The Tree of Life

 The Tree of Life

In the Biblical book of Genesis, a story is told to explain why people die and don’t live forever. Later Jewish and Christian theologians have tried to make it into a story of man being punished for disobedience to God. By looking at the facts presented in the Genesis story alone, and how it is treated by the rest of the early biblical works, it seems that humanity is punished because God doesn’t want any competition. But does it reflect the reality of this world? Perhaps there is another message in the book of Genesis about nature of mortality.

The punishment of humanity by the gods for acquiring the gods knowledge is a common theme in other creation stories. Judging from their legends, the ancients believed the life of humans was more difficult than that of the gods. They did not think that the gods were nicer or more benevolent than humans. In a world of kings and commoners and slaves, it made sense to them that the gods would be as protective of their status as a human king would be of his.

In Genesis, Yahweh – the god, places a man, Adam, in a garden He made. In the garden He placed every beautiful and edible tree. Among these are a tree of life and a tree of knowledge of “good and bad.” The tree of knowledge is said by Yahweh in Gen. 3:4, to give those who eat it the knowledge of good and bad, a power held by Yahweh and his heavenly associates. Yahweh also says that in the day you eat the fruit of the Tree of Good and Bad, you will die. Yahweh gives no warning against the Tree of Life, and presumably the Man can eat from it.

Later Yahweh makes the Man a mate, Eve. She is convinced by a snake to eat the from Tree of Knowledge, and in turn gives some to the Man. The pair realize they are naked as proof of their newly gained knowledge. Yahweh finds out and curses the Man, Eve and the snake. Yahweh complains that now man is as wise as the gods, and fears they will eat of the Tree of Life and not only be wise but immortal. To keep this from happening, Yahweh sends a monster with a flaming sword to guard the Tree of Life.

It is worthwhile for understanding the nature of the themes and characters in this story to look at the Greeks myth of Prometheus and Zeus. Prometheus makes the first men, and to help better their lives, he takes fire from Zeus to give to men. Zeus isn’t afraid men will misuse fire but feels that fire is his exclusive prerogative as the ruler of the cosmos. With this act, Prometheus makes men independent of Zeus’s royal authority. This is why Zeus punishes Prometheus and sends the first woman to men as a Trojan Horse laden with all the ills of the world. Zeus must make man suffer for approaching equity with his holy self.

While there are a number of parallels between the Greek and Israelite legends, not surprising when one considers the common border in the Mediterranean sea, the parallel to be considered here is how mans’ assuming of a useful skill brings the wrath of the god. The punishment is not a moral retribution, but a means to ensure that man will remain lower than the gods. Genesis does not imply that it is evil to know good and bad, Yahweh also knows good and bad. Instead the worry is that humans will no longer be the servants of the gods if they know good and bad and have eternal life.

Israel’s middle eastern neighbors have legends that illustrate the relationship between the gods and humans. In the Mesopotamian accounts of man’s creation, Ea – the lord of the earth and sea, suggests that humans be made to free the gods from the toil of maintaining the fields. The gods are the masters, and men are the slaves. This is a good observation of the role of the worshiper in relation to the priest and the priest to the god. Humanity’s purpose is to bring sacrifices to the gods for their pleasure.

Ideas of humans being punished for impious gain of knowledge occur in Mesopotamian myths as well. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enlil, the sky god curses man and sends trouble into the world to punish Gilgamesh for killing a giant that guards a sacred forest and perhaps the secret of fire. After a number of heroic quests, Gilgamesh seeks after the secret to immortality. He finds a plant that confers eternal life but a snake takes it while he sleeps.

The wrath of the gods at humanity’s struggle for equality with them is more clearly seen in the tale of Adapa and the food of life. Here Ea “granted him (Adapa) wisdom but he did not grant him eternal life.” Adapa breaks the wing of the south wind and this angers Anu, the king of Heaven. Ea gives Adapa advice on how to escape the lord of the gods punishment. He tells him what to say to gain admittance to heaven and warns him not to eat or drink any food because the food will be poisoned. Anu is enraged that Ea has given out his secrets to man so instead he offers the food and drink of life. Adapa turns it down as Ea told him and thus men die.

These stories share a some common elements. In each, the boon man receives is a desirable skill or knowledge in general. It is technology that separates man from animals, and technology that ends humanities total dependence on nature. Fire was probably one of the first technology to receive this profound sense of power over the forces of the world. Its inherent danger, unpredictability, rare natural creation from lightning and volcanoes and all the terror they and the attendant wildfires cause would make fire seem like natures most guarded secret – the a-bomb of the gods.

Later inventions like writing and agriculture are often the gifts of benevolent gods. But just the ability to reason and think is something many would be willing to die to gain. How exciting would eternal life be if those who received it were reduced to the intellect of an animal? Those who seek the forbidden fruit are not the villains, but heroes. They lead us from the world of beast to the world of humanity. Without them humans would be no different from chimps.

In the stories, the tragic hero has a trickster who aids them in gaining the boon. Prometheus acquires fire himself, but in the legends of Genesis, Adapa, and Gilgamesh, the man is tricked by another’s council. Adam is deceived by a snake. Gilgamesh is convinced to kill the giant of the sacred forest by his sidekick, Enkidu. Ea’s attempt to cheat by telling Adapa the solutions to Anu’s test leads to Anu’s switching the food of life for the food of death.

Another character in the stories brings man the punishment for impiety. For Gilgamesh it is the snake who takes immortality for itself. Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus and Adam are both undone by the addition of women into there midst. Adapa is fooled by Anu. The punishment is either the end of ease, or death or both.

In the end, the secret of life is hidden away and guarded from humanity. It is notable that a giant dragon-like monster with flaming weapons guards the sacred forest that Gilgamesh seeks to conquer. Could the sacred forest be a version of the garden of Eden that is guarded by the Cherubs with the flaming sword? There are also a number of other legends in western world of dragons or serpents guarding trees of healing or magical gardens.

What these stories are all trying to communicate is that it is the lot of humans to suffer and die; that death and suffering are evils that result from trickery; that death and suffering is the punishment from the gods for encroaching on their domain, humans are regarded higher than animals but not gods, and that immortality is a far away fantasy that mankind is unlikely to attain. These are truths of human existence.

Eating form the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad is not a choice to be evil but to be wise, or sapient (from the Latin, wise), as in homo sapiens. The later Christian and Jewish ideas that God punishes humanity with death for disobeying His will is not the moral of this story. The moral is that Yahweh will not tolerate humanity becoming gods. The choice was “immortality” as animals or intellectual equality with the inhabitants of Heaven and mortality.

Now while every animal is mortal, from their perspective they are immortal because they don’t know they will die. They lack the foresight to know that every creature will die. They know that creatures around them sometimes die, but cannot connect that this is something that happens eventually to everyone. People live in the shadow of their eventual demise. It is a rot that mutes the joy of living. Then, when humanity came to depend on agriculture, hard work and toil also became necessary accompaniments to human life. From the point of view of the ancients, animals lived care free live. As Jesus said, the birds don’t work but they never lack for food to eat. In Genesis, paradise is the life of the wild animals.

In light of this remember that Yahweh tells Adam that the day he eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, he will die, but he does not die the day he eats it. This is often taken to mean that he becomes mortal that day, thus he is now dying. But could the author have intended that his new knowledge only makes him aware that he will die? Adam and Eve were naked the whole time they were in the garden but it is not until they eat the fruit that they know they are naked. Without eating from the Tree of Knowledge Adam and Eve may have gone though their lives blissfully ignorant that they would die like all other things.

Peoples understanding of death is now is more like the writers of Genesis than that of the later theologians. It is the nature of universe for things to die. Humans don’t have the option to live forever. Obedience to the will of God will not spare anyone from physical death. God has, in effect, ordained that humans are mortal, and it is the inevitable consequence of human wisdom to know this. To be human then, is to be especially damned to death. The Tree of Life is still in a faraway land beyond reach.

Or is it? If mortality is not death but the specter of one’s demise, is the Tree of Life, not necessarily ignorance of death, but freedom from the fear of death? Perhaps then we will eventually understand what death means to us, and that knowledge will remove our fear of it. If so then maybe way to the Tree of Life is though the Tree of knowledge.

 

 

http://www.theoi.com/Titan/TitanPrometheus.html

The Epic of Gilgamesh from the Norton Anthology World Masterpieces, Maynard Mack, General Editor, W.W. Norton & Company New York 1997

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/adapa.htm

Is the Spirit a person seperate of God?

 

This a post from the site Eclectic Christian and my response to it.  If time allows please visit there site and read through the rest of the series.

From Eclectic Christian;

Reflections on the Deity of Christ – Jesus is not the Father

We do not mean that Jesus is the Father. The New Testament is very clear to distinguish between God as he is revealed as Father, and God as he is revealed as Son.

Although it is very difficult to use a two dimensional diagram to describe what God is like, this diagram may help.  Although we say that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, it is clear that we do distinguish between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

Writers in the early church compared God to a river.  Each stage of a river is different, from where it may start as a spring bubbling out of the ground, through the meandering in may experience through the countryside, to  the delta it forms as it empties itself into the ocean.  We would not try to say that the start of the river is indentical to the end of the river, and yet we would say that each part of it is the river.

If a guide takes me to the head of the Amazon river, he would say “that’s the Amazon river.”  When he takes me to the middle of the Amazon river,  he would say, “that’s the Amazon river.”  When he takes me to where the Amazon river empties into the ocean, he would say, “that’s the Amazon river.”  Each part of the river is called the river, and yet each part of the river makes up the river as a whole.

That being said, every analogy of the Trinity will break down if stretched too far. This is simply as a result of not being able to describe the infinite with finite language.

As Joshua Hearne, a co-author of Eclectic Christian notes in the comments:

The problem with the river image is that a particular section of the river is not simultaneously source and delta. We must be careful not to slip into modalism and assert that each of the three coequal persons of the trinity are one God serving/manifesting in three different roles. This is a similar theological problem to what we end up with when we look at “forms of water” or “the egg.”

I agree that you can’t limit the Trinity to the roles that are played within the Trinity. Each of the three persons of the Trinity have different roles to play, but their interdependence is so much greater than the roles they play. The river analogy breaks down when you consider that a river can have many sources. Take away one source, and you still have a river. A river may, or may not have a delta. Not having a delta does not detract from the fact that it is a river.

The same can not be said for the Trinity. I believe that there is an interdependence in the Trinity that is not properly captured in the river analogy. I wanted to conclude my series looking at the interdependence of the persons of the Trinity, but I will try and change around my original posting plan so that I look at it first and use it a framework on which many of the other posts will hang.

It is very difficult (if not outright wrong) to put God into a box. It is impossible to describe the infinite in finite terms. So understand that I am not trying to delineate the edges of the box, rather it is my attempt to say, “Here is what we do know about the deity of Christ. Please understand that our knowledge is imperfect, and our understanding of the topic is imperfect, but we present it as best we can so as to improve your knowledge and understanding.”

 

My response;

 

I don’t think it worth while to comment on the arguments of the popes and church fathers concerning the nature of the Trinity since this is mostly post-Biblical thinking, and as an old country pastor once said “where the scripture is silent we should be silent.” Any how my areas of study are in Biblical thinking and its precedents not Catholic and Orthodox apologetics.

