Narrative Disjunction, Artful Occlusion, and Cryptic Commentary in Joshua 1–12
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16901424 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robin Baker (0000-0001-5633-3814, University of Winchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 388 |
| Publication date | 2024-03-22 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel15040388 |
| OpenAlex | W4393081093 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 55 |
The book of Joshua is a book-length crux interpretum. Its cultivation of two concurrent narratives that contradict one another has fascinated commentators since antiquity. This is only one of its hermeneutically challenging features. Most modern commentaries attribute these features to an uneven process of redaction. Focusing on chapters 1–12, this essay argues that incongruity, ambiguity, and disjunction are essential elements of a rhetorical strategy in which form and content are imaginatively correlated, and that the text contains many cryptic clues that are necessary to elucidate its meaning. It contends that Joshua is the product of a bold literary innovation that is motivated by a sustained and uncompromising determination to unsettle facile assumptions about YHWH and Israel’s history. It concludes that the book challenges us to re-evaluate not only the answers we thought it gave, but even the questions we ask of it
Art · Genealogy · Literature · Narrative · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · History
Tehillah le-Moshe
Foreign Women – Women in Foreign Lands
Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past
Cozbi, Achan, and Jezebel
Judean Onomastic Hermeneutics in Context
What is in a Name? Rahab, the Canaanite, and the Rhetoric of Liberation in the Hebrew Bible
Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking
Lurking Lions and Hidden Herds
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |