Slow Walls Tumbling, Slow Waters Engulfing

  A very interesting episode on NOVA helped liberate my mind to see a new, a bit deeper, and more satisfying,  truth in a couple of bible stories. The first story is about the Walls of Jericho tumbling down when trumpets were blown by God's chosen people. The story was one of mighty conquest. The other story was how the Red Sea parted to let God's chosen people cross, but engulfed Pharaoh's  armies. This story was told as a big dramatic supernatural event. 

   I believe that God reveals truth through both biblical writers and through modern archeologists who are "reading" physical artifacts left in the wake of God's ever-unfolding creation. But what to make of the following discrepancies?  

   The warrior Joshua was said to have conquered Jericho and several other cities in Canaan. But the archeological evidence shows the cities collapsed over a one thousand year period, and showed strong evidence of civilization collapse of the network of city states in Canaan which belonged to an Egyptian empire. 

   Evidence of civilization collapse, and the theory that the Israelites most likely more-or-less walked into the cities once they died, rather than swooping in from some far off place (Mesopotamia), suggests that God's faithful were probably more "survivors" than "conquerors". 

   To me, as a long distant runner, and as a person who likes to take the long view of things (and looking into true, lasting, principles), the idea that the walls of Jericho may have tumbled ever so slowly for the have-not Isrealites, is more satisfying than the hoopla and drama of the stories as they were told in the bible. Yet, the walls did tumble. The story speaks a truth, even if the facts have been dramatized a bit over campfire re-tellings (before one of four different historical waves of scribes wrote them down). 

    As regards the Exodus, the slow crumbling of the Egyptian Empire could well have been symbolized as waters engulfing the enemy occupiers, and as the plagues on Egypt. Various deadly plagues could well be metaphors of the agonizing collapse of a civilization. But one people's collapse became an opportunity for God's folks to just walk into Canaan, slowly, but as though the "waters" were parted. Is a slow gift any less special than a sudden big-drama gift? Not to me. 

  Of course, I was never impressed by heaven's streets of gold, if it meant literal gold. The big drama and bling bling all suggests a hunger for power by oppressed have-nots who had to suffer from lack of power and wealth and sovereignty for a long time. So, was "the wilderness" a metaphor of some long and patient and faithful wait through cultural oppression?  If so, it is, in my opinion, not less, but more, impressive. 

   All the stories of the bible ring true. To read them as epic poems speaking the truth in a different way than the left-brain minds of the western world are used to hearing allows the truth revealed by archeologists (who are using God's gifts of intellect and observation) to be heard as well. As theologian Mathew Fox suggests in his book Creation Spirituality, there is room for modern science in the creation story, and the mystery of creation is none-the-worse for science's version of it.