JOSEPHUS' ANTIQUITIES, Books I-V, Adam to Samson (SOLVED)

[alon]

Oct 26, 2019 10:14:10 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

Dan,
What you said here has at least a grain of truth:

Maybe Jacob's mistake ... perhaps alluding to ... Maybe the problem was ...

Yeah, we could speculate on that all day, and by nightfall be no smarter than any of the common-taters

The truth is that Gen. 32 doesnt give an explicit reason for the wrestling.

You also made a good point that Jacob wrestled for a blessing because Jacob didnt let the angel go until he was promised a blessing. At that point Jacob was wrestling for a blessing. But it doesnt say if or why the angel started the wrestling.

An interesting issue is that the angel said his name will be Israel, but it wasn't until Gen. 35 that he got the name:
And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.

name- שֵׁם shêm, ; a primitive word [perhaps rather from H7760 through the idea of definite and conspicuous position; compare H8064]; an appellation, as a mark or memorial of individuality; by implication honor, authority, character:—+ base, (in-) fame(-ous), named(-d), renown, report.

So the term "shem" appears it can be more of an honorific in some cases. The way we know this is a title rather than a name change is after it is granted he is still called Ya'akov/Jacob, and far more than Israel. The example you cited was Gen 35: 10. Yet a mere 10 verses later we read:

Genesis 35:20  (ESV) and Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel's tomb, which is there to this day.

No one who was given an actual name change by God was ever referred to by their old name again.

Dan C

[rakovsky]

Good explanation.

[rakovsky]

For Question 5 (whether Joseph's story relates to the Eucharist and why the baker was the one killed), some writers do see Eucharistic imagery in the story of Joseph, the cupbearer, and the bread baker:

Greg Witherow's article  , from Holy Trinity Catholic parish, theorizes a relationship between the story in Genesis and the Eucharist:

The baker was sentenced to die but the cupbearer was to live. Because of this, we see both death and resurrection linked to the Eucharist typology. Finally, it was through Joseph’s relationship with these two that he is delivered from the dungeon. The cupbearer, who lived, pleaded Joseph’s cause to Pharaoh. As a result, Pharaoh released Joseph, giving him his life back. The typology provides bread and wine, death and resurrection, and a new life for Joseph, all elements of the Eucharist.

The abstract for Abdulla Galadari's article "Joseph and Jesus: Unearthing Symbolisms within the Bible and the Qur’an" gives an impressive explanation of correlations:

Joseph had been left in a pit (cistern) by his brethren. He was taken out by a caravan and sold for twenty pieces of silver. Jesus was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. In Egypt, Joseph enters the prison, which is described in the Bible also as a pit (cistern). Two others enter the prison with him, the cupbearer and the baker. Jesus is also crucified with two thieves. The cupbearer and the baker have similarities to the Last Supper, as Jesus distributes bread and wine. By interpreting their respective dreams, Joseph tells the cupbearer that he will be restored to his position in three days, while the baker will be crucified. Jesus informs one of the thieves that he will be with him in his kingdom, implying that one of the thieves is saved, while the other is not. In the story of Joseph, the fulfillment of the dreams occurred after three days, which coincided with Pharaoh’s birthday. After crucifixion, Jesus enters a pit of grave, which is also described as a prison by Peter in the Bible, and is fulfilled in three days when he is resurrected. Joseph asks the cupbearer to remember him when he returns to Pharaoh, but the cupbearer forgets. One of the thieves asks Jesus to remember him when he returns to his kingdom, and Jesus promises him that they will be together.

So the execution of the baker is correlated with that of the murderer on Yeshua's left. The article itself says:

The king’s chief cupbearer and chief baker also enter the prison with Joseph. This symbolizes the Last Supper, when Jesus gives bread and wine to his disciples. Also, as Josephenters prison with two individuals [Genesis 40:2 – 3], so was Jesus crucified with two thieves[Mark 15:27]. Joseph interprets the cupbearer’s dream as that he will be restored back to hisposition in three days. However, to the baker, he interprets his dream as that he will be crucified [Genesis 40:12 – 13, 18 – 19]. The usage of this symbology is important. Jesus symbolized wine as blood [Matthew 26:28]. In the , blood is life [Leviticus 17:14]. Hence,the cupbearer was to live. Jesus symbolized his flesh as bread [Matthew 26:26]. Bread isbroken symbolizing the destruction of the flesh. Hence, the baker was crucified. The Hebrew Bible uses the word (lachm) for bread, which means both bread and flesh (meat). ...
When Jesus symbolizes wine and bread, the same symbology of the cupbearer and thebaker is made, but instead of it being fulfilled in two different individuals, it is being fulfilledin one. The wine is blood, which is life, and life is the opposite of death. Therefore, Jesus,as Life, cannot truly die, as the cupbearer. The bread is flesh, which is crucified and destroyedunto death, as the baker. Hence, the Gospels speak of Jesus’ crucifixion, which is true, as itis talking about the destruction of his flesh, as the baker.

In Jon Courson's Application Commentary: Volume 1, Old Testament, (Genesis-Job), Jon Courson writes:

If the cup and the bread both speak of Communion, why does the butler's deam end in salvation, while the baker's end in damnation? Because he who understands and accepts what Christ did on the Cross, as signified by the bread and wine of Communion, will be set free. But he who goes to the Lord's Table haphazardly and doesn't embrace what Jesus did on his behalf will remain in the grip of sin.

I think that his answer isn't clear enough as to how it relates to the difference between the cupbearer and the baker. But I notice that in Genesis 40, after the Butler/Cupbearer tells Joseph his dream, the text says:
16. When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good, he said to Joseph, “I also was in my dream, and there were three [c]white baskets on my head.

You could theorize that first the Butler gave his story because he trusted Joseph, and it was only after hearing that the news was good that the Baker gave his story, so the Butler was more trusting and thus favored.

The "Let’s Talk Scriptures" Blog's Bible Study on Joseph and The Holy Communion says:

The baker was to die, just as the bread must be broken. This showed that the body of Christ would be hung, as the perfect sacrifice to pay for sins committed by all mankind.



Hebrews 10:10 (ESV) And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
...
Joseph represents sinful mankind who was in prison. The baker died, that’s the sacrifice of the body of Christ which was given once and for all. Yet the blood continues to testify on our behalf. And it is that blood that brings our redemption



Hebrews 12:24 (ESV) and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Witherow's article "The Eucharist In Scripture: Part I " also addresses Question 19 about the mystical or spiritual meaning in the threshing floor where the Temple was built.

Threshing floors were used by God to stage significant events in the Old Testament. A
few are listed here.

• The Temple was where the Old Testament sacrifices were offered in the Davidic

kingdom. It was built on the site of Araunah the Jebusite’s threshing floor.

• Abraham offered his son Isaac on the future site of Araunah’s threshing floor,

which also served as the future site of the Temple.

• Uzzah was struck dead at a threshing floor when he touched the Ark 8.

• David was judged at the threshing floor after he conducted the census 9
.


8. II Samuel 6:6

9
. II Samuel 24:16-25

...Threshing also included
separating the grain from the chaff. Those united to Christ have access to heaven while
those not united are lost. And any union with Christ is an act of the Holy Spirit who
blows where he wishes 13. The grain was eventually turned into bread, completing the Eucharist imagery. ...

13. John 3:8 - The word for Spirit and wind is that same in Greek (pneuma) and Hebrew (ruwach).

In the New Testament, John the Baptist depicts Christ’s ministry as taking place on the
threshing floor. In Luke chapter 3 John states, “[Christ] will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and
to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

[alon]

Oct 26, 2019 22:27:26 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

For Question 5 (whether Joseph's story relates to the Eucharist and why the baker was the one killed), some writers do see Eucharistic imagery in the story of Joseph, the cupbearer, and the bread baker:

Greg Witherow's article  , from Holy Trinity Catholic parish, theorizes a relationship between the story in Genesis and the Eucharist:

You can read almost anything into it you want. And those who see “Eucharistic imagery in the story” are Catholic commentators with a vested interest in “finding” such imagery, even though nowhere in scripture does this appear! As I read through your explanations it occurred to me how convoluted the logic is throughout in order to prove what cannot be proven. What can be proven is the practice of taking the eucharist in a myriad of pagan religions. Here are just a couple of the more well known examples:

* 500 years before Jesus, Dionysus (the Greek god of fertility and ecstasy) was celebrated through ritual wine drinking; born of a virgin, his blood is wine to be shared.

* Another prominent pagan religion popular in Jesus time and long before was the cult of Mithras. He had a last supper just before ascending to heaven. Initiates partook of a sacred meal which included both bread
    and wine, believed to be the flesh and blood of the great bull slain by Mithras.

Some, while lesser known have even more striking similarities to the taking of the Eucharist in Catholic churches. I understand the EO Church doesn’t believe in Transubstantiation, and even more pagan doctrine in itself. But still, the Eucharist is not of God, but of pagan men. However it is a cornerstone of Catholicism and much of Christianity. It is taught as doctrinal truth, pounded into the minds of people who are there, predisposed to believe anyhow. So this is one I can see how you would believe all the twisted logic in those commentaries.

Yeshua did what Christians commonly call “communion” at a Pesach seder just before His death. As Meshiachim, we follow this custom once each year, teaching what Yeshua did at the appropriate time in the seder. The entire moed of Pesach and everything associated with it had pointed to Yeshua for 1500 years by then, not just that part. It is an important part to be sure, and one we emphasize. But like our approach to the Bible, we observe the entire message of Pesach. And there is a LOT there that Christianity misses out on.

Sorry to be so straightforward but really there is no other way to say it. The Eucharist is false doctrine.

Dan C

[rakovsky]

You gave a thoughtful conclusion about Question 6 (on Joseph's Egyptian name):

May 8, 2019 8:22:53 GMT -8 alon said:

Translations are not exact, often trying to get across a message the modern reader might understand where the original text (especially very old ones) may use colorful metaphors or other literary devices. I can see a distinct similarity in the two translations there.

The Egyptians believed in many gods, so I doubt they’d name someone for the One True God.

