---
description: Sources worked up for the Jericho, Ai and conquest article - what each supplied, the archive.org leaf anchors for Kenyon, and the four load-bearing sources not yet obtained.
agents: Claude Code
models: claude-opus-5[1m]
last_reviewed: 2026-08-30 11:15 ET
theme: common/themes/berean2/theme.php
---

# Literature review — Jericho, Ai, and the Conquest Narratives

## Cited in the article

| Source | Route | What it supplied |
|---|---|---|
| Kenyon, *Digging Up Jericho* (1957), 261–262 | archive.org search-inside, item `diggingupjericho0000unse_a2r1`, via `bin/iapdsearch.py` | The whole crux passage verbatim: the "sad fact" sentence, the erosion explanation, the concession that a Late Bronze wall may have existed and been lost, the 1400–1350/1325 tomb re-use, the single in-situ dipper juglet, and the closing earthquake / divine-intervention paragraph |
| Kenyon, *Archaeology in the Holy Land* | archive.org search-inside, items `archaeologyinhol0000kath` (leaf 134) and `archaeologyinhol0000unse_x6i8` (leaf 200) | The repeated deliberate burnings of the Jericho walls, the 3-foot brushwood ash layer at the south end, the timber-tied bricks as a possible anti-earthquake measure, and the 1580 BC Eighteenth-Dynasty association |
| Bruins & van der Plicht 1995, *Radiocarbon* 37/2 | Project source library, `bruins-1995_jericho-radiocarbon.pdf` | Cereal 3306 ± 7 BP, charcoal 3370 ± 6 BP, calibrated 1601–1566 or 1561–1524 calBC, the explicit rejection of Bimson 1978 and Wood 1990 by name, the "premature calibration" caveat, and the point that Kenyon's date came from an Egyptian assumption whose own date has since moved |
| Kennedy 2023, *Religions* 14:796 | Project source library, `kennedy-2023_bronze-age-destruction-of-jericho.pdf` | His IntCal20 recalibration (1699–1623 and 1617–1531 calBC), his retreat to pottery typology, his summary that radiocarbon rules out 1230 but cannot decide MB III vs LB I, and his ~1400 BC conclusion |
| Nigro et al. 2024, interim report | Project source library, `nigro-2024_interim-report-tell-es-sultan-jericho.pdf` | The 1550–1525 BC date from House A341 C14, the period table, and the Sultan Va (LB I) orange-mudbrick wall on top of the Cyclopean Wall found partly collapsed |
| Bimson, *Redating the Exodus and Conquest*, 2nd ed. (1981) | Project source library, `bimson-1981_redating-the-exodus-and-conquest.pdf` | His actual thesis, which is routinely confused with Wood's: he keeps the MB destruction and lowers the period boundary, putting Jericho c. 1430 and the Exodus c. 1470 |
| Stripling & Hassler, "The 'Problem' of Ai" (ABR, 2016) | curl of the ABR PDF | The Albright letter of 23 Feb 1970, the Khirbet Nisya failure, the Maqatir scarabs and LB I pottery, and the site sizes (Maqatir 1 ha, et-Tell 11 ha, Jericho 3.6 ha) |
| Zuckerman 2007, *JMA* 20/1: 3–32 | curl of the open PDF at berlinarchaeology.wordpress.com | The internal-revolt model for Hazor and the "no archaeological evidence of warfare … anywhere in the site" statement, verified in a single-column extraction |
| Wartburg Project, "Jericho and Ai: The Archaeological Problems" | curl of the PDF | The ABR fortification description, the six/nine-acre figures, and a compact statement of the consensus position |
| NET Bible: Josh 6:20–24, 7:3, 8:25, 8:28, 11:11–13, 24:13;  Judg 1:27–33 | labs.bible.org plain-text API | All scripture quotations |

