A Foundation for One People: Reclaiming Joshua from the ‘Settler-Colonial’ Lens

²⁰ When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. ²¹ They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. 

From the Book of Joshua 6: 20-21

Joshua’s trumpets heralded the Israelite conquest of Canaan as promised by God to Abraham and his descendants. Abraham is the universal patriarch. For Jews, he is the founding father and first Hebrew Patriarch; in Islam, he is a vital link in the chain of continuous prophets beginning with Adam and ending with Mohammed; for Christians, Abraham is the spiritual ancestor of all believers—whether Jewish or non-Jewish.

The fact that our three religions share the same roots doesn’t seem to help us get along, and, with this obvious understatement, we each claim the Holy Land as our own Holy Land. This complex religious environment continues to reveal major shifts—especially in the landscape of mainline Protestantism.

The Shifting Landscape of the Mainline Church

We Christians are changing the way we talk about the Holy Land—especially when it comes to Israel and, even more specifically, the existence of the state of Israel. There are now massive waves of books and lectures claiming that Israel should not be a legitimate, internationally recognized modern state.

Besides this indictment, an increasingly popular censure includes the re-branding of Israel as a "settler-colonial” project. Without study or serious exegesis, it’s easy to toss around words like “genocide” and refer to the Book of Joshua as evidence of a contemporary trend.

This accusation finds foundation in the narrative generated by Middle Eastern Critical Theory, typically housed within academic circles.

Middle Eastern studies at prestigious universities offer perspectives that affect the mainstream Christian community, especially when amplified by a small group of Palestinian Christian pastors and theologians.

As a Lutheran pastor, I see this influence spreading through our Western churches. In my own denomination, the ELCA, the Palestinian lens is now the primary filter for our mission and education. “Our main resource for the conflict is now called ‘Sumud’—an Arabic word for ‘steadfastness.’” When a church adopts a political slogan to define its Middle Eastern mission, the bias is out in the open.

In an effort at fairness, the Lutheran church ostensibly calls for peace for both Palestinians and Israelis. The emphasis, however, is firmly placed on a condemnation of Israel, highlighting its “occupation,” and embracing what the church calls a “core Palestinian concept of resilience, resistance, and continued existence in the face of the Israeli occupation.”

(See: ELCA “How we Serve,” the “Global Mission,” and ELCA Sumud)   https://www.elca.org/how-we-serve/global-mission/sumud

Mitri Raheb and the “Theological Software” of War

A leading voice in this movement is Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Lutheran pastor and theologian based in Bethlehem. In his book, Decolonizing Palestine, for example, Raheb argues that, if the Bible is the "software" and modern munitions are the "hardware," then the Book of Joshua is the ultimate “blueprint” for settler-colonialism. He claims that this original formula is specifically Hebrew in origin, referring again to the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament). The claim is that these scriptures—for example the Book of Joshua—influence the "settler-colonialist" (Israel) to use Old Testament “hardware” (munitions) to eliminate the “native” Palestinians (genocide).

Raheb exclaims: “What kind of God is this who orders genocide of a people, and what kind of theology is this that celebrates it?” His objection includes the idea that, if we believe God ordered the extermination of the Canaanites, we are effectively saying that God is a “settler-colonialist.”

To make this argument stick, Raheb plays a "linguistic shell game" with two specific words: “settler” and “colonial.” These terms have been hollowed out and refilled with new, accusatory meanings—with Israel as the accused. Furthermore, with widespread, woke ideology, this language triggers a specific moral reflex in Western Christians.

Most peace-loving Christians are also upset by the bloody battles in the Book of Joshua as we try to comprehend God’s incomprehensible power. But it is a leap to call the book a manual for "ethnic cleansing." Raheb urges us to examine the text through a new lens grounded in the pervasive and academic critical theory called settler-colonialism that includes branding the existence of Israel as an example of settler-colonialist existence.

The Book of Joshua tells the story of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, featuring commands for herem—the total destruction of an enemy. Critics argue that because the text describes the displacement of an indigenous population, it serves as a script for removing "the other" from the land. In other words, the invasive settler (Israel—a representative of European Colonialism) displaces, removes, and replaces the “Other” (the Palestinians) through genocidal acts.

