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"POWERFUL GOD, VIOLENT GOD ? Violence, justice and peace in the Old Testament" by Albert de Pury

Published on 2007-12-27 17:35:15

Men's vision in God, war or peace, has much evolved during the centuries.

At the heart of the Old Testament- particularly in the Torah (the Pentateuch), these visions share two main streams : the Deuteronomy current and the current of the Priests, to lend from exegetic criticism. In the first book God appears warlike, exclusive, conquering, whereas the second offers us a more pacific vision, constructive and universal.

Albert de Pury, Professor of theology at the Geneva Faculty, gives a study on how historical and political contexts have oriented and fashioned these texts, which are sacred today, and considered as revealed Words of God by Jews and Christians around the world.

 

Many Christians suspect the Old Testament (the Hebraic Bible) in thinking that the God of the Old Testament is violent, warlike, sometimes cruel, whereas in the New Testament they discover, through the life and message of Jesus- Christ, a loving, soft and compassionate God, patient and understanding. My goal here will not be to revise the whole of biblical passages in the Old and New Testament; this would imply a total rereading and research in function of the image each religion seems to project of God. Such a study would probably reveal that the Old Testament is less monolithic than one thinks, and that the New Testament harbors a few pages where violence cannot be envied from the Old Testament. I will simply try here to detect and lay down some historic facts and weigh different languages which appear in the Old Testament which practice the power of God – in that, manifestation of its' violence- to see if there is not a new light possible if one looks to situate them in their historical context. Bearing history enables observance, which in turn is liberating, and sometimes gives way to a theological readapting of script.

1. Diffuse peace, latent violence

Disputes, conflict, rivalry, struggles, even group confrontations, have existed since the birth of mankind. War however, has been possible only since the existence of States -even embryonic- capable of organizing them and to erect armies. Peace, therefore, as a conceptual ideal, is a war and state surmise.

In the patriarchal accounts of the Genesis, especially in the Jacob cycle (Genesis 25-35), one gathers that the god protector of the clan is neither unique nor all mighty. In this world, it is not a supreme God who masterminds peace: it is rather the result of an auto-regulatory process where the forces of diverse groups meet with their gods, in equilibrium.

2. Centralized peace, violence implemented

With the advent of royalty, of the strong State, and mostly of the imperial State, one discovers a more ambitious vision of pacific order, more elaborated in discourse, and mostly more centralized, a vision of peace as it is incarnated and defended by this State. Throughout history, numerous attestations are given by Egypt as well as Mesopotamia. All give an account of what one can name royal ideology. (…)
Peace is perceived in Egypt as well as in Mesopotamia as a state joint with justice: protection of the vulnerable against the oppression of the strong, protection of cultivated lands against irruption of the desert and wild animals, protection of territories against outside enemies. Peace is with justice the expression of cosmic order where God is the creator and the king the guarantee. In this perspective, peace is forever a fortress of peace, a peace that must defend itself from all its' enemies.

What is rather astonishing with the small kingdom of Judah – for the kingdom of Israël- is that it took on the same royal ideology, with the conception of cosmic order, as the Egyptians and the Assyrians, by situating the center not in Thebes or in Assur, but in Jerusalem. Royal psalms, mostly Ps. 2 (verses 7-9), 72 and 110 (verses1. 5s) or again Ps. 76, well show that the king of Jerusalem also claims a universal sovereignty: all kings of the lands owe him submission and allegiance.

However when applying the Israelite/Judean context to the one of cosmic peace, there is a major problem that is posed: this concept is relevant only if the God that guarantees it is, if not God the Creator, at least the Sovereign of heaven and earth. However, today we have reasons to believe that the god of the land of Israël, Yhwh, was explicitly confessed as the Creator of heaven and earth only but during the middle or end of VII B.C, probably beginning with the reign of Josias. So the existence in Judean thinking of a concept of peace as universal and centered on Yhwh and his temple in Jerusalem is a surprise, almost an anomaly: this might well have been seen by contemporaries and neighbors of Judea as a sign of conceitedness and excessiveness. So how explain the appearance of a theology and cosmology reserved normally to the ''great forces'' in Judean context? (…)

One must first realize how this vision is expressed in the accounts of the conquest of the land of Canaan by Israël. In Ex 34, 11-13, Yhwh announces to Moses that he will chase by Israël all past inhabitants of the land, then forbids them to conclude alliances and ordains them to throw down their altars and other cultural installments. In Dt. 20, 10-40, Moses gives instructions to the Israelites on the manner to deal with the cities of the land they prepare to enter. The ones who opened their doors to the invader will simply be seen obliged to chores and constraints. The cities who resisted were besieged, men killed and woman and children reduced to slavery. Then comes, in verses 15-18, an aggravating clause: only distant cities from the new home of Israël will be subject to the fate here described. The populations of the other cities, that is, the nearby cities, will have to be entirely exterminated. (…)

All of these passages are not of the same body of writers, but all translate the same base perspective. Here he have an extreme version of the concept of centralized peace: inside, a homogeneous people compelled to a flawless allegiance towards their God, and on the outside, the ejection, slavery or death of all others!

