Innerbiblical Reception History: The Case of the Regulations Concerning the Conquest of Canaan

The main questions that this paper addresses are the following:

First, what is the relationship between the various passages dealing with the conquest of the promised land spread across the books of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy?

Second, what can be said about the dating of the respective texts?

Third, how are the regulations found in these passages used and reshaped in other corpora of the Hebrew Bible? This question will receive most attention.

An investigation of the phrases and topics contained in the Pentateuchal regulations concerning the conquest of Canaan shows that there is a line leading from Exodus 23 to Deuteronomy 7 and 20, in (surprising) accordance with the canonical sequence of the texts.

The main loci of reception can be found in the books of Joshua and Judges, leading to clusters of legal blend in the respective sections of both books – clusters that have a clear function in the shaping of the theological message of these books.

Based on various innerbiblical observations, it will be argued that late datings (late monarchic period, exilic period, postexilic period) that dominate the scholarly discussion do not provide satisfactory answers to the question of the literary-historic setting of the relevant texts both in the Pentateuch and in Joshua and Judges.

Along the way, observations will be made on how to determine the direction of the dependency of biblical texts that go well beyond the specific case of the particular texts investigated in the presentation.

Prof. Dr. Markus Zehnder is Professor of Old Testament at IHL; Adjunct Professor and member of the Doctoral Faculty at ETF Leuven. His academic career has included research and teaching appointments in Switzerland, Israel, the United States, Norway, Belgium, and Germany, with a particular academic background in Old Testament studies.