November 2023
Like many church kids, I grew up with the song, “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho.”
The song is an accurate, if simplistic, understanding of the story in the book of Joshua. Theologians call this period, The Conquest. In this view, the Israelites were the good guys; they fought for God and won. The good guys beat the bad guys and everyone is happy. However, modern students of the Bible may find these same passages troubling. For instance, consider Joshua 6:20-21:
A plain reading of the text indicates after the walls of Jericho tumbled down, the Israelites slaughtered everything that breathed, except Rahab and her family. Killing women and children is a war crime in the modern era. Destroying all the animals would be pointless and cruel. Does God condone this sort of behavior? Or worse, celebrate it? Much of our increasingly moralistic culture says this is exactly what is wrong with religion. It promotes tribal, petty, violent behavior and is a curse rather than a blessing. These passages may provoke horror and disgust. The coherence of the God of the Bible is also at stake. How could a forgiving, loving God presented in the New Testament possibly square with this presentation of Yahweh? This paper seeks to examine The Conquest and what explanations Christians could possibly give for it.
Like many areas of contention, apologists and skeptics often operate with different terminology and end up talking past one another. What is genocide? It feels intuitive but we should establish a definition. The Google Oxford Dictionary defines genocide as, "the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group." This fits with the colloquial understanding of genocide and with Wikipedia’s definition. Some skeptics refer instead to the United Nations definition, which is much broader, and includes causing serious harm or attempting to prevent births. This is where semantics will come in. Is The Conquest a genocide if multiple people from the same ethnic group are killed? If that’s our definition, pretty much every war in history is a genocide. Is The Conquest a genocide only if the aim is to destroy the people? Or are the aims irrelevant? Most people would agree a genocide has occurred even if the goal of destruction it is not achieved. If the skeptic needs to only see evidence of more than one member of the Canaanites being killed, then this is a case-closed example of genocide. Arguing differently results in incredulity instead of dialogue. Apologists need to be aware of the definitions being used or their arguments may appear absurd, arguing against a case that is as clear as day. For my purpose, a genocide is defined as:
We will see shortly this definition is still highly problematic for the Old Testament. Consider Deuteronomy 20:10-18, which was taken as the divinely inspired law for Israel to follow:
Here God seems to be ordering them to attack towns and kill everyone in the towns. Worse, a list of ethnic groups is given who are explicitly targeted for destruction. By our definition, this would be genocide whether or not the aim is carried out to completion. Deuteronomy 25:19 adds in the Amalekites:
Not only does God seek to destroy the people, but their culture and anyone’s memory of them. This seems as barbaric, bloodthirsty, and hateful as the skeptics say. The context is an offensive war, which many people today see as immoral for almost any reason. The war is against particular people in the "special possession", which is otherwise known as the Promised Land. The instructions appear to be to kill every soldier and non-combatant. This language is repeated over and over throughout Deuteronomy, Numbers, Joshua, and 1 Samuel.
How would a contemporary Christian respond to this view? Yahweh of the Old Testament is supposed to be the same as the Father of the New Testament. Merciful Jesus is to be his example in the flesh. Jesus himself claimed in John 10:30, "The Father and I are one." The original audience understood this to mean he was equal to the Father and tried to kill him. To us, this means, surely they would be on the same page with the same priorities. To avoid accepting the Bible is contradictory or the depictions of God are inconsistent, the apologist needs strong answers to these troubling passages.
Christians have long known these passages to be difficult and have suggested a number of responses. We will survey the most prominent ones.
The first answer is since God is the creator, he may do anything he wants with his creation. The Bible uses the illustration of the potter who owns his clay. Jeremiah 18:5-11 is very applicable:
Just as a potter owns the clay and the subsequent creation made from it, and the artist may keep, smash, remake, or sell these creations, since she owns them, so too God has the right to do whatever he wants with his world. In Jeremiah, God says he is allowed to uproot or preserve nations based on their response to him. He exhorts his people to repent so they will not experience disaster, warning them hard times come to those who reject him. This is very relevant to The Conquest. As we will see below, The Conquest centers around nations living in the Promised Land and whether they are obeying God or not.
Advocates of Divine Command Theory would further assert that whatever God commands is moral since morality comes from God. The Conquest is moral because it is directed by God, even though it would be highly immoral coming from anyone else, because only God is the potter. Traditionally, Christians use this point to justify The Conquest in Joshua while rejecting the Crusades and other abuses in history. Since God explicitly directed this war, and not others, God’s use of warfare is extremely limited. (Critics may respond since people thought the Crusades were blessed by God, this still opens the way for abuse, since people use this war to justify others, whether accurate to the Bible narrative or not.)