In the three persons mentioned above, the most mysterious to me was the Holy Spirit. Jesus has a well laid out personality, and if the Father was the guy who spoke to Moses at Sinai, it seems like we have an idea of Him to. The Spirit always seems like something God owns and not like a person. I mean you have a soul, but it’s not really a person separate from you.

If the Bible says that the Spirit of YHWH enters a prophet or Judge, I think that means that YHWH’s power is entering him, but not YHWH Him self. YHWH is not a little man that enters the bodies of Judges or the mouths of prophets. YHWH’s nature is such that you don’t get to interact with Him. It is not Him but His glory that inhabited the temple. YHWH cannot be said to be contained in anything. I think his glory and his spirit are effectively the same thing. God does thing by way of his Spirit as we do things by way of our hands. God doesn’t have hands as we do he has much more, he has his Power(Spirit).

But is this a person separate of Him? Are me and my body different people? I can understand why this could be an issue. If we are to worship YHWH only, would worshiping His Spirit or His Wisdom be idolatry? If someone cut off my hand and then took it for a party at Chucky Cheese, it would be honoring my hand but not me.

I think we can speak of YHWH’s Wisdom, Spirit, or Glory as people in poetry but I’m not sure how they would qualify for actual person hood. Jesus said Wisdom is proved right by her children, but does Wisdom really have children like mothers have children?

When Jesus says that unless He goes away the Advocate (Holy Spirit) won’t come, or the Father will send the Holy Spirit on behalf of Jesus, does he mean another person? I believe that nothing happens by YHWH to a person unless the Spirit brings it about. It is only by the Spirit that YHWH does things. If Jesus sent the Father, it would still be the Spirit we talk to. You never talk to “me”. You talk to my ears and they pass the message along. Of course Jesus doesn’t send the Father or His Spirit. It is the Father that does all the doing. He gives the orders.

 

P.S. I wrote this before reaserching Philo’s Logos. In light of that, it would seem that the Spirit may be something like an angel consisting of several spirits, each with some aspect of Gods power or being.  It is like the Kabbalah concept of God, the Tree of Life.

Christ the Image of God

 

Below is a post from the site Eclectic Christian and my response. The original can be found at

http://eclecticchristian.com/2009/01/21/reflections-on-the-deity-of-christ-the-image-of-god/

Eclectic avoids post outside orthadox doctrine, but I thought the information provided would be of use to anyone wanting to know about Christ being the “Image of God” and how the New Testament writers thought about it as opposed to latter church traditions.

Reflections on the Deity of Christ – The Image of God

This is Part 3, of a multi-part series looking at the deity of Christ.

Have you ever considered what happens when you look at a star? We don’t actually see the star itself, but the light that in generated by that star. Not only that, but the light from the closest visible star (other than the Sun) takes over four years to reach our eyes. So, you are not actually seeing the star as it exists today, but as it existed when that light wave was sent from the star at least four years ago. And of course our eyes can only process the visible part of the entire light spectrum, infrared and ultraviolet rays are invisible to us.

Similar things can be said of God. John writes that “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” – John 1:18″ Jesus himself said, “And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form.” – John 5:37. He also stated “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” – John 14:9.

How is it that seeing Jesus is like seeing God? Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God”. One of my favorite passages, Hebrews 1, states:

Hebrews 1:3a (NIV) – The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…

While the meaning doesn’t change, I like the wording of the King James Version.

Hebrews 1:3a (KJV) Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person…

Getting back to the star imagery, the light from a distant star forms an image on the retina, and helps us learn more about the star. Similarly, Christ as the brightness or radiance of God’s glory gives us an image or exact representation of an invisible God. The best way that we can understand what God is like is by looking at the Person of the Son. He is that part of God that we can see and experience directly.

I believe also that an “exact representation” goes beyond mere image but to the very essence of who God is. Philippians 2:6 stated that Jesus was “in very nature God”. He has within him the all the qualities and attributes that make God who he is. (More on this in our next post.)

Think back to our triangle diagram and imagine that the only part of the diagram that you can see is the part that says “Son”. While we no longer are able to experience Christ face to face, we have much to learn from those who were his contemporaries and wrote about their experiences with him. As a result, we are able to know much more about what the rest of the picture is like, through our learning about the Son.

Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

The image of the invisible God.

The radiance of God’s glory.

The exact representation of [God's] being.

God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

In very nature God.

Very powerful words, leaving us no doubt as to the nature and character of Jesus Christ.

 

My response

This topic has been tricky for me but after a lot of research I think I know what the New Testament writers were getting at.

One of the respondents ask whether being the “exact replica” of God means God looks like a middle eastern man. I think it was the idea of Paul and the other NT writers that Jesus, in his earthly life, was merely the decedent of David. In his resurrection he was appointed the Son of God. (See Romans 1:3-4) The resurrected Jesus then is a whole different being than the man who died. They share the link of his individual personality. So seeing Jesus during his earthly life would also be seeing in a way the man who will come down from heaven to judge the world. If you’ve seen Bruce Banner, you’ve also seen the Hulk.

Understanding what the Son of God means to Paul and the others along with Logos and the image of God requires reading Philo of Alexandria. Here are some good sites

http://www.socinian.org/philo.html
and
http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/
Essentially God, who doesn’t interact directly with the world, uses his Spirits. The NT commonly calls it singularly the Holy Spirit but it seems to be a multiplicity of spirits (Revelation 4:5 “Before the throne were seven lamps blazing. These are the seven spirits of God”). All these spirits as a unity are the Logos, the first created of God, who is also a separate entity. The Logos controls the Spirits at the command of God. So in Philo’s view the Logos creates the world according to Gods thoughts using Gods powers (his Spirit(s)). God, who can’t be perceived, is perceivable in the form of the Logos, who is made according to the images (Plato’s ideas or forms) in Gods mind.

In Plato’s (the old Greek philosopher, not to be confused with Philo, the Jewish one) thinking God has in his mind the idea of those things that exist materially. So in his mind he has the idea of “walrus” when he creates he makes an animal after the template in His mind. Of course, according to Plato, the image in Gods mind is more perfect than the actual could ever be. The Logos is then the expression of the idea of God that is in God’s mind.

Philo, lacking the idea of God the Father and God the Son, sometimes calls the Logos God and sometimes says that is not God. Once again his confusion is since he has only one term for the God, and it doesn’t interact with the material world, Logos that does can’t be God. But it paradoxical has all of Gods powers. The Father/Son does solve this paradox.

Since the Spirits that make up the Logos can operate independently (like Voltron) when the Logos became a mere human, the universe didn’t fall apart. Upon his resurrection to the right hand of the Father, Jesus then assumes all the powers of the Spirits of God (Revelation 5:6 “The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth). Once again this is Philo’s kind of language, in keeping with Stoics, thought he felt that God maintained the universe by being in contact via his spirit, with every particle of creation.

Now technically you can’t see Gods wisdom, or power, or goodness, or authority, but you can see a manifestation of the one who controls these things for God. Philo believed in the Old Testament this was the Angel of the LORD, Paul and the others believe this is the resurrected Jesus Christ.

The Oneness of YHWH

The passage below is from  a website promoting orthadox Christianity and following is my response.  I personally liked my thinking here, the folks at Eclectic Christian not so much, so I’ve dropped it into my mental dumping ground. The point is “god” is a flexible word with lots of meanings. So while there is only one God there are many gods, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:5.

to read the original article and the sereis its in go here

http://eclecticchristian.com/2009/01/13/reflections-on-the-deity-of-christ-only-one-god/

 The post from Eclectic Christian

“This is Part 1, of a multi-part series looking at the deity of Christ. Here are the links to the Introduction and Table of Contents.

As we begin, it is important to clarify just what we mean, and what we do not mean, when we say that Jesus is God.

We do no mean that there is more than one God.

Many have tried to portray Jesus as a god, but not the Almighty Lord God, and as a result try to make him less than God.  Yet, the scripture clearly teaches that there is but one true God.  Several of these verses are listed below.

Isaiah 43:10b (NIV) – “… Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.”

Isaiah 45:5 (NIV) – “… I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.”

Isaiah 45:21b-23 (NIV) – “… And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Saviour; there is none but me.  Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.”

Isaiah 37:16 (NIV) – “O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth.  You have made heaven and earth.”

Deuteronomy 6:4 (NIV) – “Hear, O Israel:  The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

Mark 12:28-29, 32 (NIV) – One of the teachers of the law… asked him, “of all the commandments, which is the most important?”  “The most important one, answered Jesus, “is this:  ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one…”  “Well said, teacher,” the man replied.  “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.”

What does all this mean?  Since the Bible clearly states that there is only one true God, we are left with two options.  We can either believe that Jesus Christ is the LORD God, or we can believe that he is not God, or “a god” at all.  If we try to call Christ “a god”, we are then saying that there is more than one God, which, as can be seen from the above verses is definitely not biblical.”

 My response

The oneness of God in the Old Testament has had several interpretations. The word that YHWH* is called el(god) or elohim(gods) was the proper name of a common middle-eastern deity of weather. It also came to mean a divine being or sometimes a powerful one. It was typically applied to divine beings that were worshiped as opposed to beings like the cherubim who are heavenly creatures but not sacrificed to. So Baal is called an El but not necessarily the cherubim who guards the tree of life.

The primary idea that seems present in Judaism is only YHWH is to be worshiped. there are passages that seem to indicate that early Jews thought other gods also existed, like those sons of El that take human wives in Genesis. Gods in Canaanite society were all the sons of El. This is like our believing that Satan is an actual being even though some people worship him.

In the passages quoted in Isaiah above is expressed the idea that not only is YHWH the only el to be worshiped, he is the only el in existence. Isaiah doesn’t’t believe YHWH is the only heavenly being(he believes in cherubim and seraphs) but that He is the only thing that is El like or divine. I think this derives from His being the first cause. He creates everything else. so as the father is greater than the son and the grandfather greater than the father, YHWH is greater than any other heavenly being and only he truly merits being an el(god). The Egyptians had a similar idea. Their creator god, Amun, as the first cause and originator was held by some to be the only real god.

While Isaiah believes that belief in angels doesn’t’t contradict YHWH’s oneness other Jews did. The Sadducee of New Testament fame didn’t believe in angels. I think this is because they believed angels were just gods by a different name. Angels were said to move the planets and protect nations just like the old gods did. People would invoke angels for protection like Catholics invoke saints (and angels!). The Sadducee were also said to only regard the 5 books of Moses as canonical, and apparently they must of thought some parts more inspired than others since angels are found there to, but the precise nature of there beliefs are unknown to us as they are no longer with us. The rest of Judaism thought angels were o.k. so long as you used different terms to refer to YHWH than to them. so while YHWH and Gabriel are both spirit beings, only YHWH could be called an el or theos.

This reduces YHWH’s oneness to nothing more than grammar. I think a more sensible approach would be to say YHWH is the supreme being. By definition there can only be one supreme being. In the event of tie no one is supreme. But here there is no tie. Existence comes from somewhere and that somewhere is YHWH, the Supreme Being. Supreme Being is a category of one. So whether you call your spirit beings angels, ens, els, jannies, kamies, baals, spirits, elves, ashura, devies, theos, daemons, gods or what ever, none of them are God.

 

*Here for conventions sake I use the traditional Judeao-Christian term to refer to the supream being. Of course such a being would be beyond a personal name.

