As an evangelical Christian, Earl seeks to reconcile his beliefs with the genocide and violence in the Old Testament, focusing here on the book of Joshua. He considers whether Christian faith is in vain if Jericho was razed, the importance of interpretation, understanding Joshua as an ancient text, reading Joshua, and reading Joshua as Christian scripture. A final chapter places the book in the contexts of history, salvation, and miracles. The study began as his 2008 PhD dissertation at the University of Durham. It is not indexed. The 2010 edition was published by Cascade Books. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)