To listen to the whole follow-up feedback session on the Copan Bacrac podcast click on Rob Bell defends ‘Love Wins’ and skip forward – just drag the slider forward – to 1:06:21 and play from there. (The section relating to Madeleine starts at 1:11:43.)

We have had several requests for the text of what Madeleine wrote that Brierly read out, so here it is below:

It does not follow that just because there is good textural and cultural evidence to read specific passages this way that all passages must now be read that way.

If I wrote a book of memoirs of my life that included a poem I wrote to be read out at my wedding, my favourite recipe for chocolate cake and my first hand experience of surviving an earthquake do you read the part of my memoirs recording my experience and observations of the earthquake as a poem? Do you take the chocolate cake recipe as historical narrative of a natural disaster? Do you assume I am an idiot for mixing my genres in a single text? Of course not! you can recognise the different genres as you read your way through the book and strike them – doing this is easy when we are reading texts from our own culture and time but when we talking about another culture and time written in another language, it is a lot harder but it does not mean that the we stop looking for genre and context clues and we start saying if we are to interpret passage x as rhetorical flourish then we have to interpret everything as rhetorical flourish.

It never ceases to amaze me that people fail to get this point which Madeleine makes in a far more pithy way than I could.

I was reminded of this recently in an exchange with someone who on considering Paul Copan’s work in Is God a Moral Monster? and Matt’s blog series God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I, Part II and Part III, asked me:

“If these Biblical battles are so clearly exaggerated, why aren’t they taught to be so in churches? When I learnt in Sunday School about how “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho”, should the Sunday-School teacher have added “Of course, it didn’t really happen!”

Aside from the fact that I thought it was an interesting observation on his part that he had never really sought to take his own understanding of those passages beyond Sunday School level, I think there is something in his question but before I go on I should make a brief qualification. Neither Copan or Matt have argued that the Battle of Jericho never happened; they have argued that the ‘genocide language’ in the earlier parts of the Book of Joshua should be read as hyperbolic hagiographic accounts of Israel’s early skirmishes in Canaan and that this language and the accounts of those battles should not be read in isolation from the rest of the Book of Joshua and the surrounding texts – especially Judges. This more Canonical approach shows that the Bible does not teach that the Canaanites were genocided by the Israelites.

As to why Sunday School teachers don’t get into how to interpret the ‘genocide passages’ in Joshua, I expect it has something to do with the same reason the dove with the olive branch is generally not depicted flying over any floating, swollen corpses in the pictures of the happy pairs of animals floating on an ark with a rainbow in the background that dot the Sunday School walls. A Sunday School teacher should focus on the message or point of these stories and leave the realities of floods and wars and their effect on the people who don’t survive them for when a child is older.

But this I guess is my correspondent’s point. The church seems to have produced Christians en masse whose understanding of these passages has not really moved beyond the Sunday School glossing of the story – their understanding now appears to be the Sunday School version plus, now they have lived a bit and get that floods and wars kill people, X number of dead people. If you scan the comments on the half or dozen posts Matt has published on the ‘genocide passages’ on this blog you will find Christians struggling to get their heads around the idea that perhaps instead of reading only Joshua 6-11 and forming a conclusion that is only fractionally more in touch with reality as the Sunday School stories they should instead read all 24 chapters plus a fair decent way through Judges.

Now I am not trying to say that my fellow Christians are all stupid (or even that new atheists are). I think that this state of affairs is entirely understandable, natural and none of us should be surprised that it exists because the disciplines of Theology, Hermeneutics – competence in ancient languages and culture and interpreting texts from within that culture – are not skills the average layperson picks up as they go through life.

This is normal in any field. Take Law. Most people have a basic enough understanding as to how to go through life and understand enough of the law to stay on the right side of it without their holding a law degree but does that mean they can pick up any statute and understand it accurately and immediately know how to apply it? Not always and especially not if the statute is old as it is more likely to have been drafted verbosely in ye olde English with no punctuation and a liberal sprinkling of precise archaic legal terms. Even if you pick up a plain English one, some statutes conflict with others, some are vague, some have precise terms in them that have a specific meaning in case law and some are just poorly drafted. Most people are not remotely likely to be able to read these tricker pieces of legislation to the degree of competence I can read them to because I have a degree in law.

The best way for a lay person to understand an old or confusing statute is to go to a lawyer for assistance or head to a law library and pull out some case law, commentary and guides to legal interpretation. You would be nuts to do none of this and instead proceed on the assumption that because you can read English, you have experienced life in New Zealand and you think on talking to your family and friends, watching TV and having caught a bit of talkback radio that you understand what the law is on this topic and further that you are so sure of what it means you are prepared to write books on it, teach it to other people, defend it on the internet and challenge law scholars to public debates, and so on, but people take this approach to Theology all the time and Christians can be guilty of doing so too when they really only have a basic knowledge of the subject.

The problem of failing to appreciate that Theology and Hermenutics, like any subject, have areas the lay person can easily grasp and areas where a specialist is needed is exasperated by a pervasive anti-intellectualism within the (Protestant) church (at least in my corner of the world) where theology is a ‘Pharisaical [read: bad] thing that gets in the way of a relationship with Jesus and one’s own personal revelation from the Holy Spirit as to what text X [frequently written to the Israelites personally] means to me today’. Further, some denominations seem to practice the idea that everyone can be a preacher or a teacher if they love Jesus and can speak engagingly and have a passion for others. They scoff at the idea that those teaching the church should be qualified and tend to either hold to the idea that if someone is qualified then they are automatically not likely to be an engaging teacher with a passion for Jesus or that requiring this is somehow a backwards pre-Reformation step.

There may be good reasons why Sunday School teachers and children’s books teach the Noah story, Jonah and the whale, Adam and Eve in the garden, Jesus and the loaves and fishes, the Battle of Jericho and so on complete with cartoonised pictures and glossing over of anything that might give children nightmares. Children are not any more capable of understanding the finer points of textual interpretation and hermeneutics than they are capable of understanding the finer points of statute interpretation and conflicts of laws. The problem is that as they grow in their capability to understand these things, this kind of simplified Sunday School reading of the Bible as a bunch of stories rather than as a canonical sequence doesn’t seem to get left behind as the Sunday School student matures into the adult Christian.

While it is not reasonable to expect the adult Christian to accurately be able to do advanced hermeneutics one should not need a degree in Theology to be able to grasp that the Bible is a book and that you need to read it as one. You would not pick up a novel and flick it open to a random page and begin dipping in and out and focussing only on a few paragraphs out of order which tell only the story of one character. To fully understand the greater plot and get who all the players are and how and why their stories are being told as part of the greater story you need to read the whole thing and keep in mind how all the parts and sub-plots fit together. If, on reading the text as a whole, you find something that you don’t get try asking a specialist or locating some commentaries written by a specialist. Carefully listen to and read these and compare a few, consider the reasoning advanced and how cogent it is.

How far you go into this depends on how you are wired. With law I have been at mummy groups with my babies and I have raised the topic of current debates over proposed legislative changes and I have observed glazed eyes, a distinct lack of invites to extra curricular social activities and a stingy slice of the chocolate brownie. Some people are just not interested. The other extreme is my friend David who has been known to re-write the government’s budget and then phone me wanting clause by clause feedback. Whatever your bent, it pays to know your limitations and do your homework before you start asserting.

You are hardly going to walk up to a lawyer and tell her – as a lay person having done no proper homework to support your assertion – that she is a moron for saying in her professional opinion that the law prohibits action X simply because you’ve grown up believing that it does not or that it just seems obvious to you and everyone you know thinks you are right. You’d be the moron.

So why do you do it to Theologians?

My article was a revised version of a paper I presented in Atlanta in November last year (my God and the Genocide of the Canaanites series gives a good overview of my position). Around the same time I presented this paper, Thom Stark, posted a critical review of Douglas S. Earl’s book The Joshua Delusion? Rethinking Genocide in the Bible. As a review, much of it was addressed to the specifics of Earl’s book. However, in the introduction Stark offered a critique of Wolterstorff’s position and made reference to my defence of it.

He offered three lines of argument; two against the conclusion Wolterstorff and I offered and one against Wolterstorff’s argument itself. Since then several people have asked me my thoughts on his critique. In this post I will look at his critique of Wolterstorff’s argument, which I defended and adapted in my article.

Before one can criticise an argument it is important to be clear as to what it is. As I note in my forthcoming article (and in the post I linked to above) Wolterstorff’s argument consists of three points and a basic assumption. The assumption is that “Joshua as we have it today was intended as a component in the larger sequence consisting of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings”.[3] On the basis of this assumption Wolterstorff contends “…  I propose that we interpret the Book of Joshua as a component within this larger sequence – in particular, that we interpret it as preceded by Deuteronomy and succeeded by Judges.”[4] In taking this approach, Wolterstorff engages in a more canonical approach to the text; he focuses on the meaning of the final form as part of a canonical sequence.

The three premises are as follows. First, the so called genocide accounts in Joshua 1-11 are part of a broader context which includes both the rest of Joshua but also other canonical books, such as the book of Judges. When one reads the whole sequence one observes that while early passages in Joshua describe Israel exterminating the inhabitants, later passages in Joshua and Judges proceed on the assumption this never literally happened.[5] Taken literally these accounts of the conquest contradict each other.

Second, this contrast is fairly obvious. Whoever “edited the final version of these writings into one sequence” was not “mindless” and would have noticed  “the tensions and contradictions – surface or real”;  therefore, they cannot have intended to affirm both as literally true.[6]

Third, while Judges appears relatively “down to earth”, a careful reading of Joshua shows it to “be full of ritualistic, stylised, accounts, formulaic language”. This final point suggests that Joshua is the non-literal figurative one and Judges is the more literal account.

In support of this I set out Lawson Younger’s study of ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts in Part II of my God and the Genocide of the Canaanites. Younger’s study shows:

(a) Such accounts are a common transmission code. They hyperbolically describe victories in terms of gods raining meteors or hailstones down on the foe, battles taking place in one day, the numbers of armies and enemy causalities being rhetorically exaggerated and, most importantly, victories are often described hyperbolically in terms of total conquest, complete annihilation, destruction of the enemy, killing everyone and leaving no survivors.

(b) Comparisons between these accounts and the early chapters of Joshua suggest Joshua is written according to this  transmission code.

I also added:

(c) There is precedent from both within the book of Joshua and also within the biblical canon for accounts and language of this sort being used figuratively and hyperbolically.

