Really I don’t think the destruction of Jericho was not a factor, although Joshua did not play around. I had seen the thread every day and just decided to take a look. I wasn’t expecting so many images, but back in those days that was about all you could paint without being accused of blasphemy of some sort.
Your observation about the limited safe topics for artists back then rings true--that had not occurred to me, so thanks for contributing it. Of course, it enriches these threads now!
Another limitation for them was the nearly total lack of visual information available to them: no photographs and no internet to display them, so they were pretty much flying blind about foreign lands and ancient times. We had a chuckle at Tintoretto's expense when he portrayed Egyptian women as pale-skinned curly-haired blondes in ball-gowns.