Book of Joshua 16-24, Judges 1-15

The Book of Joshua picks back up with the splitting of territories.  Riveting stuff.

I meant to make this reference before, but there's a strong feeling that Book of Joshua inspired a lot of Revelation's imagery, with its emphasis on the number seven and the appearance of Megiddo, which is the source of the word "Armageddon."  Megiddo was a real place, where the apocalyptic battle was supposed to take place.  And as I've stated before, there is plenty of fighting in the chronicles of Moses and Joshua..

Shiloh appears.  I found this remarkable mostly as an extremely amateur American Civil War buff.

"Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land he swore to give their fathers."  This line kind of makes the original Abrahamic covenant sound complete, but of course the whole relationship between God and the Hebrews became very much ongoing, as long as those Hebrews quit being so rebellious...Which doesn't happen very soon.  Just as I was making a note that they were behaving themselves, they stopped that right away.  God gets pretty hot under the collar when they build an altar intended for a purpose other than worshiping him, although Phinehas appears again to explain that it is a communal phenomenon that will help unite them in their common devotion to their Lord.  This appeases him.  No smiting.  Phinehas is the go-to guy when you don't need to know too much about the guy saving the Hebrews' butt.

Joshua in his farewell address summarizes the line of Abraham, skipping just like Exodus to Moses at that point in the history.  Apparently there was just no one worth talking about, or their names were completely forgotten.  Balaam is described as intending to curse rather than bless Israel, and I still hate reading this kind of stuff.  He seems to have come from a separate tradition that was folded into the Moses narrative without anyone realizing it, and only the orthodox view based on his final fate survived full tradition.  In the address Joshua utters the phrase, "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," which you will surely find familiar.

I know I've tried to guess how many generations passed from the time of Joshua to when his story was codified in this chronicle, possibly the first record completed, and I conclude by suggesting that perhaps it was as few as two, as the concluding passages in the book might be interpreted to say.

Judges is very similar to Joshua and may stem from an equally early recording tradition.  More summary can be found here, of the conquests the Hebrews were so fond of performing.  Caleb is mentioned here.  Everything sounds perfectly fine, and then they start making concessions, and that seems to be where things fall apart.  As living memory of the founding fathers fades away, the people stray from God.  So he gives them a series of periodic champions, or judges, to try and put them back in order.

The first judge is named Othniel, and he is the son of Caleb's brother.  The second is Ehud, who has the first of the extended episodes, in which he personally slays the king of an enemy nation.  The king is extremely fat, and Ehud has to plunge his sword deep into the king's belly.  Shamgar operates against the Philistines, who are quickly approaching their most famous biblical hours.  Then there's Deborah, who is described as a prophetess but is clearly a judge.  The highlight of her episode is a a pretty good poem.

The first truly big name among the judges appears next, and it's Gideon.  He frequently has God, or the angel representing him, prove they are who they say they are, which makes him far more brazen than past figures (any of them).  He has to contend with worship of that nasty pagan god Baal, whose followers fully expect him to act in their defense as Gideon threatens smiting.  In opposite of Abraham, who had to talk God into accepting smaller numbers of worthy individuals to save, Gideon argues that he needs fewer men to lead in battle.  Prophetic dreams return to scripture, but not in the guise of Gideon.  He engages in spectacular trumpet warfare, probably something you may remember.

The enemy leaders flee from him much as Darius does from Alexander the Great.  Unlike Darius, however, these guys are eventually slain by Gideon himself.  As soon as Gideon himself dies, the people return to their wicked ways.

One bit of cultural connections is camels wearing the crescent, which remains an Arabic emblem to this day.

Remember the name Abimelech from earlier?  Someone else gives it as spin, as king.  He is the son of Gideon. He faces the same kind of turmoil as the successors of Alexander, everyone spoiling for control and no one capable of filling Great shoes.  Abimelech is no slouch, but he's no Gideon, either.  Even with two of them now, I doubt you remember the name at all.  But he does leave an echo behind.  Like Samson who is to appear shortly, the most famous of the judges, Abimelech finds himself in the position to wipe out a whole mess of his enemies in the midst of one major structural collapse.  He ends up dying in battle, although since he's fatally struck by a woman, the chauvinist asks a male colleague to do him in first, because he doesn't want to go out that way.

Maybe that's why no one knows his (or his predecessor's) name...

Then there was Tola who judged for 23 years, then Jair who judged for 22.  Syria is mentioned.  Philistines come round again.  Another interesting lost figure is Jephthah, who was initially rejected as meaningless in the grand scheme, and so he gathers around him other "worthless fellows," only for the lot of them to be recuited, via begging, to help the Hebrews catch a break.  He consents.  He later goes so far as to massage their ego by explaining in extremely favorable terms the history of their conquests.  Jephthah has a tragic ending, however, when he strikes a bargain with God and the payment he comes to regret is sacrificing the first person he sees when he returns home.  That person ends up being his own daughter, which begins a tradition when she's allowed to bemoan never having made a life for herself, and then becomes a burnt offering.  Which kind of beggars the question of why earlier God had to make such a point of saying this was an abomination pagans practiced.

