Article Summary on Joshua 1-8 and Parallel Narratives in Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts

The purpose of this article is to present the similarities between the narrative of Joshua chapters one through eight with the Ugaritic text relating the story of King Keret and his journey to the city of Udum. The article cautiously proposes that there may in fact be a connection between the stories of the Exodus and the Conquest with the stories of King Keret. While most scholars are in agreement that the stories found in the Joshua narrative are made up of several different accounts that have been put together and edited by a redactor, the authors of this article seek to show that there is an element of continuity within these stories that may link it to the continuity found in the stories of King Keret. The authors acknowledge the discontinuities of the Joshua narrative, particularly in areas of chronology, but point out that it is the chronological ordering of the stories themselves that may point to the biblical text’s connection to the Ugaritic text.

The article starts out by showing that the beginning of the book of Joshua is a part of a larger history that is sometimes called the Primary History of the Israelites. This Primary History is made up of the books of Genesis through 2nd Kings. The authors state that nowhere in the rest of the Primary History is there seen such a connection to the rest of the history as there is seen in the first few chapters of Joshua. The first few chapters of Joshua point to and reference many other elements and stories portrayed in the rest of the history, especially in connection to the story of Moses and the Exodus. The authors point out the connection of the crossing of the Jordan River to the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites in the book of Exodus. The idea of the crossing of the Jordan is also seen in the stories of Elijah and Elisha. The crossing of the water is a significant event in all of these stories. The body of water is even portrayed as the same body of water, the Jordan River, in the stories of Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha.

Another connecting factor of the Joshua narrative with the Elijah narrative is the element of a three-day search. In Joshua 2, the spies are sent out to scout the land. When they leave Jericho they hide in the hills for three days as the king’s men search for them but eventually do not find them. This is similar to the Elijah story, where Elijah is taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire and the company of the prophets goes out to look for him and spends three days trying to find him out in the wilderness but is unsuccessful.

A similarity also exists between Joshua and Moses on a number of different levels. One obvious example would be the removal of one’s sandals in the presence of God. Both Joshua and Moses are commanded to remove their sandals. There is also a connection between Joshua’s curse upon the future rebuilder of Jericho and 1st Kings 16:34 as well as a connection between the description of the capture of the city of Ai in Joshua and the capture of Gibeah in Judges 20.

The authors point out that even though all of these similarities exist, scholars are still mostly of the belief that these were separate stories that were combined into a larger narrative. It has been the task of many scholars to attempt to piece together from where these various stories came from before being combined into the final narrative form of Joshua 1-8. The authors of this article point out that one of the difficulties in figuring out the background of these texts lies in the chronology presented within them and the overall storyline of the final narrative. They write, “Apart from the incident of the seven days when the Israelites circled Jericho for six days in silence and saw the fall of the city on the seventh day (Joshua 6), these [chronologies] appear fragmentary and also do not seem to fit easily into a single coherent chronological scheme” (254). These chronologies within the first few chapters of Joshua are even more confusing when compared to the rest of Joshua which mentions little of chronology.

The authors list the chronological issues present in Joshua 1-5. After discussing the chronological issues and similar issues seen in the account of Saul’s death, they discuss the departure of the spies in Joshua. The spies are sent out on the same day that Joshua has told the Israelites to prepare to cross the Jordan within three days. The spies arrive in Jericho that evening. That same evening the king’s men inquire of them at Rahab’s house. That same night, Rahab helps them escape and tells them to hide in the hills for three days, which they do. After this, the spies meet back up with Joshua on the other side of the Jordan, implying that the crossing of the Israelites had not yet taken place. It would appear then that on the day the spies returned the Israelites crossed the Jordan. The text records that the Israelites crossed over on the tenth day of the first month, and that later they celebrated the Passover on the fourteenth day. The authors point out that the Israelites celebrate the Passover on the fourteenth, which is the same day of the original Passover when they left Egypt.

They also show that periods of seven days exist in these stories. The Israelites march around Jericho for seven days, with six of those days in silence. The authors question why it was important to include this chronological structure when so much of the rest of Joshua fails to do so. The authors acknowledge the beliefs of different scholars who argue that Joshua contains the same source material as the Pentateuch and should thus be group with those other books, forming a Hexateuch, while others say that Joshua’s place belongs at the beginning of another narrative known as the Deuteronomic history, which derived separately from the Pentateuch. However, the authors are not too concerned with where exactly Joshua should be categorized and are more concerned with the categorization of the materials within Joshua. They write that the section of the narrative encompassing Joshua 1-8 is held together not only by its use of chronology, but also by its similarity to other ancient Ugaritic texts relaying the story of King Keret. At this point, the article comes to its main point of comparing the texts of Joshua 1-8 with the Ugaritic story of Keret, king of Hubur.