Because Mitri Raheb is a self-proclaimed “Palestinian Christian,” we Westerners might forget the Arab influences that inform his position. The pervading Islamic view of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament), for example, includes conditional acceptance. Joshua is a holy man, a righteous man. Raheb’s criticisms, however, imply that the Book of Joshua reveals a poisonous ideology. An Islamic-style analysis claims that the text has been corrupted with alterations over time making the divine revelations unreliable. For Muslims, the only reliable source for divine revelation is, of course, the Quran.

Unfortunately, “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” negates all serious scholarship and exegesis. An evaluation of the various rivers of bloodshed flowing throughout history is indeed a vexing and insuperable task.

For the purposes of this post, however, the focal point is the misapplication of Christian terminologies and concepts for political purposes. In this case, Mitri Raheb seeks to influence Western Christians by creating a pastiche of Christian, Middle Eastern, Arabic, and Islamic concepts to create an aggressive attack on the Jewish-Israeli existence.

The foundations of Palestinianism are admittedly complex, but, most often, the Palestinian Christian identity is defined only in opposition to Israeli occupation. Thus, the political component becomes inseparable from the Palestinian Christian narrative.

Our religious genealogical lines stretching back to our common ancestor, Abraham, become blurry when we examine the Arabic, Islamic, Hebrew, Amharic, and Aramaic overlaps. These Semitic languages possess shared language roots as well as the Abrahamic connection. And, although Middle Eastern peoples are predominantly Semitic, antisemitism, is only reserved for the Jews.

The Linguistic Bait-and-Switch: Redefining the "Settler"

Language—whether Semitic or not—continues to confound us today. Consider the word "settler." We need to remember that for most of Jewish history, the "settler" (in Hebrew, halutz) was a pioneer. These were penniless refugees fleeing Russian pogroms or European ghettos. They purchased land—often at inflated prices—that was considered "unsettle-able" malarial swamps or rock-strewn hills. These settlers didn’t steal the land; they bought it from willing Arab sellers. "Settling" wasn't a crime; it was an act of repatriation—returning to the only soil where their language, their calendar, and their history made sense. And they paid for it.

Palestinian scholars like Raheb have performed a "bait-and-switch" by tethering the word “settler” exclusively to the American "Wild West." By calling the Jew a "settler," they aren't describing a person returning to their ancestral cradle; they are invoking the image of a cowboy—a foreign predator who arrives with a gun to "eliminate" the native and steal his land. This is why the word "settler" makes us feel a sense of subconscious guilt; we are being told a story about the American frontier, not the Middle East. It turns a 3,000-year-old homecoming into a 19th-century land grab.

Colonialism 101: Why the Label Fails the Fact Check

We also must address the word "colonial." Traditional colonialism (like the British Empire in India) requires a Mother Country—a "home base" where the settlers send back resources and to which they eventually return when the job is done. But Israel has no "London" to return to There is no "home" for a Jew from Baghdad, Yemen, or Poland to "go back" to.

Since Israel fails this basic "Colonialism 101" test, scholars like Fayez Sayegh popularized the academic workaround of "settler colonialism." In this framework, the people themselves are the colony. They argue that because Zionists intended to stay and build a society, their very existence is the "colonial project."

Crucially, this work was not a neutral study; it was first published by the PLO Research Center as political propaganda to give their struggle the weight of a "decolonization"movement.

By combining "settler" (redefined as a foreign predator) with "colonial" (the ultimate modern original sin), anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian Christians have created a framework where the Jewish people are stripped of their indigenous identity. In this linguistic trap, the "settler" is always the thief, and the "colony" is the very existence of the Jewish state.

Raheb uses this framework to claim a "logic of elimination" that is built into Israel's DNA as in the Book of Joshua. To "prove" this, he highlights David Ben-Gurion saying, "The Bible is our mandate," and Moshe Dayan’s famous 1956 eulogy: "We are a generation that settles the land and, without the steel helmet,...we shall not be able to plant a tree."

