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