Loading...I have been discussing the book of Joshua and its descriptions of violence inflicted on others on orders of the God of Israel — massive military campaigns and massacres (is there any reason NOT to call it a genocide of the inhabitants of Canaan?). I have wanted to cover this material as background to the New Testament book of Revelation, where the slaughter is even more full scale. One of my points is that the contrast between the “God of wrath” in the OT and the “God of love” in the NT does not really hold up, especially in view of the New Testament’s final book; another will be that the devastation of Revelation is indeed consistent with a common motif of Scripture. I will be getting to that later, and emphasizing it, since at the same time it is inconsistent with another motif of Scripture.
But first I want to address a question lots of people typically have about these stories of the Conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua. Did any of this happen?
Here’s how I discuss the matter in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford University Press), a book you should consider getting if you’re interested in knowing both what’s in the Bible and what scholars say about it from historical and literary perspectives.
******************************
The Historical Value of the Narrative
When considering the historicity of the narratives of Joshua, the first thing to re-emphasize is that
Want to see more? Did the Walls of Jericho really “come a-tumblin’ down”? Join the blog! It doesn’t cost much, and every dime of your small membership fee goes to charities helping those in need. Everyone wins! No one loses! Click here for membership options
I believe the sun stopping in the sky, as mentioned in the book of Joshua, was used by the Catholic Church as ‘proof’ that Copernicus and Galileo were wrong and that the Earth was at the centre of the Solar System/universe.
Either way you’d expect it to create a few waves, so to speak.
If I’m not mistaken, one leading consensus among historians and archaeologists is that Israelite identity was borne from Canaan itself. Could these stories have been told to create a canon of myth to set them apart perceived Canaanite identity?
It’s not a consensus. Lots of scholars still think there were outsiders who triggered the movement. But yes, the stories almost certainly were designed to show they were a people apart.
There seems to be a very slight contradiction here:
“Many of the specific cities cited as places of conquest did not even exist as cities at the time. This includes, most notably, Jericho, which was not inhabited in the late 13th century BCE, as archaeologists have decisively shown (see box).”
and
“But there was no walled city there – let alone a very large and heavily fortified city – at the end of the thirteenth century, when the so-called Battle of Jericho allegedly took place. At the time, Jericho was a sparsely populated little place, and there were no walls around the city at all.”
Was Jericho not inhabited in the late 13th century BCE or was it sparsely inhabited at the end of the thirteenth century?
Are two different sources being combined here? The first uses the Arabic numeral “13th”, whereas the second source or perhaps the final redactor spells out the number “thirteenth”.
Or is the same author merely being a little inconsistent? So much for source and redaction criticism!
Ah, sorry. THere may have been some people there at the time, as I understand it; but it was not an inhabited city (i.e. with walls and houses, and so on)
I totally agree with you! I really don’t see these as historical narratives.
Still, I read the story differently and allegorically, as I do with (at least) the entire Genesis, Exodus story, some of the OT profetic books, and more. I think that the whole setting (part of it may have been borrowed), the plot line, the symbols are carefully put there to convey and mature into a deeper message. These battles referred to when they returned from the “land of slavery / slavery / captivity/land of dark soil, or Egypt in a story full of all kinds of symbols and numerology, and then into the land of God ,,,, and to replace it with all Israelites. It just seems so symbolic, allegorical! One example is the battle of Jerico which seems in some way like the story inside the Book of Revelation if you compare it side by side, a book wich I consider as a spiritual ascend/story and nothing about an external world.
I tried finding your book, “The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction” online and to my surprise discover there is no Kindle version of it at Amazon. Further research shows that even on EBAY the hard copies are going for well over $100. Any chance of this being made into a Kindle book any time soon?
Wow. I had no idea. I”m afraid I have no say about book prices or formats. I just write ’em. Seems like a lot of dosh…
I just bought the paperback 2nd edition from Amazon for 89.49
Just purchased a used copy in excellent condition (we’ll see) online for $45.00.
