This approach did not stop with the story of Adam and Eve. Noah’s ark was next and eventually there were few biblical events which escaped this type of scrutiny. After this we were apparently left with a kind of biblical version of Aesop’s Fables, which conveys spiritual truth but has minimal historical basis.
The process of reading the Bible from this standpoint was given a long name: demythologization. Put simply, this means that in order to obtain the truth, one must discard the story (myth), and with it any suggestion that the story is based on historical fact. Miraculous or supernatural elements can therefore be discarded as being part of the myth.
This demythologization did not stop with the Old Testament: the New Testament was also attacked. The virgin birth, the miracles and the resurrection were regarded as soft targets. This scholarly debate affected theological training, and before long there were church leaders who taught that it did not matter whether the resurrection actually took place, providing people believed that it did. They said that if Jesus’ bones did still lie rotting in Israel, it made no difference to our ‘faith’.
With this background in mind, it is no surprise to find that concerns have been raised regarding elements of the book of Joshua, not least the story of the fall of Jericho. Scholars reasoned that the miracles in the story could not be accepted as fact by readers in a sophisticated scientific age. They saw it instead merely as a tale teaching us that God wants us to win our battles.
However, demythologizing Joshua requires much of the book to be cut out, for there are many apparent myths within the book: the Jordan river dries up, the Jericho walls collapse, hailstones help win a battle, and the sun and moon stand still for a whole day.
How do we respond to such an attempt to undermine the historical value of Joshua?
1 If we were to accept that miracles do not happen, we would be left with a purely human history, with little or no spiritual benefit. God’s part would be totally excluded. The ‘values’ or ‘truths’ would be of no more value than the sort of lessons gleaned, for example, from the secular history of China.
2 Mythical writings invent places and people to distinguish the genre from proper history, but biblical history is completely different. Joshua includes real places we can visit today: the River Jordan, Jericho and Jerusalem. It also includes real people groups, which secular historians acknowledge existed at this time: the Canaanites and the Israelites.
3 Joshua claims to be written by contemporary eyewitnesses. The first person plural ‘we’ is used, for the writers were reflecting on events they had seen. Furthermore, a common phrase in the text is ‘to this day’. Contemporaries of the writer could check out the details. This is not a fable about mythical characters, but a sequence of historical events described by people who were there.
4 Archaeologists confirm a great deal of information given in Joshua. They have discovered that the entire culture of some of the cities included in the book changed over a 50-year period. There is evidence that cities such as Hazor, Bethel and Lachish were destroyed between 1250 and 1200 BC and the inhabitants reverted to a far simpler lifestyle. The date of this change fits with Joshua’s account of how these cities were conquered.
5 Those who question the miraculous events in Joshua ignore the fact that the events in themselves are not necessarily miraculous. It is no problem for us to accept the miraculous, but it is interesting to note that such phenomena can be explained. For example, the River Jordan dries up during floods even today. The river meanders through the Jordan Valley and, because of the flood conditions, undercuts the banks on the curve. These banks can be so undercut that they collapse, causing the river to dam itself, sometimes for up to five hours. Similarly, in modern times, we know that large buildings collapse. Cathedrals and skyscrapers have fallen in the same manner as the walls described in Joshua. It is not the events that are miraculous so much as the timing. The river dries up and the walls fall just when God said they would.
6 We have noted already that the Bible is not the history of Israel as such, for there is much that is excluded. Joshua covers 40 years, yet most of what happened in those 40 years is not recorded. The fall of Jericho fills about three chapters, which is out of all proportion if this is a history of Israel. It is really the history of what the God of Israel did. The writer records the periods when God was at work, for he is a living God, active in time and history, saying and doing things. If God had not intervened on their behalf, the Israelites would never have got the Promised Land. It was an impossible task for a bunch of ex-slaves with no military training to go in and take a well-fortified land and replace a culture that was far superior to theirs in humanistic terms. If the subject of the book is God’s activity, therefore, it should be no surprise when his work is beyond human understanding. If we seek to remove these parts of the story, or to ‘demythologize’ them, we undermine the whole nature and purpose of the book.
Questions about whether the Bible is myth or history boil down to a personal question: Do we believe in a living God? If our answer is yes, then we can go on to look at the Bible as a record of what he said and did and ask why he said and did these things.
The Bible is not just about God, or even just about the God of Israel. It is the history of God and Israel – the story of their relationship – and that is how we need to read every book of the Old Testament, including Joshua. It is not fanciful to see God’s relationship with Israel as a marriage. The engagement took place with Abraham when God promised to be the God of Abraham and his descendants. The wedding took place at Sinai when the people heard the obligations and promises tied up with the law and agreed to play their part in the binding agreement God was introducing. The honeymoon was supposed to last for three months, as the people journeyed to the Promised Land. The bride, however, was not ready or willing to trust her husband, so it was 40 years before they finally entered the land. In Joshua we have the beginning of their life together in a prepared place, their new home. They were given the title deeds but still had to enter the land and take it. Sadly the marriage did not work out and there was even a temporary divorce, the faults being on the ‘wife’s side’. Since God hates divorce, however, he never left them.
The content of Joshua
It is important that we gain an overview of the content of Joshua before looking at the detail. This will save us from drawing inappropriate or unwarranted conclusions about what it means, just as we would refuse to judge a novel by selecting isolated pages without seeing the whole thing. Every sentence in a book takes its meaning from the context, so we need to see the book as a whole first.
The book covers the life of Joshua from the age of 80 to 110. This compares with the 40 years of Moses’ leadership which is covered by Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The difference between the two is that Moses was a lawgiver and a leader while Joshua was just a leader, the period of lawgiving having been completed.
Structure
The book divides like a sandwich. There are three parts: two thin slices of bread and a lot of filling in the middle.
The main section between these two outer ‘slices’ is the account of how Israel possessed the land that God had promised them, in spite of the fact that it was already occupied. This middle section can be further divided: