I agree with The Public Forum letter from Marilyn Marshall as she writes that “based on background, baggage, biases and experience, people interpret the written words differently.”
Based on those elements, when I read the story of Joshua and Jericho, I read a gruesome, inhuman story that is devoid of any moral value whatsoever, and it implicates the supposedly compassionate and loving God.
After all, Joshua claimed that his God instructed him how to bring down the walls of Jericho so that he could commit his genocide, ethnic cleansing, infanticide and many other despicable crimes that he committed, and his loving God didn’t make any attempt to stop him. Yet, there are hymns written in honor of Joshua and children are made to sing them.
Perhaps I am not intelligent enough to decipher the true hidden meaning of that atrocious story and many others like it. But, then again, from New Zealand to Pittsburgh to San Diego to Sri Lanka, in one month or so alone, the true believers have left carnage, killing each other and innocent bystanders because they did not get the memo that the Bible stories are about “human characteristics.”
If there is such a being as Joshua’s God, then he deserves all the blame for all the religious crimes committed throughout the history of mankind.
Behrouz Motiee, Salt Lake City