Jericho Was In Ruins BEFORE Joshua Allegedly Conquered It.
The account of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan is inconsistent with the archaeological evidence. Cities supposedly conquered by Joshua in the 14th century BCE were destroyed long before he came on the scene. Some, such as Ai and Arad, had been ruins for a 1000 years.
Amazingly, a devout Christian, Dr. Gerald Aardsma (Ph. D., Nuclear Physics) believes the bible to be literally true yet he acknowledges that Jericho was in ruins before Joshua allegedly conquered it. See “Biblical Chronologist, Jericho“. So how can he believe the bible to be literally true and yet, acknowledge the archaeological evidence that proves Jericho was in ruins at the time of Joshua? Simple. He merely ascribes a transcription error; to wit…
In 1990, Dr. Gerald Aardsma proposed a major adjustment to traditional biblical chronology. He proposed that the “480” of 1 Kings 6:1 was originally “1,480” but the Hebrew letters corresponding to the “one thousand” were lost at an early stage of copying. The new biblical date for the Exodus becomes ca. 2450 B.C., and prior biblical events are similarly shifted to earlier times, by exactly 1000 years relative to traditional biblical chronology.
See? That’s how you make something out of nothing. Just fiddle with the dates.
About Dr. Aardsma
This man, with a Ph. D. in Nuclear Physics, has stopped his work in nuclear physics (multiple publications in valid journals) and is now trying to figure out what it was about the flood that caused our lifespan to go from 900 years to 72 years. Read all about him HERE. The really interesting thing about him is that before he went off his rocker, he provided very compelling evidence that works AGAINST the creationists. He completely validates two of the techniques that are used to determine the age of things – radio carbon dating and dendrochronology (use of tree rings to validate date calculations)
The Church Of Truth™ 
You know what? You really gotta hand it to Christians. Seriously. NOBODY can do the mental somersaults to desperately try to make something fit or make sense the way these easily brainwashed, feeble minded fools can.
Projection at it’s finest.
Atheists are not only less intelligent on average than theists [1] but they and other non-affiliated are far more likely to believe in mystical woo like fortune-telling and ghosts [2]. Let’s not even start on the myriad pseudoscientific ideas atheists glom onto lest a divine foot be let in the door (multiverse, etc). All that combined with the breath-takingly sloppy thinking and willingness to pontificate on issues they barely understand on display at this sight makes me wonder how any atheist can stand to look at themselves in the mirror.
The author of this written diarrhea saying “See? That’s how you make something out of nothing. Just fiddle with the dates.” belies a complete lack of understanding of ancient texts. A single digit being dropped by copyists is a very common mistake, so extending the time of the Judges is most certainly on the table.
The correct approach would be to look at ancient Hebrew manuscripts as far back as possible and check the phrase in question, seeing whether it expressed the time in question in numbers or words (i.e. 480 or four hundred eighty). That, though, would require actual work. And why do that when we can repeat garbage we read on Reddit that was already answered by Catholic monks five hundred years ago?
[1] http://voxday.blogspot.com.es/2014/01/mailvox-distribution-of-atheist.html
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122178219865054585, http://winteryknight.com/2014/08/24/pew-survey-evangelical-christians-least-likely-to-believe-superstitious-nonsense/
(inb4 shrieks of bias; address the claims)