For the record, it appears to be in great shape. A sticker on the cover says “This book was originally distributed as a sample copy by the publisher for academic review.”
It appears to be an instructor’s edition. (Does that mean I have all the answers to the Bible now???!!!)
There’s an odd story in Genesis 9, where Noah gets drunk and lies naked in his tent and his son Ham sees him. The next morning Noah realizes what Ham did to him (maybe more than just looked at him?) and so Noah curses…his grandson Canaan, rather than Ham. ‘So he said, “Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brothers.”‘ Why? To show that the evil Canaanites are descended from an evil son and deserve whatever the Israelites do to them. These stories recorded in the OT are propaganda, not history. Unfortunate that these stories helped frame the image of a wrathful God that we see in some passages in the NT and persists today.
Hereditary sin is everywhere in OT, incl. Decalogue. But I mean, what´s the problem, the Bible IS the source of morality, without it, we would lose our moral compas! 🙂
“Promised Land” was never promised to the children of Israel.
When God made promises to Abraham, Gen.15:18-21, Jewish race never existed. Much earlier, Gen.15:2-8, God Promised Abraham a son and LAND was for his firstborn son Ishmael. MEANING of Ishmael is: “God(el) answered(Ishma)” Abraham’s prayer. Ishmael was the only name Promised and Given by GOD with the word GOD attached to it and in Gen.15:4 “shall be thine heir.” That is why your investigation shows so many untruths.
Covenant of Circumcision in Gen.17:5-8, promise of Canaan was for Abraham and “thy seed” Ishmael. Entire Gen.17 is about Abraham and Ishmael, both of them were circumcised together.
Gen.17:7-8 “I (God) will give unto and thy seed….Land of Canaan…and I WILL BE THEIR GOD.” That is why the Arabs, descendants of Abraham via Ishmael, dominated Middle East and their religion Islam is surely the religion of God as promised by God, Abraham, and all the Prophets of God including Jesus.
Manipulation in Genesis is massive. Scribes inserted Isaac, not promised yet, in between the Covenant of Circumcision in Gen17:15-19. Similarly, in Gen 22, the Sacrifice took place long before the promised of Isaac.
Slightly personal question, if I may, dr. Ehrman. I suppose these atrocities were part of your deconversion story as desribed in God´s Problem, but pior to it, how did you make sense of it all?
THey didn’t really play a role in my deconversion because I had known for a long time that they hadn’t actually happened. I believed they were written to make some religious points that I disagreed with, but they didn’t cause me angst the way actual real-time human suffering did and does.
Since most of the story is legend. How then, once aware of this can one maintain a faith? (rhetorical) The unravelling for me is largely because the foundation of the Bible is no longer trustworthy as a foundation any more than the story of Santa Claus. Maybe, like Santa Claus, it is okay to believe it for a while… but most grow out of Santa Claus… not so with the biblical narrative. At least with Santa Claus you don’t have to justify genocide.
I think the problem most (of us) have today is that we think that if something didn’t happen (say, in a story) then it has no value. But for most of the past 2000 years,the Christian faith was less about the raw data of history than of the meaning of the world, and for that stories can be very valuable….
Having been raised as a believing Mormon who subsequently left the practice, I resonate a lot with your comment. The moral and ethical teachings, including endless applications of Christ’s gospel, contained in the Book of Mormon are of considerable value. Whether the Golden Plates and the Nephites ever really existed (very dubious at best) is much less important, at least to me.
Thank you doctor. Do you also think that the original ancient audience understood or were expected to understand it as just a myth, not a history?
My sense is that most ancient people would have thought this is something that really happened.
There was a PBS NOVA program from 2008 called “Proving The Bible” which examined archaeological evidence around the Hebrew Bible stories. In the section on Canaan, archeologists indicated that there is evidence to show that the nation of Israel grew out of Canaan itself. There is evidence that the Israelites grew out of Canaanite underclasses which rose up and overthrew their overlords, French Revolution style. There was much more in that episode dealing with many other Hebrew Bible stories. Worth watching for sure.
