Trying to get past the violence in the OT

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normdplume

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Over the past year, I’ve read endlessly about Catholicism. In my opinion, it was and still is Christ’s true Church. However, I’m having a great deal of trouble reconciling the teaching of Jesus with the violence commanded by God in the OT (most notably the slaughter of children).

The Apostles dedicated their lives to Him, many of whom were killed for their Christian faith. I find it hard to believe that they would all do this if they didn’t truly believe that Jesus was the Messiah. That tells me that what is documented in the gospels is true, and the Apostles really did see Christ perform miracles, culminating in the Resurrection.

The huge stumbling block for me is the atrocities committed by the Israelites, which they claimed were commanded by God. As far as I understand it, Catholicism requires the belief that the Bible is inerrant, the OT is canon, and that God doesn’t change (i.e., the God of the OT is the same as the God of the NT).

I’ve read many posts and articles trying to justify the OT violence, and I still find most of them appalling, and all of them fall short of satisfactory. If someone told me that Catholicism considers those immoral acts to be the written works of Israelites “claiming” they were commanded by God, I could understand that since history is written by the victors. But that’s not the case. As I understand it, these acts were commanded by God.

I don’t know how to reconcile the OT and the NT, and I wonder how others do so.
 
Anyone who claims that the God of the OT is immoral holds to a completely arbitrary morality which, interestingly, is already influenced by Judeo-Christian values.
 
The problem arises when using modern standards to view old history. Remember that God chose this People in an ancient world which was quite violent and in many ways less civilized by modern standards. It is in the midst of such peoples that God guided and protected the Jewish people. Then Jesus came in the fulfillment of time, when humanity had matured enough to live by better standards.
 
The people were violent (still are). That doesn’t explain why God Himself would participate in (and command) such violence against children.
 
What were the other faiths among them?

What did they promote/encourage?

Do you remember King Josiah and the episode in 2 Kings 23?

He got rid of the male and female temple prostitutes. He got rid of the places where children were sacrificed. (That’s what the Valley of Tophet was-- Tophet/Topheth is a generic word indicating a place of child sacrifice.) He got rid of the place where children were burned alive. (Which is what the Molech thing refers to.) He got rid of the pagan altars inside the temple. He got rid of a lot of stuff.

So the people who embraced other faiths weren’t kindly neighbors who happened to have a differing worldview. The competing religions in the area were brutal (ie, setting your children on fire) and immoral (ie, formalized temple prostitution as an ordinary thing) and their presence served to separate God’s chosen people from God. (How often does Israel “do evil in the sight of the Lord” and bring down punishment among themselves?)

Here’s an example of a Carthaginian Tophet.

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So, just as children nowadays suffer for the crimes of their families in war zones, children then suffered, as well. Presumably, God had a place for them in his mercy, before they started propagating the errors of their parents. But ultimately, how much is there to choose from— between your mom or dad setting you on fire and sacrificing you to Moloch because they didn’t want you? Or an invading army killing you by the sword? Or starving to death because the invading army killed your parents but spared you? They’re all ugly, brutal, and undesirable situations to be in. But looking at things from the perspective of eternity— how would you have handled it, if you were God?
 
Leviticus 20:22-23 says:
You are therefore to keep all My statutes and all My ordinances and do them, so that the land to which I am bringing you to live will not spew you out. 23 ‘Moreover, you shall not follow the customs of the nation which I will drive out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I have abhorred them.
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So let’s ignore anything that reference what other nations did or what the overall culture was. That’s just a poor excuse. I find the people who denounce moral relativism are the first to use it as an explanation for uncomfortable Biblical passages.
 
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midori said:
They’re all ugly, brutal, and undesirable situations to be in. But looking at things from the perspective of eternity— how would you have handled it, if you were God?
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Simple. Instruct the invading army not to kill anyone unarmed and then make the survivors part of Israel. Romans, for all their horrendous violence, used this technique to tame outlying areas of the empire, even granting full citizenship to many. Even if you argue that the unarmed adults noted above would turn Israel from God, I see no way that can apply to children. Moses had no problem making surviving virgins part of God’s chosen people. Hence my difficulty with the OT.
 
