Helene Tiley
Biology Major,
Oberlin College
Violence in religions and holy books has always been a point of contention. The majority of believers often see their religion as advocating for peace and denouncing brutality, while outsiders frequently focus on the violence in the other religion as a way to delegitimize it. Religious scholars have spent centuries trying to explain away and reinterpret passages from holy texts in which God appears to approve of and even in some cases incite violence. In Christianity, these scholars have done a commendable job focusing our attention on God’s peaceful side and ignoring moments of cruelty. However, it is important to remember that these passages exist in one’s own religious texts in order to understand that the violence found in other scriptures does not make that religion inherently violent.
The Bible over all preaches peace and forgiveness, but the Old Testament has many violent stories scattered throughout. The Old Testament tells the overarching story of the Israelites continually disobeying God and consequently being punished many times over the course of history. The New Testament has far fewer instances of violence throughout its retelling of the story of Jesus and his disciples. The amount of anger and violence in both testaments has actually been quantified to justify the age old conception of the Old Testament God being a god of war and anger while the New Testament God is one of forgiveness and salvation.[1]
This quantification was done through text analysis software that categorized words into various emotions and then counted the number of times different emotions were expressed. While the New Testament’s words only referenced killing and destruction 2.8% of the time, the Old Testament had nearly double that at 5.3%. These statistics have a few caveats however, since they depend on which edition of the Bible is analyzed. In this study, the New International Version of both the Old and New testaments were used. Interestingly enough, when the 1957 English language version of the Quran was analyzed, only 2.1% of its words referenced killing and destruction, which is lower than both testaments of the Bible. Again, while it is intriguing to compare the three statistics, it is important to remember that there are many additional holy books that were not included in the analysis.[2] Counting moments of violence in a book has one major flaw – it does not account for the context of the violence. So what types of violence are found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible? While there are many different types of brutality that can be categorized based on a variety of different criteria, this paper will focus on instances of herem and sexual violence due to their prevalence and relevance to modern history.
Herem translates to “total annihilation,” and it is often used in reference to wiping out the enemy’s entire population. One of the most iconic examples of herem in the Bible is in 1 Samuel, when King Saul is instructed by God to attack the Amalekites and “utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them.” The text goes on to specify that even nursing infants, their mothers, and all livestock should be killed.[3] Another example of this systematic violence occurs in Joshua 1-12, which recounts the Israelites being encouraged by God to slaughter all the people living in the Promised Land so that His chosen people may claim their rightful home. However, there is historical evidence that this did not actually occur, and that the Israelites moved very slowly into the Promised Land while assimilating to the local towns that they encountered.[4] Likewise, King Saul chose not to annihilate the Amalekites counter to God’s wishes. However, King Saul’s disobedience and God’s subsequent punishment by taking Saul’s kingdom away from him are recorded in the Bible, unlike the Israelite’s slow movement through the Promised Land.[5]
In today’s terminology, this sort of complete destruction of a group of people could be called a genocide. In fact, Philip Jenkins, a religion professor at Penn State University says that, “there is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide.” Not only does God appear to be encouraging genocide, but he also punishes Saul for not doing so. This promotes the idea that by destroying enemies of God, one is simultaneously cleansing his or her own personal sins. Unfortunately, this violent interpretation has been used to justify countless atrocities throughout Christianity’s history, including the crusades, during which the Pope proclaimed that Muslims and Jews in the Holy Land were Amalekites to draw on the example set down in Joshua. In addition, passages of herem in the Bible have been cited to legitimize American settlers’ atrocities against Native Americans and the more recent conflicts between Protestants and Catholics.[6]
Just as the books of 1 Samuel and Joshua have been used to condone violence in the modern day, God’s lack of intervention in cases of sexual violence against women has been used by some people to support misogynistic views of women. However, the Bible does a much better job at denouncing sexual violence than it does herem. There are several portrayals of sexual brutality against women in the bible, including the story of the dismemberment of the unnamed concubine in Judges 19 through 21. When a traveling man was threatened with rape from a riotous crowd, he chose to offer up his concubine in order to save himself. After her dead body was returned to the man, he cut her body into 12 pieces to send to the 12 tribes of Israel. Fortunately, her horrific death was avenged when the other 11 tribes went to war against the tribe responsible for raping the concubine. Another example is in the book of 2 Samuel, where Tamar is raped by her half brother Amnon. Once her other brother Absalom finds out about this, he responds by killing Amnon and starting a rebellion against King David, who is their father. Both of these stories show retribution for violence against women, and they encourage men to protect the women around them.[7]
However, other passages from the Bible, and even different interpretations of the same stories, can lead to a much more negative view of how women are treated in the Bible. After Tamar tells her brother Absalom about her rape in 2 Samuel, he replied, “Be quiet for now, my sister; he is your brother; do not take this to heart.” Tamar is then forced to remain in Absalom’s house and, as one interpreter said, “she is locked in the silence, shame, violation, and trauma of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her half-brother.” While the story continues on regarding what happens between the brothers and their father, it hardly mentions Tamar again after this point. This is hardly an acceptable guide for how victims of sexual abuse should be treated today, since it can be used to justify encouraging women to stay silent.[8]
The Book of Revelation is full of depictions of God raining down violence upon the world. This violence is justified as retribution against those who have sinned, and some have interpreted it to suggest rape as an appropriate form of punishment. This idea has deep roots in antiquity, when it was expected that military victors would assert their dominance over the defeated peoples by sexually violating them. In Revelation 2:22-23, a prophetess is singled out for punishment by Jesus, who says that he is going to throw her onto a bed and anyone who commits adultery with her will be punished, unless they repent. While the sexual abusers have the choice to rape her and receive punishment, the false prophetess loses all autonomy in this passage and seems to be forced to commit more sins. He then says he will kill all of her children, implicating both sexual and physical violence. In the same book, the city of Rome is metaphorically likened to a woman who will be stripped naked and punished, known as the Whore of Babylon. Dr. Meredith Warren, a Biblical and Religious Studies professor at the University of Sheffield, feels that these passages, combined with the Book of Revelation’s idea that “the punishment fits the crime,” appears to condone sexual violence against women for their wrongdoings.[9] However, the first passage can also be interpreted as condemning sexual assault against women, since any man who sleeps with the false prophetess is punished unless he repents.