Like you, I supposed that the original meaning was colorful, whereas Josephus was being inexact.

[rakovsky]

Regarding Question 6 (Why does the meaning of the Hebrew name that Josephus says that Pharaoh gave Joseph differ so much from the meaning of the Biblical Egyptian version, which Josephus himself seems to recognize?
), it seems like Joseph's name could be related to Asenath's name, since they both contain "-enath".
Genesis 41 says:

Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-Paneah. He also gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. So Joseph took charge of all the land of Egypt.

Bible Study Tools connects this part (-enath) of her name with Neith, a goddess of the heavens:

'-c-n-t, pointed by the Massoretes as 'acenath, appears in the Septuagint as aseneth or asenneth. The last two consonants appear to represent the name of the Egyptian goddess Neith. The first part of the name will then represent either ns = "belonging to" (so Brugsch and generally), or 'ws-n (note the doubled "n" in the Septuagint transcription) = "she belongs to" (so Spiegelberg). It is possible that these four letters represent the Egyptian name Sn-t (so Lieblein and others), though the 'aleph (') must then be explained as 'aleph prostheticum and the taw (t) would be less regular than a he (h) to stand for the Egyptian feminine t.

Tyson Thome theorizes on the Think-biblically website that Zaphnath-Paaneah (צָפְנַת פַּעְנֵחַ Ṣāfnaṯ Paʿnēaḫ) is related to צפן פִּעְנֵחַ (tsaphan paneach), meaning to hide & to interpret. This would go along with Josephus' explanation that the name meant "Discoverer of Secrets." Thome writes:

An interesting possibility comes from Julia Blum, of the Israel Institute for Biblical Studies. She asked herself the question, "What if the name isn't Egyptian?" What if the name derives from Hebrew rather than Egyptian? She writes:



The name Zaphenath-Paneah that was given to Joseph, can be derived from the Hebrew roots: צפן פִּעְנֵחַ (tsaphan and paneach). Tsaphan means “to hide, treasure or store up”. Paneach means “to decipher; solve; decode, interpret”. Thus, Zaphenath-Pa’neach, Joseph’s Egyptian name, might be translated as, “He who explains hidden things”.

This fits in much better with the context of historical events, but one has to wonder if Pharaoh would provide a Hebrew based name? Pharaoh was in a generous mood — just look at the ways he honored Joseph in the Bible's account — and in an effort to continue that he might just have given Joseph an honorific based on Joseph's native tongue.

On his own website, Rabbi Michael Samuel lays out K. Kitchen's theory that the Zaphenath part was originally Zatenaph (an attempt to write the well known Egyptian word "Djeduen-ef") and that a scribe accidentally switched the T and the Ph in the name because it resembled the Semitic root "Zaphan" (to hide):

Professor Kenneth Kitchen, points out that Zaphenath-paneah was originally Zat-en-aph, for in ancient Egyptian was pronounced Djed(u)en-ef (‘he who is called’). This point, he asserts, is a familiar phrase to all Egyptologists. Furthermore, it is an example of where the letters ‘t’ and ‘p,’ became reversed. Such orthography illustrates the common (but unintentional) practice whenever difficult words and names are transferred from one language into another. A Hebrew scribe most likely slipped into the use of a common Semitic root zaphan while writing zaphenat, for the unfamiliar vocalization of Joseph’s Egyptian name. The second part of the name, “Paneah,” may be derived from the Egyptian word, “aneah” ankh or ankhu (signifying ‘is alive’). The initial “Pa” or “Pi,” corresponds to the Egyptian word Ipi or Ipu. Therefore, “Zaphenath pa’aneah” means, “he who is called Anakh.”

So according to Kitchen's rendering, Joseph's name is Djed(u)en-ef Pa'Anakh, meaning "He who is called Life".

Damien Bullen, in his article The True Joseph, theorizes that Joseph was Pharaoh Amemenhat I's (ruled from 1991 BC to 1962 BC) steward Sobeknahkt, although I don't have much opinion on that, since the name seems significantly different than Joseph's:

Sob – Zap

Ek- He

Nahkt – Nath



Stunningly, we know that a Sobeknahkt was royal chief steward during the later years of Amemenhat I, fitting perfectly with the Bible’s versions of events. Indeed, the block at Lisht gives him the titles of ‘Chief Steward,’ & ‘Chief of the Friends,’ the latter meaning he was the most trustworthy of all the pharoah’s officials, reflected by the Pharoah’s proclamation to Joseph of; “Only with regard to the throne will I be greater than you.‘ There is also an image of Sobeknahkt on one of the smaller blocks, which shows him filling storage jars, a perfect fit for Joseph’s laying aside a fifth of Egypt’s produce in preparation of famine!

In "Joseph’s Zaphenath Paaneah—a chronological key
", Patrick Clarke writes:

One very popular idea that Joseph was some kind of‘revealer of godly secrets’ (
Dje(d)-Pa-Nute(r)-(‘e)f-ankh
was first postulated by Steindorff over a century ago. This name-type has been attested by scholarship as occurring between the 11th
–6
th
centuries
BC
but not during the timeof Joseph, which in both the conventional and the biblical chronology was considerably earlier. What Steindorff did not know at that time was that his
Ḏdp3nṯrfanḫ
always mentioned a specific deity, never ‘the god’.
Schulman not long ago commented, “I do not think thatan exact original prototype [of
Ḏdp3nṯrfanḫ
] … will ever be found in the Egyptian documents, for I doubt that it ever existed.”

He notes that Kitchen admits that the name is quite different than known Egyptian words: "Zaphenath
is directly reminiscent of thecommon Semitic root

zaphan
,
and of very little in Egyptian."
Unfortunately, Clarke's own solution, which is based on Egyptian words like storehouse does not come across very clearly and persuasively for me.

It sounds to me like Julia Blum's answer is best, and that it is based on the Hebrew צפן פִּעְנֵחַ (tsaphan paneach), meaning to hide & to interpret, because it matches those words except for the "-ath" in the middle, and because it goes along with the context of God revealing secrets to Joseph. The difference that I saw between the Egyptian name and Josephus' solution is that the context and Budge's solution ("the God speaks and he lives") called for the word "God". But the goddess of the heavens, Neith, is conceivably in the -nath root word, and anyway, the context of God revealing secrets still fits with "Discoverer of Secrets".

[alon]

Oct 27, 2019 11:56:04 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

Regarding Question 6 (Why does the meaning of the Hebrew name that Josephus says that Pharaoh gave Joseph differ so much from the meaning of the Biblical Egyptian version, which Josephus himself seems to recognize?
), it seems like Joseph's name could be related to Asenath's name, since they both contain "-enath".
Genesis 41 says:

Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-Paneah. He also gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. So Joseph took charge of all the land of Egypt.

Bible Study Tools connects this part (-enath) of her name with Neith, a goddess of the heavens:

'-c-n-t, pointed by the Massoretes as 'acenath, appears in the Septuagint as aseneth or asenneth. The last two consonants appear to represent the name of the Egyptian goddess Neith. The first part of the name will then represent either ns = "belonging to" (so Brugsch and generally), or 'ws-n (note the doubled "n" in the Septuagint transcription) = "she belongs to" (so Spiegelberg). It is possible that these four letters represent the Egyptian name Sn-t (so Lieblein and others), though the 'aleph (') must then be explained as 'aleph prostheticum and the taw (t) would be less regular than a he (h) to stand for the Egyptian feminine t.

Tyson Thome theorizes on the Think-biblically website that Zaphnath-Paaneah (צָפְנַת פַּעְנֵחַ Ṣāfnaṯ Paʿnēaḫ) is related to צפן פִּעְנֵחַ (tsaphan paneach), meaning to hide & to interpret. This would go along with Josephus' explanation that the name meant "Discoverer of Secrets." Thome writes:

An interesting possibility comes from Julia Blum, of the Israel Institute for Biblical Studies. She asked herself the question, "What if the name isn't Egyptian?" What if the name derives from Hebrew rather than Egyptian? She writes:



The name Zaphenath-Paneah that was given to Joseph, can be derived from the Hebrew roots: צפן פִּעְנֵחַ (tsaphan and paneach). Tsaphan means “to hide, treasure or store up”. Paneach means “to decipher; solve; decode, interpret”. Thus, Zaphenath-Pa’neach, Joseph’s Egyptian name, might be translated as, “He who explains hidden things”.

This fits in much better with the context of historical events, but one has to wonder if Pharaoh would provide a Hebrew based name? Pharaoh was in a generous mood — just look at the ways he honored Joseph in the Bible's account — and in an effort to continue that he might just have given Joseph an honorific based on Joseph's native tongue.

It sounds to me like Julia Blum's answer is best, and that it is based on the Hebrew צפן פִּעְנֵחַ (tsaphan paneach), meaning to hide & to interpret, because it matches those words except for the "-ath" in the middle, and because it goes along with the context of God revealing secrets to Joseph. The difference that I saw between the Egyptian name and Josephus' solution is that the context and Budge's solution ("the God speaks and he lives") called for the word "God". But the goddess of the heavens, Neith, is conceivably in the -nath root word, and anyway, the context of God revealing secrets still fits with "Discoverer of Secrets".

I too like Blum's version. The Egyptians would have given him an Egyptian name. And since he was appointed to a high posting that name would have honored one of their Gods. However we serve a God who can oder things such that even the Egyptian name when written in Hebrew would honor the Lord God Almighty; the God of Israel, and His purpose for this man so destined for greatness in service of his God!

The theory about transliteration of  the name rendering something different is interesting, and entirely possible. But I think less likely than Blum's understanding. Just my opinion.


Dan C 

[rakovsky]

Regarding Question 7, let me make a corrective note:
I had quoted Josephus as saying that God was angry at the Benjamites for sparing the Canaanites in Book V. But actually the full passage says that God was angry at the Israelites for this, not just the Benjamites. More importantly, the place in the Bible that this correlates to in Loeb's sidenote is Judges 2, and this passage in the Bible does not say that God was angry for them sparing Canaanites, but rather Judges 2 notes that they violated the covenant that said "And you shall make no covenant/treaty with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars."