Fantastic New Dinosaur Discovery

       It was reported today that scientist in Norway found the remains of  a 50 ft. long Jurassic predator with a bite force of 15 tons per square inch.  Thats ten times the bite force of a crocodile, four times that of a T-Rex. 

God made awesome animals back then.  Not like now.  Now animals are pussies.  We’re supposed to console our selves with blue whales, “The largest animal ever! And it only eats tiny shrimp with a stainer.”  Seriously?  This is supposed to compete with T-Rex and 50 ft sharks? Lame.  It’s like 100 million years ago God was totally into metal. 

“Yeah lets make some giant lizards that are half bird with teeth like railroad spikes, and when it closes its mouth it like dropping a bus on you!”

At some point God turned into a big fagot.  He tuned dinosaurs to flamingos, pleisiosaurs to dolphins.

The History of Early Israel Part Two

The Children of Israel and Bedouin Genealogy

In The Early History of Israel Part One, I talked about the archeological evidence concerning early Israel. Now I would like to switch the perspective and look at the emergence of Israel unig the accounts from the Bible. What will be important here is to use what has been learned from the Documentary Hypothesis to interpret the text. As a quick overview of the Documentary Hypothesis, the Torah and the Former Prophets [1] are made up of a number of different sources, written at different times and combined and edited at still later times. The traditional view comes from the finished product and is thus a synthesis of a number of different independent works. The works, as best they can be separated, are J from the early priesthood of YHWH in Judah, E from the priesthood of YHWH in Israel, P from the later priesthood in Judah, and D from the author of Deuteronomy. Included in these works are a number of earlier poems and genealogies, some from earlier written works like The Book of Jashar and the Book of The Wars of YHWH. The poems are the earliest parts of the Bible, followed by J, then E, then D, and finally P. While all could preserve traditions that are accurate and all have biases reflecting the interest, I will focus mostly on the earlier works as they have less accumulated tradition influencing them. P for example is attempt by the Aaronid line of priest to rewrite the combined JE to reinforce their religious principles.

J and E both begin their history of Israel with a man named Jacob (heel catcher or supplanter)[2] who after a series of adventures is named Israel. Jacob marries several women, and with them and some concubines, has a number of children. These children become the ancestors of the tribes of the nation of Israel. This is a convention of Bedouin society. To this day Bedouin tribes trace their origin to a single common ancestor. [3]

What is important to understanding the history of Israel is that the genealogies are often fictional.[4] Their alliances are thought of in terms of an extended family relationship. This is summed up by the Arab proverb, “I and my brothers against my cousins, I and my brothers and my cousins against the world”. The Bedouin mind can conceive of no alliance out side the family. No doubt this is formed by their lifestyle of traveling in small groups they call bayts. The bayt consist of a nuclear family and a few siblings or parents. Few others will be encountered during daily life. Unlike the city dweller, the only people a Bedouin nomad can expect to rely on are his immediate relatives. When tribes encounter new groups, then these can be worked into the genealogy to be come new “brothers”. In the Bible every one in the world is related though genealogy to the Israelites. The degree of relation says a lot about how the Israelites viewed the group, but not much about the actual blood connection.

A case in point are the Canaanites. As said earlier, the Canaanites spoke the same language as the Israelites and worshiped the same god. But in the P and J portions of Genesis chapters nine and ten’s, “Table of Nations”, Canaan is the son of Ham. His other sons are Cush (Nubia), Put (Libya), and Egypt.[5] So for the Bibles writers Canaan is not even a Semite. They are lumped with people speaking a far different language and, in the supreme spirit of a color blind society, are considered more closely related to the blacks of Cush than to their Israelite neighbors.

What led Israel to believe in such a strange genealogy? Absolute hatred. The memories of war and the Canaanites current situation of subservience wouldn’t allow the Israelites to view the Canaanites as a cousin people like the Edomites. They were so despised that couldn’t be ranked even as distant cousins like the Assyrians. They were as distant from the Semite line as the Greeks. Since the Canaanites were under the control of Egypt for so long they were attributed with a decent from a man called Mizraim, the Hebrew word for Egypt. By tracing them to Noah at least they were considered human. This need to invent an appropriate family relationships lies behind many of the stories of Genesis. The attitude of the story toward the ancestral figure says a lot about how the writers viewed the tribe they supposedly spawned. For the troublesome but similar people, the Moabites and Ammonites, their origin is traced to Abrahams nephew, but by a shameful incident of incest. The Arabs get a tragic origin reflecting their distance from Israel, and ambivalent role, sometimes merchants of rare luxuries, sometimes bandits. The people of Edom are given the best spot in the genealogies as brother to Israel. This reflects the close relationship of Edom and the kingdom of Judah.

 

Earlier Israeli Coalitions Before King David

When you compare the similarities between Israel and her neighbors it’s best to think of them not as Israel, and Moab, and Edom, and Canaan. It’s better to say Judah, and Gad, and Asher, and Ephraim, and Moab, and Ammon, and so on. The relationship between them has as much to do with politics as family. By the time the Bible was being wrote the tribes of Israel had probably shared a close and relatively friendly relationship. Had alliances been different though we could read Judah as the foolish brother Jacob and Moab as a Jacob’s son by his wife’s maid. This isn’t just speculation. We have in the Bible its self an very different version of the tribes than the traditional list. It can be found in Judges chapter 5:1-18, from The Song of Deborah.

 

1 On that day Deborah and Barak son of Abinoam sang this song:

2 “When the princes in Israel take the lead,
when the people willingly offer themselves—
praise the LORD!

3 “Hear this, you kings! Listen, you rulers!
I, even I, will sing to the LORD;
I will praise the LORD, the God of Israel, in song.

4 “When you, LORD, went out from Seir,
when you marched from the land of Edom,
the earth shook, the heavens poured,
the clouds poured down water.

5 The mountains quaked before the LORD, the One of Sinai,
before the LORD, the God of Israel.

6 “In the days of Shamgar son of Anath,
in the days of Jael, the highways were abandoned;
travelers took to winding paths.

7 Villagers in Israel would not fight;
they held back until I, Deborah, arose,
until I arose, a mother in Israel.

8 God chose new leaders
when war came to the city gates,
but not a shield or spear was seen
among forty thousand in Israel.

9 My heart is with Israel’s princes,
with the willing volunteers among the people.
Praise the LORD!

10 “You who ride on white donkeys,
sitting on your saddle blankets,
and you who walk along the road,
consider 11 the voice of the singers at the watering places.
They recite the victories of the LORD,
the victories of his villagers in Israel.
“Then the people of the LORD
went down to the city gates.

12 ‘Wake up, wake up, Deborah!
Wake up, wake up, break out in song!
Arise, Barak!
Take captive your captives, son of Abinoam.’

13 “The remnant of the nobles came down;
the people of the LORD came down to me against the mighty.

14 Some came from Ephraim, whose roots were in Amalek;
Benjamin was with the people who followed you.
From Makir captains came down,
from Zebulun those who bear a commander’s staff.

15 The princes of Issachar were with Deborah;
yes, Issachar was with Barak,
sent under his command into the valley.
In the districts of Reuben
there was much searching of heart.

16 Why did you stay among the sheep pens
to hear the whistling for the flocks?
In the districts of Reuben
there was much searching of heart.

17 Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan.
And Dan, why did he linger by the ships?
Asher remained on the coast
and stayed in his coves.

18 The people of Zebulun risked their very lives;
so did Naphtali on the terraced fields.

The underlined names are the tribes that Deborah the judge holds out for praise or criticism. They are Ephraim, Benjamin, Makir, Zebulun, Issachar, Reuben, Gilead, Dan, and Naphtali. Since Debora is mentioning both the praising tribes who tribes who fought and ridiculing the ones who did not it’s not likely she would have just forgot about a few. Deborah singing about important life or death matters! The notable absences from the list are Judah, Simeon, Levi, Manasseh, Asher, and Gad. Now some would argue that Gilead means Gad and Makir means Manasseh,[6]but I don’t think the proud people of Manasseh and Gad would appreciate being referred to by their dependent clans. What we apparently have is an early list of the Tribes of Israel, a list before the J and E sons of Jacob list, a list before the Judahite tribes or the recognition of the Levites as a tribe. At the time Gilead and Makir held more prominence than Manasseh. What this shows is that the son of Jacob was fluid in membership up until the spread of written versions made the switching of tribes to noticeable to be feasible. Hence the when Assyria hauled off the tribes of the northern kingdom, they weren’t written out of the Bible. When Manasseh rose in prominence the records were still fuzzy enough to slip them in and Makir out.

 

Genesis Genealogy Shows Degree of Affiliation Between Tribe Through History

When we keep this in mind the genealogies of the Bible can give us information about the political history of the tribes. Characters like Abraham and Isaac seem like stock characters that were common to any number of ancient nomads. Jacob was such a popular character that Israel traced their lineage to him and not to another separate character named Israel. Possibly this reflects either that the original Israel called its self Jacob and then changed their name later. Or the tribes that would form Israel traced their origin to Jacob, but didn’t operate as a confederacy named Jacob. For instance both Israel and Edom traced their ancestry to Isaac but they didn’t coordinate as a group called Isaac. In the stories of Jacob, Rachel, and Leah in the J and E text we can find clues to relation of the actual tribes to one another.

The children of Jacob are listed in Genesis chapter 29-30:1-26. Part of it, 29:1-30:1,24b (starting with may the LORD)-26, is J the rest is E. The J portions begin the story of Jacobs labor to win his true love, Rachel. It extends to Laban tricking him into marring his older daughter Leah. J stresses Leah’s homeliness compared to Rachel. After Leah gives birth to Levi and three tribes form southern Israel.

E picks up with Rachel, desperate for children commanding her servant girl, who seems to be little more than a slave, to have a baby by her husband and give it to her. This maid has several children. Then Leah makes her maid give her two babies. Rachel, who seems to run this harem, lets Leah have sex with Jacob in return for a mandrake root. The Hebrew word for mandrake is literally “love plant”. [7]Leah has even more babies. The Rachel, with her mandrakes and the god El’s help, finally has a baby, ending the story.

The stories have a lot of over lap and no doubt the missing parts of J and E were similar. That they were small changes is shown by way the two are mixed. The Judahites could not accept the north’s treatment of their own birth and the Israelites wouldn’t accept Judah version of the birth of their own tribes. They both agree on the status of Leah and Rachel in relation to the tribes, Jacob, and each other. The children all have puns made on their names, but remember the tribes were not made based on pet names given to mythical founders. The stories are there to give a family bond to different groups of people. There was no man named Judah or Gad who had a bunch of kids who in reverence of their great, great, grand father, used his name as the name of their family. Why would these peoples children find them so special? At times the exact meaning of the word is unclear, and like many of our own modern names, may have had origins in older languages and hence don’t translate to Hebrew. For instance my own name, Michael, means “who is like El” in Hebrew, a language that is virtually extinct in the modern world.

The following are the children of Leah and the meaning of their names. To start, Leah means “weary”. Her first son and hence Jacobs heir, is Reuben (behold, the son)[9]. Next is Simeon ( heard or listen)[10], then Levi (joined to)[11] and last Judah (praise Or thanks)[12]. In E she has a few more children after Judah. After buying the right to sleep with Jacob she has Issachar (He redeems)[13] and Zebulun (exalted or high habitation)[14].

