0:04

Hello and welcome to another episode

0:07

of the Enter the Bible podcast where you

0:09

can get answers or at least reflections

0:11

on everything you wanted to know about the Bible.

0:13

But we're afraid to ask. I'm Katie

0:15

Langston

0:18

And I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker And our guest for this podcast

0:20

is Professor Reverend

0:23

Dr. Paul Hinlicky. He's

0:25

the Tice professor emeritus at Roanoke

0:27

College in Virginia, and

0:30

he's on the graduate faculty at the Institute

0:32

of Lutheran Theology. And

0:34

we are so grateful that he is

0:37

with us today and willing

0:39

to talk with us about an important

0:41

topic. Thanks and welcome, Paul.

0:44

Thank you very much, Kathryn. And hello, Katie,

0:46

to you, too. I'm happy to be with you today.

0:49

So glad you're here.

0:51

Uh, we have a

0:53

question for

0:55

you, Paul, from a listener

0:58

and again for

1:00

our listeners on the podcast, If you

1:02

have a particular question that you would like to

1:05

ask, just go to EntertheBible.org .

1:08

The question from the listener is this How

1:10

did the 12 tribes of Israel

1:12

enter the Promised Land? And

1:15

related to that, what do we do with stories

1:18

of violence in the Bible? Now

1:21

we're asking you this question, Paul, because,

1:23

of course, you're the author of a recent

1:25

commentary on the book of Joshua

1:27

in the Brazos Theological commentaries

1:30

on the series on the Bible.

1:33

And it's really the book of Joshua that

1:35

that is the one is the

1:37

is the really problematic book for many

1:40

Christians, because it

1:42

is the story of the so-called conquest

1:44

of the land. As the children

1:47

of Israel have left Egypt

1:49

left the bondage of slavery

1:51

and wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

1:53

Now, after Moses's death

1:56

and under the leadership of Joshua,

1:58

they enter the Promised land. And

2:01

there's many stories of of

2:03

conquest, of battles, of the

2:05

Israelites annihilating

2:09

or defeating the people of the

2:12

land to take over the promised

2:14

land.

2:14

So, like, aren't they, aren't they commanded

2:16

to. Kathryn Like the, the

2:19

text is like God says, go in there

2:21

and don't spare anyone

2:24

and wipe them all out. Right.

2:26

So that's a lot. Yeah.

2:30

It's a lot for us, but it's been a lot

2:32

for believers from the beginning.

2:35

When I when I began working

2:38

on Joshua, I read

2:40

the commentary of

2:42

the church Father origin of Alexandria.

2:45

And of course, he had a major

2:49

conflict with the rival

2:51

Gnostic sects who

2:53

were saying that the God of the Old Testament

2:56

is a violent and

2:58

vengeful deity. The

3:01

author of this dark and

3:04

worthless world. And he's

3:06

not identical with the father of

3:08

our Lord Jesus Christ. Excuse

3:11

me. So Origin

3:13

is among other church fathers

3:15

dealing with this deviation

3:18

from the fact

3:20

that Jesus, of

3:22

course, addressed that very God

3:24

of Israel as his own ABBA

3:27

father and experienced himself

3:29

being addressed by that ABBA father

3:31

as beloved son. So

3:34

there is a real problem here.

3:36

If you cannot affirm that

3:38

Jesus, the God of Jesus,

3:40

is the God of Israel. That's

3:43

a big issue, isn't it? Of course

3:45

it's the big issue. Origin

3:47

had knew

3:50

the offense people took at the

3:52

book of Joshua when he got

3:54

to Chapter eight, which is this litany

3:56

of slaughter, he said. I

3:58

mean, at that point, Origin says,

4:00

I know many of you are sick and disgusted

4:02

with hearing all about about all this

4:04

blood and violence. And he says, now

4:07

we have to we have to find a way of reading this

4:09

that is proper for Christians and

4:11

I think hermeneutically. That's exactly

4:14

right. There's no

4:16

such thing. I think as a literal

4:18

reading of Joshua, there's

4:21

various Jewish readings of Joshua

4:23

and there are various Christian readings

4:25

of Joshua. But anyone who

4:27

says this is a plain sense meaning

4:30

of the text that sets

4:32

aside its place within

4:34

these religious traditions that

4:36

flow out of Israel,

4:39

I suppose you could include

4:41

Islam to their. Though

4:43

Islam, I think, more or less ignores the conquest.

