Narrative Disjunction, Artful Occlusion, and Cryptic Commentary in Joshua 1–12

Dados Bibliográficos

ID16901424
AutoresRobin Baker (0000-0001-5633-3814, University of Winchester, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume15
Fascículo4
Páginas388
Data de publicação2024-03-22
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoReligions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
EditoraMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel15040388
OpenAlexW4393081093
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas55

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