Rather than a script for genocide, Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion and Dayan utilized the Book of Joshua as a vital cultural foundation to unite a fractured immigrant population into one cohesive people returning to their ancestral home.

But Raheb purposefully misconstrues their intent. These were secular men trying to help a brand-new country of refugees find their ancient roots. After 2,000 years of being "the other" in every land they lived in, they were finally reclaiming their status as indigenous to their own history.

By misapplying these terms, Raheb is committed to stripping the Jewish people of their indigenous history and re-casting a story of return as a story of theft. When we allow the Book of Joshua to be redefined as a manual for ethnic cleansing, we aren't just changing how we read the Bible; we are adopting a framework that views the very presence of the Jewish people in their ancestral home as an act of aggression.

The Arithmetic of Coexistence: 1937, 1947, and the 22% Solution

Beyond ancient history, the modern record disproves the claim of "erasure." In 1937, the Peel Commission offered a plan where Jews would receive about 17-22% of the land; Jewish leaders accepted it, while Arab leaders rejected it.

In 1947, the UN Partition Plan allocated roughly 55% of the land to the Jewish state—but roughly 60% of that was the uncultivated, arid Negev desert, leaving a "habitable" Jewish state of about 22% of the total territory. Meanwhile, the fertile, arable land of the heartland—Judea and Samaria (known today as the West Bank), the very cradle of biblical Israel—was given to the Arabs for a state. Jewish leaders again said "yes" to coexistence, while Arab leaders said "no" and launched a war in 1948.

If there were a true "war of erasure," the population numbers would show it. Instead, the Palestinian population in this area has grown over five-fold since 1948—from 1.4 million to over 7.5 million today. The Jewish population is also about 7.5 million.

A Courtroom of Modern Lawyers: The Trap of Presentism

This leads to a big mistake in Raheb’s argument—a trap historians call “Presentism.” Presentism is simply judging the past by the rules of today. It’s like getting mad at a caveman for not using a fork or applying Geneva Convention laws to a world that existed 3,000 years ago. This violates Intertemporal Law, which states that acts must be judged by the laws of the time in which they occurred.

Since modern international human rights laws did not exist in the ancient world, critics are essentially trying to put God on trial using a courtroom built by modern lawyers. Back then, every nation—Egypt, Moab, Assyria—used the exact same "total war" language. To single out Joshua while ignoring everyone else is a massive double standard.

Furthermore, Raheb’s lens is curiously selective. He remains silent on the 7th-century Muslim Conquests, which saw Arab armies sweep across the Levant, conquering Jerusalem, and building the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temples. If entering a land and establishing a new religious order based on a holy text is "settler-colonialism," then the Arab-Islamic expansion fits Raheb's definition.

Yet, he does not demand the "decolonization" of the Arabic language or Islamic law. He is practicing polemics, selecting one group for unique moral condemnation while giving a "free pass" to others who are actually more similar to traditional European empire-builders like the Ottomans, the Romans, and the British.

Neo-Marcionism: The Heresy of Throwing Out the Old Testament

My goal in writing this is to sound the alarm and blow the trumpets: this is not just a political debate. The religious danger signals a return to "Neo-Marcionism." Marcion was an early church heretic who tried to throw out the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), claiming the Jewish God was too violent and "lesser" than the God of the New Testament.

If we agree with Raheb to treat the Jewish scripture as an illegitimate "blueprint" for evil, we are doing the same thing effectively. We are cutting ourselves off from the Jewish roots of our faith and replacing the Bible with a political agenda. We must be brave enough to see this terminology for what it is: a Middle Eastern shell game and a purposeful distortion of history.

Finally, "A Theological Lament":

How do we handle the word of God? Do we pick and choose certain Biblical texts to defend or debunk history? Do we discard those texts that don’t support our positions? However we try to handle these problems and apparent inconsistencies, we are forced onto a holy ground of faith. We must wrestle with a God whose love, commands, and silences—from the whirlwind of Job to the silence of Auschwitz—are demanding, shattering, and, often, incomprehensible.