The New Testament affirms this view of God’s rights, in Romans 9:19-22, Paul argues:
God is the creator who gets the right to set the purposes of his creation, including the people. Some people interpret this chapter as individual predestination, a bias our individualistic culture tends to read into things. This flavor of Calvinistic interpretation would have God making individuals, merely for the purpose of destroying them, since this is his right. Critics say, why would we follow a God who does this? The context of Romans 9 is the nation of Israel versus the Gentile nations and how God used Israel in the Old Testament, but has pivoted to using the Church in the New Testament. Paul is saying God is allowed to use the nations for various purposes as he sees fit. Groups fall out of use for God when they fail to respond to him and are useful when they accept what he is doing. Paul fervently hopes Israel will repent and is sure they will be useful again in the future. He is willing to exchange his life for the Jewish people and loves them dearly.
Paul speaks to this in Acts 17:26-27, when discussing with the philosophers in Athens:
Paul acknowledges God made both the nations and the individuals. He determines when the nations will rise and fall, and their boundaries. He uses the nations, even though they are corrupt and an imperfect instrument of his will. This use of the nations is what the traditional view says we see in The Conquest. God is using the nation of Israel to displace the nations of the Canaanites. Their boundaries are being adjusted as they are removed from the Promised Land. God has this right since all the nations and peoples originate from him.
The second traditional argument is the aim is not to kill everyone, but rather to establish the worship of Yahweh. The Canaanites are worshiping false gods to their detriment and the hindrance of everyone around them. Killing them is a means to an end. Our Deuteronomy text cited this explicitly, the goal is to prevent the Israelites from the worship of their gods and the corresponding sin which would accompany this worship. While killing the Canaanites is regrettable, it is for a good purpose.
The third piece of traditional apologetics is the non-innocence of the Canaanite people and practices. The Canaanites were violent and savage, users of women and known for their sacrifices of children to their gods. Authors of the traditional view point out, just as people understand the need to intervene in Nazi Germany or the Bosnian War, the Canaanites were in the same category. They were vicious, evil people who needed to be stopped, even if that required force. Some sub-points of this tend to be, even if women and children were killed, it was more merciful than allowing them to grow up in a culture which would murder them anyway or use them for ritual prostitution. Innocents would go to heaven and the cycle of violence would be broken after a one-time act.
A final argument in the traditional view is that God promises to judge everyone in the end, so it is just a matter of when. The Conquest essentially brings God’s judgment of these nations forward in time, much as God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their evil. These nations become a negative example in the past for current people to reflect on and choose differently. They ultimately would be judged by God later anyway in the final judgment. Much like the potter premise, God has the right to judge and this is part of him bringing the world to justice and setting things right. While the destruction of these groups seems harsh to us, it is ultimately just due to the Canaanite evil, and useful to history as an example by bringing it forward in time as a lesson for others. This has biblical support as God references the negative example of the Canaanites again and again when warning Israel not to follow in their footsteps.
In his excellent and readable book, Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan makes a splash into the debate with additional arguments. Copan affirms many of the traditional arguments. He agrees the Canaanites were truly wicked, God is judging sins not ethnicities, and that Western ideology has tried to tame God by making him out to be a mellow live-and-let-live persona more in line with modern cultural Western norms. Copan adds two key pieces to the traditional argument which deserve consideration.
First, the Canaanites were warned and had plenty of time to repent. In Genesis 15:16, God tells Abraham the time for his people to have the Promised Land is not yet. It is explicit the reason is to give the Amorites, a Canaanite tribe and likely meant to be inclusive of all the Canaanites, more time. The Canaanites were given over 400 years to repent. Rahab was warned during the scouting of the land and asked to switch sides. This was granted and she was preserved. This makes us wonder if anyone else took this option. Even if they didn’t, it suggests they could have. Copan cites Psalm 87 to show God intended Israel’s enemies to eventually become part of his people, even groups such as Babylon, Philistia, and Tyre. He shows in Isaiah 19:25, that Egypt and Assyria will become God’s people. This means God’s aim was not the destruction of these people groups, but rather to reprimand them. Since the aim of The Conquest is not destruction, by part three of our definition, it would not be genocide.
Second, Copan argues the Israelites did not actually do that much killing, nor did God intend them to kill everyone. He cites the killing of women and children would be very limited, as Israel mostly fought against military installations, such as Jericho and Ai. He says it was common practice for non-combatants to flee to the mountains and the wilderness. This would have put them out of harm’s way for the battles. Many critics do not believe The Conquest was historical, because there is little archaeological evidence of widespread cleansing and destruction. He cites this as evidence of Israel’s non-total kill behavior. Archaeology suggests a gradual assimilation more than a sudden annihilation of the Canaanite people. Copan says this fits with an Israelite practice of exaggerating their victories against armies, while really leaving most of the common people alive.