Anyway, Jephthah in all judged for 6 years.  Elom followed for 10, Abdon for 8.  The Philistines come round again!  And then a man named Manoah receives a visit from the angel of the Lord, who like Abraham before him and later for two lucky ladies in the New Testament, learns that his barren wife will give birth after all.  The resulting child's name is Samson.  Samson grows up and is a clever guy, wanting a Philistine bride so he can have something to complain about later.  His whole career as a judge is recorded at 20 years.  David Maine has one of his several exceptions works of fiction based on biblical episodes I've now reached in my readings centered around Samson, called appropriately enough The Book of Samson.  Maine also has The Preservationist (concerning Noah) and Fallen (the best of them; featuring Adam, Eve, Abel, and Cain, told in reverse).  He doesn't paint Samson in the best of lights, you should know...

Deuteronomy 26-34, Book of Joshua 1-15

I was just wondering, because God goes to great lengths to explain that bad things would only happen to his people if they strayed from him,why it is that Exodus begins by explaining that the bondage in Egypt happened because of a regime change after the time of Joseph.  Just something to think about.

Deuteronomy continues the the job of summarizing what has come before, and finally gets around to reintroducing the significance of Joshua, making a heavy case for him.  I'll have more on that in a moment.

I'd also like to make mention of the fact that God says the ark of the covenant needs to be plastered.  I don't think that was mentioned previously, when God was being incredibly specific about all that.

There's another song that reads like a psalm, with an emphasis on the Rock, which is I think the second time the idea is mooted in the books of Moses.  In Christianity, Jesus famously rechristens Simon as Peter because it means the Rock, which he intends to build his church on.  Peter is a Joshua figure, by the way.

There's mention that the Hebrews void of counsel may be something of a breach of contract, which may explain what happened to them in Egypt, because that was a significant breach in the Genesis lineage.  I've been bringing that up regularly.  This may have something to do with explaining what befell Balaam, a prophet who failed to sway a people in the direction of God.  God doesn't like that sort of thing.

Moses dies, and Deuteronomy ends by noting that there has been no prophet like him since.  There are plenty of other prophets that follow in the Old Testament, but at later times, and of course Christians have Jesus as the new Moses.

The Book of Joshua may be a continuation of Deuteronomy just as Acts is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke.  Didn't I say something like that previously?  At any rate it's a clear distinction from the way other some of the other books chronicling Moses present themselves.  God is still active, but he's not the God who spent all his time building a culture with rules.  He's more like the God who believes in war and conquest above all else, which to be fair Moses also experienced, but not quite to this heavy extent.

Another difference in perspective is the phrasing of what happened to the Red Sea after the flight from Egypt.  Here it's described as melting, several times.  Tradition, and earlier narratives, have it as being parted.  There's a clear difference.  I stated previously that perhaps the later books of Moses were written sooner than the earlier ones.  This difference may be a sign of things not being solidified yet.  Who looks to the Book of Joshua for information concerning the flight from Egypt anyway?

It may also be worth noting that there's a city called Adam, and it doesn't reference the first man in the passage at all.  Possibly indicates where the name came from, or what it inspired, much as the name Eve is described in Genesis itself as having in itself significance beyond being the name of the first woman.  So another indication that Book of Joshua, like Deuteronomy, came first, and Genesis was solidified later, like a Hollywood prequel.

One bit of continuity is the ending of God providing manna.  However, no mention of quail, which is far less famous, and perhaps for this very reason.  He seemed to provide it for the first time twice anyway.

Another lost heroic woman of the Old Testament is the harlot Rabah, who was a citizen of a Jericho who like Lot was the one good person living there, providing shelter for Joshua's scouts and thus securing her and her family's survival in the most famous conquest of the book (she reads like a preview of women in the New Testament).  But there are more.  Many more.  There was certainly war and conquest elsewhere, but here it's so jubilant and almost the whole point entirely, as if it's the template for what is described in earlier instances.  God does tell Joshua how to do it, but again, that's a marked difference between the interactions God has with his chosen representative and all the covenants and social outlines he spent his time reiterating in previous books.

There is a link, however, with the God of Genesis, insofar as Joshua making at least one deal with citizens of a land the Hebrews approach, even though it quickly degenerates into even more war.  That's what Abraham was famous for, a little like the Solomon of his day, a wise ruler (except for tricking people into thinking his wife was his sister).

Jerusalem is mentioned for the first time.  It is one of five kingdoms that attempt to unite against the Hebrew hoard.  Gaza is mentioned, too.  God points out the Philistines to the aging Joshua.  We met them in Genesis, but things didn't end well then, and they will only get worse later.

As if in confirmation of my observations, the Book of Joshua provides another summaries of Moses' conquests.  Here Balaam is mentioned again, this time as a soothsayer.  It may be entirely possibly that God's previously inexplicable crusade against the magical kind of all variations is a reaction to other relationships he's tried to make that failed, unlike with Abraham and his descendants.  You fail, like Balaam, and you become dead to him, an abomination.  He demands success above all else.  Obedience is about as important to him as human life in general.  He tests and tests, and if you fail, he smites you.  The end.

Caleb is finally referenced again!  At this point he has become another Esau or Lot, someone whose story has branched off from the main record that is the Bible.  It is no doubt very likely that people at that time had a lot more stories.  I'm beginning to wish I had access to those, too.  I like these lost figures like Balaam and Caleb, who begins to sound, in the Book of Joshua, almost like a classic Greek warrior.

The Jebusites, one of several tribes routinely referenced in the books of Moses as antagonistic to God's wishes for his people, are referenced as occupying Jerusalem "to this day," another indication that the memory as of the composing of this book was probably fairly recent.  They also read like the predecessors of today's Palestinians.