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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily

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the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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According to the Bible, Joshua said unto the people, Shout, for the Lord hath given you

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the city.

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So far as we know that Joshua is a historical figure, his role was that of a military leader.

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He becomes a second Moses.

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In the book of Joshua, when he crosses the Jordan River, he separates the waters the

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way Moses separated the waters in the Red Sea.

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But he becomes more than Moses.

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He is a military conqueror, and he becomes the agent of God in the minds of the Hebrew

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writers.

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The priests blew with the trumpets and the walls fell down flat.

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Was it an ancient biblical story embellished from generation to generation, or did the

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sensational events recorded in the Old Testament actually occur?

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The Bible relates that the Israelites were led out of Egypt by Moses in the Great Exodus.

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The Hebrews were inspired by their belief in the one and only God because they considered

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themselves his chosen people.

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But once they had escaped from Egypt, they were forced to wander the desert for over

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40 years.

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It was prophesied that Moses would remain in the desert that he would never reach the

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promised land.

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According to the Old Testament, Moses died on Mount Nebo.

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He was 120 years old.

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The leadership passed to Joshua, Moses' minister.

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The Old Testament records that the Lord spoke unto Joshua saying, Moses, my servant, is

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dead.

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Now therefore arise.

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Go over this Jordan, thou and all this people, into the land I promise to give to the children

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of Israel.

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Joshua, his army, priests and fellow Israelites eventually arrived at the east bank of the

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Jordan.

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Across the river lies Jericho, one of the oldest cities in the world.

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From the beginning, the people of Jericho built their homes in the traditional desert

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manner.

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Bricks are made of earth, straw and water.

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It was understood that nature would wear away the material, but no matter.

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It was simple to rebuild their village.

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Beneath the dry sand of Jericho lies its most precious resource, water, a seemingly endless

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supply.

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For more than 90 centuries, tribes, bands of desert wanderers took sanctuary here.

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They constructed their homes atop the mudbrick ruins of their predecessors.

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By 8,000 BC, it had grown into a town of 2,000 people.

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Layer upon layer, they created a record of their time on earth, one city atop another.

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But we have left our abandoned ruins as the markers of their passing.

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It is possible to find in the rubble the pieces of pottery and charred remains of fireplaces

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that tell us the way of life of those who lived here.

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Today, this is all that remains of the walled city of Jericho.

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Yet among the stones, there is clear evidence that here was one of the first advances of

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civilization.

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Here, it seems for the first time man learned how to domesticate animals and grow crops.

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It was a major step forward in human development as a nomadic life of hunting and food gathering

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gave way to a settled life of farming.

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What was most significant about Jericho, however, was its important defense position as the guardian

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bastion to the land of Canaan, the Promised Land.

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Dr. Gerald LaRue, biblical scholar and lecturer.

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Jericho as the gateway to the Promised Land is the first city that a group of people, nomads

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or enemies would encounter when they crossed the Jordan at that particular spot.

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And therefore it was a defense city.

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To get into the holy land or the Promised Land or to Israel or Palestine, you would

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have to knock off this city, otherwise you would have enemies on your flank and behind

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you once you passed it by.

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So it was a very, very important center as a defense.

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According to the Bible, the people of Jericho were so wicked in their ways that God decided

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to evict them and to give the Israelites who fled out of Egypt a place to dwell.

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Joshua would lead the assault.

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Before him lay the problem of conquering the walled city.

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This account has been recreated based on the Old Testament.

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From his camp on the arid east bank, Joshua sent two men across the river Jordan to spy

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on the city's defenses.

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It would take them all night to cross the river and reach Jericho by morning when the

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gates opened.

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Using their best to remain unobtrusive, the spies made their way to the marketplace where

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they could mingle with the crowd.

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But to really get the information Joshua wanted about the inner city and its defenses, they

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needed an accomplice, somebody who wouldn't be worried about being seen with strangers.

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They went to the house of a harlot named Rahab.

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Joshua made welcome in a manner customary to Rahab.

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Along the way the spies had been recognized as Israelites.

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Within a few minutes, the authorities would be alerted.

