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The Truth about Conquest: Joshua as History, Narrative, and Scripture

L. Daniel Hawk
Interpretation 2012 66: 129
DOI: 10.1177/0020964311434872

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0010.1177/0020964311434872HawkInterpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology
2012

Article

Interpretation: A Journal of

The Truth about Conquest: Bible and Theology

66(2) 129140
The Author(s) 2012
Joshua as History, Narrative, Reprints and permission:
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and Scripture DOI: 10.1177/0020964311434872

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L. Daniel Hawk
Ashland Theological Seminary, Ashland, Ohio

Abstract
The Book of Joshua constitutes a vital biblical resource for interpreting modern narratives of conquest and
colonialism. As a historical narrative, it reveals the fluid and complex character of national memory; as a
national narrative of origins, it points to processes and motifs that shaped the identities of both Israel and the
United States; as a scriptural narrative, it presents a revelatory vision that illumines contemporary narratives
of conquest and evokes the stories of both colonizing and colonized peoples.

Keywords
Joshua, Conquest, Colonialism, Narrative, Ethnic Cleansing, Imperialism, h erem

Introduction
When George Bush, a professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature at the New York City University,
published the first edition of his commentary on Joshua, the United States government was in the
final stage of implementing a massive program of ethnic cleansing. Bush, a Christian of liberal
sentiments, aspired to offer an exposition that joined the critical and the practical, as well as the
exegetical and the ethical. His exposition followed the convention of the time, ascertaining with
the utmost practicable exactness the genuine sense of the original and extracting from that sense
the moral principles that might inform and edify Christian faith and action.1 It did not seem to occur
to him, however, that the biblical book of conquest might have any bearing on the events of his age.
As Bush was pondering Joshua, the federal government was systematically removing indigenous
peoples from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast and Old Northwestculminating in 1838

1 George Bush, Notes, Critical and Practical on the Books of Joshua and Judges (New York: E. French,
1838), 1.

Corresponding author:
L. Daniel Hawk, Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, Ashland Theological Seminary
Ashland, Ohio
Email: dhawk@ashland.edu

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130 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 66(2)

with the Cherokee Trail of Tears during the year of the commentarys publication. Although the
removal policy generated controversy and debate within the church and the society at large, Bush
did not see a connection with the story told by Joshua. Instead, he presented the conquest and
expulsion of the Canaanites primarily as a lesson from the past, a testimony to the certainty of
Gods judgment on wicked peoples and Gods blessing on the obedience of the chosen people.

Modern commentaries on Joshua generally correspond to Bushs in form and content: descrip-
tive exposition focused on issues of origin, a discussion of moral and theological principles
extracted from the narrative, and little if anything to say about how Joshua might speak to manifes-
tations of religious violence, ethnic antagonism, or the projection of imperial power.2 When read
solely as a testimony from the past and about the past, the interpretation of the book resembles a
process of excavation. The interpreter works through compositional strata and ascertains what they
reveal about the past, making discoveries along the way that illumine the meaning of that past and
what it has to teach contemporary readers. The process is selective in what it determines as rele-
vant, for Joshua endorses actions and attitudes that repel modern sensibilities. Interpreters thus
commonly affirm those aspects of the book that are consistent with Christian teaching and humane
values, while relegating those that are not to an unusable past.3

It is as a narrative of conquest, however, that Joshua speaks most directly to the challenges that
confront a global church in the present age. The story Joshua tells intersects with modern stories of
conquest, dispossession, and mass killing, while the sentiments that infuse itmilitant triumphal-
ism, the construction and demonization of indigenous others, appeals to the divine to legitimize the
confiscation of territoryresonate with motifs that configure the narratives of colonial empires to
this very day. The questions that press the modern reader, in other words, are narrative questions:
how Joshua narrates the story of conquest and expulsion, how the story influences the production
of new narratives, and how Joshua illumines contemporary narratives of conquest.

