Do the genocide passages of
the Old Testament prove problematic to you? They certainly cause me some
headaches and I find it increasingly difficult to reconcile those passages from
Joshua with what I read about God in Jesus in the Gospels. If you have no
problem with God commanding the slaughter of every man, woman, child and animal
in a city then maybe you should turn to your second favourite blog today and
come back to me tomorrow.
Interpreting the Bible
There are a number of
answers to the ‘Is God a genocidal monster?’ problem and the Welsh OT scholar
Eryl W. Davies recently published a volume containing a review of some of the
most popular ways of interpreting these and other problematic passages. (Dr
Davies taught me New Testament Greek in my under-grad days, employed me as a
part-time lecturer for a period, and is not
paying me for this review!)
In The Immoral Bible Davies outlines in some detail numerous OT
interpretive methods and then goes on to critique them in a very even handed way.
His own particular favourite method is the ‘reader-response’ approach whereby
‘scholars have adopted the methodologies of comparative literature’ in order to
understand the Bible (page 120). This involves the reader being prepared to
‘challenge [the text’s] assumptions, to question its’ insights, and (if
necessary) to discredit its claims’ (page 121). It, therefore, involves the
reader coming to the text with a critical eye and being willing to ask some
deeply searching questions of it.
Our relationship with the Bible
Davies accepts that many
will feel ‘instinctively uneasy’ about doing this with the Bible, believing
that the text should be treated with a ‘reverential deference’ (page 131) – a
sense that I would certainly partly share – but points out that within the text
itself there are examples of biblical characters questioning God’s justice,
e.g. Abraham over the destruction of Sodom in Genesis 18.
Whatever one’s stance
towards the Bible, this volume by Davies is a valuable text book on the issue
of biblical interpretation and well worth a read. It is written in an engaging
style and despite being published specifically for the academic market, one
does not need a background in theology to be able to engage with it.
Eryl W Davies, The Immoral Bible – Approaches to biblical
ethics (London, T & T Clark: 2010).
