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blessedarethebinarybreakers · 2 months

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Wrestling with the Bible's war stories

Spend any solid amount of time with scripture and you'll run into something that perplexes, disturbs, or downright horrifies you. Many of us have walked away from the Bible or from Christianity in general, sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently, after encountering these stories. So how do we face them, wrestle them, and seek God's presence in (or in spite of) them?

In her book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, the late Rachel Held Evans spends a whole chapter on the "war stories" of Joshua, Judges, and the books of Samuel and Kings. She starts with how most teachers in her conservative Christian upbringing shut her down every time she tried to name the horror she felt reading of violence, rape, and ethnic cleansing; I share an excerpt from that part of the chapter over in this post.

That excerpt ends with Evans deciding that she needed to grapple with these stories, or lose her faith entirely.

...But then I ended the excerpt, with the hope that folks would go read all of Inspired for themselves — and I still very much recommend doing so! The whole book is incredibly helpful for relearning how to read scripture in a way that honors its historical context and divine inspiration, and takes seriously how misreadings bring harm to individuals and whole people groups.

But I know not everyone will read the book, for a variety of reasons, and that's okay. So I want to include a long excerpt from the rest of the chapter, where Evans provides cultural context and history that helps us understand why those war stories are in there; and then seeks to find where God's inspiration is among those "human fingerprints."

I know how important it was to Rachel Held Evans that all of us experience healing and liberation, so it is my hope that she'd be okay with me pasting such a huge chunk of the book for reading here. If you find what's in this post meaningful, please do check out the rest of her book! A lot of libraries have it in print, ebook, and/or audiobook form.

[One last comment: the following excerpt focuses on these war stories from the Hebrew scriptures ("Old Testament"), but there are violent and otherwise disturbing stories in the "New Testament" too, from Herod killing babies to all the wild things going on in Revelation. Don't fall for the antisemitic claim that "The Old Testament is violent while the New Testament is all about peace!" All parts of scripture include violent passages, and maintain an overarching theme of justice and love.]

Here's the excerpt showing Rachel's long wrestling with the Bible's war stories, starting with an explanation for why they're in there in the first place:

“By the time many of the Bible’s war stories were written down, several generations had passed, and Israel had evolved from a scrappy band of nomads living in the shadows of Babylon, Egypt, and Assyria to a nation that could hold its own, complete with a monarchy. Scripture embraces that underdog status in order to credit God with Israel’s success and to remind a new generation that “some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7). The story of David and Goliath, in which a shepherd boy takes down one of those legendary Canaanite giants with just a slingshot and two stones, epitomizes Israel’s self-understanding as a humble people improbably beloved, victorious only by the grace and favor of a God who rescued them from Egypt, walked with them through the desert, brought the walls of Jericho down, and made that shepherd boy a king. To reinforce the miraculous nature of Israel’s victories, the writers of Joshua and Judges describe forces of hundreds defeating armies of thousands with epic totality. These numbers are likely exaggerated and, in keeping literary conventions of the day, rely more on drama and bravado than the straightforward recitation of fact. Those of us troubled by language about the “extermination” of Canaanite populations may find some comfort in the fact that scholars and archaeologists doubt the early skirmishes of Israel’s history actually resulted in genocide.

It was common for warring tribes in ancient Mesopotamia to refer to decisive victories as “complete annihilation” or “total destruction,” even when their enemies lived to fight another day. (The Moabites, for example, claimed in an extrabiblical text that after their victory in a battle against an Israelite army, the nation of Israel “utterly perished for always,” which obviously isn’t the case. And even in Scripture itself, stories of conflicts with Canaanite tribes persist through the book of Judges and into Israel’s monarchy, which would suggest Joshua’s armies did not in fact wipe them from the face of the earth, at least not in a literal sense.)

Theologian Paul Copan called it “the language of conventional warfare rhetoric,” which “the knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized as hyperbole.” Pastor and author of The Skeletons in God’s Closet, Joshua Ryan Butler, dubbed it “ancient trash talk.”

Even Jericho, which twenty-first-century readers like to imagine as a colorful, bustling city with walls that reached the sky, was in actuality a small, six-acre military outpost, unlikely to support many civilians but, as was common, included a prostitute and her family. Most of the “cities” described in the book of Joshua were likely the same. So, like every culture before and after, Israel told its war stories with flourish, using the language and literary conventions that best advanced the agendas of storytellers.