Joshua therefore constitutes a critical biblical resource for shaping Christian identity and mission
in the present age because of the story it tells, not in spite of it. Its meaning as a truth-telling, truth-
evoking narrative can be pursued, I suggest, by reading it along three descriptive trajectories. Joshua,
first of all, is a historical narrative, a particular peoples memory of their past that provokes reflection
on how citizens of modern nations remember and express their own pasts. Second, it is a narrative of

2 Compare the remarks of Michael Prior (The Bible and the Redeeming Idea of Colonialism, Studies in
World Christianity 5.2 [1999]: 143): Most commentators are uninfluenced by considerations of human
rights, when these conflict with a naive reading of the sacred text, and appear to be unperturbed by the
texts advocacy of plunder, murder, and the exploitation of indigenous peoples. An exception is the
recent commentary by Pekka Pitknen, which includes a reflection on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
Joshua (AOTC; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010), 7498.
3 Note, e.g., the comments of John Bright (The Authority of the Old Testament [Nashville: Abingdon,
1967]: 24344): The institution of holy war and its use in the conquest of Canaan is a bit of ancient
historyleave it there.

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Hawk 131

origins that looks to the foundation of the nation as the wellspring of national identity and mythology,
in ways reminiscent of the founding narratives of modern states and colonies. Third, it is a scriptural
narrative, a narrative of revelatory vision that speaks the truth about God, the world, and the people
of God. Reading Joshua as Scripture requires the church to accept the story it tells as its own, to see
itself reflected in it, and to take a hard look at what it sees. A narrative reading of Joshua, in short,
recaptures the sense that the biblical narrative reads the church even as it is read by the church.

Joshua Eclipsed
For most of their history, Christians perceived no distinction between the world of human experi-
ence and the world narrated by the Bible; the biblical world and the lived world were one and the
same. The biblical narrative explained the whole of human experience from creation to new crea-
tion, thus providing a framework within which contemporary events could be situated and under-
stood. Christians looked to the patterns and types that configured the biblical narrative for guidance
on how to interpret their lives in the interim between the beginning and end. Put simply, Christians
looked to the Bible to explain the world.

As Hans Frei noted in a landmark study, a significant shift occurred, beginning in the 17th century,
when readers began to look to the Bible with an interest in how it correlated with their experience
of the world. The lived world of human experience became increasingly the primary point of refer-
ence, eventually precipitating a fracture that set the biblical world over against the real world of
human experience.4 Once human experience became a reference point over and against the
Christian Scriptures, the Bible lost its explanatory authority and became an object of study subject
to the emerging narratives of science and humanism. Knowledge of the world now explained the
Bible.

The process resulted in three significant developments in the way Protestant Christians in par-
ticular read the Bible. First, the biblical narrative could no longer be taken at face value, as it
depicted a world often at odds with that known through scientific and historical inquiry. Interpreters
therefore adopted a critical method of interpretation that privileged objectivity, questioning, and
evaluation of texts and contexts. Second, the Bible was read from a historical perspective that
viewed the Bible as a collection of texts rooted in the past and about the past. Third, exegesis of the
literal or plain sense of the Bible became a matter of descriptive analysis. The hermeneutical task
focused on discerning and describing the ideas conveyed by the texts, the events to which they
referred, or the contexts in which they were produced.

Through the historical-critical method, the Bible became a bridge that connected the present to
the original, revelatory events and ideas that informed the churchs faith and practice. No longer

4 Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics
(New Haven: Yale University Press), 1974.

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132 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 66(2)

comprehended as an explanatory vision in its own right, biblical narrative had meaning for the
church through its capacity to bridge the contemporary experience of the church with the revelatory
past, to those points in time when God spoke through Moses, Christ, or a host of inspired prophets
and authors. The interpreters task, then, was to describe the events or ideas as clearly and accu-
rately as possible, casting the latter in the form of propositions that could contribute to the construc-
tion of a biblical theology.