The theological and literary school to which we owe this ideal and comprehension of the history of Israël is called by an exegetic criticism of history the " Deuteronomy school" because it is in the book of Deuteronomy that one finds its' basic principles. (…)

Before questioning existent context in which such viewpoints of history were made possible, one must insist on the fact – supported by corroborating findings during the last 40 or 50 years, in archeology, epigraphy and critical history of biblical scriptures- that the presentation of the history of Israël in the books of the Deuteronomy and Josue reveals to be fictive from A to Z. The Blitzkrieg of Joshua, the blood bath, the "ethnic cleansing", all is invented! In fact, Israelites tribes that formed in the mountains of middle Palestine are not the result of a warlike invasion, or of a diffuse infiltration of groups coming from Syria or Egypt. (…)

If the events accounted by the texts are not historical, if then these stories are but an ideological edition, can this not aggravate the severe judgment that we are thinking of making of the texts and of ones who produced them? How explain such a dreadful leeway?

The historical context one must be aware of, is this: The system of small Syro-palestinian States which Israël and Judea were part of, and where gods and their people considered themselves as brothers (even if this did not stop them from leading unceasing wars), was seriously shaken -and even abolished- when, in the second half of VIII century B.C, rose Assyrian imperialism. These small states were suddenly and brutally transformed into vassal kingdoms, provinces of the Assyrians, when they had for so long nourished their illusion of independence all while being in a zone of nominative Egyptian influence. The king of Assyria considered himself to be the vicar on earth of the god Assur, and he felt he was called to transform the people around the world into ''subjects of the City of the god Assur". In the laws of wars in Dt. 20 we find exactly the same claims as the ones Assyrian imperialism used to approach States and cities of the Middle East: "Capitulation or death!" The entire planet was to submit to the god Assur, and with this obtained, the Assyrians were willing to offer to the gods of the vanquished people a minor seat in the celestial court of the imperial god.

The language, choreography and ideology of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament are but an adjustment of Yhwh to the Assur theology, an Israelite assimilation of the Assyrian structure. To oppose the totalitarian and brutal militarism of Assyria, Deuteronomy accepts to militarize and brutalize their own religious traditions. They will hammer that the lord of Israël is not Assur but well Yhwh. Legitimate allegiance to Israël does not go to the conqueror Assur but to Yhwh, the God of Israël. Moreover, the structure conceived to serve and pledge allegiance to Israël and to Yhwh, the ''alliance'' (berit), is itself borrowed from the juridical language of the Assyrians. Indeed, it is in the treaties imposed by the Assyrian kings on his vassals that one must look for the model of the alliance concluded in Dt. 27-28: in both cases, the document ends in enumerating the terrible punishments sanctioning all transgression of the treaty by the vassal. The Alliance of the Deuteronomy was from the beginning, an Assyrian concept turned against the Assyrians. The radical of these texts thus finds its roots not in the inebriety of the triumphant, but in the deaf determination of the conquered.

It is in prophetic circles in countrysides that this state of mind is first developed. But a while later, under the reign of Josias (640-609), as the Assyrian empire begins to weaken before falling, the Deuteronomy movement emerges from the underground, enters the court and becomes the official doctrine. Its' obvious manifestation is the famous reform of Josias in 622, which centralizes the cult in Jerusalem and establishes the Deuteronomy.
The history of the origins of Israël is thus written within this context. Through Moses, the Exodus and alliance with Yhwh is made the key event of this story, while the entree of Israël into Canaan is represented in the light of the Assyrian invasions: a steamroller clearing the table (see mostly Joshua 11-12). The (fictive) figure of Joshua could well be a past projection of the (real) character Joshua himself, a king who indeed tried (but not as successfully as his model) to regain territories of the ancient kingdom of Israël. (…)
Later on, even when the kingdom of Judea fell under the assault of the Babylonians and that the Temple was destroyed in 587, dragging the Judean elite in what is called the Exodus into Babylon, Deuteronomy will accentuate the perspective of the Judgment: If Israël and Judea succumbed, this is not due to a weakness of their God – on the contrary, the book of Joshua serves now to demonstrate that the land was given to Israël in all its' extensions, emptied of its inhabitants, nearly ''keys in hand'', and that it was Israël that was not worthy of its' task, over again won by its' unfaithfulness towards Yhwh. The fall of the kingdoms of Israël and of Judea is thus viewed as a just punishment of Yhwh upon his people. The question left unanswered is to know if this castigation represents or no the "history's last word". (…)