Stark contends this argument is “wholly untenable”. It is unclear, however, exactly what premises he rejects. Stark says nothing about the starting assumption. Similarly, he seems to clearly grant the first premise; he accepts that, taken literally, the first half of Joshua contradicts the second half and the book of Judges. Stark also appears to grant the third premise or at least some of my supporting argument for it; in an earlier blog post on the topic entitled “The Flannagan Delusion” (which is no longer online) he stated that Lawson Younger  ”has shown definitively that the conquest narratives follow a basic ancient conquest script, replete with exaggerations, [and] hyperbole”.
In his review Stark defends Younger’s contention that Joshua is such an account against Earl’s criticisms. He also grants that the gods destroying the enemy with a meteor or hailstones is a common “literary motif” and is “exaggerated”.

As best I can tell, Stark takes issue with Wolterstorff’s second premise. He summarises it as,

“The hyperbolists say that, since the author wasn’t stupid, the contradictions indicate that the language of total destruction is not to be taken literally. If it says in one part of the book that an entire population was killed, but that population is still alive later on, then it is clear that the earlier statement was hyperbolic in nature, not to be taken literally.

In response he argues,

“Earl argues that the book of Joshua is composite in nature. The first half of the book, chapters 1-12, was written by the Deuteronomistic historian, but chapters 13-22 were written by the Priestly writer. Chapter 23 returns again to the concerns of the Deuteronomistic historian, and according to Earl, chapter 24 (the final chapter) represents a more generic summary.

If Earl is correct that Joshua is two-part composite, that sufficiently explains the contradictions between the summaries of military victories. The latter half of Joshua does not contradict the former in order to provide a cue to read the earlier statements as hyperbolic; they are contradictory because they represent two different sources with two different agendas.”

Stark suggests Wolterstorff’s second premise is undermined by the fact that the final form of Joshua combines or draws upon two different sources. The authors of these sources had different agendas and contradict each other. This explains the contradictions without suggesting the author mindlessly wrote an obviously contradictory narrative. Each author wrote a coherent narrative, it is just that their narratives contradict the account of the other author, but none of them blatantly contradicted themselves.

I think this response is a non-starter based on a failure to grasp Wolterstorff’s point. As I note in my paper, Wolterstorff  argues for the second premise as follows:

Those whose occupation it is to try to determine the origins of these writings will suggest that the editors had contradictory records, oral traditions, and so forth to work with.  No doubt this is correct.  But those who edited the final version of these writings into one sequence were not mindless; they could see, as well as you and I can see, the tensions and contradictions – surface or real – that I have pointed to. So what is going on?[7]

Nothing in this comment is undermined by noting that Joshua is a composite document and that the redactors of the final form drew on different and contradictory sources. Wolterstorff, in fact, grants that this may have been the case. His point is that the redactors of the final version choose to put both these sources side by side as part of a single book within a series. And these redactors were not, mindless or stupid, and so the redactors of the final version could not have intended to affirm both accounts of the conquest as literally true. Even if the authors of the redactors’ sources, were internally consistent and disagreed only with each other, this is beside the point. Wolterstorff  is not talking about the authors of the sources; he is talking about the redactors who combined different sources into a single narrative sequence. These redactors would be contradicting themselves if they intended both accounts to be literally true.

To actually address Wolterstorff’s second premise Stark needs to argue that the final redactors did put both these sections together in an obviously contradictory narrative intending to affirm both as literally true. The redactors were either stupid or they missed the blatantly obvious contradictions in front of them.

This is an extremely uncharitable contention.  Wolterstorff notes the phrase “he killed all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword” occured at least 15 times in Joshua 6-11 in close succession. This point is “hammered home with emphasis.” This is then followed in the next chapter by the claim that Joshua had not conquered the land and then in the next five chapters it is stressed repeatedly that the land was not yet conquered and the inhabitants still existed in large numbers. This was followed by the opening chapters of Judges, which affirm eight times in a single chapter that the Israelites had failed to conquer the land or the cities, and had failed to drive the inhabitants out. It finishes with the angel of the Lord at Bokim rebuking them for failing to do so (Judges 2:1-5). These are not subtle contrasts. They are, in Wolterstorff’s words, “flamboyant”. It is unlikely that an intelligent redactor would have missed something this blatant.[8]

But apart from being implausible, Stark can only make this argument by engaging in special pleading because throughout his review he works on the assumption that the author of a literary unit does not author an obviously contradictory narrative. Consider one example: Stark notes that in Judges 20-21 the  Israelites “proceeded to massacre every last woman and child in the land of Benjamin”. Stark argues this language cannot be hyperbolic because,

[In] the second half of the story. The Israelites decided to show mercy on the tribe of Benjamin, not desiring to blot them out forever. The problem they face, however, is that there are only a few hundred remaining men (the soldiers who escaped), who no longer have wives and children. Why? Because the slaughters were not exaggerated.”

Stark here argues that if one reads the first half of the story hyperbolically it will contradict what is said in the second half, and so for this reason one cannot read it hyperbolically. Note this inference utilises the same line of argument Wolterstorff does; it assumes that an author does not  juxtapose an account or battle in the second half of a narrative when it obviously contradicts what  they have said in the first half.

Similar, points can be made about many of Stark’s other arguments in the review. In several places he criticises readings of the text proposed by “Apologists” on the ground that their readings involve attributing to the author a position that contradicts what that author says elsewhere in the context. These arguments all assume the authors of a literary unit do not write obviously and blatantly contradictory things.

Seeing Stark endorses this assumption himself, it is hard to see how he can reject it when it is used by someone else. Stark appears to accept a hermeneutical principle when it leads to a literal reading of the text he accepts and then abandons it when the same principle leads to a conclusion he rejects.  Like I said earlier, this is special pleading.

Anne’s story was the real life face of an intellectual journey and struggle I had faced some years earlier during my theology studies. How should I understand the bibles teaching on divorce? When I was at Bible College I remember two approaches vividly.

The first was from a marriage counsellor who, when I asked him if we should counsel battered spouses to leave their marriages, responded “no, until death do we part”. He refused to take with any seriousness my suggestion that in some cases the death of one spouse might be a realistic outcome if the battered spouse does not leave.

The second was a lecturer who argued that the New Testament did not speak unequivocally on this topic. While Matthew’s gospel allowed an exception for adultery, Mark’s gospel seemed to condemn divorce outright with no exceptions. On the other hand Paul, in his epistle to the Corinthians, contended that a person abandoned by their spouse “is not bound”. The Greek in this epistle alluded to the wording of a Jewish divorce certificate, which stated that the person in question had a right to remarry. The lecturer, quite correctly, concluded that Paul allowed divorce and remarriage for abandonment. The lecturer then suggested that because Paul added to Jesus’ teaching so could we.

Both approaches seemed to me to be evidently problematic. My questions remained equally unsolved by the Pastor who told me that he accepted Jesus’ teaching as correct but did not follow it because it was “impractical” in the real world and in his experience. I was underwhelmed by the author who suggested that because Mark, Paul and Matthew disagreed, we should just choose the one we find the most congenial.

Then I discovered a study, which to my mind answered my questions and addressed Anne’s concerns. The book was Divorce and Re-Marriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context by David Instone-Brewer. Brewer is a scholar of first century rabbinical writings. In his book he places Christ’s teaching within the cultural context of first century Judaism; the results are interesting and enlightening.

The passage Anne cited comes from Matthew 19. This passage begins with a question from the Pharisees – the Jewish religious scholars at that time – which asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?” In the dialogue the Pharisees appeal to Deuteronomy 24 and ask, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?” The passage Anne cited is part of Christ’s response to this argument.

Brewer’s study documents the background of this debate. In the Judaism of Christ’s day there was a consensus that people could divorce on grounds of abuse or serious neglect. This was based on a passage in Exodus 21, which regulated a man’s relationship with a concubine; although I would argue that the bible does not condone this practice, its existence meant the Old Testament law (The Torah) did tolerate and regulate it. The Torah stated that if a concubine was deprived of “food,” “clothing” or “conjugal rights” then she was free to leave.  The Rabbis argued, quite sensibly, that if this was true of a concubine then how much more true is it for a wife?

The requirements to provide food, clothing and conjugal rights became the basis of Jewish marriage vows. Hence, by the time of Christ the consensus was that divorce was allowed for the gross violation of these vows through abuse or neglect. This position was assumed both by the conservative school of Shammai and the liberal school of Hillel; the two dominant schools of thought in Christ’s day.

Where these schools differed was over Deuteronomy 24 – the very passage cited by the Pharisees in Matthew’s Gospel. This passage refers to a man divorcing his wife for “a reason of sexual immorality”. The liberal Hillel Rabbis split this phrase into two separate clauses and argued it allowed a person to divorce for “immorality”, which they understood as adultery, and also for “a reason”, which they understood as any reason at all. Some liberal Rabbis were quite candid, the reference to “a reason” meant a man could divorce his wife if she cooked him a bad meal or if he thought she was too ugly or if perhaps he saw someone more attractive and he wanted to ‘trade her in’. However, the conservative Shammai Rabbis argued that it should be read as a single phrase, “a reason of sexual immorality” so that the passage only allows divorce for adultery.

Despite their differences, both schools recognised divorces granted by the other schools courts as valid. Hence, a person who had a Hillelite “any reason” divorce would have their divorce recognised as valid by a Shammaite court.

Brewer also documents how records of rabbinical debates tended to not spell out all the background details and qualifications, which everyone at the time knew about.  An example from contemporary moral debates might illustrate this. In New Zealand society today there is an ongoing debate over the drinking age. Now suppose I hear someone on the radio saying “the drinking age should be 18.” I would not interpret this to mean that the person supports a ban on drinking per se, that they were arguing for young people to consume no fluids – no water, milk, Coca Cola, orange juice or anything – until age 18. That would be a ridiculous interpretation. Rather, I assume they mean to limit their use of the term ‘drinking’, in that context, to refer only to alcoholic drinks. I make this assumption despite the fact that the phrase “drinking age” is commonly used without any explicit qualifications because everyone knows what it means when they hear it. In a similar way, when a conservative Rabbi stated that it was “not lawful to divorce” or it is “not lawful to divorce except for adultery,” people knew the Rabbi was saying that it was wrong to divorce on grounds of “any reason”, a reference to the practice advocated by the liberal school.

