Gunning for God by John C. Lennox

Author:John C. Lennox
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science & Religion, Theology, Atheism, Apologetics, Agnosticism, Religious Studies, Religious Studies & Reference, Religion & Spirituality, Christian Books & Bibles
ISBN: 0745953220
Publisher: Lion Books
Published: 2011-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

However, there is another consideration. I have already drawn attention to the fact that, for Christians, it is the Bible’s own understanding of justice that leads to questions about the morality of the invasion of Canaan. Could it just be that our difficulty with the biblical statements on this topic is that we misunderstand their meaning? Could it be that Deuteronomy is not embarrassed to juxtapose a high morality of protection of the weak and defenceless, for the simple reason that the action taken did not violate that morality? If that is the case, we next need to ask: how exactly would Joshua have understood the command to “utterly destroy” the Canaanites?

Let us consider first another phrase that seems to be all-inclusive. Think, for instance, of the meaning of the phrase “all Israel” in the following examples: “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan”;30 “When all Israel comes to appear before the Lord”;31 “Now Samuel died. And all Israel assembled and mourned for him”;32 “Then the king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice”.33

It is surely clear that the phrase “all Israel” should not be interpreted in the literalistic sense of “every single person in Israel without exception”. For instance, many Israelites would not have been able to attend the ceremonies mentioned because of other duties, some would have been ill, and so on. In other words, the phrase is to be interpreted in the natural sense of “a substantial representation”. We use this kind of language today: “All of London came to the Princess of Wales’ funeral.” We know exactly what this means: no one would think of interpreting it literalistically.

How, then, should we understand these commands to eliminate everyone without apparent exception? One obvious approach is to ask whether there is any evidence in the rest of the biblical account as to what actually took place. There is. If we read the book of Joshua we find that Joshua struck down every person in the towns of Debir and Hebron with the sword. However, in the succeeding book of Judges, Judah and Benjamin are said to have conquered those very same cities. But what would that mean, if the cities had already been completely exterminated by Joshua? On this basis, Nicholas Wolterstorff34 argues that the expression “struck down all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword” is a formulaic phrase (for instance, it occurs seven times in Joshua 10). He argues that it is a literary convention that should be understood in conjunction with the fact that Joshua (as reported in Judges) did not literally wipe out the entire population of the cities with which he did battle.

Wolterstorff concludes that the commands to “utterly destroy” or “strike down all inhabitants with the sword”, etc. are to be interpreted as “score a decisive victory over”; and did not therefore imply that the Israelites violated their normal rules of war by eliminating the defenceless.

One swift response to this will be: even if Wolterstorff

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