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 ...

Inside the walls of Jericho lived a woman who has forever been nicknamed by those who know of her as Rahab “the prostitute.” History has a strange way of remembering people, but in Christ, Rahab “the prostitute” would eventually become Rahab “a daughter of Zion,” and we can be confident that in heaven she is known by that better name. But the transitions from life in sin to salvation often happen on dramatic stages, and Rahab is no exception. Hebrews 11:30 actually records the destruction of Jericho before the salvation of Rahab. Jericho was something of the Las Vegas of the known world in Rahab’s era. The inhabitants of Jericho were violent, murderous, and idolatrous in the extreme. The evil of the city’s inhabitants was such that God had placed the entire city under His punitive ban; the whole city was to be destroyed.  Joshua 6:17 says, “The city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction.” This particular type of judgment was the most severe. The Heb...

I’ve sometimes asked my students what comes to mind when they hear the phrase “The God of the Old Testament.” Words like wrath, anger, violence, judgement, and even hate are often shared.  To be sure, some also associate God with mercy and salvation, but the imbalance toward the “negative” attributes is telling. This image of an angry and violent God features prominently in the intro to Christianity Today’s podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, where Mark Driscoll expresses his desire to “go Old Testament” on a few members of his church—an overt reference to violence.  Many would baulk at the idea of equating the Old Testament with violence. But what of the many texts that show God acting violently or commending violence within Israel? Isn’t the idea of God drowning 99.999% of his creatures in the Flood, or commanding the destruction of the Canaanites, inimical to the teachings of Jesus? The rush to resolve this perceived disconnect between the violence of God in the Old Tes...

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 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? The genocide commands are explicit. In Deuteronomy 7, God orders that When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations ….  and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. The word for “destroy totally” is herem, Greek anathema, and...

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...

  The object of the conquest narrative in the Book of Joshua is to demonstrate the theological principle that God will give the chosen people victory over their opponents as long as they remain obedient and do not serve other gods.  The result is an idealized account that glorifies Joshua’s leadership in a series of military campaigns that encompass the entirety of Canaan and leads to the utter defeat of a long list of kings.  The injection of miraculous intervention by Yahweh, the Divine Warrior, in the capture of Jericho (Josh 6) and of the miraculous lengthening of the day in the campaign against the Amorites of the hill country (Josh 10:1–15) serves the Deuteronomistic Historian’s theological agenda, which is not particularly concerned with providing a realistic account of the battles.  In addition, archaeologists have found no physical evidence for the conquest and destruction of most of the cities listed in the narrative during the time period associated with t...

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...

One comment that Christian pastors sometimes hear from people they are counseling is that it would be easier for them to have a strong faith if they could see God doing the same kinds of miracles today as are recorded in the Bible. The unspoken assumption is that seeing is believing—that the people who lived in Jesus' day found themselves more readily trusting Him because they could see His great works. www.hopecollege.com Such comments show the need for a closer reading of Scripture, for there are many cases where seeing great miracles didn't move observers to faith.  For example, John 11 records Jesus' raising Lazarus from the dead—a convincing sign if there ever was one. Yet the authorities took the miracle as a reason to oppose Jesus, not to believe in Him (vv. 45-53). Scripture also records occasions when even God's people experienced disbelief after seeing many miracles. Consider Joshua 7, which records what happened at Ai not long after the Israelites con...

In Joshua 5:13–15, a supernatural being who calls himself “the commander of the army of the LORD ” appears to Joshua in an episode that leaves most people puzzled: When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” And the commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.   www.hopecollege.com To better understand this seemingly strange episode in Joshua, let’s consult a few Bible resources as we follow these steps. Step 1: Locate the episode in the storyline of Joshua First, let’s look at the immediate context of this pa...

“As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you” (Josh. 1:5b). The events recorded in the book of Joshua mark a new period in Israelite and redemptive history, and the book itself inaugurates a new section of Scripture. The transition is clearly set forth when God declares “ ‘Moses My servant is dead’ ” at the outset of the book.  The man who led the people of Israel out of bondage in Egypt, who mediated as God formed them as a nation and established His covenant with them, who guided them through 40 years of wanderings in the desert as a consequence of their sin, who wrote the first five books of the Bible—this man has passed from the scene and a new leader has been appointed by God.  Joshua will lead the Israelites as they enter and take the land promised to them by God. The book opens the section of Scripture known in the Hebrew canon as the “Former Prophets,” the historical books covering the period from the death of Moses to th...

David and Saul (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) One of the more vexing problems in the Old Testament is how to parse the parallel accounts of 1 Chronicles 21:1–17 and 2 Samuel 24:1–25. 1 Chronicles 21:1–2 Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, and bring me a report, that I may know their number.” 2 Samuel 24:1–2 Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army, who was with him, “Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people.” The two accounts are nearly identical, save for one glaring disparity: The Chronicler’s version has Satan as David’s instigator, while 2 Samuel names Yahweh , the God of Israel , as the provocateur. The Chronicler’s a...

Moses with the tablets of the Ten Commandments, painting by Rembrandt (1659) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) By its own testimony (Deut. 1:1, 5; 31:22), Deuteronomy is the work of Moses. Mosaic authorship is affirmed many times elsewhere in the Old Testament (e.g. 2 Kin. 14:6), in ancient Jewish sources (e.g., Josephus), and in the New Testament. This view was almost universally held until the rise of rationalistic criticism in modern times. Critics correctly point out that the last chapter could not have been written by Moses. It is widely agreed that ch. 34 is an addendum, perhaps appended by Joshua. In the same way, the Book of Joshua ends with the death of Joshua, this record clearly having been supplied by the author of the Book of Judges, who appended verses from Judges to the end of Joshua (Judg. 2:7–9; cf. Josh. 24:29–31).  Likewise, the first verses of Ezra are copied and appended to the last chapter of Chronicles (Chronicles ends in the middle of a sentence). This w...

c. 840 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Does man have a free will? This question is one of the most frequently asked questions of theology. At times, it is not voiced as a question but as an objection to the whole idea of a sovereign God . At the heart of the problem is the definition of free will. What are we saying when we assert that man has a free will? Stated briefly, free will simply means that man has the ability to choose what he wants. Such ability requires the presence of a mind, a will, and a desire. If these faculties are present and functioning in a man, that man has a free will. Free will does not mean that man can choose to do anything he pleases and necessarily succeed. We may choose to fly without the aid of mechanical devices. We can fall through the air by ourselves, but we cannot fly through it. We lack the necessary natural equipment (in this case, wings) to fly. This does not mean, however, that we are not free. It does mean that our "freedom" is limit...