Charlie Trimm (associate professor and chair of Old Testament) releases in March 2022 The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation. How can a good God command genocide? This short, accessible offering provides the resources needed to make sense of one of the Bible’s most difficult ethical problems — the Israelite destruction of the Canaanites as told in the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges.
Trimm begins with a survey of important background issues, including the nature of warfare in the ancient Near East, the concept of genocide (with perspectives gleaned from the field of genocide studies), and the history and identity of the Canaanite people. With this foundation in place, he then introduces four possible approaches to reconciling biblical violence:
- Reevaluating God—concluding that God is not good.
- Reevaluating the Old Testament—concluding that the Old Testament is not actually a faithful record of God’s actions.
- Reevaluating the interpretation of the Old Testament—concluding that the Old Testament does not in fact describe anything like genocide.
- Reevaluating the nature of violence in the Old Testament—concluding that the mass killing of the Canaanites in the Old Testament was permitted on that one occasion in history.
The depth of material provided in concise form makes Trimm’s book ideal as a supplementary textbook or as a primer for any Christian perturbed by the stories of the destruction of the Canaanites in the Old Testament.
“Charlie Trimm’s The Destruction of the Canaanites takes some very difficult verses from the Old Testament and deals with them in an intellectually and theologically fair-minded way. Trimm presents different views in an even-handed manner, mentioning their strengths and weaknesses, all the while staying away from one-sided advocacy. He doesn’t tell readers how to think; he gives them different, competing views that allow them to think for themselves and to discuss with others. Too often Christians want to shut debates down; Charlie Trimm wants to elevate them, and in this book he does.”
Peter Wehner
Charlie Trimm is associate professor of biblical and theological studies at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. He is the coauthor, with Brittany Kim, of Understanding Old Testament Theology and the author of Fighting for the King and the Gods: A Survey of Warfare in the Ancient Near East and “YHWH Fights for Them!”: The Divine Warrior in the Exodus Narrative.