Joshua conquers Canaan ~ 1200BC. Wasn't this genocide?

Question

Deuteronomy 20:16-18 bothers me in that God orders the Israelites to kill "everything that breathes" when they retake the land of Canaan from the people who had settled there while the Israelites were in Egypt. OK, maybe the adults were sinful - had too much sex, worshiped idols, etc. If they did engage in human sacrifice, that was clearly wrong. But murdering every woman, small child, and baby - tens of thousands of people - seems wrong to the radical extreme. How can this apparent genocide be defended? Why are radical religious extremists today wrong - if Joshua was right? Is it just because Joshua was acting on correct orders from the right God? But I thought the God of Islam was the same one as the Jewish and the Christian God? Could we humans have gotten our messages confused? It seems we interpret God's messages so differently. Perhaps there is no answer other than blind faith.
It's the blind part that concerns me. It can not be reasoned with.

Answer 1

How about a nonbeliever’s perspective? I’m coming from the point of view that there is no supernatural individual watching or judging us as the Bible of Judaism and Christianity (and Islam) advocate. I’m also assuming form your comments, spreedog, that you are a believer.

From my perspective, this is very easy. The account that you refer to, insomuch as it is historically accurate, reflects a perfectly ordinary human activity – warring for property rights – but carried out centuries ago when sensibilities were different. It’s not much different than the US in Iraq today except that we’re not trying to move in, just take control, and therefore, it is not necessary to obliterate all human life – just that that objects or is too close to that which does. Same tune, new lyrics. But an evolved public morality now judges what was perceived as innocent in the past. It’s the same problem on a larger scale that we have with Br'er Bear, Fox and Rabbit, Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, and yowsah.

I believe men and men alone wrote the Bible. It reflects the rationalizations and justifications of its people, who, like the residents of late 17th century Salem, were superstitious and fearful, and who’s leaders could take advantage of that. The enemy is literally cast as unholy and unclean - demonized as it were - and therefore must be extirpated thoroughly. That’s how you justify taking his property. He is cast as unclean, and there is zero tolerance for that. As George Bush said, “You’re either with us or your with the [Enemy]”. It’s the song Danforth sang in Miller’s “The Crucible”: "But you must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it. There will be no road between." And so it was for the Canaanites. Same militant drumbeat, modern orchestra. It’s as plain as black and white. Jew or Canaanite. Dead or alive.

There are obvious practical reasons for this when you are taking over somebody else’s homeland. Nobody is left to rise up, or to retell the story from another perspective. And there are no faces to look at as you recall the horrible things that you did to the rest of them. Look at the guilt that the Amerind remnant causes decent Americans.

God is a projection of man himself, and the Hebrews wanted those souls gone. Therefore, so did their deity. It’s just that it was an ancient era, when mores were more primitive, and what we call genocide of strangers and enemies was not yet frowned upon. Neither was slavery or theocracy. We’ve progressed, but the Biblical record is fixed. So, what to do about it today? How do we keep Jehovah righteous? He was when our ancestors wrote down what they did and laid it at His feet. But man has grown up a little, as has his God. Today, Yahweh would not advocate genocide. But man is allowed to grow, not his deity. There’s the problem.

So, most of us, still rationalizing and a little intellectually dishonest, accept the account untroubled. You, spreedog, are troubled. Good for you. You see the great contradiction, and it nags at you. That is to your credit. But how to reconcile that with your faith? I don’t think that you can if you are to remain rigorous and maintain moral integrity. Unless you just chalk it up as so many do to the mystery of God. He is so great that we cannot understand that what appears bad is really good.

But you won’t do that, will you? Because you are more decent in 2007 than Joshua was in the 11th century B.C. You should be. You are also more decent than most of your fellow believers. That is to your credit. It’s probably why you enjoy the religious culture: you equate it with decency. It’s been updated and whitewashed. It’s a new deity, though many of us cling to the old one, like Falwell and Robertson, those brimstone-loving fools. But for gentler souls, there’s the new God who loves like we wish we did – without genocide or even homicide.

As for the pronouncement that God's justice transcends our own, and that which seems bad to us is really good, Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, said this about religion: " Without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. For good people to do evil things, it takes religion." Now let’s talk about that sun coming to a standstill. It’s not just our moral codes that have progressed, and not just our moral pronouncements that embarrass believers today.

And if these things are going to trouble you, and you don't want your faith shaken or challenged, get out of the Old Testament, at least the Pentateuch. The carnage begins in the first book with the flood and doesn't stop until the end.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t me more supportive of your beliefs. But from a naturalistic perspective, there is no contradiction or mystery here. It's just people being people, then a little less ashamedly than now.

