The Book of Joshua is a book of the Old Testament, translated by the Catholic Church as Joshua, which follows the Pentateuch and records the Israelites led by Joshua into the Promised Land.
Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to "the Promised Land of Canaan, the blessed land that God had given them." After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites came to the east bank of the Jordan River, and across the bank was "a land flowing with milk and honey."
At this point, the Pentateuch ended, and the next thing was the whole process of Joshua leading the Israelites across the Jordan River, and then going around to fight, besiege cities and plunder, and armed colonization, the whole process was very bloody and cruel.
So, is the book of Joshua really true? The discoveries made by modern archaeology make people wonder if the Bible is fiction or not.
The Canaanites were slaughtered
Before Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and came to the east bank of the Jordan River, Jehovah commanded Moses: "You will kill the inhabitants of the city with the sword, and you will kill all the animals that are in the city." ”
It can be said that a mere military victory is not enough to demonstrate Jehovah's intentions, and Jehovah's total destruction of the "infidels" entrenched in Canaan.
Since Jehovah had a will, Joshua went on a killing spree when he attacked Canaan, leaving not even a single living man, old or young, women, children, livestock, etc., so the book of Joshua is a bloody book of cruelty.
Jericho, the first city of Joshua's massacre, says that "he slew with the sword everything that was in the city, men, women, and children, cattle, sheep, and donkeys." Below, Joshua and the Israelites cross the Jordan River.
Ai, the second city slaughtered by Joshua, records that "the Israelites slaughtered all the inhabitants of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness." The men of Ai fell by the sword until they were utterly destroyed. ”
Joshua led the Israelites to slaughter the city continuously, causing the Canaanites to shake, so the five kings of the Canaanite region united (there were some kingdoms in the north, such as the northern kingdom of Hazor, which was also slaughtered by Joshua), but in the end they were defeated by Joshua, beheaded, and hung their bodies on trees, and the Canaanites of the five kingdoms were also slaughtered.
In short, in the book of Joshua, there were at least 34 cities scattered in the land of Canaan, as dense as in modern times, and they were all conquered or destroyed in the end, that is, Joshua slaughtered all of the Canaanite region, either "leaving not a single one" or "slaying all the people of the city with the sword."
Archaeological finds are puzzling
Since Joshua slaughtered Canaan and destroyed countless cities, it is reasonable to leave some traces, but modern archaeological discoveries such as the cities of Jericho and Ai are puzzling.
First came the city of Jericho, the first battle after Joshua crossed the river. Modern archaeology has found that the city was destroyed from the 14th century BC onwards and has not been settled there, while the Joshua conquest took place between 1250 and 1230 BC.
This was followed by Ai, the second city of Joshua's massacre. But archaeological findings have found that between 2300 and 1200 B.C., the city was completely abandoned, and it was impossible for Joshua to massacre Ai.
It should be noted that there is no self-proof that the cities of Jericho and Ai are not self-proven, and it is difficult to say whether the original names were called that, but the West named them according to the Bible. Judging by the time of the destruction of Jericho and Ai, Joshua knew that the names of these two cities were question marks, and the more he went on, the more no one knew the real names of these two cities.
William Deaver, an American archaeologist who has been engaged in field archaeology in Palestine for more than 40 years, pointed out that of the more than 40 sites recorded in the Bible, only two or three sites show signs of destruction in the late 13th century BC, of which Joshua conquered or destroyed 34 sites, but only three or four archaeological discoveries show obvious signs of destruction.
All in all, more than 90% of the ancient sites in Palestine do not show any traces of destruction or massacre, and the archaeological findings are highly inconsistent with the biblical record. Only a few sites show signs of destruction, such as the site of Hazor, but was this destruction carried out by Joshua and the Israelites?
It is worth mentioning that the modern large-scale excavation of the site of Shazo began with the Israeli archaeologist Igar Yadin, who served as the chief of the IDF General Staff. And judging from Israel's credibility today, Yigar Yaden's "discovery" may have to add a question mark!
Aftermath
The book of Joshua is an ancient and important chapter in the Bible, but from the perspective of modern archaeology, it is clear that the book of Joshua is seriously untrustworthy and mostly fictional! In this case, the following two questions have to arise:
First, if the book of Joshua is heavily fictional, is it true that the rest of the Bible is the same? Or, at least, a significant portion of the Bible is a fiction of posterity?
Second, since the book of Joshua is grossly fictional, is the name of the ancient city of Canaan correct, is Israel's history of and of Canaan credible?
More importantly, the Bible is the foundation of Jewish history and European civilization, and it is also one of the key keys for the West to decipher the ancient Egyptian civilization and the civilization of the Two Rivers.
References: "The Bible", "Gao Feng Feng: The Bible and Violence: Biblical Archaeology and Imagined Killing", etc