"I’m still not sure

"I’m still not sure it’s correct to say that the Canaanites were killed because of their race."

Genocide doesn’t have to be based on racial differences. Any time one group of people tries to wipe out another based on national, religious, or class differences, it’s still genocide. Going back to the original subject of this post, the Hutus and Tutsis aren’t distinctive races. They are different tribes or nations, but genetically they’re more similar to each other than they are to any other neighboring tribes/nations. When the Belgians conquered both nations, they decided that the Tutsis tended to have longer noses than the Hutus, suggesting that at some point in their history they had interbred with "superior" European stock. Because of their supposed European-ness, the Belgian conquerors assigned the Tutsis to positions of higher authority and greater power within the new colonial nation. Genetic studies indicate that there was no greater prevalence of European-ness in the Tutsis than in the Hutus. It was the Belgians who in effect created a class differential within Rwanda based on their assignment of imaginary race differences. So here’s a genocide that’s not based on race at all.

It’s clear that any war based on the alleged racial superiority of one group over another is a falsehood. That’s not just because all races are equal, but because the whole idea of race is a socially defined construct. All humans belong to the same species, all can interbreed, all carry the same genes that distinguish them from other species and that make them all part of one humanity. We’re all members of one race: the human race.

"That is a problem for any theology that thinks that the God of Jesus is the same God who revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, et al."

I understand that you want to establish the distinctiveness of Christianity within the framework already established in the Old Testament: God sets aside one group of people and establishes a special relationship with them. God promises to protect and bless that special group, and in turn He expects them to worship Him and to obey His laws. He may punish disobedience among HIs people, but He does so in order to bring them to repentance and renewed obedience. God may move other peoples aside; He may punish their sinfulness; He may even use them as instruments to test or to bring judgment on His special people. But with these other peoples God has established no special relationship, extends no covenant, assigns no Law, He offers no special blessing or chastisement.

You call attention a couple of passages that might ameliorate God’s seemingly callous disregard for nations other than Israel. You mention Deut. 20:10-18 as evidence that God treats the neighboring Gentile cities differently from the seven nations subjected to genocide. In that passage God tells Moses that any city agreeing to make peace with Israel shall become forced labor; if they don’t agree to peace then Israel shall besiege that city and kill all the men, preserving all women, children, animals and goods as war booty. I wouldn’t say this constitutes a dramatically different tone from the thorough elimination of cities within the boundaries of the promised land. You also second Peter Wilkinson’s citation of Gen. 15:16 as partially relevant to the possibility that God would have given the Amorites (one of the nations of Canaan) a chance to repent. While it is somewhat ambiguous, this passage suggests that God is waiting to give Abraham’s descendants the Promised Land until after the iniquity of the Amorites is complete. It doesn’t sound like God is going to intervene with the Amorites in order to prevent their total iniquity, inasmuch as the Amorites’ repentance might have delayed the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham.

In His earthly ministry Jesus functioned primarily within this Old Testament framework, as you have repeatedly pointed out. He focuses most of His attention on His fellow Jews. He tries to bring them to repentance in order to avert God’s judgment on Israel, which seems imminent. He doesn’t want just surface-level obedience to the Mosaic Law; he wants perfection and a commitment from the heart. But even as you read the Gospels you see hints of a different direction. He responds to certain Gentiles as though they are more deserving of God’s good graces than are many of the Jews. He says that when it comes down to it the only real commandment is to love.

It’s not until the Book of Acts and especially the ministry and writings of Paul that these glimmers in Jesus’ earthly ministry start to take on an intense luminance. I’m a Jew, says Paul, but all my Jewish credentials I count as worthless. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. In fact, I, a Jew, am specifically called to minister to the Gentiles. I’m blameless according to the Law, says Paul, but that doesn’t make me truly good. The Law is good but ironically it stimulates my desire to transgress. But now I’m dead to the Law and alive to Christ. I don’t live as a servant to the Law; I live by the Spirit. I’m no longer stuck in the endless cycle of commandment, disobedience, guilt, punishment, and repentance that characterizes God’s historic relationship with his special nation, Israel. There are no more sacrifices, I’m forgiven once and for all, I no longer need to wallow in guilt, I can be motivated by love.

As I read Paul I’m struck by how radically discontinuous are his proposals from the Old Testament project. The chosen nation, the moral economy based on law and obedience, the disregard of other nations as irredeemably corrupt and only instrumentally relevant to God’s purposes for His chosen people — all of this Paul seems to set aside. Those may have been good things, Paul says, but now we should consider ourselves dead to them. Instead we are alive together in the love of Christ that knows no distinctions between people and in which there is no condemnation.