What Bainton calls the crusading idea in the Hebrew Scriptures is, in fact, not unique to Israelite culture. And within the Hebrew Bible the sort of war of extirpation waged against the Canaanites in Joshua is one among many war ideas as Bainton himself implies (46), a war ideology with which the authors of Chronicles and Jonah, some Deuteronomic threads, and post-biblical authors such as Josephus are uncomfortable.
Susan Niditch in War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence, “Introduction”
Related Posts:
Fretheim on God and Violence in the Old Testament
Ezra 9-10 – The Context of Today’s Reading Makes it a Tough One