JOSHUA - Week 4
What are we to do, then, when historical research not only appears to challenge the biblical narrative but potentially appears to deny it?
That is one of the questions that I posited last week, when we looked at some of the reasons why there are doubts about the historicity of Joshua.
It is a question which can spread far wider than just Joshua, but in this context, it will be our focus to ask ‘If Joshua isn’t a historical account, then what do we do with it?’
Joshua, in particular, holds quite a lot of weight when it comes to how it portrays God, and therefore the accuracy of the account should also have great significance.
Many, especially non-Christian readers of the text, view the story of Joshua as an account of God sanctioning genocide. That is an extreme thing to claim, but also an extreme thing to defend. If Joshua is not historically accurate, or was never meant to be, then that is one concern about God, something that could be a barrier to someone believing, that we needn’t worry about.
It’s worth first examining why one might even think that it was historical.
I think it is rooted in the complexity of an understanding of the ‘truth’ of the bible. That is a principle which many Christians hold, which can tie us up into having to leap to other conclusions where it may not be warranted.
One chain of thought would go that the bible is ‘true’ and therefore narrative accounts must be ‘true’ in a sense of historical accuracy.
That is logical as a thought process, but not from a critical thinking perspective. ‘If x, then y’ statements are common, but the first factor should be a concrete fact upon which you are then drawing a second conclusion. The ‘truth’ of the bible is abstract as an idea and debatable on theological, historical and philosophical levels, so doesn’t serve well in this context.
Another position, perhaps more commonly held, is that the bible is truth, rather than true, which allows for some flexibility with detail and accuracy of accounts, whilst maintaining the significance and value in the texts.
How might we apply this logic (which I’m not currently suggesting is right or wrong) to Joshua?
What are the truths contained in this story that can speak both into the context of the narrative and our lives today?
In our other blog posts on Joshua, we’ve seen principles like ‘God uses all kinds of different people for Their work’ and ‘We should obey God’. The overarching story of Joshua can be read as a fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham in Gensis and to Moses in Exodus. We can, then, find another deep truth in Joshua; God always keeps Their promises. A different reading of the same events could lead us to a variation on that truth; God can overcome any barriers. We can even take notions from other parts of scripture and find them back in the story of Joshua; God has a good plan for Their people.
One question would be this; is that sufficient for you?
That might be enough – an understanding of Scripture as alive and active can come across these kinds of messages in scripture and hold to them as true. A counter argument would be that these messages are only viewed as ‘truth’ because they come from a bible which has been deemed to be ‘true’. In a sense, this is the same dilemma as presented by the claim to historicity.
Plenty of Christians do consider this to be enough, and there may be nothing wrong with that. If you read the bible, are encouraged by it and feel God’s guidance through it, that sounds like a good thing. The danger, however, is taking what we want from the bible, rather than what is there.
A problem is that we don’t always know ‘what is there’ and can’t know the original authors specific intent.
As ever, most of what we can do is just best guesses. So, what is the best guess as to the purpose of the author of Joshua.
Well, the strong consensus among biblical scholars is that the book of Joshua was most likely written in the late 7th Century BC, during the reign of King Josiah, and maybe completed during or even after the Babylonian exile in the 6th Century BC. This was a tumultuous and uncertain time in Ancient Israelite history. Why might an author/a group of authors in this time period write a story set almost a thousand years earlier?
One suggestion I came across is that Joshua might serve as propaganda. We know from our study of Isaiah that around this time, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrians, and that once they were gone, the Babylonians posed new threats. This geo-political upheaval leaves the potential for a land grab. The southern Kingdom of Judah may have had aspirations of asserting itself on the global stage and so an expansion north and the formation of something like a ‘unified Kingdom of Israel’ could do that. The story of Joshua, a manifesto for conquering new lands in God’s name, could be seen as a story told to motivate the people of 7th/6th century Judah for a new campaign.
A slightly more moderate position is that it could just be a call for unity among the tribes. The portrayal of a unified people of Israel, combined with a reminder of a united call on them by God, would encourage unity again.
A different perspective suggests that this could just be a cultural origin story. We know that all sorts of cultures and people groups, around the world and across history, tell stories of how things came to be as they are. It could be as simple as the Joshua narrative being a version of how the people came to be in the land. This would make sense in the historic context as a reminder that though the Judahites were vulnerable and fearful of attack, the people of Israel were once strong conquerors of the land.
So, what do we do with historical challenges to narratives?
I recommend that we engage with these challenges and allow ourselves to explore new possibilities which can shed light on the life of the people of the bible.
If the bible is important to you, then it is worth knowing what was really going on at the time of these stories, and where we find difference, we can learn a great deal from the gap between the story and history.