The Occupied Territories

The book of Joshua can be summed up with the following words: "So Joshua ... utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded." (10:40). This happened at Jericho, Ai, Makkedah, Linah, Lachish, Gever, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and 20 other cities. And he did it under God's command.

Kathleen Kenyon's excavations at Jericho in the 1950s challenged the traditional biblical narrative of the Israelite conquest. While she uncovered evidence of a city destroyed by fire and collapse around 1550 BCE, much earlier than the assumed date of the Israelite conquest, she found no evidence of a city with walls during the time period when the biblical account places the conquest. This began a period of archaeological revisionism, where the increasing evidence was of no mass invasion by the people of Israel.

However, Richard Elliott Friedman argues that the Exodus, as described in the Bible, was simply written up as a much larger event than what actually happened, for which there is no evidence in the oldest Hebrew poems. He believes it involved a smaller group, possibly just the Levites, who were of Egyptian origin and possibly even slaves or labourers. He suggests that this group of Levites spent time in Midian, where they encountered the Shasu people who worshipped a god named Yahu. They may have adopted this deity, later known as Yahweh, as their own. These Levites eventually migrated to Canaan and joined with the resident Israelites who worshipped El. They merged the two deities, resulting in the concept of Yahweh becoming the primary God of the Israelites.

Friedman's theory implies that the Israelites didn't conquer Canaan in the way described in the Bible, with a large-scale military invasion. Instead, the Levites, already familiar with Canaanite culture, likely integrated with the existing population.

Something like that happened in Jersey with the Huguenots fleeing persecution in France. Often well educated, they rapidly assimilated into the native French speaking population of Jersey, where the religious culture of the time, while nominally part of the Elizabethan settlement, was in fact Geneva Calvinist. Several Huguenots, such as Daniel Brevint, became Rectors of country parishes. What would have happened after the Restoration if it had not happened, when a number of the more Calvinist Rectors lost their parishes is unknown: would they have rewritten their own history? The Reformation, after all, had already seen a substantial rewriting of the Catholic history (as corrupt).

In Israel, long after the assimilation, the priestly caste rewrote their history as a mighty conquest, beginning with the fall of Jericho, and promoted their own remembrance of Exile as involving the entire people. This taking of what they saw as their right in the narrative, regardless of rights of others, is something we can see today in the newly occupied territories and in Gaza. History never quite repeats itself, but the justifications for invasion and subjugation often do.

The Occupied Territories

And the tribes came to the promised land:
They circled Jericho, and then the band
Struck up, trumpets, horns, cymbals clash,
And one by one, the bricks fall, walls crash;
The slaughter begins, bloodshed, killing,
That prophecy can be complete, fulfilling
The word of God, to massacre, wipe out
Fleeing people of Canaan, who cry out,
Beneath the arrow, the sword, the spear;
Our God is mighty, and we bring fear
And death to all, as commanded to do:
Invade, take over territory, never rue
The slaughter of the innocent this day,
Occupied territories are ours, we say.

It never happened, no trumpet sound,
No tribes circling the city walls around;
No destruction, no God’s slaughter,
But assimilation, son and daughter;
The few exiles, the Canaan natives:
Not much to sing, commemoratives;
So history rewritten, by the priests,
And sacrifices of blood at the feasts;
For this mighty victory, listen, hear:
Our God is mighty, and we bring fear
And death to all, as commanded to do:
Invade, take over territory, never rue
The slaughter of the innocent this day,
Occupied territories are ours, we say.

And now history is made manifest today:
Bombings of innocent: how can they pray?
Those who maim and kill, day and night:
Do they see themselves in Joshua’s light?
Settlers in occupied territories, move in,
Push out those living there: is that not sin?
Deaf to the suffering, to all the slaughter:
Now killing children, son and daughter;
They write their tale as Joshua’s heir:
Our God is mighty, and we bring fear
And death to all, as commanded to do;
Invade, take over territory, never rue
The slaughter of the innocent this day:
Occupied territories are ours, we say.