The difference is important when it comes to understanding what exactly God commanded the Israelites do to the Canaanites, because God's anger over their laxity to the Canaanites had been a key reason why I thought that God had commanded their killing.

On the other hand, it looks to me like Josephus was likely referring to Psalm 106, because he writes that God complained about them sparing the Canaanites in an "oracle" (like the Psalms were oracles), and Psalm 106 says:

34. They did not destroy the peoples,

Concerning whom the Lord had commanded them,
35. But they mingled with the Gentiles

And learned their works;

36 They served their idols,

Which became a snare to them.

37 They even sacrificed their sons

And their daughters to demons,

38 And shed innocent blood,

The blood of their sons and daughters,

Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;

And the land was polluted with blood.

Thus they [j]were defiled by their own works,

And played[k] the harlot by their own deeds.



40 Therefore the wrath of the Lord was kindled against His people,

So that He abhorred His own inheritance.

41 And He gave them into the hand of the Gentiles,

And those who hated them ruled over them.

Although I suppose that "destroying" a people could include dissolving it politically as one variation.

That leaves basically Deuteronomy 7 and 20 (and perhaps Joshua) that specify annihilating them.

As for the parts of Question 7:

A) Was the extermination of Canaanites God's order or just something that Moses decided on in accordance with God's more general command to conquer the area?

In Deuteronomy 7, it sounds like it is Moses announcing his own intention:

"1. When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;
2 And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:"

Deuteronomy 20 presents it as if God commanded destroying everyone in the cities given as an inheritance:

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)

Paul Coulter, in his article "Old Testament Killings" and its section "Did God Command the Mass Killing of the Canaanites?", argues that to imagine that the Israelites misinterpreted that God ordered the killings would severely undermine the 's account of God:

The suggestion is made that Israel at the time of Joshua had a limited understanding of God and that they wrongly thought that their God, YHWH, expected the same kind of sacrifice. This line of reasoning raises serious questions about the nature of God, in particular whether or not He is able to make Himself clearly understood and whether or not He would allow such blatant disobedience to go unchallenged. One attempt to overcome this difficulty is the suggestion that God allowed His name to be associated with these mass killings because His love for Israel was so great that He was willing to have His reputation tarnished for the sake of His relationship with them. This view, however, does not find any support in the relevant Old Testament texts, which clearly state that God commanded the mass killings (Joshua 6:17, 21; Deuteronomy 20:16-17). Later texts even criticise the Israelites for their failure to obey the command (Psalm 106:34-42). The only way to reconcile the Old Testament accounts with this view is to regard the Old Testament as simply Israel’s record of their perception of their unfolding relationship with YHWH. The Old Testament is reduced to being a human account of the evolution of monotheistic religion rather than a divine revelation of God’s actions in history.

On the other hand, in the same article, Coulter argues that per a closer analysis, the specific commands were not actually necessarily killing, but could be driving out the Canaanites:

The judgement was intended to be expulsion from the land rather than genocide

There is a range of verbs used in the commands to Israel concerning how they should treat the Canaanites. Some of these clearly speak of extermination, but others speak of driving them out (see Deuteronomy 7). Deuteronomy 9:3 brings these two ideas together succinctly: “you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the LORD has promised you”. It seems from a careful reading of the related passages that God’s intention was that the Canaanites would have a possibility of fleeing the land as the Israelites advanced. In the case of those kings and cities that refused to do so, there was no option but annihilation. There is no suggestion that Canaanites who left the land must be pursued; rather the commands to annihilate are connected only with people in the cities of the land.

Presumably if Canaanites had left Canaan they would then have been treated like all other nations and the Israelites could have made treaties with them and would have been bound by the more general codes of conduct in warfare given in Deuteronomy 20 (see 1. above).



So, this was not so much a case of genocide (the extermination of an ethnic group) but rather forced removal from the land of Canaan. God’s judgement was primarily that the Canaanites would lose the land because of their detestable religious practices and in order to preserve the purity of Israel’s worship of Him. As we read through Joshua and Judges this appears to be born out, as the extermination of the Canaanites is never fully implemented.

“So Joshua struck the whole land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings. He left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed, just as the LORD God of Israel commanded.” — Joshua 10:40
Joshua captured all the cities of these kings, and all their kings, and he struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them; just as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded. — Joshua 11:12



They struck every man with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them. They left no one who breathed. Just as the LORD had commanded Moses his servant… he left nothing undone of all that the LORD had commanded Moses. — Joshua 11:14-15

B) Could the Israelites, in fulfilling their instructions, spare the Canaanites who surrendered and gave up their idolatry and political independence?
It looks like the answer is Yes because you gave the example of Ruth, Dan.

Greg Koukl writes in "The Canaanites: Genocide or Judgment?":

Aliens shared the same legal rights in the commonwealth as Jews (Lev. 19:34, Lev. 24:22, Deut. 10:18–19). Foreigners like Naomi and Rahab were welcome within their ranks.

Rahab was the woman who protected Israelite spies in Joshua 2.
Archeologists theorize that the Israelites themselves have a major or fundamental Canaanite component hereditarily, which implies that many Canaanites did convert over the centuries to the Israelites' religion.

Justin Taylor writes on the Gospel Coalition website:

Even though the destruction is commanded in terms of totality, there seems to have been an exception for those who repented, turning to the one true and living God (e.g., Rahab and her family [Josh. 2:9], and the Gibeonites [Josh. 11:19]). What this means is that the reason for the destruction of God’s wicked enemies was precisely because of their rebellion and according to God’s special purposes—not because of their ethnicity.

C) How could Josephus say that there were no Canaanites left after the Israelite conquests, but then talk about the Canaanites as still existing later?

Deuteronomy 20 says not to leave anyone in the cities given as an inheritance to the Israelites. But maybe that allows them to live if they leave the cities. 

Judges 1 notes Jebusites staying:

The Benjamites, however, did not drive out the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the Benjamites.

22. Now the tribes of Joseph attacked Bethel, and the LORD was with them.

Reuel Leasure writes on the Cross Examined site that utterly destroy doesn't mean genocide because of how Joshua's book says that he left survivors yet utterly destroyed the people:

Joshua’s Claim: Josh 10:39 says “every person” in Debir was “utterly destroyed.”



Reality: Josh 11:21 states that later, Joshua “utterly destroyed” Anakites in Debir.



Again, Joshua says they “utterly destroyed every person” in Debir. But the very next chapter, we read of survivors in Debir who Joshua “utterly destroyed” again.



Joshua’s Claims: In Joshua 11:21, he tells us the Anakites were “cut off” and “utterly destroyed” in Hebron.



Reality: A few chapters later in Joshua 15:13-14, we read that “Caleb “drove out” the Anakites from Hebron.



Once again, Joshua claims utter destruction while a few chapters later, he tells us that Caleb drove out the same people group he just “utterly destroyed.”
...
I’m a biblical inerrantist. I’m not someone to play “fast and loose” with the text. Yet I’m persuaded that Joshua didn’t intend for us to interpret the “utterly destroy” language literally.



How could he if in Joshua 11 he tells us that they “utterly destroyed” the Anakites in Hebron, and then just a few chapters later in Joshua 15, he tells us that Caleb “drove out” those same Anakites in the same Hebron?



Would Joshua really be that irresponsible with his reporting? It’s doubtful. After all, God made it clear elsewhere that “utterly destroy” didn’t mean complete annihilation.



Consider Deuteronomy 7:2-4:



And when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction…you shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they will turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods.



Now, wait a second. God ordered them to devote the Canaanites to complete destruction, but then he forbids them from intermarrying with them. How could they intermarry with people they had completely obliterated?



It seems obvious that whatever “utterly destroy” means, it doesn’t mean genocide.

Leasure argues that it was hyperbole based on other examples and on the usage of rhetoric of the time:

King Mesha of Moab (840 BC) reported that the Northern Kingdom of Israel “has utterly perished for always.” — In truth, Israel was around long enough to be taken into exile one hundred years later.



Tuthmosis III of Egypt (1500 BC) declared that “the numerous army of Mitanni was overthrown within the hour, annihilated totally, like those now not existent.” — Actually, Mitanni continued to fight for another two hundred years.



Merneptah of Egypt (1230 BC) bragged “Israel is wasted, his seed is not.” — Guess who is still around today?



When Moses or Joshua spoke in exaggerated ways, they were simply adopting the common hyperbolic rhetoric that all ancient Near Eastern military leaders used. Everyone reading the accounts would have understood it that way, just like we understand hyperbolic sports language.

Leasure also argues that "destroy" can mean drive out based on how it was used in Deuteronomy of the Israelites as being scattered:

We saw earlier in Deuteronomy 7:2-4 that God ordered Israel to commit the Canaanites to “complete destruction,” and then he ordered them not to intermarry with the Canaanites afterwards. These dual commands only make sense if the “complete destruction” means to drive them out, rather than annihilating them altogether.



On another occasion, God threatens to “destroy” Israel for their disobedience, but this destruction did not mean genocide. It meant driving them away from the promised land. Consider Deuteronomy 28:63-64



And the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in destroying you. You shall be plucked off the land… And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other.



Here is a clear example where “destroying” really meant driving them out of the land.

Greg Koukl argues that the extermination was hyperbole:

"Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded…."(Josh. 10:40, 11:15)



Still, at the end of Joshua’s life it was clear that many Canaanites continued to live in the land, left to be driven out gradually by the next generation (Josh. 23:12–13, Judges 1:21, 27–28). According to Copan, if Joshua did all that was expected of him, yet multitudes of Canaanites remained alive, then clearly the command to destroy all who breathed was not to be taken literally, but hyperbolically.

Koukl also argues:

Yes, Joshua claimed he “finished” the job, though Canaanites remained. In light of all the details in the account, though, clearly the conquest wasn’t complete, only Joshua’s portion. He’d been completely faithful to do everything he could do on his watch (and here I think Joshua was using hyperbole, too).

This potentially relates to how the conquest was supposed to be incremental. (“The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You will not be able to put an end to them quickly, for the wild beasts would grow too numerous for you” (Deut. 7:22).)

