In Deuteronomy 7:1–5 Moses relays God's command to the Israelites before they enter the land: when God delivers the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites into their hands, they must "destroy them totally", make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.In Deuteronomy 20:16–18 God specifically instructs regarding the cities of these nations inside the land: "Do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you."
What kind of God would order a people to do such a thing? A god who never existed. Contemporary secular and textual scholars generally date the core of the Book of Deuteronomy around 622 BCE, 800 years after Moses is traditionally believed to have lived.


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