Violence in Old testament

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Im a practicing catholic and one of the questions thrown at me which i could not adequately answer is the violence in the Old Testament. Specifically, it would be good for my apologetics to put a proper explanation to God’s order to Joshua in killing the inhabitants of Palestine, in their initial conquest. I need some help, could anyone pitch in their ideas, or could anyone refer me to an apologist who have the answers. Thanks
 
I have heard a priest explain it as an allegorical story where the nations in Israel that were defeated(and destroyed) were representative of evil tendencies, sin, paganism, etc and that putting the ban on them is like putting the ban on these tendencies inside of us, leave nothing. see below the last thing he addresses about halfway through answers this

youtube.com/watch?v=pP2InFa16D0&feature=related
 
I was reading Joshua a little while ago and I just felt that he was a mass murderer. It was hard to understand what the meaning of it all was… He just goes around wiping out so many people.
 
I am reading Joshua right now, and I was reading the part about Jericho and the slaughter.

Well, it’s death for the men, women, children, and animals in Jericho (we’re talking about Jericho, right?) Well it was Jericho or the place before Jericho.

It’s a judgment from God, that’s the beginning and end of it.

This is a deep question. I write such long posts, I hate to get started on it. Killing the people is the lesson for the Israelites about God’s judgment on their pagan beliefs and idol worship.

Recall, the entire generation of Israelites that left Egypt died in the desert, because of their apostasy in worshipping the golden calf. It is their descendents who are entering the Promised Land to conquer it. If this generation does not recall the lesson of that earlier generation, by itself, this is an “object lesson” about God’s wrath on idol worshippers.

They’re not supposed to spare any lives and all the precious metals are supposed to be turned over to the temple. That one guy doesn’t (he takes and hides some gold, silver, and iron) and he doesn’t make it far. It is the judgment of God to have him AND HIS FAMILY stoned and burned, and that’s what it says happens.

Jesus’ message in the gospel is about condemnation and fire, too. Nothing changes in the NT, I don’t think.
 
It’s a couple hours since my last post, and I’ve read up to the end of Chap 9 and the matter seems clearer to me.

The violence, in a way, is the whole point of the story. 1) God is fulfilling His promise (and covenant) to guarantee the conquest of Canaan – like it or not, it is the violence that accomplishes it. 2) It’s a proof to the Israelites of the trustworthiness of God’s word, that they would have the victory. 3) by exterminating the inhabitants, the threat of an uprising destroying the peace of Israel would be prevented. and 4) as it suggests in Chap 9, the surrounding nations are taught a lesson about the strength of the Israelites and the power of their God. So, the surrounding kings and people would keep their hands off Israel.

That’s what I get out of the reading up to this point. I’m reading the Jewish Publication Society translation of Joshua in The Jewish Study Bible (Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, editors, Oxford University Press, 2004). This translation even hightens the image of carnage by referring to the Israelite fighters as “storm troopers.”
 
Crumpy said:
It’s a couple hours since my last post, and I’ve read up to the end of Chap 9 and the matter seems clearer to me.

The violence, in a way, is the whole point of the story. 1) God is fulfilling His promise (and covenant) to guarantee the conquest of Canaan – like it or not, it is the violence that accomplishes it. 2) It’s a proof to the Israelites of the trustworthiness of God’s word, that they would have the victory. 3) by exterminating the inhabitants, the threat of an uprising destroying the peace of Israel would be prevented. and 4) as it suggests in Chap 9, the surrounding nations are taught a lesson about the strength of the Israelites and the power of their God. So, the surrounding kings and people would keep their hands off Israel.

That’s what I get out of the reading up to this point. I’m reading the Jewish Publication Society translation of Joshua in The Jewish Study Bible (Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, editors, Oxford University Press, 2004). This translation even hightens the image of carnage by referring to the Israelite fighters as “storm troopers.”
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The Bible,like it or not, is a history book. The judgements are not pretty things to watch. Neither was the judgment of the German nation for the deeds done in its name, and by its sons and daughters. Eisenhower’s book was called “A Crusade in Europe,” which might seem a high flown name for an act of carnage. But knowing what we know, how does one complain about the babies burned alive as German cities were destroyed when their parents were complicit in all that Hitler did. The Knowing and the ignorant, the guilty and the innocent: they were all in the same boat as it sank. Rough justice for the thirty million other Europeans who died because of their ambitions. Likewise, rough justice for those nations who shared the same nest as those who lived outside the law and knowingly or not violated even that law written on their hearts, of the covenant that Noah had made with God.
 
Fidelis said:
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend this explanation from *Catholic Answers *apologist Jimmy Akin. It should give you a little more context and perspective on this issue:
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Akins discussion is written as a subjective philosophical rationalization of suffering and pre-mature death.