Paul Coulter seems to think that the order was only for specific Canaanite cities and so 96.5% of the Canaanites survived:

Joshua 12 lists 31 kings who were defeated by Joshua and whose cities were therefore wiped out (at this time the Canaanites lived largely in independent walled city-states).



The average population of each walled city at the time was probably around 1000-3000, with many cities having no more than around 700 people. The 31 cities conquered by Joshua probably had a combined population of around 70,000. Many of these people may have fled before the Israelites attacked, but even if we assume they were all killed, this is only around 3.5 per cent of the likely population of Canaan (the Canaanites were more populous than Israel according to Deuteronomy 7:1-7, and the Israelites numbered around 1.6 million, so we can assume that there must have been at least two million Canaanites). The remaining 96.5 per cent either fled or were conquered after the time Joshua 12.

Judges 2 gives this justification for why God didn't drive out the Canaanites whom Joshua left:

20 Then the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and has not heeded My voice, 21 I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, 22 so that through them I may test Israel, whether they will keep the ways of the Lord, to walk in them as their fathers kept them, or not.” 23 Therefore the Lord left those nations, without driving them out immediately; nor did He deliver them into the hand of Joshua.

D) Can one reconcile Moses' instructions on killing Israel's enemies with Christian principles of mercy towards one's enemies?


You seemed to imply the argument that it was defensive, Dan, when you wrote, "Mercy applies to a merciful enemy. (etc.)..." and this goes along with something that Peter Enns mentions when he writes in his essay "On Creation and Killing Canaanites: One Simple, Hardly Worth Mentioning (but I feel that I should) Thought":

But once we see that Chemosh, god of the Moabites, tells king Mesha (or better, Mesha tells us what Chemosh told him) to take Nebo from the Israelites and “put to the ban” the entire population–and that the word “ban” corresponds precisely to the Hebrew word for the same sort of behavior–well, it puts the theological and philosophical discussion on a whole different level.

But the Moabite case with King Mesha was just one example, and anyway the Israelites were the aggressors and invaders, so the defensive argument is not fully persuasive.

Greg Koukl writes in "The Canaanites: Genocide or Judgment?" that it could have been hyperbole:

Ancient writings commonly traded in hyperbole—exaggeration for the sake of emphasis—especially when it came to military conquest. The practice is evident throughout battle reports of the time. “Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric,” Copan writes, “was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia B.C.” Therefore, phrases like “utterly destroy” (haram), or “put to death men and women, children, and infants”—as well as other “obliteration language”—were stock “stereotypical” idioms used even when women or children were not present.[5] It decreed total victory (much like your favorite sports team “wiping out” the opposition), not complete annihilation.

Another argument goes that their sin was so bad, with things like child sacrifice, that God exterminated them like He did in the case of Sodom. Paul Coulter finds this argument scriptural:

Passages like Deuteronomy 9:4-6 (“it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you”), Deuteronomy 18:12 (“because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you”) and Leviticus 18:24-25 (“Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants”) clearly claim that God was judging the Canaanites. The wrath of God against sin and His righteous judgement of sinners are important biblical principles.

Similar to this theory is the idea that God was trying to cleanse the land for His eventual plan of Redemption. Deuteronomy 20 makes the justification of not leaving alive anyone in the cities but utterly destroying them "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." Along those lines, R.C. Sproul, Jr. writes in his essay "Why Did God Command the Children of Israel to Kill Every Man, Woman, and Child in the Promised Land?",

God wanted the land cleared of all temptations to His people to turn from Him, His worship and His law. The Canaanites were a threat to the purity of God’s people. He had set them apart, consecrated them, adopted them. In giving this order, He was protecting them.



Joshua, for all his faithfulness, left the job unfinished. Once Israel was in the ascendency, once they felt safe, they began to think it might prove helpful to leave some of the Canaanites around, to fetch their water and chop their wood. The book of Judges reveals the results. Those few who were spared became a snare, just as God predicted they would. Soon, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

Justin Taylor says that this goal of a cleansed land for a ritually pure theocracy is a different situation than the "Christian" view of what the "Christian" community should be like today:

In America we talk about the separation of “church” and “state.” But Israel was a “theocracy,” where church and state were inseparably joined and indistinguishable, such that members of God’s people had both political and religious obligations. To be a citizen of Israel required being faithful to God’s covenant and vice-versa.
The covenant community demanded purity, and egregious violations meant removal (e.g., see Deut. 13:5; 17:7, etc). This also entailed the purity of the land in which they were living as God’s people, and failure to remove the unrepentant from the land meant that the entire nation would be pulled down with the rebellious, resulting in idolatry, injustice, and evil (e.g., Deut. 7:4; 12:29-31)—which sadly proved to be the case all too often under the old covenant.



Christians today are not in a theocracy. We are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11) with no sacred land in this age. We live in the overlap of the old age and the age to come—”between two places” (in the creation that groans—after the holy-but-temporary Promised Land and awaiting the holy-and-permanent New Heavens and the New Earth).

Leasure makes two (somewhat humorous for me) turns in argument about putting a stop to evil, and also how the cleansing of the land was ultimately meant to be a blessing for gentiles:

While they were notorious for temple prostitution, incest, and bestiality, perhaps their worst crime was their practice of child sacrifice. It was their ritual practice to burn their children alive on the god Molech.



Skeptics often ask why God doesn’t stop evil. Well, here is a clear example where he does, but they still find fault nonetheless.



Ultimately, God wanted to establish the nation of Israel in the land free of pagan influence to provide a context for the coming Messiah. Yes, Israel defeated these Canaanite armies, but the ultimate goal was to be a blessing to all the nations (Gen. 12:3).

Eric Lyons, in "God’s Just Destruction of the Canaanites", argues that the killing was not directed at killing a whole people (the Canaanites) but in driving them from the land, and also that God was patient with them before they had done enough wickedness:

But, it was not a war against a particular race (from the Greek genos) or ethnic group. Nor were the Israelites commanded to pursue and kill the Canaanite nations if they fled from Israel’s Promised Land. The Israelites were to drive out and dispossess the nations of their land (killing all who resisted the dispossession), but they were not instructed to annihilate a particular race or ethnic group from the face of the Earth.
...
Indeed, God waited. He waited more than four centuries to bring judgment upon the inhabitants of Canaan. ... He would wait until the Israelites had been in Egypt for hundreds of years, because at the time that God spoke with Abraham “the iniquity of the Amorites” was “not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). [NOTE: “The Amorites were so numerous and powerful a tribe in Canaan that they are sometimes named for the whole of the ancient inhabitants, as they are here” (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, 1997).] In Abraham’s day, the inhabitants of Canaan were not so degenerate that God would bring judgment upon them. However, by the time of Joshua (more than 400 years later), the Canaanites’ iniquity was full

Paul Coulter tries to reconcile the Canaanites' killings with the New Testament based on the concept of Judgment:

Jesus and the apostles taught that a future day of judgement is coming when sin would finally be judged by God’s standard of righteousness. Until we understand the wrath of God against sin (Romans 1:18) and the fact that this wrath must find expression in judgement (Romans 2:5), we cannot appreciate the wonder of God’s love displayed in the cross of Christ (Romans 5:8) or why His death was necessary to demonstrate God’s justice and avert God’s wrath from us (Romans 3:25). Without an understanding of God’s wrath the cross becomes meaningless and grace becomes a weak and insipid thing. The mass killings of the Old Testament can teach us much about God’s judgement.

William Lane Craig, in his article "#16 Slaughter of the Canaanites",  says that according to archeologists, the Canaanites were not actually utterly exterminated, so the problem of God supposedly commanding their destruction evaporates:

The problem, it seems to me, is that if God could not have issued such a command, then the biblical stories must be false. Either the incidents never really happened but are just Israeli folklore; or else, if they did, then Israel, carried away in a fit of nationalistic fervor, thinking that God was on their side, claimed that God had commanded them to commit these atrocities, when in fact He had not. In other words, this problem is really an objection to biblical inerrancy.
In fact, ironically, many Old Testament critics are sceptical that the events of the conquest of Canaan ever occurred. They take these stories to be part of the legends of the founding of Israel, akin to the myths of Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome. For such critics the problem of God’s issuing such a command evaporates.

Paul Coulter, on the other hand, says that to take the view that the Canaanites were not actually killed en masse would severely undermine the spiritual reliability of the Bible:

[Option] b. The mass killings never actually happened

Proponents of this view suggest that the accounts of mass killings are not contemporaneous to the events themselves but were written later in the history of Israel, during the period of the kings, by scribes who were witnessing the ill effects on the nation of idolatry involving Canaanite deities. These scribes supposedly concluded that it would have been better if Israel had eradicated the Canaanites when they first settled among them and so included commands from God in their ‘official history’ of Israel. This view also necessitates an understanding of Scripture as the opinion of human beings rather than the true word of God or even an accurate record of historical events. In addition, it says little for the honesty of the authors of the Old Testament, who become little more than ‘spin doctors’, and raises the question how God’s people could have been so mistaken in their view of God. It actually creates greater problems in one sense than the preceding view since it places the concocted accounts of mass killings at a later stage in Israel’s history when an evolutionary view of their religion should expect a more enlightened concept of God.

Another argument, which W.L. Craig brings up in the same article, goes that God cannot be judged for killing people, since He is

not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are. For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take life as He chooses. We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as “playing God.” Human authorities arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now, that’s His prerogative.
What that implies is that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites when He sees fit. How long they live and when they die is up to Him.



So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. The problem is that He commanded the Israeli soldiers to end them. Isn’t that like commanding someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder. The act was morally obligatory for the Israeli soldiers in virtue of God’s command, even though, had they undertaken it on their on initiative, it would have been wrong.

That is, the Israelites would have been guilty of murdering the Canaanite people, but since God ordered it and God cannot be judged for killing people any more than if they die of natural disasters that He causes, then the Israelites cannot be judged for that either.
Paul Coulter adds:

Deuteronomy 9, where God commands the annihilation, is helpful in this regard. In that chapter God makes it absolutely clear that the Israelites are not being used because they are better than the Canaanites or morally superior, but simply as agents of His judgement. In fact, He repeats twice that it is “not because of your righteousness”.

