Msg#: 1599                            Date: 03-24-95  18:38
  From: John Musselwhite
    To: Tenna Draper
  with: David Worrell


 DW> Hmmm... What about the slaughter of the Canaanites, among
     others? Did these acts have anything to do with God?

 TD> The Bible says that God told the Israelites to destroy every man,
 TD> woman and child and also the livestock and to burn down the entire
 TD> city... Well, historians? Did this REALLY HAPPEN??? Or has everyone
 TD> just decided to let the sleeping dog lie on this one???

    The Bible story seems to have been meant as an explanation for the
    remaining evidence of mounds and rubble which indicated historical
    events - something relatively common in the OT. By weaving oral
    history with speculations about ancient ruins an entire mythology
    is created. I hesitate to call it fiction, but that is exactly
    what it is.

    God may very well have told the Israelites to do that (or somebody
    thought he might have and wrote it that way), but there is no
    evidence of it ever happening. The Israelites not so much
    conquered the Canaanites but rather inflitrated them near the end
    of the late bronze age (about 1300 BCE) as the semi-nomadic tribes
    moved into the towns. Stories such as Joshua blowing down the
    walls of Jericho are historically improbable as none of the dates
    for any destruction are even close. The rubble of the walls the
    story is meant to explain probably was caused about 2350 BCE -
    long before Joshua. Other evidence indicates the Israelites merely
    moved from the country into the towns and by the beginning of the
    iron age the two culture's (as well as bits of others) culture and
    mythologies had been combined into what became Jewish history.

    "None of the major phases of destruction at an early Canaanite site
    can be confidently ascribed to Israel or her warring Yahweh."
    (Robin Lane Fox)

    I will supply sources if you wish but it means doing some digging
    (pardon the pun) on your part otherwise my going to all that work
    is pointless.

            John