Here’s some more evidence Joshua never happened: From around 1400 to 1130 BCE, Egyptian troops were garrisoned in Canaan. Their main function was to keep Mesopotamians and Hittites from getting to Egypt, and also to keep the local kings in line. Had there been ANYTHING close to the events recorded in the book of Joshua, the troops would have reported it back to the Pharaoh, and certainly would have intervened.
Sorry, I got the NOVA show title wrong. It’s actually “The Bible’s Buried Secrets” NOVA season Episode 35, Episode 16.
So…it is my understanding that kinsman redeemer Boaz, of the Ruth story is the offspring of the harlot Rahab. The story of the fall of Jericho being a legend I wonder what this would make of Boaz? (Could it be that Rahab (and then Boaz) did actually have some place in the real world?) How does all this story telling work? Does it all fall apart and then what are we left with?
Did I answer this already? What we are left with are great stories that teach intriguing and possibly important lessons. In my view “meaning” is not only, mainly, or necessarily taught simply by what can be shown actually to have happened int he past. I get much more meaning and insight into life from 19th century novels than 21st century historiography.
Give us two examples of novels you enjoyed! Go on, I’d like to read them. Thanks
David Copperfield and Middlemarch are two of my all time favorites.
Get this: The legend of Rahob is purely symbolic. Here we go, from Randolphe Stone, disciple of a Twentieth century Master, Sawan Singh — my Master’s master and grandfather. >
Jericho is Ego. The two ‘spies’ are energy currents of consciousness, saved by Rahob, symbol of the generative energy on the “wall” of the city, the human pelvis. When the city fell, the generative energy was relieved of the needs of ego, the ‘harlot,’ and remained in the city as normal reproductive function. The seven circuits of the city and ‘shouting’ in unison on the seventh day represents spiritual effort by the people, that conquers the Ego.
Every single story of the scriptures is symbolic this way. For another example, the five kings slain without mercy in chapter10 are lust, anger, greed, attachment, and vanity.
Source: Mystic Bible, author Randolphe Stone. RSSB.org
Scienceofthesoul.org for books, at cost.
Do you know what the city of Jericho looked like either during the time of the supposed conquest (13th century BCE) or during the time when the accounts of it were written? If it’s a given that the city as described in the book of Joshua didn’t look like such an imposing structure at that time, then why is it used to represent such a miraculous event? Apparently the city itself dated from the 9th millennium and the imposing structure had been gone for thousands of years by the 13th century CE. Why did it deserve such special focus in the Book?
It was apparently just a small place. The stories were written in a later period, when possibly it was much larger and significant, and it is geographically well located to be the entry point into the Promised Land when coming across the Jordan River from the east.
Accepting the clear evidence that the “Conquest” never happened as described in these OT books, what do scholars make of the fact that in their telling of these stories the authors felt obliged to portray the ancient Hebrews as genocidal killers?
Thanks
Just that they were intent on showing the absolute need for purity among the followers of Yahweh, who were not to be polluted by outside influences. They appear not to have any moral qualms about having other populations wiped out. Then again, few people in antiquity that we know about did have qualms.
Hi Dr Ehrman!
1. So throughout the Bible there are evidently various minor contradictions and discrepancies. What are examples of some major discrepancies?
2. When approaching each gospel, what should one bare in mind about each author (ie: intent and christology)
Thank you!
Ah, that’s hard to answer in a comment! It sounds like you’re really interested. If the NT is your focus, I’d suggest you look at my book Jesus INterrupted. THat’s where I give an account of contradictions and such. As for each author: my book The New Testament: A Historical Introdcuction gives a chapter to each one.
For cobntradictions in the OT, see the opening chapters of my book The Bible: A Historical and LIterary INtroduction.
Thank you! I’ll definitely try and get my hands on those!
