The Weaponisation of the Exodus and Canaan Conquest

Posted Jul 12, 2026 by Adrian Ebens in Character of God

The character revealed in the person of Jesus Christ stood in sharp contrast to that understood by the Jews of His day, as well as the entire world. The gentleness, patience, and compassion of God were vividly displayed in the character of the Messiah.

On the night before His death, Christ expressed to His Father in prayer that He had fulfilled the mission given Him of His Father: He had glorified His Father’s character and revealed His name to His disciples. (John 17:4,6).

The gospel of Jesus that spread to the world after His death centred in the loving self-denial of their Master and continued for well over a hundreds years after Christ had graced the earth.

But the tentacles of Hellenism manifested in the dogma of Neo Platonism laid the foundations for the development of the Papacy. The major transition point took place in the person of Emperor Constantine.

After decades of persecution, intensified under the rule of Diocletian, Hellenised Christianity found a Saviour in Constantine, and master politician found in this brand of Christianity a narrative to enhance his career aspirations.

After a dream in which Constantine was told “in this sign conquer,” (In hoc signo vinces), he attributed his victory against his rival Maxentius at the battle of Milvian Bridge (AD 312) to the Christian God. His army was baptised and the doors opened to Christians to be placed at the centre of Roman life.

In his fawning eulogy Life of Constantine, Eusebius Bishop of Caesarea painted Constantine as the New Moses. Constantine was raised in the court of the “Pharaoh” Diocletian before rising up to rescue the church.

Commenting on the victory of Milvian bridge which elevated Constantine to unrivalled power, Eusebius draws a parallel to Pharaoh drowned in the Red Sea.

"For once, as in the days of Moses and the Hebrew nation... He cast Pharaoh's chariots and his host into the waves of the Red Sea, and at this time did Maxentius, and the soldiers and guards with him, sink to the bottom as a stone... sank as lead in the mighty waters. when in his flight before the divinely aided forces of Constantine, he essayed to cross the river [the Tiber] which lay in his way, over which he had made a strong bridge of boats, and had framed an engine of destruction—really against himself, but in hope of ensnaring thereby him who was beloved by God. [But God brought this engine to be Maxentius’s undoing:] for the machine, erected on the bridge with the ambuscade concealed therein, giving way unexpectedly before the appointed time, the passage began to sink down, and the boats with the men in them went bodily to the bottom."[1]

In contrast the leadership of Joshua, the ideological objective of the Constantinian narrative was to frame the Christian Emperor as a liberator rather than a genocidal conqueror. The Canaanite narrative requires viewing the inhabitants of the land as an irredeemable "other" marked for total destruction. Constantine, however, was trying to unite a fractured Roman population. By using Moses, Constantine and Eusebius could claim they were freeing the Roman people from the "slavery" of tyrannical, pagan emperors, rather than conquering a foreign population.[2]

The Roman Papacy not only continued to align with the Moses narrative popularized by Constantine and Eusebius, but they aggressively expanded it to build the very foundation of papal supremacy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

However, the Popes made a critical structural adjustment: they stripped the Moses title away from secular emperors and claimed it entirely for themselves. While Eusebius used Moses to paint Constantine as the supreme leader of both state and church, the medieval Popes argued that the Pope was the true, ultimate "New Moses"—a supreme spiritual legislator and temporal sovereign whose authority superseded all earthly kings.[3]

Starting in the high Middle Ages, theologians like Bernard of Clairvaux began systematically applying Old Testament typologies to the papacy. The Popes faced constant power struggles against secular rulers (like the Holy Roman Emperors). To win these theological-political wars, the Vatican argued that the Pope inherited the unique, absolute authority of Moses.

The logic was simple: Moses was the direct mediator between God and man, the supreme lawgiver, and the ruler who established the high priesthood of Aaron. Therefore, the Pope was the source of all spiritual law and held the ultimate right to judge earthly rulers, while remaining above the judgment of any human court.[4]

In 1439, Pope Eugenius IV issued the papal decree Moyses vir Dei ("Moses, the Man of God"). He directly compared the church councils opposing him to Korah, Dathan, and Abiram—the Old Testament figures who rebelled against Moses's leadership and were swallowed alive by the earth. By aligning with Moses, the Pope framed any democratic or structural dissent against the papacy as a literal sin against God's ordained order.[5]

The absolute peak of this papal alignment with the Moses narrative is permanently painted on the walls of the Sistine Chapel, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV in the late 15th century.

