The Violence of Scripture: Overcoming the Old Testament's Troubling Legacy

1. Introduction: The Bible Should Never Be Used to Harm Others

1 chapTer 1 introduction: The bible Should never be used to harm others Humans have an amazing capacity to demonize their enemies, portraying them as the epitome of evil who must be eliminated at all cost. Time and time again “civilized” Christian people have committed genocide, practiced slavery, and in other ways demeaned “uncivilized” peoples because they saw them as evil. Using the Bible to justify this kind of behavior must stop. —Esther Epp-Tiessen1 The Mystic river Massacre On May 26, 1637, New England settlers attacked and burned a Pequot village, massacring approximately “700 elderly men and defenseless women and children.”2 It was an utterly unjustifiable act of cold-blooded killing and unmitigated brutality. How could Puritans justify such carnage? By appealing to Scripture! John Higginson wrote a treatise defending the war against the Pequot generally, and the massacre at the village at Mystic River particularly, on the basis of Judges 20. This chapter in Judges describes intertribal warfare in which the Benjaminites are nearly annihilated by their fellow Israelites. According to Laura Donaldson, this particular Old Testament passage “provided the early settlers of New England with all the legitimation they needed to wage war against the Pequot.”3 2 The Violence of Scripture John Underhill, who was second in command on the fateful day of the massacre, also attempts to justify the slaughter by appealing to the Old Testament. He does so by alluding to David’s war with the Ammonites in 2 Samuel 12.4 In an apparent effort to respond to some criticism of the Mystic River massacre, Underhill writes: Great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of young soldiers that never had been in war, to see so many souls lie gasping on the ground, so thick, in some places, that you could hardly pass along. It may be demanded, Why should you be so furious? (as some have said). Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But I would refer you to David’s war. When a people is grown to such a height of blood, and sin against God and man . . . he [God] hath no respect to persons, but harrows them, and saws them, and puts them to the sword, and the most terriblest death that may be. Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. Sometimes the case alters; but we will not dispute it now. We have sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.5 As Matthew Kruer has noted: “The Puritans’ worldview was rooted in a Scripture that contained spectacular episodes of mass violence, and . . . these precedents provided a ready justification for those who sought to retroactively account for their ferocity.”6 When the Old Testament is used to justify the killing of hundreds of “elderly men and defenseless women and children,” something has clearly gone terribly wrong! Do no harm The premise of this book is simple and straightforward: the Bible should never be used to inspire, promote, or justify acts of violence. This means, among other things, that the Bible should not be read in ways that oppress or otherwise harm people. Yet, tragically, this is how the Bible has often been used in the past, and it is how it continues to be used by many people today. In recent years, a number of books have appeared, highlighting the destructive way the Bible has been used to hurt others.7 These books, with such provocative titles as The Sins of Scripture and The Savage Text, help people recognize how the Bible has often been read in ways that foster injustice, oppression, and death.8 Biblical texts have been used to justify such things as warfare and genocide, violence against women, child abuse, religious intolerance, capital punishment, slavery, bigotry, and racism. The Old Testament has frequently been used in these ways, resulting in what I refer to as “the Old Testament’s troubling legacy.” As the subtitle of this book suggests, overcoming this troubling legacy is one of my primary concerns. Introduction: The Bible Should Never Be Used to Harm Others 3 As we will see, the Old Testament’s troubling legacy is intricately connected to its many violent texts. It is difficult to read the Old Testament for very long without bumping into passages that depict or describe violence in some way. Many of these passages portray violence positively and sanction various acts...