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A remarkable series of events now takes place.

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Rahab realizes that her guests are Israelite spies.

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She does not turn them in.

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She says that she knew the Lord had promised the land.

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All of Jericho, she tells them, is filled with terror because of Joshua and the armed Israelites.

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The men behind the city walls had lost their courage.

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Rahab's little brother spots the authorities and runs ahead to warn his sister.

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She quickly takes the Israelites to the flat roof.

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She asks the Hebrews to swear by the Lord that since she has not betrayed them, they

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will spare her father's house and allow her family to live.

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The men answer, Rahab, our life for yours if you don't reveal our business.

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Rahab explains that the strangers had been with her, but that she had no idea who they

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were or where they had come from.

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They seemed anxious to get out of the city before the gates shut.

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If the authorities moved quickly, they might catch the men before they crossed the Jordan.

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They would have to hurry.

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As the day comes to a close and the city gates are shut for the night, Rahab keeps her bargain

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and brings the spies out of hiding.

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She lowers the cord through one of her windows.

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Rahab urges them to hide in the mountains for three days until the authorities returned

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to Jericho.

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They could then safely return to the Israelite camp across the water.

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Joshua awaits news of Jericho's defenses.

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By the 20th century, Jericho was reduced to mounds of dirt.

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For over 3,000 years, the evidence of its secrets had laid buried.

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The thing about ancient cities is that they were located always where there were a number

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of favorable factors.

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First there had to be enough natural water to sustain life, either by wells or running

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streams or springs of water.

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It had to be in a position where it could be defended.

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There had to be arable land where they could grow things to sustain life or to nurture their

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flocks and their herds.

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And Jericho has all of these factors.

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In the 1930s, an Englishman, Professor John Garstang, carried out an excavation which

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unearthed walls rising to nearly 16 feet, the defenses of a great city.

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He found that the city was destroyed by a fire which he estimated occurred around 1400

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BC.

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This fits very well with the biblical dating of Joshua and seemed positive archaeological

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confirmation of the Bible's story.

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In the 1950s, a second excavation produced contradictory evidence.

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Archaeologist Alexandra Wilkinson.

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A bit of circumstantial evidence that was found was a snail shell.

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And that has been identified as the intermediate carrier of Bilharzia, which is a water-borne

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disease that gets in through the skin and ancient people would not have been able to

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get rid of it.

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And this has a gradual debilitating effect.

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And the theory is that when the enemy came and blew their trumpets, they couldn't do

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anything about it.

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They were just too exhausted.

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Was it disease or was it trumpets that opened the way for the conquest of Jericho?

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Did Joshua fight the battle of Jericho at all?

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So far as the biblical literature is concerned, it becomes symbolic.

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The story of Joshua, the book of Joshua indicates that the Hebrews came in and in a massive

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wave swept across the whole of Palestine and practically killed everyone or enslaved everyone.

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But when you move into the book of Judges, you find that they did not conquer this place,

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that place, there's a whole listing of places that stood out against them or were not simply

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not touched.

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So the book of Joshua becomes an idealized history, an idealized sweeping across the land,

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which never really happened.

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This idealized history was formed, we believe now, in the late 7th century, possibly the

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early 6th century.

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And this would be the time when the Hebrew people were taken into exile in Babylon.

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And they're looking back over their history and they're rewriting it in the context of

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their new experiences.

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Jericho lies in an earthquake zone which is never free from tremors.

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The remains of the walls contain evidence of repeated collapse.

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The stories from the Old Testament and the theories of archaeologists vary as to dates

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and type of calamity.

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This is a very recent point, an excavation of the 1950s led by another British archaeologist,

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Dame Kathleen Kenyon.

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Employing an army of Palestinian workers, she dug deeper than Garstang, uncovering layer

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after layer of cities.

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One was built on top of the other, spanning a period of nearly 9,000 years, back to the

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beginning of civilization itself.

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At the bottom of her excavations, Kathleen Kenyon found military defenses that are remarkable

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for their period.

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A five foot thick wall rose to 15 feet in stone before being topped by mud bricks.

