Genocide in the Bible: does this trouble anyone else?

  • Thread starter Thread starter StudentMI
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
MasterHaster said:
By that reasoning why didn’t God destroy the Nazis or Pol Pot or Stalin?
Click to expand...
If there is no god, then millions of people died unjustly, and they will never have justice.

If there is a God, then God can raise all these people to a greater good life after death.
 
StudentMI said:
Yep, another thread on that. Before someone says search for other threads, those are closed, and I’d like to discuss the topic.

What can one say? The order in the Bible, directly from God, to conquer the land of Canaan and put the inhabitants to the sword… how does that not qualify as genocide?

I’ve seen lots of attempted justifications. Oh the book of Judges says there are Canaanites still left; Joshua is allegorical; the inhabitants were pure evil; etc. But I still wonder, how was a Canaanite baby guilty of anything? Even if the Canaanites were guilty of the most heinous crimes and human sacrifices known to man (which archaeology and historical research does not show), how were the babies guilty?

What do people think about this? Is anyone else troubled by it? Has anyone found an explanation that makes sense?
Click to expand...
Context is everything. The ancient peoples understood God’s action in the world through their eyes. In the battles they fought with other peoples, they interpret God’s action and providence in the ways that they understood it.

Still, those passages have meaning for us that transcends the original context. That’s what matters for us. The suggestion that God commands one human being to slaughter children for the crimes of their parents is suspect, at best.

In all things Christ. Christ is the ultimate hermeneutical key to the scriptures. In Christ we see the living God.
Look up Verbum Domini sec’s 42 and 44 for one of the better address of this issue.
 
Last edited:
GEddie said:
To me, it’s simple.

Yahweh is the author of life and as such, has the sole right to take it away. Whether through a genocide or otherwise.

Death is death. Not being subjected to a genocide will be no comfort the day anybody wakes up not breathing.
Click to expand...
This is the “because God is able to do something then it is literally in his nature to do it” defense. Similar to God being able to create a square circle.
Also, because Scripture is inspired, whatever a passage says is taken in rigid literalist fashion.
In literalist fundamentalism, God is constrained to the isolated words in a passage against his own revelation of himself.

It’s not in God’s revealed nature to command one human being to slay other innocent human beings. And you are left with accusing the children of pagans as guilty and punishable by death at God’s order. That is a problematic stand to say the least.
Why is that problematic? Christ, that’s why.
 
Last edited:
EugeneCharles said:
40.png
StudentMI:
What do people think about this? Is anyone else troubled by it? Has anyone found an explanation that makes sense?
Click to expand...
Hello! I feel bad when innocent people had been victims of wars and etc.

The only answer that I find so far is they had to experience these things for the better of humanity. For example, the Holy Innocents, they are naïve and don’t know anything about sin but they had been killed for the sake of God’s plan to redeem us and to bring the Good News to the world. I believe that God don’t want to harm this babies, He wants us to realize our faults and bring us to a preferable stage of life.
Click to expand...
There’s a difference between God redeeming evil for his good ends, and God literally willing and commanding genocide.
A murderer may repent and contribute to God’s good purposes, but his murder is still evil and can never be part of God’s active will.
 
It doesn’t bother me. God doesn’t need our permission to create life; likewise, He doesn’t need our permission to take life. Every human life, animal life and plant life belongs to God. I would say the same thing if my son/daughter had an incurable type of cancer.
 
StudentMI said:
…
See this is where I have a problem. According to archaeology and historical research the Canaanites were pretty much a typical Near Eastern culture of the time. I haven’t come across any evidence of their ‘wickedness,’ …
Click to expand...
So Trent Horn category 1. 'Literal Commands, Literal History’ has “the Canaanites, who are stated to have committed such wickedness”. That means it stands as a historical record using that category.
 
Last edited:
Gorgias said:
Just for the sake of argument: what kind of “archaeological or historical” evidence of ‘wickedness’ might you think you’d be able to find? Or, better yet, you might reasonably expect you should be able to find?

If the answer is “well… none, really”, then you can’t establish the null hypothesis on the basis of not finding it. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, remember?
Click to expand...
Writings from the Egyptians who ruled Canaan for like 400 years, archaeological remains that suggested human sacrifice, etc.
 
StudentMI said:
I also came across something in the book The Exodus by Richard Elliott Friedman. He mentions the steles bearing evidence of Israel, and notes that they speak of Israel being no more, that its seed is wiped out. We know this not to be true, and he compares it to language such as “we killed 'em” and “we slaughtered 'em.”