Some writers like Justin Taylor compare the inability to judge God's ways here to Job's experience.

Craig also cites the passage in Genesis about God patiently waiting while the Amorites' sin built up over time:

“Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. . . . And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites [one of the Canaanite clans] is not yet complete” (Gen. 15. 13, 16).

...God stays His judgement of the Canaanite clans 400 years because their wickedness had not reached the point of intolerability! This is the long-suffering God we know in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Paul Coulter ties this idea of God waiting while sins built up leaving time for repentance and allowing the salvation of Rahab in a graph, comparing this to other Judgment events like the flood:

------- Judgement (agent)
| Time to repent
|  God’s witness
  |   Salvation through faith



Flood
| Genesis 6:5-7 (the Flood)
| While the ark was being built (1 Peter 3:20)
|   Noah
  |  Noah and family built and entered the ark (Genesis 6:9; 7:8)


Canaanites
|  Deuteronomy 9:4-6, 18:12; Leviticus 18:24-25 (Israelite armies under Joshua)
|  Israel’s 40 years in the desert (news reached Canaanites – Joshua 2:10)
|  Israel led by Moses and Joshua
  | Rahab and family – she tied a scarlet thread outside window (Joshua 2)


The four common features of these accounts are, then:



1. Divine judgement – they are all judgements of God against extreme sin.

2. Time to repent – they are all preceded by long periods of opportunity to repent.

3. Witness to God – during the time of opportunity there was knowledge available to the people that enabled them to know about God.

4. Salvation through faith – people who had faith in God and were innocent before Him were always provided with a means of salvation. Their families were saved with them just as the children of those who were judged died with them. Someone is saved in each case except (apparently) the Amalekites.



These same principles also apply to what the New Testament says about the final judgement:



a. God will judge fairly – once again God initiates the judgement, but in this case the outcome will be more than physical death. The consequences will be either eternal punishment or eternal blessing (Revelation 20:11-15).

b. Time to repent – God is now patiently waiting, giving people an opportunity to repent (2 Peter 3:9). When Christ returns, God’s judgement will come and no one will be able to escape from it.

c. God’s witness – Christians are present now in the world as witnesses to God’s truth and love (2 Corinthians 2:14-16).

d. Salvation through faith – There is salvation for any who will repent and trust in Christ for salvation (Acts 2:21).

Justin Taylor writes similarly about the concept of Judgment in the New Testament:

At the end of the age, Christ will come to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42; 2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5), expelling them from the land (the whole earth). That judgment will be just, and it will be complete. That is the day “the Lord Jesus [will be] revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (2 Thess. 1:8-9).

W.L. Craig also argues: "Moreover, the slaughter of the Canaanites represented an unusual historical circumstance, not a regular means of behavior."
Paul Coulter notes that in Deuteronomy 20, when the Israelites fought non-Canaanite cities, there were restrictions preventing annihilation of those cities, eg. " That enemy cities must be offered the chance to make peace before being besieged (verses 10-12)" and "the women and children were to be absorbed into Israel and the possessions to be kept (verses 13-15)".

Matt Flanagan notes about exceptional circumstances regarding killing the innocent and those who don't pose a threat:

Second, a loving and just person would endorse a strong presumption against such actions but could, in principle, support them in rare circumstances if there is some greater good that overrides this presumption.
The existence of cases such as those where a woman in childbirth will die unless her child’s head is crushed, both conjoined twins will die unless one is deprived of access to a vital organ, on a crowded life-boat one has to decide which people to push over, or on a plane doomed to crash who gets a parachute and who does not, suggest that the second claim and not first that is true. This means that while a loving and just God does endorse a general rule against killing the innocent, he could allow exceptions to it in rare, unusual occasions.

[alon]

Oct 30, 2019 11:38:47 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

Regarding Question 7, let me make a corrective note:
I had quoted Josephus as saying that God was angry at the Benjamites for sparing the Canaanites in Book V. But actually the full passage says that God was angry at the Israelites for this, not just the Benjamites. More importantly, the place in the Bible that this correlates to in Loeb's sidenote is Judges 2, and this passage in the Bible does not say that God was angry for them sparing Canaanites, but rather Judges 2 notes that they violated the covenant that said "And you shall make no covenant/treaty with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars."

The difference is important when it comes to understanding what exactly God commanded the Israelites do to the Canaanites, because God's anger over their laxity to the Canaanites had been a key reason why I thought that God had commanded their killing.

On the other hand, it looks to me like Josephus was likely referring to Psalm 106, because he writes that God complained about them sparing the Canaanites in an "oracle" (like the Psalms were oracles), and Psalm 106 says:

34. They did not destroy the peoples,

Concerning whom the Lord had commanded them,
35. But they mingled with the Gentiles

And learned their works;

36 They served their idols,

Which became a snare to them.

37 They even sacrificed their sons

And their daughters to demons,

38 And shed innocent blood,

The blood of their sons and daughters,

Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;

And the land was polluted with blood.

Thus they [j]were defiled by their own works,

And played[k] the harlot by their own deeds.



40 Therefore the wrath of the Lord was kindled against His people,

So that He abhorred His own inheritance.

41 And He gave them into the hand of the Gentiles,

And those who hated them ruled over them.

Although I suppose that "destroying" a people could include dissolving it politically as one variation.

That leaves basically Deuteronomy 7 and 20 (and perhaps Joshua) that specify annihilating them.

Not a lot of time right now, but looking at your ref above God was angry because just as He predicted if they left the pagan inhabitants alive the people would learn their ways and some would convert. Then they fell into worship of other gods, even sacrificing their children to them! So God handed the nation over to the Gentiles as punishment. The nation sinned in not killing all the inhabitnts as commanded, and so the nation was jdged, even though some did not fall into demonic worship. I'll read the rest later. 

[rakovsky]

May 8, 2019 17:09:29 GMT -8 alon said:

(Question 9) Does the Biblical story of Yael killing the Canaanite commander Sisera in Book V have an allegorical meaning, particularly one referring to the Passion?

She gave him milk because warm milk, especially when you are tired will put you to sleep. Sour milk could refer to buttermilk or othr intentionally soured milk.

You made a good point about the milk being used to put Sisera to sleep and the sour milk maybe meaning buttermilk.

[alon]

Oct 30, 2019 11:38:47 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

A) Was the extermination of Canaanites God's order Yes, as per the verses you quote below.

or just something that Moses decided on in accordance with God's more general command to conquer the area? No. God's commands were not general. He was very specific: kill them all.

In Deuteronomy 7, it sounds like it is Moses announcing his own intention:

"1. When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;
2 And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:"

No, Moses was passing on God's instructions as accurately as he could. Remember, Moses is the only prophet God regularly spoke to face to face. He knew what God said, and he dutifully passed it on.

Deuteronomy 20 presents it as if God commanded destroying everyone in the cities given as an inheritance:

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)

First off, when the ancient peoples spoke of cities, they included all the land that city controlled as well. These were more like City-Sates than just cities, and may have included smaller towns as well. There is also the issue that this did not abrogate any previous commands. They were still to kill everyone in the land.

Paul Coulter, in his article "Old Testament Killings" and its section "Did God Command the Mass Killing of the Canaanites?", argues that to imagine that the Israelites misinterpreted that God ordered the killings would severely undermine the 's account of God:

The suggestion is made that Israel at the time of Joshua had a limited understanding of God and that they wrongly thought that their God, YHWH, expected the same kind of sacrifice. While the generation that entered the land was only once removed from Egyptian slaves, these people were well instructed about their Elohim. They also had the example of he Golden Calf and of Nadav and Abihu where mixing paganism with worship of Adonai was concerned. They also had Moshe right up until they entered the land. So while it's true that God eveals Himself more to us, I guarantee they had a good enough understanding to know to do right. God doesn't punish unjustly, nor does He send us in half trained.

This line of reasoning raises serious questions about the nature of God, in particular whether or not He is able to make Himself clearly understood and whether or not He would allow such blatant disobedience to go unchallenged. To assume God cannot make Himself clearly understood is just another way of saying "I'll do what is right in my own eyes, because God is just too vague." Put another way, "I'm my own God because He wrote what is right and wrong on my conscience."

One attempt to overcome this difficulty is the suggestion that God allowed His name to be associated with these mass killings because His love for Israel was so great that He was willing to have His reputation tarnished for the sake of His relationship with them. Ridiculous.

This view, however, does not find any support in the relevant Old Testament texts, which clearly state that God commanded the mass killings (Joshua 6:17, 21; Deuteronomy 20:16-17). Later texts even criticise the Israelites for their failure to obey the command (Psalm 106:34-42). Yes.

The only way to reconcile the Old Testament accounts with this view is to regard the Old Testament as simply Israel’s record of their perception of their unfolding relationship with YHWH. The Old Testament is reduced to being a human account of the evolution of monotheistic religion rather than a divine revelation of God’s actions in history. And that would be heresy.

On the other hand, in the same article, Coulter argues that per a closer analysis, the specific commands were not actually necessarily killing, but could be driving out the Canaanites:

The judgement was intended to be expulsion from the land rather than genocide

There is a range of verbs used in the commands to Israel concerning how they should treat the Canaanites. Some of these clearly speak of extermination, but others speak of driving them out (see Deuteronomy 7). Deuteronomy 9:3 brings these two ideas together succinctly: “you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the LORD has promised you”. It seems from a careful reading of the related passages that God’s intention was that the Canaanites would have a possibility of fleeing the land as the Israelites advanced. That is always a possibility, and I don't recall any commands to chase them after they left the general area. But these would be individuals and small groups.

In the case of those kings and cities that refused to do so, there was no option but annihilation. There is no suggestion that Canaanites who left the land must be pursued; rather the commands to annihilate are connected only with people in the cities of the land.

Presumably if Canaanites had left Canaan they would then have been treated like all other nations and the Israelites could have made treaties with them and would have been bound by the more general codes of conduct in warfare given in Deuteronomy 20 (see 1. above). They'd have ben absorbed into the cultures around them, so treties woud be made in the nae of their new kings.



