In the Survey of Jewish History course I'm TAing this semester, we looked at these accounts of conquest and then observed that there is no archaeological evidence that shows any conquest ever happened. Many scholars think that these tales of conquest were composed so the Israelites could show that they had a right to the land because they'd conquered it fair and square, which was what counted for legitimacy at the time.
I don't think we can just say the stories don't mean anything because they never actually happened--they still got canonized into the Tanakh, so obviously Jews have seen them as important for a long time. But it adds an interesting dimension to the problem of dealing with these stories pedagogically and ethically.
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Date: 2008-10-11 12:54 pm (UTC)I don't think we can just say the stories don't mean anything because they never actually happened--they still got canonized into the Tanakh, so obviously Jews have seen them as important for a long time. But it adds an interesting dimension to the problem of dealing with these stories pedagogically and ethically.