A more specific, hopefully comment-length, question: does Jesus ever indicate a view of salvation and justification that can be reconciled with Paul’s? I mean what verses from the gospels might evangelicals look to in order to prove Paul’s theology?
Thank you!
Oh absolutely. Especailly in the Gospel of John. But even verses like Mark 10:45 etc. But that means that hte Gospel writers often had views like those of Paul; that doesn’t mean that the historical Jesus did, if you see what I mean. They are painting Jesus in the image they themselves have of him.
Ah I see what you’re saying!!
So how can one distinguish what Jesus actually believed from what gospel writers placed on him? More specifically, how can it be proven then, that Jesus and Paul did not share the same view of justification and routes to salvation?
Thank you!
Ah, that’s an enormous topic. If you’re really interested, it is what my book is about: Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. I cover it as well in my textbook on the NT, if you want a shorter treatment. If you look up Paul and Jesus on the blog you can find some posts on whether they had the same views of salvatino or not.
“Promised Land” was never promised to the children of Israel. Isaac was promised two times in Genesis 17 and 18. Both chapters were manipulated by the scribes which is lengthy topics.
Scribes mixed truth with falsehood. Chapter 17 is to show falsely that Isaac was promised during the Covenant of Circumcision to claim wrongly the rights for Land and Canaan. Gen.18 mentioned earlier than the Sacrifice in Gen.22, to show falsely that it was Isaac that was offered for sacrifice. The truth is that Isaac was not promised yet.
Promise of Isaac took place when 3 Angels visited Abraham (Gen.18) to convey good and bad news. Good news, the promise of Isaac to Sarah who was barren. These verses(Gen.17:15-19) were illegally transferred from Genesis 18 to 17 so that Canaan was supposed to be given to Isaac.
Sarah laughed in Gen. 18, that was when she actually received the good news. God named her son Isaac MEANING laugh. The bad news was: the 3 Angles were to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their despicable, abhorrent sins.
Would you like to have free copy of book on evidence how the scribes manipulated Genesis?
No thanks. I have a rack of books by Hebrew scholars on Genesis and on the textual criticism of the OT. But thanks anyway!
I recall someone telling me years ago that much of the Bible fits the literary definition of myth – that is, a story whose point is not that it actually happened (in full or in part or at all) but of a deeper message / truth it conveys. Much like the shorter form we have in stated parables. Contrast this with the contemporary lay understanding of myth as being a falsehood or fanciful legend. I was also advised to “think Hebrew” when reading the OT especially – as it was written with the focus not on the analysis of facts & what happened & how (“thinking Greek”?) but on why it happened & what does it teach about God & the human experience. They are stories. The intention was not to be distracted with verifying (or not) facts but to ask how should I respond to the message therein. This makes sense to me as a more effective tool for cultural transmission throughout generations.
Prof Ehrman – can you comment on this please?
I thnk that can be a helpful way of looking at it (the first part of your statement). In the past when I’ve seen people talking about “thinking Hebrew” and “thinking Greek,” it ended up leading to very broad generalizations, almost stereotypes, about what that mean. Greeks, for example, certainly had lots of myths that many, many people thought were non-historical but valuable and meaningful.
Thankyou for that response. Whereas I had heard of the “think Hebrew” & “think Greek” tool for understanding OT & NT I did have similar reservations about it. Not just because of the known vast pantheon of the Greeks and the myriad of stories interconnecting them & with humans but because while implying the Hebrews had a higher concern for meaning and answers to “why?” it conveniently stops short of allowing the term “Hebrew mythology”. Once that is allowed it opens a floodgate that I think many literatists would fear & I think would be viewed as a threat?
The one helpful use I gained from this tool though was to encourage a starting focus on how any original authors & audience thought & understood things – which you also advocate.
Is there documented evidence of “Hebrew thinking” among Jews contemporary with the OT writers? Extra-canonical and secular writers might help in this regard.
