Over the past week, I have been doing some reminiscing of my high school days—in particular, I’ve been posting some of my artwork from the high school art classes I took back in the mid-80s. Now, as I was rummaging through my old high school things, I came across a paper I had written for…
We now come to the final post of my six-part extended book review of John Walton’s most recent book, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, and in this post, we will address the controversial question, “Did God really tell the Israelites to commit genocide by wiping out entire populations, including women and children?” To…
As we come to Part 5 in my series about understanding the conquest of Canaan, I want to address a point John Walton makes that stems from his propositions I addressed in Part 4. It is here where I take issue with some of Walton’s claims. Simply put, I’m not convinced. I think he overstates…
In his latest book, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, John Walton attempts to present the conquest narrative in the Book of Joshua in its historical and literary contexts in order to correct two common misconceptions regarding Israel’s conquest of Canaan: (1) those who justify the conquest by claiming the conquest was God’s punishment…
Before I cover the sections in John Walton’s book, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest where he discusses (1) how the Bible depicts the Canaanites (i.e. their identity), and (2) how the Mosaic Law relates to the Canaanites (i.e. their fate), I feel it is necessary to lay out my own understanding of the…
In my previous post, I began to address the controversial topic of the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan as depicted in the Book of Joshua, by means of beginning a book review of John Walton’s latest book, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest. I began by briefly discussing two of Walton’s fundamental points in the…
Mass genocide. Ethnic cleansing. An ancient form of colonialism. Cruel, superstitious, fanatical, barbarous war criminals no different than Nazis. That’s the ancient Israelites and their conquest of Canaan for you, and that’s the God of the Bible for you. How could anyone in their right mind think the God of the Bible to be worthy…
One of the most controversial and contentious issues in churches today has to do with the role of women in leadership roles. I grew up in an Evangelical culture in which all the leadership roles were filled by men, but at the same time there were women exercising “leadership” roles in areas of church life…
A few months ago, when Eugene Peterson, in an interview with Jonathan Merritt, said he would perform a same-sex wedding if two gay members in his congregation asked him to, the Evangelical world thought the world was coming to an end, and Progressives Christians exploded in celebration on social media. Peterson was called a heretic…
In my previous post, I critiqued the recent Evangelical statement known as The Nashville Statement regarding biblical sexuality in general, and homosexuality and transgenderism in particular. My criticism of it came down to basically this: although many of its points did, in fact, reflect the historical Christian position on a number of things, it was…