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Re: questions i combined (no otr)
On Sun, 30 Dec 2001, J. Marie Hall wrote:
> Peter said:
> > Incidentally, those passages in the Bible which talk about the Hebrews
> > wiping out entire villages (genocide? ethnic cleansing?) also talk
> > about the Hebrews "devoting" the villages to God, a term that had
> > explicit religious significance; essentially, it was a form of human
> > sacrifice.
>
> I always thought of sacrifice in the biblical and cultural contexts as
> having to do with giving up something important to you personally.
That's what it has largely come to mean for us today, yes. But as the NIV
notes in the footnotes, every time the Israelites "destroyed" a town, the
Hebrew word underlying that term refers to "the irrevocable giving over of
things or persons to the LORD, often by totally destroying them."
If I may quote from a short essay I wrote several years ago, comparing the
Israelite and Moabite accounts of a war that was fought between them:
http://peter.chattaway.com/articles/moabite.htm
[ snip ]
Both accounts speak of total destruction of the other's towns, both
property and citizens. Mesha boasts of killing "all the people" of
Atarot as well as Nebo's "whole population, seven thousand male
citizens and aliens, and female citizens and aliens, and servant
girls", and says he did this because he "had put it to the ban for
Ashtar Kemosh." Similarly, the Israelites are said to have "invaded the
land and slaughtered the Moabites. They destroyed the towns, and each
man threw a stone on every good field until it was covered. They
stopped up all the springs and cut down every good tree." (3:24-25)
This wholesale destruction is a staple feature of the Deuteronomistic
History, and it appears in revised accounts of previous Israelite
conquests too. Num 21:25 claims that the Israelites "captured ... and
occupied" the cities governed by Sihon, but Deut 2:34-35 claims, "At
that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them -- men,
women and children. We left no survivors. But the livestock ... we
carried off for ourselves." No reference is made there to occupation,
and the NIV footnote says that the word translated as "destroyed"
refers to "the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the
LORD, often by totally destroying them." In this, then, the Israelites
and the Moabites shared a common religious and military practice.
Mesha also speaks of taking "the vessels of YHWH ... before the face of
Kemosh", an act that parallels David's dedication of captured Moabite
articles to YHWH (II Samuel 8:11). And, just as Kings interprets
Israel's misfortunes and ultimate destruction as the judgment of YHWH,
who "was not willing to forgive" (II Kings 24:2-4), Mesha claims that
Moab's former oppression was brought on Moab because "Kemosh was angry
with his land."
And if I may quote Thomas Cahill on this subject:
The conquest of Canaan, as presented in the Book of Joshua (which
brings the Epic of Israel -- from founding patriarch to final
settlement -- to its conclusion) is a grisly business, reminding us of
just how primitive a society as have been considering. All the
Canaanites -- "men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys"
-- are put to the sword, their settlements burned to the ground, their
objects of precious metal set aside as "holy," "devoted" to the
sanctuary of YHWH -- that is, priestly booty. The Canaanites, too, are
set aside as "devoted" -- that is, marked for extermination. As far
away from the Jordan valley as prehistoric Scotland, the sacrificial
victim, the prisoner of war offered to a god, was called the "Devoted
One." What we have here is human sacrifice under the guise of holy war,
compelling us to recognize how powerful a hold the need to scapegoat
and to shed blood has on the human heart.
-- Thomas Cahill, _The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads
Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels_, New York: Nan A. Talese /
Doubleday, 1998, page 171.
> Why would wiping out a faceless mass have anything to do with that?
Because *those* people don't belong to *your* god. Wiping them out and
making room for *your* god's people is pleasing to *your* god, no?
> > Ever read Philip Yancey's _Disappointment with God_? I believe that's
> > the book where he says that the central thrust of the Bible -- its
> > overarching narrative, if you will -- is that God *learns* to be a
> > parent.
>
> This is an interesting take. I have a hard time thinking of God as
> needing to learn anything. What are some other things you might use to
> exemplify this?
Well, the incarnation, for one thing. If you believe that Jesus is the
incarnate God, then it is through his experience as Jesus that God has
finally learned, *experientially*, what it is to be human.
> > Actually, no, the resurrection does *not* prove Jesus's deity. The
> > whole point of the resurrection is that *all* people will be
> > resurrected, and in this, Jesus just happens to be the first of us.
> > When we are resurrected, we will finally become fully human, just as
> > Jesus is fully human.
>
> Peter, you've brought this up before in our conversations...that
> becoming more like Jesus is essentially becoming more human. Discuss?
> I still can't quite grab a hold of this.
I first came up with this idea years ago (back when _The Last Temptation
of Christ_ came out in 1988, actually) because I was trying to reconcile
the idea that Jesus was "fully human" with the idea that Jesus was
"without sin". I finally concluded that our sin was what made us less
than human -- we were not the humans that God made us to be.
--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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