The Book of Joshua presented historical critics with considerable challenges. First, the miracu-
lous events in the conquest accounts indicated, to the scientific mind, a mythological rendering that
obscured the real events. Joshua contains some of the most spectacular events in the Hebrew Bible:
the miraculous stoppage of waters at the Jordan River (3:74:24); Joshuas encounter with the com-
mander of a heavenly army (5:1315); the collapse of the walls of Jericho (6:1521); and the stop-
ping of the sun during a defeat of five kings at Gibeon (10:1214). Second, the narrative displays
a striking incoherence both in whole and in part, complicating the task of reconstructing the events
and the books compositional history. The narrative broadly renders Israels entry into the land as a
military conquest by which the nation took possession of the entire land, driving out or annihilating
all its peoples without effective opposition (10:3843; 11:1015, 1623; 12:124; cf. 12:4345).
Yet following claims of total victory, the reader encounters a report of great swaths of land yet to
be possessed by the Israelites (13:16). Subsequent materials portray an occupation of the land
taking place over a long period of time, punctuated by Israelite failures (15:63; 16:10; 17:1213;
18:110; 19:4748). Confused reporting also characterizes individual episodes. The account of the
Jordan crossing, for example, doubles back on itself, repeats various elements, and offers two dif-
ferent explanations for the erection of the shrine at Gilgal (4:89; 4:1924). Finally, Joshuas depic-
tion of a rapid and massive conquest conflicts with the account of Israels origins that has come to
light through archaeological analysis. Setting aside the biblical text, the material remains suggest
that Israel emerged from indigenous groups within Canaan as opposed to entering the land as an
invading force.

The task of addressing the books moral and ethical ideas within a historical framework has been
no less complicated. A wide diversity of opinion on the books compositional history has rendered
it difficult to situate theological claims within the context of Israelite religious systems and thought.
A case in point is the erem (mass killing as a religious act). Historical-critical study has opened
important paths for thinking through the moral problem of the erem, for the most part by identify-
ing the practice as an early or primitive manifestation of Israelite thought. There are, however, no
firm grounds for determining whether the commands and reports of the erem in Joshua reflect
early thought and practice or later rhetorical embellishments. If the latter, or if the erem informed
Israelite thought over a long span of time, dealing with its ethical implications clearly becomes
more problematic.5

5 For an overview, see Eryl Davies, The Morally Dubious Passages of the Hebrew Bible: An Examination
of Some Proposed Solutions, Currents in Biblical Research 3.2 (2005): 197228.

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Hawk 133

History as Narrative Discourse

In common parlance, history refers to those events, systems, and processes that occurred in the past
(as in historical events). Alternatively, it denotes a coherent, explanatory account of the past (as
in the history of the United States). In another sense, history may be conceived and studied as a
form of discourse that narrativizes the events of the past (that is, history as a mode of storytelling
that plots real events as opposed to imaginary ones).6 Finally, history may refer to a discrete aca-
demic discipline. History in this sense assumes a gap between the past and present that requires a
specific mode of consciousness to bridge. Historians construct the bridge through a critical approach
and empirical method that seeks to ascertain what actually happened, to discern the relationships
and processes that connected events, and to explain their significance for the present day.

Contemporary scholarship has taken up the question of how history functions as narrative dis-
course, that is, how histories weave past events into a narrative with a discrete beginning and end.
The relevant aspects of this discussion may be summarized as follows. First, like all narratives,
history renders disparate events into a unity through a plot that sums up and explains the meaning
of the whole. History as narrative presents a world that is finished, complete, and meaningful.
Histories thus speak to the impulse to find meaning in life. They give to reality the odor of the
ideal by linking events together with connections that become fully apparent only when viewed
by the explanatory insight of the end, mirroring the fiction that the meaning of a human life can be
fully known only after it has ended.7 Second, perspectives, beliefs, and values play a significant
role in the historical narrators decisions about what events are worth telling, what they mean, how
they should be related, and how all are related to the whole. The meanings that histories ascribe to
their accounts, in other words, have much to do with their narrators moral and ideological senti-
ments.8 Third, histories emanate from social systems and contexts and reflect specific social reali-
ties. They constitute culturally-specific ways of remembering and take up forms and tropes that
configure the thinking of their societies. The histories of groups and nations in particular often
implicitly authorize social systems; they argue either for the way things are or the way things
should be.9

