Readers Guide: “The Word for Today” Saturday, October 20, 2012 Read – Joshua 1 & 2 The book of Joshua continues that narrative that has been told in the book of Deuteronomy. We are going to read only the first few chapters of Joshua to get a flavor of the story of how God gave the land to his people. Sometimes this story is spoken of as the conquest – as if the people had conquered someone to take a land for themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth as the story itself makes clear – God gave them the land. The land is a gift not an achievement. The story is one of grace. It might be important for us to stop a moment and think about the material that we have been reading up to now. You may well have noticed that there are subtle differences in the style of writing of the different books. Reading Deuteronomy has a different “feel” than reading Genesis or Exodus. Reading Joshua is not quite the same as reading Deuteronomy – though the same theology seems to be present in both books. What this most likely means is that different human hands are involved in each of the different books. Biblical scholars have pointed out the while there are some differences in “feel” between Deuteronomy and Joshua – and the book of Judges, the books of Samuel, and the books of Kings for that matter – it is most likely that the authors who put together Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings were influenced by the writer of Deuteronomy. These later books are sometimes called the “Deuteronomistic History” of the kingdom. We are not going to read 1 & 2 Chronicles because they essentially tell the story of Samuel and Kings but from a very different perspective – not much like Deuteronomy and more like Leviticus and Numbers. All of this may not seem important but knowing these differences helps us to understand the Old Testament which can be a difficult book for us to follow. Chapters 1 and 2 of Joshua tell the story of the passing on of leadership to Joshua and another story of sending out spies – this time into Jericho which will be the first city God delivers into the hands of his people. The story of the sending of the spies reminds us of the earlier sending of spies into the Promised Land – a story of spies who were not faithful. Will history repeat itself?