When it comes to God’s imperatives, Copan argues Yahweh was merely using the hyperbolic battle language of the Ancient Near East (ANE). He cites a multitude of examples of other ANE exaggerating their wins, including claiming to kill everyone when clearly they did not. For example, take the Anakim:
Joshua and the editors of the book of Joshua were not so stupid as to contradict themselves mere pages later, as some critics assert. Instead, Copan claims Joshua was using the exaggerated language of the day and his original audience would have understood without seeing a contradiction since they knew the first part was not literal. Similarly, in Deuteronomy, Yahweh was giving instructions in a way his ancient people would have understood it, but which modern readers mistake for literal. We may read this as God ordering their utter destruction, to a man, but this is not how the Israelites understood the order, nor is it what God meant. Our mistake is in the cultural distance between us and them. Again, by our definition, since the people were not destroyed and the aim was not to destroy them, it was not genocide.
Many critics of The Conquest do not believe in the historical events as described in the Bible. Thom Stark and John Loftus both fit into this view. Their position is Yahweh is a minor Canaanite god, who is fake but thought to be real at the time. The accounts we have were written by the victors, and therefore untrustworthy.
These critics reject the traditional answer of God commanding it being moral. They usually reject Divine Command Theory and say we ought to be able to judge God on whether he is being moral or not. Since God is not a real being, we are not beholden to him and he has no rights over us. These narratives promote wicked behavior in people who use it to justify evil. Since the existence, or non-existence of God, is outside our scope, we’ll table this critique and say it depends on your presuppositions.
Similarly, the aim of the worship of Yahweh depends on your view of the events and his character. If Yahweh is the kind of person who orders genocides, then establishing a wider adoption of his policies may not be beneficial. If God does not exist, then following him is, at best, fake. Critics argue this answer begs the question or should be rejected on the grounds worship of God promotes evil, of which this is a primary example. Christopher Hitchens' book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is an example of this counter.
These critics claim we cannot trust the Israelites when it comes to how evil the Canaanites were since these were their opponents. They reject that the Canaanites were that bad. Stark argues their sexual practices are not damaging and their sacrifice of their children showed they cared, in their own mistaken way. He also argues Yahweh is hypocritical since Israel eventually does some of the same practices. Hence, the offensive war was not morally justified because these were not Nazi or Rwanda level bad guys. This evaluation of the morality of the Canaanites is a serious disagreement of the facts between apologists like Copan and critics like Stark.
Just as many critics reject God as the potter, similarly they reject him as judge. Unless one acknowledges the seriousness of evil in the world and a certain level of individual responsibility for said evil, judgment is seen as unfair and mistreatment. The idea of God temporally bringing the judgment forward in time is not compelling to those who think no judgment should occur or the Canaanites were not practicing evil deeds.
As for countering Copan’s assertion of hyperbole, Stark exclaims, "the moral problem of genocide isn’t removed by saying that only four hundred of three thousand were actually slaughtered (remember the legal definition of genocide: "in whole or in part"). And the fact that the real figures are exaggerated only makes the text more morally problematic, because it’s idealizing total annihilation." Stark contends, the Israelites tried to kill lots of the Canaanites, they do not get off the hook just because they failed to kill more. He parallels their failure to the account of Saul in 1 Samuel 15, where God is upset with Saul for failing to kill King Agag and keeping the plunder. This appears to be a powerfully damning example, since God calls on Saul to "completely destroy" the Amalekites, who we recall is one of the nations mentioned in Deuteronomy. Then God is angry when a single survivor is kept. If so, it would make the total-kill language seem to be literal in contradiction to Copan.
In their book, Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? William Webb and Gordon Oeste feel the tension between these modern criticisms and the traditional answers. They posit throughout their book that the traditional answers are great for narrative questions, and how The Conquest fits into the overall biblical narrative. These match the concerns the original audience would have, both the people of Joshua’s day, and the Jews of the exilic period. God is in control. God promotes worship of himself. God rejects evil nations. These points would reassure the original audience and explain how The Conquest fits into the big picture of the Bible. God raised up his people, the Israelites, and expunged evil nations from the Promised Land. He warned them not to follow in the same practices as the Canaanites. Yet, over the centuries, they do not listen and are expelled from the Promised Land themselves, for the same reasons. Immediately, this responds to some critiques, such as God being hypocritical, since God is even-handed in his treatment of the residents of the Promised Land. He uses the same rules for the nations and punishes both the Canaanites and Israelites.