Simeon’s territory is essentially inside of Judah. Reuben was directly across the dead sea from them. Levi had land throughout the rest of the tribes. These three tribes may have seemed most linked to Judah. In Judges chapter 1, Judah and Simeon get together to conquer the Negev.  Another thing about Reuben, Simeon ,and Levi is that they are all disqualified as the first son due to misconduct. Reuben sleeps with his dad’s mistress (Genesis 35:22) and Simeon and Levi murder a tribe their father was trying to marry into using their sister as a bride (Genesis 34). This shows Judah having a humble beginning and only later gaining prominence.

Leah’s children though hiring Jacob, Issachar and Zebulun, are both neighbors in northern Israel. The children by Leah’s maid, Gad (an invader, troop, or fortune) [22] and Asher (happy, from a root meaning to walk forward, like upgrade)[23], on the other hand are spread far from each other. Asher is on the Mediterranean while Gad occupies the east bank of the Jordan. As these come from the E story it’s presumable that the people of Judah did not feel as strongly toward the tribes. To highlight this Gad and Asher are only half brothers to Judah and the others. Issachar and Zebulun owe their Judahite relation to the deal made with Rachel, the favorite wife of Jacob. The four may have been linked to Judah simply because they weren’t closely related, by history or decent, to the Joseph tribes. Of the Leah tribes, Zebulun, Issachar, and Reuben are listed in the Deborah list of tribes.

Rachel (sheep)[15], the wife loved by Jacob, has two children, Joseph (increase)[16], and, dying as she gives birth, Benjamin (son of the right or south)[17] (Genesis 35:16-20). Rachel adopts two children by Jacob and her maid, Dan (judge or governor)[18], and Naphtali (wrestling)[19]. Joseph in turn has two boys by an Egyptian woman of a priestly family (Genesis 41:50-52). The boys are named Manasseh ( to forget, from an older root meaning to remove, as in removing memory)[20] and Ephraim (double fruitful)[21]. Dan and Naphtali are in the Deborah list. While Joseph doesn’t make that list, his sons Ephraim and Manasseh do.

To sum it all up here is a list of the sons of Jacob. * indicate a tribe from the Deborah list.

From Leah, Jacob’s first wife;

1. Reuben (behold, the son)*

2. Simeon ( heard or listen)

3. Levi (joined to)

4. Judah (praise or thanks)

From Bilah, Rachel’s maid;

1. Dan (judge or governor)*

2. Naphtali (wrestling)*

From Leah’s maid Zilpah;

1. Gad (an invader, troop, or fortune)

2. Asher (happy, from a root meaning to walk forward, like upgrade)

From Leah after buying the opportunity to sleep with Jacob;

5. Issachar (He redeems)*

6. Zebulun (exalted or high habitation)*

From Rachel, Jacob’s favorite wife;

1. Joseph (increase)

2. Benjamin (son of the right or south)*

Joseph’s sons by Asenath, daughter of Poti-phera, priest of On (Heliopolis);

1. Manasseh ( to forget, from an older root meaning to remove, as in removing memory)

2. Ephraim (double fruitful)*

 

The First Tribes of Israel

Looking at all this we can see that nearly half of the sons of Jacob were new additions to Israel since the composition of the Song of Debora. Also Judah gains preeminence from being born of the first wife but the House of Joseph gains preeminence from being of the favorite wife. We can see the historical early importance of Joseph in that. Judah rises through circumstance to be the first ranked son, Joseph is the son that Israel always wanted. Leah is added into the story to explain why Judah was now the dominate tribe. The focus of this story is Joseph. We can also see the close association of Joseph with Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh. The names of these tribes seem to reflect their history of occupying their territories in the land of Canaan. From the early Conquest Document (See the full reconstruction in my article The Conquest Document.) also found in Joshua 17:14-18

14 The people of Joseph said to Joshua, “Why have you given us only one allotment and one portion for an inheritance? We are a numerous people and the LORD has blessed us abundantly.”

15 “If you are so numerous,” Joshua answered, “and if the hill country of Ephraim is too small for you, go up into the forest and clear land for yourselves there in the land of the Perizzites and Rephaites”. 16 The people of Joseph replied, “The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites who live in the plain have iron chariots, both those in Beth Shan and its settlements and those in the Valley of Jezreel.”

17 But Joshua said to the house of Joseph—to Ephraim and Manasseh-”You are numerous and very powerful. You will have not only one allotment 18 but the forested hill country as well. Clear it, and its farthest limits will be yours; though the Canaanites have iron chariots and though they are strong, you can drive them out.”

Joshua addresses Ephraim and Manasseh as the house of Joseph. True to their name, “Increase”, Joseph grew to big for their territory, which consist of the tribal allotment of Ephraim. Ephraim contains the allotment for Joshua plus the cities, Shiloh and Shechem. It is at Shechem that Abraham is promised the land of Canaan by YHWH (J Genesis 12:6-8. Given the significance of Bethel and Shiloh to the early history of Israel, it leaves us with little doubt that it is here is where Israel began. Further more since the plain cannot be taken they clear the forest from the hill country. This is the sort of increase in settlement that archeological evidence shows took place during the 11^th century.[24]

Now while Joseph is the father of Ephraim and Manasseh is the first born of Joseph, neither Joseph or Manasseh made the Deborah list. Manasseh’s first born status is probably owed to its greater power at the time E was written, or to its apparent subjugation to Gideon in Judges 9:2. Manasseh’s expansionist history is in its name, Remove, not removing  memory, but land. The “double fruitful” Ephraim is likely “parent” to its brother Manasseh. The brother “son of the South” Benjamin’s name relates to Ephraim to since they were directly south of Ephraim. We should be careful to not read to much into a name since it would be expected for a tribal group to take names promising growth and greatness. It is difficult to answer whether Ephraim or Joseph came first. In Deborah Joseph is not mentioned but it is possible that after the splitting of Benjamin from Ephraim, Joseph became the name of a father figure. On the other hand it seems unlikely that a tribe named Joseph would willingly drop its original name and choose a new one. It is possible that Joseph was made to be an ancestral figure to maintain equality in status between Ephraim and Manasseh. The other tribes of Israel are technically uncles rather than brother tribes to Ephraim-Manasseh.

The use of Joseph in the Blessing of Jacob poem ( J Genesis 49:1-27 ), Joshua 16:14-18, Judges 1:22-26, and in the division of the land in Joshua 16:1 seems to represents a period when the Ephraim-Manasseh tribes held a separate political arrangement in Israel. Several times it seems a king could rule in Shechem and that wouldn’t have bearing on the non Josephite tribes. Saul’s activities don’t extend far from the Hills of Ephraim. Gideon and his son Abimelek (my father is king)[25] seem to have been kings over Manasseh and Ephraim, but the rest of Israel doesn‘t factor into the story.

Much of the early history of Israel after the entrance into the land focuses on the Rachel tribes. Joshua was an Ephraimite and the Rachel tribes claim nearly half of the known Judges of Israel. It is at Shechem that Joshua renews the Covenant, sets up the memorial stone to that event, and buries Joseph. While Reuben and Gad occupy their territory in Numbers chapter 32, Gad isn’t a part of Israel when Deborah is written and Reuben isn’t placed very close to Ephraim in genealogy and doesn’t play much of a role in the rest of Judges. Given the low status of Israel in Merneptah’s stele and the lack of other mention in the known writings from him and Ramses II, it would seem that the first coalition of Israel probably dates from around this time and was made up of little more than Benjamin and the House of Joseph.

The Merneptah stele mentions the capture of Gezer and Ashkelon along with Israel.[26] He and his father also fought bands of pirates called Sea People[27][28]. Later the Philistines would count among these people and it seems possible that Ashkelon and Gezer, two cities occupied by the Philistines later, were already working with Aegean pirates. Considering the rash of cities being burnt in the last half of the 13^th century (1250-1201), it seems likely then that Merneptah’s campaign was a response to these activities. We don’t know if it was a coordinated attack or if one group was acting opportunistically to a situation created by the other. Ashkelon had already attempted to rebel against Ramses II [29]. By the time the accounts of Hazor and Bethel are written into the Bible all mention of the presence of Egypt and any assistance from other Canaanite cities was forgotten.

 

Activities of Joshua’s Israel

 

As explained in The Bible Unearthed the book of Joshua is a collection of heroic myths and memories of old battles woven together as a national epic of conquest under a single great general [30]. I think by comparing Joshua and Judges and keeping in mind the archeological record some events can be said to be more likely Joshua’s work. I think given the man’s popularity, and the lack of knowledge of what he actually did vs. all he’s credited as doing, we can say he was a very old part if Israel’s history. He is likely the Founder of the coalition of Israel (I‘ll get to Moses, who is never mentioned being in Canaan, later). He becomes a catch all in history. He conquers the whole nation, slays giants, and miraculously causes great cities to become legendary ruins. As has been explained Jericho and Ai were most certainly not the work of Joshua [31]. His connection to them is like the King Arthur myth of Merlyn building Stone Henge. One old figure is credited with creating an even more ancient landmark as the complete history is forgotten.

The story of the House of Joseph taking Bethel from judges 1:22-26, and possibly the Conquest Document, bears some similarity to the story of the taking of Jericho. Both cities are gained by spies promising a traitor safety for their family while the rest of the city is killed. The proximity of Bethel to Ephraim makes this a very good candidate for Israel’s work. The timing of it’s destruction matches Hazor and Aphek (c. 1250-2101). It is a modest start, and the later Israelites can be forgiven for wanting to jazz up the story with miracles and an old city of legend.

Joshua’s northern and southern campaigns pose more problems. They are further from the Hills of Ephraim and both seem to parallels in Judges, where they are taken on by figures other than Joshua. We can doubt Deborah’s involvement in Hazor’s downfall. In Judges chapter 4 the chief villain is Jabin king of Hazor, as in Joshua chapter 11. In Judges chapter 5’s Song of Deborah neither Jabin or Hazor appear. I think it can be presumed that Sisera was only later taken to be Jabin’s general. So it is reasonable that Joshua was involved in the sack of Hazor, but we can’t presume that only Israel was involved.

His war with Adoni-Zedek, King of Jerusalem [32] seems comparable with the Judges account of Judah’s war with Adoni-Bezek[33]. Besides the similarity with the names, both contain the destruction of Debir. Since Judah possessed this region at the beginning of the age of king, and Judah seems to be a late joiner to Israel, it may be more likely that the Judges account is more accurate. Furthermore, the Joshua account includes the burning of Lachish, and event a century later than Hazor and Bethel’s destruction.

It seem likely then that Israel began as a coalition of Beduin clans named Ephraim who opperated in the hills of Canaan north of Jerusalem.   They pillaged a couple of cities under the leadershp of sheik named Joshua during a rebellion of some Canaanite city states against Egypt. They survived the Egyptian counter attack and continued to grow in strength as Egypt declined.  The poor economy of the 11th century, caused in part by the activities around the world of bandit groups like themselves, forced them to switch from nomadic herding to farming.

 

 

[1] The Torah consist of genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers. The former Prophets are Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings.

