Staycation reading

So, I've been on leave this week, at home, kicking back, so what have I been reading? Trashy chick-lit? Re-reading old faves like Georgette Heyer and Terry Pratchett? Some thrilling page-turner by Stephen King? Not quite...

I've just finished reading Laying down the sword: Why we can't ignore the Bible's violent verses, by Philip Jenkins. It's written partly as a response to the constant casting of Islam as a violent religion, and the Qu'ran as a violent text. As Jenkins points out, the Qu'ran contains nothing as atrocious as the genocide of the Canaanites by the Hebrews described in Deutoronomy and Joshua, a genocide that is a commandment from God.

From this, and other similarly revolting passages, Jenkins considers various issues, the key one being how Jews and Christians throughout history have interpreted, justified, or excused those passages. A common interpretation or reading has been symbolic - that Canaanites and other condemned groups represent the inner struggle against our own sinful natures (sic). A common justification has been probably along the lines of God's response to Job - roughly, it is not for humanity to question God. A common excuse is that things were generally far more barbaric in those days - this sort of warfare was not unusual. Jenkins lists many other examples - these passages have been troubling people for a very long time.

To respond to the examples I give, the first has probably the most going for it. The second is impossible, really. And the third is wrong - complete extermination of enemy groups including women, children, and livestock was not common practice.

The other issue Jenkins considers is fact that on a practical level, these verses have ceased to be a problem for the average believer because they have largely fallen out of use. The lectionary, the prescribed Bible readings for each Sunday throughout the year, pretty much ignores those books. Exodus is the most used, with the dramatic Moses narrative. Also, when we do read them, various common psychological defenses kick in to dampen down their true horror. And at least in the West, those verses have pretty much ceased to have any moral authority at all. They are not used to justify current wars or crusades.

Past wars and campaigns are a different matter of course. This book was painful to read, both because I had to really consider the horror of those genocidal passages in a way I hadn't before (see the para above), and also because I had to read about the ways they had been used throughout history, to modern times, when politically expedient. Particularly in colonial times, and their potential to be used again remains.

One of the biggest issues raised (for those who are religious) is what all this means for the idea of scriptural authority. One of the interesting points Jenkins makes is that it is often religious teachings that make these passages so horrific and pose us such problems. Christian examples are the parables of the Good Samaritan, and command to love your neighbour and turn the other cheek. Judaism and Islam have equivalent commands to mercy. Faced with how to reconcile these contradictory types of passages, most people recognise compassion as the higher call. For which thank God.

I was pleased to see Jenkins use my favourite passage in the New Testament, Matthew 15: 21-28, in which Jesus initially rejects the request of a Canaanite woman to heal her daughter, but changes his mind when she challenges him. I love the idea of Jesus being open to experience and learning from the people he meets, but I did shock some people once when I expounded this idea - the idea that Jesus could be wrong was clearly disturbing and they preferred the idea that Jesus was 'just testing her'. Jenkins agrees with my interpretation, and emphasises that she is described as a Canaanite, indicating a reconciliation between the two groups.

I highly recommend this book, and I hope to do a sermon on these ideas if I get a chance. It is written from a religious viewpoint, Christian in this instance, but if you aren't religious yourself, I still recommend it. Atheist writers such as Mark Twain and Richard Dawkins underline the violent side of religion, so this gives a very thoughtful perspective on how believers deal with these texts, and it has to be said that a lot of the ways people have done so are pretty feeble (another painful part for me to read). I also found the discussion about the influence of secular and non-Muslim terrorist tactics on modern Islamic terrorists, and the whole relationship between Islam, the Qu'ran, and violence very informative.