Joshua in 3-D: Biblical Conquest and Manifest Destiny #4

The fourth in a five-part series on Biblical Conquest and Manifest Destiny by Dr. Dan Hawk of Ashland Theological Seminary is posted below. It has been a great series to read and interact with. The last post in the series will be published next Tuesday.

By way of reminder, Dan's newly published book, Joshua in 3-D, can be purchased by the publisher at a 40% discount. The discounted price will not be available much longer. When you order from the website, insert the coupon code "HAWK40."

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Scorched Earth

L. Daniel Hawk

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One of the pivotal scenes in Avatar takes place when Secops, a security force under the command of Col. Miles Quaritch, attacks the Na’vi heartland, slaughters Na’vi villagers, and burns Hometree, their dwelling place. Quaritch personifies imperialist militarism; Secops works in the employ of RDA, a corporation that has come to Pandora to mine Unobtanium, a mineral regarded as essential for alleviating a global energy crisis on earth. Quaritch hates the Na’vi, whom he regards as savages and obstacles in the way of a resource deemed necessary to earth’s viability. In an early scene he warns newly arrived soldiers about the Na’vi’s vicious aggressiveness, projecting the invader’s violence onto the indigenous inhabitants and implying that invader excursions are justifiable defensive operations. At Hometree, and in the climactic scene at the sacred tree Eywa, Quaritch executes a campaign of indiscriminate killing and devastation, revealing the invader’s moral imperative: the end justifies the means.

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Mass killing and wanton destruction were common elements of warfare among the civilized societies of the ancient Near East. Israel was a part of that world, and it is no surprise that its conquest narrative exults in reports that Joshua “killed everything that breathed.” A tone of militant triumphalism is particularly pervasive in Joshua 11-12, which draws on rhetoric well-known in the military literature of its time. Although a few references to the sin of the indigenous peoples appear in preceding books of the Bible, no such reference appears in Joshua. The book itself does not present the annihilation of the indigenous population as an act of judgment but rather as a program of dispossession necessary to achieve a utopian vision of a land inhabited only by Israelites.

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Wars of annihilation and devastation do not appear to have been an aspect of war in pre-contact America. Early colonial narratives, supported by Native traditions, indicate that warfare among the indigenous peoples was ritualized and limited. Accounts of early conflicts reveal settler frustration with Indian allies, who left the field after shooting all their arrows or after the deaths of one or two people. It did not take long, however, for the English colonists to replicate the violence of the horrendous religious wars that ravaged Europe in the 17^th Century. The watershed occurred when rising tensions, caused in part by the expansion of New England colonies, prompted the colonists to make a pre-emptive strike on a Pequot Village near Mystic River in 1637. Surrounding the village when the warriors were away, the colonial force burned the village and slaughtered almost all of its 400-500 inhabitants, mostly women, children, and elderly. “Total war” was, in other words, a European import.

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The practice inaugurated at Mystic Fort would be replicated at Gnadenhutten, Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, and countless lesser-known sites – and when the Native populations had been subdued, would continue westward across the Pacific Ocean to places like Balangiga, Hiroshima, and My Lai. Scorched earth policies, which subjected Native populations to exposure and starvation, became stock elements of American warfare. Campaigns to burn villages and fields were initiated during the Revolution, perfected in the conquest of the Old Northwest, and adapted to the subjugation of Plains nations through the mass slaughter of bison.

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In Joshua, the narrative attempts to mask the scope and brutality of the conquest by rendering the wars against the indigenous peoples as defensive operations. The kings of Canaan, representing the hostile powers of the land, are presented as increasingly hostile as the story goes along, beginning with the attempt of Jericho’s king to find the spies, moving to the king of Ai’s attack on Israelites waiting in ambush, and culminating in attacks by coalitions of kings at Gibeon and the waters of Merom. In each case, the Israelites are recast as defenders rather than aggressors.

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A corresponding move configured America’s expansion into Native lands; Natives were the aggressors, not the settlers. Among myriad examples, we may note the final accusation made against George III in the Declaration of Independence: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” The accusation conveniently omits the fact that “undistinguished destruction” distinguished settler practice to an even greater extent and that a veritable settler tsunami was deluging lands the Crown had promised to keep inviolate for Native peoples, plunging the entire frontier into a maelstrom of reciprocal violence.

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Avatar shows us conquest and its aftermath from the perspective of the indigene as well as the invader and in so doing exposes the invader’s rhetoric. Joshua, in ways I have suggested in the prior two posts, makes a similar move. How might both narratives enable Christians to read the rhetoric that renders America’s wars and policies, both past and present?