Dr Paul Allen

When you have children, one of the things you find yourself doing is singing a lot of the songs you used to sing in Sunday school and at church when you were a kid. There is one that has been particularly favoured by my kids in recent days: “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho.” Perhaps you remember the song’s chorus: Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho. Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho, And the walls came tumbling down! The song is a lot of fun for our kids, as it gives them an excuse to march around the living room and simulate the fall of Jericho’s walls with hand motions. It is also a good way to impress on their young minds the basic truths of one of the most famous stories in the Old Testament. In fact, I would venture to say that most children who spend any length of time in a church’s educational programs will hear the story of Joshua and Jericho several times over. TELLING THE WHOLE STORY As I think back on my time as a child in Sunday school, I know that ...

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...

In this excerpt from Joshua: Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary, David Firth explains how the purpose and genre help explain the issues of violence in the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua stands at an important point of transition both in the life of Israel and within the canon that reflects on that life. Appreciation of this shared transition is crucial if we are to read this text and continue to hear it as Scripture today. These points of transition have also played an important role in how the book has been understood through the years, not only in recent critical interpretation but also in the history of Christian interpretation. The transitional function of the book is flagged by its opening verses, declaring that Moses was dead and Joshua was therefore to lead Israel into the land God was giving them. Moses had been the pivotal human figure in the Pentateuch, the one who led Israel out from Egypt and through whom the great body of God’s teaching at Sinai had been delivere...

Perhaps you have sung: “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho.” Perhaps you remember the song’s chorus: Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho. Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, And the walls came tumbling down! The song is a lot of fun for kids, as it gives them an excuse to march around the living room and simulate the fall of Jericho’s walls with hand motions. It is also a good way to impress on their young minds the basic truths of one of the most famous stories in the Old Testament.  In fact, I would venture to say that most children who spend any length of time in a church’s educational programs will hear the story of Joshua and Jericho several times over. TELLING THE WHOLE STORY I know that we learned the basics of the fall of Jericho. Who could forget Joshua and the Israelites’ marching around the city once a day for six days, seven times on day seven, and the blowing of the horn and the shout that resulted in the walls’ miraculously falling to the gr...

I have little doubt that you can search the web and find an article on the invasion of Canaan and the destruction of the Canaanites recorded in the book of Joshua. In fact, it doesn't take long to find an atheist website that listed the destruction of the Canaanites as one of the top twenty most evil stories in the Bible. As part of our responsibility to give an answer for the hope that is within us ( 1 Peter 3:15–16 ), we must respond intelligently and graciously to such claims.  Enemies of the faith frequently refer to the destruction of the Canaanites as a form of genocide and then reject the God of the Bible as evil.   Sadly enough, in recent years, some Christians of a more liberal theological persuasion have effectively conceded this point to those who reject the Bible altogether and have responded in one of three ways.  First, they may reject the book of Joshua as inspired, saying that the Israelites got it wrong and that God did not approve of what t...

As much as I would like for it not to be so, the way we label things really does have an effect on the way people think. This is one of the reasons why propaganda is so effective. Call a particular group something or describe their beliefs or actions in a particular way long enough, and people will start to believe it.  For example, it is much easier to get a group of people to turn against others if you keep accusing them of being “enemies of humanity,” “on the wrong side of history,” or something of that nature. When God’s people and their Scriptures are attacked, it is often by having a label applied to them and then having that label repeated over and over again.  Want to get people to reject the Bible?   Accuse it of something that elicits an immediate emotional response, repeat the accusation long enough, and you can encourage people to reject large portions of the Bible or at least be embarrassed about certain portions of Scripture. This discussion ...

Genocide. The very word makes us cringe and conjures up unpleasant images of death and reminds us of some of the most wicked acts in history. It is a loaded term, to be sure, and many Christians are caught off guard when they hear it used to describe the invasion of Canaan that God ordered the Israelites to accomplish. Hearing such a charge puts us on the defensive, and it may even cause us to wonder whether our critics might be right. In our series on the invasion of Canaan, we have been considering whether it is accurate to describe the conquest as an act of genocide. Thus far, we have considered whether the invasion matches Merriam-Webster’s definition of genocide as “the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group,” and we have seen that the actual biblical narrative and history does not support the charge that the invasion of Canaan was a genocide. Before we move on to consider other aspects of the invasion more specifically, let...

Scripture both describes the Israelites exterminating the Canaanites in cities like Jericho (Josh. 6:21) and also presents this as the command of God. This is what the Israelites are supposed to do when they enter the Promised Land and encounter its inhabitants: "devote them to complete destruction . . . and show no mercy to them" (Deut. 7:2, ESV). The Hebrew word for "devoting to destruction" is 'herem'. It is not an ordinary kind of massacre but something sacred, a way of giving things totally to the Lord. It includes property and livestock as well as men, women, and children. And it has the effect of cleansing the land of abominations. The procedure looks very much like an ethnic cleansing demanded by the holiness of God. Is this what holiness looks like? Is this what we are supposed to imagine when we read, "Be holy, for I am holy" (Lev. 11:44, ESV)? How can we possibly read and teach the genocide accounts in our churches today? To answe...

One of the standard ways that the New Atheists attack Christianity is by using some of the Old Testament war passages to argue that God is violent and petty. One of the favourite passages for this is the so-called Amalekite Genocide of 1 Samuel 15 . But difficulties with passages such as this are not restricted to atheists. In 2009, the popular website Ship of Fools ran a feature called Chapter and Worse. 1 Readers were invited to submit their least favourite Bible passages, and an evangelical acquaintance of mine submitted 1 Samuel 15:3 . And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” ( 1 Sam 15:1 ‑3...