Marginal Christianity

We're troubled by God's commands for Israel to wipe out entire peoples. Why we should be encouraged. Phillip Cary / July 23, 2013 Gentiles in the Hands of a Genocidal God We're troubled by God's commands for Israel to wipe out entire peoples. Why we should be encouraged. Phillip Cary / July 23, 2013 T here is genocide in the Bible. Scripture both describes the Israelites exterminating the Canaanites in cities like Jericho (Josh. 6:21), and also presents this as the command of God. This is what the Israelites are supposed to do when they enter the Promised Land and encounter its inhabitants: "devote them to complete destruction . . . and show no mercy to them" (Deut. 7:2, esv). The Hebrew word for "devoting to destruction" is herem . It is not an ordinary kind of massacre but something sacred, a way of giving things totally to the Lord. It includes property and livestock as well as men, women, and children. And it has the effe...

May 21, 2015 @ 5:56 by RJS 5 Comments   Chapter 2 of Walter Moberly’s book Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture concludes with a section asking the question “ What kind of law is the law of ḥērem? ” The question arises for a variety of reasons. Many people read the passages in Deuteronomy and Joshua and wonder about the kind of God who would condemn children to death without mercy. It just doesn’t seem right. Scholars see another problem as well. Quite simply, there is no evidence that ḥērem was ever practiced in any significant manner.  As Moberly puts it: The puzzle relates to the scholarly consensus that, despite the specific way in which Deuteronomy 7:1-5 and 20:16-18 promote the practice of ḥērem , they in fact promote something that was not actually realized within Israel’s history. (p. 64) The Canaanites were neither expelled nor exterminated. Ḥērem warfare was never carried out except possibly in limited military ...

I’ve been following with great interest your posts on Seriously Dangerous Religion for the last several months, and all the comments they have generated. I want to thank you very much for your thorough and accurate reporting on the content of the book – I feel very well represented!   Now that your posts are concluded, I wonder if I could enter the discussion on the point that is the focus of the final one? In this post, you say that “a valid case can be made that The Old Story is intrinsically dangerous if it actively teaches and encourages violence and warfare.” I do agree with this sentiment. So the question is: does the Old Testament do such things? It certainly describes violence and warfare in the ancient world – but does it actively teach and encourage us to engage in these activities? After all, there are many actions described in the Old Testament that cannot reasonably be taken by the alert reader of Scripture as intended for our imitation (e.g. David’s adulter...

I read/skimmed the new book Holy War in the Bible:   Christian Morality and the Old Testament Problem (hereafter HWB) edited by Heath A. Thomas, Jeremy Evans, and Paul Copan, published by InterVarsity Press Academic.   It consists of papers given at a colloquium of professors of Southeastern Baptist Seminary and Duke Divinity School in 2009.   Other contributors were added to the project that is this volume. My first impressions (and that is all they are at this point) is that this book is important in several respects.   HWB takes an interdisciplinary examination of the well-known but oft denied, rationalized, spiritualized, or just plain ignored “Achilles heel” (for many readers) of the Bible and its portrayal of God – the phenomenon of the (wrongly named, as this volume makes clear) “Holy War” found especially in Deuteronomy and Joshua concerning the so-called “Conquest” of the promised land by the people of Israel.   Acknowledging and opening up ...