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A great circular tower still stands 21 feet high.

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Curiously, it was built inside the city wall.

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Was this a lookout post against attack or flash flood?

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Dr. Kenyon realized that a great fire destroyed the city and the site lay abandoned until

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sometime later when a new people moved in from the north.

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Various tribes inhabited Jericho for nearly 1,500 years.

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In places, no less than 26 plaster floors were found, one on top of the other.

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As the city grew, the defenses were extended.

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A slope was built along the base of the city walls and coated with a smooth plaster to

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make it slippery against attack.

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This was the city whose destruction Garstang attributed to Joshua in about 1400 BC.

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Kathleen Kenyon, however, was using a technique unknown in Garstang's day, radiocarbon dating.

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By using radiocarbon methods, Kathleen Kenyon found that these early walls were destroyed

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around 2100 BC, nearly 700 years too early for Joshua.

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And the second city was destroyed in about 1600 BC, still too early for Joshua.

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The biblical account of the fall of Jericho was probably written some 600 years after

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Joshua at a time when the Israelites were threatened with slavery.

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Was it just history or did it have some meaningful symbolic purpose?

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It looks in a way like a rallying call at the last ditch to say, look, if you do what

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God tells you, nothing is impossible.

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And in fact, in the Joshua story, we're told what the purpose of it is so that all the

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earth's people might discover how strong the hand of God is.

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This is a story of God interacting with his people.

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And it's not history.

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It's not Joshua's diary.

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The Bible looks like history, but it's more history-like.

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In 1956, the last year of her dig, Kathleen Kenyon uncovered a most significant find,

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one square meter at the very top of the hill.

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Here she found a section of floor with a small clay oven.

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Inside the oven lay a small jug, apparently dropped and left where it lay.

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Confirmed by carbon dating, the date fits.

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There was a settlement here in the 13th century BC.

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Joshua's story might be history.

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Imagine what it was like on the day Joshua rallied his people outside the fabled walls

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of Jericho.

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Joshua set about rousing his people, reminding them of God's promise not to fail them.

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The Ark of the Covenant, their sacred symbol of God, would be born before them and would

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guarantee their victory.

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After three days, Joshua gave the order to advance to the river.

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They that bore the ark would come unto Jordan and the feet of the priests that bore the ark

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would dip in the brim of the water.

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With Joshua's forces approaching, people within the city were filled with fear.

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Joshua ordered the Israelites to march around the walls for six days silent, except for

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the priests blowing Ram's horns trumpets in front of the Ark of the Covenant.

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At dawn on the seventh day, the climax came.

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Seven times the Israelites marched with trumpets blaring.

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On the seventh circuit, he ordered his people, shout, for the Lord have given you the city.

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The first day of the day, the Israelites were gathered in the city of Jerusalem.

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The Israelites were gathered in the city of Jerusalem.

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The Israelites were gathered in the city of Jerusalem.

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The Israelites were gathered in the city of Jerusalem.

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The Israelites were gathered in the city of Jerusalem.

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According to the Old Testament, so the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat.

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So that the people went up unto the city, every man straight before him and they took the city.

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Because of the cord identifying Rahab's house, she and her family were spared.

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The rest of the city was put to the torch.

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Whether legend or history or a combination of both, it should be known that the story of the walls of Jericho

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is related in the book of Joshua and can be found nowhere else.

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Could the biblical account of the fall of Jericho be true?

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The fall of the walls of Jericho, if they actually fell, and if this is not simply a legend to explain how the Hebrew people got past this fortress,

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would be to a group of people struggling in from the desert, a miraculous event.

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Miracles are simply those things that we can't explain by other means.

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And so people turn and say, well, God must have intervened to make this thing happen.

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In light of theological points of view and archaeological discoveries, there is considerable controversy to this day.

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A controversy of ancient beginnings that will perhaps continue until our sands of time run out.

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Coming up next, agents race against time to stop a rash of drug tampering on FBI The Untold Stories.

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Then histories, crimes and trials goes on a nationwide manhunt for child killer Wayne Williams.

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Thank you for watching.