I thought that many scholars believe that there some evidence of Israelis appearing around 900 BCE around the collapse of the Bronze Age civilization. We do have some historical evidence for Judges so is it possible that Joshua is based on events that were stretched through oral tradition?
Yes, it’s possible that there were some battles here and there among people there or possibly some peoples trying to muscle their way in (of course the “conquest” of Joshua would have happened about 350 years before this) But there was no widespread collapse of cities or major dewstructions.
Could it be a memory the Bronze Age collapse? Maybe they thought their identity was responsible for it like Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell‘s finger from “Good Omens” and combined that with pre-existing stories of Joshua.
So, somewhere I picked up someones theory that within the loose timeframe of Joshua there was an economic collapse hitting the cities of Canaan resulting in mass exodus from the cities into the rural areas and conflict between the ex-urbanites and rural peoples – with the Hebrew people being rural worshippers of Yahu. The idea went on that this conflict was the conquest of Canaan perhaps mixed in with a few escaped slaves from Egypt showing up to source the Exodus story. Have you heard of this scenario and does it have any real academic support?
Thanx!
Yup, it’s one of the scenarios scholars have tossed about. My sense is that most scholars today don’t think we know enough about the economic situation in any detail (or at all) since there aren’t any other records outside of these biblical reports, so it’s just speculation.
“…The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford University Press), a book you should consider getting if you’re interested in knowing both what’s in the Bible and what scholars say about it from historical and literary perspectives.”
It’s not available electronically, Bart.
No kindle, no sale, here.
Sorry. 😐
Not a problem for me. I already know what’s in it! 🙂
This reminded me of an OLD memory. I was probably pre-teen. Baptist church, must have been a guest preacher.
Preacher is recounting a tale about some researcher who was comparing the creation date with (what? I don’t know – something supposedly external to the bible) and had it all figured out but was off by exactly one day, and for the life of him couldn’t see what he was getting wrong.
Then somebody (wife, seminary professor, don’t recall) “correctly” points out that he is off by a day because he didn’t account for Joshua’s extra 24 hours!
At 8 or 9, I was impressed!
Ha!!
About ten years ago, there was an email circulating, which claimed to be a true story about when NASA was testing their computer program to calculate the positions of the moon, sun, and planets. They were running it back and forth through the centuries, when all of a sudden red lights and bells went off. The scientists couldn’t figure it out until finally one of them who was a devout Christian remembered the story of Joshua holding the sun steady for 24 hours. Once they worked that into their program, everything worked okay.
No other evidence is needed that it was legend other than the stopping of the sun, that’s not moving. It’s clearly not God’s word. God would know that the earth is spinning, not the sun.
Not surprising. All the books of the Bible were written by flat-earther’s.
If the biblical accounts (stories) were originally written and received by their readers as myth, at what point did they come to be regarded as literal events with powerful religious significance, and become the basis for a legal claim to the land of Palestine?
My sense is taht as the stories were told, and then written down, both the authors and the readers thought they were things that actually happened, even if they werent’
Many of the problems in understanding the Bible, especially stories like those being discussed in this string, stem from a supposedly literal and fundamentalistic interpretation of the Biblical narratives. Unfortunately, symbolism, hyperbole, mythical interpolations, and idioms are often ignored. Another factor is the cultural background. For example, in ancient times nothing happens in the Near East without God’s or the gods involvement. So, if a leader wants to go to war the leader would say (or get a prophet to say) God’s will is that we attack ____ and eliminate every person and even their livestock. Of course, “God” would make exceptions if they needed their livestock or if they needed young men for service or if they needed women for procreation, etc. The sun standing still is idiomatic in that it was like time stopped. God never told the people to exterminate another tribe. This is simply part of an ancient way of communicating a perceived need to go to war. These areas are understood in the Near East but grossly neglected by Western students and scholars of the Bible.
When you were a “fundie” how did you reconcile the carnage in Joshua? What was the “party line”?
