In the immortal words of Jim Anchower, "Hola, amigos. What say? I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but your old pal Jim's been thicker than a donkey's dick with problems."
Hmmm... well, maybe not all of those words, but the point is I've slacked on the blog a bit these past seven few weeks and for that I am truly sorry. I plan to be much more dedicated to this project over the summer from here on out. One way or another, I will finish reading the Bible. I swear to science.
Ok, so the next book in the Bible is Joshua. It's from Joshua that we get the famous story of Jericho's walls coming down as well as the story of the sun standing still in the sky for a whole day.
For those of you that aren't in the know, Joshua was Moses' assistant. After Moses dies Joshua takes over control of Israel after God tells him to do so. From the way the book Joshua reads, the person Joshua must have been Moses' assistant in military related matters because Joshua spends virtually all his time kicking ass and taking names (no seriously, he actually takes names!) in a fairly successful effort to claim the land God promised Israel. He's absolutely ruthless about it. He leaves no stone unturned and no baby unstabbed. Then the land gets portioned out to the tribes of Israel and Joshua dies and that's pretty much it.
Of course, what kind of blog would this be if I didn't have something to say about the details?
JOSH 3:14-17 Joshua has his own mini-"parting of the Red Sea" involving the river Jordan. I had never heard this story before but as I read it all I could think was, "This sounds an awful lot like a river being dammed up by something rather than a divine miracle." Sure enough, a little Googling will show that a mudslide caused by an earthquake is often used as a natural explanation for the event by Christians and non-Christians alike. So, assuming that this story actually did happen, it's entirely possible that Joshua lucked out and simply attributed his good fortune to God (which didn't hurt to establish him as Moses' rightful replacement).
JOSH 6:21, 8:25, 10:28, 10:30, 10:32-33, 10:35, 10:37, 10:39-40, 11:11, 11:14 Joshua kills a ton of people. Probably literally and then some. Men, women, and children. I have nothing to say about that. I think it speaks for itself.
JOSH 7 & 8 After Joshua defeats Jericho he sends two spies to the land of Ai. The spies come back and inform Joshua that he need only send in two or three thousand men to attack Ai because it's sparsely populated. Joshua sends in 3,000. Except, by surprise, the men of Ai are able to fight them off. Joshua is torn up about this and can't figure out what went wrong. He looks to God and God tells Joshua that some jerk broke the law and kept some of the "devoted things" from Jericho and that's why God let Israel be defeated. God tells Joshua to get rid of the offender if Joshua wants the Lord's help killing people. Joshua finds the offender, named Achan, through what appears to be interrogations. Joshua kills Achan and his family (more on that later), attacks Ai again, and is victorious the second time around proving once and for all that God will help you if you follow his rules.
But... (and you knew there was a "but," right?) there's one thing that really bugs me about this story. On the second attack, Joshua not only sends in 30,000 men plus at least another 5,000, he also uses a different, and very effective, strategy. That doesn't prove the first defeat was due to God being bothered by Achan's petty theft. It proves Joshua f*cked up by sending too few men and learned his lesson. Achan was probably just some unfortunate scapegoat! I picture Joshua finding out that his first attempt failed and thinking,
"Oh my Yahweh! This is not good. I only just recently took this job. People are still comparing me to Moses, for Yahweh's future son's sake! Ugh! How could I be so stupid!? 3,000 men?! Joshua, you idiot! One lucky mudslide and you act like you own the world! Ok ok ok. Calm down. This isn't over. Think! ...well obviously I'm going to need to go back into Ai and completely f*ck their sh*t up! More men, this time. 30,000 at least. Maybe ambush them from behind while a small group draws them out the front. Yeah! That could work! Except...if I just go back in with more men, it'll look too much like I recognize my own mistake. People will start murmuring against me. I need someone to blame this on. But who? Huh...someone must have broken a law recently, there's so many of them! And that probably pissed Yahweh off. Oh!! Jericho! We were just in Jericho! Someone almost definitely took something he shouldn't have! I'll just pick a tribe and clan at random, start asking around, and I'm sure someone will start naming names. Chances are it'll be someone no one likes anyway or they wouldn't have ratted him out. It's perfect! The people get rid of an annoying neighbor, I look like a strong leader who's brilliant plan was foiled by some sinner, and then Ai gets what they deserve. Joshua, you're a genius!!"That brings us to Achan. As I previously mentioned, Achan and his whole family were stoned to death and burned with fire for Achan's actions. Let's ignore the satirical inner monologue above and assume that the first defeat really was due to Achan's theft and that he deserved to be stoned to death for it. Does his family really deserve to die as well? As we saw in Deuteronomy, "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin." So, it would appear that, no, the family should not have been put to death as well. Unless my memory fails me, that's the most blatant case of contradiction I've seen so far.
JOSH 10:11 Joshua gets lucky with some natural phenomena again.
JOSH 10:12-14 This is the fairly famous moment where Joshua asks God to stop the sun in the sky for a day and God obliges. I wanted to bring this up because I have actually heard people say that NASA once ran some calculations with a computer in regards to the position of celestial bodies in our solar system and they found a missing day! This proves that the sun did in fact stop for an entire day! Well, let's see what NASA has to say about this:
"[NASA] does not apply its computers to the task of projecting thousands of years into the future or past, as this would be irrelevant to the operational lifetime of satellites, which rarely exceeds a dozen years."
Ta-da! Knowledge is power!
JOSH 11:20 God hardens some people's hearts again. Which is interesting to me because, as I've been told, he only does this to people that will never turn to him anyway. In which case, we shouldn't be sad for any non-Christians that die, right? It was part of God's plan.
JOSH 1:5 Jumping back a bit here, as long as Israel follows the law, no one will be able to stand in their way. The two battles with Ai are proof of that. So then, what's up with this? And this? And this? If it's due to sinning, why is a sinner not sought out as was done with Achan? And why then are we told, at least in one case, it had to do with Israel not yet being strong enough? Later it's says that not one of all their enemies had withstood them and that no man has been able to stand before them to this day. But obviously they had. That just doesn't make sense. I'm hoping someone has a logical explanation for this that doesn't involve saying the people Israel was unable to drive out weren't enemies after all, because that's too easy to say in hindsight.
That's all I have for Joshua. In the next post I'll cover both Judges and Ruth since Ruth is really short.
-Nikko
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