6 History as a form of narrative discourse can be distinguished from other modes of remembering the past.
Annals, by contrast, simply record events in chronological sequence, while chronicles connect events
with a unifying thread but do not summarize the whole or offer explanatory endings. See Hayden White,
The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality, The Content of the Form (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University, 1987), 1021.
7 White, The Value of Narrativity, 21.
8 Ewa Domanska, A Conversation with Hayden White, Rethinking History 12.1 (2008): 321.
9 Hayden White (Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe [Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University, 1975]) argues persuasively that the empirically-oriented historians of
the nineteenth century appropriated archetypal plots, configured events according to their own perspec-
tives, and explained historical processes in conformity with their ideological convictions. See also Erlend
Rogne, The Aim of Interpretation Is to Create Perplexity in the Face of the Real: Hayden White in
Conversation with Erlend Rogne, History and Theory 48 (2009): 6375.

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134 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 66(2)

Joshua may be considered a history in the sense that it narrativizes and explains the past. It is not
a history in the modern sense, as it does not offer a critical evaluation of its sources or a thoroughgo-
ing analysis of the relationship between events. It does, however, bind events together through plots
that connect, summarize, and explain the meaning of the whole. That it relates something that actu-
ally happened in the past is integral to its meaning. Among other things, Joshua lays out the grounds
for Israels claim to the land of Canaan over against rival claimants. It argues that the land of Canaan
became the land of Israel because the God of Israel gave the land to his people in fulfillment of
promises to Israels ancestors. This same God fought for Israel, defeated all opposing forces, and
subdued the peoples of the land, all within the arena of space and time. The main plot of Joshua
thereby renders the past to serve ideological ends and to authorize a particular social reality.10

Joshua as a Narrative of Origins

Joshua draws on the core elements and motifs of Israels national mythology (the symbolic matrix that
constructs and maintains national identity) to configure the past and establish the tie that binds the
nation and its homeland. The portrayal of YHWH as a warrior, arguably the most prominent image of
YHWH in the Hebrew Bible, dominates the plot and perspective of Joshua. YHWH saves Israel from
its enemies, fights for the nation and wins victories, both directly (as at Jericho, Ai, and Gibeon) and
indirectly (through Joshuas defeat of kings and the capture of cities). YHWH overpowers and expels
indigenous kings and peoples and apportions their lands to each of the tribes as permanent posses-
sions. Israels God is the lord of the entire world (3:11), who directs the affairs of nations with unas-
sailable power. Israel, for its part, wins great victories and occupies territory only to the extent that it
is obedient to YHWH and to divine commands issued through Joshua and Moses. A unique destiny
propels it through history, and a privileged relationship to YHWH defines it. Israel becomes a nation
at YHWHs initiative, through a calling and promises made to its ancestors and brought to fulfillment
by the God who has superintended its history from beginning to end (24:213). A covenant binds the
people and YHWH together. The covenant offers abundant blessings to the nation but also calls for
exclusive allegiance and specific obligations (24:1428). The continued well-being of the nation
depends on maintaining the convictions, commandments, and commitments that set it apart from all
other peoples (23:1116). Israels connection to its homeland is therefore not essential, but rather
contingent on its relationship with YHWH. Joshua portrays Israel not as the original people of the land
but as an immigrant nation established by God for the fulfillment of divine purposes. It presents the
connection between nation, God, and land in the ideal: one nation living in one land with one God.11

10 Narrative reading does not inquire into Joshuas accuracy as a historical source. Contemporary scholar-
ship spans a continuum on this question, from the view, on one end, that it is a foundation myth and, on
the other, a substantially historical account.
11 This is not to suggest that Israel was a nation in the modern sense of the term. The rise of modern nation-
states represents a distinct phenomenon, as does the process of nationalism. How and to what extent
modern nationalism reflects continuity with the origins and attributes of nations in prior eras remains a
matter of debate. Certain centralizing processes and elements can be discerned, however, in the various
ways ethnic groups merge and form into new, larger entities. See Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origin
of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) and idem, Were There Nations in Antiquity? in The Antiquity
of Nations (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), 12753.