This background sheds an interesting light on Christ’s teaching in Matthew 19. When the passage begins with the question “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?” it seems that Christ is being asked to comment on the specific proposal of the liberal school. Is it lawful to divorce for not just material and physical neglect and infidelity but does The Torah, in fact, allow a fourth category of “any reason”? The appeal to Deuteronomy 24 to back this up by the Pharisees then fits quite nicely in this context as this was the standard liberal argument.

Christ’s response, in this context, is a rejection of the liberal reading in favour of the conservative one. In fact, Brewer notes the very phraseology and wording Christ used was the same as that used by the Shammaites; however, his claim “whoever divorces his wife, except for adultery, and marries another woman commits adultery” took the conservative reading one step further. Not only are liberal “any reason” divorces wrong but they are invalid. People who have divorced on the “any reason” ground did not gain a legitimate divorce.

Brewer’s analysis is the best I have come across to date; it makes sense of the text without requiring the reader to turn a blind eye to the bits that don’t seem to sit right. His argument further explains the apparent differences between Mark, Matthew and Paul. Mark’s gospel is significantly more summarised than Matthew’s, hence his unqualified claim that divorce is forbidden is simply a summary without qualification. Similarly, Paul’s application in 1 Corinthians is not in any real conflict with Jesus’. Taken in its context, Jesus was not condemning a person who, after being abandoned, walked away from the marriage and remarried. Material and physical neglect as a ground of divorce was not in question. In Jesus’ teaching he was simply rejecting the “any reason” approach of the liberal school.

This background to Paul’s writing is strongly suggested by the fact that in the same passage he refers to sexual activity between spouses as a ‘debt’ mutually owed to each other. Brewer notes that Paul’s language and teaching here reflects rabbinical understandings of Exodus 21, which allowed divorce for failure to provide “conjugal rights”. Paul is therefore not adding to Christ’s teaching, he is simply applying it to a different situation.

Brewer’s analysis addresses the concern that we need to adjust Christ’s teaching to the “practical realities of life today”. Brewer shows that Christ’s teaching is immensely practical; it avoids the extreme permissiveness of our modern no-fault culture, where women are abandoned to single parenthood at the whim of a man’s lust (and sometimes vice versa). It also avoids the harsh heartlessness of the counsellor I questioned as a student which condemns abuse victims to a life of brutality and sometimes death.

It also directly addresses the concerns Anne raised. Christ is not saying that a woman who flees a violent spouse is an adulterer if she re-marries; he was addressing a situation where men believed they could divorce their wives for any reason, including frivolous and poor reasons. Beating one’s spouse is a fairly obvious case of serious mistreatment and divorce for reasons like this were taken for granted in Christ’s discussion (it is why dowry’s were paid for brides – so they had financial means if their husbands mistreated them).

As I have met with the Anne’s of this world, I have discovered this information is profoundly important to them. They don’t want to disobey God and yet have often taken years to gain the courage needed to escape an abusive relationship. The Church has not always appropriately responded to their plight; it has felt torn between the harrowing situations their congregants are sometimes living with and what they perceived to be Christ’s teaching on divorce. Brewer’s study helps us see there is no dilemma, people like Anne are free to leave and remarry.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled “Contra Mundum.” This blog post was published in the Feb 2011 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

RELATED POSTS:
Contra Mundum: Is God a 21st Century Western Liberal?
Contra Mundum: In Defence of Santa
Contra Mundum: The Number of the Beast
Contra Mundum: Pluralism and Being Right
Contra Mundum: Abraham and Isaac and the Killing of Innocents
Contra Mundum: Selling Atheism
Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
Contra Mundum: Fairies, Leprechauns, Golden Tea Cups & Spaghetti Monsters
Contra Mundum: Secularism and Public Life
Contra Mundum: Richard Dawkins and Open Mindedness
Contra Mundum: Slavery and the Old Testament
Contra Mundum: Secular Smoke Screens and Plato’s Euthyphro
Contra Mundum: What’s Wrong with Imposing your Beliefs onto Others?
Contra Mundum: God, Proof and Faith
Contra Mundum: “Bigoted Fundamentalist” as Orwellian Double-Speak
Contra Mundum: The Flat-Earth Myth
Contra Mundum: Confessions of an Anti-Choice Fanatic
Contra Mundum: The Judgmental Jesus

There is a lot that can be said about these concerns and in a short column I cannot say everything. In many instances I think the sceptics fail to appreciate the context and genre of the passages they cite. They fail to appreciate, for example, that Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts employ highly figurative rhetoric, which hyperbolically describe victories in terms of total annihilation of the enemy. They fail to appreciate that Ancient Near Eastern legal texts, as noted by Raymond Westbrook, “reflect the scribal compilers’ concern for perfect symmetry and delicious irony rather than the pragmatic experience of the law courts.” Or that, as JJ Finkelstein points out, they “were not meant to be complied with literally” but to “serve an admonitory function” and so probably do not command execution for the crimes mentioned. Sceptics can fail to grasp that claiming the bible is God’s word does not mean it did not come to us mediated through the writings of human beings who wrote in a particular time and place using the language, rhetoric and literary conventions of their time and so and frequently they fail to appreciate the bible is a Canon and that passages need to be read in their broader context i.e. taking into account the whole bible. A full articulation of these points, however, would take more space than I can here muster.

Instead I will address another feature of this issue which concerns the general method in play here. In each case the sceptic takes a purported divine command and compares it to a moral belief that he takes to be correct. The conclusion he draws is that the purported command is inauthentic. This is of course a possibility; there is, however, another possibility that on at least some occasions, moral statements these sceptics are relying on are mistaken.

This feature of the dialectic became clear to me after a public debate I had on these issues in August. A sceptic wrote to me claiming that even granting the issues about the genre of the biblical text, the bible still presents a picture of God who issues commands out of accord with contemporary modern understandings of morality.  Suppose one grants that when read in its literary context, the Torah does not literally prescribe the death penalty for adultery or sodomy, it still is condemning sexual activity between consenting adults. This raises an interesting question, why does the sceptic assume that God, if he existed, would be a contemporary western liberal? Why assume that he would never command anything politically incorrect or out of accord with trendy Western mores? The sceptic assumes that it is appropriate to assess purported divine commands with his own moral perspective. Why?

The most sustained argument for this method I know of comes from a Moral Philosopher at Yale University, Robert Adams, in his excellent book Finite and Infinite Goods. Adams states that “Our existing moral beliefs are bound in practise, and I think, ought in principle, to be a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.”

Adams reasons that we can only accept the claim that Gods commands constitute our moral duties if God is understood as perfectly good; if God were evil or morally indifferent then it would be possible for him to command wrongdoing and we cannot have a duty to do wrong. Once this assumption is granted, however, one cannot coherently say that God has commanded just anything. We have some grasp of what goodness is, what counts as right and wrong, what kinds of things a good person does not command. Therefore, God cannot coherently be called good if what he commands is contrary to “our existing moral beliefs”. As Philosopher Raymond Bradley notes, to do so would be “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest” that deprive “the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for ‘evil’.”

In response, I will simply note that critics of Adams’ argument have shown that as it stands it needs qualifying. It is true we have some grasp of what goodness is but this is mitigated by two factors.

First, our moral judgements are fallible. While God does not command wrongdoing it is likely that a perfectly good omniscient being would at some time command something contrary to what we think is wrong. To say otherwise dogmatically assumes that we are such good judges of morality that God could never disagree with us.

Second, our moral concepts are subject to revision. We change our opinions about the goodness and rightness of certain things without “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest” or depriving “the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for ‘evil.’” If this were not the case then one could never honestly or rationally change one’s mind on an ethical issue.

Consequently, Adams’ argument does not show we cannot attribute to God’s commands contrary to “our existing moral beliefs”. Rather, as he says elsewhere, we cannot coherently ascribe to “God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” Elsewhere he allows for “the possibility of a conversion in which one’s whole ethical outlook is revolutionized, and reorganized around a new center” but “we can hardly hold open the possibility of anything too closely approaching a revolution in which, so to speak, good and evil would trade places”.

Therefore, Adams does not establish the claim that “our existing moral beliefs must serve as a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.” It does, on the other hand, suggest that we cannot coherently “accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.”  Adams argues that we cannot coherently or defensibly accept a theological ethics which, in effect, makes good and evil trade places and which so radically transforms our concept of goodness that it becomes a synonym for what we call evil. Nor could we accept an ethical system that calls our concept of goodness so radically into question that it breaks down.

Certain beliefs such as, “that killing, assault, theft and lying are in general wrong and can only be justified if some overriding moral reason applies” or that without special overriding reason it is wrong to inflict pain and suffering on others or treat them with contempt” are so central to our account of goodness that we cannot coherently accept that a perfectly good being has issued commands which negate them. However, many moral claims are highly controversial and such that people can debate them and change their minds on them and so on. When they do it is implausible to suggest that their concept of goodness was so radically at odds with previous beliefs that “good and evil would trade places” or that it is merely a word game that the position holding these things could be endorsed by a good person.

Consider, for example, the debate over whether the bombing of Hiroshima was justified because it saved a huge number of lives by ending a war early. While I myself do not share this opinion, I would not say that it is obviously self-contradictory.

Similarly, consider moral debates about capital punishment or euthanasia or affirmative action. While I believe there are defensible and justified answers to these questions, I doubt we can dismiss those views we disagree with as conceptually incoherent, as being so radically at odds with our understanding of good so as to be incomprehensible or merely semantic gymnastics. Even when we disagree with people on these issues in many instances we need to take what they say with real seriousness and be open to the possibility that they are right and we are wrong.

