3 Things You Need to Know About Divine Violence in the Bible

For the past 8 months now I have been reading every book I can get about divine violence in the Bible. So far, I've read about 20, and I have 5 more to go. In my reading I have been noticing a trend that I think is important to acknowledge when framing one's discussion of this topic. I think the issue centers around 3 vital components, which often go unnoticed in debates (see, for example, my review of 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide, here).

1. This is first and foremost an issue of the authority of Scripture

Is all of Scripture God's self revelation? Does every portrait of God painted in Scripture perfectly depict his true nature? Does Jesus repudiate any Old Testament theologies? Did the Israelites get anything wrong about God? These questions need to be dealt with first. How you answer them will determine what the rest of your approach is going to look like.

If Scripture is infallible, then that means none of Scripture's depictions of God are flawed. If you believe Scripture has God as its ultimate author, that every part of Scripture was willed and determined by God, then that means all of Scripture's theology is really God's self-description, and none of it is wrong. What is your view of Scripture? That will be the biggest deciding factor in your understanding of the issue of divine violence in the Bible. As Thom Stark has said, "In the end, the way one looks at these things and the manner in which one interprets these matters depends completely on one's theology of sacred scripture" (The Human Faces of God, 2011, p.150).

Too often biblical scholars have neglected this issue in their discussions of Scripture's violent portrayals of God. None of the contributors to 4 Views on God & Canaanite Genocide, for example, discussed this aspect of the problem in their respective chapters.

2. This is an issue of the historicity of certain biblical books

Related to the authority of Scripture aspect of this problem is the issue of whether or not the OT books are historically accurate. Did God flood the entire earth, killing most of its inhabitants? Did God toss the Egyptian warriors into the Red Sea? Did God deliver Jericho into the hands of the Israelites so that when they marched around the city and shouted its walls miraculously came crumbling down? Did God hand the Canaanites over to the Israelites so that they could defeat them in battle? How reliable is the OT history? If it is indeed historically reliable, and the battles happened exactly the way the texts say they happened, then it seems that we would have to say that God actually did do those things.

Furthermore, when the OT says, "Thus says the Lord," does it reflect what God actually said? Are such speeches of God historical? If so, we would have to admit that God did command Saul through Samuel, "Go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys" (1 Sam. 15:3).

Are all the battle stories in the OT accounts of actual historical events? How you answer this question will be a significant determining factor in your understanding of the larger issue.

3. This is an issue of how to interpret the book of Revelation

Often in their arguments for the continuity between the theology of the OT and that of Jesus, Evangelical scholars will refer to the book of Revelation, which seems to portray Jesus in the same violent manner in which God is portrayed in the OT.

I think this one is so important because if we were to base our understanding of the God revealed in Jesus solely on his teachings and example described in the Gospels, I think most Christians would recognize a discontinuity between the theology of Jesus and that of certain parts of the OT.

For example, when his disciples suggest that they pray for God to strike fire on the Samaritans for refusing to let them into their village, Jesus rebukes them and says, "You know not what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human beings but to save them" (Luke 9:55). Also, Jesus repudiates the OT teaching of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" (Deut 19:21; Ex 21:24; Lev 24:20) and taught that we shouldn't be violent but should rather engage people peacefully (Matt 5:38-39). Rejecting the way the Israelites dehumanized and hated their enemies (for example, Ps 139:21), Jesus taught that we should love our enemies and pray for them (Matt 5:43-44). Indeed, I think the dominant Christian consensus would be that Jesus rejected the violent theologies of the OT, if it were not for passages in the book of Revelation like this one:

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. . . . He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. . . . Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the rider on the horse and his army. But the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. . . . The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. The rest were killed with the sword coming out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh. 

Revelation 19:11-21

How do we interpret this passage? Do we take it at face value and interpret it to mean that Jesus is the same as the warrior God in the OT? How you interpret passages in Revelation like this will determine whether or not you think Jesus affirmed the violent theologies of the OT.

Recommended reading:
On the authority of Scripture with regard to divine violence, see Kenton Sparks, Sacred Word, Broken Word (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012). See my review, here. Also see Wesley Morrison, "Did God Command Genocide?: A Challenge to the Biblical Inerrantist," Philosophia Christi, 11, no. 1 (2009). Finally, see my blog, "God-Breathed: The Authority of Scripture According to the Greek Word θεόπνευστος," http://jdhollowayiii.blogspot.com/2013/11/god-breathed-authority-of-scripture.html

On the historicity of the Old Testament, see K. Lawson Younger, Jr., Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1990). Also see Victor R. Matthews, A Brief History of Ancient Israel (Lousville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002).

For a fantastic bibliography on the book of Revelation, see Greg Boyd, "Revelation and the Violent 'Pride-Fighting' Jesus," Reknew.org, http://reknew.org/2010/09/revelation-and-the-violent-prize-fighting-jesus/

Is My Faith in Trouble If the Fall of Jericho Didn't Happen? (A Response to V. Philips Long)

For decades, the dominant consensus in biblical archaeological research has suggested that the story of the Fall of Jericho in Joshua 6 (as well as the other conquest narratives) is not a record of an actual historical event. This presents a problem for Christians who are used to taking for granted the historical trustworthiness of the Bible's narratives.

