Book Of Joshua Chapter 6

[Marianna]

Rahaba Canaanite woman of the Bible, sets in motion the entrance into Canaan by the Israelites.[9] To avoid repeating failed attempts by Moses to have notable men of Israel predict the success rate of entry into Canaan mentioned in the book of Numbers, Joshua tasks two regular men with entering Jericho as spies. They arrive at Rahab's house and spend the night. The king of Jericho, having heard of possible Israelite spies, demands that Rahab reveal the men. She tells him that she is unaware of their whereabouts, when in reality, she hid them on her roof under flax. The next morning, Rahab professes her faith in God to the men and acknowledges her belief that Canaan was divinely reserved for the Israelites from the beginning. Because of Rahab's actions, the Israelites are able to enter Canaan.[9]

Having described how the Israelites and Joshua have carried out the first of their God's commands, the narrative now turns to the second: to "put the people in possession of the land." Joshua is "old, advanced (or stricken) in years" by this time.[12]

Joshua completed the division of the land in its boundaries, and the children gave a portion to Joshua, by the commandment of the Lord. They gave to him the city for which he asked, Thamnath Sarach gave they him in Mount Ephraim, and Joshua built the city, and dwelt in it. And Joshua took the stone knives with which he had circumcised the children of Israel, which were in the way in the wilderness, and he placed them in Tamnath Sarach.[19]

Joshua meets again with all the people at Shechem in chapter 24 and addresses them a second time. He recounts the history of God's formation of the Israelite nation, beginning with "Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor, [who] lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods."[29] He invited the Israelites to choose between serving the Lord who had delivered them from Egypt, or the gods which their ancestors had served on the other side of the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land they now lived. The people chose to serve the Lord, a decision which Joshua recorded in the Book of the Law of God. He then erected a memorial stone "under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord" in Shechem.[30] The oak is associated with the Oak of Moreh where Abram had set up camp during his travels in this area.[31][citation needed] Thus "Joshua made a covenant with the people", literally "cut a covenant", a phrase common to the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages. It derives from the custom of sacrifice, in which the victims were cut in pieces and offered to the deity invoked in ratification of the engagement.[32]

There were no Levitical cities given to the descendants of Aaron in Ephraim, so theologians Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch supposed the land may have been at Geba in the territory of the Tribe of Benjamin: "the situation, 'upon the mountains of Ephraim', is not at variance with this view, as these mountains extended, according to Judges 4:5, etc., far into the territory of Benjamin".[38]

In the 1930s Martin Noth made a sweeping criticism of the usefulness of the Book of Joshua for history.[44] Noth was a student of Albrecht Alt, who emphasized form criticism (whose pioneer had been Hermann Gunkel in the 19th century) and the importance of etiology.[44][45] Alt and Noth posited a peaceful movement of the Israelites into various areas of Canaan, in contradiction to the Biblical account.[46] American archaeologist William F. Albright questioned the "tenacity" of etiologies, which were key to Noth's analysis of the campaigns in Joshua.

In 1955, G. Ernest Wright discussed the correlation of archaeological data to the early Israelite campaigns, which he divided into three phases per the Book of Joshua. He pointed to two sets of archaeological findings that "seem to suggest that the biblical account is in general correct regarding the nature of the late thirteenth and twelfth-eleventh centuries in the country" (i.e., "a period of tremendous violence").[50] He gives particular weight to what were then recent digs at Hazor by Yigael Yadin.[50]

Archaeologist Amnon Ben-Tor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who replaced Yadin as the supervisor of excavations at Hazor in 1990, believed that recently unearthed evidence of violent destruction by burning verifies the Biblical account of the city's conquest by the Israelites.[51] In 2012, a team led by Ben-Tor and Sharon Zuckerman discovered a scorched palace from the 13th century BC in whose storerooms they found 3,400-year-old ewers holding burned crops.[52] Sharon Zuckerman did not agree with Ben-Tor's theory, and claimed that the burning was the result of the city's numerous factions opposing each other with excessive force.[53]

Fragments of Joshua dating to the Hasmonean period were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QJosha and 4QJoshb, found in Qumran Cave 4).[56][57]The Septuagint (Greek translation) is found in manuscripts such as Washington Manuscript I (5th century CE), and a reduced version of the Septuagint text is found in the illustrated Joshua Roll.[58][59] The earliest complete copy of the book in Hebrew is in the Aleppo Codex (10th century CE).[60][61]