God insists that his people be pure, apart from outside influence. They are “set apart” (the technical meaning of “holy” and “sanctity”)
How confident can you be that a walled city didn’t exist at a certain point in time? I get that in the absence of evidence, there isn’t any evidence. But how do you know that you didn’t look in the right place or that the wall wasn’t completely destroyed? I get that remnants are often left. I would think though (and might be wrong of course) that it would be possible for a wall to be completely demolished and all the bits all taken away. If there is no evidence of a city whatsoever, that’s a bit harder to explain away.
Archaeologists can date these things, and tehre appears not to be in any question in this case. Walls of cities in antiquity were not disintegrated into nothing, they left remains even when stones ere taken away and other things built on top of them. It’s a whole science. If you’re interesetd, there’s a lot you can read about it by experts (and a lot by people who aren’t!)
I’m convinced that a lot of the contradictions are due to contemporary mistranslations of ancient idiomatic expressions. However, I also think prophetic illustrations were needed to scatter fear into the intended audience to keep the “fledgling” group together.
Idiomatic expressions (stopping the sun for x amounts of “time”, etc.) running concurrently with serious lack of cultural, historical background and linguistics info-things that mythology and new denominations thrive on. Nonetheless, I continue being interested in “thus says god”.
Thank you for sharing your scholarship with us Bart!
I like to think of these herem stories in Joshua as similar to the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars. Sure, if Star Wars were a documentary, there would have to have been families on the Death Star: children, slaves, pets, innocents. But Star Wars didn’t actually happen, and the narrative itself doesn’t think about it that way. The viewer is invited to imagine a morally black-and-white world (since it’s all imaginary anyway), where a totally bad force was totally defeated. To ask “But what about the children on the Death Star?” is to play a literary game with the narrative that is separate and secondary to what the film itself is trying to say. If someone told me that it’s immoral to enjoy Star Wars, I’d stick my tongue out at them.
To me, it’s the same with Joshua. So long as we keep the genre of Joshua distinct from how we actually treat foreigners in real life, it’s not a problem. But the idea that the Bible is 100% literally true and made to give moral lessons for the modern world — that idea is actually dangerous here (if soldiers read these stories before going to war.)
‘Stopping’ the Sun is plausible, I think. Occasionally there are giant solar flares that create intense northern lights, making daytime activities possible at night-time. One happened in 1859. These could easily be understood as the Sun standing still. So the author incorporated such a day in the story of the battle of Jericho.
You may want to look into that a bit. The author says the sun stopped in midsky. That’s not a temporary lightening up of the dark one night. These authors simply had no idea what would happen if the earth stopped revovlving since, well, they didn’t know it did.
I have made two in-depth replies to this article:
Hazor Battles “Contradictions”? (Including Possible Archaeological Evidence for the Battle of Deborah in Judges 4)
Joshua’s Conquest & Science
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2022/03/ehrman-errors-6-joshuas-conquest-science.html
Excerpt from the first:
Judges 3:11 states that “the land had rest forty years”. Judges 3:30 then informs us that “the land had rest for eighty years.” So at least 120 years had passed since Joshua’s destruction of Hazor (c. 1230-1200 BC), and this second battle led by Deborah.
But when is the time period of Deborah? It so happens that recently, archaeologists believe they may have found evidence of the town Haro’sheth-ha-goiim, where Deborah’s nemesis Sisera dwelt (Jud 4:2). El Ahwat is now believed to possibly be the location (as reported in The Jerusalem Post on 11-27-19). A chariot linchpin was found on the site. 900 chariots were involved in this battle (Jud 4:7, 15-16).
Wikipedia also noted that the well-known Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein dated the site at around 1060-1050 BC. A. D. H. Mayes places the battle between 1050-1000 BC. The late estimate for the first battle (1200 BC) is 140 or 150 years earlier than Finkelstein’s estimate, and 150-200 years earlier from that of Mayes. That’s very good correspondence with archaeology indeed.