The biblical authors present these histories in order to explain why Judah and Israel split up, and why they were eventually destroyed by invading forces in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE.
The Historical Problem
Before the kings, however, come the events within the Book of Joshua, one of the predominant biblical texts that has been used to justify war in God’s name: the Israelites have reached the land of Canaan after wandering around the desert, Moses dies on the border of the much-anticipated Promised Land, and the military genius Joshua takes over leadership of the Hebrew tribes. According to divine mandate and under divine protection, the Hebrews are to utterly decimate the Canaanite peoples, who have become legendary for their practices of human sacrifice among a slew of other immoralities. Should the arrival in the Promised Land necessitate hostile takeover and the spilling of blood, so be it. Apart from violence, no other viable options present themselves to the Hebrews.
The issue with the Book of Joshua is essentially that it’s a steaming, heaping pile of ridiculous defecation.
The vast majority of archaeologists and non-literalist biblical scholars have concluded that Joshua cannot be used as a reliable basis for determining factual history for a couple of primary reasons. First, records demonstrate that the territory known as Canaan was not invaded all at once by a substantial group of people, but was rather settled gradually over hundreds of years; in reality, the discovery and subsequent analysis of artifact record heavily indicate that the tribes of Israel co-existed (though not always peaceably) with Canaanite tribes. Second, the first two cities mentioned in Joshua -- Jericho and Ai -- had suffered conquest and destruction centuries before the Israelite tribes ever landed on the scene. The word “Ai” more or less means “ruins,” and had been destroyed in the 3rd millennium before the Common Era, over 1,000 years before Canaan was ever formally settled. Jericho, a more prominent urban center of the ancient Near East, had gone through many stages of being destroyed and rebuilt, and there is no indication outside of Joshua that the Israelites had anything to with them.
Simply put, the Book of Joshua claiming that the Hebrews conquered Canaan by force is more or less akin to my standing amongst the ruins of the Mayan empire and claiming that I conquered this ancient peoples.
The Etiology of an Alternate History
This glaring discrepancy between biblical narrative and verified and verifiable history leads to quite the question: why does the Book of Joshua almost completely fabricate a history of conquest? There must be a reason for it, a meaning behind its composition, after all.
The answer, methinks, lies within the Babylonian Exile, which -- as I have written about before -- was the single most formative event in the history of the Hebrew Bible’s formation. Returning home from Babylon, the former slaves of Judah (the tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel have been completely lost to history with their conquest by the kingdom of Assyria in 721 B.C.E.) returned to Jerusalem, and got to work rebuilding their Temple with the help of the Persian government. Prophetic traditions and successions had arisen during the periods immediately surrounding the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests of Israel and Judah, but it was when the Judeans returned home that they sat down to write down their history, to form the majority of the Hebrew scriptures as we know them.
While some texts certainly have historical and formative basis preceding the Exile, the former slaves created the solid majority of the Bible once they returned home; exilic themes inhere throughout the prehistories and the histories. In their postlapsarian condition, Adam and Eve go into exile from Eden, and the Sabbath day of rest began as a religious practice in Babylon when the Hebrews could no longer worship and sacrifice in the Temple. The stories of Jacob the trickster are folk tales of survival in a foreign land. The 613 commandments are codified legal, ritual, and moral code for a nascent nation.
The Book of Joshua (along with the rest of the historical books) is nothing short of an attempt by the Judean literati to create a sense of identity and meaning upon returning home. It is a tale of mythical proportions, boldly proclaiming in a state of birthing pangs: “Look how great we once were! We took over the land promised to our forebears! Look at what we hope to become!” How does one create a sense of pride and identity and purpose from nothingness, other than by telling stories?
Wakanda and Canaan
I was discussing all this with my first period kids, and if I do say so myself, this has come to be one of my better lectures as the years have progressed. It’s logical, coherent, and provides an insight into how and why the Bible came to be. This stuff sends the mind reeling, for it calls into question the entire narrative of Canaan, and therefore Israel, as we know it.
One student, when I asked for questions or comments or insights, raised her hand. “So, it’s kind of like ‘Black Panther,’ huh?”
“How so?”
“Well, Wakanda doesn’t exist. The Black Panther doesn’t exist either. The whole thing is made up.”
Another African American student crossed her arms in front of her chest, and mimicked the gesticulation that the characters of “Black Panther” do in order to make their Wakandan identity known. I paused, wondering if I should do the same thing as an offer of solidarity, but then I realized how ridiculous that would have been (thankfully).
“So if it’s made up, why see it? Why take it seriously?” I asked. I paused pregnantly again as the class looked at me, and I turned to her: “So do you and I get the same thing out of seeing this made-up movie?”
“No!” she retorted. “I’m black, you’re white.”
“Bingo,” I shot back. “I can’t get it. I can’t understand. I can only appreciate what it’s trying to do by creating this alternate Wakandan history.”
This first period class, along with the rest of my periods, came to the conclusion that even though “Black Panther” creates an alternate history to the one we actually know, it does so for similar reasons that the authors of Joshua did. It is a social and political commentary, and as a white dude I cannot in serious conscience doubt the meaningfulness of the story, or question its validity, because the comics and the film were not really made with me in mind. “Black Panther” takes the question of violence seriously, however, and does not assume it to be a given: while Joshua on the whole advocates for forceful colonization, the two Black Panthers, T’Challa and Killmonger, present diametrically opposed positions on the matter. The former intends to position his kingdom as force for establishing harmony in the midst of a broken world, whereas the latter hopes (understandably, though not excusably, given what he has suffered) to use Wakanda as a means for exacting revenge upon the world, fracturing its bones and drawing further blood. These leaders assume the mantles of restorative and punitive justice, respectively.
Those of us who take the Bible seriously cannot dismiss those parts of it that are historically fictitious, as they still possess truth. When the Jews returned to Judea from captivity in Babylon, they created a mythos, an identity by means of stories. And yet, it took twenty-five hundred years before Israel emerged as an independent nation, free from external overlords. Its writings vascillate between the intentions of T’Challa and Killmonger: at times, the Bible’s authors look for revenge, while its more lovely passages prophetically declare that the new Heavens will transform rather than obliterate the world as we know it. For these authors, God seeks restoration, rather than punishment.
The ancient Hebrews’ scriptures (and therefore our scriptures) proclaim that their covenant with God would be a light to the nations, a witness of the relationship through which God has wedded God’s very self to the entirety of creation and all divine image-bearers within it. Through their history and experience, salvation would be made known. I strongly suspect that Wakanda might serve a similar purpose as the Marvel universe unfolds.
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