As Peter Enns explained, for the biblical writers, “Writing about the past was never simply about understanding the past for its own sake, but about shaping, molding and creating the past to speak to the present.”

“The Bible looks the way it does,” he concluded, “because God lets his children tell the story.”

You see the children’s fingerprints all over the pages of Scripture, from its origin stories to its deliverance narratives to its tales of land, war, and monarchy.

For example, as the Bible moves from conquest to settlement, we encounter two markedly different accounts of the lives of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon and the friends and enemies who shaped their reigns. The first appears in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. These books include all the unflattering details of kingdom politics, including the account of how King David had a man killed so he could take the man’s wife, Bathsheba, for himself.

On the other hand, 1 and 2 Chronicles omit the story of David and Bathsheba altogether, along with much of the unseemly violence and drama around the transition of power between David and Solomon.

This is because Samuel and Kings were likely written during the Babylonian exile, when the people of Israel were struggling to understand what they had done wrong for God to allow their enemies to overtake them, and 1 and 2 Chronicles were composed much later, after the Jews had returned to the land, eager to pick up the pieces.

While the authors of Samuel and Kings viewed the monarchy as a morality tale to help them understand their present circumstances, the authors of the Chronicles recalled the monarchy with nostalgia, a reminder of their connection to God’s anointed as they sought healing and unity. As a result, you get two noticeably different takes on the very same historic events.

In other words, the authors of Scripture, like the authors of any other work (including this one!), wrote with agendas. They wrote for a specific audience from a specific religious, social, and political context, and thus made creative decisions based on that audience and context.

Of course, this raises some important questions, like: Can war stories be inspired? Can political propaganda be God-breathed? To what degree did the Spirit guide the preservation of these narratives, and is there something sacred to be uncovered beneath all these human fingerprints?

I don’t know the answers to all these questions, but I do know a few things.

The first is that not every character in these violent stories stuck with the script. After Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering in exchange for God’s aid in battle, the young women of Israel engaged in a public act of grief marking the injustice. The text reports, “From this comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah” (Judges 11:39–40).

While the men moved on to fight another battle, the women stopped to acknowledge that something terrible had happened here, and with what little social and political power they had, they protested—every year for four days. They refused to let the nation forget what it had done in God’s name.

In another story, a woman named Rizpah, one of King Saul’s concubines, suffered the full force of the monarchy’s cruelty when King David agreed to hand over two of her sons to be hanged by the Gibeonites in an effort to settle a long, bloody dispute between the factions believed to be the cause of widespread famine across the land. A sort of biblical Antigone, Rizpah guarded her sons’ bodies from birds and wild beasts for weeks, until at last the rain came and they could be buried. Word of her tragic stand spread across the kingdom and inspired David to pause to grieve the violence his house had wrought (2 Samuel 21).” ...

The point is, if you pay attention to the women, a more complex history of Israel’s conquests emerges. Their stories invite the reader to consider the human cost of violence and patriarchy, and in that sense prove instructive to all who wish to work for a better world. ...

It’s not always clear what we are meant to learn from the Bible’s most troubling stories, but if we simply look away, we learn nothing.

In one of the most moving spiritual exercises of my adult faith, an artist friend and I created a liturgy of lament honoring the victims of the texts of terror. On a chilly December evening, we sat around the coffee table in my living room and lit candles in memory of Hagar, Jephthah’s daughter, the concubine from Judges 19, and Tamar, the daughter of King David who was raped by her half brother. We read their stories, along with poetry and reflections composed by modern-day women who have survived gender-based violence. ...

If the Bible’s texts of terror compel us to face with fresh horror and resolve the ongoing oppression and exploitation of women, then perhaps these stories do not trouble us in vain. Perhaps we can use them for some good.

The second thing I know is that we are not as different from the ancient Israelites as we would like to believe.

“It was a violent and tribal culture,” people like to say of ancient Israel to explain away its actions in Canaan. But, as Joshua Ryan Butler astutely observed, when it comes to civilian casualties, “we tend to hold the ancients to a much higher standard than we hold ourselves.” In the time it took me to write this chapter, nearly one thousand civilians were killed in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, many of them women and children. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took hundreds of thousands of lives in World War II, and far more civilians died in the Korean War and Vietnam War than American soldiers. Even though America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it takes in less than half of 1 percent of the world’s refugees, and drone warfare has left many thousands of families across the Middle East terrorized.

