Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 86:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: Reviews Of Books
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 86:1 (Spring 2024) p. 99

Reviews Of Books

Lissa M. Wray Beal, Joshua. The Story of God Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2019. Pp. 640. $49.99, cloth.

Wray Beal has provided an excellent commentary on the book of Joshua and contribution to the Story of God Bible Commentary series. Commentators often either shy away entirely from Joshua or avoid facing the challenges that arise when the book collides with modern (especially Western) sensibilities, especially regarding the destruction of the Canaanites. Wray Beal begins with a 50-page introduction that faces such issues squarely, anticipating and summarizing what she will argue in the commentary proper. In particular, she focuses on the challenges of (1) warfare and the commands for total destruction of the Canaanites, and (2) the questions of historiography: in what way the book of Joshua writes history.

Regarding the commands for the total destruction of the Canaanites—demands that trouble many modern audiences—Wray Beal reads Joshua as an ancient Near Eastern (ANE) conquest account, of which many extra-biblical examples are extant. This identification includes the presence of hyperbolic language which “is not meant to deceive” (p. 29). This leads to Wray Beal viewing the command for the total destruction of the Canaanites not as a command to kill every living being, but as a more limited command to wipe out the national identity of the Canaanite peoples, thus preventing Israel from later identifying with that culture. Wray Beal supports this reading by (1) arguing that the Deuteronomistic commands for total destruction applied only to the cities, not the open country, (2) pointing out the many texts that declare God would be the one to drive out the inhabitants, and (3) demonstrating the aforementioned hyperbolic nature of ancient accounts, which she supports later in the commentary with multiple references, especially in her analysis of chapter 6. Wray Beal therefore concludes that God is not endorsing genocide in the book of Joshua.

Regarding the questions of history and historiography, Wray Beal reads Joshua as a creative but historical narrative, noting that it reflects “all the artistic hallmarks of Hebrew narrative” (p. 26) and exploring the challenges this genre creates for readers used to modern historiography. She notes differences including non-chronological ordering of the narrative, the acceptance of the supernatural as an explanation for events, and the nature of ancient historiography as persuasive, not purely factual, reporting. These features of ancient historiography lead to the understanding that Joshua’s historiography is necessarily theological in nature, which Wray Beal understands to not be pitted against an understanding of events as factual. Instead, Wray Beal argues that rea...