Joshua (Bible Heroes)

Joshua
Bible Heroes
by Jason Parish
Copyright: 2014
Format: paperback
Status: A few pre-owned copies are available on ebay 
Conclusion: keep



I found this book at one of the local dollar stores.  In fact, I have two Joshua books and both came from the dollar store.  I've had this book for years, but it has never been a favorite for either of my two children.  I suspect it is because there are lots of words on only a few pages, which means fewer pictures.

The Good Points:

  • The book stays pretty close to the Bible.
  • Joshua is illustrated with dark colored skin, which is a bit startling in a world of Bible stories where most of the people look like Europeans.  But is this accurate? Would Joshua have had light or dark skin?  Moses was mistaken for an Egyptian (Exodus 2:19), so it can be assumed that the other Ancient Israelites, like Joshua, probably looked similar to the ancient Egyptians. So what did the Ancient Egyptians look like? Did they have dark or light skin?  It turns out that there are good arguments for both options.  This article claims they had dark skin.  And this article argues for light skin.  Anyway, it's nice to have a book like this in our library so the kids don't get too used to all of the Europeanized versions of the people in their Bible stories.
  • The last pages of the book have some trivia questions, a crossword puzzle, and a (rather boring) board game to play.

The Discrepancies:

  • This book claims that Rahab helped the two spies enter Jericho.  In the Bible, it merely says that they came to her house and stayed the night, not that she helped them get into city. 
  • After the walls fall, the book states that everything in the city was destroyed.  The Bible says that everything was destroyed except for the items made from gold, silver, bronze, or iron which were saved for the Lord's treasury, 
  • This story concludes by saying that after the walls fell down, Joshua thanked the Lord for the victory and for always being faithful.  But in the Bible, this is never shown.  Instead, Joshua invokes a curse on the children of anyone who attempts to rebuild Jericho.
I always find it interesting which paths I start wandering down while researching these Bible stories. Tonight I spent awhile sifting through articles trying to determine the skin color of Ancient Egyptians. But in addition to that, since one of the illustrations features camels, I delved into the question of whether camels might have been around Jericho during Joshua's time.  That's a can of worms! (The answer is I don't think they were, but I didn't have enough evidence to call it a discrepancy without doing a lot more research).  So is this book worth keeping?  Sure.  It has some mistakes, but I'm not sure they are enough to change the story significantly.  I would recommend this book for ages 4-9.



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