Marginal Christianity

Ch.7: War Rape Meets Genocide Both war rape and genocide share this: “ both reflect God’s accommodated ethic as he communicates within a fallen world.” This, though the traditional view tends to see the “kill everybody” texts as unaccommodated divine commands reflecting the good will of God. Ch.8: Total Kill Hyperbole, Part One: Ancient Near Eastern Warfare Ancient Israel shared not only the experience of combat with its neighbors but also the use of similar weapons, strategies, tactics, and even beliefs about the right conduct of war. ANE battles were directed by the gods, and victories won were theirs. Defeat indicated divine displeasure with the people and their leaders and too many defeats could lead revolution against the king. So kings glorified their battles and military achievements every way they could. Accounts of military achievements served a variety of purposes: -to enhance the worship of a king’s patron deity, ...

One can certainly be excused for assuming that violence is an intrinsic part of all life in our world. Nothing and nobody is free of its taint and corruption. Well, almost nobody. Jesus of Nazareth, a 1 st century a.d. Galilean peasant and prophet, acclaimed the Messiah of Jewish expectation and Lord and world ruler by Christian faith, seems to have lived free of its taint and even its allure. And therein lies the nub of the problem investigated in this study. How do we understand this Jesus, and the God he worshiped and served, and the books of the Bible that witness to him? Especially since the latter, and the God they present as the “Father” of this Jesus, his “Son,” seem as “bloody, brutal, and barbaric” as the world in which it arose and to which it claims to witness to a redemptive nonviolent alternative reality and possibility for human life on this planet. The Bible itself testifies to the near ubiquity of violence in the life of our planet. Most of its content is ...