Nothing Fails Like Bible History 14: How Archaeology Buried the Joshua Conquest Story

Nothing Fails Like Bible History 14: How Archaeology Buried the Joshua Conquest Story

Crash Course in Archaeology

The region of the world is the Ancient Near East, more specifically, the Southern Levant. The time period is the Late Bronze IIB, or the 13th century BCE. And we're going to be exploring the sizes of the various locations mentioned in the Joshua conquest narrative.

But for any of this to make sense, we first need a quick crash course in archaeology. Archaeologists usually measure ancient sites in hectares. For reference, a hectare is 10,000 square meters, or about the size of half a large city block in Fredericksburg, Texas. And they measure population densities in people per hectare. So, if you assume that each of seven houses on a block has an average family size of four people, then you get a population density of 28 people per hectare.

The entire metropolitan area of Waco, Texas is roughly 268,000 hectares and has a population of about 307,000. Because it's so spread out, that's only an average of just over 1 person per hectare. By contrast, Dhaka is possibly the most densely populated city in the world today with over 450 people per hectare, with some neighborhoods (Lalbagh Thana in Old Dhaka) packing nearly 1,700 residents into a single hectare.

So, given this massive range, when archaeologists look at ancient sites and try to estimate their populations, where do they even begin? Well, first they can look at known average family sizes and population densities in similar pre-modern agrarian societies to get a baseline. They can measure what percentage of a tel (ruin mound) is covered by habitations versus how much of it is open courtyards, marketplaces, temples, and so on. They look at how many houses there are per hectare, and how much floor space there is per house—after all, there's a minimum amount of space that even the most easygoing people need in order to live without going insane (or for things like a bed to sleep on).

And then, if they're trying to get an upper-bound maximum population estimate, they'll even measure things like the site's total grain and water storage capacity, and how much food their fields and livestock could yield to see how big of a population they could realistically sustain given the average human's minimum water and caloric requirements.

As a general rule, in the ancient Near East, cities without walls tended to be more sparsely populated because they spread out into the fields, while fortified towns tend to cram their houses together inside the walls and even build houses with multiple floors. But after over a century of excavations and thousands of in-depth analyses, archaeologists have found that as a general rule of thumb, the average Bronze Age Levantine city had a population density between 100 and 200 people per hectare. Now there were densely populated cities like Tell en-Nasbeh later in the Iron Age, but even it only reached about 300 people per hectare across the 3.2-hectare site.

And this creates a massive problem for Christian apologists. Because most of the sites we'll be looking at only occupied a tiny regional footprint. They need these Biblical cities to match the Biblical picture and at least be large enough to field standing armies as described in the conquest of Joshua. The Bible gives exact census data for the Israelite army—over 600,000 fighting-age men, 42,000 of whom cross the Jordan River to carry out the conquest—and claims that the land they're going into vastly outnumbers them.

Inflating the Numbers

Now the first problem here is that the entire population of the city that the Israelites allegedly left from only had a population of 20,000–50,000. So first, apologists need to drive up the size of this city.

To explore how they do this, I spoke with archaeologist, author, and associate professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa, Dr. Robert Cargill.

"I also spend a lot of time looking at individuals who attempt to take the archaeological findings of these very credible archaeologists who have been working on these sites for decades," Dr. Cargill told me. "And then they like to say, well, the findings of these archaeologists, they don't match what the Bible claims, or it doesn't really fit the conquest model in Joshua. What can we do to pick apart the archaeological findings? Is there a variable that we can fudge? Is there a variable we can change so we can begin to, in little ways, make it possibly fit these conquest narratives? And one of these things they do is with population density. Because unlike a date that something was destroyed—which people still try to cheat—these types of things, like how large was the city, how many people were in it at the time, these are a little easier to cheat than when something was destroyed."

And this is exactly what the Christian apologist and Egyptologist Dr. David Falk does to inflate the numbers of the city he claims the Israelites left from. Falk has argued that since the site of Avaris covers 250 hectares—and since the Egyptian worker's village of Lahun had a population density of 800 persons per hectare—we can estimate that Avaris had a population of at least 200,000.

But here's what he's not telling you. Lahun wasn't a normal city. It was a worker's village built from the ground up as a pyramid construction town. It required the most advanced empire on Earth to supply centralized grain rations for this concentrated specialized labor force. The workers didn't grow their own food. And still, the extreme densities only applied to the 2.5-hectare Sekhem district, which was essentially a worker's dormitory—not the whole site.