This story is recorded on three clay tablets in the Ugaritic language and is believed to have been written around the thirteenth century BC by a scribe named Illimilku. In this story, Keret is weeping on his bed because he has no hope after having lost his entire family. The god El appears to him in a dream asking him what is wrong and offering him prosperity. Keret refuses, saying he wants descendants. El wishes to give descendants to Keret and tells him to offer a sacrifice and sends him on a mission to go capture the city of Udum, the home of King Pabil. El tells Keret that he will march for seven days, and then besiege the city for another seven days. El also tells him that Pabil will offer him silver and gold, but that he must refuse these offers and instead ask for Pabil’s daughter, Hurriy. Keret follows El’s instructions, sacrificing to receive the strength of Baal and additionally stopping three days into his journey at the temple of Athirat, promising to offer Hurriy’s weight in silver and gold as an offering when he returns. He and his army travel another four days before reaching the city, they then march around the city in complete silence for six days until King Pabil cannot stand it anymore and calls out to Keret, offering him silver and gold. Keret refuses, asking for his daughter. Keret receives his bride and withdraws from the city. They have children together, but Keret does not fulfill his vow to Athirit, so he becomes ill. The rest of the country also falls under a drought and the crops do not grow. El comes to the aid of Keret and creates a healing goddess after none of the other gods want to help him. Keret is healed, but his oldest son thinks he is still about to die and goes ahead and announces he is going to take over as king. The story ends with Keret cursing his son.

There are obviously many similarities between the story of Keret and the story of Joshua. Both of them travel seven days before reaching the cities they are besieging. Both of them carry out cultic rituals on the third or the fourth day of this time period. Keret makes vows to Athirit and Joshua calls the people to sanctify themselves for the crossing of the Jordan as well as sets up memorial stones after the crossing. At the crossing of the Jordan, the covenant is renewed and the men are circumcised. This covenant is then immediately broken by Achan. The difference between Keret’s and Achan’s broken promise, however, is that Keret becomes ill and is healed, whereas Achan and his entire household and possessions are destroyed.

Both Joshua and Keret receive their battle instructions from a diety. In both stories, the armies surround or march around the city for six days in complete silence, and on the seventh day something happens. The armies of Joshua shout, and blow trumpets as the walls collapse; and the animals of the city in Keret’s story become very loud so that the king cannot sleep. Also, “two periods of seven days have brought the Israelites into the Promised Land, the land for their future; two periods of seven days have brought Keret the promised wife and thus the desired family in the future: a national as opposed to a dynastic perspective” (264).

Both stories have women who join the besiegers, Rahab with Joshua and Hurriy with Keret. Both women enter into marital relations with the invaders. However, the two women have opposing social statuses. One is a princess and the other is a harlot. They write, “If the author or authors of Joshua were familiar with the story of Keret or a derivative of it, they have in any case given it a naughty twist: the woman that came out of the besieged town changed from a princess into a harlot” (265). Also, one of the key differences between Joshua and Keret is that Keret is a king seeking his own good, but Joshua is a mediator between God and the people of God. In both stories, though, it is the deity who is truly the star of the show. One final similarity between the two stories is that both involve the withholding of gold and silver or devoted things from a deity and both of these broken vows result in punishment.

The authors are unsure about what to do with the similarities between these two stories. The evidence seems to strongly indicate that one or the other borrowed elements from each other’s stories, or else the two stories were based upon another story, perhaps of prose or of poetry or of an oral tradition. They agree that emulation is indeed a possibility, and point to the example of how the Romans copied the stories of the Greeks. Virgil’s works resembled Homer’s in obvious ways. They point out that emulation is actually a common thing in the Hebrew Bible, with later stories borrowing elements from earlier stories within the Bible as well as from other texts, such as Homer’s Odyssey having apparent connections with Tobit, Genesis, and Job; Ezekiel’s connection to the Akkadian Poem of Erra; the Histories of Herodotus throughout the Primary History and Daniel; and the Gilgamesh Epic and the Genesis stories of Creation and The Flood. The conclusion of the authors of this article is that it is very possible that Joshua 1-8 was influenced by the Ugaritic story of Keret, whether directly or indirectly. However, this was not the only outside source used. Joshua also parallels Moses in many ways, and there are numerous other examples of texts within and without the Bible borrowing from one another. Their conclusion is that there is no need to assume that Joshua 1-8 has a “complex editorial history,” due to its current “extremely well composed” form of a “literary-religious composition.”


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Article:


Braber, Marieke den, and J W. Wesselius. "The unity of Joshua 1-8, its relation to the story of King Keret, and the literary background to the exodus and conquest stories." SJOT 22, no. 2 (January 1, 2008): 253-274.