Answer 2

Any victim is the same and it was a great shame that the war started and also lasted for so long. Sad thing. Before the war nobody was concerned with the ethnicity. All were just people. Then came the politics and the politicians. They wanted the war. People went to the streets to protest for the peace. They were sniped down, so the politicians soon after that had their war. There were a lot of victims during the war - Wikipedia source Total 104,732 Bosniaks c. 68,101 Serbs c. 22,779 Croats c. 8,858 Others c. 4,995 The high count of Muslim victims is for couple of reasons. 1st there were 2 Muslim factions during the war. They fought each other for the dominance. Most gruesome massacres were commuted during that period among those factions. After 1 faction won they were still facing from 2 sides Serbs and the Croats. Each wanted to have their own war agenda. Once started a circle of revenge could not end easily. Each monstrosity was avenged by ALL sides. Total blood-bath. The genocide that is mostly mentioned is in Srebrenica. There you had 2 ethnic cleansing. First was done by the Muslims over the Serbs. Then oddly enough the Muslim troops retreated from the town. For what reason, why leave your own population undefended!? Serbs rushed in. Muslim knowing what had been done tried to flee and some managed to do so. Most were not so lucky. Revenge is what colored that attack. Also some 70% of the people could have been saved. YES 70%. All that was to be done was for the Dutch soldiers that were stationed there to accept them in their base. 1000 people!!! (more -less dont get stuck on the number here, I use 1000 as A LOT of people) They were denied access to the base. Why!? Revenge I can understand, this cowardly action I can not! It came so far that one frustrated Muslim soldier threw grenade at Dutch tank after their refusal to accept women and children at least. It is all too complicated and my firm belief is that the war could had been avoided with ease. It is a shame that European states instead of sending troops to end the war even armed some of the factions, illegally selling them arms. To conclude why the Muslims had so many victims? Because they were not as well armed as the rest. Because it was all a big circle of bloody revenge. If you ask me all the people are equal and 1 victim is too much...too much.

Answer 3

You cannot judge the actions of a different era by modern beliefs and practices. The Bible is a combination of a philosophical text and oral history stories. It does take a certain amount of logical gymnastics to understand and accept the Bible as holy writ, but man is fallible and can misunderstand the intentions of God. If you read the bible in other languages, you'll find that there is a distinct difference between 'kill', 'murder', and 'execute'. You'll also find several important differences between the original Latin versions and modern bibles in word choice that change the meaning of passages.

What you need to do is read the bible, cover to cover (maybe skipping the 'begats', they're always a stumbling block for me). Then talk to your priest and your family and close friends about your questions and concerns. Then come up with your own beliefs. Then it will be easier to understand the actions of Joshua and others. The answer is not blind faith, but knowledgeable faith. The more you know about your religion, and the more active you are in it the more religion will mean to you. Good luck with your search for answers.

Answer 4

The adults also sacrificed their kids to idols.
The reason for total annihilation was to warn the other surrounding nations.As far as the kids they always suffer whether the war was due to GOD or man.However it was a mercy killing rather than have them grow up and try to take revenge or assimilate with their old lifestyles and beliefs into Israel was not an option GOD was going to give them.
Islam claims to be the same,but you have to understand something.
Israel was a Theocracy and was responsible for executing GOD'S judgments on sin.GOD did not tell them to do this to the whole world as Islam believes they should do, but only to the ones who were a threat to them ,or so wicked that redemption was impossible.
Things are different under Christianity, before you get worked up about what the Roman Catholics have done though, please read the 4 gospels and ESPECIALLY the book of acts and compare the book of acts to the Roman Catholic church dogma.It apples and oranges.

Answer 5

Please, you are taking the bible much too literally; it shouldn't be taken at all, especially for historical reference.

Anyway, he probably didn't do it. I thought he just "fit the battle of Jericho". (I always loved the verb in that old hymn.)

And who cares about the people? I'm sure the Israelites needed the room, but I'm sure they didn't kill the dogs and cats and farm animals and birds and such, which is what would be important to me.

Of course, the bible is rather selfish in its animal instructions also, that more than anything proves it was written by a bunch of men, without any inspiration other than to attempt to order and control.

You should have put this question in religion, or myth and folklore.

