Reuse Of Israelites And Canaanites Storyline In Modern Settings hi,Below is the instructions and the questions. I can provide you the bible .Length: 300 wo

Reuse Of Israelites And Canaanites Storyline In Modern Settings hi,Below is the instructions and the questions. I can provide you the bible .Length: 300 words. Keep in mind that you the study questions are the very broad and there is much to say about them. The study questions are intended to guide your reading. Choose something from the your interaction with the readings to address in your written response.1. The two readings (attatched below) present different ways in which the storyline of the Israelites and canaanites is employed in more modern settings. As you read through the two articles, ask yourself why and how is the storyline being reused. In particular, consider how our understanding of the conquest story in the book of Joshua changes dramatically when we read it through the eyes of the Canaanites. Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians
ROBERT WARRIOR
Native American Theology of liberation has a nice ring to it. Politically active Christians in the U.S. have been bandying about the idea of
such a theology for several years now, encouraging Indians to develop it.
There are theologies of liberation for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, women, Asian Americans, even Jews. Why not Native Americans?
Christians recognize that American injustice on this continent began
nearly five hundred years ago with the oppression of its indigenous people and that justice for American Indians is a fundamental part of
broader social struggle. The churches’ complicity in much of the violence
perpetrated on Indians makes this realization even clearer. So, there are a
lot of well-intentioned Christians looking for some way to include Native
Americans in their political action.
For Native Americans involved in political struggle, the participation
of church people is often an attractive proposition. Churches have financial, political, and institutional resources that many Indian activists
would dearly love to have at their disposal. Since American Indians have
a relatively small population base and few financial resources, assistance
from churches can be of great help in gaining the attention of the public,
the media, and the government.
It sounds like the perfect marriage—Christians with the desire to
include Native Americans in their struggle for justice and Indian activists
in need of resources and support from non-Indians. Well, speaking as the
product of a marriage between an Indian and a white, I can tell you that
it is not as easy as it sounds. The inclusion of Native Americans in Christian political praxis is difficult—even dangerous. Christians have a different way of going about the struggle for justice than most Native
* This article appeared in Christianity and Crisis, 49 (September 11,1989): 261-265 and
is reprinted with the permission of the author. The original journal is no longer in print.
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ROBERT WARRIOR
Americans: different models of leadership, different ways of making
decisions, different ways of viewing the relationship between politics
and religion. These differences have gone all but unnoticed in the history
of church involvement in American Indian affairs. Liberals and conservatives alike have too often surveyed the conditions of Native Americans
and decided to come to the rescue, always using their methods, their ideas,
and their programs. The idea that Indians might know best how to
address their own problems seemingly lost on these well-meaning folks.
Still, the time does seem ripe to find a new way for Indians and
Christians (and Native American Christians) to be partners in the struggle against injustice and economic and racial oppression. This is a new
era for both the church and for Native Americans. Christians are breaking away from their liberal moorings and looking for more effective
means of social and political engagement. Indians, in this era of “selfdetermination,” have verified for themselves and the government that
they are the people best able to address Indian problems as long as they
are given the necessary resources and if they can hold the U.S. government accountable to the policy. But an enormous stumbling block immediately presents itself. Most of the liberation theologies that have
emerged in the last twenty years are preoccupied with the Exodus story,
using it as the fundamental model for liberation. I believe that the story
of the Exodus is an inappropriate way for Native Americans to think
about liberation.
No doubt, the story is one that has inspired many people in many
contexts to struggle against injustice. Israel, in the Exile, then Diaspora,
would remember the story and be reminded of God’s faithfulness.
Enslaved African Americans, given Bibles to read by their masters and
mistresses, would begin at the beginning of the book and find in the
pages of the Pentateuch a god who was obviously on their side, even if
that god was the god of their oppressors. People in Latin American base
communities read the story and have been inspired to struggle against
injustice. The Exodus, with its picture of a god who takes the side of the
oppressed and powerless, has been a beacon of hope for many in despair.
God the Conqueror
Yet, the liberationist picture of Yahweh is not complete. A delivered
people is not a free people, nor is it a nation. People who have survived
the nightmare of subjugation dream of escape. Once the victims have
CANAANITES, COWBOYS, AND INDIANS
3
been delivered, they seek a new dream, a new goal, usually a place of
safety away from the oppressors, a place that can be defended against
future subjugation. Israel’s new dream became the land of Canaan. And
Yahweh was still with them: Yahweh promised to go before the people
and give them Canaan, with its flowing milk and honey. The land, Yahweh decided, belonged to these former slaves from Egypt and Yahweh
planned on giving it to them—using the same power used against the
enslaving Egyptians to defeat the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan. Yahweh the deliverer became Yahweh the conqueror.
The obvious characters in the story for Native Americans to identify
with are the Canaanites, the people who already lived in the promised
land. As a member of the Osage Nation of American Indians, American
Indians who stand in solidarity with other tribal people around the
world, I read the Exodus stories with Canaanite eyes. And it is the
Canaanite side of the story that has been overlooked by those seeking to
articulate late theologies of liberation. Especially ignored are those parts
of the story that describe Yahweh’s command to mercilessly annihilate
the indigenous population.