This is not to excuse Israel’s violence, because modern-day violence is also bad, nor is it to trivialize debates over just war theory and US involvement in various historical conflicts, which are complex issues far beyond the scope of this book. Rather, it ought to challenge us to engage the Bible’s war stories with a bit more humility and introspection, willing to channel some of our horror over atrocities past into questioning elements of the war machines that still roll on today.

Finally, the last thing I know is this: If the God of the Bible is true, and if God became flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ, and if Jesus Christ is—as theologian Greg Boyd put it—“the revelation that culminates and supersedes all others,” then God would rather die by violence than commit it.

The cross makes this plain. On the cross, Christ not only bore the brunt of human cruelty and bloodlust and fear, he remained faithful to the nonviolence he taught and modeled throughout his ministry. Boyd called it “the Crucifixion of the Warrior God,” and in a two-volume work by that name asserted that “on the cross, the diabolic violent warrior god we have all-too-frequently pledged allegiance to has been forever repudiated.” On the cross, Jesus chose to align himself with victims of suffering rather than the inflictors of it.

At the heart of the doctrine of the incarnation is the stunning claim that Jesus is what God is like. “No one has ever seen God,” declared John in his gospel, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known” (John 1:18, emphasis added). ...So to whatever extent God owes us an explanation for the Bible’s war stories, Jesus is that explanation. And Christ the King won his kingdom without war.

Jesus turned the war story on its head. Instead of being born to nobility, he was born in a manger, to an oppressed people in occupied territory. Instead of charging into Jerusalem on a warhorse, he arrived on a lumbering donkey. Instead of rallying troops for battle, he washed his disciples’ feet. According to the apostle Paul, these are the tales followers of Jesus should be telling—with our words, with our art, and with our lives.

Of course, this still leaves us to grapple with the competing biblical portraits of God as the instigator of violence and God as the repudiator of violence.

Boyd argued that God serves as a sort of “heavenly missionary” who temporarily accommodates the brutal practices and beliefs of various cultures without condoning them in order to gradually influence God’s people toward justice. Insofar as any divine portrait reflects a character at odds with the cross, he said, it must be considered accommodation. It’s an interesting theory, though I confess I’m only halfway through Boyd’s 1,492 pages, so I’ve yet to fully consider it. (I know I can’t read my way out of this dilemma, but that won’t keep me from trying.)

The truth is, I’ve yet to find an explanation for the Bible’s war stories that I find completely satisfying. If we view this through Occam’s razor and choose the simplest solution to the problem, we might conclude that the ancient Israelites invented a deity to justify their conquests and keep their people in line. As such, then, the Bible isn’t a holy book with human fingerprints; it’s an entirely human construction, responsible for more vice than virtue.

There are days when that’s what I believe, days when I mumble through the hymns and creeds at church because I’m not convinced they say anything true. And then there are days when the Bible pulls me back with a numinous force I can only regard as divine, days when Hagar and Deborah and Rahab reach out from the page, grab me by the face, and say, “Pay attention. This is for you.”

I’m in no rush to patch up these questions. God save me from the day when stories of violence, rape, and ethnic cleansing inspire within me anything other than revulsion. I don’t want to become a person who is unbothered by these texts, and if Jesus is who he says he is, then I don’t think he wants me to be either.

There are parts of the Bible that inspire, parts that perplex, and parts that leave you with an open wound. I’m still wrestling, and like Jacob, I will wrestle until I am blessed. God hasn’t let go of me yet.

War is a dreadful and storied part of the human experience, and Scripture captures many shades of it—from the chest-thumping of the victors to the anguished cries of victims. There is ammunition there for those seeking religious justification for violence, and solidarity for all the mothers like Rizpah who just want an end to it.

For those of us who prefer to keep the realities of war at a safe, sanitized distance, and who enjoy the luxury of that choice, the Bible’s war stories force a confrontation with the darkness.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

#joshua #biblical interpretation #texts of terror #rachel held evans #inspired #wrestling god #reading and studying the bible #bible tag #long post #quote tag

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a-queer-seminarian · 5 months

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Hey Avery, I love this blog and the binary-breakers blog. They’ve both been a great help to me as I reconstruct my faith. But I’m struggling with something: my fiancé and I are scheduled to light an advent candle during the Sunday morning service at his church. Initially I was really looking forward to it, but by chance I was curious about how old Mary was when she bore Jesus, and when I looked it up I learned she could have been anywhere from 13-16. Moreover, some traditions put Joseph as being much, much older. It’s just hard not to think in a very . . . sinister direction when considering that context, especially as far as God’s role in this is concerned. What did you learn about this topic in seminary, if anything? Is there any hope that my “problematic” interpretation is unnecessary/invalid?