This means one should not be too quick to dismiss a purported divine command merely because it is contrary to a contemporary liberal morality. Obviously one cannot coherently attribute anything at all to God and claim he is good and Adams is correct that we cannot accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking. However, one function of theological reflection is to critique our contemporary mores and an authentic encounter with God’s will is likely to contrast with some of our moral beliefs.  It is sheer hubris to suggest God would always agree with us. Is it really impossible for an all knowing, all good being to disagree with us on the seriousness of adultery or the propriety of capital punishment? To say no is to tacitly assume that modern 21^st century liberal westerners have made no mistakes and their understanding of morality is infallible and inerrant. Those who make such an assumption have a dogmatically certain faith in contemporary liberal mores. Such attitudes are normally attributed predominantly to religious fundamentalists and I think the irony of this speaks for itself.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled “Contra Mundum.” This blog post was published in the February 2011 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

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Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
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Contra Mundum: The Judgmental Jesus

In a recent Conference at Notre Dame Alvin Plantinga suggested that the commands to wipe out the Canaanites, recorded in the book of Deuteronomy, might be hyperbolic; they should be understood more like how we understand a person who states, in the context of a boxing match, “knock his block off, hand him his head”, or in a football game where a person states that the team should “kill the opposition” or boasts that “we totally slaughtered them.”[1] Understood this way, the commands in Deuteronomy meant “something like attack them, defeat them, drive them out; not literally kill every man, woman, child donkey and the like”.[2]

In two previous posts I have explored and defended Nicholas Wolterstorff’s argument for this conclusion. In God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation, I elaborated on, appropriated and expanded Nicholas Wolterstorff’s case for understanding Joshua as a hagiographic, stylised and highly hyperbolic account of Israel’s early skirmishes. In Part II: Ancient Near Eastern Conquest Accounts, I argued that studies into Ancient Near Eastern historiography give considerable support to his conclusion. Joshua appears to follow the same rhetoric, literary conventions and motifs of other ancient Near East conquest accounts and one feature of such accounts is to narrate victories hyperbolically in terms of killing all people, leaving no survivors and so forth. This suggests the description of Joshua putting every inhabitant to the sword, totally destroying all and leaving no survivors, is not to be taken literally. In this last post in this series I want to look at some implications of accepting this.

I think two implications can be drawn from this conclusion. First,

On the assumption that Deuteronomy and Joshua are parts of the same sequence of books, this interpretation of Joshua forces a back-interpretation of Deuteronomy. If “struck down all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword” is a literary convention when used to describe Joshua’s exploits, then it is likewise a literary convention when similar words are used by Moses in his instructions to Israel in general and to Joshua in particular.[3]

I think Wolterstorff is correct here, this interpretation of Joshua does force a back-interpretation of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 7:2 states “when Yahweh your God has given them up before you and you have struck them, you shall utterly destroy them”. Similarly, Deuteronomy 20:16-17 states “anything that breathes you shall not keep alive, but you shall utterly destroy them”. In Joshua 10 one sees the formulaic language of “and Yahweh gave [the city]” and they “struck it by the mouth of the sword, and its king he hath destroyed” until there were “no survivors”. The chapter is summarised with the phrase “So Joshua struck all the land, … He destroyed all that breathed”. The similar phraseology is evident.[4]

Moreover, the book of Joshua clearly, explicitly and repeatedly identifies what Joshua did in these chapters with the command that Moses had given regarding the Canaanites in Deuteronomy.[5] If the language of “striking all the people by the sword”, “leaving no survivors”, “totally destroying”, “striking all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword”, and so on, is hyperbolic (as the evidence suggests it is) then the command cannot have been intended to be taken literally.

This understanding of the commands in Deuteronomy also solves some other interpretative problems. Here I will mention briefly three.

First, what God commanded regarding the Canaanites differs in various canonical books. As noted above, in Judges when the angel of the Lord refers back to the original command it is stated in terms of not making treaties with them, destroying their shrines and driving them out; it is not stated in terms of literally exterminating them. Similarly, in the earlier book of Exodus the command is given in terms of not allowing the Canaanites to live in the land, again, not in terms of extermination. This is significant. “Deuteronomy” in Greek means “second law”. Throughout Deuteronomy, Moses repeats laws already laid down in the book of Exodus, sometimes expanding on them. The Decalogue, for example, which was delivered on Sinai in Exodus 20, is repeated again in Deuteronomy 5. The laws about releasing an ebed (and indentured servant) in Exodus 21:1 are repeated and expanded on in Deuteronomy 15:12-18. Similarly, Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is a repetition of a law spelled out in Exodus 22:15.[6] The same occurs with the law under discussion. Deuteronomy 7 repeats the same promises and commands laid down in Exodus 23:20-32; however, in Deuteronomy, the language of “destroy them” replaces the “do not let them live in your land” in Exodus. Wolterstorff’s interpretation explains this.

Second the word herem, which is translated “destroy” in Deuteronomy 7:2, has the primary meaning of the irrevocable giving-over or devotion of something to Yhwh and hence implies renunciation. The term has also developed a secondary secular meaning of “to destroy”;[7] but, a literal reading of “destroy” here does not fit the context well. The command to “destroy” the Canaanites occurs alongside several other commands, “Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons”.[8] However, this seems odd. Killing is not an obvious antithesis to marrying or making a covenant; moreover, the text goes on to elaborate the command in terms of smashing idols and driving them out in a similar vein to Judges. For this reason Christopher Wright argues herem should be translated as “renounce” and is a command to shun the Canaanites.[9] This reading clashes with the parallel verse where “In Deuteronomy 20:17 herem is used epexegetically to verse 16, ‘you shall not leave alive anything that breathes’”.[10] However, taking the word as ‘destroy’ and understanding it hyperbolically makes sense of this.[11]

Some object that a hyperbolic interpretation does not fit the context, which draws a contrast between sparing “the women, the children, the livestock” in verse 14 and totally destroying them in verse 16 “do not leave alive anything that breathes”. This is mistaken; first the emphasis in verse 14 is not on sparing non-combatants but rather on the permissibility of marrying the women of conquered enemies, adopting their children and using their cattle. Second, the contrast is not between verses 14 and 16, but between verse 16 and the whole set of instructions regarding nations that are far away in verses 10-15. These verses command Israel to seek to make peace treaties first and if they go to war and kill combatants they can marry the women, adopt children and keep the live stock. In other words, as much as possible they are to seek peaceful co-existence with these nations. A command to go to war and drive them out expressed hyperbolically as ‘totally destroy them, leave nothing alive that breathes’ would stand in contrast to this. A final point on this is that the crucial issue is whether the hyperbolic interpretation is more plausible than a literal one, even if a literal interpretation fits Deuteronomy 20 better. Above I have argued that a literal interpretation puts Joshua 6-11 at odds with Judges and the later chapters of Joshua. It would be odd to reject a hyperbolic interpretation because one passage in Deuteronomy 20 does not cohere with it and instead embrace a literal interpretation which creates an even greater incoherence in the text.

Finally, the hyperbolic reading addresses another apparent contradiction in the text noted by many readers of the Pentateuch. While Deuteronomy 7:2 and 20:16-17 command Israel to “utterly destroy” the Canaanites and to “not leave alive anything that breathes”, numerous other texts claim the Canaanites are to be “driven out”, “dispossessed”, “thrust out”, etc; in fact, often the “drive out” language is juxtaposed with the language of “destroy”. Taken literally these pictures are inconsistent. If I stated that I had driven an intruder from my house one would not assume the intruder was dead in my lounge. Similarly, if I said I had killed an intruder, one would not normally think this meant the intruder had fled. The Hebrew confirms this; the language of driving out and casting out is used elsewhere to refer to Adam and Eve being driven from Eden, Cain being driven into the wilderness, David driven out by Saul. All are cases where the meaning precludes something being literally destroyed.[12]

Moreover, when the “drive out” language is used of Canaan it often is used in a context where it does not literally mean destroyed but rather, dispossessed. In Leviticus 18:26-28[13] the Canaanites are said to have been driven out in the same way Israel will be driven out if they violate the Covenant.

Finally, the language of destroying whole nations is in several places in the book of Deuteronomy used in a rhetorical or hyperbolic sense where it refers to “driving out” the nation in question or dispossessing them; it does not mean exterminating them. Hence, Wolterstorff’s suggestion has ample precedent from within the text itself.[14]

A second implication of Wolterstorff’s position is that Joshua does not assert that Israel engaged in divinely-authorised genocide.

[W]hen a high-school basket ball player says his team slaughtered the other team last night he’s not asserting, literally now, that they slaughter the other team. What is he asserting? Not easy to tell. That they scored a decisive victory? Maybe, but suppose they barely eked out a win? Was he lying? Maybe not. Maybe he was speaking with a wink of the eye hyperbole. High school kids do.[15]

In the same way, when one realises that Joshua is hagiographic and highly hyperbolic in its narration of what occurred, the best one can conclude from the accounts of killing everyone that breathed is that,

Israel scored a decisive victory and once you recognise the presence of hyperbole it is not even clear how decisive the victories were. Joshua did not conquer all the cities in the land nor did he slaughter all the inhabitants in the cities he did conquer. The book of Joshua does not say that he did.[16]

Canonical factors force the same conclusion. I noted above that in Judges and Exodus the command is expressed in terms of avoiding treaties and driving the Canaanites out. In Joshua and Deuteronomy the command is expressed in the language of “utterly destroying them”. The conclusion we have reached is that the latter is figurative language and the former is literal. If this is the case then the command was to drive them out and it was not to literally exterminate them.

[1] Alvin Plantinga “Comments on Evan Fales’ Satanic Verses: Moral Chaos in Holy Writ” a paper presented to “My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible” Conference at the centre for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame, Friday 11 September 2009 at <http://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/conferences/documents/HBprogram_006.pdf> accessed 5 Jan 2010.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reading Joshua” in Michael Bergmann, Michael J Murray and Michael C Rea (Eds) Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) 252-253. 252.
[4] All scripture references in this paragraph are from the Hebrew Greek Interlinear Bible.
[5] “So Joshua subdued the whole region, including the hill country, the Negev, the western foothills and the mountain slopes, together with all their kings. He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded. (Joshua 10:40 NIV) [Emphasis added] Similarly we see,

“Everyone in it they put to the sword. They totally destroyed them, not sparing anything that breathed, and he burned up Hazor itself. Joshua took all these royal cities and their kings and put them to the sword. He totally destroyed them, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded.” (Joshua 11:11-12 NIV) [Emphasis added]

Also,

“So that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses (Joshua 11:20b NIV) [Emphasis added]

As the LORD commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua, and Joshua did it; he left nothing undone of all that the LORD commanded Moses.” (Joshua 11:15 NIV) [Emphasis added]

[6] Gordon Wenham “Bethulah: A Girl of Marriageable Age” Vetus Testamentum 22 (1972) 326-348.
[7] J P U Lilley “Understanding the Herem” Tyndale Bulletin 44 (1993) 1:11.
[8] Deuteronomy 7:2-4.
[9] Christopher J H Wright Deuteronomy (New International Biblical Commentary) (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996) 109.
[10] Lilley, supra n7, 174.
[11] Other commentators such as Duane L Christensen and J McConville suggest “destroy” is being used in a figurative sense. McConville, for example, states “the concept of complete annihilation of the nations is always a kind of ideal, symbolizing the need for radical loyalty to Yahweh on the part of Israel.” J. G. McConville, Deuteronomy, Apollos Old Testament Commentary, ed. D.W. Baker and G.J. Wenham (Downers Grove/Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2002) 161.
[12] I owe this point to conversations with Paul Copan.
[13] “But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things,²⁷ for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled.²⁸ And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.”
[14] Deuteronomy 2:10-12, 20-22, 4:26-30, 28:63.
[15] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reply to Antony” in Michael Bergmann, Michael J Murray and Michael C Rea (Eds) Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) 263.
[16] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reading Joshua” presented to “My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible” Conference at the centre for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame, Saturday 12 September 2009 at accessed 19 December 2009; this paragraph was in the paper presented at the conference but was omitted from the published version.