[2] http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Jacob

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[3]

 

 

http://www.mongabay.com/reference/country_studies/jordan/all.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin

 

 

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/gulf/abdullah.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

[5]

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_(Bible)

[6] The Bible is History, Ian Wilson, Regnery Publishing, INC, Washington D.C., 1999

 

 

 

 

 

[7]

 

 

[8]

 

http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=leah

 

 

 

[9]http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=reuben

 

 

 [10] http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=08085

 

[11]http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=levi

 

 

 

 

 

[12]http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=03034

[13]http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=issachar

[14]http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Zebulun

[15]http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Rachel

[16]http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=03254

[17]http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=03225

[18]http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=01835

[19]http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=naphtali

[20]http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=05382

[21]http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=0669

[22]http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=01425

[23]http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=0836

[24] The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2002 p.114

[25]http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Abimelech

[26]http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/merenphatvictorystele.htm

[27]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rameses_II and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah

[28]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples

[29]http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Ashkelon

 

[30]

 

 

 

 

[31] Finkelstein 79-81

 

 

[32] Joshua 10

[33]Judges 1:1-15

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_joshua#Historicity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrake_(plant)

The Early History of Israel Part One

                                                                                             Introduction

In the Bible Unearthed, by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, it is shown that many of the origin stories of Israel are myths unsupported by archeological evidence. The developments of Source Criticism by scholars like Julius Wellhausen and Richard Elliot Friedman, have demonstrated that the common interpretations of Biblical text don’t  reflect the ideas of the Bible’s original authors. Works like The Bible Unearthed and Friedman’s, Who wrote the Bible?, show that the books of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1Kings, and 2 Kings) were wrote during the time of the kings of Judah and Israel and reflect more their own time than the period they propose to describe. The Bible can’t been seen then as a reliable witness to the events it describes, as Finkelstein says in the Bible Unearthed, “The biblical stories should thus be regarded as a national mythology with no more historical basis than the Homeric saga of Odysseus’s travels or Virgil’s saga of Aeneas’s founding of Rome”. Keeping all this in mind, we who have  grown up and studied these tales though our lives wonder, if this is so then “Who are the Israelites?”, “What was the Exodus?” “Who is YHWH?”, and “When was the Bible written?”. In the following essays I will share some of my ideas on these topics.

Who are the Israelites?

Israel is a Hebrew word meaning “fight with El” or “El prevails” .[1] Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Canaanite group. It is specifically southern Canaanite with Moabite, while Phoenician is a northern Canaanite language. Its closely related to Aramaic and south central Arabic.[2] El is Canaanite deity common thought the middle east. His name is often used to mean generically, a god.[3] Often it was a specific deity, a sky god who reigned from a heavenly mountain over his son the storms and his wife the Earth. The Babylonians worshiped this god under the name Enlil, “lord wind”. In Arabia he was called Al’Lah.

In Genesis 32: 29 E source[4], El renames Jacob, the ancestor of the tribes of Israel, to Israel because, “you’ve struggled with God and with people and were able.” Now it seems odd that a group of people would name themselves for fighting God (My teams name is Beat Down Jesus!), and I think it’s more likely that fighting with God on our side is implied here. The first mention of this name in known history is in a victory monument for Ramses II son Merneptah. Dates vary for the reigns of Egyptian kings. Quite frankly I haven’t picked a favorite, so I’ll give broad range based on several sources for the monument, c. 1220 to 1208 BC with 1207 being most supported.[5]

The monument (called a stele) refers to Merneptah defeating a number of cities and peoples in Canaan. Israel is designated as a people as opposed to a nation, implying that Merneptah considered them to be nomadic or at least not controlling the territory they lived on. While Merneptah boast that he has eliminated Israel, obviously he exaggerated his claims.[6] How much he exaggerated is not known, but the Bible records no battles between Egypt and Israel in the pre-monarchy period. The Merneptah Stele tells us that a people called Israel existed in Canaan at this time but had not yet taken control of any major settlements. The timing of the conflict with Israel coincides with a transformation in the settlements of the central highlands of Canaan.

As explained in The Bible Unearthed periods of Egyptian strength over Canaan tend to result in the use of the highlands for nomadic herding. During down turns in international trade the nomads have to focus on procuring their own grains and create farming settlements. During Merneptah’s reign the stability of the wider world was being undermined. The twelfth century witnessed the collapse of the Hittite empire and Mycenaean civilization.[7] We can speculate that proceeding these collapses may have been a decline in international trade. Already, during the reign of Ramses II (c.1304-1237), Egypt battled pirates who would later be found among the infamous Sea People[8]. As trade declined communities would have became less specialized and more self-sufficient. Around 1200 BC new settlements were created in the highlands between Jerusalem and Shechem. Land, that evidence points to having been used as pasturage, was being tilled for crops. Circular tent camps were replaced with house arranged in the old nomads pattern. As the economy declined far ranging nomad settled down to farm on limited land.

For four hundred years before, the highland was occupied by pastoral nomads called Shosu or Hapiru by the Egyptians.[9] These were fairly generic words meaning “moving on foot” and outlaw, , respectively.[10] The name was applied to a broad range of people but it is likely that Israel had its origins in peoples who were referred to as being Hapiru. Hapiru would have been a Canaanite equivalent of the term “hillbilly” for Appalachian rural mountain dwellers. Linguist are still undecided if the word Hebrew is related to Hapiru but it seems likely that early Israelites would have been called Hapirus by their detractors. The term has a long pedigree and broad usage. It turns up in sources as far away as Ur in southern Mesopotamia and as far back as 2100 BC.[11] In a telling window onto pre-Israelite Shechem, the Amarna Letters of Egypt (c. 1417-1362)[12]contain the correspondences from Canaanite princes to Egypt requesting help to fight Hapiru. Also found are the details of the career of Labayu, ruler of Shechem, who fights using Hapiru troops, against the rulers of Jerusalem and Megiddo.[13]

Was there an Israel at this time? Possibly there was a band of Hapiru fighting under that name. Its likely that different bands of mercenaries and brigands fought under tribal names and these were just to minor to be mentioned in sources, they were just “terrorist”. On the other hand none of the events or personalities of the period are recorded in the Bible, so Israel may not of remembered this period or felt that they took no part in it. But it demonstrates the restlessness of the region, and how, in a time of weakness, bandits in the hills and desert fringes were ready to take on the urban elites of Canaan.

From the time of Amosis (c.1570-1546) until Ramses II (c.1304-1237 or 1279-1213)[14] there was no such weakness in Canaan. Ramses II routinely traversed Canaan in his early years, a feat that precludes any states in opposition to Egyptian rule. As the great king grew older , the situation begins to change. Evidence suggest that two major cities in Canaan were destroyed after Ramses II death or in the decade or two before. Hazor and Bethel were burned in the late thirteenth century (1250-1201)[15]. Aphek can reliably be dated for destruction around 1230.[16] From this point on more and more cities in Canaan are burned and Egypt’s reach grew shorter. Lachish is destroyed between 1184 and 1153. Megiddo has evidence of lasting until the reign of Ramses VI in the late twelfth century (1150-1101)[17]. Archeology doesn’t tell us who destroyed these cities, but Hazor, Bethel, Lachish, and Aphek were claimed to be the work of Joshua and Israel by Biblical writers.

 

Destroyed Cities

Jericho: c.1560 BC

Ai: c.2650-2350 BC

Aphek: c.1230 BC

Hazor: c.1225 BC

Bethel: c.1225 BC

Lachish: c.1184-1153 BC

Megiddo: c.1150-1101 BC

 

 

 

 

# [1]http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=03478

# [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew

#[3] http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=el

# [4]E source is the Elohim book of the Torah according to the Documentary Hypothesis. It is suspected of being composed by those sympathetic to the Northern Israeli kingdom. Other major sources are the J source, for Jehovah, sympathetic to Judah, P source, by the priest of Judah, and D, by the writer of Deuteronomy. Opinions differ somewhat on which particular verses belong to which source, but there is a broad consensus on most passages. ^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis}

^{and Richard Eliot Freedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed, Harper Collins, New York, 2003}

[5] The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Simon and Shuster, New York 2001  p. 18 1207 BCstele dated to Year 5, 3rd month of Shemu (summer), day 3 (c.1209/1208 BC),

^{for alternate opinions.#  http://www.touregypt.net/kings.htm or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_Egyptian_chronology}

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele

[10]^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapiru}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shasu

 ^{[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapiru}

 

 

 

^{[15]Hazor, Negev p.170, Finkelstein p. 81, 90,}

 ^{http://unixware.mscc.huji.ac.il/~hatsor/hazor.html}

Bethel,Finkelstein P. 80, Negev p 56

^{#[16] Finkelstein p. 90}

 [17]Finkelstein p. 90

 [17]Negev 196

 [19] Negev 21,22

 

 ^{[12] Negev p. 378-379}

^{[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labayu}

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

The Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, edited by Avraham Negev, Prentice Hall Press, New York 1990 p. 182 c. 1220 BC

 

 

 

 

 

[14] Negev 417, dates vary for Egyptian kings from source to source, so all dates are approximate. See

^{[6]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele}

^{[7]A history of Ancient Greece, Nancy Demand, McGraw Hill, Boston, 1996 p.72}

 

^{[8]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramses_II}

 ^{[9]Finkelstein p.103}

The Conquest Document

Survey of conquest document. Hypothetical(12) 

This is used in the JE material of Joshua and in Judges. The similarity of some of the passages in Judges and Joshua has led some to believe that they were taken from detailed survey of the conquest of Canaan. The following is what we may have left of it.(13)

 

 

 

 the Israelites asked the LORD, “Who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites?”

2 The LORD answered, “Judah is to go; I have given the land into their hands.”

3 Then the men of Judah said to the Simeonites their brothers, “Come up with us into the territory allotted to us, to fight against the Canaanites. We in turn will go with you into yours.” So the Simeonites went with them.

5 It was there that they found Adoni-Bezek and fought against him, putting to rout the Canaanites and Perizzites. 6 Adoni-Bezek fled, but they chased him and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and big toes.

7 Then Adoni-Bezek said, “Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off have picked up scraps under my table. Now God has paid me back for what I did to them.” They brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there.(14)

19 The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.

21 Judah, however, failed to dislodge the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with Judah.

20 As Moses had promised, Hebron was given to Caleb,

he advanced against the Canaanites living in Hebron (formerly called Kiriath Arba)

14 From Hebron Caleb drove out the three Anakites—Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai

15 From there he marched against the people living in Debir (formerly called Kiriath Sepher). 16 And Caleb said, “I will give my daughter Acsah in marriage to the man who attacks and captures Kiriath Sepher.” 17 Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s brother, took it; so Caleb gave his daughter Acsah to him in marriage.

18 One day when she came to Othniel, she urged him to ask her father for a field. When she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What can I do for you?”

19 She replied, “Do me a special favor. Since you have given me land in the Negev, give me also springs of water.” So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs.

16 The descendants of Moses’ father-in-law, the Kenite, went up from the City of Palms with the men of Judah to live among the people of the Desert of Judah in the Negev near Arad.

17 Then the men of Judah went with the Simeonites their brothers and attacked the Canaanites living in Zephath, and they totally destroyed the city. Therefore it was called Hormah.

36 The boundary of the Amorites was from Scorpion Pass to Sela and beyond.

22 Now the house of Joseph attacked Bethel, and the LORD was with them. 23 When they sent men to spy out Bethel (formerly called Luz), 24 the spies saw a man coming out of the city and they said to him, “Show us how to get into the city and we will see that you are treated well.” 25 So he showed them, and they put the city to the sword but spared the man and his whole family. 26 He then went to the land of the Hittites, where he built a city and called it Luz, which is its name to this day.(15)

27 But Manasseh did not drive out the people of Beth Shan or Taanach or Dor or Ibleam or Megiddo and their surrounding settlements, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that land. 28 When Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor but never drove them out completely.