Hi there! I think it's lovely y'all are going to light an advent candle tomorrow, and I hope it's a meaningful experience! I also totally get your dismay about Mary's age at Jesus's birth.

To start with the facts: yes, Mary was almost certainly a teenager when betrothed to Joseph. The Bible doesn't give any confirmation of her age, but in both ancient Jewish culture and Roman culture, girls were usually married off not too many years after they started menstruating.

When it comes to Joseph's age, I do have some slightly relieving news — he's unlikely to have been the old man he's often depicted as in medieval art. (I actually had a fascinating conversation on this topic with queer Catholic art historian Amy Neville on my podcast that you can read or listen to here!) He almost certainly would have been older than Mary, but it's uncertain how much older.

In ancient Jewish culture, the "ideal" marriage was actually one between a man and a woman who were both in their teens, with an expectation that a man marry by age 20. Being able to support a wife & kids was a key indicator of manhood, so men were expected to get married as young as they could. But in practice, it was more common for men to marry in their late 20s / by age 30, which does mean that their wives would often be a good ten or fifteen years younger than they were.

The Bible doesn't tell us what age Joseph was when he and Mary were betrothed, but it's unlikely he was older than 30, just as it's unlikely she was older than 18.

So maybe that's not quite as discomfiting as the image of a much older Joseph, but by our modern standards, it's still pedophilia. So what do we make of that? And what did God think of that??

I believe it is an act of faith to be troubled by elements of scripture that should be troubling, rather than shrugging them off as being "God's will" just because they're in the Bible. I highly recommend Rachel Held Evans' book Inspired on this topic, which has a whole chapter on grappling with difficult biblical texts (you can read a long passage from it here).

While exploring our emotions and giving them holy space, it is also important to accept that biblical cultures are two thousand or more years old — the ancient world had completely different understandings of morality from us. That doesn't mean we shrug off displays of sexism or xenophobia in scripture — bigotry is bigotry, whether an ancient iteration or what we have today — but learning about biblical cultures enriches our understanding of why certain things, like slavery or women having little say in whom they marry, are present in the Bible (and often completely taken for granted by its human authors). It can help us distinguish between what is truly God-ordained, versus what the humans writing down their experience of God presume is God-ordained.

I appreciate how womanist theologian Wil Gafney explores the complexity of appreciating the Bible as an ancient human text while looking for Divine truth "between the lines":

“There is liberation in the gospel even though it is sometimes obscured by the structures of power that benefit from holding people captive. There is also a story in and between the lines of and behind the text we hold so dear that points to a liberation that not even the authors and editors of scripture were able to see clearly or, see their way to record.

Jesus was a rabbi, he would have never wanted us to cling to the letters and syntax of these texts as though they were his very body and blood but rather, his spirit and the Spirit of God, blow through them, ruffling and disturbing them and permitting us to read new truths in and out of them and, not lose sight of the ancient stories that are also part of our shared heritage."

___

When it comes to Mary's young age when betrothed to Joseph and approached by Gabriel to request her "yes" to carrying God's child, your question of God's "role" in that is a vital one to ask.

In Mary's world, a woman without a kyrios, a man to be her protector, was in a very precarious position. Mary has to be betrothed to someone in her teens. We don't know whether God "approves" of this cultural practice, but we can see how God works within this custom to ensure Mary's security throughout her life:

when Joseph plans to divorce her after she becomes pregnant with Jesus, God sends an angel to persuade him to stick by her;

when Jesus is dying on the cross, he ensures that his beloved will protect Mary after he's gone.

Throughout scripture, God largely seems to operate within a people's cultural expectations (with key exceptions, like how God insists Their people treat foreigners the same as members of the group, or when God warns against giving the people a king just because that's what all the other nations have). That's what I see here. Mary must have a husband to be secure in her culture, and I imagine God ensuring that that husband will be one who will treat her well.

Then there's the question of God espousing Mary — of the Holy Spirit "overshadowing" her so that she conceives Jesus. What exactly is this "overshadowing" act? Why is God getting a teen girl pregnant?