4:46

They don't really care for the idea

4:48

that God chose the Jews

4:51

as his own people. Yeah, but

4:53

anyway, so to

4:55

me, Kathryn, the first question we

4:58

have to ask about Joshua is what

5:00

kind of literature is this? Yes.

5:02

Always a good question.

5:04

What kind of literature is this? And

5:06

as I worked on the Book of Joshua,

5:09

it became very, very clear to me

5:11

that this book was composed

5:13

after the exile centuries,

5:16

maybe five, six, seven centuries after

5:19

the purported history that is

5:21

being represented in the book. Yeah.

5:23

And when you take that issue

5:25

of the context of

5:27

the composition, it becomes

5:30

clear that the burning issue

5:32

for the author and the first readers is

5:35

we have lost the land that

5:37

the Lord once gave our ancestors,

5:39

and now we are, as in the Book of Ezra.

5:42

And now here we are, slaves

5:44

in our own land under

5:46

the hegemony of foreign

5:48

kings and leaders. Okay.

5:51

So and just to quickly interrupt

5:53

for the for our listeners

5:55

that might not be familiar with the whole

5:57

sort of kind of basic

6:00

narrative arc of the Old Testament,

6:02

when we talk about the exile, we're referring

6:04

to the time after the

6:06

Babylonian empire came in and

6:09

kind of. Took

6:11

over the land

6:14

and kicked a bunch of the people,

6:16

not everyone, but kicked a bunch of people out

6:18

and made them go to Babylon and

6:21

like took over their land and

6:23

their, you know, households

6:25

and that sort of thing. Right. And

6:27

and that was a very and that was a very

6:30

important moment

6:32

in the history of the Jewish

6:35

people, because they had been

6:37

promised this land and

6:39

now they didn't have it. And so it was like this

6:41

question of, you know,

6:43

can we is God faithful

6:46

to us?

6:48

So we're talking like five, 587

6:51

BCE. And the

6:55

so they yes, the the elite

6:58

of the land or many of all

7:00

the leaders of the land, at least, are taken into

7:02

exile in Babylon. They they're

7:04

able to return in 539

7:07

after Persia defeats the

7:10

Babylonian empire. But it's

7:12

still the case that is

7:15

what we call Israel today, or

7:17

Judah in those days is

7:20

under the authority,

7:22

under the control of

7:24

various empires, the Babylonian

7:27

empire, than the Persian Empire. So

7:29

so what you're saying, Paul, is this

7:31

book of Joshua, the story of the conquest,

7:34

which literally is set

7:36

in the time right after

7:38

the Exodus. So the wilderness

7:40

wanderings in actuality

7:42

is written for a people who

7:44

are who

7:47

are under the control, who are who

7:49

are oppressed by a series

7:52

of empires and need

7:54

to hear a word of of

7:56

hope. Right?

7:58

Exactly. And it's

8:00

also a burning question not just

8:02

of theodicy, of the faithfulness of

8:04

God. It's also a burning question

8:06

of if anthroposophy, how

8:09

do we how do we justify the human

8:11

behavior which has led to the loss

8:13

of the of the land of Israel?

8:16

And that's where I think Joshua becomes

8:18

very interesting when we understand

8:20

that it's a theological text.

8:23

It is primarily a theological

8:25

text that's trying to answer

8:28

the question, Why have we become

8:30

just like the Canaanites, whom

8:32

our ancestors under Joshua

8:34

defeated? And that's a profoundly

8:37

probing question, I think.