## Locator notes

- **Kenyon, *Digging Up Jericho*.**  Leaf-to-folio offset is −4, anchored twice and far apart: leaf 100 carries the running head "96 DIGGING UP JERICHO" and leaf 265 carries "JERICHO AND COMING OF THE ISRAELITES 261."  So the "sad fact" sentence begins on p. 261 and the "thrown no light" paragraph is on p. 262.  This is a proper double anchor.
- **Kenyon, *Archaeology in the Holy Land*.**  The item used for the burning passage (`archaeologyinhol0000kath`, leaf 134) was **not** anchored to a printed folio.  The footnote says so.  Anchor it before this article is published.
- **Bimson.**  The scanned PDF's text layer does not carry usable page numbers.  Quotations are cited by chapter content.  Fix from a paginated copy.

## Added 2026-08-30 from the conservative literature

| Source | Route | What it supplied |
|---|---|---|
| Bryant G. Wood, "Dating Jericho's Destruction: Bienkowski is Wrong on All Counts," *BAR* Sept.–Oct. 1990, on the ABR site | curl | **The Wood/Bienkowski exchange, previously flagged as this article's biggest gap.**  The Hatshepsut scarab argument, the eight-site pottery correlations for Phase 52, the Cypriot-import methodology objection, and Wood's own concession that his detailed pottery study was unpublished |
| Bryant G. Wood, "Carbon 14 Dating at Jericho," ABR, 7 Aug 2008 | curl | **That the British Museum date of 1410 ± 40 BC which the 1990 rejoinder defended was later found to be a lab error and corrected to 3300 ± 110 BP** — Wood reports this himself.  Also his systematic-offset argument and its Thera framing |
| Pearson et al., *Science Advances* 4 (2018) eaar8241 | Open access, QUB repository via `bin/oafind.sh` | The measured offset from the calibration curve between c.1660 and 1540 BCE, and the ruling out of laboratory bias |
| Manning et al., *Scientific Reports* (2020), PMC7431540 | curl of PMC | **The test that settles it:** against IntCal20 the 1700–1500 BCE period "shows little offset," Mediterranean series "fit the calibration curve closely," and region-wide offsets are "~0–22 14C years" |
| Rodger C. Young, NEAS presentation, 18 Nov 2015 | curl of rcyoung.org PDF | The Thera-pumice stratigraphy argument and the key relative datum: Jericho City IV is "45 ± 15 years later than the BP date for Thera" |
| Keaton Halley, "Canaanite Hazor—the Bible got it right!", creation.com | curl | The Amarna titulature point (EA 148, 227, 228, 364) and the Mari statistic, both independently checked |
| Peter Briggs, "Testing the Factuality of the Conquest of Ai Narrative," Part Four, ABR | curl | The remanent-magnetization evidence for burning at Maqatir's gate, the slingstone and gate-socket counts, the 1-in-2-million probability calculation, and the P1 = 1/6 datum that survives the critique |

## Popular-source leads followed to scholarship, 2026-08-30

Two YouTube channels were worked through as lead-generators on the human's instruction, with the leads then chased to sources.  Captions pulled with `yt-dlp --write-auto-sub`;  channel video list via the RSS feed at `youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC5g_Zgi8TOC6GvvnxzQCY2w`.

- **Joel Kramer, "'The Problem' of Joshua's Ai…SOLVED!"** (`lK7GQxkEkKk`) produced the session's most consequential single finding for this article:  **Titus Kennedy and Kramer have both abandoned Khirbet el-Maqatir** and excavated et-Tell in 2019, reporting Late Bronze I pottery and a burn layer.  Kennedy had dug at Maqatir.  **Still unpublished after six years** — no excavation report, no peer-reviewed article, no ceramic corpus located.  The article treats it as an open claim and says why it cannot yet be used.
- **Kramer, "#1 Evidence for Israel's Conquest"** (`mLxE3JmHV2U`) led to the Shechem convergence now in [The Emergence of Early Israel](/unpublished-ai/emergence-of-early-israel/), via S. Douglas Waterhouse, "Who are the Ḥabiru of the Amarna Letters?", *JATS* 12/1 (2001), open access at Andrews Digital Commons.
- **Not obtained:** any publication of the 2019 et-Tell soundings;  Moran's edition of the Amarna letters;  G. Ernest Wright's Shechem report.  Kennedy's *Religions* 14/6 (2023) Jericho paper is in the source library and was already used.