Again, Rev. Wil Gafney provides words that wrestle out the good news with this complexity. When reading Luke 1, she urges us to sit with our distress at the image of a powerful "male" figure (Gabriel) approaching a teen girl to tell her what's going to happen to her body:

"Sit with me in this moment, this uncomfortable moment, before rushing to find proof of her consent, or argue that contemporary notions of consent do not apply to ancient texts, or God knew she’d say yes so it was prophetic, or contend that (human) gender does not apply to divine beings, Gabriel or God, and the Holy Spirit is feminine anyway. Hold those thoughts and just sit in the moment with this young woman."

Our distress is holy; it shows our connection to a fellow human being, our thirst for justice. Honor what you feel, don't discard your emotions, even while you join them to sociohistorical understanding.

I highly recommend you read Gafney's whole article, but here's a little more from it that balances ancient culture with modern ethics:

"Yet in a world which did not necessarily recognize her sole ownership of her body and did not understand our notions of consent and rape, this very young woman had the dignity, courage, and temerity to question a messenger of the Living God about what would happen to her body before giving her consent. That is important. That gets lost when we rush to her capitulation. Before Mary said, “yes,” she said, “wait a minute, explain this to me.” ... Did the Ever-Blessed Virgin Mary say, “me too?” Perhaps not. A close reading shows her presumably powerless in every way but sufficiently empowered to talk back to the emissary of God, determine for herself, and grant what consent she could no matter the power of the One asking. And yet in that moment after being told by someone else what would happen to her body, she became not just the Mother of God, but the holy sister to those of us who do say, “Me too.” "

Because Mary was a teen girl, an impoverished Palestinian Jew living under empire, she can extend solidarity to people across all time who experience similar oppression, whose bodily autonomy is equally precarious. Just as her son, God in human flesh, extends solidarity to all who have ever been arrested or executed under an unjust state through his crucifixion. Divine power is expressed in and through those whom the world denigrates and discards — that's why God chose Mary, and why Mary in turn chose God.

Sorry this got so long and has a lot of complex stuff to wrestle with. I honor your courage to ask the hard questions, and I hope you are able to take time throughout Advent to keep pondering! There are no easy answers, but wrestling can yield a blessing.

#mary tag #advent #annunciation #reading and studying the Bible

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theblasianwitch · 2 years

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Stole this from a friend with permission

#ex christian #pro chocie #reproductive rights #abortion #god was never pro life #do christians read the bible #bible shitpost #bible study #twilight academia #shadow academia #human rights #roe v wade #your religion is not mine

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godslove · 2 months

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¹⁷ “You can throw us into the blazing furnace. The God we serve is able to save us from the furnace and your power. If He does this, it is good. ¹⁸ But even if God does not save us, we want you, our king, to know this: We will not serve your gods. We will not worship the gold statue you have set up.”

—‭‭Daniel 3:17-18

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tajcox · 29 days

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holystormfire · 2 months

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beautyandlifestyleblog86 · 10 months

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Amen!!! ✨✨✨

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rescatada · 6 months

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“Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

Proverbs 31:30

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tradmare · 4 months

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”The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.“

‭‭Psalm‬ ‭103‬:‭19‬ ‭ESV‬‬

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psalmlover · 4 months

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“for the lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water and god will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” - revelations 7:17

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blessedarethebinarybreakers · 2 months

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Queer-Affirming Worship Resource: Daily Ripple

"Our goal is to build a framework for discipleship for the 21st Century. With more people leaving traditional churches, we hope to fill in a gap for people who are still looking for faith formation opportunities."

If you want to incorporate queer-affirming, justice-oriented snippets of biblical reflection into your everyday life, Daily Ripple is a great option. Every weekday, subscribers receive a short reflection, ending with a question meant to guide you towards action. (It's free btw!)

If you're curious, here are a few of the recent daily posts that most resonated with me:

Lament as a skill, a gift

Considering neopronouns in light of Jesus's statement that "The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath"

"How does your image of God reflect the image you experience in a mirror?"

I'm excited to be joining Daily Ripple's creative team, starting this week! So y'know, if you're into the stuff I write here — or are looking for ways to bring more intentionality into Lent — now's a great time to check it out :D

#biblical reflection #reading and studying the bible #devotional #worship materials #daily ripple #btw it was previously called reframe -- just got renamed recently!#prayer tag #resources

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a-queer-seminarian · 1 month

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Walter Brueggemann's Chosen? Reading the Bible amid the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2015)

I've been searching for biblical scholarship on disconnecting biblical Israel from the modern nation of Israel. It felt necessary to read Brueggemann's take, as he is one of the best-known Hebrew Bible scholars of our time. So for those interested, here are my thoughts! (Btw, I've posted this same piece on Medium if you prefer reading it there.)

