Although skeptics and liberal scholars have tried to deny the historicity of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, archaeology confirms the Biblical accounts.
Egyptian documents called the Amarna Letters and the Merneptah Stele have been discovered that support the historicity of the conquest narratives of the Bible. The former letters were written in about 1360 BC. They demand help from Pharaoh for local Canaanite rulers (vassals of the Egyptians) to defeat Semites coming in from the desert and conquering the land of Canaan. The latter is a monument put up by Pharoah Merneptah in about 1200 BC describing his defeat of a nation called “Israel” in the highlands of Palestine. In other words, Israel, coming out of nowhere from the perspective of the historical record, is by at least the middle of the period of the Judges a recognizable national entity.
The root of this rejection is often a rejection of God’s righteous judgment. But explaining away God’s judgment is not the answer, as our conscience well-knows:
The key to finding a gracious God is not to explain away judgment, but to find the place where God has placed his promise of grace where we can flee to escape judgment. As the example of Rahab demonstrates, it was open to the Canaanites to flee to the divine word of grace attached to the community of Israel. Rahab found grace because she fled the city of Jericho, which God had attached his word of judgement to and fled to the promise of grace attached to the seed of Abraham present in Israel. In the same way, contemporary Christians should not explain away God’s wrath, but flee to his grace in the word and sacrament ministry of the church.
Jack Kilcrease, “Did God Command the Destruction of the Canaanites?” in Logia 32:2.