29 Nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, but the Canaanites continued to live there among them.

14 The people of Joseph said to Joshua, “Why have you given us only one allotment and one portion for an inheritance? We are a numerous people and the LORD has blessed us abundantly.”

15 “If you are so numerous,” Joshua answered, “and if the hill country of Ephraim is too small for you, go up into the forest and clear land for yourselves there in the land of the Perizzites and Rephaites.”(16)

16 The people of Joseph replied, “The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites who live in the plain have iron chariots, both those in Beth Shan and its settlements and those in the Valley of Jezreel.”

17 But Joshua said to the house of Joseph—to Ephraim and Manasseh-”You are numerous and very powerful. You will have not only one allotment 18 but the forested hill country as well. Clear it, and its farthest limits will be yours; though the Canaanites have iron chariots and though they are strong, you can drive them out.”

30 Neither did Zebulun drive out the Canaanites living in Kitron or Nahalol, who remained among them; but they did subject them to forced labor. 31 Nor did Asher drive out those living in Acco or Sidon or Ahlab or Aczib or Helbah or Aphek or Rehob, 32 and because of this the people of Asher lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land. 33 Neither did Naphtali drive out those living in Beth Shemesh or Beth Anath; but the Naphtalites too lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land, and those living in Beth Shemesh and Beth Anath became forced laborers for them. 34 The Amorites confined the Danites to the hill country, not allowing them to come down into the plain.

47 (But the Danites had difficulty taking possession of their territory, so they went up and attacked Leshem, took it, put it to the sword and occupied it. They settled in Leshem and named it Dan after their forefather.)

35 And the Amorites were determined also to hold out in Mount Heres, Aijalon and Shaalbim, but when the power of the house of Joseph increased, they too were pressed into forced labor.

 

^{12 This seems to be were J would pick up after Numbers 32:33-42, when the middle tribes receive their territories before the rest cross over.}

¹³ An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, by S.R.Driver, Meridian Books, New York, 1957  p.^162-163

 

^{14 Compare with Joshua chapter 10’s Adoni-Zedek, king of Jerusalem.}

 

^{15 Compare with Joshua chapter 2’s spies in Jericho story.}

^{16 Joseph is the name of the tribe, only after settling do they split into two clans.}

Colossus with Feet of Clay; Why Dinosaurs went Extinct

Colossus with Feet of Clay; Why Dinosaurs went Extinct

I just finished watching First Apocalypse on the Nat Geo channel.  It speculated on the extinction of dinosaurs.  One of the ideas thrown around is the notion that dinosaurs were on the way out and the asteroid was the nail in the coffin.  I would like to add to that statement.  I don’t think that the Cretaceous was a world with lots of mammals and birds and a couple of dinosaurs. I think there were lots of dinosaurs, a full complement of species filling lots of niches. It wasn’t like modern Australia or the Americas where most of  the mega fauna are extinct.  The Cretaceous is a world much like the plains of Africa with a wide range of animals. 

The issue for dinosaurs is that the niches they were-filling were all on the top, the small to super sized herbivores and carnivores.  The tiny, unspecialized niches were filled by birds and mammals.  These are the niches that new directions in evolution come from.  If you took all the mammals today in the top spots of the food chain, the elephants, buffalo, tigers, lions, horses, and so on, and looked at their ancestors in the Cretaceous, the Cretaceous ancestors would all look like a collection of rats and opossums. The dinosaurs were not completely unrepresented at the bottom, but of course we dont quite feel like birds are “really” dinosaurs.  Also birds didn’t diversify to become the lions, buffalo, and elephants of today.  Why? I think they were to specialized. there are only a few flightless birds around. to branch out to being a large herbivore or carnivore the bird has to re evolve hands and more robust bones and teeth. The mammals already had the tools to upgrade.  

And lets not forget the mammal way of rearing young.  As birds become larger their eggs become more vulnerable.  Ostriches cant nest in trees and can’t carry eggs with them.  for large dinosaurs, mass production was the key to producing offspring.  When an animal the size of an elephant produces young the size of chickens, you can bet 99.9% didn’t make past the first year. 

The asteroid took out all the heavy animals and it leveled the field.  If you killed every one who made more than $2000 a year it wouldn’t wipe out every European but their would be a lot less of them than oh say Africans and there would be no guarantee that in such a ruined world that Europeans would still dominate.  I would not be surprised if we find the remains of a dinosaur that made it though the great extinction, but its would be a drop in the biological bucket and with no advantage over a bird or mammal of similar size its chances of surviving the many small extinctions that happen all the time would be slim.

The Joshua JE source

I had originaly put this together for my own research, but since there are not a lot of places to get the book of Joshua divided into its component sources, I’ve decided to put this out for for anyone who’s interested. It’s suspected by scholars of the Documentary Hypothesis that the P, D, and JE sources extend into the book of Joshua. This particular reconstuction of the JE source and the Conquest Survey is suggested by Samuel Rolles Driver in his book, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. It is likely that more recent work has been done on this topic, as Proffesor Driver has been dead since 1914. Prof. Driver felt that the JE portions of Joshua could not easily be seperated into J and E, and it is possible that these parts of Joshua were added to the J and E documents after they were combined into JE. There are spots though where the combining of separate sources can be shown and these have been identified by a different color.

The value of thise page is the opportunity to see the material in Joshua before later writers of D and P added to it. Because the some of the text of the Conquest survey appear in judges and Joshua, it would seem that it was an earlier work than both. The JE material would date from at least the time of the J and E Pentateuch source’s combination. The Deuteronomist then took the combined JE Joshua and conquest tales, added his additional material placed Deuteronomy before it and followed it with the tales of the Judges.  (1)

 

 

The Joshua JE source(2)

 

 

 Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, Today’s New International Versionä TNIVâ

Copyright 2001,2005, by International Bible Societyâ . All rights reserved world wide.

 

1 Then Joshua(3) son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.

2 The king of Jericho was told, “Look! Some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.” 3 So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”

4 But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. 5 At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, the men left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.” 6 (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.) 7 So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.

8 Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof 9 and said to them, “I know that the LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you.

12 Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign 13 that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death.”

14 “Our lives for your lives!” the men assured her. “If you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the LORD gives us the land.”

15 So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall. 16 Now she had said to them, “Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way.”

17 The men said to her, “This oath you made us swear will not be binding on us 18 unless, when we enter the land, you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you have brought your father and mother, your brothers and all your family into your house. 19 If anyone goes outside your house into the street, his blood will be on his own head; we will not be responsible. As for anyone who is in the house with you, his blood will be on our head if a hand is laid on him. 20 But if you tell what we are doing, we will be released from the oath you made us swear.”

21 “Agreed,” she replied. “Let it be as you say.” So she sent them away and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window.

22 When they left, they went into the hills and stayed there three days, until the pursuers had searched all along the road and returned without finding them. 23 Then the two men started back. They went down out of the hills, forded the river and came to Joshua son of Nun and told him everything that had happened to them. 24 They said to Joshua, “The LORD has surely given the whole land into our hands; all the people are melting in fear because of us.”

 

A.   1 Early in the morning Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over.(4)

  5 Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do amazing things among you.”10 This is how you will know that the living God is among you and that he will certainly drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites.

 

 B.    12 Now then, choose twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe.

 

A.    13 And as soon as the priests who carry the ark of the LORD -the Lord of all the earth—set foot in the Jordan, its waters flowing downstream will be cut off and stand up in a heap.” 14 So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. 15 Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, 16 the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea ) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. 17 The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground. 1 When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, 2 “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.”

 

 B.    4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”

 

 A.    8 So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the LORD had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down.

  B.   9 Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day. 10 Now the priests who carried the ark remained standing in the middle of the Jordan until everything the LORD had commanded Joshua was done by the people, just as Moses had directed Joshua. The people hurried over, 11 and as soon as all of them had crossed15 Then the LORD said to Joshua, 16 “Command the priests carrying the ark of the Testimony to come up out of the Jordan.”17 So Joshua commanded the priests, “Come up out of the Jordan.” 

 

 

8 And after the whole nation had been circumcised, they remained where they were in camp until they were healed.(5)

9 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the place has been called Gilgal to this day.

13 Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

14 “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

15 The commander of the LORD’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.(6)

1 Now Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in.

2 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. 3 March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. 4 Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. 5 When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in.”

6 So Joshua son of Nun called the priests and said to them, “Take up the ark of the covenant of the LORD and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it.” 7 And he ordered the people, “Advance! March around the city, with the armed guard going ahead of the ark of the LORD.”

8 When Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets before the LORD went forward, blowing their trumpets, and the ark of the LORD’s covenant followed them. 9 The armed guard marched ahead of the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard followed the ark. All this time the trumpets were sounding. 10 But Joshua had commanded the people, “Do not give a war cry, do not raise your voices, do not say a word until the day I tell you to shout. Then shout!” 11 So he had the ark of the LORD carried around the city, circling it once. Then the people returned to camp and spent the night there.

12 Joshua got up early the next morning and the priests took up the ark of the LORD. 13 The seven priests carrying the seven trumpets went forward, marching before the ark of the LORD and blowing the trumpets. The armed men went ahead of them and the rear guard followed the ark of the LORD, while the trumpets kept sounding. 14 So on the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp. They did this for six days.

15 On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. 16 The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the people, “Shout! For the LORD has given you the city! 17 The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the LORD. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent. 18 But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. 19 All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the LORD and must go into his treasury.”

20 When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

22 Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the prostitute’s house and bring her out and all who belong to her, in accordance with your oath to her.” 23 So the young men who had done the spying went in and brought out Rahab, her father and mother and brothers and all who belonged to her. They brought out her entire family and put them in a place outside the camp of Israel.

24 Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the LORD’s house. 25 But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day.

26 At that time Joshua pronounced this solemn oath: “Cursed before the LORD is the man who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho:
“At the cost of his firstborn son
will he lay its foundations;
at the cost of his youngest
will he set up its gates.”

27 So the LORD was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.

2 Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth Aven to the east of Bethel, and told them, “Go up and spy out the region.” So the men went up and spied out Ai.

3 When they returned to Joshua, they said, “Not all the people will have to go up against Ai. Send two or three thousand men to take it and do not weary all the people, for only a few men are there.” 4 So about three thousand men went up; but they were routed by the men of Ai, 5 who killed about thirty-six of them. They chased the Israelites from the city gate as far as the stone quarries and struck them down on the slopes. At this the hearts of the people melted and became like water.

6 Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell facedown to the ground before the ark of the LORD, remaining there till evening. The elders of Israel did the same, and sprinkled dust on their heads. 7 And Joshua said, “Ah, Sovereign LORD, why did you ever bring this people across the Jordan to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? If only we had been content to stay on the other side of the Jordan! 8 O Lord, what can I say, now that Israel has been routed by its enemies? 9 The Canaanites and the other people of the country will hear about this and they will surround us and wipe out our name from the earth. What then will you do for your own great name?”

10 The LORD said to Joshua, “Stand up! What are you doing down on your face? 11 Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have lied, they have put them with their own possessions. 12 That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies; they turn their backs and run because they have been made liable to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction.(7)

13 “Go, consecrate the people. Tell them, ‘Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow; for this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: That which is devoted is among you, O Israel. You cannot stand against your enemies until you remove it.