My review in one sentence:

I did find this book helpful in articulating the distinctions between biblical Israel and modern Israel, as well as how both modern Israel and Christian Zionists have co-opted the biblical narrative to serve their own agendas;

however, I strongly disagree with Brueggemann's staunch support of modern Israel, which he maintains as he acknowledges that its military is vastly overpowered and that its treatment of Palestinians is unconscionable.

Summing up my summary:

If you want to know the key points Brueggemann makes without reading through the rest of this post, here they are:

How biblical Israel and modern Israel are not the same:

While biblical Israel was a theocracy relying on theological claims, modern Israel relies on military might and power politics (as well as support from Western powers like the United States).

Deuteronomy and the prophets emphasize that while God gave the Israelites the "promised land" unconditionally, their retaining of that land is conditional on whether they obey Torah. Modern Israel's violence against Palestine is absolutely not obedient to Torah, which emphasizes protection of "the other."

Other key points:

Trying to apply scripture to any modern issue is complex and risky, because scripture is an ancient collection of differing viewpoints; our own personal biases will color which biblical voices we uplift to further our own agendas.

Even so, taking all of scripture together, God's reach is clearly towards "the Other" — towards the most vulnerable of society — and our interpretation should reflect that. Ultimately, none of us should be able to morph biblical symbols or themes into an uncompromising ideology to justify our violence or bigotry.

Zionist Jews more or less hold that Judaism = Israel / the "promised" land. Other Jews emphasize that they are "people of the book" (Torah), which means that Judaism can be practiced anywhere!

Meanwhile, Christian Zionists co-opt Jewish Zionism to serve their own agenda to Catalyze The Eschaton lol (i.e. how to make the Second Coming of Christ happen; learn more about this at christianzionism.org). Christians also appropriate the biblical concept of Jews being God's chosen people for our own uses, which is supersessionist.

My full summary, key quotes, and longer review are below the readmore. Alternatively, read or share this piece as a Medium article.

I'm going to write about the stuff I actually found helpful in this book first, and then end with more critique of Brueggemann's personal politics. After all, I read this book for help with the biblical scholarship side of things, not for opinions about a "solution" to this issue, and the book did deliver on what I came to it for. Even so, awareness of the author's personal views is important in noticing where his scholarship leans towards that bias (as I believe Brueggemann would agree).

Book Summary:

Introduction:

Brueggemann notes that "much has changed" since he wrote a previous book on this topic (The Land, 1977): since then, Israel has become an immense military power, has escalated its occupation of the West Bank, and continues to be "indifferent" to Palestinians' well-being.

Thus this new book aims to clarify that “...peace will come only with the legitimation of the political reality of both Israelis and Palestinians.”

Book thesis: a warning to and hope for Christians:

“It will not do for Christian readers of the Bible to reduce the Bible to an ideological prop for the state of Israel, as though support for Israel were a final outcome of biblical testimony.”

“It is my hope that the Christian community in the United States will cease to appeal to the Bible as a direct support for the state of Israel and will have the courage to deal with the political realities without being cowed by accusations of anti-Semitism.”

Chapter 1: Reading the Bible in the Midst of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Chapter’s aim: determine how to read the Bible responsibly in the face of this conflict — can the Bible guide us at all here? Trying to apply scripture to any contemporary issue is risky, because the Bible’s multiple voices allows us to draw the conclusions we want to.

Modern Israel claims that God gave ancient Israel the “promised” land unconditionally, so that it remains promised to Jews today.

They’re drawing from the ancestral narratives of Genesis

But other biblical voices hold a different point of view: Deuteronomy and the prophets understand the land as given unconditionally but held conditionally — if the people break their end of the bargain, they can (and eventually do!) lose the land.

