CHAPTER 1
Well, Moses is dead and that leaves Joshua with some pretty
damn big shoes to fill. This tries to
make clear that he’s up to the task. He
might not be the prophet that Moses was, but after someone like Moses, you need
someone willing to fulfill the word of the prophet, and that’s our man
Joshua. We’re told here that Joshua
observes the laws of Moses – all of the laws.
Also, he recites the law code to the people. Given that this book is believed to be written by the same person
that wrote Deuteronomy, that means he’s really good at repeating the laws of
that chapter. No wonder God tells
Joshua, “As I was with Moses, I will b with you.” So it’s a nice, easy transition from one leader to the next.
And the 12 tribes also pledge allegiance. Wouldn’t you know it? The 12 tribes are
finally going to follow the Lord’s man, and its’ right after Moses’ death. Just Moses' luck. They’ve finally come around to his style, and he doesn’t get to
enjoy it.
CHAPTER 2
Here is a famous story.
Spies get sent into Canaan in advance, and are saved from discovery in
Jericho from a woman named Rahab. She’s
a prostitute. She helps the spies
because she, like apparently all the people of Canaan, have heard how strong
the Israelites are, and more importantly how powerful their God is.
Basically, she’s playing the angles here. She believes that the Israelites are going
to win, so she’s going to curry favor so she lives. The deal is made, she and everyone in her house will be
spared. The rest of the people of Jericho? Man, tough shit for them. They are so dead. But she’ll be spared. On
the one hand, nice job playing the angles Rahab. On the other hand – she’s helping facilitate the mass murder of
the entire town she’s in.
Really, Joshua promises to be an ugly book. The back half of the Torah had some
statements from Moses on how the Hebrew were justified in slaughtering the
inhabitants of the towns in Canaan, sparing not a person. But here we'll actually get the slaughter.
Let’s compare that for a second with what is still my
favorite Bible passage so far, Abraham arguing with the Lord over Sodom andGomorrah. There, Abraham got God to
agree to spare the cities if there were just a handful of righteous people
living there. Now? There is nothing of the sort going on. They’ll all die and don’t worry about the
morality. Are they bad people or
horrible people? Look, the point is
they’re on the land we want. They make
Rahab a likable person, but I’m not sure they’re at all successful. She’s willing to sell out her own people to
save her skin. That’s conniving and
cowardly. (In her defense, is she
supposed to accept death or fight for her own survival? She can’t save everyone).
Interestingly, it looks like the people of Canaan are more
observant of God than the Hebrew are.
Rahab tells the spies about how they know of the Lord’s deeds and his
strength. The Canaanites have already
lost all faith that they can win.
Meanwhile, the Hebrew themselves have been giving God and Moses a hard
time (though by now they’ve come around).
This actually brings up an old issue: just how monotheistic
were the ancient Hebrew? Was God the
God of all, or were they just fortunately that the most powerful God out there
was their God? Think about it: if the
people of Canaan believe in and recognize that God is real and powerful (as
they clearly do) then shouldn’t they be part of the faith? It’s not about faith, though, it’s about
ancestry. God here is entirely parochial.
He cares about this group of people because they’re his. Then again, if he’s so all-powerful, why
only care about one group. God began in
the origins of Near East religion, a god of a people, but over time transformed
into GOD. You can see elements of both
here, though frankly he comes off more like a parochial god in a polytheistic
universe here.
CHAPTER 3
This is pretty much just a logistical chapter. They prepare to cross, and they’ll bring the
ark of the tabernacle with them. No one
is to come within 2,000 cubits and the ark (except the priests, of course).
And here we get the first miracle of Joshua: the river stops
flowing. As soon as the priests’ feet
touches the water of the Jordan River, the upstream waters stop flowing
downstream, leaving a river bed behind that the Israeli can walk across.
Nice miracle, but it reads like a knock-off of Moses parting
the Red Sea. Joshua is coming off like
a mini-me version of Moses, which is probably the point.
CHAPTER 4
This chapter celebrates the previous one. To commemorate the miraculous river
crossing, Joshua orders 12 stones assembled, one for each tribe. They are to tell their children from then on
what the stones represent and what it means.
It works, as the Bible declares of the stones, “They are there to this
day.”
OK, so non-believer that I am, I start re-engineering
this. The stones were first erected,
and then slowly over time the story created.
Maybe it was just a ceremony of unity among the 12 tribes. From what little I know of Biblical scholarship,
one theory is that the Israeli were a coupling of two groups: one a bunch of
herdsmen from the area who traced their lineage to the patriarchs, and the
other a smaller group that traced their history back to Moses and an escape
from Egypt. (Richard Elliot Friedman
pondered that the smaller, landless Levi tribe might be this group).
Anyhow, as the two stories co-mingled into one, with a story
of promised land and Moses, people saw the 12 stones together and began to
think: hey, maybe this is where we crossed over. Rumor became theory that became legend that became conventional
wisdom – and then people started writing down the Bible.
That’s my take on it anyway.
