Undoing Conquest: Ancient Israel, the Bible, and the Future of Christianity

by Kate Common

Archeologists in the last century unearthed new evidence of the origins of the Hebrew people that reshapes understandings of Israelite history and the Bible. Undoing Conquest recovers the Highland Settlements material evidence as a history that challenges the theological imagination of conquest that is still present in Christianity today. Yet this new history remains largely untold outside of specialized archeological and biblical studies contexts. Undoing Conquest analyzes this evidence from a feminist perspective in dialogue with the present moment and uncovers its importance for shaping Christian theology and church practice today. The book examines how the biblical conquest narratives shaped Christian ideology, which justified settler-colonialism and genocide around the globe like the European conquest of the Americas. It proposes ways to invite the Highland Settlements story into the life of the church by creating a new liturgical season called the Season of Origins, focused on repairing the harms of the past and creating a more just future.

208 pages, Paperback

Published February 21, 2024

Reviews

[Janelle Hooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Groundbreaking and life changing. Academic yet accessible. A must read for understanding faith origins.

[Michael Sasson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author takes on the project of aiding in the popularization of relatively (last century) recent archaeological discoveries that do not support the biblical narratives (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, etc.) of Israelite conquest of Canaan, committing multiple genocides at God's command. She gives hypotheses of why the conquest narrative might have been written and made scripture and then begins to explore the political implications for the church and broader culture if that conquest narrative were thrown to the side.

P71 If the origins of the Hebrew people in Canaan were a result of an indigenous and nonmilitaristic settlement process, why does the Bible depict Israelites as outsides, as people who conquered Canaan through a Yahweh-ordained genocidal conquest?

P88 From this perspective, the book of Deuteronomy can be understood as an ideological "attempt to revise the system of Israelite law in order to enhance the religious, economic, and political power of the centralized state and thereby to unite the people around the Jerusalem temple and the house of David."

P96 By rebranding their history, Deuteronomists also rebranded the Israelite cult and practices, developing a Yahweh-only tradition that was based in Jerusalem. The list of Josianic reforms in 2 Kings 23 provides a window into Israelite cult practice before the reforms, which included multiple cultic sites and the worship of Yahweh's consort Asherah. Evidence of goddess worship is prevalent in the archaeological record in Israel and Judah, as household figurines of Asherah are ubiquitous throughout the Iron Age.

P98 A world of genocide has unfolded from the conquest narrative. The violence and genocide in Joshua can be and has been understood as part of the divine will. [...] The stories of Israelite conquest in the Hebrew Bible have been used in Western Christian contexts to justify actual historical conquests and genocides. That these texts helped create such a world is of grave concern.

P118 The act of storying the Highland Settlements is a theopoetic practical theological task. [...] Storying the Highland Settlements history can draw on the existing motif of the exodus narrative to wrap the Highland Settlements evidence in a story that rests at the heart of the Bible and the biblical faith traditions.

P119 [...] from a cultural memory studies perspective, the Israelite story of the exodus from Egypt refracts the Highland Settlements period through its basic, albeit abstracted, plotlines: people miraculously leaving the oppressive conditions of empire and starting a new.
[...] A Late Bronze Age map of the Egyptian Empire includes Canaan since Egypt controlled this region. Even if most of the Highland Settlers were indigenous Canaanites who left the oppressive conditions of the urban lowlands of Canaan for the rural highlands, they still left Egypt.

P120 [...] the cultural memory of the Canaanites, who experienced the sudden withdrawal of Egypt from Canaan at the end of the Late Bronze Age after nearly 350 years of subjugation. Egypt's departure meant freedom and liberation for the Canaanite people who lived for centuries under imperial rule. Na'aman argues that eventually the cultural memory of Egypt miraculously leaving Canaan was inverted in the written story, and the main plot became the Israelites leaving Egypt. However, interpreted in a less textually literal way than does Na'aman, the Canaanites did leave Egypt as Exodus depicts. [...] Migrating Canaanites left or came out of Egypt as they chose to move away from Egyptian-controlled city-states and begin a new settlement pattern in the highlands. The Canaanites did indeed leave Egypt even though they never left Canaan.
[...] Mnemohistory is a literary reception theory that "is concerned not with the past as such, but only with the past as it is remembered," particularly how groups construct a collective identity by symbolically narrating a multiplicity of past events into one unified symbolic story.

P137 What is God calling us to do or be today through the Highland Settlements story?