Before Michelangelo painted the ceiling, Sixtus IV hired Renaissance masters (including Botticelli and Perugino) to paint two parallel cycles of frescoes facing each other on the walls:

This layout was explicit political propaganda designed to visually validate the doctrine of Plenitudo Potestatis (the plenitude of papal power). The frescoes deliberately drew typological lines showing that the absolute authority God gave to Moses was passed to Christ, who then passed it to Saint Peter (the first Pope), and by extension, to Sixtus IV. One specific fresco, Botticelli's The Punishment of the Sons of Korah, served as a massive, visible warning to anyone challenging papal authority, once again casting the Pope as Moses putting down a mutiny.[6]

The shift toward the Joshua narrative occurred centuries later, when European Christians transitioned from ruling an existing empire (the Constantinian model) to invading and colonizing entirely new continents (the Settler Colonial model). When the goal changed from political liberation to total land acquisition and the displacement of native populations, Christian theologians largely set aside the Moses/Exodus framework and picked up the Joshua/Canaanite framework.

Early American leaders viewed their arrival in New England as a literal reenactment of Exodus, explicitly casting Native Americans as the ungodly tribes occupying their promised land.

During the Pequot War (1637), English colonists trapped and burned alive roughly 400 to 700 Pequot men, women, and children at their fortified village in Mystic, Connecticut. William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony, described the horrific scene by explicitly framing it as a holy offering:

"It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands..."[7]

Captain John Mason, who led the attack on the Mystic fort, explicitly invoked the language of David and Joshua, stating:

"Thus the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the Hinder Parts, and to give us their Land for an Inheritance... Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies."[8]

Decades later, the prominent Puritan minister Cotton Mather rallied colonists to go out against the indigenous populations by linking them directly to the biblical enemies of the ancient Israelites:

“...go forth against Amalek annoying this Israel in the wilderness.”

Reflecting on the near-total destruction of local tribes during this era, Puritan writer Herbert Gibbs explicitly mirrored the Book of Joshua, giving thanks for:

“...the mercies of God in extirpating the enemies of Israel in Canaan.”[9]

As the British Empire expanded, the providential framework endured, shifting from the specific "New Israel" model to a broader mandate where the British were chosen by God to inherit the earth, styling indigenous resistance as rebellion against divine decree.

In the late 16th century, early English colonist and strategist Robert Gray, writing in A Good Speed to Virginia (1609) to justify the displacement of Native Americans, argued that the earth belonged to those who built civilization, invoking Joshua-like logic regarding the right to seize land.

The tract was written to generate financial and public support for the Virginia Company's colonization of Jamestown. In it, Gray explicitly addresses a pressing moral question of the day: by what right can Christian nations take land belonging to native peoples?

To ease the consciences of prospective settlers and investors, Gray relied heavily on the Book of Joshua and biblical concepts of land stewardship.

"The earth is the Lord's... and he hath given it to the sons of men to be inhabited... Far be it from us to think that God hath created the earth to lie waste... It is no unjust war for a civil nation to enter into the countries of a barbarous people, to reduce them to civility and to true religion."[10]

Robert Gray developed this thought into the wasteland argument. He stated that God did not create the earth "to lie waste," Gray strips indigenous people of their ownership rights by claiming that their hunting, gathering, and non-European agricultural practices amounted to "wasting" God's property.

He concludes that conquering a "barbarous people" is entirely just, provided the invaders intend to bring them "civility and to true religion"—conceptually paving the way to treat native resistance as an ungodly rebellion that could be met with righteous, violent erasure.

These principles were carried out in earnest in Australia with the genocide of the indigenous Tasmanian population, and slaughter and subjugation of the mainland.

The conquest rhetoric was heavily blended with the biblical command to "subdue the earth." Because Indigenous Australians did not practice Western agriculture, colonial leaders and writers argued that they had forfeited their right to the land, framing frontier massacres and disease-driven population collapse as a form of divine cleansing.

In 1848, Richard Hill, an influential colonial figure in New South Wales, wrote regarding the rapid disappearance of Aboriginal populations:

"We cannot look upon the history of the world without seeing that it has been the decree of Providence that a dark race should disappear before a white one... It seems to be an unalterable law of nature, or rather, the will of God."

Similarly, an editorial in The Christian Colonist (an early Australian colonial newspaper) routinely justified the aggressive expansion into Aboriginal territories by using the explicit logic of Israel displacing the older inhabitants of Canaan:

"The land was given to us by Providence to cultivate and replenish. The blackfellows have failed to do this... It is the law of God that the land should be taken from those who do nothing with it, and given to those who will make it bring forth fruit."