You're not going to replicate these conditions elsewhere without highly advanced supply chains. And even then, you may be able to cram 500–600 people into a hectare for a few blocks, but scaling that across an entire city? Without modern sanitation and waste disposal, disease becomes the real population cap. Pack humans together beyond a certain threshold and dysentery brings your numbers right back down. Scaling population densities of 800 people per hectare across the entire 250-hectare region of Avaris in the Late Bronze Age is simply not credible.

As Dr. Cargill put it: "When you start looking at things like cramming people together and saying, 'Oh no, the city was much more compact and that's how you get more people and therefore it fits'—I would say stick with the people who are actually doing the research there, who are actually doing the excavations and publishing the reports, and not the folks who are trying to examine it from the outside."

But now let's move to the cities that Joshua allegedly conquered. And here the Christian apologist, archaeologist, and young earth creationist Dr. Titus Kennedy tries to pull exactly the same maneuver. In his doctoral dissertation, he attempted to estimate these cities' populations, but realizing their surface areas were way too tiny to fit the Biblical narrative, he simply went with a population density coefficient roughly 2–3 times greater than the archaeological standard for almost every single one of the 25 sites—including for locations that were entirely abandoned at the time.

And here's the thing: if you actually read the archaeological reports for these sites, you find that Beth-shean only had Late Bronze occupation in the upper region of the mound; Jericho was completely destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, and though re-inhabited, was massively scaled down during the Late Bronze.

But that didn't stop Kennedy from taking these locations' largest footprints during their most expansive periods and simply multiplying them by absurdly unrealistic population coefficients. And the most egregious example of this—well, besides the entirely abandoned cities—is the city of Lachish, where his population estimates are substantially higher than the archaeological estimate for the entire 1,000-square-kilometer region.

And Kennedy isn't done. Next we've got the city of Dor, whose king Joshua allegedly defeated. Dor occupies an 8.5-hectare footprint. Kennedy pegs it at 10 (fine). But then he says that because of erosion and rising sea levels the city was likely twice this size, placing it at 20 hectares before multiplying this entire area by 400 people per hectare.

What does he base this on? Not the data. Because we actually know exactly how much of the coastline has eroded away (it's about 65 meters since the Late Bronze IIB). And we have underwater archaeological surveys which have found an Iron Age mole from just after this time period about 20 m out, but they have yet to find evidence of any Bronze Age underwater structures. At most, at the very most, you can add maybe another four or five hectares to the site. But the archaeologists at Door also dug all along the eastern and southern sides of Door all the way down to Virgin Sand and found zero evidence of any Bronze Age structure. And in the middle of the tell, below the Iron Age level, they just found a Bronze Age dump site (the kind that you might find outside of a city), leading them to believe that during the late Bronze Age, Door likely only occupied a small region in the unexavated northern part of the Tel… which is exactly what a 2020 excavation finally found.

But I'm going to be generous here and give Dor an entire 8.5 hectares. In fact, for each site we look at, unless specified otherwise by the archaeological reports, I'm going to assume that the entirety of each site was fully occupied during the time of Joshua. When population data has been calculated by an expert, that's what we'll go with. When it's not, we'll use the standard 200 people per hectare. But then just to give the Bible the extra benefit of the doubt, at the end, we'll double this number. But bear in mind, these are the absolute upper maximum limit of what's even remotely possible for these sites.

The Reality of Canaanite Armies

So, according to the Book of Joshua, the Israelite army of 42,000–600,000 men faced impossible odds. Seven mighty nations, each more numerous and mightier than Israel. Armies "like the sand on the seashore." Massive fortified cities with walls reaching up to the heavens. King Og of Bashan alone ruled over sixty fortified cities, each protected by high walls, double gates, and bars. The land was full of giant warriors, tall as cedars and strong as oaks, so enormous that ordinary men looked like grasshoppers beside them. They formed huge coalitions fielding massive armies with advanced technology like chariots of iron. And here's what we actually find:

Hazor. Let's start with the best candidate in support of the Joshua conquest: the city of Hazor. This city absolutely dwarfs every other Late Bronze Age site in the region. It occupies a massive 80 hectares, with approximately 18,000 inhabitants. And it was violently destroyed at this time. It is by far the best evidence in favor of the conquest narrative. And Christian apologists love to camp on this one data point.