RELATED POSTS:
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II: Ancient Near Eastern Conquest Accounts
Download Matt’s EPS Talk “God and the Genocide of the Canaanites” (& other EPS talks)
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II
Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?

In my previous post, God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation, I expounded and adapted Nicholas Wolterstorff’s argument for a hagiographic hyperbolic reading of the book of Joshua. Wolterstorff’s argument has, I think, considerable force. Judges and Joshua cannot both be taken literally as their accounts are at odds; given the internal evidence Wolterstorff cites it is reasonable to contend that Joshua is the one that is non-literal. Wolterstorff, however, limits his case to what I call internal evidence, evidence from within the text itself. I think there is some interesting external evidence, evidence of how particular terms and language were used in other Ancient Near Eastern histories of conquests and battles, which could be added to Wolterstorff’s argument to make it significantly more plausible. Here I will cite three lines of such evidence.

The first is that comparisons between the book of Joshua and other Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts from the same period demonstrate some important stylistic parallels. Various studies have documented these similarities. Commenting on the structure of the campaigns mentioned in Joshua 9-12, Kitchen notes;

This kind of report profile is familiar to readers of ancient Near Eastern military reports, not least in the second millennium. Most striking is the example of the campaign annals of Tuthmosis III of Egypt in his years 22-42 (ca. 1458-1438). … [T]he pharaoh there gives a very full account of his initial victory at Megiddo, by contrast with the far more summary and stylized reports of the ensuing sixteen subsequent campaigns. Just like Joshua against up to seven kings in south Canaan and four-plus up north.[1] [Emphasis added]

Kitchen adds,

The Ten Year Annals of the Hittite king Mursil II (later fourteenth century) are also instructive. Exactly like the “prefaces” in the two Joshua war reports (10:1-4; 11:1-5), detailing hostility by a number of foreign rulers against Joshua and Israel as the reason for the wars, so in his annals Mursil II gives us a long “preface” on the hostility of neighbouring rulers and people groups that lead to his campaigns.[2] [Emphasis added]

Kitchen adds other examples. He observes that the same formulaic style found in Joshua is also used in the Amarna letters EA 185 and EA 186.[3]Similarly, before his major campaigns,

Joshua is commissioned by YHWH not to fear (cf. 5:13-15; 10:8; 11:6). So also by Ptah and Amun were Merenptah in Egypt and Tuthmosis IV long before him: and likewise Mursil II of the Hittites by his gods (10T-Year Annals, etc.), all in the second millennium besides such kings as Assurbanipal of Assyria down to the seventh century.[4]

Similar studies have been done by Van Seters[5] and James Hoffmeier.[6] However, the most comprehensive is that done by J Lawson Younger.

Younger notes similarities in the preface, structure and even the way the treaty with the Gibeonites is recorded between Joshua and various Ancient Near Eastern accounts.[7] Joshua follows this convention in describing numerous battles occurring in a single day or within a single campaign.[8] Ancient Near Eastern accounts also, like Joshua, repeatedly make reference to the enemy “melting with fear”.[9] Even the way post-battle pursuits are set out and described have parallels with pursuits in Ancient Near Eastern literature.[10] I could mention more examples; the point is that “when the composition and rhetoric of the Joshua narratives in chapters 9-12 are compared to the conventions of writing about conquests in Egyptian, Hittite, Akkadian, Moabite, and Aramaic texts, they are revealed to be very similar”.[11]

Second, Younger notes such accounts are “highly figurative”[12] and narrate military events via a common transmission code.  The literary motif of divine intervention is an example. Both The 10 Year Annals of Mursilli and Sargon’s Letter to the God record a divine intervention where the God sends hailstones on the enemy.[13] Tuthmosis III has a similar story regarding a meteor.[14] Younger notes these accounts are extremely similar to parallel accounts in Joshua 10. Similarly, Younger notes in many Ancient Near Eastern texts “one can discern a literary technique whereby the deity is implored to maintain daylight long enough for there to be a victory”[15] which has obvious parallels to Josh 10:13-14.  Similarly, Richard Hess notes that Hittite conquest accounts describe the gods knocking down the walls of an enemy city in a manner similar to that described in the battle of Jericho.[16] The fact that similar events are narrated in multiple different accounts suggests they are “notable ingredient of the transmission code for conquest accounts”;[17] that is, part of the common hyperbolic rhetoric of warfare rather than descriptions of what actually occurred.

Third, part of this “transmission code” is that victories are narrated in a stereotyped exaggerated hyperbolic fashion in terms of total conquest, complete annihilation and destruction of the enemy, killing everyone, leaving no survivors, etc. Kenneth Kitchen notes,

[T]he type of rhetoric in question was a regular feature of military reports in the second and first millennia, as others have made very clear. … In the later fifteenth century Tuthmosis III could boast “the numerous army of Mitanni, was overthrown within the hour, annihilated totally, like those (now) non-existent” –- whereas, in fact, the forces of Mitanni lived to fight many another day, in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries. Some centuries later, about 840/830, Mesha king of Moab could boast that “Israel has utterly perished for always” – a rather premature judgment at that date, by over a century! And so on, ad libitum. It is in this frame of reference that the Joshua rhetoric must also be understood.[18]

Younger notes numerous other examples. Merenptah’s Stele describes a skirmish with Israel as follows, “Yanoam is nonexistent; Israel is wasted, his seed is not”.[19] Here a skirmish in which Egypt prevailed is described hyperbolically in terms of the total annihilation of Israel. Sennacherib uses similar hyperbole, “The soldiers of Hirimme, dangerous enemies, I cut down with the sword; and not one escaped”.[20] Mursilli II records making “Mt.Asharpaya empty (of humanity)” and the “mountains of Tarikarimu empty (of humanity)”.[21] Mesha (whom Kitchen cites as stating “Israel has utterly perished for always”) describes victories in terms of him fighting against a town, taking it and then killing all the inhabitants of the town.[22] Similarly, The Bulletin of Ramses II, an historical narrative of Egyptian military campaigns into Syria, narrates Egypt’s considerably less-than-decisive victory at the battle of Kadesh with the following rhetoric,

His majesty slew the entire force of the wretched foe from Hatti, together with his great chiefs and all his brothers, as well as all the chiefs of all the countries that had come with him, their infantry and their chariotry falling on their faces one upon the other. His majesty slaughtered and slew them in their places; … He took no note of the millions of foreigners; he regarded them aschaff. [23] [Emphasis original]

Numerous other examples could be provided. The hyperbolic use of language similar to that in Joshua is strikingly evident.[24] It is equally evident that histories of this sort are highly stylised and often use this exaggeration for what could be called hagiographic purposes to commend the kings as faithful servants of the gods rather than as literal descriptions of what occurred.[25] They constitute “monumental hyperbole.”[26]

In addition, both Kitchen and Younger note that such hyperbolic language is used in several places within the book of Joshua itself. In Joshua 10:20, for example, it states Joshua and the sons of Israel had “finished destroying” and “completely destroyed” their enemies. Immediately, however, the text, affirms that the “survivors went to fortified cities.” In this context, the language of total destruction is clearly hyperbolic.  Similarly, the account of the battle of Ai is clearly hyperbolic. After Joshua’s troops feign a retreat the text states that “all the men of Ai” are pressed to chase them. “Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go after Israel. They left the city open and went in pursuit of Israel.” Joshua lures the pursuers into a trap “so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives” Then it immediately goes on to assert “When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword” they went to the city of Ai and killed all the men in it. Apparently all the men of Ai were killed three times in the battle and in each case they appear alive again. A final example is suggested by Goldingay, in the first chapter of Judges he notes that after Judah puts Jerusalem to the sword, its occupants are still living there ‘to this day’.

A similar phenomenon occurs in the case of Midian,[27] the Amalekites[28] and the Babylonian invasion[29].  In each case a battle is narrated in totalistic terms of complete destruction of all the people and later narration goes on to matter-of-factly assume it did not literally occur. The fact that this occurs on multiple occasions in different books rapidly diminishes the probability that these features are co-incidental or careless errors. Why is that almost every time a narration of “genocide” occurs, it is followed by an account which presupposes it did not? These facts significantly increase the possibility that this is deliberate literary construction by the authors.

Four things are evident; first, that taken as a single narrative and taken literally, Joshua 1-11 gives a contradictory account of events to that narrated by Judges and also to that narrated by the later chapters of Joshua itself. Second is that “those who edited the final version of these writings into one sequence were not mindless” particularly if God speaks through them. Third, while Judges reads as “down to earth history” a careful reading of Joshua reveals it to be full of ritualistic, stylised, accounts, formulaic language. This third point is supported by research into Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts. Such studies show (a) such accounts are highly  hyperbolic, hagiographic, figurative and follow a common transmission code (b) comparisons between these accounts and the early chapters of Joshua suggest Joshua is written according to the same literary conventions and  transmission code (c) part of this transmission code is to hyperbolically portray a victory in absolute terms of totally destroying the enemy or in terms of miraculous divine intervention; “such statements are rhetoric indicative of military victory”,[30] not literal descriptions of what occurred.  Fourth, this hyperbolic way of describing victories is attested in several places elsewhere in Scripture.

I think these four points, taken together, provide compelling reasons for thinking that one should interpret the text as a highly figurative and hyperbolic account of what occurred. In light of these factors it seems sensible to conclude that the accounts of battles in Joshua 6-11 are not meant to be taken literally.

In Part III I look at two implications of the hagiographic hyperbolic account.