So, this was not so much a case of genocide (the extermination of an ethnic group) but rather forced removal from the land of Canaan. No, God commanded genocide, and there is no need to water it down. He doesn't need our help in this. He said it, and for good reason.


God’s judgement was primarily that the Canaanites would lose the land because of their detestable religious practices and in order to preserve the purity of Israel’s worship of Him. As we read through Joshua and Judges this appears to be born out, as the extermination of the Canaanites is never fully implemented. And God would be OK with them continuing those detestable practices elsewhere? No, while some may have escaped, the Hebrews were not to let them do so. 

“So Joshua struck the whole land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings. He left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed, just as the LORD God of Israel commanded.” — Joshua 10:40
Joshua captured all the cities of these kings, and all their kings, and he struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them; just as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded. — Joshua 11:12

They struck every man with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them. They left no one who breathed. Just as the LORD had commanded Moses his servant… he left nothing undone of all that the LORD had commanded Moses. — Joshua 11:14-15


Joshua clearly understood God and did as he was told.  

B) Could the Israelites, in fulfilling their instructions, spare the Canaanites who surrendered and gave up their idolatry and political independence?
It looks like the answer is Yes because you gave the example of Ruth, Dan.
Individuals always have the option of repentance, joining Israel and worshiping El Elohe Yisroel alone and in the manner He said to do it. But the time to do that would have been before the Israelites were beating on the city gates!

Greg Koukl writes in "The Canaanites: Genocide or Judgment?":

Aliens shared the same legal rights in the commonwealth as Jews (Lev. 19:34, Lev. 24:22, Deut. 10:18–19). Foreigners like Naomi and Rahab were welcome within their ranks.

Rahab was the woman who protected Israelite spies in Joshua 2.
Archeologists theorize that the Israelites themselves have a major or fundamental Canaanite component hereditarily, which implies that many Canaanites did convert over the centuries to the Israelites' religion.

Justin Taylor writes on the Gospel Coalition website:

Even though the destruction is commanded in terms of totality, there seems to have been an exception for those who repented, turning to the one true and living God (e.g., Rahab and her family [Josh. 2:9], and the Gibeonites [Josh. 11:19]). What this means is that the reason for the destruction of God’s wicked enemies was precisely because of their rebellion and according to God’s special purposes—not because of their ethnicity. Yes! JT gets it!

Once someone converts, they were no longer of their former nationality. Now of course, people know and may refer to their heritage. But for all practical purposes proselytes were considered Hebrews themselves.

In ancient times, when you changed religions and worshiped a different god, you gave up family, friends, nationality; everything. It was an insult to yor ancestors and a black mark on your family. I wasn't like joining a Baptist church instead of being EO. And in not so ancient times, when I was growing up if someone left the RC faith the family would turn their picture to the wall and not speak of or to them.

[alon]

Oct 30, 2019 11:38:47 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

C) How could Josephus say that there were no Canaanites left after the Israelite conquests, but then talk about the Canaanites as still existing later?

Using the Bible to prove Josephus is like using a Ford truck manual to prove the earth is flat. 

Deuteronomy 20 says not to leave anyone in the cities given as an inheritance to the Israelites. But maybe that allows them to live if they leave the cities. 

Judges 1 notes Jebusites staying:

The Benjamites, however, did not drive out the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the Benjamites.

22. Now the tribes of Joseph attacked Bethel, and the LORD was with them.

Reuel Leasure writes on the Cross Examined site that utterly destroy doesn't mean genocide because of how Joshua's book says that he left survivors yet utterly destroyed the people:

Joshua’s Claim: Josh 10:39 says “every person” in Debir was “utterly destroyed.”



Reality: Josh 11:21 states that later, Joshua “utterly destroyed” Anakites in Debir.



Again, Joshua says they “utterly destroyed every person” in Debir. But the very next chapter, we read of survivors in Debir who Joshua “utterly destroyed” again.



Joshua’s Claims: In Joshua 11:21, he tells us the Anakites were “cut off” and “utterly destroyed” in Hebron.



Reality: A few chapters later in Joshua 15:13-14, we read that “Caleb “drove out” the Anakites from Hebron.



Once again, Joshua claims utter destruction while a few chapters later, he tells us that Caleb drove out the same people group he just “utterly destroyed.”
...
I’m a biblical inerrantist. I’m not someone to play “fast and loose” with the text. Yet I’m persuaded that Joshua didn’t intend for us to interpret the “utterly destroy” language literally.



How could he if in Joshua 11 he tells us that they “utterly destroyed” the Anakites in Hebron, and then just a few chapters later in Joshua 15, he tells us that Caleb “drove out” those same Anakites in the same Hebron?



Would Joshua really be that irresponsible with his reporting? It’s doubtful. After all, God made it clear elsewhere that “utterly destroy” didn’t mean complete annihilation.



Consider Deuteronomy 7:2-4:



And when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction…you shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they will turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods.



Now, wait a second. God ordered them to devote the Canaanites to complete destruction, but then he forbids them from intermarrying with them. How could they intermarry with people they had completely obliterated?



It seems obvious that whatever “utterly destroy” means, it doesn’t mean genocide.

Leasure argues that it was hyperbole based on other examples and on the usage of rhetoric of the time:

He's right. You have to be careful with absolute statements in the Bible. They weren't lying, it was just accepted practice to say "all" or "everyone" when "everyone" just knows this is not the case. We do it too, just not as often: "But dad, everyone is doing it!" 

King Mesha of Moab (840 BC) reported that the Northern Kingdom of Israel “has utterly perished for always.” — In truth, Israel was around long enough to be taken into exile one hundred years later.



Tuthmosis III of Egypt (1500 BC) declared that “the numerous army of Mitanni was overthrown within the hour, annihilated totally, like those now not existent.” — Actually, Mitanni continued to fight for another two hundred years.



Merneptah of Egypt (1230 BC) bragged “Israel is wasted, his seed is not.” — Guess who is still around today?



When Moses or Joshua spoke in exaggerated ways, they were simply adopting the common hyperbolic rhetoric that all ancient Near Eastern military leaders used. Everyone reading the accounts would have understood it that way, just like we understand hyperbolic sports language. Yep!

Leasure also argues that "destroy" can mean drive out based on how it was used in Deuteronomy of the Israelites as being scattered:

We saw earlier in Deuteronomy 7:2-4 that God ordered Israel to commit the Canaanites to “complete destruction,” and then he ordered them not to intermarry with the Canaanites afterwards. These dual commands only make sense if the “complete destruction” means to drive them out, rather than annihilating them altogether. Or if He, being God, knew they all wouldn't be killed in the first place.



On another occasion, God threatens to “destroy” Israel for their disobedience, but this destruction did not mean genocide. It meant driving them away from the promised land. Consider Deuteronomy 28:63-64



And the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in destroying you. You shall be plucked off the land… And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other.



Here is a clear example where “destroying” really meant driving them out of the land.

Greg Koukl argues that the extermination was hyperbole:

"Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded…."(Josh. 10:40, 11:15)



Still, at the end of Joshua’s life it was clear that many Canaanites continued to live in the land, left to be driven out gradually by the next generation (Josh. 23:12–13, Judges 1:21, 27–28). According to Copan, if Joshua did all that was expected of him, yet multitudes of Canaanites remained alive, then clearly the command to destroy all who breathed was not to be taken literally, but hyperbolically. Joshua never completely conquered the land.

Koukl also argues:

Yes, Joshua claimed he “finished” the job, though Canaanites remained. In light of all the details in the account, though, clearly the conquest wasn’t complete, only Joshua’s portion. He’d been completely faithful to do everything he could do on his watch (and here I think Joshua was using hyperbole, too). He conquered most of the land, but even Jerualem was not yet taken when he died (it was David who later took Jerusalem). So he and  everyone else knew the job was not quite completed. 

This potentially relates to how the conquest was supposed to be incremental. (“The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You will not be able to put an end to them quickly, for the wild beasts would grow too numerous for you” (Deut. 7:22).)

Paul Coulter seems to think that the order was only for specific Canaanite cities and so 96.5% of the Canaanites survived:

Joshua 12 lists 31 kings who were defeated by Joshua and whose cities were therefore wiped out (at this time the Canaanites lived largely in independent walled city-states).



The average population of each walled city at the time was probably around 1000-3000, with many cities having no more than around 700 people. The 31 cities conquered by Joshua probably had a combined population of around 70,000. Many of these people may have fled before the Israelites attacked, but even if we assume they were all killed, this is only around 3.5 per cent of the likely population of Canaan (the Canaanites were more populous than Israel according to Deuteronomy 7:1-7, and the Israelites numbered around 1.6 million, so we can assume that there must have been at least two million Canaanites). The remaining 96.5 per cent either fled or were conquered after the time Joshua 12.

Judges 2 gives this justification for why God didn't drive out the Canaanites whom Joshua left:

20 Then the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and has not heeded My voice, 21 I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, 22 so that through them I may test Israel, whether they will keep the ways of the Lord, to walk in them as their fathers kept them, or not.” 23 Therefore the Lord left those nations, without driving them out immediately; nor did He deliver them into the hand of Joshua.

[alon]

Oct 30, 2019 11:38:47 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

D) Can one reconcile Moses' instructions on killing Israel's enemies with Christian principles of mercy towards one's enemies?
Depends on how locked in to the "God is (only) love" and "His mercy extends to everyone" dogma the church has (erroneously) preached for almost 2000 yrs.