## Consulted and deliberately not used

- **Wood, "Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence," *BAR* 16/2 (1990).**  Not obtained directly.  Wood's ranking-of-evidence quotation used in the article was verified for this project's [dating the Exodus](/unpublished-ai/dating-the-exodus/) article and is carried over.  His full ceramic argument is not reproduced here and should be, in a published version.
- **Bienkowski's 1990 reply to Wood, and Wood's rejoinder, both in *BAR*.**  Not obtained.  This is the sharpest published exchange on the Jericho pottery and the article is weaker for lacking it.  Get both.
- **Callaway, "Was My Excavation of 'Ai Worthwhile?" *BAR* 11/2 (1985): 68.**  Paywalled at the BAS Library;  no open copy located.  The two famous sentences are quoted in the article **flagged as unverified against the printed page**.  Callaway's substantive conclusion is separately sourced through his *NEAEHL* entry as cited by Stripling and Hassler.
- **Ben-Tor's publications on the Hazor destruction.**  Not obtained.  His iconoclasm argument is summarised in the article from secondary reporting and is not quoted.  Get *Hazor: Canaanite Metropolis, Israelite City* or the excavation reports before publication.
- **Titus Kennedy's reported 2019 et-Tell soundings** (Late Bronze pottery and a burn layer at et-Tell itself).  No peer-reviewed publication located;  the claim circulates only through popular outlets.  Named in the article's "what would settle it" list and explicitly marked unverified.  If it is published it materially changes the Ai section.
- **Finkelstein and Dever on the emergence of Israel.**  Deliberately out of scope.  That material belongs to the sibling article "The Emergence of Early Israel," which covers Merneptah, the highland settlement wave, pig bones and the four-room house.  This article is limited to the destruction-layer question.
- **Garstang's own excavation reports (1930–36).**  Not obtained.  Everything about Garstang here is relayed through Kenyon or through ABR.  A published version should quote Garstang directly on the Middle Building and the collapsed walls.
- **Weinstein, "A New Set of Radiocarbon Dates from the Town Site," in Rast & Schaub eds. (2003).**  Not obtained.  Relevant to the Jericho radiocarbon picture.

## Open questions

1. What is the printed folio for the Kenyon *Archaeology in the Holy Land* wall-burning passage?  One leaf anchor would close it.
2. Is there any published stratigraphic date for the collapse of Nigro's Sultan Va wall?  The 2024 interim report describes the wall but not a destruction event.  If a burn layer or short-lived sample exists under the collapse, it is the most important unexploited datum at the site.
3. Did Kennedy publish the 2019 et-Tell soundings anywhere peer-reviewed?
4. ~~Bienkowski vs Wood on the Jericho pottery~~ — **closed 2026-08-30.**  Wood's rejoinder is on the ABR site and is now represented in the article, including the Hatshepsut scarab argument, which is the strongest single item in the early-date case.  **Bienkowski's own 1990 article is still unread** and is the remaining half of the exchange.
5. Verify Wood's eight-site pottery correlations for Phase 52 (Shechem XIV, Lachish Fosse Temple I, Ashdod XVII, Hazor 2, Megiddo VIII, Mevorakh XI, Michal XVI, Rabud LB4).  These are checkable and nobody appears to have checked them in print.
6. Read Pearson 2018 and Manning 2020 in full;  only the abstract and the relevant figure captions were read.
7. Check the *Radiocarbon* 32 (1990): 74 and 35 (1993): 30 notices for the correction to the British Museum Jericho date, which is currently cited as Wood cites it.