Did Joshua Anticipate Greater Israel?

DID JOSHUA ANTICIPATE "GREATER ISRAEL"?

September 21, 2019 

Blog Post Date: 9-23-2019

"From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, 

all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, 

shall be your coast."  Joshua 1:2-4

Far from being the seemingly insane ramblings of some irrelevant desert dwellers, the Bible is the historical account by the winners of the greatest military campaign in Antiquity.  Moses prepared Israel for the onslaught, but Joshua led the invasion.  Joshua took on the three greatest Empires of the day and won. 

They vanquished Egypt, the Assyrians, and utterly annihilated the Hittites.

With this stunning new perspective, Joshua must be considered the greatest General of Antiquity. 

Only Alexander, a thousand years later, can stand in his shadow.

   

Migchels writes: "This notion that Israel was behind the Bronze Age Collapse, is really a major discovery, if true. 

But this narrative about Israel and the Bronze Age Collapse, and Joshua leading the invasion after Moses' death is really incredibly concrete.

 And if true, of World Importance. 

It's a great validation of the Bible, and solving a major historical mystery, suddenly giving a clear view of what transpired of the centuries in the area."

HAS THE BIBLE BEEN PROVEN CORRECT AS A MAJOR HISTORICAL TEXT?

By Anthony Migchels (abridged by henrymakow.com)

In Deuteronomy, Moses describes the tribulations of the tribes and discusses the invasion of Canaan, and the annihilation of the Amorites and the Hittites, and others. The duty to stick to the Law is the key condition for victory and future security in the Promised Land.

Moses gave these speeches in Moab, which is the East bank of the Jordan. This would be the base from which Israel would strike.

Here is a map to show where Moab is located. This map is not of the same era that we are discussing, it just shows where the Israelites were at the start of the campaign.

Moses dies in Moab, and he is tragically not allowed to lead Israel in the taking of the Promised Land. This honor falls to Joshua (Hoshea).

Joshua succeeds Moses as the leader of Israel, and the Book of Joshua is the sixth book of the Bible...

Here is what God says to Joshua will be his conquest, after Moses dies:

"² Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.

³ Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.

⁴ From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast." Joshua 1:2-4

It couldn't be more clear: Canaan AND the land of the Hittites are for Israel, including all the land west of the Euphrates.

Moses relates that God directly commands to attack and completely destroy the Canaan tribes, and the Hittites, and Joshua is given the exact geographic extent of the conquest.

Note that God does not demand the destruction of Egypt and Assyria, but he does demand destruction of their influence in Canaan, all the way up to the Euphrates.

Also note, that Moses and Joshua do not claim to have been behind the attacks on the Greek territories. And the map also clearly has others attack the Mycenaeans and the Minoans. These attacks were committed by a clearly distinct people, not mentioned by the Bible (for as far as I can tell now), but called the Dorians by Mainstream History.

While it was the Hittites and Egyptians that dominated Canaan, the Assyrians throughout history have had a major impact on the area. Mesopotamia and the Levant together are the Golden Crescent, and the rivers, the trade routes, they all conspire for it to be so, right up to this day, when Iraq and Iran are still central for the fates of all players in the Levant.

Previously, I noted that the texts do not claim the attacks on the Assyrian cities, but here with God's orders to Joshua, it is clear that Israel is behind the attacks. They were not intended to outright destroy the Assyrians, but a couple of their cities were annihilated to deliver the message: stay out, or else. And the Assyrians were more than happy to escape with a bloody nose, that's for sure, they wouldn't bother Israel for centuries. The Assyrians were weakened, but they lived and maintained the bulk of their city-states.

The same is true of Egypt in Canaan's South: their positions were demolished, but the goal was not to destroy them as a people or Empire, but only to push them out of Canaan. They too never fully recovered, but they lived.

This in marked contrast to the Hittites, who were to be entirely genocided.

So now, with all this, can we not conclude that the battles as shown in the map, which is the mainstream account of events, matches to a tee the claims of Moses and Joshua?

...There are going to be questions, for sure. Inconsistencies in different accounts, perhaps the accounts of Moses and Joshua are unfair on their enemies, and overrating their own virtue. Perhaps not. But that does nothing about the main facts.

Nothing can dispel that both Joshua's claims in terms of the geographic conquest, and Moses claims concerning the peoples to be wiped out, are completely consistent with the map of the Bronze Age Collapse as shown. Moses and Joshua describe genocide, which is what archaeology confirms.

Next, Israel and Judah are the successor Kingdoms in the Area, which is consistent with an Israelite victory.

CONCLUSION
It's a major paradigm shift. The Bronze Age Collapse is not a mystery. Israel did it. Their conquest was an astonishing geopolitical feat of the very first order. They completely destroyed any opposition to their claims in the Promised Land. They caused a total collapse in the international system that had dominated over an immense area for almost two thousand years. A dark age ensued, and in the centuries after the fact, they slowly repopulated and colonized the area, with settlements of growing importance. By 1000 BC two strong states were clearly recognizable.

The odds they faced seemed insurmountable: what was a ragtag bunch of tribes going to do against a series of superpowers who had been consistently crushing any revolts against their authority for centuries? For years they diddled and dared not, but when they struck, they did the impossible.

Think what you will of their claims to have been directly led by God, that's a wholly different matter, and God knows that typically people will say God is on their side when they go to war. Although the sheer magnitude of their feats will lend credence to these claims, no doubt about it.

But what matters is that we transpire to have the first-hand account of those that crushed the Bronze Age Empires, and next dominated the area for centuries to come.

Not only that, we are talking about a People that is even to this day absolutely central to the human condition. Not just the Jews, but also the lost tribes, who must be somewhere. And of course, there are many theories about who and where they are.

It is also clear that we are at a crossroads here in the centuries-old struggle between the Bible and its message, and the Powers that Be, and their Scientism Religion.

Because if all this is true, Science can no longer ignore the Bible as a first-rate text of history, suddenly shedding bright daylight on a previously dark age.

It seems reasonable to assume that a thing of this magnitude is a cover-up, and not just blindness.