Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!topaz!christian From: christian@topaz.UUCP Newsgroups: mod.religion.christian Subject: Joshua and the conquest of Canaan Message-ID: <10739@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Sun, 5-Apr-87 02:11:57 EST Article-I.D.: topaz.10739 Posted: Sun Apr 5 02:11:57 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 5-Apr-87 19:38:36 EST Sender: hedrick@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Lines: 80 Approved: christian@topaz.UUCP Hi! This is my first posting [moderator permitting] to this newsgroup, but I've been following it for several weeks now with interest. I wonder if any of you could provide some insights about a Bible passage which has proven troublesome for me. In a recent discussion with some Christian friends, someone brought up in passing the story of Joshua at Jericho. A brief recap: Joshua beseiges the city, eventually captures it, and then kills everyone inside: men, women, and children. Chapters 7 through 11 of the book of Joshua describe how the Israelites go on to attack the other cities in Canaan and the surrounding countryside, eventually putting everyone in the region to death. (There are a few exceptions: Rahab and her kin are spared, as are the Gibeonites, who are enslaved rather than slaughtered.) The person who brought up the story explained that God commanded this doom because if the Canaanites had been spared, the Israelites would have been assimilated into their society, marrying the Canaanites and turning away from Jehovah toward the idol-worship of the Canaanites. I can't fathom the morality behind this. I don't see how the loving God of Christianity (or pre-Christianity) could order what I have to call genocide. Does anyone on the net have any thoughts or explanations? I eagerly anticipate anyone's ideas, whatever your views are on this passsage. John Ockerbloom ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ockjoha@yalevmx.BITNET ...!{seismo,decvax}!yale!ockerbloom-john ockjoha@yalevmx.yale.EDU Box 5323 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520 From cmcl2!psuvax!wisdom.bitnet!eitans Wed Apr 1 13:59:27 1987 Received: by topaz.rutgers.edu; Wed, 1 Apr 87 13:11:40 EST Message-Id: <8704011811.AA03033@topaz.rutgers.edu> Received: by nyu.arpa; Wed, 1 Apr 87 07:05:23 est From: Eitan Shternbaum Date: Mon, 30 Mar 87 20:47:15 -0200 To: christian@topaz.rutgers.edu, talk-religion-misc@ucbvax.berkeley.edu Subject: (the) Late gender in religion Status: RO This is a reply to an article discussing the gender in religion. The topic is an old one and i apologize for not responding in time. "Most feminists I know (myself included) don't care at all about "the way the Hebrew language names God". We care about the way the English language names God. Now it's all well and good to say that "one must be percise [sic] on [sic] translating Religious [sic] terms", but what exactly do you mean by "percise [sic]"? Do you mean that one should be faithful to the syntax of the original phrasing, or to the semantics?" If one assumes that the word of god are sanctified than one must assume that there is a certain importance to the way in which those words were presented. Thus both semantics & syntax must be carefully translated. "you seem to imply that the the original Hebrew was intended to convey the notion of a parental relationship between god and humans. Yet God is referred to as "Father" and not as "Parent". Your explanation of word genders seems to imply that "Father" was chosen over "Parent" not for any semantic reason, but simply because the original Hebrew words were masculine. So, in the case of god, you seem to be more interested in carrying over the syntax of the language (the gender) than you are in the retaining the semantics. Yet you don't translate "Herev" as "swordess" (female sword), so in this case you seem to be perfectly willing to drop the syntactic gender in favor of the meaning. You're not being consistent." There are two points in the former article. - Explaining why does god has been referred as male by the OT (syntax). - God is named in a certain form since the human brain needs a model in order to understand the human-god relations (The Best example is christianity's trinitheism). Since The model of human-god relations imitates the model of a patriarch family and since the immediate association in our mind to this kind of relations is the relations between a father and son we apply it on the human-god relations. Weather it's good or bad association i'm not to judge. The idea of a model is that it is COMMON ( it would be understood by all thus i think this model is quite satisfying.) (in other words feminists should aim their enthusiasm into more important problems than this. It seems to me that this "crusade" is more likely to be an ego trip ...) I believe that this posting has answered all the question marks and misunderstandings exposed by the writer of the former letter.