ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way Wright, as a theologian but operating under the aegis of archaeology as a scientific endeavor, constructed a rigid separation between the ancient Israelites and ancient Canaanites. His belief in the Bible as an objective record of God’s mighty acts in history made possible his insistence that the conquest of Palestine occurred in as bloody a manner as described in the book of Joshua, and that the slaughter of the Canaanites was good because God ordered it. The Israelites’ conquest provided the opportunity for “the purity and righteous holiness of the God of Israel” to shine against the background of the preexisting “pagan and immoral religion”. In his theological writings, Wright found many faults with his contemporaries’ practice of Christianity, especially when compared with Israelite religion. Critics of the Albright school’s thinly veiled religiosity must have found it frustrating that one of its leading proponents was a self-professed theologian.
