Unlocking the Bible. David Pawson
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of children: ‘Who knocked down the walls of Jericho?’ There was a long silence before a small boy said, ‘Please sir, I didn’t!’
Later that day in the staffroom, the teacher recounted the incident to the headmaster. ‘Do you know what happened in my classroom today? I asked who knocked down the walls of Jericho and that boy Smith said, “Please sir, I didn’t.”’
The headmaster replied, ‘Well, I’ve known Smith some years and I know his family – they’re a good family. If he says he didn’t do it, I’m sure he didn’t.’
The headmaster later reported the boy’s answer to a visiting school inspector, whose response was: ‘It’s probably too late to find out who did it; get them repaired and send the bill to us.’
The joke, of course, is that everybody should know who knocked down the walls of Jericho. It is one of the better known stories in the Bible. If they do not know the story from the Bible, then they have heard the Negro spiritual song ‘Joshua fit the battle of Jericho’. But this is the only part of the book many people do know. Joshua is not a well known book and a knowledge of the battle does not mean that everyone believes it actually happened. For even this story raises questions: How were the walls knocked down? Were they, in fact, knocked down at all?
It is clear that there are a number of preliminary questions for us to consider as we look at the book of Joshua. First of all we need to ask what sort of a book it is and how we should read the incredible stories it contains. We will then go on to look at the content and structure of the book, and how Christians can read it for maximum benefit.
What kind of a book is Joshua?
Joshua is the sixth book in the Old Testament. In our English Bible it is the book after Deuteronomy, with an apparently logical flow from the death of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy to the commissioning of Moses’ successor Joshua at the start of the next book. To the Jews, however, the significance of the book’s position is quite different. The end of Deuteronomy marks the end of the Torah, the law of Moses. These five books are read annually in the synagogue, with Genesis 1:1 beginning the New Year and Deuteronomy 34:12 being read at its end. Each of the five books is named after its first words, since these would be the words seen at the start of the scroll when the books came to be selected for reading. Joshua is the first book to be known by the name of its author.
Joshua is also a completely new type of literature. The first five books of the Bible set out the basic constitution of the people of Israel and are foundational to all that follows. By contrast, there is not a single law in Joshua, or in the books that follow. In Joshua we begin to see how the law is worked out in practice.
Joshua tends to be regarded as a history book because it comes in what is regarded as the history section of the English Bible. But it is more than just a history book. As we saw in the Overview of the Old Testament (Chapter 1), the Jews divide the Old Testament into three sections, rather like a library with books collected under three categories (Old Testament). The first five are the ‘books of the law’, also called the Torah or the Pentateuch. The ‘books of the prophets’ come next. Joshua is the first book of the ‘former prophets’, followed by Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. The books of Isaiah to Malachi comprise the ‘latter prophets’, with a few exceptions. The third section is ‘the writings’, which includes Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. So two books which are in the English Bible as prophets – Daniel and Lamentations – are part of ‘the writings’ in the Jewish Old Testament arrangement. Chronicles is the last book of the writings, although the English Bible includes it in the history section.
Joshua’s inclusion as a book of prophecy under the Jewish arrangement surprises many, for most of it is in narrative form and reads more like straight history than the poetic prophecy of later books. There are, however, a number of reasons why we should concur with this ‘prophecy’ tag.
First, it is not widely known that Joshua was a prophet. It is true that he is better known as a military commander, but he was a prophet just like Moses in that he heard from God and spoke for God. Indeed, the last chapter of the book records Joshua, in the first person singular, delivering God’s message to the people.
Second, biblical history is in any case a special kind of history. There are two principles which have to be followed when writing any history:
Using these two principles, we can see why the history in Joshua and the other ‘history’ books in the Bible is in fact prophetic. The author selects the events which are significant to God or are explained by God’s activity. Only a prophet can write this kind of history, for only a prophet has insight into what to include and why. Seeing the book as prophecy reminds us that the real hero of the book is not Joshua but God (and this applies to any book of the Bible). We see God’s activity in this world, what he says and what he does. Therefore, whilst it is genuine history, in that it describes what happened, we must see it as prophetic history, for it declares the reality of God and his work in the world.
The chart below shows the contrast between the books of the ‘former prophets’ and the books of the law.
There are a number of things to note from this chart.
1 The law includes God’s promises to Israel. The former prophets describe how these promises were fulfilled.
2 The law is God’s grace expressed to the people. The former prophets show how the people responded in gratitude to what they heard (although, as we will see, this gratitude was often sadly lacking).
3 The books of the law describe God’s redemption of his people from Egypt (Exodus). The former prophets explain how the people were to respond to God’s initiative by living in righteousness.
4 The books of the law tell how God would bless obedience and punish disobedience. In Joshua we see how an obedient response led to victory, as in the battle of Jericho. Conversely, we also see the ramifications of disobedience to the law, as in the defeat at Ai. Continued disobedience meant that the land claimed in the book of Joshua was taken away in 2 Kings.
The former prophets tell the tragic story of how the people won the Promised Land through obedience to the law, but then forfeited it because of disobedience. To put it another way: the first five books are the cause and the next six books the effect.
How should we read Joshua?
Before focusing on the book of Joshua itself we need to deal with the scholarly debate which can undermine our reading of so much biblical history. Many scholars argue that biblical truth is not historical or scientific but moral and religious. They are quite happy to accept that miraculous events form part of the Bible – just as long as no one is expected to believe that they actually took place! They suggest that biblical history is ‘myth’ or ‘legend’, teaching spiritual truths or values but not describing actual events which took place.
We need not deny that parts of the Bible are fictional. Jesus’ parables are technically ‘myths’. It does not matter whether there was an actual prodigal son or not, since the purpose of the story was to communicate important truth to the hearers. However, admitting that the Bible contains stories is a long way from agreeing that events included in the Bible are fiction.
Questioning the truth of the Bible began in the nineteenth century, when scholars argued that Adam and Eve were not real people but mythological figures whose activities explain universal truths. They said that the Fall