Abstract
In his preface to the series, David G. Firth writes that the Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Historical Books is aimed at ‘serious students of the Bible’ rather than the laity or busy clergy looking for ‘light pastoral preparation’. The entire series is framed by an ‘evangelical commitment to the Bible as God’s Word’, and it sets out to provide a resource that is substantive but not overwhelming. To that end, the series focuses on overarching themes, structural markers and the literary features of the text before reviewing each major unit rather than analysing the text verse by verse.
John Goldingay eloquently delivers on all counts. An initial introduction to Joshua provides an overall framework for the commentary, though curiously there is no corresponding conclusion at the end of the book pulling the threads together. Joshua is then divided into the two parts, which Goldingay labels ‘The Israelites gain control of Canaan (Joshua 1—12)’ and ‘Joshua and Eleazar distribute the land (Joshua 13—24)’. Each part is prefaced with a brief introduction setting out the structure of the narrative and exploring key themes, before launching into the section-by-section analysis.
The actual commentary is based on years of thorough research, picking up on a great deal of recent scholarship, though surprisingly dependent on the work of the older all-time ‘greats’. The writing style is relaxed and at times informal, inviting readers to benefit directly from Goldingay’s wisdom, insight and encyclopaedic knowledge.
As an experienced scholar and teacher, Goldingay is, of course, well aware of the critical and theological issues raised by the text – for example, the violence of the Conquest, which seems to have echoes to this day in the contemporary history of Israel and Palestine, and the theological implications of a God who seems to command the annihilation of non-Israelites. Goldingay adopts a kind of Socratic approach to cautiously and critically consider these searching and challenging questions, but gently steers the reader away from concerns about divine morality – unsurprising, perhaps, given the evangelical audience for which the commentary is designed. Thus, divine violence is said to be primarily a response to (alleged) human offending rather than the character of God. So also the troubling Hebrew word herem is consistently translated as ‘devoted’ (as an offering to God) rather than as the more common ‘banned’ or ‘wiped out’. Goldingay also encourages a stronger canonical reading of Joshua seen through the lens of the cross, although he rightly points out that the New Testament authors themselves do not appear to have been too worried about the divine violence that troubles so many twenty-first-century readers. But Goldingay’s conclusion has to be right: however much we might be disturbed by these troubling images of God, the Church is called to listen carefully to Joshua even if we profoundly disagree.
Nor does Goldingay duck away from the unsettling challenges of more recent archaeological research, which tends to show that many of the stories of Joshua 1—12 can only be fictionalized accounts: neither Jericho nor Ai could have been attacked in anything like the dramatic way suggested in the text, simply because they did not exist in any substantial form at any plausible date for the ‘historical Joshua’. This is about Israel’s own reflection on the ways of God speaking through the conflicted memories of later generations in different historical circumstances.
And so to Part 2, which Goldingay sees as the centre of Joshua’s ‘theological geography’. Having gained control of the land, the next task is to complete the allocation of territory to the remaining tribes. There is a great deal of scholarly uncertainty about many of the cities and locations named in the text, but broadly Joshua seems to assume a greater Palestine covering a larger area than the actual territories of later Israel and Judah. There remains, however, a high degree of ambiguity about the borders imagined between the tribes, reflecting, perhaps, a memory of fluidity over the generations. But these long lists of cities bring the reader to the heart of the matter; as Peter Ackroyd pointed out many years ago, this is theology rather than history.
Goldingay thus starts to muse on the possible development of the canonical text over several generations as different theological perspectives gradually shaped a series of individual short stories into a connected narrative that linked into the Pentateuch in one direction and the historical books in the other. This is about the God who gives, and who draws the people of Israel into the emerging idea of a covenant.
Goldingay, as ever, has produced a book that is full of insight, wisdom and humour. It certainly delivers on the specification set out by Firth in the series preface, and it deserves to stand alongside the existing ‘go-to’ commentaries for all those engaging seriously with the text.