Jericho in biblical times had a serious crime problem. It was there, you may remember, that the good Samaritan had to come to the rescue of "a certain man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves".
But then the place had had a nasty history, which may well have induced traumatic stress in some of its inhabitants. Some years previously, when Joshua had led the Israelites across the Jordan and advanced against that fortified city, "the walls came tumbling down".
The Bible blames the Lord. "Go round about the city with all your fighting men once a day," He allegedly told Joshua, "and so shall ye do for six days. On the seventh day the priests shall take seven trumpets, and shall walk before the ark of the covenant. And ye shall go about the city seven times, and the priests shall sound the trumpets. And when they shall sound a long blast, all the people shall shout together with a very great noise, and the walls of the city shall fall to the ground."
Scientists, however, have come up with a seismic explanation for Joshua's good fortune. They suggest that an earthquake caused the walls of Jericho to fall.
Earthquakes, apparently, are common in the area. Jericho lies on the Dead Sea Rift, a fault which runs north-south through Palestine and down into the Red Sea. In terms of plate tectonics, the rift is a boundary between the "Arabian" plate to the east and the "African-Sinai" plate to the west, and the two move relative to each other at an average speed approaching one centimetre per year. This movement is erratic and sometimes, rather than sliding smoothly past each other, the plates periodically relieve the built-up stress in "jerks" that are palpable as seismic tremors.
More than 30 major earthquakes have been documented in the vicinity of the Dead Sea in the last 2,000 years, the most recent in 1927, and the walls of Jericho have collapsed several times in the city's 10,000-year history. Moreover, evidence that Joshua's entrance to the city was facilitated in this way is enhanced by additional information in the Bible that the flow of the Jordan river was cut off at the same time. Such disruptions, typically lasting one or two days, have been recorded in 1160, 1267, 1546, 1834 and 1906, always in association with seismic activity in the region.
The coincidence of the sudden destruction of the walls of Jericho with the interruption of the Jordan waters leaves scientists in little doubt as to how the Lord contributed to Joshua's achievement.