Among the biblical authors reckoning with Judah’s fall, there are exclusionists and inclusionists

Ezra the exclusionist: “Ezra referred to the community as ‘the holy seed’ (9:2). That phrase intends a biological identity…” Ezra had foreign wives expelled in order to guarantee “the purity of the land and of Israelite society”; modern Israel favors this reading, uses it to argue for “one people in one land”

Post-exilic inclusionists pave the way for expressions of Judaism that welcome the other:

Jonah is sent to show God’s mercy to Nineveh, a major oppressor of Israel; Ruth the Moabite is part of David's line; Isaiah 56:1-8 radically welcomes foreigners & eunuchs [my personal fave passage in all of scripture btw]

So any arguments using one of these two voices tend to fail because the other one is also present in the text

However, throughout scripture God’s reach tends to be towards the other. Thus any view that excludes the other should be met with skepticism – more likely to be about our own fears and hopes “that serve self-protection and end in destruction”

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be resolved until the human rights of the other are recognized and guaranteed. These human rights are demanded by sociopolitical reality. They are, moreover, the bottom line of Judaism that has not been preempted by Zionist ideology.”

Desmond Tutu: “...the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too.”

Chapter 2: God’s Chosen People: Claim and Problem

The Hebrew Bible makes no sense if we ignore its claim that Israel is God’s chosen people — a claim which carries on into Judaism today. The chapter explores whether this chosenness is revocable and if not, who carries it today. Ultimately, it concludes that any “chosen” group must “choose beyond their chosenness” to end the violence.

At least 3 traditions in scripture imply that Israel is God's chosen, all without explaining why God chooses Israel — it's beyond explaining, doesn't need to be explained

Ancestral tradition of Abraham — God promises “to be God to you and to your children after you” (Gen. 17:7). “The drama of the book of Genesis, in each generation, is whether God will grant an heir who can carry the promise and live as God’s covenant partner.”

Exodus tradition — here God declares that “Israel is my firstborn son” (Exod. 4:22). Firstborn son = role of “special privilege and entitlement but also one of responsibility.”

Sinai tradition — “Israel is given opportunity to be God’s ‘treasured possession out of all peoples’ (Exod. 19:5).”

“In these traditions, however, the specific language of “chosen” is not exactly used. It remained for Deuteronomy, which represents perhaps a later tradition, to utilize the most direct and unambiguous rhetoric for Israel’s status as God’s chosen people:

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deut. 7:6).

Deuteronomy gives a reason for this chosenness: it’s not because Israel is more numerous or righteous, but because God “set his heart” on Israel and “loved” Israel (7:7–8; 10:15).

The exilic texts also reaffirm that Israel remains God’s chosen — beautiful in the face of all the seeming rejection of being humiliated and displaced.

But there are two big questions that problematize the chosenness that the biblical authors take for granted:

1. Is this chosenness conditional? Most biblical texts seem to assume it is unconditional and permanent; but places like Exodus 19:5 and parts of the prophets name a conditional if — that the people’s covenantal chosenness depends on their obedience to the Torah.

2. Has this theological claim morphed into an ideological claim that functions as self-justification? — particularly in the context of the modern state of Israel, but also…

Christians have appropriated the concept of being “God’s chosen”

The United States has too — we are the “city set on a hill” according to the first Puritan governor; we are God’s emancipated, coming from the “wilderness” of Europe to the “promised land” of the New World. And now we are Moses to the “benighted peoples” of the world, butting in with our military to “save” them.

Even liberation theology takes the concept of chosenness and applies it to the poor. “Jon Levenson, a noted Jewish interpreter, has protested against the notion of the poor as God’s chosen people, as though to usurp the claim from the Jews to that status.”

Another issue: what about the unchosen?

Genesis’ ancestral tradition is aware of other peoples, makes a place for them “as those who are blessed by the life of Israel”

Paul takes this “good news” that God’s promise reaches beyond Israel to argue for the “admission of Gentiles”

Prophets also explore this issue — through Amos 9:7 and 3:2 we find that Israel is “chosen for obedience but without monopoly of God’s saving deeds, especially when presumed upon.”

Ultimately, those who are “chosen” — be they Israel, USA, or church — must “choose beyond their chosenness” or expect present violence to yield to a future of endless violence.

Chapter 3: Holy Land?

Digging deeper into the biblical theme of land in the light of all that’s happening in Palestine. Even though it’s only a “small ingredient” in the current conflict, it is one that needs to be explored. Within Judaism, Zionists equate Judaism and the land, while other Jews focus on being "people of the book" (Torah), meaning that Judaism can be practiced anywhere!

Reiterates how “the land is given to Israel unconditionally, but it is held by Israel conditionally."

Adds that one thing that leads to disobedience, which then leads to land loss, is “the temptation to self-sufficiency” (drawing from Deut. 6:18)

Another interesting point is that the Torah, “the most authoritative textual tradition in the Hebrew Bible, ends before Israel enters the land (see Deut. 34:4). That is, Israel’s original or earliest tradition is not about having the land; it is about anticipating the land.”