Also, for some strange reason the back half of this chapter
largely repeats the first half. I don’t
know why, but you get the 12 stones set up twice and Joshua’s words on what it
means a second time. It’s a weird
internal doublet.
I know modern Biblical scholarship explains the doublets of
the Torah with the notion that they were stories written by different authors
at different times. OK, but Joshua was
supposed to be written by one game at one time. So how do the scholars explain this? I have no idea.
CHAPTER 5
The center of this chapter is an odd story – God commands
Joshua to circumcise all the Israelites.
The idea that they should be circumcised isn’t odd. But the notion that they haven’t been at all
yet is very strange. The Bible says that the generation that grew up in the
wilderness never had it done to them.
Well – why in heck not? That’s the symbol of Abraham’s covenant, after
all. Moses was a stickler for God’s law
and despite leading the Hebrew for 40 years in the wilderness, he let this
completely slide? That is entirely out
of character for him.
What the hell is going on?
As near as I can tell, this story is about making Joshua look good. Also, it helps parallel Joshua with some
other Bible honchos. Abraham had all
the men in his group snipped back in the day.
For that matter, when Moses first set out for Egypt, he has his son
circumcised. Now Joshua is fulfilled a
similar role. He’s the Abraham and Moses of his generation.
Also, the story notes that the place where this occurred is
known as Gilgal to the Hebrew, and exists “to the present day.” Well, the footnotes tell me that Gilgal
means “I have removed.” Something
happened there no doubt. Maybe Joshua
did lead a circumcision or maybe it was just some ritual purification thing or
– I dunno. But you begin with the event
and end with a story making him the second Moses.
Speaking of attempts to parallel Joshua with figures from
the Torah, how about some Jacob? Joshua
sees a man with a drawn sword and learns that this man is the command of the
army of the Lord. It isn’t the same as
Jacob wrestling with God, but it’s the most similar thing to it. Whoever wrote this book really thought
Joshua was a seminal figure. But I have
to admit, all these stories are beginning to feel a bit second hand to me. It’s like a cover band doing Torah’s
greatest hits! Instead of making Joshua
seem big, it’s starting to make the thing seem a bit creaky. It’s an unimaginative sequel to a box office
success.
Speaking of paralleling Joshua to previous stories (and making him look inadvertently smaller in the process), the Bible rehashes my favorite single line from the Torah when Joshua meets God’s military commander. The angel tells Joshua: “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy.” That is exactly what God told Moses at the burning bush. It’s a great line – but it’s already been used. Get some fresh material, Joshua!
CHAPTER 6
So far, too much of Joshua has been him performing revised
versions of other leaders’ greatest hits in a failed attempt at
paralleling. In Chapter 6, Joshua
finally comes into his own as an Israeli leader. He’s not a replacement Moses or an Abraham-lite here. He’s Joshua, leader in his own terms.
And folks, it’s not a very pretty picture.
This is the most famous moment in the Book of Joshua –
Jericho time. They walk around it for
six days blowing their horn. Then walk
around it on the seventh day, blow their horn, have everyone shout and then –
as the song says – “the walls came tumbling down.” OK, that’s neat. But what
happens next is horrible – and sadly, sets the tone for the next several
chapters.
They attack the city and kill everyone inside – “men and
women, young and old, as well as oxen, sheep, and donkeys.” The city is entirely laid to waste. It’s Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, like Sodom and Gomorrah, there are a
few survivors: Rahab and her family are left alone. That’s some deal she made.
OK, you can live, but you every person around you who isn’t related to
you will die. That’s a hell of a
philosophical question --- would you take this offer if you were Rahab? Talk about survivors’ guilt!
Then comes an interesting coda at the end. We learned that Rahab’s family are still
allowed to live, and they still “dwell in the midst of Israel to this
day.” Interesting. So what are we to make of this?
Well, there was a religious tradition of this land being the
Promised Land for the Hebrew, but there were still non-Hebrew there that were
accepted as proper occupants of the land as well. So a story came about to explain it. They are allowed to stay because they helped out during the
conquest. Ah, OK. Also, by making the only named person in the
clan a prostitute, you can denigrate them a bit while still accepting their
continued existence. They are all
allowed to live with us, but they’re all sons of whores. This story probably evolved over the
centuries and was already an accepted story by the time the author wrote it
down here.
This leads to the question of why have this horrible story
of Jericho in the Book of Joshua in the first place. Modern carbon dating and all that confirm that Jericho was already
a ruin at the time that the Hebrew were supposed to enter the Promised
Land. Archeologically, the Hebrew story
just doesn’t hold up. Odds are, the
fact that Jericho was already a ruin explains the story. It was a ruin in pre-Hebrew times and
remained a ruin afterwards, so the Hebrew asked why did this city collapse and
came up with their answer. Well, we
know Joshua led the forces in, and this has been a ruin for so long – it
must’ve been Joshua’s doing. In fact, the Bible tells us that Joshua put a curse
on whoever would try to rebuild it.
EDITED to add: click here for Joshua: Chapters 7 to 12
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