Violence In The Old Testament: The Top Approaches to Dealing With It, And If They're Any Good

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"When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— 2 and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally."

- Deuteronomy 7:1,2

Scriptures like this have long baffled many people because it just doesn't seem to line up with the character of Jesus in the New Testament. The story of the Israelites slaughtering the Canaanites in what many deem a "genocide" is well-known history, and the cause of much political rhetoric even today. Many people have stated that the principle reason they reject the Bible's teachings, or Christianity in particular, is precisely because of this - because it seems contradictory to how Jesus speaks of loving our enemies, doing good to others, 'turning the other cheek' to enemies, and so forth.

How is this issue resolved?

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This is the Lo-fi Theology podcast, which releases on Fridays at 10pm CST. The idea is you can relax after a long week with some chilled lo-fi music and devotional theology. Today’s episode is about violence in the Old Testament.

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Contrary to what skeptics often think, Christians have not turned a blind eye to the violence of the Old Testament and refused to answer the hard questions. Many Christians, in fact some of them well-known church leaders of the past and present, have struggled to reconcile a loving God as revealed in the New Testament with a God in the Old Testament who exhibits a violent streak from time to time. Even as far back as the first few centuries of the church, this was a topic of debate. One Christian in particular, a man by the name of Marcion, went so far as to teach that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New are not the same person - and that these two cosmic gods are essentially battling things out. Christ, in Marcion's view, was a spiritual being sent by the Supreme Being to show us how to escape the earthly trap of the creator God, Yahweh, who created a defective world.

Marcion was expelled from the Church as a heretic in 144 AD. The popularity of his movement, however, forced the Church to decide on a canon of scripture and reckon more clearly with how Judaism and Christianity were linked - something that the Church had been grappling with since its very inception, like in Acts 15. While a lot of theology on this matter is settled, this discussion is still ongoing, and new ideas (such as the "New Perspective on Paul") often arise in scholarship.

There are many ways that Christians have attempted to reconcile the seeming character difference between who God is in the Old Testament and in the New. Here are some of these:

1. Some say that there is no difference at all - the problem is merely our modern or post-modern day sensibilities. Jesus is not always about love, and frequently acts as a warrior too - riding with a robe dipped in blood and treading the winepress of the wrath of God the Almighty (Revelation 19). (It seems to me, however, that the blood on Jesus' robes in Revelation 19:13 is his own.) Anyway, it’s worth noting that Yahweh in the Old Testament is frequently loving, forgiving, patient, and takes no pleasure in anyone's death, even "the wicked" (like it says Ezekiel 18:23), so therefore there is some consistency between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

2. Some have resolved the issue by saying scripture is simply fallible and unreliable. This is usually the "Progressive" or "Liberal" approach.

3. Some, such as Paul Wallis, take the Marcion approach. Wallis' views are quite esoteric and are really a new form of New Age Gnosticism. His content is quite the rabbit hole.

4. There are others, such as Paul Copen, who largely argue the commandments from God to kill the Canaanites were hyperbole. This makes sense in the light of ancient near east culture and we often see this kind of language today in middle-east rhetoric, or even when we speak of sports. The proof for the theory is seen from the fact that the scriptures often claim a certain people group was destroyed, only for them to appear again later. People in war time talk like this - the German people were often said to be "utterly destroyed" in World War I, but yet we all know that they weren't really.

5. There is also the view that the Canaanite people really deserved justice, and someone needed to mete it out. This is frequently missed by skeptics, but it's true - these were not innocent people. They used to sacrifice their children, allowing them to sizzle on the arm of Molech while they beat the drums to drown out the child's screams. And that's really just the tip of the iceberg.

Now these options are the 'usual subjects' in apologetics. But I'll present some others that are not well known, but are rising in popularity.

6. Popularized by the late Michael Heiser's groundbreaking work, some claim that the Canaanites were sub-human "giants" - the result of spiritual beings having children with human women. This would mean there was good reason to wipe them out. We see this strange story in Genesis 6 that is very hard to interpret any other way. Later on, the people of Canaan are referred to as the offspring of these giants. (Described as "Nephilim" - see Numbers 13:33.)
   
   This view of Genesis 6 is not new - it is, in fact, quite a classical interpretation of the passage. There is much interesting scholarship for this view, and if you look at all ancient cultures, they all seem to repeat the same message: that at some point in our ancient history, "sky people" or sub-human beings taught humankind agriculture, astrology, architecture, and effectively gave us civilization. And they also gave us idol worship and religion. These ideas are increasingly becoming more accepted. The British writer, Graham Hancock, also has interesting information on this. He became famous for his book, Fingerprints of the Gods.

7. Some claim the passages are allegorical, which is how many early Christians interpreted them. They are a literary device, not necessarily entirely historical, given to us to see the spiritual battle taking place between God and the powers of evil in the world.

8. There is also the idea that God basically accommodated the ancient Israelites' tribal view of life, and in order to try and reach them, he makes as if he is a little bit like them. Jesus says some of the laws of the Old Testament were given not because of God's will, but because he was accommodating human stubbornness - see Matthew 19:8, for example. Another well-known example is when Israel asks for a king in 1 Samuel 8. God says he doesn't want them to have a king, but nevertheless lets them have one.

9. A view I find very original and interesting is that presented by Greg Boyd in his book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God (two volumes), who makes the claim that we ought to read the Old Testament through the lens of the cross - that God takes on the appearance of violence in the Old Testament, much like Jesus on the cross is an image of violence. In this way, God is taking the blame for the violence of Israel, just like He takes the blame for the sins of the whole world by bearing our sins and letting us go free when we are guilty. But on the cross, the violence of humanity is finally absorbed, and the spiritual powers behind violence are exhausted, and therefore defeated.

Thus ends the nine current options in scholarship for resolving the conflict, and I think they all have some very great points. But on their own, they might not quite fully tell the whole picture. In the next podcast, I will attempt to provide my own thinking on this topic or how I try to put all of these together.