Biblical Views: The Archaeology of Rahab

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With its many layers and compositional phases, the Bible is often compared to a Near Eastern tell composed of strata accumulated over successive historical periods. However, there is yet another way the Bible can be compared to a tell; namely the layers of interpretation that one Biblical narrative can generate over time. Having attracted its share of interpreters, the story of Rahab the prostitute¹ (Joshua 2; 6) exemplifies this process and shows why an awareness of this type of Biblical stratigraphy enhances an appreciation of the Biblical text as a living document.

From the perspective of the Deuteronomistic historians (the Deuteronomistic history consists of Deuteronomy through Kings, including the Book of Joshua), Rahab has at least two strikes against her: She is a prostitute² and a foreign (Canaanite) woman (see Joshua 23:12). Nevertheless, as a number of modern interpreters have observed, the Rahab story succeeds by reversing expectations. Rahab the harlot has always impressed readers as brave, quick-witted and decisive when she hides Joshua’s spies, diverts the king of Jericho’s posse and negotiates her family’s safety on the basis of her faith in the Israelite God Yahweh. Not surprisingly, feminist theologians³ have taken Rahab to heart as a rarity in the patriarchal Bible: a named and independent female hero who even displays a prophetic spirit when she proclaims to the spies, “The LORD [YAHWEH] your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below” (Joshua 2:11).

Unlike their modern counterparts, all the ancient Jewish and Christian interpreters of Rahab’s story begin with the assumption that after surviving the fall of Jericho, she repudiated her sinful profession and lived an exemplary life. Her appearance as one of only four women in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:5)^a attests to her high standing in first-century C.E. Jewish circles. The Talmudic tradition (Megillah 15a) that Rahab was a beautiful proselyte (a convert to Judaism) who married Joshua also belongs to this stratum of interpretation. The early Christians admired Rahab for similar reasons. For the author of James, Rahab was an example of justification by both works and faith (James 2:25). The author of 1 Clement asserts that she was a sinner saved by her faith (thus providing the prototype of the reformed prostitute that Mary Magdalene became in Gregory the Great’s sixth-century sermon). Justin Martyr favored a typological reading whereby the scarlet thread in Rahab’s window (Joshua 2:18) became an inclusive “symbol of the blood of Christ, by which those who were at one time harlots and unrighteous persons out of all nations are saved” (Dialogue with Trypho 111). And Augustine struggled in his sermon Against Lying to minimize Rahab’s deceit and acclaim her more admirable actions “meet to be imitated.”

In the later 20th century, Norman Gottwald laid the groundwork for ideologically informed readings of the Rahab story when he suggested that by validating a foreign woman, the Joshua narrative subverts the Deuteronomistic historians’ xenophobic theology.⁴ In other words, despite the Deuteronomistic insistence on an ethnically pure Israel, the story of Rahab, alongside that of the enterprising Gibeonites (Joshua 9), might actually preserve an ancient counter-memory of “foreign” groups being included in Israel’s covenant with Yahweh.

This positive interpretive history of Rahab actually presents an instructive paradox, because if we try to hear her story with truly ancient ears—in other words, as seventh-century B.C.E. patriarchal Israelites—we likely would perceive a less high-toned message. True, the narration refers several times to Rahab’s family by the respectable patriarchal term bet-’ab (“house of the father”), but both her profession—the very factor which enables her to act independently—and the fact that a woman is shown making political and religious decisions for her family thoroughly undercut her family’s claim to honor, the primary social currency of patriarchal societies. Behind the notice in Joshua 6:25 that Rahab’s family has lived among the Israelites “to this very day” lurks an imputation of second-class 078status on the part of her descendants. Rahab’s story hides within it an ethnic slur reminiscent of the story of Lot’s daughters, who incestuously produce the ancestors of the Ammonites and Moabites (Genesis 19:37–38).

I find this paradox instructive precisely because the later interpretations of Rahab’s story run so counter to its probable original intent, a phenomenon lost on many critics of the Bible. A good example is Richard Dawkins, author of the bestseller The God Delusion.⁵ A shortcoming pointed out by many reviewers is Dawkins’s simplistic understanding of the nature of human religiousness and, more specifically, of the Bible. Dawkins knows his Bible, but as he rails against claims of Biblical inerrancy, he fails to take into account other interpretive traditions. In fact, the literal approach to the Bible that draws his ire gained momentum only in the last century or so. On the other hand, rabbis, church fathers and Biblical scholars of all stripes have demonstrated for centuries a conviction that a “literal” reading hardly does justice to a living Biblical text whose inherent depths and complexities continue to reveal themselves. Dawkins is right that the Bible’s authoritative status (i.e., as the source of rules) has led to injustice, but interpreters past and present have just as often been able to find meanings that transcend the potentially negative implications of a Biblical passage.⁶ The prostitute Rahab serves as a case in point.

With its many layers and compositional phases, the Bible is often compared to a Near Eastern tell composed of strata accumulated over successive historical periods. However, there is yet another way the Bible can be compared to a tell; namely the layers of interpretation that one Biblical narrative can generate over time. Having attracted its share of interpreters, the story of Rahab the prostitute1 (Joshua 2; 6) exemplifies this process and shows why an awareness of this type of Biblical stratigraphy enhances an appreciation of the Biblical text as a living document. From the perspective of the Deuteronomistic historians […]