Webb and Oeste’s main thesis is that God's aim is setting up a sacred space in the Promised Land. The goal is not killing, and a close analysis of all the relevant passages show "kill" or "drive out" offered as two equally valid alternatives. Removing Canaanite idol worship from the particular geography of the Promised Land is the objective. Since only destroying the structures of worship is the aim, they note the battles and lists of conquests focus on the kings and key members of the military. In their view, fighting immediately ceases in areas after the king is killed. They show from internal and external evidence, not all the people are killed and it seems from archeology, only a minority could have perished in The Conquest. In this, they agree with Copan on the similarities to ANE war language and how God is using the parlance of the times, which his ancient followers would know was not literal. Further, they reject the traditional argument that the means of killing women and children would be moral even for the end of establishing Yahweh worship. Like Copan, they argue killing women and children was not an aim, nor a practice, though certainly some happened incidentally as does in all wars.
How to explain God’s instances of displeasure? They take 1 Samuel 15 as a lengthy case study. God is not angry because Saul kept one man alive. God is angry because of who that man is, the Amalekite king. Saul was not commissioned to kill every peasant, but to eliminate the Amalekite structures of worship and power, both of which center around the king. Saul, in his pride, kept the king and plunder for selfish reasons. Samuel the prophet corrects this. Similarly, Joshua is praised for doing everything God commanded even though the Canaanites were not completely destroyed on his watch. In fact, they are still around centuries later under Saul and David. This is why Joshua 12 lists Joshua’s accomplishments in terms of kings defeated. Joshua was faithful, not in eliminating every Canaanite peasant, but in defeating armies and dismantling Canaanite structures of power.
Webb and Oeste contend God is reluctant about war but operating under a prioritized ethic as he accommodates his ANE followers. They affirm the use of ANE hyperbole and demonstrate how God’s warfare commands scale back rape, mutilation, and slavery from the standards of the times, if far short of our standards today. God does not allow blood-stained David to build the temple. He wants a man of peace to be associated with the temple instead. If God was so pro-war, this makes no sense as David and Joshua are the ultimate righteous warriors in the Bible. God also tries to dissuade the people from having a king, citing how kings promote war and the military industry. He forbids Israelite kings from capturing chariots or stockpiling on horses. These are the premiere weapons of the day. The Israelite kings from Solomon onward rejected his orders and participated in plenty of unauthorized fighting.
Under this framework of understanding, God did not order genocide since his intent is not the destruction of the common people, just their corrupt leaders. God does not target ethnicities so much as occupants of a particular space, the Promised Land. He treats various nations who occupy this space by the same rules, be they Canaanites, Israelites, or Assyrians. Once they are driven out of the land, or exiled, the punishment ceases. None of these people groups experience total destruction as part of God’s discipline.
The authors of this nuanced view feel the tension in how the modern reader is approaching the text from a different vantage point, and with different questions. Unlike the original audience, to whom the moral questions are secondary, or perhaps not even felt, the modern readers feel these moral questions acutely. The original readers would be able to see how God’s instructions temper and elevate ancient practices. Thousands of years later, the modern reader has seen war practices change past the biblical reforms and beyond. These moral, not narrative, questions require different answers.
What answers could Christians possibly give for these texts? The traditional ones are theologically correct. God is sovereign and has a right to do as he wishes with his creation. God does promote worship of him, as the truly existing God, over false misleading gods. God will judge the world and set things right, and does so incrementally and incompletely prior to the end of this era. These answers are true but unlikely to be morally satisfying to people in our current culture. How could God murder innocents to set things right? Why would following him be better than the other savage false gods?
More compelling to us is to remember the history of the Conquest comes down to us from over 3,000 years ago. Just as your children speak in ways different, and sometimes incomprehensible to you, we should accept that ANE people spoke in ways different from us. Hyperbolic war language was normative and taken as non-literal, as evidenced by the histories passed down to us, including the biblical history.
God intended to create a sacred space in the Promised Land, and was willing to allow suffering far greater than what we are comfortable with, to achieve his ends. At the same time, he clearly valued the individual people within the land, calling on the Canaanites to repent for 400 years, and for the Israelites to repent generation after generation. None of these groups were eliminated during their expulsions, but kings and leaders were held to account more than the average person.
