The Book of Joshua raises many questions, such as "Did the walls of Jerico really fall down at the sound of the Israelites' trumpet blast and victory shout?" and "Did the sun actually 'stand still?'" Though we can only take in faith that trumpet blasts would fell a wall and the sun could stand still, we cannot, on the other hand, read the Bible as if Joshua did not exist. It must be read in context and for the promises of God it provides.

Some would deal with the questions cited above by dismissing the Book of Joshua in general as the literary vestiges of a primitive religious view.

This does not seem to be an option for orthodox faith.

The church long ago, and ever since, rejected the Marcionite heresy that the God of the Old Testament is to be abandoned in favor of the God of the New Testament and Jesus. The synagogue and the church have preserved and proclaimed Joshua as Holy Scripture through two millennia, and for good reasons.

Without the Book of Joshua and the story of the possession of the promised land, the promises of God to Israel's ancestors and the great salvation of the Exodus would be fraudulent claims made in bad faith. Without the fulfillment of the promise of the land to Israel as described in Joshua, the Christian's hope for the coming kingdom of God would be less concrete and more like "pie in the sky."

The intellectual and moral struggles of dealing with difficult questions of interpretation are small investments to make in return for the great regard of Joshua's rich theological truths.

We also cannot read Joshua as if the Book of Judges did not exist. Just as it would be a serious mistake to resolve the problems raised by some of the contents of Joshua by dismissing the book altogether, so would it be wrong to pretend that such questions did not exist.

For, example, the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges, if read as objective history in the modern sense, have serious contradictions about how and when and to what extent Israel occupied the Land of Promise. The church and synagogue have declared in their wisdom that both books possess the truth, without reconciling their differences.

Even more vexing than the historical questions are the moral and ethical concerns Joshua raises. The divine command to dispossess and exterminate the Canaanite population will always cause pangs of conscience to thoughtful people who have even the slightest awareness of the Cherokees' Trail of Tears or Bosnia's ethnic cleansing. In some places, the Book of Joshua reads more like a graduate-level text in theodicy than a theological primer for new believers.

It is a comfort, perhaps, to think that all of our questions about the Bible have simple, complete answers. Such comfort, however, is either short-lived or secured by the illusion of reducing life's mysteries to fit our limited understanding. We cannot recreate the Bible as we would want it. It must always remain at least somewhat strange and foreign to us, if for no other reason than to prevent us from mistaking its voice for our own deceitful desires.

Perhaps, then, the difficult problems of the Book of Joshua are presented primarily to humble us, to hone our thinking and to make us hunger for maturity, wisdom and understanding in greater measure than we now possess. Such humility, thoughtfulness and wisdom comes from holding on to the tensions within scripture, rather than pretending that they do not exist.

Even if we were to reach the conclusion in faith, as many have done, that the brutality, violence and killings in the Book of Joshua were somehow appropriate for a certain time and place in God's mysterious plan of redemption, Christians must also admit that we no longer live in that time or place. In his book "Long Ago God Spoke: How Christians May Hear the Old Testament Today," William L. Holladay reminds us that, unlike ancient Israel, Christians do not need to conquer land for their survival, and that in the parable of the good Samaritan Jesus extended the command to love our neighbor to its farthest limits.

No matter how God dealt with His enemies in ancient Canaan, we see most fully how God deals with His enemies in the cross of Calvary. There Jesus deals with God's enemies by dying for them in order to reconcile them to God.

Christian theology does envision a day when the risen Christ will utterly put down the enemies of God and establish God's kingdom forever. This action, however, belongs to Christ in an eschatological time, not to Christians living in the course of history. The events of Joshua are to be remembered; they are not to be repeated.

For not with swords' loud clashing;
Or roll of stirring drums;
With deeds of love and mercy
The heavenly kingdom comes.