3. Universal peace, deprecated violence

Personally I feel it to be lucky that the Deuteronomy is not the only stream of biblical traditions to be heard regarding the origins of Israel. A certain number of key accounts in the Torah, especially in the book of Genesis are fashioned by another capital voice contributing to the universality of biblical canon; the voice of the "sacerdotal" author (abbreviated as "P" for Priest) and of his school. We owe him the story of the creation of the world in Gen1, one of the versions of the story of the Great Flood in Gen 6-9, the account of the alliance with Abraham in Gen 17 as well as the second account of Moses' calling in E.6. The original work of this author probably ended with the God's command to Moses to build a sanctuary in the desert (Exodus 25,1; 29,45-46; 40, 16), the sanctuary including a kind of sacramental space allowing the sinner – Jew and through him all of humanity- to subsist facing the Lord.
The priestly author, who no doubt was a part of the Judean exiled to Babylon, lives in a period coinciding with the emergence of the Persian Empire. In 539 B. the e.c, Cyrus is greeted as a hero in Babylon after conquering Anatolia, Mesopotamia and the Levant. The accession of Cyrus seems to have created a general enthusiasm, and not only among the Judean (id. Esaïe 44,28; 45,1.) One is tempted to call his reign the inauguration of a modern era. The Persian attitude in regards to the people of this empire will be opposite to the one of the Assyrians. While the Assyrian tried by all means – as with massive deportations- to dissolve, assimilate and homogenize the conquered populations and submit them to Assur, the Persians on the other hand, saw interest in tolerance, particularity, diversity and in the restoration of local authorities. According to imperial theology, the lord god of Persians, Ahuramazda, all in being the paramount of the universe, could also be venerated under other names, such as Marduk, Baal- shamêm or Yhwh, and combined the plurality of cults and cultures. However, this theological proposition evidently seems to have been quickly accepted by the hieratical author with a reserve of transference: the identity and name of the supreme creator and Paramount of the universe, was revealed only to the sons of Israel (Exodus 6,2-3), they alone qualified to build the sanctuary allowing the Sovereign to reside on earth. However Persians and Judeans agreed in affirming a unique God and that Cyrus was the envoy of God (…)

Soon enough, under the reign of Darius the 1st (522-484), the Temple of Jerusalem will be reconstructed, and the compilation of the Pentateuch will begin: along each step of this literary elaboration, those inheriting from the Deuteronomy and their authors, will often come to defend their opposing views. In the last fifteen years we have thus learned to read the Pentateuch as a great 'match' of two opposing streams.

The hieratical author is a man of the Persian Empire. He is far from the Deuteronomy movement, and will introduce a vision of God, of Israel and of humanity that will denounce all martial aggression, and that will opt for what seems to be a kind of pacific realism. We have not yet measured this original and radical perspective; I would like to conclude here in drawing some of its' elements:

Not one war is reported in the history of the priests - going from the creation of the universe (Gen 1) to the construction of the sanctuary in the desert (Ex. 40, 16-17,33)-. The sons of Israel promise themselves and other descendants of Abraham, so see their right of a city in Canaan. The entrée of Israelites into the country is not related, but apparently is supposed to have happened, as did the return of exiled Babylonians into Judea: by a pacific immigration of a particular group into an already populated country. According to this author, the co-habitants in Canaan belong to two different categories: the people of Abraham (Ismaelites and Edomites) and the people of Canaan with the "sons of Hêt" (Gen 23; 26,34-35). It seems like intermarriage between the first is possible but not with the later (Gen 28, 1 6-9). The reason of this probably being circumcision practiced by ones and ignored by others (Gen 17. 25-27). This have been said, relations with all inhabitants are good and non-problematic, all being venerators of God; Abraham's descendants venerating the unique God under the name of El Shaddaï (Gen 17,1; E. 6,3), the sons of Hêt (descendants of Noah, that is all of humanity) venerating the God Elohim (God) (Gen 23,5). For the sacerdotal author there are no more "pagans". There is neither a question of expulsion of non-Israelites: the accounts of Gen 16 (flight from Hagar) and of Gen 21 (expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael) are not part of the sacerdotal account and probably translate a national rereading. Among the descendants of Abraham what is then the particularity of the sons of Israel and those of Noah (the entire of humanity)?
The sons of Israel are the only ones to have received the revelation of God's ultimate name, and their vocation consists thus in, and still according to our author, to "live before Yhwh" (Gen 17,18), meaning taking care of the sanctuary and cult, " And you shall be to me a priestly kingdom" (Ex. 19, 6). Israel is the guardian of the Temple, the priest of humanity (Ex. 19,6 " And you shall be to me a priestly kingdom"). But as for the rest, this perspective is resolutely internationalist and interethnic.

