What we see in the Bible as historical narrative is hardly the only thing happening in those places at that time. There is a wealth of historical background that the writers assumed readers would know. They wrote for their own people.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to all the depth of scholarship that was so common back when I went to college. Today I hear and read people spouting stuff that they simply made up, leaping to conclusions when data seems to coincide. Better answers aren’t that hard to find, though I realize that it means going to a real library with paper books and reading stuff written long ago. Sadly, some of the best history and archaeology never made it onto the Net.
Today we estimate that Abraham was called to serve God and leave his home around 2100 BC. While it was rare for an urbanized man to join the wandering clans of nomadic herders, he wasn’t all that noticeable. Aside from his peculiar cultural ways, he was part of a very large number of nomads. Palestine was thinly settled, somewhat forested and there was plenty of room for him among the other roving tent-dwellers. There were rivalries and raids, but nothing we would call “warfare” most of the time. What made Abraham stand out was a considerably longer life-span than was common in Palestine. Mortality among the locals was largely a matter of cultural religious practices that mandated very bad sanitation practices. The wandering tribes tended to live a little longer, but Abraham was ancient by their standards.
A century later, we see evidence of a rising presence of far larger groups and more warlike. Their religions were also pretty rough, including some morally repulsive rituals. We can’t guess their identities in any meaningful terms, only their presence and some differences. A large number of towns and cities in Palestine were destroyed or taken over and the ethnic mix changed a bit. By the time Israel’s clan goes down into Egypt, things got really busy in Palestine. Substantial nations washed over the area from all directions, each conquering the one before, and it was truly chaotic, a bad time to live in that land.
This was when the truly nasty religions mentioned in the Bible make their appearance in archaeological evidence. That doesn’t mean they weren’t there before, but that now they were leaving traces that we can dig up with very large shrines and such. We also find evidence through third party mention of them, both the invaders and the large pagan cults that arose. This was when sacrificing children to Molech became rather common. Life was chaotic and fearful at best, and extreme practices were just a part of it.
When Israel invaded and began the conquest of Palestine, those other raiding tribes were still doing their business. Israel was different, but the locals experienced them as just another warring nation taking and destroying and occupying. Meanwhile, don’t be surprised to discover that a large number of Israel’s relatives had never left the land, but had managed to keep their villages alive and something close to Yahweh worship in the mix of religions (Shechem, for example). But when the Bible lists the places conquered and destroyed by Israel’s army, you should get a clue: those were the centers of degrading heathen religions. They didn’t conquer every Canaanite city, nor did they tear down every shrine or temple, on those that were nasty by just about anybody’s standards.
What we see in later history in the Bible are attempts to revive some of these nasty old cults. Most of them included degrading sexual practices as ritual. This stuff was destructive of stable family life and spread diseases. It summoned demonic presence and created an awful moral havoc that we can scarcely picture. What made things so bad was that too often during the Conquest, Israel was unwilling to finish the job, so some of this trash was left among them to tempt them. Honestly, if the average modern saw some of the nasty stuff these people did, you’d be horrified and consider killing them, too.
Leaving some folks and their towns alive was not the problem; it was the kind of folks Israel failed to drive out.
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Thanks for that Pastor, I really enjoy these history posts.
Do you have any book/material recommendations in addition to your own books and blog posts? A list somewhere perhaps?
This is interesting but still new and somewhat confusing territory for me. This western thinking and background won’t go away easily.
Do you have any book/material recommendations in addition to your own books and blog posts?
My college texts were not that good, but Oklahoma Baptist University’s library had a whopping collection of much better stuff. There’s no way I can list what I read there, but I can recommend a rather fat single volume for Old Testament History background: Old Testament Survey by La Sor, et al. In fact, anything written by William Sanford La Sor is worth your time. For something approaching commentary, I like Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible. While you can’t swallow everything you read anywhere, those two will start you thinking along good lines. For dumping Western thinking, it’s not so simple. Most of the best scholarly discussion comes in the form of comparative philosophy surveys, which requires a big load of prerequisite reading in philosophy in general. You get lost really quickly because secular scholars have no sympathy with biblical thinking.
By the way, my comment about the philosophy stuff isn’t meant to discourage you from dumping the Western approach. That’s simply a description of what it takes to match the background behind my writing. The main point is to become aware of Western thought patterns and how they differ from the biblical pattern of thought; that’s within reach of most people.
OK, in any case it’s a process. And of course more likely it’s a matter of expanding your current view of the world and outlook rather than replacing it outright. Getting even the basics of Christianity roughly correct isn’t always that easy, not to mention finding your way around all the rest that’s involved. At least there’s something to occupy your free time. 🙂
I’m willing to bet those old pagan tribes were worse than anything the Nazis could come up with. When you look at it that way, it’s a wonder God didn’t want to wipe out all of them like the Canaanites…although, in a way, He did.
Indeed, Jay, worse, but also quite different. The Nazis were a great deal closer to rational.