Despite all the brutality described in the Bible that is still being used in order to justify violence in this day and age, one cannot entirely blame scripture for human atrocities against each other. Just as holding a gun does not spontaneously create a murderer, “a sacred text filled with violence is insufficient to trigger mass brutality.” Luckily for humanity, fundamental aspects of our societies, such as empathy and education, protect us from taking the Bible at face value.[10] There is a reason why religious scholars have spent centuries interpreting and trying to understand what God really meant behind the stories in the Bible. Genocide and sexual violence are no longer condoned in mainstream Christianity, but they continue to be present throughout the world. Simply because a holy book can be interpreted by biased people to support their violent actions, does not mean that the book itself condones violence.
[1] Warren, Meredith, “Sexual Violence and Rape Culture in the New Testament,” The Shiloh Project: Rape Culture, Religion, and the Bible, 31 May 2017, http://shiloh-project.group.shef.ac.uk/?p=1404.
[2] Osborne, Samuel, “Violence More Common in Bible Than Quran, Text Analysis Reveals,” Independent, 9 February 2016, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/violence-more-common-in-bible-than-quran-text-analy sis-reveals-a6863381.html.
[3] Hagerty, Barbara, “Is The Bible More Violent Than the Quran?” NPR, 18 March 2010, https://www.npr.org/templates /story/story.php?storyId=124494788.
[4] Rollens, Sarah, “Violence in the Bible: Greatest Hits,” Huffpost, 26 December 2016 https://www.huffingtonpost.com /entry/violence-in-the-bible-greatest-hits_us_5861bd66e4b068764965be0a.
[5] Hagerty, Barbara, “Is The Bible More Violent Than the Quran?” NPR, 18 March 2010, https://www.npr.org/templates /story/story.php?storyId=124494788.
[6] Hagerty, Barbara, “Is The Bible More Violent Than the Quran?” NPR, 18 March 2010, https://www.npr.org/templates /story/story.php?storyId=124494788.
[7] McCoy, Katie, “What Does the Bible Say About Sexual Assault?” The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Babtist Convention, 10 March 2015, https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/what-does-the-bible-say-about -sexual-assault.
[8] “Sexual Abuse in the Bible,” The Evangelical Covenant Church, accessed 9 November 2017, http://www.covchurch. org/abuse/sexual/sexual-abuse-in-the-bible/.
[9] Warren, Meredith, “Sexual Violence and Rape Culture in the New Testament,” The Shiloh Project: Rape Culture, Religion, and the Bible, 31 May 2017, http://shiloh-project.group.shef.ac.uk/?p=1404.
[10] Tarico, Valerie, “30 of the Most Violent Exhortations From the Bible, Torah, and Quran,” Alternet, 23 October 2014, https://www.alternet.org/30-most-violent-exhortations-bible-torah-and-quran.
Bibliography
- Hagerty, Barbara, “Is The Bible More Violent Than the Quran?” NPR, 18 March 2010, https://www.npr.org/templates /story/story.php?storyId=124494788.
- McCoy, Katie, “What Does the Bible Say About Sexual Assault?” The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Babtist Convention, 10 March 2015, https://erlc.com/reso urce-library/articles/what-does-the-bible-say-about -sexual-assault.
- Osborne, Samuel, “Violence More Common in Bible Than Quran, Text Analysis Reveals,” Independent, 9 February 2016, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/violence- more-common-in-bible-than-quran-text-analy sis-reveals-a6863381.html.
- Rollens, Sarah, “Violence in the Bible: Greatest Hits,” Huffpost, 26 December 2016 https://www.huffingtonpost.com /entry/violence-in-the-bible-greatest-hits_us_5861bd66e4b0 68764965be0a.
- “Sexual Abuse in the Bible,” The Evangelical Covenant Church, accessed 9 November 2017, http://www.covchurch. org/abuse/sexual/sexual-abuse-in-the-bible/.
- Tarico, Valerie, “30 of the Most Violent Exhortations From the Bible, Torah, and Quran,” Alternet, 23 October 2014, https://www.alternet.org/30-most-violent-exhortations-bible- torah-and-quran.
- Warren, Meredith, “Sexual Violence and Rape Culture in the New Testament,” The Shiloh Project: Rape Culture, Religion, and the Bible, 31 May 2017, http://shiloh-project.group.sh ef.ac.uk/?p=1404.