8:40

So to get to

8:42

the to the meat of the matter,

8:44

I would like to tell readers,

8:47

make a point with listeners

8:49

about this, if you like, the

8:51

exodus. If

8:54

you like God liberating these

8:56

Hebrew refugee refugees

9:00

at the Red Sea or the Sea of

9:02

Reeds, whatever that was. If

9:05

you like that and you like the

9:07

song of Victory that Miriam sings

9:09

in Exodus 15 about,

9:11

the Lord is a warrior, The Lord

9:13

is His name. If you like

9:15

the rescue from the slaveholders,

9:18

you've also got to like the Book of Joshua,

9:21

because it's exactly the same

9:23

conflict that's being pursued.

9:25

And even historical studies

9:27

here, I think, are indicating along

9:29

these lines that the Canaanite,

9:32

the walled Canaanite city states

9:34

were under the hegemony of

9:37

the Egyptian empire at the time

9:39

of the tribes were entering the land

9:41

of Israel. So the book of Joshua

9:44

is representing the so

9:46

called conquest as an extension

9:48

of the exodus. The exodus

9:50

is continuing in the defeat of the

9:52

walled Canaan City states.

9:56

Mm. Now, in that context,

9:59

you know, we have the issue of violence,

10:01

which is so appalling to

10:04

contemporary readers after

10:06

the appalling 20th century,

10:08

continuing today with various

10:10

episodes of genocide. Yeah.

10:12

And here we have to, of course, put

10:14

on our historical imagination

10:17

and understand this in the context

10:20

of the ancient Near East, where

10:22

in wars of conquest, standard

10:24

practice was to slaughter

10:26

the adult male population

10:29

to to disarm

10:31

the conquered people so there would be no

10:34

possibility of resistance. But

10:37

then what became of the women and the

10:39

children? They became slaves.

10:41

They were enslaved. That

10:43

was that was how conquest worked.

10:46

And then, of course, you could you could

10:48

grab up all the booty and

10:50

so forth. Now, what's so

10:52

surprising about the law of

10:54

harem? That's the Hebrew

10:56

word for this ban.

10:58

Or we translated as the ban or

11:00

whatever devoted

11:04

to destruction, I think is another

11:07

translation. What's so

11:09

interesting about that is that absolutely

11:11

undercuts the secular motives

11:14

for wars of conquest. If

11:17

you can't take the women and children

11:19

of slaves, if you cannot possess

11:21

their property as booty, what's

11:24

the point of going to war? You

11:27

know, so the the

11:29

rule of harem that's so offenses

11:31

with its massive command to

11:33

exterminate every living thing is

11:36

very it makes it very clear that Israel

11:38

is only to fight under

11:41

the direction of the Lord. And

11:43

the Lord has his own purposes

11:45

in this battle. And that's,

11:47

I think, another essentially theological

11:50

point to grasp. Do you remember the episode

11:53

just before the fall of Jericho where

11:55

Joshua suddenly transported

11:57

and there he is in Jericho.

12:00

Somehow it's really kind of

12:02

mystical. And he

12:04

meets the captain of

12:06

the armies of the Lord, standing in front

12:08

of him holding a sword. And

12:10

it's a very ominous picture.

12:12

And Joshua immediately falls

12:14

to the ground. And then he very

12:17

meekly says, Are you on our

12:19

side or are you against us?

12:22

And basically, this mysterious

12:24

figure replies, neither, I'm

12:27

not on your side and I'm not on the other

12:29

side. I'm on my own side. And

12:31

that's an indication that Israel

12:34

is to fight for the Lord's purposes

12:36

and never for its own. And so all

12:39

these battles that we see in the Book of Joshua

12:41

amount to this. They amount

12:43

to the dispossession of the kings

12:45

of the Canaanite city states and

12:47

the destruction of their walls, and

12:50

then the rest of the performance of

12:52

the command to exterminate is in

12:54

the book of Joshua is very ambiguously

12:57

fulfilled. In fact, it proves

12:59

impossible to fulfill. And

13:01

the most important narratives in Joshua

13:03

Rahab, the prostitute

13:06

and the Knights, are

13:08

evidence that the

13:10

foreigners in Canaan were assimilated

13:12

into Israel. They were

13:14

not universally exterminated.

