Wasn't the conquest of Canaan a genocide carried out in God's name?

🔥The question: “How can anyone excuse the words ‘do not leave alive anything that breathes’?”

🛡️The Church's answer: The language of total destruction in the Book of Joshua has to be examined together with the victory rhetoric of the ancient Near East and its historical context. Even within the Bible those peoples keep appearing after the phrase ‘they wiped them all out,’ which shows that this text holds a memory more complicated than its literal surface. The discomfort of the violent language still remains, and the Church reads revelation as given gradually within history and brought to completion in Christ, who loved his enemies.

🧐If they press further: “Then is it all right to seize land in God's name?” — Absolutely not. This text authorizes no expulsion of a people, no massacre, no racism, and no religious war today. Actual conflicts have to be judged by the dignity of every civilian, by international law, and by the standards of justice and peace.

✨In one sentence: “The Canaan texts have to be read within ancient war rhetoric and gradual revelation, and they cannot become a command that justifies conquest or massacre today.”