Spies and Lies: Faithful, Courageous Israelites and Truthful Spies

The leader of a great nation ponders the invasion of a country in the Middle East. The majority report of his intelligence agency indicates that an invasion would be a bad idea, but the leader invades anyway, citing a minority report. As predicted, the invasion runs into trouble. Later, the leader g...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Curzer, Howard J. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 2010
In: Journal for the study of the Old Testament
Year: 2010, Volume: 35, Issue: 2, Pages: 187-195
Further subjects:B Ark of the Covenant
B Caleb
B twelve spies
B twelve scouts
B calumnies
B Moses
B Joshua
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Electronic
Description
Summary:The leader of a great nation ponders the invasion of a country in the Middle East. The majority report of his intelligence agency indicates that an invasion would be a bad idea, but the leader invades anyway, citing a minority report. As predicted, the invasion runs into trouble. Later, the leader gives a distorted history of the events leading up to the war, portraying himself as blameless, and accusing the naysayers of lacking courage and faith. Of course, the leader is Moses; the incident is the Israelites’ abortive first invasion of the Promised Land; and the intelligence agency consists of twelve spies. This article presents a novel interpretation of Numbers 13—14, a hermeneutical maxim for dealing with inconsistencies between Deuteronomy and the rest of the Torah, and a political moral.
ISSN:1476-6728
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal for the study of the Old Testament
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/0309089210365964