While the accusation is understandable from plain readings of the text, when a close study is undertaken, we see God did not order a genocide. His intent was not the destruction of these ethnic groups’ lives, but rather their way of life. While this may be viewed as "cultural genocide" by some, it does not fit into a colloquial or even international definition of genocide. These cultural norms were evil, and there is evidence God was grieved the Israelites did not raise the standards higher.
At all times in history God is forced to accommodate the people he is working through. We’d be hypocritical to condemn the ancient Israelites for living in the context of their times, when we do the same today. God’s true standards will not be enacted until the return of Christ and the advent of his perfect kingdom. While I wish God had declared his final moral standards more clearly, and earlier in the biblical narrative, this is not how he chose to reveal himself. He gives glimpses in Eden but humanity goes off the rails before we have many details of what things should be like. The picture we see in the Conquest is not God’s final word or dream. This dream came with Jesus and will be fulfilled by him.
Special thanks to Andy Chilcoat for suggestions and editing.
DeLashmutt, Gary. "The Ban." https://www.dwellcc.org/essays/ban. Accessed 11/17/23.
Loftus, John W. Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity. 2012.
Rochford, James Michael. "What about the Canaanite Genocide?" https://www.evidenceunseen.com/what-about-the-canaanite-genocide/. Accessed 11/17/23.
Stark, Thom. Is God a Moral Compromiser? A Critical Review of Paul Copan’s "Is God a Moral Monster?" Second Edition. 2011. http://thomstark.net/copan/stark_copan-review.pdf. Accessed 11/17/23.
Webb, William J. and Gordon K. Oeste. Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric?: Wrestling with Troubling War Texts. 2019.
. Google "genocide". Accessed 11/15/23.
. "Genocide" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide. Accessed 11/15/23.
. "Genocide Convention". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention. Accessed 11/17/23.
. See my paper, "Is God Different in the Old Testament and the New Testament?" http://theblackpenguin.net/philosophy/reconcilotnt.html.
. Is God a Moral Monster? p.165.
. Is God a Moral Monster? p.192.
. Is God a Moral Monster? p.178. Genesis 15:16: "After four generations your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction" (NLT). Genesis 15:13 puts this time period at 400 years.
. Is God a Moral Monster? p.176-182.
. Some authors argue God is far more harsh to the Israelites than the Canaanites since he uses the Assyrians and Babylonians to expel them. Webb and Oeste hold this view. These nations were far more brutal and callous in warfare practices than the Israelites. The expulsion of the Israelites tends to raise fewer moral concerns since it's clear God intends to preserve Israel and he doesn't directly order these invasions. It is an example of his passive will. Generally, I do not hear this called a genocide since the aim is clearly not to destroy Israel, though many thousands of them perish.
. Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? p.244-249
. Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? p.248-261
. Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? p.204-230. All of chapter 11 is devoted to these arguments.
. Joshua 11:14, "As the Lord had commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua. And Joshua did as he was told, carefully obeying all the commands that the Lord had given to Moses."
. Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? p.294-316. See chapter 14, "Yahweh as Uneasy War God."
. 1 Chronicles 22:7-8, "And David said to Solomon: 'My son, as for me, it was in my mind to build a house to the name of the Lord my God; but the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'You have shed much blood and have made great wars; you shall not build a house for My name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in My sight.''" 1 Kings 5:3, "You know that David my father could not build a house for the name of the LORD his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him, until the LORD put them under the soles of his feet."
. 1 Samuel 8
. Deuteronomy 17:16-17
. I wish God had more clear Old Testament verses directly condemning slavery, polygamy, mutilations, unjust warfare practices and the like. The Old Testament shares plenty of negative consequences of these behaviors. I think explicit language would make a stronger case for a moral God who is outside of human culture and points us to a better path. God’s constant accommodation opens the Bible to being viewed merely as a product of its times, little different from other ancient books from a moral perspective. I do not think that view is accurate, Jesus is widely viewed as having a very advanced morality for his times, and apologists such as Webb show the Old Testament law moved the Israelites much further ahead than their contemporaries. Webb and Oeste propose a “redemptive-historical” hermeneutic. ANE culture establishes some norm (point A). God reveals an improvement on ANE culture (point B) in the Old Testament. We often then get a further improved ethic (point C) in the New Testament. We want to determine the final standard (point Z) God really has in mind. This is done by trying to draw a line through all four points. Sometimes the final standards are hinted at in accounts of the new heaven and earth, or from pre-Fall Eden. Other times, we have to read the trajectory ourselves. Whatever we do, we need to have a consistent hermeneutic, otherwise we will be tempted to read in the directions we want the ethics to go. I have to trust God that he knew what he was doing to strike the balance he did. I am grateful for his deep accommodation of me.