If the priestly author excludes war in his accounts, he however proposes a very subtle thought upon violence, thus on war, and thus on peace and justice. Indeed, the creation of the world he depicts in Gen1 is a world of "good'' and ''very good" (Gen 1, 31). The inhabitants on earth, animals and men, shared the same space but never came into conflict, because their food was not the same: grains and fruit for men, grass and greens for animals (Gen1, 29-30). Neither men nor animals are carnivorous. It is thus peace and not violence that was inscribed in the order of creation. Obviously, it did not escape our author that this ideal vision was in reality contradictory. But he does not give an account of the "fall". He simply notices, at the beginning of the great flood that " all matter is corrupted and earth filled by corruption" (Gen 6,11). It is thus violence that is evil by excellence. But who is responsible for this? " All matter", meaning men and animals as a whole. Thus the problem is not one of individual guilt, or guilt of such and such individual or group of humans or animals. One could say that is the problem is structural.
"Make war to end all war", has forever been a temptation, and is the logic that lead to the Deluge. The deluge comes, but helps nothing.
At soon as these radical solutions have failed, one better understands the stakes within the accounts of the postdiluvian reconstruction, as the hieratic author sees it. Now what is needed is to guarantee that the lives of men and animals not be absorbed by violence that they never cease in generating. Breeding of men is maintained (9,1), but the one who spills blood will be held responsible: " For I will require the blood of your lives at the hand of every beast, and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man, and of his brother, will I require the life of man." (Gen 9,5). And to well show that that these radical solutions ("avenge seven times", "exterminate and start over again" are henceforward banished, God himself will be the model. The rainbow, his veritable sign, must remind men and God's self that the bow hangs amidst the clouds (Gen 9, 13-16). Meaning that the bow, arm of war and hunt and extermination by excellence, was hung on the rack, well exposed to all. God says himself that he will no longer contribute to the cycle of violence: "And I will remember my covenant with you, and with every living soul that beareth flesh: and there shall no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh." In other terms, God himself commits to overcome his destructive sides. That man does the same!

Violence can never entirely be struck out, and the hieratical author knows this. But man has the choice and power to dominate violence, meaning he can tame it, build a dam for it, and domesticate it as one would with a wild animal or an enemy. How to do come about this? In projecting and establishing legal, juridical and balanced structures where this violence can lose its essence, or at least, be less raging.

In leading a clan type Israel towards a new born Judaism with the Persian Empire, through the kingdom of Josias rethought in the light of confrontations with the Assyrians, we find ourselves at the end of a journey that enabled us to mark three different conceptions of the power and violence of the God of Israel.

The first model, both archaic and modern, springs from a pluripolar world and of humanity where people are colleagues and rivals and where their gods must cohabit within a cosmic grid and share their areas of influence. The important is common sense and craft, decency and certain ability to management.

The second model brings us a centralized concept of the world and of cosmic order. Peace is commanded and imposed by a central authority, may it be by persuasion or by force. There is no benediction outside this order. This model can find serene expressions (often utopian or eschatological) otherwise, extremely aggressive.

The third model transcends the later two models all in putting forth some of their aspects. It proposes astonishing universal and pacific visions of peace and of justice, in rediscovering on one part the virtues of the ancestral system and on another part the postulate of a unique creator and God. Violence is perceived as a destructive and very dangerous ferment: because it is in working towards justice and equilibrium (as well as against the "enemy") that God and men make an alliance to dam and entreat the menace that it represents for them and for others.

Albert de Pury

© Extracts (worked over again by the author) of an article published in the Biblical News bulletin (bib), n° 52, 1999, Paris, pp. 15-20.

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