Why Do People Admire the Jericho Massacre?
According to legend, an invading army once besieged the city of Jericho. The priests blew on their trumpets, and the city wall miraculously collapsed. The attackers killed every inhabitant in the city, men, women, and children. They killed all the oxen, sheep, and donkeys. They spared only a prostitute who had protected their spies, along with her family.
After Jericho, Joshua and his forces continued their killing spree. Ai, Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir: all slaughtered to the last infant.
Many people today think this was a great thing to do. They sing about how “the walls came tumbling down.” Preachers give sermons citing the attack as an example to follow. Search YouTube, and you’ll find cartoons to teach children about this wonderful act of genocide.
Just to be clear, nothing very close to the events in the Book of Joshua ever happened. Historians don’t think there was a walled city at a time that matches Joshua’s invasion. Details like the Jordan River interrupting its flow to let Hebrews across and the stopping of the Earth’s rotation are mythical, not historical. The issue isn’t whether anyone was guilty of that act of carnage, but why people hope the story was true.
Animated propaganda
The answer lies, I think, in the hold which stories take on people’s minds. The songs and the cartoons build up Joshua as a hero. They don’t dwell on the slaughter; most often they don’t even mention it. A lot of Christians, never having been very big on Bible study, don’t even know that the Israelites are supposed to have wiped out the populations of entire cities.
Those who know carefully cultivate the story in people’s minds. Given the whole thing without preparation, any decent human would recoil from it. Start with “The walls came tumbling down” and leave out the ugly parts, and you have an exciting story. Let them invest their belief in the story, give it time to become part of what they are, and they’ll find a way not to be bothered by the thought of soldiers breaking into homes and skewering women as they tried to shield their children.
A striking example is “Beginners Bible” animated version of “Joshua and the Battle of Jericho.” (You can find it easily on YouTube. I refuse to give it the benefit of a link.) It’s a study in propaganda techniques.
Joshua is shown as humble and uncertain. He insists he’s not a soldier. But God gives him orders out of the sky, and what’s he supposed to do but obey? His opponent, the king of Jericho, has a mocking laugh. That’s enough to establish him as a villain. He misidentifies an innocent man as a spy before spotting the real spies. That’s understandable when your city is under siege. Never mind that he’s trying to save his people from total destruction.
The cartoon’s presentation of Rahab stays close to the Bible, except that it doesn’t mention her profession. As in Scripture, she admits she helped the spies out of fear and begs to have her family spared. That’s one of the more honest parts of the presentation.
Before the sonic assault, Joshua sings a rock song. Music is a good way to get a young audience on your side. The walls collapse, but the people being crushed under them aren’t shown.
The Canaanite king is taken away protesting. Presumably he’s going to be executed, though it isn’t made explicit. There isn’t even that much of a hint about the butchering of the rest of the city. The creators knew better than to try to sell modern American kids on the murder of foreign kids. Getting them to applaud that can come later.
The cartoon is full of humorous bits: people taking harmless falls, spies blundering, animals doing silly things. Humor has its uses in propaganda.
Look at the comments, if your stomach can take them. “Trust and obey God always.” “God is good. He is all love.” “I love god for you and everything and everyone god is blessing everyone.” “GOD IS THE BEST I LOVE GOD SO SO SO SO MUCH HE IS ARE SAVER.” These people are positively ecstatic over the extermination of a city.
Justifying murder
Such tricks are enough to lull children. Still, you’d think that when they grow up and learn the full story, they would recoil. With few exceptions, they don’t. Most don’t explicitly endorse the carnage.
Some fully understand and don’t mind. I once talked with a man who was promoting his brand of Christianity in Harvard Square. I brought up the Jericho issue and asked how he could justify that. He said that the killing was OK because the Canaanites practiced human sacrifice. I don’t know whether that’s true. Let’s suppose it is. He said it’s OK to murder the entire population of a city in order to stop human sacrifice! That’s not just stupid. It’s evil. Nazi-level evil.
Others say they don’t understand how it could be right, but we can’t expect to understand God’s ways. If he says it’s right, it must be right. That’s moral abdication. You can claim that the universe is ruled by a good Deity, or you can claim that it’s ruled by the Deity described in the Book of Joshua. (Or neither.) The two claims are incompatible with each other. If God ordered the Jericho massacre, he’s a bloodthirsty monster who deserves no one’s worship.
Many modern Christians don’t take the Bible literally. They’re willing to say it was a myth. But not many of them go so far as to repudiate it and call it a slander against their God. They maintain a discreet silence.
Mental walls
Many Christians, I think, deal with the issue by building a mental wall around it. They say to themselves, “Don’t look here. Don’t think about it.” Not in so many words, of course. Try telling yourself not to think about elephants for the next sixty seconds, and you’ll see why that doesn’t work. It’s a wordless barrier, one gradually built up over time. It’s built out of what their friends would think if they raised the question, of what it would mean to recognize a vicious story in the Bible, of whether it might make their whole belief system collapse.
A wall of that kind doesn’t yield to a frontal assault. Tell devout Christians that they believe in genocide, and they’ll refuse to listen. If anything, they’ll become more convinced their beliefs are right. Changing people’s minds about long-held beliefs requires communication and patience. It’s usually more constructive to say “I don’t accept that” and give reasons than to say “You should not accept that.” Let people understand what you think without making them feel threatened. In time their walls may come tumbling down.
