Dr Paul Allen

Philip Jensen I have been writing about the alarming Bible passages in which God commands the destruction of the older peoples of the land of Canaan, ordering what by any common sense understanding we would call genocide. Early Christians were not too troubled by such texts, because they mainly saw them as allegorical, and they saw no need to confront the moral dilemmas in their writings, particularly in the New Testament. But here is one exception, and a significant one. It appears in a devious and quite sneaky way in the Gospel of Matthew. Am I allowed to call gospels sneaky? I have been writing about the alarming Bible passages in which God commands the destruction of the older peoples of the land of Canaan, ordering what by any common sense understanding we would call genocide. Early Christians were not too troubled by such texts, because they mainly saw them as allegorical, and they saw no need to confront the moral dilemmas in their own writings, particularly the New Testament. B...

aYou must destroy all the people the  Lord  your God hands over to you. Do not feel sorry for them, and do not worship their gods, or they will trap you.  Deut.7.16 I recently read Charlie Trimm’s book The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation (Eerdman’s 2022). Let me say right away that this particular post does not in any sense constitute a specific response to that book, and is not a review: that is for another day. (I’ll just say here that it would be a great text for classroom use). Rather, Professor Trimm’s book set me thinking about the broader issues involved, which I covered in my own book Laying Down The Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore The Bible’s Violent Verses (HarperSanFrancisco 2011). The problem is easily stated. In the Old Testament, a sizable number of verses show God commanding not just the defeat of a people, but also their total annihilation, every last man, woman, child, and dog (literally). These passages involve the im...

A team of scientists sequenced genomes from people who lived in a port city on the Mediterranean coast of Israel between the 12th and 8th centuries B.C. Sometime in the 12th century B.C., a family in the ancient port city of Ashkelon, in what is today Israel, mourned the loss of a child. But they didn’t go to the city’s cemetery. Instead, they dug a small pit in the dirt floor of their home and buried the infant right in the place where they lived. That child’s DNA is now helping scholars trace the origins of the Philistines, a long-standing, somewhat contentious mystery. In accounts from the Hebrew Bible, the Philistines appear mostly as villainous enemies of the Israelites. They sent Delilah to cut the hair of the Israelite leader Samson and thus stripped him of his power. Goliath, the giant slain by David, was a Philistine. The Philistines’ reputation as a hostile, war-mongering, hedonistic tribe became so pervasive that “philistine” is still sometimes lobbed as an insult for a...

Probably the most difficult Old Testament ethical issue is the divine command to kill the Canaanites. Theologian-turned-atheist Gerd Lüdemann wrote that “the command to exterminate is extremely offensive”—a far cry from the merciful God frequently proclaimed in Scripture.  Consider just one of these passages: Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God. (Deut. 20:16–18) Were the Canaanites That Wicked? According to the biblical text, Yahweh was willing to wait about 430 years because “the sin of the Amorite [a Canaanite people group] has not yet r...

One of the most difficult episodes for us to handle as people who live on this side of the New Testament are the Old Testament records of what is called the herem . This is where God calls Israel to embark in what we could call a holy war against the Canaanites . He tells them to go in there and wipe out everyone—men, women, and children. They were forbidden to take prisoners and were to utterly destroy and put the ban, or curse, upon this land before they occupied it for themselves. When we look at that, we shrink in horror at the degree of violence that is not only tolerated but seemingly commanded by God in that circumstance. Critical scholars in the twentieth century have pointed to that kind of story in the Old Testament as a clear example that this couldn’t be the revealed Word of God. They say that this is the case where some bloodthirsty, ancient, seminomadic Hebrews tried to appeal to their deity to sanction their violent acts and that we have to reject that as not be...

Among the countless nuggets of wisdom I have received over the years from my father is this bit of gold—when you are reading your Bible and you come across something that makes you uncomfortable, resist the temptation to simply move on to something else. Where the Bible makes us uncomfortable is precisely where we need to slow down. It is compelling evidence of a specific weakness. When our thoughts or feelings bristle under God’s Word, He is right and we wrong. That said, it is understandable that so many would recoil from God’s command that every living person in Canaan be put to death as His people conquer the land. No mercy for those women and children, no compassion on the aged, God’s instructions were as clear as they were brutal. Many outside the faith have planted their flag here, arguing that our God is immoral, monstrous. Many on the fringes of the faith perform sundry exegetical gymnastics to wiggle out from under the account. Many faithful believers are simply puzzled an...

Canaanites the descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham. Migrating from their original home, they seem to have reached the Persian Gulf, and to have stayed there for some time. They then “spread to the west, across the mountain chain of Lebanon to the very edge of the Mediterranean Sea, occupying all the land which later became Palestine, also to the north-west as far as the mountain chain of Taurus. This group was very numerous, and broken up into a great many peoples, as we can judge from the list of nations (Gen. 10), the ‘sons of Canaan.’ ” Six different tribes are mentioned in Ex. 3:8, 17; 23:23; 33:2; 34:11. In Ex. 13:5 the “Perizzites” are omitted. The “Girgashites” are mentioned in addition to the foregoing in Deut. 7:1; Josh. 3:10. The “Canaanites,” as distinguished from the Amalekites, the Anakim, and the Rephaim, were “dwellers in the lowlands” (Num. 13:29), the great plains and valleys, the richest and most important parts of Palestine. Tyre and Sidon, their famous citie...

The ancient Canaanites , who according to the Bible were commanded to be exterminated, but later disobeyed God - did not die out, but lived on to become modern-day Lebanese , according to the first study to analyse their DNA . Key points DNA reveals that modern Lebanese are direct descendants of ancient Canaanites  Despite tumultuous history, there has been substantial genetic continuity in the Near East across the past 3,000 to 4,000 years  European additions to Lebanese ancestry occurred around 3,750-2,170 years ago  Study also provides clues about ancient Phoenicians   The Bronze Age Canaanites lived between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago in the region now encompassed by Israel , Lebanon , Syria and Jordan. Despite being the first group known to use an alphabet, and appearing many times in the Bible, the Canaanites left few written records. "What is exciting was that we can see the genetic continuity between the Bronze Age population and the present-day pop...

Many people fear the holy war passages of the Old Testament make him out to be. "Show no mercy." "Utterly destroy them." "Do not leave alive anything that breathes." Those are some pretty drastic marching orders. At first glance, God can look like an ancient military commander who's lost his marbles in war, suddenly unleashing rapid machine-gun fire on a conquered village of unarmed civilians. Do these passages depict genocide? Are Jesus' grandparents carrying out vicious massacres at his Father's command? How do we reconcile these tough passages with the goodness of God and help our people understand them well? How do we preach on holy war? Here are a few angles I've found helpful. Military cities The cities Israel takes out are military strongholds, not civilian population centers. Say the wordcity today and most of us think of metropolitan centers flooded with civilians: houses, restaurants, businesses, hospitals, and schools. But ...