Joshua Review

If we were to compare the books of the Bible reviewed thus far to the plotting of a novel, the story that begins in Exodus reaches it climax and denouement in Joshua (Genesis is a prologue in this interpretation, and Deuteronomy is…an interlude, maybe?  As discussed in its review, Deuteronomy’s place and provenance is odd).  It’s a climax complete with grand battles, vengeance, the fulfillment of promises, and the resolution of the outstanding issues and “plotlines.”  However, in this reading, it is also a climax written by a different author, which may be historically true.

Scholarly consensus on Joshua suggests it was written, not with the Moses books and more-or-less contemporary with the events it depicts, but centuries afterwards, around the same time as Deuteronomy, meaning that it was likely meant as a kind of justification or propaganda for the rulers of Israel at the time, pitched to a contemporary audience, and not as a record of history, though it is probably based on an oral tradition or other, now-lost recordings.  This goes some way towards explaining the more bombastic and, well, modern tone compared to the pre-Deuteronomistic books.  Though by no means “modern” as we think of it today, Joshua reads noticeably different from Numbers and its predecessors.  It is less detailed, the focus is more on the people than on Jehovah, and the Israelites are depicted in a more positive, proactive, and unified form than they were at the time of Moses’ death.

According to the fifteen minutes of research I did in conjunction with reading it, I learned there is some controversy around an effort by some scholars to label the events of Joshua an Israeli “genocide,” while other scholars retort that deploying the term in any premodern context is fundamentally anachronistic, and furthermore that the conquering behavior depicted in Joshua is well in-line with the established practices in warfare of that time.  I am inclined to agree with the latter view, given my own knowledge of history and warfare at that and in other early periods of human history.  There are also numerous notes during the distribution of land and cities to the various tribes and families that the original inhabitants were not (could not be?) completely eradicated or evicted, and assumed new dynamics alongside their new cohabitants, sometimes as equals, sometimes subserviently, which suggests the more extreme “slaughter everyone in the city” conquests were anomalous or exaggerated.

Strange though it might be, I found the treatment and negotiations with the local rulers more uncomfortable to countenance than the purging of cities.  Perhaps this is an example of individuals always being more sympathetic than groups (the power of stories and narrative over statistics), but the conquest and execution of rulers come to negotiate seemed both more aberrant from contemporaneous norms and more vindictive in general attitude and approach.  If you read Epic of Gilgamesh and its related legends, like that of Lugalbanda, you will recognize at least a few of the city names.  Which is another element worth bearing in mind, by the way – that this was largely a conquest of loosely affiliated local city-states, not of a unified nation-state as a modern reader might easily assume.  Egypt being a notable exception, most of the region remained at that time a network of largely autonomous city-states and their “suburbs” over which they claimed influence.

Speaking of cities, those named in Joshua are a major part of the reason for the consensus around the book’s later origin.  Archeologists studying the remains and histories of those cities have not found evidence to support conquest in all of them around the time Joshua ostensibly took place.  Some, yes, but not all, which some interpret to indicate the latter-day author or authors of Joshua either did not know the exact extent and locations of the initial conquest, were deliberately exaggerating it, or were basing it on a synthesis of subsequent campaigns and expansions.  As usual, I invite you to do your own research and reach your own conclusions on these matters, on which I am certainly not an expert or even particularly well-versed.

Joshua really does feel like a conclusion.  After the escape from Egypt, wandering around in the desert, and the forty years’ wait because they got scared and couldn’t follow directions, the Israelites are finally living in the Promised Land, and Joshua is dead without an apparent successor (oops, spoiler warning for a book over twenty-five hundred years old).  The “plot threads” so far introduced are all resolved, so it feels like we’re starting a new series with Judges.  But that will wait for a few more weeks.