V. Philips Long, in his book The Art of Biblical History, deals with this issue in a chapter about whether or not the historicity of the events in the Bible is important for our faith. He concludes that not only is it important, but Christian faith hinges upon the historical trustworthiness of certain events described in Scripture (for example, the resurrection).

At the end of the chapter, he discusses the less central story of the fall of Jericho. He concludes that the "Christian faith might well survive without the razing of Jericho, since it is not the razing of Jericho but the raising of Christ that saves us."(1) That being said, he goes on to say, "On what basis do we believe that Christ was raised? Surely an important part of the answer . . . is that we do so on the basis of trust in the scriptural testimony to that event."(2) He further concludes that it is possible that, if the fall of Jericho did not actually happen, our faith is in vain "because we would be made less sure either of the trustworthiness of the biblical witness or of our ability to discover its basic sense."(3)

While I agree that the Christian faith has at its cornerstone certain events that are essential to the whole picture (that Jesus lived, died, and resurrected as the Son of God, and that the Gospels capture who he was, is absolutely essential), I have problems with his overall conclusion on the historicity of the Bible's 'historical' narratives.

1) The fall of Jericho had to happen because it makes us less sure of the Bible's overall historicity if it didn't? This is not a reason to say it happened! "If this story isn't true, then it makes me question whether or not these other stories are true; therefore, it needs to be true." This is a non-sequitur if I've ever heard one. If the fall of Jericho didn't happen, then it didn't happen; if that causes us to doubt the historicity of the resurrection, then we will just have to deal with that. Dismissing the problem by affirming the historicity of all of the events in Scripture is not an actual solution.

2) I find Long's conclusion in this chapter unfortunate, as it is not as nuanced as the two previous chapters, the first on the many different genres included in the Bible, and the second on the use of fiction in writing history. On genres, he emphasizes that we have to expect different things from different genres. For example, we shouldn't treat a parable like a historical narrative. On fiction, he says, "historical reportage [in the Bible] is often more akin to painting than photography"--specifically, his example was impressionist painting.(4) He defines historiography as involving "a creative, though constrained, attempt to depict and interpret significant events or sequences of events from the past."(5)

While his assessment of genres and fiction in the Bible might be a display of mild positivism, it does recognize that when we are dealing with history in the Bible, we are not dealing with news reports, designed to provide the reader with all the right details of what happened. I found these to be strong chapters.

His conclusion here, however, did not pay respect to the nuances recognized in the other chapters. How can Long speak of "the trustworthiness of the biblical witness" if he recognizes that there are many genres in the Bible from which we should expect different things? Thus, it seems silly to speak of a "biblical witness" or of general biblical historicity, as if the Bible is one long history book. The book of Joshua is not the same kind of book as the Gospels; should we expect the same things from both? It does not follow to say that if a story in one book of the Bible didn't actually happen, then that casts doubt on stories in other books. The Gospels could be 100% historically accurate even if the book of Joshua is not accurate at all, and vice versa.

3) I think what he resists (casting doubt on the Bible's other historical narratives) should actually be embraced. We should seek to know what kind of literature with which we are dealing. For example, is the Gospel of John genuine historiography? Or is it fictionalized history?(6) Many Christians resist critical analyses of the Bible's historical narratives under the guise of not wanting to compromise their beleifs, but I think it has more to do with being afraid to find out that what they believe is wrong. I say, let your critical analyses determine what you think is true. If your critical analyses shows you that the fall of Jericho didn't happen, then accept that and go from there. If your critical analyses makes you doubt the historicity of the resurrection, study the resurrection and see what you find.

With these considerations, I will now respond to the question posed in the title:

Something I think we need to remember when studying the historicity of biblical narratives is that they approached history-writing in a very different way than we expect and are used to. Robert Alter says that a lot of the Bible's historical narratives are "chronicles of known events variously embroidered with folklore and underscored for theological emphasis."(7) They are "fictionalized history--history in which the feeling and the meaning of events are concretely realized through the technical resources of prose fiction."(8)

That being said, he also states that the "biblical authors [were] of course constantly, urgently conscious of telling a story in order to reveal the imperative truth of God's works in history."(9) The point is, ancient Israelite historiography conveyed what the authors felt was important to know about the past, and that, contrary to our modern beliefs, does not overrule the use of fiction. I don't know how much of the Fall of Jericho story is fictional, or if it even is, but I don't think it matters, as the purpose of the story was not to provide a news report on a military victory.

When it comes to Jesus, I don't know how much, if anything, of the Gospels is fictional or inaccurate, or how much is genuine historicity. What I do believe, and with good reason, is that it captures Christ's mission and message, and that the central events (i.e. his death and resurrection) have genuine historicity. The presence of fictional elements and/or inaccuracies (if they are even present in the text) does not detract from the overall portrait of the historical Jesus. In the painting above, we can tell that it is of some kind of castle overlooking waters with the sun above it. If it were based on a real place, we wouldn't get the most accurate depiction of the scene, but we can see the most significant parts; what more do we need?

Notes:
(1) V. Philips Long, The Art of Biblical History, Vol. 5 of Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 116.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Ibid., 117.
(4) Ibid., 85.
(5) Ibid., 87.
(6) This is Robert Alter's term. See The Art of Biblical Narrative, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 47.
(7) Alter, 42.
(8) Ibid., 47.
(9) Ibid., 53.