13:17

And these very significant

13:19

narrative episodes indicate

13:21

that the Lord has his own

13:23

purposes, which he's accomplishing,

13:25

and it means the Lord is destroying

13:28

walled cities with their kings,

13:30

and Israel is to be

13:32

his people under his kingship

13:35

and not to imitate or

13:37

act like the Canaanite city states.

13:39

As I said, an extension of

13:41

Egyptian hegemony. So you

13:43

see, if you put all this together and I'll stop

13:46

here, if you put all this together,

13:48

you see how in

13:51

the exile, the theologians

13:53

writing the book of Joshua were

13:56

saying something like this Why

13:58

did we lose the land that the Lord

14:00

once gave our ancestors? Answer

14:03

Because we became just like the Canaanites

14:05

that the Lord was dispossessing.

14:09

That's that's really helpful, Paul. Wow. Remember

14:12

when I. When I read

14:14

your book. You

14:17

talked about very

14:19

similarly to what you're just saying. You

14:21

know, that you shouldn't read

14:23

or one shouldn't read. Joshua in a literalist

14:26

sense, but a literary

14:28

spiritual reading. And you talked about the gospel

14:31

of Joshua, the good news of Joshua being

14:34

that the Lord fights for us.

14:36

You know, the talking about

14:38

the the Lord who fights for us.

14:41

Um, and I was reminded

14:44

of a class

14:46

that I taught several years ago now

14:49

that included Joshua. It was

14:51

a class on the first several books of the

14:53

Old Testament. And when

14:55

we got to Joshua, which is not one of my favorite

14:58

books, I was kind of apologetic

15:00

for the violence, right? And

15:02

there was an African, African American

15:05

woman in the class who

15:07

kind of listened to that and listened to

15:10

all of us kind of moaning,

15:12

bemoaning the violence in Joshua.

15:14

And finally she spoke up and said, look, I

15:17

don't know what's wrong with you all. I don't know what

15:19

you why you have a problem with this

15:21

book. She said, From my church,

15:23

from my black church. This

15:27

is good news, right? Because Joshua

15:29

Joshua tells

15:32

us that God is faithful

15:34

and that God will deliver on his promises

15:37

to, you know, to give us what he has

15:39

promised us. So that

15:42

you're talking about that just reminded

15:44

me of that conversation.

15:46

You know, Kathryn, I know in the new

15:50

hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran

15:52

worship or is that what it is? Yeah.

15:55

Yeah, the, the Maroon one.

15:57

All of the songs of

15:59

militant grace have been washed out.

16:02

You can't sing Lead on O King

16:04

Eternal or you can't sing Onward

16:07

Christian Soldiers or you mean

16:09

why not exclude a mighty fortress?

16:11

Our God? That's about the most militant

16:14

hymn that's ever been written, you

16:16

know. So this theme, my

16:19

theological friend Philip Ziegler,

16:21

teaches at Aberdeen and Scotland,

16:23

wrote a wonderful book called Militant

16:25

Grace, which is an

16:28

account of J. Lewis, Martin

16:30

and Ernst Casement and so forth, and

16:33

their rediscovery of the apocalyptic

16:35

frame of the of the Pauline Gospel.

16:38

And this theme of militant grace

16:41

is exactly what you're African American

16:44

student, I think was reflecting

16:46

that God's grace is not a

16:48

universal. God is nice to everything,

16:50

no matter what, or God is

16:52

not a problem. Just relax, you know?

