*Joshua 6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that [was] in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword. *
My apologies for trying to get all my Jewish theology questions answered at once…particularly hours before the Sabbath.
Anyway, many Christian sects have relegated their “Old Testament” to a secondary position theologically. When they are uncomfortable with a narrative or commandment, they box it into the “Old Testament” as if the New Testament replaces the old ways. And of course many modern non-religious peoples look at the sins of their forefathers (enslavement, say; conquering…) and simply accept them as sins. Harder to do, of course, when a foundational scriptural narrative describes heinous acts as being direct commandments of the God in charge.
For Jews–particularly orthodox ones?–difficult Scriptures are harder to explain away because there aren’t New Testament passages that contain newer (albeit contradictory) paradigms.
I’m not looking for a long dissertation, but simply wondering if modern conservative Jews struggle with those narratives, or ignore them, or teach them.
I am not looking for folks to jump in and tell me how other religions–including Christianity–are equally or more wicked. I don’t need to be persuaded of that. I want to know how modern orthodox Jews feel about their conquering past, particularly with respect to passages about God-ordained slaughter of innocent conquerees.
Gotta run to work, but the short answer is: Yes, we’re very uncomfortable with these stories, especially about killing the babies and other innocents. The rabbis do offer some explanations to help understand them, but not all of them fits our sensitivities easily, and they take a lot of work. For now, I hope it will suffice to say that we don’t simply say “God said it so it must be okay”, but rather we do wrestle with how God could sanction and even command such things.
It should also be noted that much of the Old Testament is purely historical. There are many accounts of people doing bad things, because those people actually did historically do those things, without any implication of endorsement of their actions.
This does not appear to be one of those cases: Joshua, God’s prophet, specifically says that only Rahab is to be spared. But it’s important to keep in mind when people try to claim that the Bible endorses rape, domestic violence, and various other sorts of villainy.
It wasn’t just cruelty; remember that the Hebrews were passing up the chance to own perfectly good livestock, slave women, etc. They did this because of the demand for absolute purity: the slaughtered were “unclean” to the extent that the Hebrews weren’t even supposed to keep the goods of the slain.
It’s a thoroughly fair argument, when people claim the Bible is “The Living Word Of God” and that every single passage is 100% literally true, and they use such passages to pass judgment against gays, blacks, liberals, global warming, etc. (Naturally, this is more of an issue with fundamentalist Christians, instead of Jews, but the point remains the same.)
The Law is a good general guide for everyday living, but when it gets in the way of a culture’s Divine Destiny…well, everybody bends the rules when they feel they have to.
If I may add another complicating factor to this thread, there’s a substantial school of thought that Joshua’s conquests (along with the story of Exodus) did not occur. The merciless scorched earth policy Joshua and the Hebrews inflicted on the Jericho, Ai, and other Canaanite cities happened many years before they came upon the scene. If that is the case and early Jewish history turns out to have come from a wide selection of vague stories that had little–if any–connection to reality, why would you seemingly go out of the way and attribute to your people acts of inhuman brutality that puts them in the worst possible light? Is it a case of different times and different audiences?
Except that what a lot of these passages say isn’t “You should go beat up people”, or whatever: What they say is “so-and-so beat up such-and-such”. Maybe that is literally true. But so what if it is? Maybe that just means that so-and-so wasn’t a very nice person.
Apparently the silver and gold weren’t quite as “unclean” goods, as these were kept for the Israelites’ treasury–at least in the conquest of Jericho. (Joshua 6:24)
Of course one group’s ethnic cleansing to effect the greater good of “absolute purity” is usually perceived by the slaughterees as genocidal mass murder. As to whether or not it was “just cruelty,” I suppose that’s also a matter of perspective. Still, it seems like almost any third party would consider it cruel to hack babies and children to death, regardless of whatever greater good is being achieved by that.
For those of you commenting who may not be completely familiar with the texts, be aware that the commandment to kill “anything that is breathing” in conquered cities is presented as God’s commandment (Deuteronomy 20:16ff) and the record reflects that this was carried out (Book of Joshua 8:24 relecting the slaughter of all the 12,000 inhabitants of Ai, for example). The conquerees in question are the original inhabitants of the lands, being conquered by the Israelites as they take possession of territory given to them by God. The genocidees are not folks who are otherwise enemies of the Jews or who have any historical quarrels with them.
I am not concerned with whether or not most of us, from the comfort of our modern perspective and ordinary lives, consider these stories to be historically accurate or appropriate behaviour. This isn’t “smear the Jews” day for me and I don’t offer any judgments for events that take place in other historic contexts. I understand that the history of the world is full of the strong conquering and slaughtering the weak. It’s a relatively modern frame of thinking to reject this notion and reject the reasoning behind it.
I’m interested in understanding why various people today think and believe the way they do–atheist, agnostic and believer alike. It’s in that context I am wondering how modern orthodox Jews approach the genocides described in the Tanakh. My assumption is that orthodox Jews do not have the luxury of rejecting outright the rationale behind past Jewish-originated genocides. I already know how Christians spin it. I’m interested in finding out how conservative Jews spin it, particularly in light of their recent history where they have been on the short side of genocide, so to speak. It occurs to me that while liberal theologians can develop a more comfortable spin, it’s much more difficult if one is orthodox enough to accept the texts as accurate, authoritative, and applicable to daily life. For a group that has spent thousands of years parsing out and applying even the smallest nuance of behavioural proscriptions, I am interested in finding out how stories such as those in Joshua do not, for example, call into question the whole paradigm of belief.
I am hereby declaring the existence of Blalron’s Law: “Anytime someone has a burning question they wish to ask about Judaism, it will be on or very near the Sabbath Day and they won’t be able to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Bad timing on my part, and my apologies.
I’d like to bump this once since the Sabbath is over.
If there’s no further interest, my apologies for bumping it.