To be sure, most scholars, of a variety of political and theological
stripes, agree that the actual events of Israel’s early history are much different than what was commanded in the narrative. The Canaanites were
not systematically annihilated, nor were they completely driven from
the land. In fact, they made up, to a large extent, the people of the new
nation of Israel. Perhaps it was a process of gradual immigration of people from many places and religions who came together to form a new
nation. Or maybe as Norman Gottwald and others have argued, the
peasants of Canaan revolted against their feudal masters, a revolt instigated and aided by a vanguard of escaped slaves from Egypt who
believed in the liberating god, Yahweh. What ever happened, scholars
agree that the people of Canaan had a lot to do with it.
Nonetheless, scholarly agreement should not allow us to breath a
sigh of relief. For, historical knowledge does not change the status of the
indigenes in the narrative and the theology that grows out of it. The
research of Old Testament scholars, however much it provides a answer
to the historical question the contribution of the indigenous people of
Canaan to the formation and emergence of Israel as a nation—does not
resolve the narrative problem. People who read the narratives read them
as they are, not as scholars and experts would like them to be read and
interpreted. History is no longer with us. The narrative remains.
Though the Exodus and Conquest stories are familiar to most read-
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ers, I want to highlight some sections that are commonly ignored. The
covenant begins when Yahweh comes to Abram saying, “Know of a
surety that your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs,
and they will he slaves there, and they will be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgment on the nation they serve and they
shall come out” (Gen. 15:13,14). Then Yahweh adds: “To your descendants I give this land. The land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephraim, the Amorites, the
Canaanites, and the Jebusites” (15:18,21). The next important moment is
the commissioning of Moses. Yahweh says to him, “I promise I will bring
you out of the affliction of Egypt, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land
flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:17). The covenant, in other
words, has two parts: deliverance and conquest.
After the people have escaped and are headed to the promised land,
the covenant is made more complicated, but it still has two parts. If the
delivered people remain faithful to Yahweh, they will be blessed in the
land Yahweh will conquer for them (Exodus. 2:23 and Deut. 7-9). The
god who delivered Israel from slavery will lead the people into the land
and keep them there as long as they live up to the terms of the covenant.
“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him [sic], for you were
strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or orphan.
If you do afflict them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry;
and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your
wives shall become widows and your children fatherless” (Exodus
22:21).
Whose Narrative?
Israel’s reward for keeping Yahweh’s commandments—for building
a society where the evils done to them have no place—is the continuation
of life in the land. But one of the most important of Yahweh’s commands
is the prohibition on social relations with Canaanites or participation in
their religion. “I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand,
and you shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant
with them or with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they
make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods it will surely be a
snare to you” (Exodus 23:31b-33).
In fact, the indigenes are to be destroyed. “When the Lord your God
brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it,
CANAANITES, COWBOYS, AND I N D I A N S
5
and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites,
the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the
Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, and when
the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them; then you
must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and
show no mercy to them” (Deut. 7:1, 2). These words are spoken to the
people of Israel as they are preparing to go into Canaan. The promises
made to Abraham and Moses are ready to be fulfilled. All that remains is
for the people to enter into the land and dispossess those who already
live there.
Joshua gives an account of the conquest. After ten chapters of stories
about Israel’s successes and failures to obey Yahweh’s commands, the
writer states, “So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and
the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings, he left
none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God
of Israel commanded.” In Judges, the writer disagrees with this account
of what happened, but the Canaanites are held in no higher esteem. The
angel of the Lord says, ? will not drive out [the indigenous people]
before you; but they shall become adversaries to you, and their gods shall
be a snare to you.”
Thus, the narrative tells us that the Canaanites have status only as
the people Yahweh removes from the land in order to bring the chosen
people in. They are not to be trusted, nor are they to be allowed to enter
into social relationships with the people of Israel. They are wicked and
their religion is to be avoided at all costs. The laws put forth regarding
strangers and sojourners may have stopped the people of Yahweh from
wanton oppression, but presumably only after the land was safely in the
hands of Israel. The covenant of Yahweh depends on this.
The Exodus narrative is where discussion about Christian involve­
ment in Native American activism must begin. It is these stories of deliv­
erance and conquest that are ready to be picked up and believed by
anyone wondering what to do about the people who already live in their
promised land. They provide an example of what can happen when
powerless people come to power. Historical scholarship may tell a differ­
ent story; but even if the annihilation did not take place, the narratives
tell what happened to those indigenous people who put their hope and
faith in ideas and gods that were foreign to their culture. The Canaanites
trusted in the god of outsiders and their story of oppression and exploita­
tion was lost. Interreligious praxis became betrayal and the surviving
narrative tells us nothing about it.
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ROBERT WARRIOR
Confronting the conquest stories as a narrative rather than a historical problem is especially important given the tenor of contemporary theology and criticism. After two hundred years of preoccupation with
historical questions, scholars and theologians across a broad spectrum of
political and ideological positions have recognized the function of narrative in the development of religious communities. Along with the work
of U.S. scholars like Brevard Childs, Stanley Hauerwas, and George
Lindbeck, the radical liberation theologies of Latin America are based on
empowering believing communities to read scriptural narratives for
themselves and make their reading central to theology and political
action. The danger is that these communities will read the narratives, not
the history behind them.