[1] Kenneth Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids MI: Erdmans Publishing Co, 2003) 170.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid 172.
[4] Ibid, 174-175.
[5] J Van Seters “Joshua’s Campaign of Canaan and Near Eastern Historiography” 2 Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament (1990) 1-12.
[6] James K Hoffmier “The Structure of Joshua 1—11 and the Annals of Thutmose III” in A R Millard, J K Hoffmeier, D W Baker (eds) Faith Tradition and History: Old Testament Historiography and its Ancient Near Eastern context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994) 165-181.
[7] K Lawson Younger Jr Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990) 200-204.
[8] Ibid 216.
[9] Ibid 258-260.
[10] Ibid 220-225.
[11] Ziony Zevit The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (London and New York: Continuum, 2001) 114.
[12] K Lawson Younger Jr “Judges 1 in its Near Eastern Literary Context” in A R Millard, J K Hoffmeier, D W Baker (eds) Faith Tradition and History: Old Testament Historiography and its Ancient near Eastern context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994) 207.
[13] Younger, supra n 24, 208-211.
[14] Ibid 217.
[15] Ibid  219, for further  discussion of the relationship between Joshua’s long day and other ANE texts see John Walton “Joshua 10:12-15 and Mesopotamian Celestial Omen Texts” in A R Millard, J K Hoffmeier, D W Baker (eds) Faith Tradition and History: Old Testament Historiography and its Ancient near Eastern context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994) 181-190.
[16] Richard Hess “West Semitic Texts and the Book of Joshua” Bulletin for Biblical Research 7 (1997) 68.
[17] Younger, supra n 24, 211.
[18] Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old Testament 174.
[19] Younger, supra n 24, 227.
[20] Ibid 228.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid 227.
[23] Ibid 245.
[24] In addition, both Kitchen and Younger note that such hyperbolic language is used in several places within the book of Joshua itself. In Joshua 10:20, for example, it states Joshua and the sons of Israel had “finished destroying” and “completely destroyed” their enemies. Immediately, however, the text, affirms that the “survivors went to fortified cities.” In this context, the language of total destruction is clearly hyperbolic. Similarly, the account of the battle of Ai is clearly hyperbolic. After Joshua’s troops feign a retreat the text states that “all the men of Ai” are pressed to chase them. “Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go after Israel. They left the city open and went in pursuit of Israel.” Joshua lures the pursuers into a trap “so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives” Then it immediately goes on to assert “When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword” they went to the city of Ai and killed all the men in it.
[25] Thomas Thompson examines several different ANE conquest accounts of this type and notes they have a hagiographic function. See his “A Testimony of the Good King: Reading the Mesha Stele” in  Lester L Grabbe (Ed) Ahabs Agonistes: The Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty (New York: T&T Clark, 2007).
[26] John Goldingay “City and Nation” Old Testament Theology vol. 3 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009) 570. Goldingay goes on to give yet another example from within the Bible itself “While Joshua does speak of Israel’s utterly destroying the Canaanites, even these accounts can give a misleading impression: peoples that have been annihilated have no trouble reappearing later in the story; after Judah puts Jerusalem to the sword, its occupants are still living there ‘to this day’ (Judg. 1:8, 21).”
[27] Compare Numbers 31 with Judges 6 and 7.
[28] Compare 1 Sam 15 with 1 Sam 28:8 and 1 Sam  30.
[29] Compare 2 Chronicles 36:17 with 36:20 and 2 Chronicles 36:18 with 36:19
[30] K Lawson Younger “Joshua” in John H Walton, Victor H Matthews,  Mark W Chavalas (eds) The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove Il: Intervarsity Press) 227.

RELATED POSTS:
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part III: Two Implications of the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Account
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II
Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?

One of the most perplexing issues facing Christian believers is a series of jarring texts in the Old Testament. After liberating Israel from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites arrived on the edge of the Promised Land. The book of Deuteronomy records that God then commanded Israel to “destroy totally” the people occupying these regions (the Canaanites); the Israelites were to “leave alive nothing that breathes”. The book of Joshua records the carrying out of this command. In the sixth chapter it states “they devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys”. In the tenth and eleventh chapters it states that Joshua “left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.” The text mentions city after city where Joshua, at God’s command, puts every inhabitant “to the sword”  “totally destroyed the inhabitants” and “left no survivors.”

If one takes these passages literally they record the divinely-authorised commission of genocide. But genocide surely is morally wrong. In the light of this, critics of Christian theism often ask a rhetorical question; how could a good and loving God command the extermination of the Canaanites?

One response which goes back to the patristic era is to suggest that the strict, literal reading on which this rhetorical question is based is mistaken. Recently, several, protestant scholars have suggested a hyperbolic reading of the relevant passages.[1] Perhaps the most detailed is that proposed by Nicholas Wolterstorff. Wolterstorff suggests,

“[T]hat the Book of Joshua has to be read as a theologically-oriented narration, stylized and hyperbolic at important points, of Israel’s early skirmishes in the Promised Land, with the story of these battles being framed by descriptions of two great ritualized events.  The story as a whole celebrates Joshua as the great leader of his people, faithful to Yahweh, worthy successor of Moses.  If we strip the word “hagiography” of its negative connotations, we can call it a hagiographic account of Joshua’s exploits.”[2]

In this series I will defend Wolterstorff’s position. In this post I will sketch, adapt and defend Wolterstorff’s argument. In Part II, I will argue that external evidence from comparative studies in Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts gives considerable support to Wolterstorff’s position. Finally in Part III I will look at two implications of this position.

Wolterstorff’s Argument
Wolterstorff’s contention is that “a careful reading of the text in its literary context makes it implausible to interpret it as claiming that Yahweh ordered extermination”. It is important to note what he means by context. Here, it is clear that Wolterstorff is advocating a canonical approach. He notes that,

“Joshua as we have it today was intended as a component in the larger sequence consisting of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings…  I propose that we interpret the Book of Joshua as a component within this larger sequence – in particular, that we interpret it as preceded by Deuteronomy and succeeded by Judges.”[3]

Joshua comes after Deuteronomy and before Judges. Wolterstorff points out that these books should be read as a single narrative. When one does this, however, several issues are apparent. Joshua 6-11 summarises several battles and concludes with “So Joshua took the entire land, just as the LORD had directed Moses, and he gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal divisions.  Then the land had rest from war”[4] (Joshua 11:16-23). Judges, however, opens with a battle that occurs after Joshua’s death; it states,

“After the death of Joshua, the Israelites inquired of the Lord, “Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them?”  The Lord said, “Judah shall go up.  I hereby give the land into his hand.”  Judah said to his brother Simeon, “Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites; then I too will go with you into the territory allotted to you.  So Simeon went with him.  Then Judah went up and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand; and they defeated ten thousand of them at Bezek.” [Judges 1: 1-4]

Taken literally, Joshua states Joshua conquered the whole land and Judges states that much of the land was unconquered.

Similarly, Joshua affirms he exterminated all the Canaanites in this region. Repeatedly it states that Joshua left “no survivors” and “destroyed everything that breathed” in “the entire land”, “put all the inhabitants to the sword”. Alongside these general claims the text identifies several specific places and cities where Joshua exterminated everyone and left no survivors. These include Hebron (Josh. 10:40), Debir (Josh. 10:38), the hill country and the Negev and the western foothills (Josh. 10:40). In the first chapter of Judges, however, we are told that the Canaanites lived in the Negev (1:9), in the hill country (Judg. 1:9), in Debir (Judg. 1:11), in Hebron (Judg. 1:10) and in the western foothills (Judg. 1:9). Moreover, they did so in such numbers and strength that they had to be driven out by force. These are the same cities that Joshua 10 tells us Joshua had annihilated and left no survivors in.[5]

Similarly, Joshua 11:23 states that “Joshua took the entire land” and then “gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal divisions”. Consequently, the conquered region is the same land that is later divided between the Israelite tribes. When the text turns to giving an account of these tribal divisions only a chapter later the allotments begin with God telling Joshua, “You are very old, and there are still very large areas of land to be taken over” (Josh 13:1). Moreover, when one examines the allotment given to Judah we see Caleb asking permission to drive the Anakites (Josh14: 11) from the hill countries and we also hear how Caleb has to defeat Anakites living in Hebron and, after this, marches against the people “living in Debir” (Josh 15:13-19). Similarly, it is evident with several of the other allotments that the people have yet to drive out Canaanites entrenched in the area and that the Israelites were not always successful in doing so.

We read, for example, that the Ephraimites and Manassites “did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer; to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim” (Josh 16:10). Similarly, in Chapter 17 it states “Yet the Manassites were not able to occupy these towns, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that region. However, when the Israelites grew stronger, they subjected the Canaanites to forced labor but did not drive them out completely” (Joshua 17:12-13). We hear that “Danites had difficulty taking possession of their territory, so they went up and attacked Leshem, took it, put it to the sword and occupied it. They settled in Leshem and named it Dan after their forefather” (Joshua 19:47). Here we see the same land said to be subdued and conquered by Joshua in battles where he exterminated and left alive nothing that breathed; this land is yet to be occupied by the tribes of Israel and is occupied by Canaanites, often heavily armed and deeply entrenched (17:17-18).

Kenneth Kitchen notes that a careful reading of the earlier chapters makes it clear that Israel did not actually conquer the areas mentioned at all. Kitchen notes that after crossing the Jordan the Israelites set up camp in Gilgal “on the east border of Jericho” (Joshua 4:19). He notes that after every battle in the next six chapters the text explicitly states that they returned to Gilgal,

“The conflict with Canaanite city-state rulers in the southern part of Canaan is worth close examination. After the battle for Gibeon, we see the Hebrews advancing upon six towns in order, attacking and capturing them, killing their local kings and such inhabitants that had not gotten clear, and moving on, not holding on to those places. Twice over (10:15, 43), it is clearly stated that their strike force returned to base camp at Gilgal.  So there was no sweeping take over and occupation of this region at this point. And no total destruction of the towns attacked.”[6]

Kitchen goes on to note,

“What happened in the south was repeated up north. Hazor was both leader and famed center for the north Canaanite kinglets. Thus as in the south the Hebrew strike force defeated the opposition; captured their towns, killed rulers and less mobile inhabitants, symbolically burned Hazor and Hazor only to emphasis its end to its local supremacy. Again Israel did not attempt to immediately hold on to Galilee: they remained based at Gilgal (14:6).”[7]

Kitchen notes that the first “real indication of a move in occupation beyond Gilgal comes in 18:4.” This is after the first allotment of “lands to be occupied are made” and as we saw above the Israelites did not find occupying these allotments easy. He concludes, “these campaigns were essentially disabling raids: they were not territorial conquests with instant Hebrew occupation. The text is very clear about this.”[8]

Finally, the account of what God commanded differs in the two narratives. Joshua states “He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded (Josh 10:40) and “exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses (Josh 11:20b ). However, when the command is retroactively referred to in Judges 2:1, no mention of genocide or annihilation is made; instead we hear of how God had promised to drive them out and had commanded the Israelites to not to make treaties with them and to destroy their shrines. This silence is significant in the context. If God had commanded genocide then it is odd that only the failure to make treaties was mentioned.