You seemed to imply the argument that it was defensive, Dan, when you wrote, "Mercy applies to a merciful enemy. (etc.)..." and this goes along with something that Peter Enns mentions when he writes in his essay "On Creation and Killing Canaanites: One Simple, Hardly Worth Mentioning (but I feel that I should) Thought":

But once we see that Chemosh, god of the Moabites, tells king Mesha (or better, Mesha tells us what Chemosh told him) to take Nebo from the Israelites and “put to the ban” the entire population–and that the word “ban” corresponds precisely to the Hebrew word for the same sort of behavior–well, it puts the theological and philosophical discussion on a whole different level.
These were vile pagans, and they'd have no problem attacking as soon as the Hebrews let down their guard. They were not to be trusted. Like the Muslims who pretend to be dead, then shoot our fighting men in the back. And they humiliate and torture prisoners. Soon our guys learn to show no mercy, "paying the insurance" on "corpses" with a round to their vitals. The inhabitants of the land showed no mercy when they burned their own children alive as offerings to Molek. God doesn't punish unjustly. But His love and mercy has limits. Every Muslim who converts, or every Cana'anite that converted was probably cause for the greatest rejoicing in the heavens. What they must overcome to do so is unimaginable. But those who do not are stuck in a vile, wicked religious system then and now, and any mercy shown is just proof of weakness, which encourages more attacks. I don't advocate cruelty towards an enemy, and neither did God. But exterminating the merciless is a mercy to the rest of humanity.

But the Moabite case with King Mesha was just one example, and anyway the Israelites were the aggressors and invaders, so the defensive argument is not fully persuasive.

Greg Koukl writes in "The Canaanites: Genocide or Judgment?" that it could have been hyperbole:

Ancient writings commonly traded in hyperbole—exaggeration for the sake of emphasis—especially when it came to military conquest. The practice is evident throughout battle reports of the time. “Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric,” Copan writes, “was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia B.C.” Therefore, phrases like “utterly destroy” (haram), or “put to death men and women, children, and infants”—as well as other “obliteration language”—were stock “stereotypical” idioms used even when women or children were not present.[5] It decreed total victory (much like your favorite sports team “wiping out” the opposition), not complete annihilation.
Possibly. In fact I have no doubt some of this was involved in Joshua's and others writings. But God was specific: kill them all. And He told them why. If not, the Hebrews would pollute their line by intermarrying. They'd learn the ways of these pagans and start to mix in their worship practices. Then some would fully convert and sacrifice to Molek. And that is exactly what happened.

Another argument goes that their sin was so bad, with things like child sacrifice, that God exterminated them like He did in the case of Sodom. Paul Coulter finds this argument scriptural:
At last, a sensible argument! (Hey, he agrees with me, he must be sensible, right?)

 
Passages like Deuteronomy 9:4-6 (“it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you”), Deuteronomy 18:12 (“because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you”) and Leviticus 18:24-25 (“Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants”) clearly claim that God was judging the Canaanites. The wrath of God against sin and His righteous judgement of sinners are important biblical principles. Amen!!!

Similar to this theory is the idea that God was trying to cleanse the land for His eventual plan of Redemption. Deuteronomy 20 makes the justification of not leaving alive anyone in the cities but utterly destroying them "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." Along those lines, R.C. Sproul, Jr. writes in his essay "Why Did God Command the Children of Israel to Kill Every Man, Woman, and Child in the Promised Land?",

God wanted the land cleared of all temptations to His people to turn from Him, His worship and His law. The Canaanites were a threat to the purity of God’s people. He had set them apart, consecrated them, adopted them. In giving this order, He was protecting them.
Sproul is spot on!



Joshua, for all his faithfulness, left the job unfinished. Once Israel was in the ascendency, once they felt safe, they began to think it might prove helpful to leave some of the Canaanites around, to fetch their water and chop their wood. The book of Judges reveals the results. Those few who were spared became a snare, just as God predicted they would. Soon, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
Yes, yes, YES!

Justin Taylor says that this goal of a cleansed land for a ritually pure theocracy is a different situation than the "Christian" view of what the "Christian" community should be like today: Now we go back to stepping in crap.

In America we talk about the separation of “church” and “state.”
THERE IS NO SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE! That only meant the state could not interfere in your church. It never meant the church couldn't get involved in politics. Our Revolution was launched primarily from the pulpit, for crying out loud! This is what comes from the modern church teaching "Love, love, flowers and rainbows and unicorns." It warps our view of our own history, besides too often making a mockery of God, mixing pagan practices in our worship, and no understanding of what it means to be righteous and holy. Do away from , you are a few short steps away from total idiocy spreading to every aspect of your/our lives. 


But Israel was a “theocracy,” where church and state were inseparably joined and indistinguishable, such that members of God’s people had both political and religious obligations. To be a citizen of Israel required being faithful to God’s covenant and vice-versa.

The covenant community demanded purity, and egregious violations meant removal (e.g., see Deut. 13:5; 17:7, etc). This also entailed the purity of the land in which they were living as God’s people, and failure to remove the unrepentant from the land meant that the entire nation would be pulled down with the rebellious, resulting in idolatry, injustice, and evil (e.g., Deut. 7:4; 12:29-31)—which sadly proved to be the case all too often under the old covenant.
Not just the "Old Covenant." If you think it is not happening today, then you are perpetually high or asleep. God does not change. He still demands purity from us as a nation and as individuals. We are right now at about 50% of the citizens in the US being totally out of control; sold out to ha'satan in one way or another. Now tell me we are not on the cusp of judgement- and I mean in the biblical sense!



Christians today are not in a theocracy. We are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11) with no sacred land in this age. We live in the overlap of the old age and the age to come—”between two places” (in the creation that groans—after the holy-but-temporary Promised Land and awaiting the holy-and-permanent New Heavens and the New Earth).

Leasure makes two (somewhat humorous for me) turns in argument about putting a stop to evil, and also how the cleansing of the land was ultimately meant to be a blessing for gentiles:

While they were notorious for temple prostitution, incest, and bestiality, perhaps their worst crime was their practice of child sacrifice. It was their ritual practice to burn their children alive on the god Molech.
I don't see the humor. We tear our children apart in the womb, and don't even kill them first because it would drive up costs and anyhow, harvesting tissue and parts is best done as soon after death as you can; still alive if possible! Molech must be laughing hysterically at us! Homosexuals and drag queens painted up and barely dressed in womens garb in our libraries and schools teaching children. Children forced to pray to the demon Allah in class. How are we any different? Our politicians murder anyone in their way (think the Clintons), they lie and steal, graft and corruption are everywhere. I think we could use a good old fashioned theocracy on the biblical model. With Messianics in charge, of course. 



Skeptics often ask why God doesn’t stop evil. Well, here is a clear example where he does, but they still find fault nonetheless.
He gave us free will. Sadly, many use that to harm others. Part of living in a fallen world. But when we show love and mercy to the fallen (yes, I just said that, and no I am not contradicting myself) then God is magnified, and some do find respite and healing in Him! Baruch HaShem!


Ultimately, God wanted to establish the nation of Israel in the land free of pagan influence to provide a context for the coming Messiah. Yes, Israel defeated these Canaanite armies, but the ultimate goal was to be a blessing to all the nations (Gen. 12:3). That was a big part of it, yes.

Eric Lyons, in "God’s Just Destruction of the Canaanites", argues that the killing was not directed at killing a whole people (the Canaanites) but in driving them from the land, and also that God was patient with them before they had done enough wickedness:

But, it was not a war against a particular race (from the Greek genos) or ethnic group. Nor were the Israelites commanded to pursue and kill the Canaanite nations if they fled from Israel’s Promised Land. The Israelites were to drive out and dispossess the nations of their land (killing all who resisted the dispossession), but they were not instructed to annihilate a particular race or ethnic group from the face of the Earth.
... Wrong. Another twit who thinks he has to soften the word for the lame and mushy brained. Apologetics is about defending or proving the truth of Christian doctrines, not about wringing our hands and apologizing for God. Ridiculous!


Indeed, God waited. He waited more than four centuries to bring judgment upon the inhabitants of Canaan. ... He would wait until the Israelites had been in Egypt for hundreds of years, because at the time that God spoke with Abraham “the iniquity of the Amorites” was “not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). [NOTE: “The Amorites were so numerous and powerful a tribe in Canaan that they are sometimes named for the whole of the ancient inhabitants, as they are here” (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, 1997).] In Abraham’s day, the inhabitants of Canaan were not so degenerate that God would bring judgment upon them. However, by the time of Joshua (more than 400 years later), the Canaanites’ iniquity was full
Yes, but in waiting God gave them a chance and a choice: repent of your evil and be spared, or become more vile and be destroyed. They chose poorly. 

Paul Coulter tries to reconcile the Canaanites' killings with the New Testament based on the concept of Judgment:
WE DO NOT HAVE TO RECONCILE ANYTHING! It's the same God! 

Jesus and the apostles taught that a future day of judgement is coming when sin would finally be judged by God’s standard of righteousness. Until we understand the wrath of God against sin (Romans 1:18) and the fact that this wrath must find expression in judgement (Romans 2:5), we cannot appreciate the wonder of God’s love displayed in the cross of Christ (Romans 5:8) or why His death was necessary to demonstrate God’s justice and avert God’s wrath from us (Romans 3:25). Without an understanding of God’s wrath the cross becomes meaningless and grace becomes a weak and insipid thing. The mass killings of the Old Testament can teach us much about God’s judgement. That (above) said, he makes a good point there.

William Lane Craig, in his article "#16 Slaughter of the Canaanites",  says that according to archeologists, the Canaanites were not actually utterly exterminated, so the problem of God supposedly commanding their destruction evaporates:

The problem, it seems to me, is that if God could not have issued such a command, then the biblical stories must be false. Either the incidents never really happened but are just Israeli folklore; or else, if they did, then Israel, carried away in a fit of nationalistic fervor, thinking that God was on their side, claimed that God had commanded them to commit these atrocities, when in fact He had not. In other words, this problem is really an objection to biblical inerrancy.
In fact, ironically, many Old Testament critics are sceptical that the events of the conquest of Canaan ever occurred. They take these stories to be part of the legends of the founding of Israel, akin to the myths of Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome. For such critics the problem of God’s issuing such a command evaporates.
And the God of creation is thus consigned to he status of any other god.

