Radiolab Podcast: Jericho

Public radio program Radiolab asks the question: "could a team of trumpeters really bring down the walls of Jericho?"

The Fall of Jericho, from Providence Lithograph Company, 1901

"Sure, sound can be a powerful - an alarm clock can get you out of bed and headed for the shower, a pop song can send you back to Junior Prom. But what about sound as a physical force? In the bible, the walls of Jericho fall to the sound of seven shofar players (shofars are basically trumpets made of rams' horns). In this podcast, [we] talk to engineer and sound expert David Lubman to find out how many shofars it would actually take to level a Bronze Age wall. To get a sense of the power of the shofar, we pay a visit to Cantor Daniel Pincus to hear him and his students blow some horns. Then, we talk to inventor Woody Norris for a modern approach to this biblical challenge."

There are some interesting comments at the Radiolab site.

Here is the podcast:


I express my theory in Volume One of my book, Hearing Shofar: The Still Small Voice of the Ram's Horn:

"For six consecutive days, 40,000 shock troops escorted the Ark of the Covenant – symbol of the Hebrew tribe’s national might – in a march around the city’s wall. Ahead of the Ark marched seven priests continuously blowing shofarot. On the seventh day, as the “psy-ops” intensified, the procession marched around the city seven times. With each circuit, I imagine more residents of the city climbed to the ramparts to watch the spectacle as their anxiety increased. At the completion of the seventh circuit, the troops broke their silence and joined the shofarot in a mighty shout. My theory is that the sudden aggressive acoustic blasts terrorized the citizens. In panic, they started shouting and running, creating tremors that ruptured the already overloaded city walls."