Essay by John Lein for Church History at Virgina Theological Seminary (November 14, 2017)

Holy Rollin’

One of my favorite series of books is Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower.” If you’ve ever read them, you may know that their inspiration can be traced back through Robert Browning and Shakespeare to a 12th-century French epic poem called The Song of . In this work of historical fiction based on events nearly five centuries prior, the knights of the Christian Emperor squabble, scheme, betray, fight, and many die in a series of battles in . They identify their enemies as those who “serve Mahumet and pray to Apollin” (lines 8-9), creating an “other” to demonize and blame based on complete ignorance. The heroes Roland and are joined by the Archbishop Turpin who gives divine sanction to their war. This poem was more than merely a memory. William the Conquerer’s men chanted it in preparation for the Battle of Hastings against the Anglo-Saxons. adopted it as their national epic in 1832 and it is taught to all their schoolchildren. The words have power. Yet, it is also pure propaganda. The Battle of Roncevaux Pass was fought in 778, but it was not the famous victory depicted here. In fact, this was the only battle that Charlemagne’s army ever lost, while on retreat to take care of a Saxon rebellion. Roland, Oliver, and other characters were slain in a rear-guard action, but everything else about them was created for the epic. Rather than facing the described 400,000 Islamic Saracens (Arabs), it was a small guerrilla group of pagan native Basques who ambushed and looted the army while any Muslims in the area at the time were more likely to have been allied with Charlemagne. The story tells us more about the European context of 1040-1115 than it does of 778, when kings were looking to expand into Muslim-held areas. An epic that depicted their new enemies as completely foreign by origin and religion, and defeat-able, was something they seized on regardless of its historicity. This pattern of retelling the past by setting up members of “our” tribe as heroes and slandering “the others” as inherently evil and deviant is sadly effective and common. Looking further back, we can see this clearly in the Bible story of the conquest of Canaan by Joshua. Following the parallel, in the Book of Joshua we find the people of God led by a divinely- designated brave hero about to conquer a land. God plays the role of Roland’s clergy by commanding the Israelites to completely exterminate the Canaanite people—men, women, children, and animals—in order to remain pure from the evil religion practiced by these pagans. “Militant triumphalism, the construction and demonization of indigenous others, [and] appeals to the divine to legitimize the confiscation of territory” (Hawk 130) are all features of colonial empires extending up to today. This narrative has had echoes of influence in Christian national contexts Lein 2 including the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny which led to slaughtering and enslavement of millions of indigenous peoples over the centuries. Finally, that parallel continues to the historical basis of Joshua. Extensive archaeological, sociological, historical, and exegetical evidence over the last century has convinced scholars that very little of the narrative could have actually happened. Once again, Joshua says more about the community compiling it around the 7th and 6th centuries BCE than it does about any events set in the 13th century BCE. The most likely hypothesis for the actual “invasion” is a slow infiltration of the Canaanite area by a small group that mingled and merged with the local tribes but later needed a cohesive national epic to solidify their own sense of identity and uniqueness. These narratives should be lessons to us today: in our need to justify domination, humans demonize and create “the other.” We see this in our country’s narrative of all Muslims as the enemy, of Polish movements once again blaming the Jews, of Israelis othering their Palestinian neighbors, and more. Rather let us turn to the second narrative of Joshua in the Bible, that of “Joshua of Nazareth,” who suffers as “the other” for us rather than “othering” others.

Works Cited

Enns, Peter. The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It. HarperCollins:New York. 2014. 27-70. Girard, René. The Last Scapegoat Theory of the Atonement, referenced in general from his works and commentaries by others read over previous years. Goldin, Frederick. . W. W. Norton & Company; 1978. Hawk, L. Daniel. “The Truth about Conquest: Joshua as History, Narrative, and Scripture”, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology. 2012 66(2) 129-140. http://int.sagepub.com/content/66/2/129 Mathis, Hannah. Lectures in Church History, Virginia Theological Seminary. 2017. Wikipedia articles on “The Song of Roland” and “The Battle of Roncevaux Pass,” retrieved November 13-14, 2017. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_Roland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Roncevaux_Pass