In addition, note that the book of Joshua proclaims that the Canaanites are wiped out. Yet we know from Judges this is not so, and even from the text of Joshua. Look at the story of Rahab. Now one may take a critical approach and say Judges was written by another so it differs, but as Catholics we must understand the text as a coherent whole. Therefore, I propose the following, which I am not claiming to be new: the language of total extermination in the text of Joshua is hyperbolic in the vein of the steles I mentioned above. Just a way of speaking back in those days. Consequently, the order may have been similarly hyperbolic, either in original form or as it was transmitted down to us.

It gets more interesting when one gets into mystical explanations. Some saint, I believe, proposed that the story was symbolic of the seven deadly sins being conquered. This fits into the evidence that there was no large scale conquest of the land and that the Israelites arose relatively peacefully in Canaan itself. The conquest then becomes symbolic. However I have no opinion on whether the conquest happened or not. Kenneth Kitchen, a respected historian, contends it did. Others don’t. I have no idea. Just throwing this out there.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you might be partial to Trent Horn’s third category of theories: 'Nonliteral Commands, Nonliteral History’ 🙂

Which is indeed one of the acceptable interpretive approaches Catholics may take.
 
Let’s assume that God - the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, ground of existence did, in fact, issue those orders.

Given that God is in total control of life and death and can spare pain and regenerate life - even to a far higher degree than is currently the case, and that God knows the repercussions of every human action down through all of subsequent human history, why would we assume that such a God would NOT be in a better place to warrant those orders than we humans from our limited perspective in a particular time and place and with a very egocentric capacity for making moral judgements?
 
Personally I believe that the Bible is the history of man’s relationship with God over time.

To me it is quite conceivable that the Israelites mistakenly invoked the name of God to justify their genocide of both the Amalekites and the Canaanites.

I was always taught to allow the New Testament to shine a light on the Old. Jesus is God incarnate, the perfect revelation of God. One of the reasons for the incarnation was that the Israelites kept getting God wrong, so he had to come in person.

If we believe that Jesus wouldn’t sanction genocide then presumably we have to believe that neither would God.
 
StudentMI said:
40.png
Gorgias:
Just for the sake of argument: what kind of “archaeological or historical” evidence of ‘wickedness’ might you think you’d be able to find? Or, better yet, you might reasonably expect you should be able to find?

If the answer is “well… none, really”, then you can’t establish the null hypothesis on the basis of not finding it. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, remember?
Click to expand...
Writings from the Egyptians who ruled Canaan for like 400 years, archaeological remains that suggested human sacrifice, etc.
Click to expand...
Does the wickedness of the Canaanites change who God is?
 
So are you saying the Bible’s historical books that quoted God as giving those commands are in error and are faulty? And that prophets were not actually speaking for God when they were told and relayed the orders?
[/quote]

No, you are falling into the fundamentalist trap of either/or in regards to the inspiration of scripture.
Don’t confuse inspired with “factual”. All of scripture is inspired. Some of it is journalistic type history, some of it is not.

The bible can be (is, actually) both inspired and be of various literary genres that are not journalism. Both/and
 
Last edited:
IanAG said:
If we believe that Jesus wouldn’t sanction genocide then presumably we have to believe that neither would God.
Click to expand...
This is the key to it right here.
And that is how P Benedict and most other mainstream Catholic scholars see this.
 
Which I addressed earlier. The fact is this is factual. God ordered their destruction, and the Church has almost always (the exception being recent) interpreted this as a factual and literal order.

Now, were they all wiped out? No, as the book of Judges tells us, God specifically spared some.
[/quote]

God also ordered a hammered metal dome in the sky, specifically, literally.
Why must one word of God commanding genocide be factual and others are not?
You cannot have it both ways. If you insist on verbatim fundamentalism, you have some wild inconsistencies to justify.
 
Last edited:
No, I’m saying that they believed they were responding to God’s call but when we look at it from the perspective of the life and teaching of Jesus they were wrong. If you believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate then you have to believe that his teaching is God’s teaching.

Jesus is quite clear that we should love our enemies and pray for them…not massacre them. That is precisely why the Jews rejected Jesus…he wasn’t the warrior Saviour they were expecting.

And let’s face it, we’re still getting it wrong today. How many battles are fought with both sides claiming God’s blessing on their actions.
 
Your giving Moses an infallibility that not even Christ gives him.
 
And I’m not going on with you. Read the reference I posted from the Vatican and comment on that.
This kind of fundamentalist fringe biblical literalism is scandalizing millions of people, literally.
 
Unless I’m missing something, in the Sermon on the Mount…

"You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. (NIV, Matthew 5:38-45)
 
Last edited:
What about church teaching, from the Catechism
  1. The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war.
And Paul’s teaching…

Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (NAS, Romans 12:17-21)
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top