Thursday, March 01, 2007

Philo and the Conquest of Canaan

In the first 2007 issue of Journal for the Study of Judaism, there is an article on Philo and the conquest of Canaan: Katell Berthelot, 'Philo of Alexandria and the Conquest of Canaan, 'Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume 38, Number 1, 2007, pp. 39-56.

The abstracts tells us "According to the Torah, the Hebrews were commanded either to expel or to exterminate the Canaanites who were living in Canaan at the time of the conquest. Philo seems to feel rather ill-at-ease about the literal meaning of these biblical passages. Besides allegory, he uses four hermeneutical strategies: 1) to pass over the problematic texts in silence; 2) to play with the meaning of certain Greek words; 3) to justify the destruction of the Canaanites from a moral point of view; 4) to rewrite the biblical account."

I found this through the Ingenta search engine; a very fine facility available to us who do not have immediate and locale access to that many journals.

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