Answer 6

I recently heard a wonderful speech from James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword on "The Emerging Church." To answer your question, the reason why Joshua was "right" and modern fundamentalists are "wrong" is because the community of believers have greatly changed. Just look at how far civil rights, womens rights, gay rights have all progressed over just the last century. Carroll argues that science, and connectivity through "our machines" are changing our "human consciousness." He argues that greater connectivity through technologies such as the internet are further connecting us as neighbors, that our neighborhood is vastly shrinking. Thus, it is much more difficult to slaughter your neighbors than it is to slaughter thousands of faceless foreigners.

When he opened it up for questions, the first one he received was:

"I have been spending a lot of time studying the Old Testament at fuller seminary. I see the big picture and it's a wonderful thing to see the conversations going on between the books and the writers of the Old Testament. But what concerns me and what I struggle with, and I think a lot of other people do, is the judgmental side of God, the side of God that would allow the Isrealites at the bottom of Mount Zion to be killed or almost encouraged to be killed for doing the golden calf. These kind of stories in the Old Testament, I wonder if you could respond to them as far as how we can integrate them into this emerging church."

"Its a wonderful question and I welcome the opportunity to elaborate a slight bit. One point I meant to make that I didn't before we shouldn't feel so satisfied with ourselves to be emerging church people as if this has never happened before. Actually the story of the Church is the story of the emerging; this is what the Church has always been doing.

"Going back to the middle of the seventh century before the common era, which you remember from Nehemiah and Ezra. You remember folks what happened, the Babylonian conquest, the Babylonian exile. When the kingdom of Israel, having been effectively established lets say about 1000, remember the bible reports the beginning of history with Abraham, which actually Abraham is the first of the people named in the Bible who scholars tell us probably existed. No it didn't exist, we know it's a creation myth.

"When we get to the twelfth chapter of Genesis, something new begins to happen in the text. We hear a story about a person who existed. Lex and I actually had the privilege of visiting two weeks ago, the cave in south eastern turkey that Muslims venerate as the birthplace of Abraham. Astounding to think of this, someone who scholars say existed somewhere between 1500-1200 B.C.E.

"But with the Babylonian conquest when the armies sweep in from the north and take Israel and take Jerusalem and take the Temple. We heard the reading this morning from Luke about Jesus looking at the Temple. The Temple in 6th century B.C.E is destroyed and the people are carried of to Babylon, the exile, they're there for more than 100 years. What do you do without a temple if you are a Jew what is Jewish religion without the temple. and the Jewish religion without the temple is telling the story of who we are as a people. For the first time we needed to put the story on text, on paper, on papyrus, on parchment, whatever, because they were apart from the place that gave them their identity. That's the beginning of the book, emerging Judaism. They are responding to a catastrophic crisis; that is the beginning of the book.

"And something new begins to happen in the faith. We think of Judaism as a religion built around text, which it is. But it only begins there in the exile. And when the come back, this is powerful, when Ezra stands up for the people, in Jerusalem, having returned from the exile, and he holds up the text. And they begin to rebuild the temple and from now on to be from Israel it be from the temple and the text. And what we call Jewish religion begins here, Emerging church.

"And the texts reflect who the people are, which is why the texts are troubling. They are full of God's violence, God's God's contempt, God's impatience, hatred. they are full of that because these are written texts reflecting who these people are. They are people at war, they are people on the edge, they are people who are scrambling to survive, they are people who have enemies.

"This is not new age love; this is a people who are struggling to survive and they define God as the God who is on their side. But then they have, within their own tradition, the very thing that you are asking for, which is criticism of the claims made about God. Which is why the people of Israel, and those texts, as they unfold through the centuries are constantly challenged by people from within the tradition. Emerging to a new point of view, we call these people the profits. And what are the profits doing? The profits are always saying: The most important thing you can know about God is that you can't know about God. How dare you define God in such specific language, in this violent language even. How dare you. God doesn't want your violent sacrifices. That's Jeremiah, right? God doesn't want violence from you.

"By the time we become people of this book, the book has establish a history of firm self criticism. You don't have to criticize the Old Testament for being arrogant or violent or Xenophobic or Triumphal. It criticizes itself!... This condemnation of Idolatry is a condemnation of idolatry the people... You can tell what the people are constantly doing by what they are told what to do, or you wouldn't need the commandments to tell them what not to do! And I know that everyone in here has been coveting my wife now!"

Sorry for the lengthy response, and sorry if I made any typos, I was scribing off of a copy of the lecture.

Answer 7

I've always believed that "blind" is the perfect word to describe the faith required to legitimize religion. What scares me is the inherent danger associated with unshakable faith. Why do many religious people argue that absolute faith is as natural as eyesight? Faith is absolutely unnatural. Is it because no religion can effectively survive without faith?