Now, there's no evidence of Israelite occupation following the destruction, and the field director of the dig site, Sharon Zuckerman, believes the city wasn't conquered by outside forces but suffered from an internal conflict—possibly a slave uprising. This is because the buildings targeted were the palaces, temples, and administrative buildings, not the worker's quarters or the entire city. The gates and walls show no signs of siege warfare. And they even found an inscription of a prophecy saying that "a slave will rebel against his master." But the co-director, Amnon Ben-Tor, did attribute the destruction to a new emerging tribe of Israelites.

I asked Dr. Cargill about how to handle conflicting interpretations like this among excavation directors.

"This happens, by the way, on archaeological dig sites," he explained. "The principals on these dig sites often disagree. The directors of these excavations will say, 'This is the evidence and I think this is what happened.' And someone else will say, 'Well, I actually think this is what happened.' These are the scholars that you want to listen to—the ones who say, 'This is the evidence and I think based on the evidence this is what happened,' while acknowledging that other possibilities exist." He continued: "To try to say this destruction level is evidence of this biblical conquest when none of the other—or at least the bulk of the other—evidence doesn't match that... you have to look at the whole of the evidence, not at one piece. Especially if you're trying to fudge different pieces of the data so that it fits."

But I'll grant them this one.

Now, the locations of some of the sites in Joshua are unknown—Lasharon, Goiim, Hepher, Adullam, Bezer, Madon—so we're forced to just ignore those.

Nine of the remaining sites were completely abandoned in the Late Bronze Age: Taanach, Heshbon, Dibon, Gibeon, Ai, Arad, Makkedah, Jarmuth, and Geder. Four other sites were almost entirely abandoned or shrank to a tiny, miniscule part of the mound: Aphek, Beth-shean, Tirzah, and Kedesh.

The second biggest city after Hazor at this time was Megiddo, which was 12 hectares and had about 2,400 inhabitants. Now half of those would have been women. Half of the male population at any time would have been too old or too young to fight. And another roughly 15% of the fighting-age men likely had medical conditions—scoliosis, blindness, some form of insanity, partial or total paralysis, missing limbs, or any number of hundreds of untreatable conditions at the time—that would have rendered them useless on a battlefield. So the maximum number of fighting-age men even capable of combat would be about 510, but most of those would have been farmers, cobblers, masons, and the like—not trained warriors.

Furthermore, the city of Megiddo was continuously occupied and wasn't destroyed until 1100 BCE, long after the proposed conquest dates. Only four other of these "grand fortified cities" mentioned in Joshua had populations higher than 1,000 people at the time: Lachish, Gezer, Achshaph, and (well, maybe) Dor. It's highly unlikely that any of these villages could have mustered a fighting force of more than a few hundred largely untrained troops.

And then we get to Jericho: the grand fortified gated fortress inhabited by giants, with walls so thick people lived inside them. The citadel that required an espionage campaign and an act of God in order to overcome… It was literally just 4.5 hectares at this time, and was a massively scaled-down Egyptian administrative center—a shell of its glory days. Even if we give it a generous 200 people per hectare, that's a population of just 900 people in the entire city. And a maximum fighting force of about 191. The Bible says they spared the life of Rahab the prostitute and her family, but that was practically half the population of Jericho right there.

Oh, and Jerusalem, which was apparently so mighty that the Israelites were unable to conquer it? It was literally the same size as Jericho at this time, albeit with possibly an even smaller population of about 500–2,000 people total according to archaeologists. You've got Libnah, which was barely more than a hectare, and Hebron and Debir, which were small hamlets no bigger than about 3.3 hectares with a few hundred inhabitants each.

Finally, there are four other sites—Shimron, Bethel, Jokneam, and Eglon—which I was only able to find estimated ranges for their surface area of between 1.1 and 5 hectares. All small villages, and none capable of fielding large standing armies.

Apologetic Gymnastics

Now, for most of these sites, the location either isn't contested at all or there's wide consensus on the identification. Nobody, Christian or secular, is arguing that Tel Gezer isn't the modern location of Gezer, or that Tel es-Sultan isn't the location of ancient Jericho. However, for some of these sites, Christian scholars do propose alternatives.

For example, Et-Tell, the widely accepted location for Ai, which fits the Biblical description of where Ai should be and is really the only candidate for it—well, it was abandoned for centuries. There is a thick buildup of silt and sediment with zero evidence of any habitation all the way down through the time of Joshua. So, in order to save the Bible, Scott Stripling and Bryant Wood, the archaeologists from the Associates for Biblical Research—a creationist organization akin to Answers in Genesis but for history—proposed that Khirbet el-Maqatir was the real city of Ai. The problem is… even Titus Kennedy acknowledges that Khirbet el-Maqatir was only about 1 hectare in the Late Bronze. But I mean… it's bigger than zero.

