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War in the Bible & Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century Review
My friend Karyn has written a very thorough review of the book War in the Bible and Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century. It is in three parts here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Violence in scripture is a topic that preoccupies my mind a great deal as I am sure that it does…
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Kill Them All – Man, Woman & Child … But, Not Really
Okay, I’m being a little facetious with the title to this post. But, it’s so hard to write good title lines without doing that from time to time. At any rate, Matt over at MandM has recently written on the “commands to commit genocide” in the Book of Joshua. One matter he brings up is…
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Does the Bible Justify Violence? – Review
This morning I finished reading John Collins’ Does the Bible Justify Violence? It is a very short monograph that (obviously) seeks to answer the question contained in the title. Pros of Does the Bible Justify Violence? First off, I think this little book has some important points to make, though I am sure they are…
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Niditch – Ban as Sacrifice versus the Ban as God's Justice
It is not easy for humans to kill others. To participate in mass killing in war is destructive of individual psyches and of the larger community’s mental health. The ban in either trajectory is a means of making killing in war acceptable. How does the ban as sacrifice and the ban as God’s justice differ…
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The Crusading Idea in the Hebrew Scriptures …
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…
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Videos on the Portrayal of God in the Hebrew Bible
Don’t know how I allowed myself to get scooped on this because I was very interested in this conference when I first heard about it and wished I could have attended. At any rate, here is a link to a conference held at Notre Dame University entitled “My Ways are Not Your Ways.” The conference…
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Justin Taylor's Misuse of Genesis 18.25
This entire POST by Justin Taylor is problematic in a considerable number of ways. For example, there is no consideration of literary genre. Joshua is a narrative concerning ancient warfare. Descriptions of ancient warfare are not the most historically accurate literary texts in the corpus of ancient literature. Rulers often described their battles as far…
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Ezra 9-10 – The Context of Today's Reading Makes it a Tough One
Today’s lectionary reading is definitely part of one of my least favorite Old Testament passages. If you heard the passage from the lectionary you probably would wonder why. The reading is Ezra 9.5-9, which reads as follows: At the time of the evening sacrifice, I, Ezra, rose in my wretchedness, and with cloak and mantle…
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Terence E. Fretheim on God and Violence in the Old Testament
HERE is a link to a helpful article by Terence E. Fretheim in Word and World (Vo1. 24.1, 2004) on “God and Violence in the Old Testament.” I will try to summarize Fretheim’s points the best that I can: Violence is both an Old Testament and New Testament phenomenon. I recommend checking out the footnotes…