These quotes highlight that the biblical narrative of conquest was not just an abstract theological theme; it was a primary piece of ideological scaffolding used by generals, governors, and clergymen to mentally convert mass violence and land theft into acts of divine obedience.

In summarising this tragic misuse of Scripture by Catholic and Protestant leaders, Puritan Theologian Greg Boyd states:

"The European conquest of America alone suffices to demonstrate how easy it is for the conquest narrative to motivate people to follow leaders who believe God commissioned them to exterminate indigenous populations in the process of seizing their land. In this light, there can be no doubt that this is a very dangerous narrative, and this contributes to its status as a paradigmatic symbol of the problem of divine violence in the Old Testament."[11]

In contrast he makes this penetrating observation:

"On the other hand, if we instead resolve to ‘know nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2) as we interpret these genocidal portraits of God, we are empowered to see through their sin‑mirroring surface to discern the cruciform God stooping to become the sin and the curse of his people within the written witness to God’s covenantal faithfulness (2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:13). We can see that God is bearing the sin of his people—including the sin of believing him to be a genocidal ANE warrior deity—and thereby taking on a literary appearance that reflects that sin. As such, these ghoulish portraits of God become for us literary crucifixes that bear witness to just how low the heavenly missionary was willing to stoop to remain in covenant with, and to continue to further his historical purposes through, his ancient covenant people."[12]

This is the key point we wish to present in this volume: The violence portrayed in the Israelite Exodus and conquest of Canaan reveal a series of crucifixion events for Christ, and by extension, the Father which they humbly accepted to remain connected to “his ancient covenant people.”

The failure to do this is what will lead the world into its final crisis. When visiting am Israeli site struck by an Iranian missile, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated:

"We read in this week's Torah portion, 'Remember what Amalek did to you.' We remember—and we act."[13]

Us Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegsteth is repeatedly invoked Old Testament examples to support their present war activities. During a formal Pentagon press briefing regarding the ongoing military action against Iran, Hegseth closed his statement by reciting Psalm 144, a passage traditionally shared by Christians and Jews:

Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer... Psalm 144:1,2

At a Christian worship service hosted inside the Pentagon—part of a series of monthly services he instituted for military staff—Hegseth prayed for "overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy," referring to the Iranian regime.

Hegseth's militant theology—underscored by his highly visible Deus Vult ("God wills it") Crusader tattoo—has raised significant alarms among civil rights watchdogs and international analysts. Groups like the Military Religious Freedom Foundation have investigated complaints that this top-down rhetoric has filtered through the ranks, with some commanders telling service members that the conflict is part of a prophetic end-times script. [14]

The subjects we are considering in the light of the person of Jesus have direct implications for our future. If God continues to be cast in the frame of a warrior, the we are destined to an endless cycle of violence, death and destruction with the most violent being the leaders of the our countries.

For those who have ears, let them hear.

 

[1]. https://websites.uta.edu/hunnicut/reading-list/readings-western-civilization/eusebius-how-constantine-overthrew-maxentius-and-favored-christianity

[2]. https://www.judaism-and-rome.org/eusebius-caesarea-life-constantine-i12

[3]. www.researchgate.net/publication/375629907_Moses_As_Figure_of_the_
Pope_II_A_Christological-political_topos_from_Eugenius_IV_to_Clement_VII

[4]. https://editorialsinderesis.com/wp-content/uploads/texto-the-pope-new-moses.pdf

[5]. Ibid.

[6]. William Johnstone, “Moses in Medieval Stained Glass,” the Church Service Society Record 42 (Winter 2006/7), 35‐55.

[7]. https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=652

[8]. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233238838_The_political_
sacralization_of_imperial_genocide_contextualizing_Timothy_Dwight's_The_
Conquest_of_Canaan

[9]. https://reflections.yale.edu/article/violence-and-theology/bible-and-legitimation-violence

[10]. https://dokumen.pub/the-rights-of-war-and-peace-political-thought-and-the-international-order-from-grotius-to-kant-9780191037429-0191037427.html

[11]. Greg Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God (2017) pp. 918,919.

[12]. Ibid. p. 927.

[13] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/netanyahu-equates-iranian-regime-to-ancient-biblical-foe/3848109

[14] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/10/pete-hegseth-christianity-iran-war-crusade