FOR decades, archaeologists have tried to cast doubt on the Bible’s account of Joshua and the battle of Jericho. According to the Bible, Joshua and the Israelite army marched around Jericho for seven days, until God made the city’s formidable walls fall down. This allowed the Israelites to enter and ‘burn the city with fire and everything that was in it.’​—Joshua 6:1-24.

Dr. Wood cites a three-foot-thick [1 m] layer of ash laden with pottery sherds, fragments of bricks from a fallen wall, and timbers, all blackened as if by a citywide fire. The ceramic fragments have been dated (with the admittedly inexact methods available) at 1410 before our Common Era, give or take 40 years​—not at all far from 1473 B.C.E., the date for the battle of Jericho derived from the Bible.