Jericho Iteration

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According to the Book of Joshua, the Canaanite city of Jericho was destroyed after Joshua marched his army around the city’s walls for six days. On the seventh day, upon his command, the Israelites blew their ram’s horns and began to shout. The walls collapsed, thus allowing Joshua and his followers to overrun the Canaanites and claim the city as their own.

That’s how the legend goes, at any rate. About twenty years ago, archaeologists studying the ruins of Jericho in Israel, just outside Jerusalem, arrived at a different conclusion. They uncovered evidence suggesting that Jericho had been destroyed not by ram’s horns but by a major earthquake caused by a geological fault line running through the Jordan Valley. Furthermore, the city was destroyed at least a hundred and fifty years before the reported date of the Battle of Jericho. Hence, the Talmudic account differs considerably from modern interpretations of the same evidence: in short, people took credit for something nature had already done.

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