16:55

Yes, I think God is above

16:57

all a problem. God is a huge problem

16:59

and it might be a very huge problem

17:02

for us. Martin Luther

17:04

King preached a sermon once

17:06

when he compared the contemporary

17:08

West to the rich young ruler

17:10

who went away. Sad. Yeah, And

17:14

the point of the book of Joshua is

17:16

God fights for us by sometimes fighting

17:18

against us.

17:21

Yeah. Yeah. And and it just

17:23

depends so much on. On what From

17:25

what perspective you're reading it. Right. Like

17:27

if you're reading it from the perspective

17:29

of the powerful, then

17:32

it can be a very dangerous text and has

17:34

been a dangerous text in the hands of

17:36

various movements, including

17:39

westward expansion. Right. But

17:43

if you're reading it from the perspective

17:45

of the oppressed, you

17:47

know, whether that's posting like Israel

17:50

or Judah or whether that's

17:53

the black church, you know, in the 20th

17:55

and 21st century in America, then

17:59

you hear a very different kind

18:01

of message. Then it's it's good news

18:03

that God fights for us

18:06

and that and that God is faithful

18:08

to God's promises.

18:10

Yes. And the Romans think of Paul

18:12

in Romans eight. If God is for us, who can

18:14

be against us and the whole litany

18:16

of the sufferings of the early Christians

18:18

that that is being discussed

18:20

there and so forth. So

18:22

I think that I think you're absolutely right about that.

18:26

That's why in

18:28

South Africa, the book of Joshua was

18:30

used for for very notorious and

18:33

nefarious purposes under

18:35

apartheid. Right. And

18:37

I'm sure in the American conquest of

18:39

the American West, we can say the same thing.

18:42

But that's why it's so important for pastors

18:45

and theologians to master

18:47

the Book of Joshua so that I

18:50

really mean that master the book of Joshua,

18:52

so that they can interpret

18:54

it properly and point out abuses

18:57

of it. Um.

18:59

I think, I

19:02

think one reason that

19:05

it's difficult for us to

19:07

wrap our minds around, at least in our

19:09

culture, sort of

19:12

especially like white, maybe

19:15

generically liberal culture

19:17

or something like that is,

19:19

um, we don't, we

19:22

actually don't much like the idea

19:24

of like an us versus

19:26

them sort of dynamic like a for

19:29

something and against something else.

19:32

Um, I think we kind of have this

19:34

idea that, you know.

19:37

All roads lead

19:39

to Rome. You know what I mean? Like

19:41

you believe your thing. I believe

19:43

my thing. Like, we

19:46

don't need to have, you

19:48

know, these sorts of divisions.

19:53

And I think there is.

19:57

Some wisdom to that as far as it goes

19:59

in terms of like trying to live in peace in a

20:01

pluralistic society. And

20:03

also, I think as people of

20:05

faith, there

20:08

are things God says yes to when there

20:10

are things God says no to. And

20:13

maybe we would do well

20:15

to remember that sometimes.

20:18

Well, I think of course, I think there's

20:20

the universal law of Christian love,

20:22

which means that Christians are obligated

20:24

to regard all as precious

20:27

creatures of the one God and

20:29

therefore people neighbors to whom love

20:31

is due. So I think that, you

20:33

know, that that I think that's

20:36

a much better way of accounting for

20:39

rather than Minnesota. Nice

20:41

if I can be a little bit. A little

20:43

bit. Are you saying are.

20:45

Are you saying passive aggression is

20:47

not actually love?

20:49

Yes, I think I think that if

20:52

you live in a certain kind of neighborhood

20:54

and put up a sign saying all are welcome.

20:56

Yeah, this is this is just hypocrisy

20:59

beyond telling or something like that.

21:01

Okay. So I

21:03

don't mean to be polemical. I just want to say.

21:05

No, that's the real thing. Yes.

21:07

Our battle is not against flesh and blood,

21:09

but against angels and powers and principalities

21:13

of wickedness in heavenly places.