Paul Coulter, on the other hand, says that to take the view that the Canaanites were not actually killed en masse would severely undermine the spiritual reliability of the Bible:

[Option] b. The mass killings never actually happened

Proponents of this view suggest that the accounts of mass killings are not contemporaneous to the events themselves but were written later in the history of Israel, during the period of the kings, by scribes who were witnessing the ill effects on the nation of idolatry involving Canaanite deities. These scribes supposedly concluded that it would have been better if Israel had eradicated the Canaanites when they first settled among them and so included commands from God in their ‘official history’ of Israel. This view also necessitates an understanding of Scripture as the opinion of human beings rather than the true word of God or even an accurate record of historical events. In addition, it says little for the honesty of the authors of the Old Testament, who become little more than ‘spin doctors’, and raises the question how God’s people could have been so mistaken in their view of God. It actually creates greater problems in one sense than the preceding view since it places the concocted accounts of mass killings at a later stage in Israel’s history when an evolutionary view of their religion should expect a more enlightened concept of God.
And then like any good pagan myth, the god (now a small "g") of the Bible changes in the telling as cultural norms change.

Another argument, which W.L. Craig brings up in the same article, goes that God cannot be judged for killing people, since He is

not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are. Craig is an idiot. God, who gave us and wants us to be more like Himself does not have to follow His own rules? His justice demands He does! To say different would be heresy if this guy wasn't so obviously stupid! 

For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take life as He chooses. We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as “playing God.” Human authorities arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now, that’s His prerogative.
He is the God of possibilities. We have no idea what even an infant taken so young and innocent might be spared. We do know that child, blameless in his/her ignorance of right and wrong are with Him. But we also must remember disease and all the things that take that young life came into this world through sin; our sin! Unless you are the Messiah, you share in Adams sin. And if you believe you are the Messiah, you need professional help. 


What that implies is that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites when He sees fit. How long they live and when they die is up to Him. He didn't just kill them for sport! They were punished for their wickedness. And although some no doubt escaped, the fewer of them there were to spread their wickedness the better for everyone!



So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. The problem is that He commanded the Israeli soldiers to end them. Isn’t that like commanding someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder. The act was morally obligatory for the Israeli soldiers in virtue of God’s command, even though, had they undertaken it on their on initiative, it would have been wrong. 
God did not drop the bomb on Hiroshima. We did, and no one heard any voices saying "Do it!" as it wrong? It ended a very costly war and saved countless thousands of our servicemen's lives, and possibly millions of Japanese. We were closer to losing that war than most people know. Anything less than total victory would have allowed Japan to rebuild and become a threat to the nations around them again. And had God allowed a mass exodus from Cana'an the end results would have been terrible for everyone. It would no more have been murder if Joshua said "Kill 'em all" than that God did say it. Right is right, and that God said do it means it was right! Should an infantryman in Afghanistan shoot an enemy who is laying there, not doing anything to harm him? Absolutely! Protect your 6 or die yourself. 

That is, the Israelites would have been guilty of murdering the Canaanite people, but since God ordered it and God cannot be judged for killing people any more than if they die of natural disasters that He causes, then the Israelites cannot be judged for that either.
Paul Coulter adds:

Deuteronomy 9, where God commands the annihilation, is helpful in this regard. In that chapter God makes it absolutely clear that the Israelites are not being used because they are better than the Canaanites or morally superior, but simply as agents of His judgement. In fact, He repeats twice that it is “not because of your righteousness”.

Some writers like Justin Taylor compare the inability to judge God's ways here to Job's experience.

Craig also cites the passage in Genesis about God patiently waiting while the Amorites' sin built up over time:

“Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. . . . And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites [one of the Canaanite clans] is not yet complete” (Gen. 15. 13, 16).

...God stays His judgement of the Canaanite clans 400 years because their wickedness had not reached the point of intolerability! This is the long-suffering God we know in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Paul Coulter ties this idea of God waiting while sins built up leaving time for repentance and allowing the salvation of Rahab in a graph, comparing this to other Judgment events like the flood:

------- Judgement (agent)
| Time to repent
|  God’s witness
  |   Salvation through faith



Flood
| Genesis 6:5-7 (the Flood)
| While the ark was being built (1 Peter 3:20)
|   Noah
  |  Noah and family built and entered the ark (Genesis 6:9; 7:8)


Canaanites
|  Deuteronomy 9:4-6, 18:12; Leviticus 18:24-25 (Israelite armies under Joshua)
|  Israel’s 40 years in the desert (news reached Canaanites – Joshua 2:10)
|  Israel led by Moses and Joshua
  | Rahab and family – she tied a scarlet thread outside window (Joshua 2)


The four common features of these accounts are, then:



1. Divine judgement – they are all judgements of God against extreme sin.

2. Time to repent – they are all preceded by long periods of opportunity to repent.

3. Witness to God – during the time of opportunity there was knowledge available to the people that enabled them to know about God.

4. Salvation through faith – people who had faith in God and were innocent before Him were always provided with a means of salvation. Their families were saved with them just as the children of those who were judged died with them. Someone is saved in each case except (apparently) the Amalekites.



These same principles also apply to what the New Testament says about the final judgement:



a. God will judge fairly – once again God initiates the judgement, but in this case the outcome will be more than physical death. The consequences will be either eternal punishment or eternal blessing (Revelation 20:11-15).

b. Time to repent – God is now patiently waiting, giving people an opportunity to repent (2 Peter 3:9). When Christ returns, God’s judgement will come and no one will be able to escape from it.

c. God’s witness – Christians are present now in the world as witnesses to God’s truth and love (2 Corinthians 2:14-16).

d. Salvation through faith – There is salvation for any who will repent and trust in Christ for salvation (Acts 2:21).

Justin Taylor writes similarly about the concept of Judgment in the New Testament:

At the end of the age, Christ will come to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42; 2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5), expelling them from the land (the whole earth). That judgment will be just, and it will be complete. That is the day “the Lord Jesus [will be] revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (2 Thess. 1:8-9).

W.L. Craig also argues: "Moreover, the slaughter of the Canaanites represented an unusual historical circumstance, not a regular means of behavior." It was an extreme example for extreme crimes, but by no means unique. As alluded to above, it is a type of the final judgement.


Paul Coulter notes that in Deuteronomy 20, when the Israelites fought non-Canaanite cities, there were restrictions preventing annihilation of those cities, eg. " That enemy cities must be offered the chance to make peace before being besieged (verses 10-12)" and "the women and children were to be absorbed into Israel and the possessions to be kept (verses 13-15)".

Matt Flanagan notes about exceptional circumstances regarding killing the innocent and those who don't pose a threat:

Second, a loving and just person would endorse a strong presumption against such actions but could, in principle, support them in rare circumstances if there is some greater good that overrides this presumption. Finally ...


The existence of cases such as those where a woman in childbirth will die unless her child’s head is crushed, both conjoined twins will die unless one is deprived of access to a vital organ, on a crowded life-boat one has to decide which people to push over, or on a plane doomed to crash who gets a parachute and who does not, suggest that the second claim and not first that is true. This means that while a loving and just God does endorse a general rule against killing the innocent, he could allow exceptions to it in rare, unusual occasions. There are always exceptions. That is where the Oral is so useful. But even it cannot outline every circumstance or scenario. That is why we must learn to work from principles, not just a list. Biblically it is incumbent on men to protect women and children. So if the lifeoat is too full, the men go in the drink. That used to be the norm for Western men. Not any more, as we are getting further from His word. In many pagan cultures women and children are sacrificed. Like the reports that Muslim "immigrants" threw women and children overboard from ships (not even lifeboats) because they were uncomfortable with the crowding. Again, if you think the Cana'anites have vanished, at least spiritually they are alive and well, but most are just ignoring them, hoping they will go away. They won't. 

[rakovsky]

Dan,
For Question 7 about killing the Canaanites, it looked like Deuteronomy 7 is Moses' orders, because Deuteronomy 6 ends with Moses and the Israelites in the 1st person repeatedly and God in the 3rd person repeatedly, eg.: ".... 25. Then it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us." Then Deuteronomy 7 begins with God in the 3rd person, but it later switches between God in the 3rd and 1st persons (eg. The Lord and Me and He):

When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you... etc... For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. ...
13. And He will love you and bless you and [e]multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb

So it is a confusing format because of how much it puts God in the 3rd person and because The 1st person was Moses in Deuteronomy 6. I guess that the idea is that Moses is portrayed as God's inspired messenger, so that what Moses is announcing here is in effect both Moses' commands and God's. I.e. God is not speaking directly. Deuteronomy 1 begins by saying about Moses:

These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel...

...Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had given him as commandments to them, ...
So the idea is that Moses is speaking according to what God has given as commands. So some of what is in Deuteronomy, is supposed to be in agreement with God's commands, but not itself necessarily an explicit command by God.

You also made a good point that "Joshua never completely conquered the land." So it is confusing how it says Joshua did as commanded and completed it. I take it to mean that he himself was not commanded to immediately capture the whole land.

I am not sure which other examples you mean when you say, "In fact I have no doubt some of this was involved in Joshua's and others writings." Maybe you mean the part about Joshua destroying them utterly.

You wrote: "I don't see the humor."
I was referring to Leasure's argument that some people wonder why God doesn't stop evil, but when He stopped child sacrifice by slaughtering the Canaanites, the people ironically object to it.

You asked, "How are we any different?" One difference is the Canananites' ritual child public official sacrifice to the national theological deity for theological and cultural reasons is different than abortion before the fetus is born and conscious. I think there is a Court restriction on how late the fetus can be in development before abortion.

You asked, "Craig is an idiot. God, who gave us and wants us to be more like Himself does not have to follow His own rules?" Maybe I didn't show what Craig meant clearly enough in my quote. I could give you a link to Craig's article on his Reasonable Faith blog so that you can see it better. The article is
Q&A #16 Slaughter of the Canaanites, August 06, 2007
He writes:

Since God doesn’t issue commands to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill. He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are. For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take life as He chooses. We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as “playing God.” Human authorities arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now, that’s His prerogative.

What that implies is that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites when He sees fit. How long they live and when they die is up to Him.

But I found other people objecting to these of his statements online like you objected. For example, someone asked Craig, if God was a strict Islamic ISIS God and wanted you to follow ISIS, would you do so?

[jimmie]

The only restriction on abortion by the courts is the child must at least be partially inside the mother when it is murdered.