Abstract
Many Israelis, but also many Christian Palestinians, today understand the current conflict around the possession of the land in a Bible-oriented way. They associate it with the radical destruction of all inhabitants of the land and its subsequent occupation as it is formulated in Deuteronomy, namely as an instruction of God, and as portrayed in the book of Joshua, namely as an historical event. This typologising form of common hermeneutics contradicts both modern historiography on ancient Israel and the historic-critical exegesis of the two books as well as their interpretation in Jewish tradition. The campaign of the twelve-tribe nation under Joshua and the destruction of the peoples of Canaan is a theological, fictitious image of radical trust in God, which was designed under King Josiah for mythical ancient times. Neither the laws on warfare nor the promises of return in a synchronically read Deuteronomy know about any future violent conquest of the land of Canaan. The article analyses Israel's relation to the inhabitants of the land, especially in chapters 29-30, which are decisive for Moses’ vision of the future. Based on this analysis, it develops the hermeneutics of Deuteronomy for the directives on the destruction of the nations. Applying these directives typologically proves to be ruled out, both for the wars following the conquest of the land and for the return of Israel from exile.
Highlights
Fifty-five years after the founding of the modern state of Israel, the conflict between its Jewish and Arab populations is still sparked off by the question: “Whom does the land belong to?” (Cf., e.g., Nieswandt 1998)
That which is special about this confrontation, that which sets it apart from other apparently similar situations, is the fact that the Bible, especially the Hebrew Tanach or the Old Testament, plays an important part in the conflict between Israel and Palestine
The Israelis realise this whether they read the Tanach – the Hebrew Bible – mediated by the Talmudic and Rabbinic tradition, or consider it their secular national literature
Summary
Fifty-five years after the founding of the modern state of Israel, the conflict between its Jewish and Arab populations is still sparked off by the question: “Whom does the land belong to?” (Cf., e.g., Nieswandt 1998). Both groups can find the motivation for their commitment to God-ordained violence right here. Concerning the history of law, its blueprint for world and society I consider to be the last – in any event the hermeneutically decisive – words of Moses in the Pentateuch They treat the wars of conquest and destruction that Israel fought on their entry into the promised land (Lohfink 2003). I take into account both the intratextual crossreferences and the sequence of reading within the book, which is designed to form a unified structure of meaning
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