After a brief hiatus thanks to holidays and conferences about nothing, regular blogging should be back. I’ve yet to catch up on the blogging-the-Bible posts but I was spurred to write about the Bible and terrorism thanks to this recent post by Keren Tuch
The Jewish festival of Pesach (Passover) has just finished — the festival commemorates the events of the Exodus where the Israelites were taken out of slavery in Egypt by YHWH. One of the most salient parts of the exodus is the slaying of the firstborn, the culmination of the 10th plague, where YHWH himself killed the firstborn in every Egyptian family over a single night in order to show himself to be a badass and to get people to plead with the pharaoh to let the Israelites go. The Biblical text itself has nothing but gloating over YHWH’s slaughter: pharaoh wants to let the Israelites go but YHWH specifically hardens his heart (ie. impinges on pharaoh’s “free will”) in order for Israel to make a much more dramatic exit over the wailing of tens of thousands of mothers.
Naturally the worldview even in the first few centuries of our era was different. A midrash (rabinnic parable) tells of the angels rejoicing when YHWH drowns pharaoh’s army in an incident that comes shortly after the 10th plague. YHWH is furious: “my creatures are dying and you rejoice?”. This is supposed to be profound in that paradoxes and contradictions are often meant to be profound within religious systems. But even so, the whole slaying of the firstborn is 100 times more uncomfortable to most reasonable Jews today*, hence Keren’s post about whether or not the killing of the firstborn.
Of course there’s a lot to be said about something like the 10th plague but others have said it already, and better than I would have. What I found interesting is that the Bible contains some of the world’s first documented cases of terrorism. What YHWH did to the Egyptians (let’s ignore the non-historicity for a second and look at only the lesson presented!) is to attack civilians for the specific purpose of terrorising the population. The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. “For otherwise,” they said, “we will all die!” (Ex 12:33). It wasn’t even collateral damage, YHWH deliberately chose to do it in the most dramatic, bloodthirsty way possible for its own sake.
This brings me to Samson from the book of Judges. This story is commonly known: his strength from his long hair (actually his Nazirite vows), Delilah cutting it off and Samson losing his strength, his capture by the Philistines, the putting out of his eyes and so forth. Let us look at the end of the story:
And it came to pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said: ‘Call for Samson, that he may make us sport.’ And they called for Samson out of the prison-house; and he made sport before them; and they set him between the pillars. And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand: ‘Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house resteth, that I may lean upon them.’ Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson made sport. And Samson called unto the LORD, and said: ‘O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray Thee, and strengthen me, I pray Thee, only this once, O God, that I may be this once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.’ And Samson took fast hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house rested, and leaned upon them, the one with his right hand, and the other with his left. And Samson said: ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ And he bent with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead that he slew at his death were more than they that he slew in his life.
Here, he is killing others by killing himself as a simple tactic of trying to maximise Philistine casualties — civilian or otherwise. There’s obviously no indication of any kind of condemnation for the act. Furthermore, the story of Samson is so ubiquitous, so widely taught and well-known that most people probably class him as a hero by default, without actually thinking about his actions.
A lot of political talk from the side of Israel says, correctly, that targeting civilians is never ok, that it is always, completely and forever off limits. It’s quite ironic that some of the same people who condemn Hamas praise the supposed historical equivalents like Samson (and of course YHWH himself).
Attitudes like collective punishment, attacking civilians, mass slaughter and xenophobia were very common in the ancient world. The Bible is nothing special in glorifying these. It is however special in sitting in such an ironic position with respect to religious people’s anti-terror rhetoric.
*Although a lot of people will give excuses about why it wasn’t so bad, I think the mere fact that they’re giving excuses shows their discomfort. Someone at the extremes of fundamentalism will not give any excuses.
6 comments ↓
Nice post – I had to share it around a bit.
Thanks
Egypt… Are you sure yhwh was going for terrorism, and not simply ‘shock and awe’? Oh, wait. Those are rather similar concepts aren’t they?
Sampson…
Actually the interesting thing about that is the loss of his powers. Ultimately, his powers were supernatural and came from yhwh; conditional upon keeping his vows. Sampson never chose to cut his hair off. It was removed without his consent. And yet yhwh makes no difference between wilfully giving something away and having it taken by force or trickery. Not to make light of the subject, but Sampson was effectively ‘drug-raped’.
So not only does the bible say that suicide murder is okay. But apparently the only way a rape victim is always at fault, and the only way they can make up for ‘their’ sin is to kill themselves. Hmm. Lovely.
And now you know! And knowing is half the battle!
My naive reading of Samson was that the loss of his powers comes as a punishment from cohorting with a non-Jewish prostitute, being careless and disrespectful of his Nazirite vows, etc etc.
Not to mention that she asked him twice before about the source of his strength and tried to do that very thing so it was quite obvious that she was up to no good — if anything the story says nothing about any gods and might have originated as a secular Israelite folk tale that warns against the dangers of being pussywhipped, especially by evil shiksas.
The issue you write about here is fascinating and has been inspiring people from all times and various traditions. It is in fact a question of the Bible’s and God’s morality and thus a question whether religion has any authority. It at least seems like that, excuse me if I oversimplified your point. Undoubtedly, there are plenty accounts in the Bible that seem to promote violence, war, murder, discrimination and lack of compassion and present them as if they were pleasing God. I believe we shouldn’t avoid facing the truth of it by escaping into denial and talking about these things as a “metaphor” of any kind. Sure, it is real. And precisely therefor it is valuable, because it tells a story of who we are. The most true story in fact. But there is something we ought to be aware of either – the Bible isn’t simply an integral, complete and consistent narrative. It consists of many tradition, many voices and many perspectives – it’s nature is polyphonic, so that it seems sometimes to contradict itself. The simplest division we can make is to the institutional, judicial tradition and the prophetic one. The prophets speak of God as if he were gently, good, caring, compassionate, merciful and loving. When prophet Elijah was hiding in his cave, God passed by – “and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” God behaves once as yet another tribe God, fighting for his people, but somewhere else he states that he is “God of Syria, of Egypt etc.” So we can’t perceive the Bible as a single lesson, a consistent, ultimate revelation. We wrote it and we contained in it an honest account of who we are. But, as we can easily observe, God can’t be defined so easily. We could quote the prophets writing about the lion and the lamb lying together, God being all in all and ubiquitous reconciliation. This difficult, revolutionary perspective does not wipe out all the previous stories, battles, bloodsheds and other multifarious painful incidents. Because that’s who we are. What we do with it, how we read it, is another question. So I don’t like the tone of accusing the Bible of promoting terrorism, because if one read it and reflected upon it, it would cease to be that simple and obvious. And of course – it’s been misused by both Jews and Christians to justify acts of violence. But, on the other hand, even the New Testament has. And it continues just the prophetic narration.
So you claim that the god of the Bible is pleased by atrocities and this is not a metaphor but it’s valuable because it tells a story of who we are? What story? It largely tells a story of who YHWH is supposed to be, but what does him being pleased at the smell of sacrifices tell us about us today?
Plus if these aren’t metaphor how can using them to justify violence be misuse as opposed to correct use?
In terms of accusations, I was not accusing, it was closer to stating. And yet if instead of the word “Bible” all my posts had the phrase “certain books/authors/passages/sources from the books that some people consider the Bible, although they may be contradicted by other books/authors/passages/sources” then it would be a dreary blog indeed.
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