There has always been trouble in the Middle East. Several thousand years ago, for example, Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan and advanced against the fortified city known as Jericho. But a strange thing happened: Joshua had an easy victory when after only a week, to everyone's surprise, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.
Now, the Bible credits the Lord with bringing about this very timely demolition. "Go round about the city with all your fighting men once a day," he is said to have 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."
And so, allegedly, it happened. But scientists like to hypothesise about the various methodologies the Lord might use to achieve such biblical objectives. In the case of Jericho, they think it might have been an earthquake.
Earthquakes are common in the region. Jericho lies near the Dead Sea Rift, a fault which runs north-south through Palestine, 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 every year. But of course the movement is erratic; 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 2000 years, the most recent one being 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 the additional information in the Bible that the flow of the River Jordan 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 destruction of the walls of Jericho with the interruption of the Jordan waters leaves scientists in no doubt as to the precise way in which the Lord assisted Joshua.