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Hawk 135

The narrative as a whole displays a centralizing agenda. Although Israel is elsewhere portrayed
as a loose confederation of tribes pursuing objectives alone or in concert with others (cf. Judg
1:136), Joshua repeatedly and emphatically renders Israel as one people (e.g., the whole nation,
all Israel, the entire people).12 With a few exceptions, it depicts the nation acting as a unit in
full conformity and obedience to its leader, who scrupulously adheres to divine commands and
directions. Representatives of the nation warn of strict punishment for any who do not acknowl-
edge Joshuas authority (1:18). The nation as a whole assembles twice for rituals of corporate soli-
darity (8:3035; 24:128). Israel achieves success in battle when it acts as one, to such an extent
that Israel and Joshua coalesce in reports of victories (10:15, 36, 38, 43). Acting as one, Joshua
and the nation subdue the entire land, defeating every enemy and wiping out all resistance (10:40
42; 11:1623). The message is clear. National unity is essential for the nations well-being and the
fulfillment of national destiny. Any fracture leaves the nation vulnerable to defeat and disaster
(7:15; 22:1034) and must be vigorously resisted.

Contrasting with this centralizing impulse is a marked discontinuity in the narrative infrastruc-
ture. Joshua does not offer a one-dimensional perspective or uniform account of what happened
when Israel invaded the land. Rather, it manifests multiple perspectives on the nations past and
what the past means. We have noted above the variant claims on the extent of the conquest and the
nations success in dispossessing the indigenous peoples. The dominant plot line trumpets the com-
plete defeat and extermination of indigenous peoples, and through the motif of the erem expresses
a profound concern to preserve Israels ethnic distinctiveness and separation.

Other stories, however, appear in strategic counterpoint to the battle accounts. These intimate a
more complex historical reality and a more inclusive vision of national identity. The stories of
Rahab and the Gibeonite emissaries, for example, humanize the peoples of the land in juxtaposition
to the associated battles at Jericho and Gibeon that relate their annihilation. In both cases, indige-
nous people praise YHWH, acclaim his mighty acts, and display national values of initiative,
resolve, and shrewdnessin marked contrast to the Israelites in the stories, who are portrayed as
passive, diffident, and silent on matters Yahwistic.13 In these stories, peoples of the land survive.
Some are incorporated into the Israelite community while still retaining their ethnic identity (6:25;
9:27). Moreover, Israel gathers for covenant ceremonies at Shechem, though the city does not
appear among the lists of conquered cities (8:3035; 24:128), intimating that other groups merged
peacefully with the Israelites. The accounts of indigenous survivals, as a whole, conflict with the
ostensible moral framework of the narrative. Joshua begins and ends with strong exhortations
toward obedience, but the survival of indigenous peoples conflicts with commandments that Israel
wipe out the peoples of the land and make no covenants with them (Exod 23:2123; Deut 7:14;
20:1618).

12 The Hebrew term kl, which signifies totality, occurs almost 200 times in the book.
13 An anecdote relating an encounter with Canaan precedes each of the three paradigmatic battle accounts at
Jericho, Ai, and Gibeon. The stories of Rahab, Achan, and the Gibeonite emissaries follow the same plot
structure, which moves from hiding to uncovering, and manifests an impulse to work through issues of
Israelite identity. See L. Daniel Hawk, Joshua (Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2000), 1933.

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136 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 66(2)

While conventional narratives create closure by explanation and summary, Joshua presents mul-
tiple conclusions that offer diverse meanings of the conquest and occupation of the land. The first
comes in the form of a commentary that hearkens back to the beginning of the book and explains
the story as a confirmation of YHWHs power and faithfulness (21:4345; cf. 1:26); YHWH gave
Israel rest in the land as YHWH promised to Israels ancestors.14 The second is a concluding epi-
sode: Joshuas dismissal of the eastern tribes back to their territories (22:19). This episode also
looks back to the beginning and signals closure, as the departure of the easterners confirms that the
conquest has been completed (1:1215). This conclusion emphasizes the theme of national unity;
the eastern tribes have already achieved their rest but agree to fight with their kindred until the
entire land has been subdued. After national unity unravels (22:1034), Joshua delivers a farewell
address that retells the story so as to highlight the tension between divine initiative and national
obedience that defines Israels relationship with YHWH (23:116). The address concludes by look-
ing to the future, but on an ominous note. Joshua warns that disloyalty will result in expulsion,
prompting the reader to read the book with the end of the larger narrative in mind (cf. 2 Kgs
25:121). A fourth ending brings Israels covenant relationship with YHWH to the fore. It begins
with YHWHs retelling of Israels story from the call of Abram to the present, moves to Joshuas
charge to the people to choose YHWH, and ends with Joshuas denial of the peoples declarations
of loyalty (24:128). The ceremony renders Israel as a people defined by reciprocal choosing, that
is, Israels choosing of the God who has chosen them. Reports of the burials of Joshua, Joseph, and
Eleazar formally close the book and mark the end of the larger narrative that YHWH previously
recounted (24:2933; cf. Gen 12:13).

