Did Israel Actually Conquer Canaan?
What if it never happened?
Much has been written about the biblical narrative of the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan. As we have seen in previous blogs, most of what has been written by christians apologists focuses on letting God off the hook for genocide. The intent of this blog is not to challenge those christians who attempt to justify morally questionable biblical stories. I’ve done that already. The question we’ll try to address in this blog is not about the morality of it all, but its historicity. Did it really happen? And if it didn’t, what does that mean for believers?
It’s not about morality, it’s about historicity.
What we know now is that there is little or no archaeological evidence to support the historicity of many biblical narratives, including the patriarchal narratives of Abraham, Issac and Jacob1, the stories of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt2, and Joshua and the conquest of Canaan3.
The curious thing is, if the scholars are right, and I believe they are, wouldn’t that mean that the stories of the Israelites conquering the Holy Land and annihilating the Canaanites are nothing more than fictitious legends created many centuries later? That would make the debate about whether God commanded genocide a rather moot point, wouldn’t it? It would be on the same level as debating whether legendary lumberjack Paul Bunyan was born in Maine or Minnesota, or how many storks it took to carry him to his parents.
If the conquest of the Holy Land and the accompanying stories of genocide never actually happened, wouldn’t that let Yahweh and christians off the hook for biblical genocide? One might think that removing divinely commanded genocide from the biblical narrative would be good news for christians. There would be no need for the plethora of books and articles written on the topic, no need to absolved Yahweh of wrongdoing, because historically, there was no wrongdoing.
But it’s not that simple.
One rather well known christian apologist (who shall go unnamed) puts it this way, “Many Old Testament critics are skeptical that the events of the conquest of Canaan ever occurred. For such critics the problem of God’s issuing such a command evaporates. Now that puts the issue in quite a different perspective. If we Christians can’t find a good answer to the question before us… then we’ll have to give up biblical inerrancy.”
As we’ve explored in previous blogs, this is something that is easier said than done. It’s more of a good news, bad news kind of thing for christians. If the stories of the Canaanite conquest never actually happened, then believers are faced with an all-new conundrum. They will be forced to reevaluate their belief that the Old Testament is a reliable source. Christian author Charlie Trimm says that this view provides an “obvious ethical benefit by disassociating Yahweh from biblical violence”. Therefore, Christians’ belief in a good and loving God could remain intact, and the angst they feel when confronted by stories of God commanding genocide would just go away.
But, the other side of coin, according to Trimm, is that choosing this view comes at a “cost of not being able to trust the Old Testament as a reliable document”. In addition, the social cost of rejecting the stance of biblical inerrancy “may be quite high, perhaps even leading to… the removal from fellowship at a church.” (Oh my!)
On the other hand, Trimm says that the cost of holding the view that Yahweh actually did command the slaughter of innocents would be that “many will be repulsed by such a god and might also question the sanity and compassion of one who follows such a god… and (this) could make evangelism more difficult”. Christians can live with that, but the thought of being shunned by their christian community is terrifying.
Let’s see if I understand this correctly.
If a christian believes that divinely commanded genocide never happened because the OT is not a reliable source, they run the risk of being rejected by other christians. If they maintain the reliability of the OT and believe that Yahweh actually did command the slaughter of innocent women and children, they run the risk of being rejected by non-believers.
Who would have thought that given the choice of the lesser of two evils, Yahweh commanding the deliberate and merciless slaughter of innocent men, women, and children would be the lesser evil. I seriously doubt that anyone was ever removed from church fellowship for professing that God commanded the slaughter of the Canaanites.
There are a couple of reasons why many evangelicals would prefer that Yahweh actually did command genocide. First, the image of an angry vengeful God, who judges the wicked, is appealing to most evangelicals. And second, by hanging on to the conquest narrative, (even though there is little evidence to support it) they don’t have to face the reality that the Old Testament is an unreliable source.
The bottom line is this, it’s socially better for christians to believe in divinely commanded genocide than it is to question the reliability of the Old Testament. It would take an uncommonly courageous believer to openly deny biblical inerrancy, knowing that doing so would have “grave consequences, both to the individual and to the Church.”
The road less traveled!
If you happen to be one of those courageous believers, stand firm! You might be ostracized by your christian “friends”, but you are not alone. Many of us secularists experienced the same thing when we arrived at the crossroads where you are now. As foreign as it might seem to you now, you might actually feel more at home in the ranks of those who (like you) are repulsed by such stories of a violent god. You too can learn to (openly) question the sanity and compassion of those who embrace such a god. It’s definitely the road less traveled, but it’s the right one.
End notes
1) “The absence of archaeological evidence for the Exodus narrative, and the evidence pointing to anachronisms in the patriarchal narratives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have convinced the vast majority of scholars that the Torah does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel.”
“Thomas L. Thompson, a Danish biblical scholar and theologian, and John Van Seters an ancient Hebrew Bible scholar, both proposed that based the lack of compelling archaeological evidence the biblical patriarchal narratives can no longer be considered as historical. Of course, some conservative scholars attempted to defend the patriarchal narratives, but this has not found acceptance among the vast majority of scholars. By the beginning of the 21st century, archaeologists have stopped trying to recover any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible historical figures.” Historicity of the Bible.
2) “While Jewish tradition holds that all five books were originally written by Moses sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE, leading scholars have rejected Mosaic authorship since the 17th century. It is believed that the composition of the Torah was a process that involved multiple authors over an extended period of time. On the basis of a variety of arguments, modern scholars generally see the completed Torah as a product of the time of the Persian Empire (a thousand years later around 450–350 BCE).” Composition of the Torah
“Most mainstream scholars do not accept the biblical Exodus account as historical for a number of reasons. It is generally agreed that the Exodus stories were written centuries after the apparent setting of the stories. Archaeologists argue that archaeology has not found evidence for even a small band of wandering Israelites living in the Sinai: “The conclusion – that Exodus did not happen at the time and in the manner described in the Bible – seems irrefutable… repeated excavations and surveys throughout the entire area have not provided even the slightest evidence.” The Exodus
3) In a blog from September 30, 2019, entitled Did The Israelites Really Conquer Canaan? Dr. Bart Ehrman writes,
“For biblical scholars, just as significant is the surviving physical evidence (or rather lack of it) for the conquest. Archaeologists have long noted that there is scant support for the kind of violent destruction of the cities of Canaan – especially the ones mentioned in Joshua. Think for a second: if one were to look for archaeological evidence, or other external verification, to support the historical narratives of Joshua, what would one look for?
- References to the invasion and conquest in other written sources outside the Bible.
- Evidence that there were indeed walled cities and towns in Canaan at the time.
- Archaeological evidence that the cities and towns mentioned actually were destroyed at the time (Jericho, Ai, Heshbon, etc.).
- Shift in cultural patterns: that is, evidence of new people taking over from other peoples of a different culture (as you get in the Americas when Europeans came over bringing with them their own culture, different from that of the native Americans).
And what kind of verification do we actually get for the narratives of Joshua? The answer appears to be: none of the above. There are no references in any other ancient source to a massive destruction of the cities of Canaan. But on the whole, the book of Joshua would be a legendary account of the conquest, not a historical narrative that can be accepted as accurate in its details.”
From Where I Stand
Dale Crum