14 ” ‘In the morning, present yourselves tribe by tribe. The tribe that the LORD takes shall come forward clan by clan; the clan that the LORD takes shall come forward family by family; and the family that the LORD takes shall come forward man by man. 15 He who is caught with the devoted things shall be destroyed by fire, along with all that belongs to him. He has violated the covenant of the LORD and has done a disgraceful thing in Israel!’ “

16 Early the next morning Joshua had Israel come forward by tribes, and Judah was taken. 17 The clans of Judah came forward, and he took the Zerahites. He had the clan of the Zerahites come forward by families, and Zimri was taken. 18 Joshua had his family come forward man by man, and Achan son of Carmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken.(8 )

19 Then Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the LORD, the God of Israel, and give him the praise. Tell me what you have done; do not hide it from me.”

20 Achan replied, “It is true! I have sinned against the LORD, the God of Israel. This is what I have done: 21 When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”

22 So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent, and there it was, hidden in his tent, with the silver underneath. 23 They took the things from the tent, brought them to Joshua and all the Israelites and spread them out before the LORD.

24 Then Joshua, together with all Israel, took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had, to the Valley of Achor. 25 Joshua said, “Why have you brought this trouble on us? The LORD will bring trouble on you today.”
Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest, they burned them. 26 Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day. Then the LORD turned from his fierce anger. Therefore that place has been called the Valley of Achor ever since.

1 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land. 2 You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.”

3 So Joshua and the whole army moved out to attack Ai. He chose thirty thousand of his best fighting men and sent them out at night 4 with these orders: “Listen carefully. You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don’t go very far from it. All of you be on the alert. 5 I and all those with me will advance on the city, and when the men come out against us, as they did before, we will flee from them. 6 They will pursue us until we have lured them away from the city, for they will say, ‘They are running away from us as they did before.’ So when we flee from them, 7 you are to rise up from ambush and take the city. The LORD your God will give it into your hand. 8 When you have taken the city, set it on fire. Do what the LORD has commanded. See to it; you have my orders.”

9 Then Joshua sent them off, and they went to the place of ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai—but Joshua spent that night with the people.

10 Early the next morning Joshua mustered his men, and he and the leaders of Israel marched before them to Ai. 11 The entire force that was with him marched up and approached the city and arrived in front of it. They set up camp north of Ai, with the valley between them and the city. 12 Joshua had taken about five thousand men and set them in ambush between Bethel and Ai, to the west of the city. 13 They had the soldiers take up their positions—all those in the camp to the north of the city and the ambush to the west of it. That night Joshua went into the valley.

14 When the king of Ai saw this, he and all the men of the city hurried out early in the morning to meet Israel in battle at a certain place overlooking the Arabah. But he did not know that an ambush had been set against him behind the city. 15 Joshua and all Israel let themselves be driven back before them, and they fled toward the desert. 16 All the men of Ai were called to pursue them, and they pursued Joshua and were lured away from the city. 17 Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go after Israel. They left the city open and went in pursuit of Israel.

18 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Hold out toward Ai the javelin that is in your hand, for into your hand I will deliver the city.” So Joshua held out his javelin toward Ai. 19 As soon as he did this, the men in the ambush rose quickly from their position and rushed forward. They entered the city and captured it and quickly set it on fire.

20 The men of Ai looked back and saw the smoke of the city rising against the sky,(9) but they had no chance to escape in any direction, for the Israelites who had been fleeing toward the desert had turned back against their pursuers. 21 For when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that smoke was going up from the city, they turned around and attacked the men of Ai. 22 The men of the ambush also came out of the city against them, so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives. 23 But they took the king of Ai alive and brought him to Joshua.

24 When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25 Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. 26 For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai. 27 But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the LORD had instructed Joshua.

28 So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. 29 He hung the king of Ai on a tree and left him there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take his body from the tree and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.

3 However, when the people of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, 4 they resorted to a ruse: They went as a delegation whose donkeys were loaded with worn-out sacks and old wineskins, cracked and mended. 5 The men put worn and patched sandals on their feet and wore old clothes. All the bread of their food supply was dry and moldy. 6 Then they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and the men of Israel, “We have come from a distant country; make a treaty with us.”

7 The men of Israel said to the Hivites, “But perhaps you live near us. How then can we make a treaty with you?”

8 “We are your servants,” they said to Joshua.
But Joshua asked, “Who are you and where do you come from?”

9 They answered: “Your servants have come from a very distant country because of the fame of the LORD your God.

11 And our elders and all those living in our country said to us, ‘Take provisions for your journey; go and meet them and say to them, “We are your servants; make a treaty with us.” ‘ 12 This bread of ours was warm when we packed it at home on the day we left to come to you. But now see how dry and moldy it is. 13 And these wineskins that we filled were new, but see how cracked they are. And our clothes and sandals are worn out by the very long journey.”

14 The men of Israel sampled their provisions but did not inquire of the LORD. 15 Then Joshua made a treaty of peace with them to let them live

16 Three days after they made the treaty with the Gibeonites, the Israelites heard that they were neighbors, living near them.

22 Then Joshua summoned the Gibeonites and said, “Why did you deceive us by saying, ‘We live a long way from you,’ while actually you live near us? 23 You are now under a curse: You will never cease to serve as woodcutters and water carriers for the house of my God.”

26 So Joshua saved them from the Israelites, and they did not kill them.

1 Now Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem heard that Joshua had taken Ai and totally destroyed it, doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king, and that the people of Gibeon had made a treaty of peace with Israel and were living near them. 2 He and his people were very much alarmed at this, because Gibeon was an important city, like one of the royal cities; it was larger than Ai, and all its men were good fighters. 3 So Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem appealed to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish and Debir king of Eglon. 4 “Come up and help me attack Gibeon,” he said, “because it has made peace with Joshua and the Israelites.”

5 Then the five kings of the Amorites—the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon—joined forces. They moved up with all their troops and took up positions against Gibeon and attacked it.

6 The Gibeonites then sent word to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal: “Do not abandon your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us! Help us, because all the Amorite kings from the hill country have joined forces against us.”

7 So Joshua marched up from Gilgal with his entire army, including all the best fighting men.

9 After an all-night march from Gilgal, Joshua took them by surprise. 10 The LORD threw them into confusion before Israel, who defeated them in a great victory at Gibeon. Israel pursued them along the road going up to Beth Horon and cut them down all the way to Azekah and Makkedah. 11 As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the LORD hurled large hailstones down on them from the sky, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites.

Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:
“O sun, stand still over Gibeon,
O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”

 13 So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on its enemies,as it is written in the Book of Jashar.  (10)
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. 14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man.15 Then Joshua returned with all Israel to the camp at Gilgal.

 16 Now the five kings had fled and hidden in the cave at Makkedah. 17 When Joshua was told that the five kings had been found hiding in the cave at Makkedah, 18 he said, “Roll large rocks up to the mouth of the cave, and post some men there to guard it. 19 But don’t stop! Pursue your enemies, attack them from the rear and don’t let them reach their cities, for the LORD your God has given them into your hand.”

20 So Joshua and the Israelites destroyed them completely—almost to a man—but the few who were left reached their fortified cities. 21 The whole army then returned safely to Joshua in the camp at Makkedah, and no one uttered a word against the Israelites.

22 Joshua said, “Open the mouth of the cave and bring those five kings out to me.” 23 So they brought the five kings out of the cave—the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon. 24 When they had brought these kings to Joshua, he summoned all the men of Israel and said to the army commanders who had come with him, “Come here and put your feet on the necks of these kings.” So they came forward and placed their feet on their necks.

26 Then Joshua struck and killed the kings and hung them on five trees, and they were left hanging on the trees until evening.

27 At sunset Joshua gave the order and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had been hiding. At the mouth of the cave they placed large rocks, which are there to this day.

1 When Jabin king of Hazor heard of this, he sent word to Jobab king of Madon, to the kings of Shimron and Acshaph, 2 and to the northern kings who were in the mountains, in the Arabah south of Kinnereth, in the western foothills and in Naphoth Dor  on the west; 3 to the Canaanites in the east and west; to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites and Jebusites in the hill country; and to the Hivites below Hermon in the region of Mizpah. 4 They came out with all their troops and a large number of horses and chariots—a huge army, as numerous as the sand on the seashore. 5 All these kings joined forces and made camp together at the Waters of Merom, to fight against Israel.

6 The LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them, because by this time tomorrow I will hand all of them over to Israel, slain. You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.”

7 So Joshua and his whole army came against them suddenly at the Waters of Merom and attacked them, 8 and the LORD gave them into the hand of Israel. They defeated them and pursued them all the way to Greater Sidon, to Misrephoth Maim, and to the Valley of Mizpah on the east, until no survivors were left. 9 Joshua did to them as the LORD had directed: He hamstrung their horses and burned their chariots.

 13 But the Israelites did not drive out the people of Geshur and Maacah, so they continue to live among the Israelites to this day.

6 Now the men of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the LORD said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me. 7 I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, 8 but my brothers who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt with fear. I, however, followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly. 9 So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly.’

10 “Now then, just as the LORD promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the desert. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! 11 I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. 12 Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.”

13 Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance. 14 So Hebron has belonged to Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite ever since, because he followed the LORD, the God of Israel, wholeheartedly. 15 (Hebron used to be called Kiriath Arba after Arba, who was the greatest man among the Anakites.)
Then the land had rest from war.

14 From Hebron Caleb drove out the three Anakites—Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai—descendants of Anak. 15 From there he marched against the people living in Debir (formerly called Kiriath Sepher). 16 And Caleb said, “I will give my daughter Acsah in marriage to the man who attacks and captures Kiriath Sepher.” 17 Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s brother, took it; so Caleb gave his daughter Acsah to him in marriage.

18 One day when she came to Othniel, she urged him to ask her father for a field. When she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What can I do for you?”

19 She replied, “Do me a special favor. Since you have given me land in the Negev, give me also springs of water.” So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs.

63 Judah could not dislodge the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the people of Judah.

1 The allotment for Joseph began at the Jordan of Jericho, east of the waters of Jericho, and went up from there through the desert into the hill country of Bethel. 2 It went on from Bethel (that is, Luz), crossed over to the territory of the Arkites in Ataroth, 3 descended westward to the territory of the Japhletites as far as the region of Lower Beth Horon and on to Gezer, ending at the sea.

9 It also included all the towns and their villages that were set aside for the Ephraimites within the inheritance of the Manassites.

10 They did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer; to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim but are required to do forced labor.

Makir was the ancestor of the Gileadites, who had received Gilead and Bashan because the Makirites were great soldiers. 2 So this allotment was for the rest of the people of Manasseh—the clans of Abiezer, Helek, Asriel, Shechem, Hepher and Shemida. These are the other male descendants of Manasseh son of Joseph by their clans.

5 Manasseh’s share consisted of ten tracts of land besides Gilead and Bashan east of the Jordan, 6 because the daughters of the tribe of Manasseh received an inheritance among the sons. The land of Gilead belonged to the rest of the descendants of Manasseh.

8 (Manasseh had the land of Tappuah, but Tappuah itself, on the boundary of Manasseh, belonged to the Ephraimites.)

There were towns belonging to Ephraim lying among the towns of Manasseh, but the boundary of Manasseh was the northern side of the ravine and ended at the sea.

The territory of Manasseh reached the sea and bordered Asher on the north and Issachar on the east.