The discontinuities, clashing perspectives, and multiple endings reveal a national narrative that
preserves numerous viewpoints about the nations past, what is worth remembering about it, and
what the past means. Israels narrative of origins holds in tension variant accounts of its history and
diverse perspectives on national identity and mission. It bears the traces of a long process of
rethinking and revising, as the nation worked out its identity over time as it retold its narrative of
beginnings. The remarkable thing about the canonical version of the book is that these various
memories and perspectives stand in tension and are not harmonized. Divergent viewpoints, and the
convictions they express, are therefore both confirmed and contested. The main plot of the con-
quest narrative articulates core convictions that define the nation and bind it to its land (e.g., God
directs and protects the nation, the nation has a unique status and destiny, the people are devoted to
God), and reports victories and events that confirm these convictions. Yet stories about indigenous
people who praise YHWH, acclaim YHWHs deeds, and exemplify national attributes appear in
strategic counterpoint to reports of wholesale slaughter. These expose the militarism and ethnic
exclusivism that infuses the dominant thread of the national narrative. Maps, lists, and summaries
transform Canaan into an Israelite homeland, but reports of failures and unoccupied land depict the
people and land as separate, though entwined entities. YHWH fights for the nation and shapes its
destiny, while Israel follows where YHWH directs and fights as YHWH commands. But YHWH
also withdraws when Israelites take matters into their own hands (7:19) and continues both as a

14 Rest signifies the end that YHWH sets before Joshua at the beginning of the book (1:13, 15).

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Hawk 137

threatening and affirming presence as the story draws to a close. Joshua, in brief, expresses a
historical vision that preserves and values narratives and counter-narratives. In so doing, it renders
a dynamic, contentious conversation about national history and identity.

Narrating Conquest
To sum up, Joshua may be regarded as a history in the sense that it narrativizes the past. It ties
events together through plots that convey the relationships between events. It presents a discrete
beginning and ending that constructs a sense of the whole and explains the meaning of the story.
And it appropriates cultural forms and motifs, expresses particular ways of remembering, and
encodes ideological convictions that authorize specific social realities. As a narrative of origins,
Joshua constitutes a platform for negotiating national identity; the text is a snapshot of Israel think-
ing through who it is as a people through a retelling of its past. The written form of this process
articulates the events and motifs that define the nation and bind it together. Yet it also incorporates
events and perspectives that communicate a more complex portrait of the nations past and its
meaning.

Joshua therefore intersects contemporary narratives of conquest and colonization not only by
the story it tells, but also in the way it remembers the past. The biblical text illumines the role
national mythology plays in defining nations, uniting peoples, and recounting the past. It reveals
the complex, multiform identities of nations and empires that construct genealogies of conquest.
Taken as Scripture, it constitutes a narrative vision that tells the truth about conquest, the occupa-
tion of indigenous lands, the ideologies that legitimize the same, and the exclusion of indigenous
peoples from the systems that empires construct and the histories that authorize them.

Reading Joshua as Scripture challenges both colonizing and colonized Christians to own the
biblical story and to interpret their histories in light of it. To illustrate, I offer comments in broad
strokes on the intersections between Joshua and the American master narrative of westward expan-
sion and nation-building.15 Points of convergence have already been suggested by my description
and discussion of the biblical text and in turn reflect my convictions and attitudes, as well as the
social realities that define my context. I write as a citizen of the United States, of Anglo-Saxon line-
age, and as a Christian clergyman and seminary professorimportant factors among many that
shape my identity and the way I read the narratives. My perspectives and commitments, in addition,
have been shaped by the vision of freedom and justice that I see configuring both accounts and the
peoples who produced them.

