Joshua

The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries

by Robert G. Boling, G. Ernest Wright

Joshua began as a collaboration between G. Ernest Wright, the distinguished biblical scholar and archaeologist, and his student, Robert G. Boling. After Wright’s death, Professor Boling, who also did the translation and commentary for Judges, finished the task alone.

Boling’s extensive treatment includes not only an entire new translation of Joshua and a complete commentary on the text, but also comprehensive notes, numerous bibliographies, four pages of illustrations, and eleven maps especially commissioned for this volume.

In addition to exhaustive research and excellent scholarship, there is also Dr. Wright’s 135-page introduction, completed just before his death, which provides not only an informed foreword to the text of Joshua but also a summary of his previous writings on Israel’s formative years.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biblical

580 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 1982

Reviews

[Alan]

The Book of Joshua immediately follows the 5 Books of Moses in both the Hebrew Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament. From past experience (see Books of Isaiah and Job earlier on this GoodReads list), Jewish and Christian translations of Axial Hebrew texts can differ substantially, so I sought out different translations of this Book, done by both self-identified Jews (Alter, several of whose excellent translations are reviewed elsewhere on this GoodReads list) and Christians (Boling and Wright, the translation reviewed here). In the case of Joshua, there is not much difference between the translations. Both narrate the story of God (Yahweh) directing his Chosen People (the Israelites) to conquer his Promised Land (Canaan). The Conquest is only accomplished through miraculous acts of God; Yahweh doesn't just facilitate the military victories, but also seeks to demonstrate his sheer power to both Israelites and Canaanites. The Conquest is very thorough; entire Canaanite cities are completely destroyed, their entire populations, even their livestock, are exterminated. The text makes it clear that the war, and the attendant massacres (what today we would call war crimes) are divine rather than human accomplishments. This differs in degree, but perhaps not in kind, from the Iliad, where the war between humans is ultimately a war between gods, or from the Ramayana, where war is waged by an avatar of an actual god (though he might be unaware that he is such). Thus mass human violence was not just sanctioned by divine right. The violence was actually conducted by divine beings. Perhaps it should not be surprising that such revered texts of old may have malign influence on human behavior today.