Sometimes apologists like those at the Associates for Biblical Research will say things like, "We are committed to the Bible and we never use the archaeology to interpret the Bible. The Bible is our starting point." Which really tells you everything you need to know about their methodology.

And they do the same thing for Heshbon, swapping out the abandoned Tel Hesban for the nearby tiny 1.8-hectare site of Tell el-Umeiri. Some people think Tell el-Judeideh is Makkedah instead of Geder, but it doesn't really matter because both sites were abandoned in the Late Bronze. Tell Harbaj is proposed as an alternative location for Achshaph, but it's actually smaller, so that doesn't fix anything. And the alternative proposals for Debir (Khirbet Rabud), Libnah (Tell Bornat/Burna), and Eglon (Tel 'Eton) at best nudge the location sizes up by a couple of hectares.

Even if we go with the largest surface area estimates and we double the population coefficients, Hazor is still the only city that even remotely fits the Biblical description, and just barely at that, with a militia size of maybe a few thousand troops.

Most scholars believe that the Joshua conquest narrative was written hundreds of years later, during the Iron Age—hence the expected historical inaccuracies. But we do have writing dating to just before this time period in the form of correspondences written by the leaders of these very towns. They're called the Amarna Letters. Egypt ruled this whole area at the time, and in these letters, the local rulers beseech the pharaoh, asking him for tiny troop requests, indicating that sometimes as few as 50 men would be enough to subdue a region. Which perfectly fits what we see in the archaeological record.

So while Biblical literalists in their echo chambers are saying things like, "I don't understand why anyone in academia doesn't believe the Bible as literal history—with all this evidence at places like Hazor," the archaeological reality tells a very different story.

Sometimes apologists will claim that the scholarly consensus against a historical Exodus is merely groupthink. As Titus Kennedy put it, “If you've come up in an academic circle where everyone agrees the Bible is myth, then your colleagues are all going to think the Exodus was a myth, and generally that group doesn't really even look into the possibility that the Exodus could be historical." This kind of framing fundamentally misrepresents how academic scholarship works. Scholars aren't ignoring the evidence—they're following it. And this article is a perfect illustration of why.

Conclusion

Ignoring the fact that many of these locations have no Late Bronze evidence of destruction but show signs of continuous occupation, 9 of these cities were completely abandoned. Another 4 were the size of a pimple. 9 more would have likely struggled to muster together 100 soldiers each. And discounting Hazor, the remaining 5 were almost equally pathetic.

And that's not even touching on the fact that Deuteronomy says Joshua conquered 60 fortified cities in the region of Bashan—all with high walls, double gates, and bars, besides a great many villages. But the archaeological reality of 13th-century Bashan is stark. The entire region was an extremely sparsely inhabited barren wilderness. There were semi-nomadic tribes like the Shasu and a handful of small forts guarding caravan routes. But sixty fortified cities? Aside from Ashtaroth and Edrei, you'd be hard-pressed to find six proper settlements from this time period. And this isn't a case of missing data or unexcavated sites. Surveys of the Bashan region have been extensive, and the settlements simply aren't there.

So what are we left with? The Bible describes seven nations mightier than Israel. Powerful kings forming military coalitions with armies too numerous to count. Giants who made ordinary men feel like insects. Sixty fortified cities in Bashan alone. Walls reaching to heaven. Iron chariots. A land so powerful that 600,000 fighting-age Israelite men needed miracles from God to prevail.

But the archaeology shows abandoned cities and tiny villages. Towns that weren't even built until the Iron Age, centuries later. "Mighty" kings whose entire military force wouldn't fill a movie theater. We find cities that weren't destroyed in this period but were continuously occupied. The wilderness of Bashan with maybe a handful of watchtowers. And fighting forces that could be measured in dozens, not thousands.

We're not looking at minor exaggeration or poetic license. The mismatch between archaeology and the Bible is glaring. The world described in Joshua simply does not exist in the archaeological record of the Late Bronze Age. On paper, it's a monumental conquest. But when you actually dig in the ground, the mighty Canaanite kingdoms evaporate into thin air. The impregnable fortress cities turn out to be hamlets and ruins. Instead of citadels, we get ghost towns. And the only miracle we find is that anyone still takes these conquest narratives as literal history.

Sources cited: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MoNIOtkmX8YcrUHCsB9jbeDxmk9nfby-PUCXfqkpaXQ/edit?usp=sharing

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