Therefore taken as a single narrative and taken literally, Joshua 1-11 gives a different account of events to that narrated by Judges and also to that narrated by the later chapters of Joshua itself.

Wolterstorff raises a further point,

“Those whose occupation it is to try to determine the origins of these writings will suggest that the editors had contradictory records, oral traditions, and so forth to work with.  No doubt this is correct.  But those who edited the final version of these writings into one sequence were not mindless; they could see, as well as you and I can see, the tensions and contradictions – surface or real – that I have pointed to. So what is going on?”[9]

Wolterstorff’s point is that, regardless of what sources or strata of tradition are alleged behind the final form of Joshua, the redactors who put these books into a single narrative would have been well aware of the obvious contradictions mentioned above. Moreover, these redactors were not mindless or stupid. They obviously would not want to affirm that both accounts were a true literal description of what occurred. Yet they chose to put next to Joshua in the canon a book which began with a narration at odds with a literal reading of the early chapters of Joshua and they chose to juxtapose the picture of Joshua 1-11 with the later chapters I mentioned above. The redactor cannot therefore be asserting that both accounts are literally true.

I think Wolterstorff is correct here. However, his position could be substantially strengthened on theological grounds. In Divine Discourse Wolterstorff provides an interesting and rigorous analysis of the notion that Scripture is the word of God. Central to his analysis is that “an eminently plausible construal of the process, whereby these books found their way into a single canonical text, would be that by way of that process of canonization God was authorizing these books as together constituting a single volume of divine discourse.” [10]

This understanding of Scripture provides the theological justification for reading the text as a single series and hence determining what the author of early chapters of Joshua teaches by examining what is affirmed in Judges and later passages of Joshua.[11] Moreover, if the primary author of Scripture is God, then obviously the primary author of the final canon text is an intelligent person who is unlikely to have deliberately (or accidentally) authored an obviously -contradictory narrative. Hence, even if the contradictions were not obvious to the redactors, and I think Wolterstorff is correct that these apparent contradictions would have been,[12] they would be evident to God. Seeing the process whereby the redactors incorporated these books into a “single canonical text” constitutes God authorising them, this process cannot have involved  the redactors affirming as literally true two contradictory accounts.

It may be contended that an appeal to divine authorship in this way begs the question, however, I think this is mistaken. As I understand the objection, the sceptic who claims that God commanded genocide is offering a reductio ad absurdum; he or she starts by assuming that whatever God commands is right and that Scripture is the word of God, and then derives from these assumptions the absurd conclusion that genocide is not wrong. The question then is whether, granting these assumptions, such a conclusion does, in fact, follow. If Scripture is a unified divine discourse, the sceptic’s conclusion need not follow, for another assumption of the sceptic – that all accounts were intended to be taken as literal – is not evidently true.[13]

Therefore the picture of total annihilation of the Canaanites and complete conquest of their land, and the picture put forward in Judges cannot both be taken as literal descriptions of what actually happened.

At this point Wolterstorff raises a further issue about the type of literature Joshua appears to be. He notes that the early chapters of Judges, by and large, read like “down- to- earth history”. However, “Anyone who reads the Book of Joshua in one sitting cannot fail to be struck by certain stylistic features in the narrative.  One is “the highly- ritualized character of some of the major events described”.[14]

“The book is framed by its opening narration of the ritualized crossing of the Jordan and by its closing narration of the equally- ritualized ceremony of blessing and cursing that took place at Shechem; and the conquest narrative begins with the ritualized destruction of Jericho.”[15]

A related ritualistic feature is the “the mysterious sacral category of being devoted to destruction.”[16] Most significant is the use of formulaic language,

“Anyone who reads the Book of Joshua in one sitting cannot fail to be struck by the prominent employment of formulaic phrasings. … Far more important is the formulaic clause, “struck down all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword.”

The first time one reads that Joshua struck down all the inhabitants of a city with the edge of the sword, namely, in the story of the conquest of Jericho (6:21), one makes nothing of it.  But the phrasing – or close variants thereon — gets repeated, seven times in close succession in chapter 10, two more times in chapter 11, and several times in other chapters.  The repetition makes it unmistakable that we are dealing here with a formulaic literary convention.”[17]

Thus Joshua itself appears to be full of ritualistic, stylised, formulaic language. It therefore looks like something other than a mere literal description of what occurred. In light of these facts Wolterstorff argues that Judges should be taken literally whereas Joshua is hagiographic history; a highly-stylised, exaggerated account of what occurred, designed to teach theological and moral points rather than to describe in detail what actually happened. Wolterstorff provides the example of North American morality tales of the noble puritan or Washington crossing the Delaware. These are idealised, exaggerated accounts of the past designed to teach a moral lesson, not accurate accounts of what actually occurred.

In Part II I look at Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts.

[1] Alvin Plantinga “Comments on Evan Fales’ Satanic Verses: Moral Chaos in Holy Writ” a paper presented to “My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible” Conference at the centre for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame, Friday 11 September 2009; Paul Copan “Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites:  Divinely Mandated Genocide or Corporate Capital Punishment” Philosophia Christi 11/1 (2009)  and Chapter 16 of Is God a Moral Monster: Making Sense of the Old Testament (Baker Books: forthcoming 2011); Christopher Wright The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 2008) 87-88; In his latest discussion on the issue, William Lane Craig states “I’ve come to appreciate that the object of God’s command to the Israelis was not the slaughter of the Canaanites, as is often imagined. The command rather was primarily to drive them out of the land. The judgement upon these Canaanite kingdoms was to dispossess them of their land and thus destroy them as kingdoms.” See Divine Command Morality and Voluntarism at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7911 accessed at 29 October 2010.
[2] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reading Joshua” a paper presented to “My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible” Conference at the centre for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame, Saturday 12 September 2009.
[3] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reading Joshua” Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham in  Michael Bergmann, Michael J Murray and Michael C Rea (Eds) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010 forthcoming).
[4] All Scripture quotations are from the NIV unless otherwise stated. At certain points I will quote from other translations when I think they capture the literal wording more accurately in a manner that is important for my argument.
[5] In addition to these general claims about exterminating populations, Joshua 11:21-22 states “Joshua came and wiped out the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah.” This happens after Joshua is already said to have killed the inhabitants in these areas in Josh 10:30-40. Josh 11:21 states that no Anakites were left living in Israeli territory after this campaign. In Judges 1:21 the text explicitly states that Anakites are in Hebron.
[6] Kenneth Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old  Testament (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003) 162.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Wolterstorff, Supra n 3.
[10] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 295; see also “Unity behind the Canon” in Christine Helmer and Christof Landmesser (Eds) One Scripture or Many? The Canon from Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 217-232.
[11] Plantinga notes “an assumption of the enterprise is that the principal author of the Bible—the entire Bible—is God himself (according to Calvin, God the Holy Spirit). Of course each of the books of the Bible has a human author or authors as well; still, the principal author is God. This impels us to treat the whole more like a unified communication than a miscellany of ancient books. Scripture isn’t so much a library of independent books as itself a book with many subdivisions but a central theme: the message of the gospel. By virtue of this unity, furthermore (by virtue of the fact that there is just one principal author), it is possible to “interpret Scripture with Scripture.” If a given passage from one of Paul’s epistles is puzzling, it is perfectly proper to try to come to clarity as to what God’s teaching is in this passage by appealing not only to what Paul himself says elsewhere in other epistles but also to what is taught elsewhere in Scripture (for example, the Gospel of John)” Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) 385.
[12] Wolterstorff notes that the phrase “he killed all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword” occurs at least 12 times in Joshua 6-11 in close succession. Judges on the other hand affirms 7 times in close succession that the Israelites failed to drive the Canaanites out, finishing with the Angel of Bokim rebuking them for failing to do so. Similarly in Josh 13-18 it is hammered repeatedly that the land is not yet conquered. Hence these are not subtle contrasts. They are in Wolterstorff’s words “flamboyant” so it’s unlikely an intelligent redactor would have missed this.
[13] I am grateful to Zachary Ardern for helping me to develop this point.
[14] Wolterstorff, Supra n 2.
[15] Ibid. The ritualised nature of the narration is also stressed by Duane Christensen, Deuteronomy 1:1-21:9 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001).
[16] Wolterstroff, supra n 2; the phrase “devoted to destruction” (herem in Hebrew). That reference to the herem serves a figurative or rhetorical function is also noted by Christopher Wright “Now we need to know that Israel’s practice of herem was not itself unique. Texts from other nations at the time show that total destruction was practised, or at any rate proudly claimed, elsewhere. But we must also recognise that the language of warfare had a total rhetoric that liked to make universal and absolute claims about total victory and wiping out the enemy. Such rhetoric often exceeded reality on the ground….” in The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 2008) 87-88. At the other end of the spectrum minimalist scholar Thomas  L Thomson writing on the use of herem in the Mesha stele notes  the “use of the ban at both Ataroth and Nebo are clearly part of the totalitarian rhetoric of holy war rather than historical considerations.”  “Mesha and Questions of Historicity” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Vol. 22, No. 2, 249.
[17] Wolterstorff, supra n 2.

RELATED POSTS:
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II: Ancient Near Eastern Conquest Accounts
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part III: Two Implications of the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Account
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II
Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?

You addressed the following paragraph to a blogger named RyogaM. This one and actually the one right above it was so common sensible but so completely profound. I read it to my wife and it was as if shutters fell from her eyes. Best thing since Molinism! lol

When I looked at the exchange Jónathan referred to I realised I had not seen it before. It was buried in a pile of comments on Matt’s post, Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II. Anyway it made me laugh so much and it was so good that I have decided it warrants its own post.

Context is important, of course, so here we go.

Over at Driving the Peterbilt: Bible Critique by Ryoga M, RyogaM wrote a sarcastic rendition of the battle of Gibeon, which is found in Joshua 10. Here are some highlights of that rendition:

[Asterisks not original]

AT GIBEON, AGAIN

Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem: Well, now, let’s see. I suggest we attack…holy [****]! What’s that?!

Hoham king of Hebron: That’s a big f[***]ing rock!

Piram king of Jarmuth: And it’s falling on our heads!

Japhia king of Lachish: Run away! Run away!

Debir king of Eglon: Well, this is going to suck.

