Settlement patterns in Canaan about 1300 B.C., just before the exodus and conquest, show the central hill country of Canaan was largely emptied out. Many people from Canaan, not just future Israelites, wound up slaves in Egypt. The Egyptians also yanked the best of the work force out of these towns and villages to toil as forced labor, emptying the rural hill country of Canaan. These communities needed mix of farming and herding just to survive. The focus on massive production of a few crops not only risked depleting the land, it also destroyed the locally integrated, self-sustaining economies of small villages and towns throughout the hill country.
They managed the country like a giant agricultural plantation, a kind of “factory farm.” They focused on producing a small number of crops valued by the Egyptian upper classes, mainly olives and a type of grape that thrived only in Canaan. He administered Canaan by appointing rulers in the top 30 or so towns. Second, Pharaoh exploited Canaan economically. To ensure they never came back, Egypt annexed Canaan and ruled it with two aims: first, never-ever would Canaan be a corridor for anyone attacking Egypt! A native Egyptian dynasty expelled these foreign kings, pursuing them into Canaan. Egypt had been ruled by foreign kings known as the Hyksos, who possibly came from Syria-Palestine. Canaan in the time of Moses and Joshua had been ruled for centuries by Egypt. By Joshua’s day, Canaan had long suffered under a harsh political system. 4) Canaan was an unstable and violent region. So there is no parallel between the book of Joshua and, say, the European settlers in North America displacing the earlier inhabitants. They came from the same place, spoke the same language, had the same physical anthropology, i.e. In fact, the Pharaohs of Egypt would have seen no real difference between Canaanites and Israelites. They were not outsiders trying to take a land from its original owners. Genesis 12-50 tells us the Israelites’ ancestors had actually lived in Canaan for centuries before their sojourn in Egypt. 3) Israelites’ ancestors lived in Canaan for centuries before their sojourn in Egypt. Canaan was a crossroads and a diverse culture of many different groups: You know, all the “-ites”-Canaanites, Amorites, Perizites, stalactites, stalagmites… If you’d asked a random inhabitant of Canaan “Whose land is this?” You’d have gotten different answers. Secular historians and the Bible itself tell us that the land of Canaan at the time of the Israelite settlement was not inhabited by a uniform, indigenous population. Are WE more morally sensitive than Jesus and the New Testament writers? Did they see something in the Old Testament that we miss? 2) The land of Canaan was not inhabited by a uniform, indigenous population. That should flash at least a yellow, caution-light on our hasty dismissal of the Old Testament. With that in mind, here are seven facts to to help focus the question of violence in the Old Testament: 1) Jesus and the New Testament writers never complain about the violence in the Old Testament. The Old Testament characters need to be seen and heard in their own time, not dismissed from the perspective of our time. Nor did they have 2000 years of reflection on the whole Bible. Being an outsider in this barren, desolate place reminds me that the biblical characters didn’t live in a world of civilian police, ambulance and 9-1-1 service. That’s why I’m excited to be sharing with you from a place called Bedhat es-Sha’ab, a little-known and infrequently visited site just west of the Jordan river that is possibly one of the earliest places where Israelites assembled and worshiped as they settled in the land of Canaan. This is not just good scholarship it’s good listening. Then in the installments to follow, we’ll turn specifically to Joshua and Judges.Īll these presentations will share one important conviction: central to getting the Bible right is hearing it in its own cultural and historical setting.
So establish some starting points by looking in a general way at the question of violence and war in the Old Testament. These stories center on the books of Joshua and Judges. The problem of violence in the Old Testament centers mainly around the stories of Israel’s struggle to settle the land of Canaan. Yahweh, the God of Israel, is in turn portrayed as a wrathful tribal deity constantly calling his people to commit atrocities in his name. To hear them talk, on every page of the Old Testament cities are burned to the ground, whole populations annihilated. It’s a fashionable bomb tossed by the so-called new atheists, and the easiest way for critics of Christianity to dismiss the Bible. It’s hard to imagine anyone today who is familiar with the Bible not being concerned about the violence in the Old Testament.
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