11 Within Issachar and Asher, Manasseh also had Beth Shan, Ibleam and the people of Dor, Endor, Taanach and Megiddo, together with their surrounding settlements (the third in the list is Naphoth ).

12 Yet the Manassites were not able to occupy these towns, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that region. 13 However, when the Israelites grew stronger, they subjected the Canaanites to forced labor but did not drive them out completely.

14 The people of Joseph said to Joshua, “Why have you given us only one allotment and one portion for an inheritance? We are a numerous people and the LORD has blessed us abundantly.”

15 “If you are so numerous,” Joshua answered, “and if the hill country of Ephraim is too small for you, go up into the forest and clear land for yourselves there in the land of the Perizzites and Rephaites.”

16 The people of Joseph replied, “The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites who live in the plain have iron chariots, both those in Beth Shan and its settlements and those in the Valley of Jezreel.”

17 But Joshua said to the house of Joseph—to Ephraim and Manasseh-”You are numerous and very powerful. You will have not only one allotment 18 but the forested hill country as well. Clear it, and its farthest limits will be yours; though the Canaanites have iron chariots and though they are strong, you can drive them out.”

2 but there were still seven Israelite tribes who had not yet received their inheritance.

3 So Joshua said to the Israelites: “How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you? 4 Appoint three men from each tribe. I will send them out to make a survey of the land and to write a description of it, according to the inheritance of each. Then they will return to me. 5 You are to divide the land into seven parts. Judah is to remain in its territory on the south and the house of Joseph in its territory on the north. 6 After you have written descriptions of the seven parts of the land, bring them here to me and I will cast lots for you in the presence of the LORD our God.

8 As the men started on their way to map out the land, Joshua instructed them, “Go and make a survey of the land and write a description of it. Then return to me, and I will cast lots for you here at Shiloh in the presence of the LORD.” 9 So the men left and went through the land. They wrote its description on a scroll, town by town, in seven parts, and returned to Joshua in the camp at Shiloh. 10 Joshua then cast lots for them in Shiloh in the presence of the LORD, and there he distributed the land to the Israelites according to their tribal divisions.

9 The inheritance of the Simeonites was taken from the share of Judah, because Judah’s portion was more than they needed. So the Simeonites received their inheritance within the territory of Judah.

47 (But the Danites had difficulty taking possession of their territory, so they went up and attacked Leshem, took it, put it to the sword and occupied it. They settled in Leshem and named it Dan after their forefather.)

49 When they had finished dividing the land into its allotted portions, the Israelites gave Joshua son of Nun an inheritance among them, 50 as the LORD had commanded. They gave him the town he asked for—Timnath Serah in the hill country of Ephraim. And he built up the town and settled there.

 

 

 

 

 

From E  (11)

 

 

 1 Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.

 2 Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods. 3 But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the River and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants. I gave him Isaac, 4 and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I assigned the hill country of Seir to Esau, but Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt.

5 ” ‘Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I afflicted the Egyptians by what I did there, and I brought you out. 6 When I brought your fathers out of Egypt, you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued them with chariots and horsemen as far as the Red Sea. 7 But they cried to the LORD for help, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians; he brought the sea over them and covered them. You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Egyptians. Then you lived in the desert for a long time.

8 ” ‘I brought you to the land of the Amorites who lived east of the Jordan. They fought against you, but I gave them into your hands. I destroyed them from before you, and you took possession of their land. 9 When Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab, prepared to fight against Israel, he sent for Balaam son of Beor to put a curse on you. 10 But I would not listen to Balaam, so he blessed you again and again, and I delivered you out of his hand.

11 ” ‘Then you crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought against you, but I gave them into your hands. 12 I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove them out before you—also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own sword and bow.

14 “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods! 17 It was the LORD our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. 18 And the LORD drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the LORD, because he is our God.”

19 Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the LORD. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. 20 If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”

21 But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the LORD.”

22 Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the LORD.”
“Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied.

23 “Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the LORD, the God of Israel.”

24 And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the LORD our God and obey him.”

25 On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he drew up for them decrees and laws. 26 And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the LORD.

27 “See!” he said to all the people. “This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the LORD has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.”

28 Then Joshua sent the people away, each to his own inheritance.

29 After these things, Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of a hundred and ten. 30 And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.

32 And Joseph’s bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph’s descendants.

33 And Eleazar son of Aaron died and was buried at Gibeah, which had been allotted to his son Phinehas in the hill country of Ephraim.

 

 

 

Survey of conquest document. Hypothetical(12) This is used in the JE material of Joshua and in Judges. The similarity of some of the passages in Judges and Joshua has led some to believe that they were taken from detailed survey of the conquest of Canaan. The following is what we may have left of it.(13)

 

 

 

 the Israelites asked the LORD, “Who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites?”

2 The LORD answered, “Judah is to go; I have given the land into their hands.”

3 Then the men of Judah said to the Simeonites their brothers, “Come up with us into the territory allotted to us, to fight against the Canaanites. We in turn will go with you into yours.” So the Simeonites went with them.

5 It was there that they found Adoni-Bezek and fought against him, putting to rout the Canaanites and Perizzites. 6 Adoni-Bezek fled, but they chased him and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and big toes.

7 Then Adoni-Bezek said, “Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off have picked up scraps under my table. Now God has paid me back for what I did to them.” They brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there.(14)

19 The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.

21 Judah, however, failed to dislodge the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with Judah.

20 As Moses had promised, Hebron was given to Caleb,

he advanced against the Canaanites living in Hebron (formerly called Kiriath Arba)

14 From Hebron Caleb drove out the three Anakites—Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai

15 From there he marched against the people living in Debir (formerly called Kiriath Sepher). 16 And Caleb said, “I will give my daughter Acsah in marriage to the man who attacks and captures Kiriath Sepher.” 17 Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s brother, took it; so Caleb gave his daughter Acsah to him in marriage.

18 One day when she came to Othniel, she urged him to ask her father for a field. When she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What can I do for you?”

19 She replied, “Do me a special favor. Since you have given me land in the Negev, give me also springs of water.” So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs.

16 The descendants of Moses’ father-in-law, the Kenite, went up from the City of Palms with the men of Judah to live among the people of the Desert of Judah in the Negev near Arad.

17 Then the men of Judah went with the Simeonites their brothers and attacked the Canaanites living in Zephath, and they totally destroyed the city. Therefore it was called Hormah.

36 The boundary of the Amorites was from Scorpion Pass to Sela and beyond.

22 Now the house of Joseph attacked Bethel, and the LORD was with them. 23 When they sent men to spy out Bethel (formerly called Luz), 24 the spies saw a man coming out of the city and they said to him, “Show us how to get into the city and we will see that you are treated well.” 25 So he showed them, and they put the city to the sword but spared the man and his whole family. 26 He then went to the land of the Hittites, where he built a city and called it Luz, which is its name to this day.(15)

27 But Manasseh did not drive out the people of Beth Shan or Taanach or Dor or Ibleam or Megiddo and their surrounding settlements, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that land. 28 When Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor but never drove them out completely.

29 Nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, but the Canaanites continued to live there among them.

14 The people of Joseph said to Joshua, “Why have you given us only one allotment and one portion for an inheritance? We are a numerous people and the LORD has blessed us abundantly.”

15 “If you are so numerous,” Joshua answered, “and if the hill country of Ephraim is too small for you, go up into the forest and clear land for yourselves there in the land of the Perizzites and Rephaites.”(16)

16 The people of Joseph replied, “The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites who live in the plain have iron chariots, both those in Beth Shan and its settlements and those in the Valley of Jezreel.”

17 But Joshua said to the house of Joseph—to Ephraim and Manasseh-”You are numerous and very powerful. You will have not only one allotment 18 but the forested hill country as well. Clear it, and its farthest limits will be yours; though the Canaanites have iron chariots and though they are strong, you can drive them out.”

30 Neither did Zebulun drive out the Canaanites living in Kitron or Nahalol, who remained among them; but they did subject them to forced labor. 31 Nor did Asher drive out those living in Acco or Sidon or Ahlab or Aczib or Helbah or Aphek or Rehob, 32 and because of this the people of Asher lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land. 33 Neither did Naphtali drive out those living in Beth Shemesh or Beth Anath; but the Naphtalites too lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land, and those living in Beth Shemesh and Beth Anath became forced laborers for them. 34 The Amorites confined the Danites to the hill country, not allowing them to come down into the plain.

47 (But the Danites had difficulty taking possession of their territory, so they went up and attacked Leshem, took it, put it to the sword and occupied it. They settled in Leshem and named it Dan after their forefather.)

35 And the Amorites were determined also to hold out in Mount Heres, Aijalon and Shaalbim, but when the power of the house of Joseph increased, they too were pressed into forced labor.

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1  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuteronomist

2 As suggested by An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, by S.R.Driver, Meridian Books, New York, 1957

3 Joshua, meaning YHWH is Salvation. Also called Hoshea in Numbers 13:16 where Moses calls Hosea son of Nun, Joshua. ^{http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Joshua}

 

^{4 Driver divides the passage into A and B sections. It’s not clear if one is to be identified as E or J. It does seem to be a combination of a story of a monument in the Jordan river bed (B) , and another story of a monument at Gilgal (A).}

 

5 Is circumcision the rite to enter into the covenant with Israel? See Genesis 34

6 13-15 seem to be J in nature. Compare Exodus 3:5 to 15 “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” Also the anthropomorphism is characteristic of J; Driver 121

7 The practice so common in the bible of destroying the wealth of a city or “devoting” it to God is a peculiar one. But this is also an age where a desperate city might also sacrifice their own children to get God’s luck on their side. The Greeks of the Iliad behave in a similar fashion in regards to killing a cities inhabitants and desecrating temples, but they keep the women and loot. Is this the fantasy ideal of the priestly elite, their intentions for the Israelite armies of their day? Did they have so much control over the early Israelite war bands as to demand all the wealth of a city be devoted to God? What would be there motive for attacking the cities? Could it be freedom from the control of city dwellers? Or was competition for horticultural products and grain?

8 Pity to the poor clan of Zerah to be immortalized in this sad tale.

9 Compare with Judges 20:29-45 specifically 20:40 “But when the column of smoke began to rise from the city going up into the sky”

 

^{10 The Book of the Jashar (Upright), this text is from an older work possibly a collection of poetry or songs. 2 Samuel 1:17-27 is the other quotation of this book in the Bible. It seems have been circulated in Judah but both fragments we have describe Israelite heroes.}

^{http://net.bible.org/search.php?search=Book%20of%20Jashar&mode=exact&scope}

 

^{11 Driver believes this chapter is purely from the E document with slight editing from D}

 

^{12 This seems to be were J would pick up after Numbers 32:33-42, when the middle tribes receive their territories before the rest cross over.}

^{13 Driver 162-163}

 

^{14 Compare with Joshua chapter 10’s Adoni-Zedek, king of Jerusalem.}

 

^{15 Compare with Joshua chapter 2’s spies in Jericho story.}

^{16 Joseph is the name of the tribe, only after settling do they split into two clans.}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

^{and       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Jashar}

 

 

 

 

18 And the priests came up out of the river carrying the ark of the covenant of the LORD. No sooner had they set their feet on the dry ground than the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and ran at flood stage as before.

A.   20 And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. 2 At that time the LORD said to Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again.” 3 So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelites at Gibeath Haaraloth.