Tag Archives: Yahweh
The Wars of the Lord 6
Someone responded to the last post with, “OK, so what? How do we read these texts in light of some of this stuff?”
Let’s try to get to that in this post. I think this is our last one on the subject. (For now!) Continue reading
The Wars of the Lord 5
Some great responses to my earlier posts – I appreciate some of the pushback as well as some of the alternate possible understandings. The issue no doubt merits further review, and I should clarify that I’m not sure where I fall on this whole discussion, as I’ve been by and large presenting the views in Thom Stark’s book. I think he raises some very valid questions, and isn’t willing to settle for the usual answers or simple solutions. That said, I may not agree with him everywhere, and some of you have noted excellent other possible approaches as voiced by Greg Boyd and Walter Brueggemann among others.
The question in this post is this: did these brutalizing campaigns and slaughter of the people of Canaan and elsewhere actually happen?
I suppose many of us would initially respond to that question with, “Of course it happened – it’s in the Bible.” But I wonder if it’s that simple. Continue reading
The Wars of the Lord 4
Some readers no doubt remain dissatisfied with our attempts to understand the conquest narratives in the Bible, in which it appears God is commanding wholesale warfare and destruction.
So what to do? Perhaps we should ignore such texts. Perhaps we should shrug our shoulders and just say, “I don’t know.” (This might be the best idea).
Some would prefer to say, “God is so holy and beyond our understanding that it is not our place to question him or his Word.” (I can hear some “Amens” at this point). Continue reading