The motifs and convictions that configure JoshuaGod as founder of the nation and the divine
warrior who fights for it; the conviction of set-apartness from other peoples; union via a common
covenant; the contingency of national well-being on devotion and dutycomprise the basic

15 The scope of this article allows for only a brief sketch. I draw these elements out in Joshua in 3-D: A
Commentary on Biblical Conquest and Manifest Destiny (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010).

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138 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 66(2)

building blocks of American national mythology. They derive from the typological hermeneutic of
the Puritans, who saw themselves as the New Israel and read their emigration to the New World in
light of the exodus: God delivering his people from oppression by a passage through water to the
New Canaan. These motifs were taken up and transformed in the Revolutionary era by the
Founding Fathers, who needed a centralizing genealogy to unite thirteen fractious colonies into a
single nation.16 Biblical symbols and tropes channeled religious sentimentthe depth of feeling
and devotion that characterized love of Godtoward devotion to the nationlove of country. The
Puritan sense of calling to preach liberty to the captives was transposed into a new key as a national
mission to bring liberty and civilization to humanity. Puritan beliefs in Gods providential design
and destiny found new expression in the conviction that America is uniquely destined by the inexo-
rable progress of human history to be the harbinger of freedom and republican democracy. Combined
with beliefs in the distinctive heritage and character of the Anglo-Saxon race, and reinforced in the
nineteenth century by scientific racialism, these convictions fueled westward expansion and
informed the narrative of Manifest Destiny that legitimized the growth of the American empire.17

In both form and content, Joshua points to significant elements of Americas narrative. The
Doctrine of Discovery, which justified the confiscation of indigenous lands by divine authority and
right of conquest, resonates with the claims that justify the conquest of Canaan (Josh 1:29; 23:3
10; 24:1113).18 As with Israels narrative, Americas conquest narrative comprises a story of unre-
lenting and devastating warfare, largely initiated and perpetrated by the invaders, and bracketed by
the massacre of over 400 Pequot elders, women, and children at Mystic Fort in 1637 and the indis-
criminant slaughter of 150 Sioux at Wounded Knee in 1890.19 Iconic frontiersmen like Daniel
Boone, Natty Bumppo, and Kit Carson personify American attributes of heroism and rugged
individualism in much the same way that the pluck and energy of Caleb and Achsah personify

16 Anthony D. Smith (Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity [Oxford: Oxford University,
2004]) discusses the appropriation of religious sentiments and symbols by nationalist movements,
although he makes only passing references to the American experience.
17 See, e.g., Richard T. Wright, Myths America Lives By (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, 2004)
and Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1981). Empire figured prominently in American self-identi-
fication well into the twentieth century, and expressions of empire still figure prominently in American
iconography. As one ascends, for example, the south stairway to the House chamber in the U.S. Capitol
building, one encounters Emmanuel Leutzes famous painting, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its
Way. On the opposite wall hangs a portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall, whose decisions established
the Doctrine of Discovery as the legal foundation for the confiscation of lands from indigenous peoples.
18 For an account of the influence of Christian motifs on the Doctrine of Discovery, and its incorporation in
U.S. jurisprudence, see Stephen T. Newcomb, Pagans in the Promised Land (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2008).
19 The conqueror as victim motif masks culpability for violence in both narrative complexes (cf. Josh
9:12; 10:15; 11:15). General Philip Sheridan, a famous Indian fighter, articulated a common attitude
when he justified preemptive strikes against villages and villagers in this way: if a village is attacked and
women and children are killed, the responsibility is not with the soldiers but with the people whose crimes
necessitated the attack (Philip Andrew Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army [Norman, OK: University of
Oklahoma, 1999], 185). Sheridan coined the phrase, The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

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Hawk 139

Israels (cf. 14:615; 15:1319). The allotment and delineation of tribal lands in Canaan (cf.
18:15) mirrors the practice of establishing territories and surveying land as a prelude to opening
the land for settlement and removing the indigenous peoples. The biblical narratives preoccupa-
tion with maintaining exclusivist boundaries echoes similar sentiments in America, manifested
through laws that prohibited racial intermarriage and enforced segregation and by an idiosyncratic
construction of race based on blood content.