I have raised this issue here before. Catholics either say ‘it was a different time, different rules applied’ or ‘God can order anything and it is not for us to know his reasoning, just do what he says’. All other answers seem to be variations on these. These answers are not subject to rational debate. I predict this thread will continue to generate these repossess, leaving you unsatisfied.
 
normdplume said:
The huge stumbling block for me is the atrocities committed by the Israelites, which they claimed were commanded by God. As far as I understand it, Catholicism requires the belief that the Bible is inerrant, the OT is canon, and that God doesn’t change (i.e., the God of the OT is the same as the God of the NT).
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We’re studying the Puritans in homeschool. It’s interesting to read about how every good event happened because someone had “special graces” or was “favored.” If something bad happened, e.g. smallpox or a bad harvest, it was because someone had fallen out of God’s favor. (Eventually, they started accusing other humans for their misfortunes instead of God, hence the witch trials. 😦 )

Where violence has always been around, the early Hebrews likely reached for explanations (or even justification) for it, just as the human race does today, and made that a guide for their narratives.
 
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Dei Verbum, Vatican II
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_...ents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html

“…the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 32 #109 and #110:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

“In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.

In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current. ‘For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression.’”

And p. 33 #115:

“One can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual….”

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.

117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.
  1. the allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.84
  2. the moral sense. the events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written for our instruction.
  3. the anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem
(http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PQ.HTM#$3G)

So when, in the OT, God tells the Israelites to kill ALL their enemies, including the children, you have to ask yourself: “What is the message I’m supposed to take away from this that will lead to my Salvation?” It’s certainly NOT to kill all your enemies and their children. It could be several things: to be uncompromising in following God’s commands; to obey God without question; to fight against my enemy (Satan) without giving any quarter; etc. The nasty bits are just details that made an interesting story 2,500 years ago. And if it makes you feel any better, read the Jerome Commentary, where a nice Jesuit says that some passages of the OT, if read literally, are ethically immoral.
 
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Thank you, Erikaspirit16. That’s the most sensible response I’ve ever received on this question. It is still troublesome that the literal interpretation advocates violence against children. I’ll check out Jerome.
 
normdplume said:
Here’s one of many:
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OK, but here’s the thing: in the ancient mentality, God is wholly responsible for everything that happens. A leaf blows in your face – God made it happen. You trip on a stone – God made it happen. (They didn’t have the notion of ‘secondary causation’ that later philosophical thought actually developed.)

So, if it happens, then it’s God’s will. At least, that’s the way that the original hearers (and writers!) of the text understood it.

If we look at the OT, though, we see that the Amelekites show up later than 1 Sam 15. So, if we’re looking at it from the perspective of the original audience of the OT, then we conclude that God did not intend the literal destruction of the children of Amelek.

So, if you want to be anachronistic or revisionist, you can certainly claim “God kills kids”, but if you interpret the Bible as it was understood by its original hearers, then that’s not the conclusion you draw from the passage you quoted.

Is there another passage, perhaps, that you might have in mind?
 
There are quite a few, but Ericaspirit16 gave me a good answer above that may address many of them. I need time to consider them in light of that.

Thanks for your help.
 
Let me elaborate a bit more. These quotations are all from chapter 66, “Inspiration and Inerrancy,” written by Richard F. Smith, S.J. for the Jerome Biblical Commentary. The whole chapter is an historical summary of the issues that have come up and repays close reading. But he addresses the question you raise:

p. 512, section 74: “Scriptural statements that cause difficulty with regard to inerrancy may be arranged under four headings…(4) moral errors, .eg. herem, total destruction of an enemy people or group, considered as carrying out the will of Yahweh.”

p. 513, section 79: “…theologians and exegetes are faced with the problem of determining in what sense the inerrancy of Scripture is to be taken. This has not yet been achieved with complete success…”
section 80: “…the necessity of examining the intention behind any given passage…”
section 81: He talks about the “truthfulness” of the Bible being truthful as a whole: “…it is wrong to say that the Bible teaches as infallibly true the right to kill innocent victims in war. That would be to limit the truth content of the Bible on this particular question to one stage of the development of revelation, when God permitted his people to remain in a subjectively erroneous state of conscience…” (i.e., morality evolved throughout the Bible).

In sections 85 and 86 (p. 514) he goes on to re-state the quotations I originally gave.

Again, the entire chapter would be very informative to read. But be warned: you need to think about every sentence. It’s not a popular novel!
 
Thanks again for taking the time to give such a detailed response. It’s been very helpful.
 
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