AT THE HEBREW CAMP

Messenger: Message for Joshua!

Joshua: Yes?

Messenger: God has attacked with big f[***]ing rocks, sir. He’s slain them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goes up to Beth-horon, and smote them to Azekah, and to Makkedah. he’s killed a lot of them, sir. Squished like bugs.

Joshua: Well it’s about time he did something useful. I guess we should kill everyone left, huh?

Joel Watts commented that RyogaM was being excessively literalistic in his reading of the text and referred RyogaM to Matt’s Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites series. RyogaM was not impressed he made several points of critique on his blog, which he repeated on ours. The relevant parts are below:

The purpose of my blog is to explore what the Bible actually SAYS, not what one wishes it to say, not what one would expect it to say if one presupposes the existence of an all-knowing, all-loving, all-power god, not what one can rationalize away because the concept of slaughtering every inhabitant of a town, including every old man, woman and child, goes against every enlightenment value we have.

And the reason I do this is because even your average, non-fundy, modern Christian takes certain parts of the Bible literally. I assume, for example, Christians take literally the idea that Jesus Christ was the son of god, that he died and rose again. Which is as equally absurd, if not even more absurd, idea, than the idea that Joshua and his people engaged in total warfare against the country he and his people invaded at the command of god. I hope, by taking the Bible literally, and pointing out why to do so is absurd, Christians such as yourself feel free to reject the entire concept of reading any part of the Bible literally and free themselves from superstition.

Now, looking at your blog, I think you are one of those selective literalistic, Christian. You presuppose that no god who calls himself just could ever order the slaughter of innocent old men, women and children, and you are right. So, you have to assume that god didn’t really mean what he very clearly said. Then you choose other parts of the Bible which are clearly in contradiction and think it resolves the question to say it’s all hyperbole….You refuse to accept what it says on its face and instead engage in mind-reading of the authors.

Matt’s response to these particular comments caused me to erupt into fits of laughter (and apparently caused shutters to fall from Jónathan’s wife’s eyes),

RyogaM, you state that I am a “selective literalist” and that not even “non-fundy, modern Christians takes certain parts of the Bible literally.”I agree. I read some parts literally and other parts non-literally. That’s a sensible approach to any form of communication.

Another sceptic told me they thought that “the Bible was bull[****], because it was full of contradictions.” No sensible person would interpret this entire passage literally, to do so would mean it would be easily refuted. One could show that most bibles are composed of thousands of pages of ink and paper. One could note that ink and paper are different substances to bovine faeces and that the term “bull[****]” is, in English, a metaphor for falsehood. Similarly, no one would interpret this passage as entirely figurative; the reference to the Bible, for example, is not a metaphor nor is the reference to contradictions.

The sceptic is literally referring to the Bible and literally attributing contradictions to it and metaphorically describing it as bull[****] in the same sentence. A sensible interpreter who is honestly trying to interpret the sceptics’ comments will interpret “bull[****]” figuratively and the rest literally. This is for two reasons: (a) taken literally, the comment is clearly absurd and it is unlikely an intelligent person would mean it to be taken this way; (b) the word “bull[****],” in English, is a well-attested metaphor for falsehoods in contexts like this. These

same two reasons are precisely what we see present in Joshua: (a) taken literally, the statements are absurd (they contradict the rest of the text); (b) the language is well-attested in ANE writing of this sort as hyperbole for victory.

Most literature and communication involves both literal and figurative language and any sensible communicator will attempt to discern both. If you disagree with me then I think your own blog post is easily refuted.

You, after all, talk in your own post about “big f[***]ing rocks.” Now this is clearly stupid, rocks cannot engage in sexual intercourse and only a complete moron with no knowledge of the sexual proclivities of rocks would say this. On the face of it, you clearly stated that rocks “f[***].” Of course I could contend (sensibly) that the word “f[***]ing” in this context should not be taken literally, that you used the word “f[***]ing” in a hyperbolic manner to emphasise the size of the rocks and the might of God. But then you are a selective literalist, you clearly do not want me to take everything on your blog as figurative. To do so would involve me “reading your mind,” it would involve me assuming you would not intend to say something obviously stupid. Seeing you think people should not do that then I have to conclude that you are a moron.

Please learn a bit more about sexual reproduction and its relationship to rocks before you write in future.

Is anyone buying this? I mean, clearly what I should do is leave with the rest of the class and talk to my lecturer later. [Doh!]

Illustrations of this sort are often used in conflict of laws or legal interpretation classes to show that what prima facie appears to be a contradiction between two pieces of legislation actually is not. This is because imperatives occur in contexts where commonly accepted qualifications, riders, priorities, idioms, etc are assumed to be understood; implicit background beliefs are in play.

We can see this clearly in the example above. I know it is unlikely my lecturer wants his students to obey his instructions to the extent that they burn to death. I know this because I know something of his purposes and of his character. I know him to be fairly decent, humane and not one to issue arbitrary, irrational commands. I know also something of the weights involved in the issues. For example, I know the fire policy is university policy and it concerns the issue of safety – both the physical safety of students as well as its own, it does not want to be sued or prosecuted or subject to critical public scrutiny. I know that the lecturer’s authority is derived from university authority and so his instructions cannot contradict or override it. I also know that the reason he gave the instruction for me to stay behind in class was because he wanted to work with me in the future to ensure the sales of his book make the top 10 list. So from all of this I can safely conclude that he did not mean for me to follow his instructions on pain of death today.

Of course if I already believed my lecturer to be a petty, arbitrary, narcissistic, cruel bully, capable of anything who routinely issued commands with the purpose of harming, maiming and destroying students (and if I suspected he wanted to take my essay and publish it as his own so as to keep all the book royalties for himself) I might take a different approach as to how I read his instructions together. But it would be uncharitable of me in excelsis to adopt this assumption of his character as the default one to reason from.

Taking these contextual factors together, along with a basic grasp of the English language, its idioms and a dose of common sense it is not that hard to navigate apparently conflicting instructions.

I raise this because a site ironically called “Common Sense Atheism” recently put up a short post entitled 6 Questions with which to Stump Conservative Christians. I was extremely underwhelmed by the questions and was left wondering if the author had actually read any Christian works above Sunday School level on Christian ethics, biblical interpretation and so on (and clearly had not read very far into this blog) but I found one of the questions stood out en stupidus maximus (that’s a legal latin maxim meaning it was so stupid it had to be taken out). Question 4 asks,

“The Bible says to worship God (obviously) and to obey your mother and father, but what do you do if your parents tell you to worship other gods?”

Here, the atheist is trying to establish a contradiction in the commands God issues and from this contradiction we are presumably supposed to concede that Christians are irrational or that God does not exist or some such thing (and, of course, any Christian reading it is supposed to be “stumped”).

No Christian I know would be even momentarily stumped by this because the answer is obvious: in such a case you should disobey your parents and worship God; end of. I find it no more paralysing than the issue of whether I should leave class when the fire alarm sounds or stay to talk to my lecturer. In both cases, I understand that the command cannot sensibly be understood as an absolutely unqualified imperative. I doubt very much that God, out of allegiance to Him, wants us to give up allegiance to Him.

Of course if one wanted to make God look silly and arbitrary one could interpret it this way, just as you could attribute silly interpretations of what my lecturer meant such as intepreting his instructions as a command to wait for him even if I get burned alive in a fire or that my lecturer does not exist, but why would you?

If you think I am just picking on one unfortunate atheist’s example I beg to differ. When Matt was an undergrad at the University of Waikato a leader of the campus rationalist society confronted him with Isaiah 30:26,

The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.

The rationalist then informed Matt as to what the temperature of the sun was. He multiplied that number by seven and then noted that if it were to become that hot then world would burn to a crisp. He concluded that the Bible taught that heaven was hotter than hell. Matt’s initial inclination was to laugh and asked the guy if the exchange had “brightened up his day and warmed his heart.” It turned out that the example came from a highly regarded book by a scientist critiquing creationism, ironically entitled “Telling Lies for God: Reason vs Creationism” [scientists really really shouldn't pontificate on theology]. The book had recieved endorsements from leading Australian Clergy. [I am reminded of Rob Muldoon's position on Australians]

Then there was a discussion I had on Debunking Christianity’s “Madeleine Flannagan is Happy to be Treated as Women Were in the Bible!“ where John Loftus pointed to Deuteronomy,

“Deuteronomy 22:23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.

Deuteronomy 22:28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. [c] He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.”

Now Matt had written several posts on this atheist chestnut which saw me get embroiled in an exchange with both Loftus and Stephen Carr. Carr surmised that,

“If a woman is threatened with a knife, told she will be killed if she screams out, and does not scream out, there will always be a Christian to say , and I quote ‘isn’t she a part of the problem’?”

Apparently the non-offensive-to-God way to rape a woman is to simply render her incapable of screaming because God’s issue is with the screaming and not the raping…

Apparently when the bible lays down case laws, it cannot simply lay down a paradigm. It must spell out every possible nuance, qualification, exception, situation, application to analogous situations and so on.

Apparently if it does not do this then it is denying opposition to the act – now even modern case law precedents do not function like this and legislation is never drafted this way but apparently this is the way to read Biblical law.

Seriously.

Perhaps Carr is a too easy a target. Atheist philosopher Michael Martin makes a similar interpretation of Deuteronomy,

“it is assumed that in all cases that a rape victim could cry for help and if she did, she would be heard and rescued. Both of these assumptions are very dubious and sensitive to the contextual aspects of rape.”

I am at a loss to understand why atheists insist on reading these texts like a lawyer with Aspergers Syndrome in search of a convincing technicality by way to circumvent the spirit and intendment of the law? I mean why? We can all handle instructions that conflict with fire alarms going off, we don’t interpret modern laws like this, so why do atheists (and some Christians) switch to such silly anachronistic readings when the instructions are attributed to God?

I suspect the issue is the background factors I mention above. Many atheists believe God is a petty, arbitrary, narcissistic, cruel bully, capable of anything who routinely issues commands with the purpose of harming, maiming and destroying people. They believe that the bible is obviously silly, irrational, oppressive and supports contradictory absolutism in the family, is anti-women (and so obviously supports rape) is full of scientific absurdities (and so Isaiah was talking about cosmology) and so on.

When you have a pre-conceived notion as to what you want the text to mean – be it an uncharitable reading or what you think or have heard that the text teaches – I suppose the silly reading is congenial. What this tells us is that the reading of the text is not what leads atheists (and some Christians) to their conclusions, rather it is their conclusions lead them to read the text this way.