How is the account of the fall of Jericho in Joshua 6 inconsistent with the other details in the book and with the archaeological evidence?

A:A minor inconsistency in the conquest stories is that the number of men at Joshua's disposal seems more realistic than the 600,000 fighting men mentioned elsewhere. Not only would Joshua have been unable to feed such a huge nation off the land, but his military tactics would have been very different.

The archaeological evidence against the historicity of the Israelite conquest is well established. Jericho had been abandoned around 1550 BCE, long before the time attributed to Joshua. By 1400 BCE, there seems to have been a small, unwalled village on the site of the former city, but nothing a great military leader would bother conquering. The second city to be conquered in the Book of Joshua is Ai, which archaeologists say was also abandoned and in ruins long before this time. Ai means 'Ruins' in Hebrew, indicating that the Israelites never knew the real name of the city and simply knew it as the 'ruins', a state that they thought must have come about because of their own conquest of the town.