One sometimes encounters the claim that Christians justified the conquest of America by
recourse to Joshua. The claim is only partially true. While exodus motifs appear throughout
American literature and public discourse, allusions to Joshua are rare. Although there is a smatter-
ing of references to Amalekites in Puritan literature, there are virtually no references to indige-
nous Americans as Canaanites, particularly during the nineteenth century, when Joshuas program
of warfare, expulsion, and occupation was being replicated time and again as the nation expanded.20
Americans, in other words, readily saw themselves as an Exodus People, chosen and liberated by
an almighty God, but they avoided identifying themselves as a Conquest People who mimicked the
violence meted out to the peoples of the land. Christians rejected the violence of the biblical text
even as they perpetrated it in their day.

A more enlightened age might consign this lack of corporate self-awareness to the past, but that
would deny the power of myth to configure and reconfigure the national psyche. As this article was
being written, President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden. The announce-
ment was made within the context of a prolonged period of uncertainty about Americas identity
and role in the world, precipitated to a certain extent by the war on terror. The campaign entailed
a military mission executed without warning or permission into a sovereign nation. In the aftermath
of the mission, President Obama revealed that the code name for bin Laden was Geronimo.21
Americas greatest enemy in our time, in short, was linked in the minds of U.S. military and
governmental personnel with the lands last great indigenous resistance fighter, whom it may be
noted gained notoriety by evading U.S. search missions, just as bin Laden had. A coincidence?
Or the past announcing itself in the present?22

Joshua offers a biblical lens for interpreting imperial mythologies and histories, and their mani-
festations in the present, not only through the themes it articulates but also by its inclusion of the
counter-narratives that unsettle their givenness. By relating stories about the peoples of the land
and blurring the boundaries between Israelite and Canaanite, the book humanizes the indigenous

20 Cf. Bill Templer, The Political Sacralization of Imperial Genocide: Contextualizing Timothy Dwights
The Conquest of Canaan, Postcolonial Studies 9.4 (2006): 358391.
21 Obama on bin Laden: The full 60 Minutes interview. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-
20060530-10391709.htm. Accessed May 20, 2011.
22 Space does not allow a discussion of the ways that the depiction of the terrorist other resembles that
of the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all
ages, sexes and conditions (Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence).

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140 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 66(2)

peoples, hints at stories suppressed by the dominant plot, and exposes the rhetoric and sentiments
that exclude others. This counter-narrative tells of indigenous peoples who have not disappeared
from the land but remain to this very day. Reading Joshua with a focus on these stories and per-
spectives presses Christian readers to consider how conquest shapes their perspectives about the
past and the presentand to hear the stories that idealized nationalism attempts to bury. Joshua
prods American Christians in particular not only to read the biblical story as citizens of the New
Israel but also through Canaanite eyes, to undertake the difficult, dangerous task of inquiring
how the motif of YHWH the conqueror has worked in tandem with the motif of YHWH the savior
to configure their attitudes, commitments, and actions.23

A narrative reading of Joshua therefore draws contemporary Christians into a process of

epiphany rather than excavation. It looks to the biblical narrative for explanatory insight into
modern narratives of conquest and illumines the multiform and fluid character of national memory.
It establishes important trajectories for a necessary conversation about what has happened between
colonizing and colonized Christians. In so doing, Joshua can play a crucial role in prompting
Christians to confess the truth about conquest and thus to facilitate necessary steps toward justice
and reconciliation.

23 Robert Allen Warrior, A Native American Perspective: Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians, in Voices
from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (3rd ed., rev. and expanded; ed. R. S.
Sugirtharajah; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2006), 235241. Referring to the Exodus-Joshua complex, Warrior
writes, It is these stories of deliverance and conquest that are ready to be picked up and believed by
anyone wondering what to do about the people who already live in their promised land. . . . It is those
who act on the basis of these texts who must take responsibility for the terror and violence they can and
have engendered.

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