I’m glad that he brings in the cross of Christ and the writings of St. Paul, at least at some point. I think we should look to the answers given in the Bible. God’s word is better than Akins words or mine.
 
Crumpy said:
Akins discussion is written as a subjective philosophical rationalization of suffering and pre-mature death.

I’m glad that he brings in the cross of Christ and the writings of St. Paul, at least at some point. I think we should look to the answers given in the Bible. God’s word is better than Akins words or mine.
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No argument there. The only trouble is that the Bible itself does not give any explicit rationale as to why God permitted this to happen. If it did, we could point to chapter and verse. Any explanation that we, personally, would propose from “in the Bible”, therefore, is as “subjective” as Mr. Akin’s (whose ideas, I think, do not exclude or contradict the validity of your own in a previous post) or anyone else’s would be, since both are a matter of personal interpretation. If his (or yours and my) perspective is or is not helpful to someone, they can take it or leave it.

I think (and the Church has always taught-- see Fides et Ratio, by JPII) that we should use faith and reason to try to understand these things. Just as we should not try to rationalize the Bible away, the “Bible alone” is a position that the Church does not ascribe to. Where the Church does not have a constant teaching or Tradition, has not offered an official interpretation or spoken definitively on a matter, there are a multitude of valid perspectives on situations like this-- yours, mine and Jimmy Akin’s included. 🙂
 
daveqdimal said:
Im a practicing catholic and one of the questions thrown at me which i could not adequately answer is the violence in the Old Testament. Specifically, it would be good for my apologetics to put a proper explanation to God’s order to Joshua in killing the inhabitants of Palestine, in their initial conquest. I need some help, could anyone pitch in their ideas, or could anyone refer me to an apologist who have the answers. Thanks
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We’ve made a stab at answering your question. “Why” is a big question and a difficult question.

Why did God make the universe?
Why did God make the universe the way He did?
etc.

I’ve tried to provide an answer in terms of what scripture says. Just by coincidence, I was reading Joshua and now I’m reading Judges, which is a continuation of Joshua.

The conquest of Canaan continues, and Israel is not obeying the commands to wipe out the inhabitants of Canaan. As a result, Israel is subjugated again and again. So, in that, there is the basis of a previous answer I gave, that wiping out the inhabitants is the only way for Israel to achieve peace and sovereignty over Canaan. It’s the only way to appease God.

So, now we get to the bigger “why” question of why God wants that.

Must be tied up with the same reason why God wiped out all mankind in a flood, save for Noah and his family and some animals, as the story goes.

If you go down the historical-critical path of exegesis, most of those battles in Joshua and Judges are thought not to be historical, due to a lack of archeological evidence. So, the purpose of the writings was to create a virtual history of Israel. Some of the dates of habitation of the town in Canaan don’t seem to match the archeological records for when some towns were destroyed and rebuilt.

The Jewish Study Bible depicts Deuteronomy through Kings as being editorially harmonized to be the fluid-flowing in their historical perspective and generally philosophically consistent books that they are. The purpose of “history” books in the Biblical times is not the same idea of history that we think it is and should be.

The books of the Bible show evidence of being revised and revised again until they came into their existing forms. Recall, that these books (scrolls) were handwritten and things could be easilty changed as time went by, either deliberately or accidentally.
 
daveqdimal said:
Im a practicing catholic and one of the questions thrown at me which i could not adequately answer is the violence in the Old Testament. Specifically, it would be good for my apologetics to put a proper explanation to God’s order to Joshua in killing the inhabitants of Palestine, in their initial conquest. I need some help, could anyone pitch in their ideas, or could anyone refer me to an apologist who have the answers. Thanks
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This question was partially answered on EWTN Live March 23, 2011, with Fr. Mitch Pacwa, Jeff Cavens, and Dr. Tim Gray.

Cavens and Gray say this is explained in their Bible study course, and it is a question which comes up frequently.

The charem policy of destroying the city of Jericho was not the “Plan A” that God intended. The Israelites defeated the Egyptian army during the exodus from Egypt. And, their reputation and reknown was supposed to scare the inhabitants of Canaan away, to make room for them.

Joshua 2:9 says (this is Rahab the harlot speaking) "I know that the LORD has given the country to you, because dread of you has fallen upon us, and all the inhabitants of the land are quaking before you. (10) For we have heard how the LORD dried up the waters fo the Sea of Reeds fo you when you left Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings across the Jordon, whom you doomed."

Now, somehow, the Israelites lost the advantage that she spoke about, and the charem policy took its place, so this is what Gray called “Plan B.”

This is just about all they said. Gray and Cavens were on the show to plug their book based on the Bible study series, the Great Adventure. I saw this at almost 2 a.m. I don’t recall if they said this was explained more fully in the book. As you would expect, the book is for sale at the EWTN website. Title: Walking With God (only 297 pages).
 
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