A review by leevoncarbon
Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God by Paul Copan

4.0

The conquest of Canaan and the commands of God relating to that have been a burr under my saddle for some time. This book covers more than that topic but it was the area in which I was most interested. He did not disappoint and with meticulous care analyzed the full context of that time in Israel's life. The long history of moral deviancy of the Canaanites was one point he raised. He also detailed the sharp contrast between the practice of war among other middle eastern nations and that of Israel at the time, showing that Israel operated within moral boundaries that other nations never even imagined. One of his more interesting points was that Joshua used the language of conventional warfare rhetoric in his writing. i.e. highly exaggerated, much like that of a hockey team telling how they "annihilated their opponent" even as the opposing team walked out of the rink under their own steam. He argued that when Joshua wrote that all who breathed were destroyed, it most likely meant only that the fighting men were routed. As he points out, the people who had apparently been totally wiped out appear later in Joshua's own writing.

His writing about the obscure laws within the Mosaic covenant were not of the same high level of interest to me but the author certainly explored each matter of concern in depth. The problem of course is that many of the arguments are nuanced and detailed. Most critics do not have the desire nor the time of day to listen to such arguments through to the end in, for example, explaining why we treat the statements about homosexuality differently than we do the command not to wear clothes of mixed cloth.