“in highly figurative, hyperbolic accounts—quite common in the ancient Near East.”
The Holy Spirit doesn’t know the difference between hyperbole and bravado and an accurate account of what happened? The author of this piece doesn’t accept that possibility. Instead they deconstruct the author’s text, assuming he was just a product of his time and place.
The first chapter of Judges 2 makes no sense if God didn’t intend absolute annihilation.
I think what people have a hard time with his NOT that God would act on His own to destroy a city and its inhabitants (e.g. Sodom and Gomorah).
It is that God, who commanded people not to kill, would use His own chosen people to actually do the mass killing.
Killing is a very ugly thing ( an understatement ) to do and affects not only the one who is killed, but the killer’s own soul as well.
THAT is what disturbs people when they read about it.
Second, the sweeping language of these warfare texts such as Joshua (as well as Numbers 31 and 1 Samuel 15) occurs in highly figurative, hyperbolic accounts--quite common in the ancient Near East. This kind of "utterly destroyed" bravado was common in ancient Near Eastern war texts.
the dominant language of "driving out" and "thrusting out" the Canaanites indicates further that "extermination" passages are hyperbolic
The Holy Spirit doesn't know the difference between hyperbole and bravado and an accurate account of what happened? The author of this piece doesn't accept that possibility. Instead they deconstruct the author's text, assuming he was just a product of his time and place. The first chapter of Judges 2 makes no sense if God didn't intend absolute annihilation.
Indeed. Sad to see that CRI has succumbed to the liberal "scholarship" such as is also seen in Roman Catholicism, which, like as liberal Prots, for decades has told the readers of its NAB Bible helps that such historical accounts were largely "folk tales, while such things as the Tower of Babel, Jonah and the fish, Balaam and the donkey, etc, were "fables."
Yet the NT treats such as literal events.
The liberal unwarranted spurious slippery slope scholarship, which ignores reasonable explanations for the problems it cites, even from easily accessible classic commentaries, impugns all historical accounts, even to the birth, death and resurrection. Since contradictions have been alleged (and answered) in the gospel accounts, including the latter event, thus these also could be relegated to being hyperbolic.
But CRI has been on a downward trajectory since Walter Martin died, and basically turned him into a non-person.
See post above for lengthy examination of this, if imperfect.