And, of course, the text itself will never be altered by interpretations
of it, although its reception may be. It is part of the canon for both Jews
and Christians. It is part of the heritage and thus the consciousness of
people in the United States. Whatever dangers we identify in the text and
the god represented there will remain as long as the text remains. These
dangers only grow as the emphasis upon catechetical (Lindbeck), narrative (Hauerwas), canonical (Childs), and Bible-centered Christian base
communities (Gutierrez) grows. The peasants of Solentiname bring a
wisdom and experience previously unknown to Christian theology, but I
do not see what mechanism guarantees that they—or any other people
who seek to be shaped and molded by reading the text—will differentiate between the liberating god and the god of conquest.
Is There a Spirit?
What is to be done? First, the Canaanites should be at the center of
Christian theological reflection and political action. They are the last
remaining ignored voice in the text, except perhaps for the land itself.
The conquest stories, with all their violence and injustice, must be taken
seriously by those who believe in the god of the Old Testament. Commentaries and critical works rarely mention these texts. When they do,
they express little concern for the status of the indigenes and their rights
as human beings and as nations. The same blindness is evident in theologies that use the Exodus motif as their basis for political action. The leading into the land becomes just one more redemptive moment rather than
a violation of innocent peoples’ rights to land and self-determination.
Keeping the Canaanites at the center makes it more likely that those
who read the Bible will read all of it, not just the part that inspires and
CANAANITES, COWBOYS, AND INDIANS
7
justifies them. And should anyone be surprised by the brutality, the terror of these texts? It was, after all, a Jewish victim of the Holocaust, Walter Benjamin, who said, “There is no document of civilization which is
not at the same time a document of barbarism.” People whose theology
involves the Bible need to take this insight seriously. It is those who know
these texts who must speak the truth about what they contain. It is to
those who believe in these texts that the barbarism belongs. It is those
who act on the basis of these texts who must take responsibility for the
terror and violence they can and have engendered.
Second, we need to be more aware of the way ideas such as those in
the conquest narratives have made their way into Americans’ consciousness and ideology. And only when we understand this process can those
of us who have suffered from it know how to fight back. Many Puritan
preachers were fond of referring to Native Americans as Amelkites and
Canaanites—in other words, people who, if they would not be converted, were worthy of annihilation. By examining such instances in theological and political writings, in sermons, and elsewhere, we can
understand how America’s self-image as a “chosen people” has provided
a rhetoric to mystify domination.
Finally, we need to decide if we want to accept the model of leadership and social change presented by the entire Exodus story. Is it appropriate to the needs of indigenous people seeking justice and deliverance?
If indeed the Canaanites were integral to Israel’s early history, the Exodus narratives reflect a situation in which indigenous people put their
hope in a god from outside, were liberated from their oppressors, and
then saw their story of oppression revised out of the new nation’s history
of salvation. They were assimilated into another people’s identity and
the history of their ancestors came to be regarded as suspect and a danger to the safety of Israel. In short, they were betrayed.
Do Native Americans and other indigenous people dare trust the
same god in their struggle for justice? I am not asking an easy question
and I in no way mean that people who are both Native Americans and
Christians cannot work toward justice in the context of their faith in Jesus
Christ. Such people have a lot of theological reflection to do, however, to
avoid the dangers I have pointed to in the conquest narratives. Christians, whether Native American or not, if they are to be involved, must
learn how to participate in the struggle without making their story the
whole story. Otherwise the sins of the past will be visited upon us again.
No matter what we do, the conquest narratives will remain. As long
as people believe in the Yahweh of deliverance, the world will not be safe
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ROBERT WARRIOR
from Yahweh the conqueror. But perhaps, if they are true to their struggle, people will be able to achieve what Yahweh’s chosen people in the
past have not; a society of people delivered from oppression who are not
so afraid of becoming victims again that they become oppressors themselves, a society where the original inhabitants can become something
other than subjects to be converted to a better way of life or adversaries
who provide cannon fodder for a nation’s militaristic pride.
With what voice will we, the Canaanites of the world, say, “Let my
people go and leave my people alone?” And, with what ears will followers of alien gods who have wooed us (Christians, Jews, Marxists, capitalists), listen to us? The indigenous people of this hemisphere have
endured a subjugation now one hundred years longer than the sojourn of
Israel in Egypt. Is there a god, a spirit, who will hear us and stand with us
in the Amazon, Osage County, and Wounded Knee? Is there a god, a
spirit, able to move among the pain and anger of Nablus, Gaza, and
Soweto? Perhaps. But we, the wretched of the earth, may be well-advised
this time not to listen to outsiders with their promises of liberation and
deliverance. We will perhaps do better to look elsewhere for our vision of
justice, peace, and political sanity—a vision through which we escape not
only our oppressors, but our oppression as well. Maybe, for once, we will
just have to listen to ourselves, leaving the gods of this continent’s real
strangers to do battle among themselves.
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