[Enoch Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

New evidence of how the Hebrew people came to exist challenges our understanding of their history as conveyed in the Bible. Undoing Conquest demystifies the biblical origin story of the Hebrew people by reporting on archaeological findings unearthed about seventy years ago. Material artifacts gathered from the Highland Settlements site provide evidence of tangible history that contradicts the imagined theological narrative of the Hebrew conquest and victory in Canaan, which is still reproduced in Christianity today. The excavation and analysis of hundreds of ancient villages in Israel and Palestine illuminate the Highland Settlement communities, whose mainly peaceful members were indigenous primarily to Canaan and constructed a conquest narrative to forge a common identity and shape their destiny as God’s chosen people—Israel. The dominance of the biblical story and the challenges of conveying the historical implications of scientific research to the public explain why this new Hebrew history remains largely untold. Compiling a narrative from the new evidence that counters the biblical conquest story has ignited contentious debates among archaeological and biblical studies scholars and between objective analysts and believers. Undoing Conquest examines the evidence of the Highlands Settlement through a feminist lens, shedding new light on the historical narrative. Kate Common, the author, places the new historical facts in dialogue with a misconstrued biblical Exodus story that became central to Jewish identity formation and Christian identity. The book demonstrates how the heroic scriptural conquest narrative, featuring Hebrew refugees driven by God to kill and displace occupants of the promised land in Canaan, has shaped Western and particularly Christian conquest ideology. Common explains how this conquest narrative has justified settler-colonialism and genocide around the globe, including the European conquest of the Americas. She encourages Westerners to embrace the Highland Settlements story as a more accurate narrative that can heal past wounds and revitalize religious traditions mired in a mythical history contradicted by evidence. If Christians accepted her appeal to embrace the Highland Settlement story, Common seems convinced it could reshape Christian theology and the practices of churchgoers today. To achieve that goal, she encourages Christians and other believers in the Abrahamic tradition to establish a new liturgy in their annual sacred calendars that she calls the Season of Origins. In honor of the Highland Settlement occupants who came to identify as Hebrews, Common asserts that the proposed liturgical practices she outlines would help repair past harms while envisioning and creating a far more just future. Common overlooks how her proposed liturgy seeks to interrogate conquest and inculcate social justice in Christians. At the same time, she continues the idea that only biblical Hebrews influenced Christianity, despite studies showing that Egyptian theology also contributed significant concepts to Christian beliefs.

[Jazmine Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Kate Common gracefully gathers archeological challenges to the Old Testament’s historicity and points to their value to Christian faith rather than their threat. This significantly helped lessen my own sense of being threatened by these challenges and feel more comfortable with archeological evidence being unearthed. I’m left feeling open to further archeological discoveries and acknowledging the limits of what we have.

For such a good challenge to Israel’s narrative of conquest, there’s a gap left in ecclesial implementation: Common provides liturgical suggestions, but more pastoral care and guidance is needed to help hearts let go of popular hermeneutical and exegetical methods that hold into the conquest narrative. The value of Scripture in the form we have it may need some triage after reading Common so as to not leave it for dead, especially in light of Jesus using those same scriptures to nevertheless create a liberating counter-narrative in his own context. Also missing is how to still distill the authentic witness of God’s work among this people group from what’s been written, whose experiences of God we can expect would have been no less than those people have today of God through Jesus.

Even if Common was light on this, she offers a powerful conversation partner with other books to eventually make this perspective fruitful for the church’s mission of inviting the world into following Jesus.

[lily · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 ⭐, rounded down. should have EITHER been a book about how the highland settlements change the way we think about the conquest narrative in joshua--and how that SHOULD affect the way we think about israel's theological claim to palestine--OR been an article about just the way the highland settlements change the way we think about the conquest narrative in joshua.

common's call to rethink joshua's conquest narrative--especially in light of the way it has historically been employed to pillage and massacre indigenous peoples by european christians--is a well-intentioned and morally correct, but the absence of any mention of the ongoing genocide in palestine is a glaring one.

this is a repetitive book that has good things to say but ultimately--in my eyes--falls short of its goal, undermining itself by avoiding mentioning one of the most obvious and tragic effects of the longevity and perceived legitimacy of biblical conquest narratives.

[Kristofer Stinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An accessible introduction to the Highland Settlements - the precursors of ancient Israelites. Common does a great job at walking readers through the implications of this archaeological discovery on church practice and religious imagination. For Common, the archaeology challenges the violence within the book of Joshua and, in the process, opens up a more liberating origin story for modern readers. She concludes with helpful and imaginative suggestions of how to work new discoveries into the communal life and practice of the church.

[Pearl Loewen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review of this book can be found in my blog: https://winsomewomen.blogspot.com/202...

[Richard Worden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read and an important contribution to theology.

[Jeremy Garber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kate Common provides a subtly revolutionary look at how archeology changes our understanding of Scripture – and how it can impact Christians today. Archeologists have uncovered evidence that the Hebrew people did not originate in a violent military conquest (a la the book of Joshua), but instead were a nonviolent egalitarian community that withdrew from imperial Egyptian occupation, driven by climate change. Common connects this reality with our view of Scriptural authority and how Christians have used to justify conquest and oppression globally and throughout history. Common then provides a new season of the liturgical year, situated in October, that will help congregants remember the true story of the Highland settlers and the community that Jesus calls Christians to represent – one of peace, social justice, and inclusion. Our congregation is planning to institute the Season of Origins from Common’s book this October, and I look forward to the rich conversations and Christian discipling that will result.