The Book of Joshua deals with the conquest of the Land of Israel and its settlement, which are politically charged issues in Israeli society. In her article "The Rise and Fall of the Book of Joshua in Public Education in the Light of Ideological Changes in Israeli Society," Israeli biblical scholar Leah Mazor analyzes the history of the book and reveals a complex system of references to it expressed in a wide range of responses, often extreme, moving from narrow-minded admiration, through embarrassment and thunderous silence to a bitter and poignant critique.[84] The changes in the status of the Book of Joshua, she shows, are the manifestations of the ongoing dialogue that Israeli society has with its cultural heritage, with its history, with the Zionist idea, and with the need to redefine its identity.

David Ben-Gurion saw in the war narrative of Joshua an ideal basis for a unifying national myth for the State of Israel, framed against a common enemy, the Arabs.[85] He met with politicians and scholars such as Biblical scholar Shemaryahu Talmon to discuss Joshua's supposed conquests and later published a book of the meeting transcripts; in a lecture at Ben-Gurion's home, archaeologist Yigael Yadin argued for the historicity of the Israelite military campaign pointing to the conquests of Hazor, Bethel, and Lachish.[85] Palestinian writer Nur Masalha claimed that Zionism had presented the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (which saw the creation of the State of Israel) as a "miraculous" clearing of the land based on Joshua, and the Bible as a mandate for the expulsion of the Palestinians.[86]

The biblical narrative of conquest has been used as an apparatus of critique against Zionism. For example, Michael Prior criticizes the use of the campaign in Joshua to favor "colonial enterprises" (in general, not only Zionism), which have been interpreted as validating ethnic cleansing. He asserts that the Bible was used to make the mistreatment of Palestinians more morally palatable.[87] A related moral condemnation can be seen in "The political sacralization of imperial genocide: contextualizing Timothy Dwight's The Conquest of Canaan" by Bill Templer.[88] This kind of critique is not new; Jonathan Boyarin notes how Frederick W. Turner blamed Israel's monotheism for the very idea of genocide, which Boyarin found "simplistic" yet with precedents.[89] In her tenure as Minister of Education, Israeli leftist politician Shulamit Aloni often complained about the centrality of the book of Joshua in the curricula, as opposed to the secondaryness of humane and universal principles found in the Books of the Prophets. Her attempt to change the Bible study program was unsuccessful.[90]

The Springboard blog highlights the experiences of Jewish teens and Jewish teen professionals participating in community programs across Chicagoland and beyond. Dive into blogs about different Jewish teen events, leadership programs, trip opportunities, and more! Join us in celebrating the unique perspectives and contributions of Jewish teens and professionals in the Jewish community. To post a blog, please email daniell...@juf.org.

When I stepped off the plane in Newark on Tuesday, June 7, I didn't know what to expect. Of the more than seventy people that I would be spending the next twelve days with, I knew one person. Walking to baggage claim 1, I was starting to wonder if this summer was going to be as fun as everyone had said it would be. As soon as I checked in and got my name tag, three people from Atlanta walked up to me and introduced themselves. When we got on the bus, we sat down and started playing cards. Being with them made the three-hour bus ride feel like thirty minutes. We got off the bus and ran through the rain to the gym.

When we woke up in the morning, everyone was excited to get started with the day. We started off by working on our leadership skills to bring back to our chapters. In the afternoon, we played basketball and went swimming. But, the part that brought the CLTC community together wasn't what we did during the programming, but instead what went on during free time. It was during the walks to meals and while we were hanging out before bed, that I really saw the bond of the BBYO community. While at camp, I met Jewish teens from Florida to California, who I will be able to reunite with when I go to college.

Throughout the time that I was at CLTC, we bonded through Maccabia, song sessions, sports, Jewish enrichment, and so much more. We were able to experience camp through a BBYO lens, and we were able to learn how to make our chapters and regions the best that they can be. When I left, I felt like a completely different person. I had stepped out of my comfort zone, and I couldn't be happier. I made lifelong friends at CLTC, and am excited to make many more during the time that I have left in BBYO.

3a8082e126