21:16

Ephesians, the Apostle's perspective

21:19

is really necessary here to

21:21

see that the conflict between good

21:23

and evil transcends us. It's over

21:25

our heads and that on

21:27

the ground our participation

21:30

in good is that we are

21:32

not overcome with evil, but we overcome

21:35

evil with good. As Paul

21:37

says in Romans 12. Right.

21:39

So that we've really got to get

21:41

the proper kind of perspective on these

21:43

issues. But the gospel that

21:45

the Lord fights for us is a militant

21:47

gospel. And I

21:49

think a lot of us have in

21:52

our alienation from

21:54

the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament scripture

21:56

have really fallen away from that

21:58

perspective. And how important I think it

22:00

really is.

22:02

I'd like to ask one more question, Paul,

22:04

and I know we're getting close to time,

22:07

but in your book you talk about the

22:09

latter day Joshua I don't know, or the

22:11

other Joshua.

22:13

The Second Joshua.

22:13

The second. Joshua Thank you. I've forgotten

22:16

your terminology. Can you say a bit more

22:18

about that?

22:19

Yeah, that really comes from

22:21

Origins commentary on Joshua,

22:24

in which he is taken

22:26

by the fact that the Septuagint

22:28

translation of the

22:30

Hebrew Yahshua

22:33

Is that how it is? Yeshua? Joshua

22:36

Yahoshua Right, is

22:38

Jesus, which is exactly

22:41

the same name in Greek for Jesus.

22:43

And so Origen origin says

22:46

this is, this cannot be an accident.

22:48

There's got to be there's got to be a

22:50

meaning to this coincidence.

22:53

And he sees,

22:55

therefore, Joshua as

22:57

a messianic type. And as

22:59

I did the commentary, I saw two features

23:02

in the book of Joshua

23:04

that that seemed to make that exegetical

23:07

credible. Number one,

23:10

Joshua never walks

23:14

away from becoming a king.

23:17

Joshua does not accept any

23:19

kind of personal authority

23:21

for himself or his dynasty.

23:24

And when he's done, he hands on

23:26

the leadership. So Joshua

23:29

is one. They tried to make him a king and he

23:31

flees into the wilderness, to quote John,

23:33

the gospel of John. Right. There's

23:35

a there's a real analogy there

23:38

between the kind of servant leadership.

23:41

And at the end of the book, he's awarded

23:43

the title of Servant

23:46

of the Lord. And that's exactly

23:48

how Joshua is a

23:50

genuine foreshadowing

23:53

of the second Joshua.

23:56

Joshua this Jesus.

23:58

And the other thing is the remarkable

24:00

story about the son standing

24:03

still. A son standing still

24:05

in the battle. Yeah.

24:06

Yeah.

24:08

And the text comments.

24:10

Nothing has ever happened like this.

24:12

That the God obeyed

24:14

a human being, that Joshua

24:16

prayed and the sun stopped and

24:19

God obeyed the command

24:21

of Joshua. And the text points

24:23

out a man commanded God

24:27

that's right there and in the text. Right.

24:29

And I think that, too, was a kind of a

24:31

foreshadowing of the messianic

24:34

character of the gospel narrative

24:36

regarding Jesus.

24:38

Where we see God in human

24:41

flesh. God as man.

24:42

Yeah.

24:42

Fully human. Fully divine. Yeah.

24:46

Well, thanks. Thanks for talking

24:48

about that, too. I know that's

24:51

obviously a Christological reading,

24:53

a Christ centered reading of Joshua, but

24:55

one that, as

24:57

you said, dates back to the early church and

24:59

is important for Christians to to

25:03

to talk about as well and to understand.

25:06

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Paul. Appreciate.

25:09

Appreciate that insight. I think that's really helpful.

25:12

And thought provoking. And I hope that

25:14

those of you who have been with us today

25:17

have enjoyed this episode

25:19

of the Enter the Bible podcast, reminder

25:21

that you can get more resources,

25:23

reflections, commentaries, all kind of stuff

25:26

on our website EntertheBible.org and

25:29

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