DIVINE PRESENCE AMID VIOLENCE

      Contextualizing the Book of Joshua

      Copyright © 2009 Walter Brueggemann. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      A Division of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      isbn 13: 978-1-60608-089-4

      Cataloging-in-publication data:

      Brueggemann, Walter.

      Divine presence amid violence : contextualizing the book of Joshua / Walter Brueggemann.

      xii + 82 p. ; 20 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books

      isbn 13: 978-1-60608-089-4

      1. War—Biblical teaching. 2. Bible. O.T. Joshua—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Revelation. I. Title.

      bs1199 w2 b78 2009

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      For

      Marilyn Stavenger

      I am delighted to dedicate this book to Marilyn Stavenger, my longtime comrade in ministry. Marilyn has modeled critical generosity in ministry that is respectful, dialogical, and empowering. It is appropriate that she be mentioned in this book because her generous feminism has lived out a faithful life of nonviolent transformative power. I am glad to count her a dear friend and treasured companion in ministry.

      Introduction

The conviction that Scripture is revelatory literature is a constant, abiding conviction among the communities of Jews and Christians that gather around the book.1 But that conviction, constant and abiding as it is, is problematic and open to a variety of alternative and often contradictory or ambiguous meanings.2 Clearly that conviction is appropriated differently in various contexts and various cultural settings.3 Current attention to hermeneutics convinces many of us that there is no single, sure meaning for any text. The revelatory power of the text is discerned and given precisely through the action of interpretation which is always concrete, never universal, always contextualized, never “above the fray,” always filtered through vested interest, never in disinterested purity.4

If that is true for the interpretive end of the process that receives the text, we may entertain the notion that it is also true for the interpretive end of the process that forms, shapes, and offers the text. That is, not only in its hearing, but also in its speaking, the text makes its disclosure in ways that are concrete, contextualized, and filtered through vested interest. While this leaves open the charge of relativism, it is in fact only a candid acknowledgment of the central conviction around which historical-critical studies have revolved for two hundred years. Historical-critical studies have insisted that a text can only be understood in context; historical-critical study believes historical context is necessary to hearing the text. But our objectivist ideology has uncritically insisted that knowledge of historical context of a text would allow us to be objective interpreters without recognizing that from its very inception, the textual process is not and cannot be objective.5

Historical-critical study thus gives us access to a certain interpretive act that generates the text, but that original interpretive act is not objective. This acknowledgment of the formation of the text as a constructive event is a recognition of what we know about ourselves, that we are not only meaning receivers, but we are also meaning makers. We not only accept meanings offered, but we construct meanings that we advocate.6 The receiving, constructing act of interpretation changes both us and the text. This suggests that Scripture as revelation is never simply a final disclosure, but is an ongoing act of disclosing that will never let the disclosure be closed. The disclosing process is an open interaction with choices exercised in every step of interpretation from formation to reception.

      Elsewhere I have summarized our situation with regard to knowing and interpretation:

      In place of objective certitude and settled hegemony, we would now characterize our knowing in ways that make mastery and control much more problematic, if indeed mastery and control can any longer be our intention at all. I would characterize our new intellectual situation in these rather obvious ways:

      1. Our knowing is inherently contextual. This should hardly come to us as a surprise. Descartes wanted to insist that context was not relevant to knowing. It is, however, now clear that what one knows and sees depends upon where one stands or sits . . .

      2. It follows that contexts are quite local, and the more one generalizes, the more one loses or fails to notice context. Localism means that it is impossible to voice large truth. All one can do is to voice local truth and propose that it pertains elsewhere. In fact, I should insist that all our knowing is quite local, even when we say it in a loud voice . . .

3. It follows from contextualism and localism that knowledge is inherently pluralistic, a cacophony of claims, each of which rings true to its own advocates. Indeed, pluralism is the only alternative to objectivism once the dominant center is no longer able to impose its view and to silence by force all alternative or dissenting opinion.7

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