Biblical History
And Joshua had charged the people, saying, “You shall not shout and you shall not let your voice be heard, and no word shall come out of your mouths until the moment I say to you, “Shout,’ and then you shall shout.” Joshua 6:10 Robert Alter
And Joshua had charged the people, saying – One of the important beliefs of Christian and Jewish orthodoxy is the accuracy and integrity of the biblical text. For most believers this means more than just the claim that the text was carefully copied from generation to generation and the text doesn’t have internal contradictions. For most believers this means that the text of the Bible is true, that is, what it says about the events recorded in the text is the truth about those events; that they happened just the way the text tells us. This belief is the result of the assumption that event recording in the Bible fits our definition of history. The problem is that our definition of history isn’t the same as the definition of history in the ancient world. I don’t mean that the ancient world viewed history as an endless repetitive cycle (which it did) or that it viewed history as the continual interaction between men and the gods (which it also did). What I mean is that the ancient world recorded events differently than we do. We think of history as the chronological account of actual occurrences; occurrences that would be reported the same way no matter who did the reporting because the event itself is independent of the reporter. So, for example, the election of Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister of Italy is an historical fact and is reported as a fact. There might be various opinions about what the election means, but no one would report that the election didn’t happen. This is why Holocaust deniers are considered crazy. The facts are the facts.
But not quite so in the ancient world. Take this Hebrew phrase in the book of Joshua:
וְאֶת-הָעָם צִוָּה יְהוֹשֻׁעַ לֵאמֹר
It’s translated as if it reports precisely what Joshua said to the people. There isn’t any other way of making sense of it. But that’s not what it literally says. It literally says, “the people commanded Joshua saying to them.” The syntax is wrong, even in Hebrew. Does it matter? Well, kind of. What this incorrect syntax does is stop me in the act of reading. I have to decipher the text in order to make sense of it. And in the process I discover something else. It’s personal! It’s not reporting the event. It’s reporting the impact of the event on the performers in the event. Haggai Misgav comments, “the Bible is a story about past events; it is not a record of past events. We must read it as we read any other story.”[1] Misgav explains what to think about the redundant repetitions that occur in books like Joshua.
We must read the phrases repeated several times in the first part of the book of Joshua—“so that no one escaped or got away” (Josh 8:22), or “they crushed them, letting none escape” (11:8)— as reflections of the subjective impression of the victor, rather than an objective record of events. In short, we must regard the Bible as an interpretation of history, presented as a narrative, rather than an exclusive account. We must understand that it is not the events themselves that mold our consciousness, but our perception of them as formed by the biblical story—by the word of God and by the hand of His prophets.[2]
In other words, the “history” of the ancient world is the personal reflection of the reporter about the event, not (as we might think) an objective, independent recording of the event. We might call this the observer theory of history. The Observer Effect is well known in modern physics. Briefly, it states that the fact of observing an event changes the event. “Somehow the act of observing something to understand its nature essentially changes its true nature as the observer becomes the part of the system to be measured itself.”[3] Biblical history isn’t neutral event reporting. It’s “observer effect” narrative.
Does this upset you? If it does, it might be because you’ve unintentionally assumed that neutral event reporting (the goal of modern history) is the same framework as biblical reporting. It’s not. But it’s a wonderful thing that it’s not because what this means is that the events in the Bible are “God-laden” events. What I mean is that they aren’t just occurrences. They are occurrences that matter intensely to the participants and to the readers. They come with spiritual packaging, and that helps us understand why they are reported in this way and why this way was so important to the audience. The Bible is not neutral history. It’s divine conversation, filled with personal impact. So, set aside your Fox News-CNN version of reporting (as if they weren’t biased) and enjoy the story.
Topical Index: history, observer effect, syntax, Joshua 6:10
[1] Haggai Misgav, “Archaeology and the Bible,” in The Believer and the Modern Study of the Bible (Targum Shlishi, Academic Studies Press, 2019), p. 526.
[2] Ibid., p. 527.
[3] https://heycheryo.wordpress.com/2016/12/30/observer-effect-vs-uncertainty-principle/