Turns out that the prophets’ “if” is correct; the land is losable, as Israel and Judah do fall, with many Judeans deported

And yet — “The story does not end with land loss, displacement, and grief. Most stunningly, in this season of deeply felt abandonment there wells up a bold and vigorous reassertion of the land promise.”

The prophets argue that God will “reperform the land promise”

One key question: how central and indispensable are the land and land promise for Judaism’s existence?

The Zionist movement argues Judaism = the land (disregarding the Deuteronomic if)

But in the 5th century BCE as Judaism was developing, different Jews had differing opinions; some exiles were not “smitten with” returning to the land.

“One compelling alternative to land theology is the recognition that Judaism consists most elementally in interpretation of and obedience to the Torah in its requirements of justice and holiness. Such intense adherence to the Torah can be done anywhere at all.”

[PS: if you're interested in an anti-Zionist Jewish view from the early 1900s, check out this article on the General Jewish Labour Bund]

Second key question: Is today’s Israel the biblical Israel?

No. While biblical Israel was a theocracy relying on theological claims, modern Israel relies on military might and power politics.

Furthermore, any appeal to theology for self-justification holds no weight among Israel’s “adversaries”; it’s just not compelling to anyone outside Zionism.

Chapter 4: Zionism and Israel

Opens with discussion of “Zion” as the poetic name for Jerusalem, has poetic force

The restoration of Zion is a primary theme in places like Second Isaiah

Delves into the history of Jewish Zionism, from the nineteenth century, through the Balfour Declaration, into 1948. [JVP has an article that delves into this history more thoroughly.]

By 1967, this ideology had “hardened” into something completely uncompromising, wanting Palestinians to just go away.

Differences between Jewish and Christian Zionism, and different branches under each umbrella

It seems like Brueggemann would call himself a Christian Zionist, of the kind that resists weird End Times versions of it, but wholeheartedly supports Israel even while insisting on critique of its violence…

His problem with Zionism isn’t that we shouldn’t have an ethnostate or whatever, but that Zion has been morphed from a biblical “symbol” into an uncompromising ideology, and thus Israel uses Zionism to claim itself beyond critique.

Brueggemann's closing statement: “...it is characteristically the ongoing work of responsible faith to make such a critique of any ideology that co-opts faith for a one-dimensional cause that is taken to be above criticism. Indeed, ancient prophetic assessments of the Jerusalem establishment were just such a critique against a belief system that had reduced faith to a self-serving ideology. Because every uncompromising ideology reduces faith to an idolatry, such critical work in faith continues to be important.”

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Key Quotes

For even more excerpts from the book, visit this Google Doc.

On the complexity of biblical interpretation/application

“We may draw these conclusions about reading the Bible.

It is important in any case to recognize that the Bible refuses to speak in a single voice. It argues with itself, and we must avoid simplistic, reductionist readings of any ilk.

Any “straight-line” reading from ancient text to contemporary issues is sure to be suspect in its oversimplification. Such a reading disregards the huge impact of historical distance between the text and our current context.

Such a straight-line reading that ignores historical distance is most likely to be propelled by an ideology, that is, by a deeply held conviction that is immune to critical thought and is unswayed by argument, by reason, or by the facts on the ground. That is, it disregards complexities in the process of interpretation. A one-dimensional, uncritical appropriation of the ancient land promises for the state of Israel is exactly such a conviction that is immune to critical thought, reason, or facts on the ground. ...

...Tribalism, often in Christian practice expressed as sectarianism, tends to absolutize its claims to the exclusion of all else. The tribe or sect characteristically imagines that it has a final formulation, a final interpretation. Absolutist readings of the Bible lead to violent actions against one’s opponent…"

On the Land

“The dispute between Palestinians and Israelis is elementally about land and secondarily about security and human rights. ...while the state of Israel continues to 'negotiate' with the Palestinians, the dominant Zionist appeal to land promises continues to hold intransigently to the exclusionary claim that all the land belongs to Israel and the unacceptable other must be excluded, either by law or by coercive violence.” (ch. 1)

“As we ponder the grand sweep of this vision that runs from Abraham to King Cyrus of Persia, two questions arise: First, how central and indispensable are the land and the land promise for Judaism’s existence? The contemporary Zionist movement would have us believe that Judaism is equated with the land and, consequently, with support for the state of Israel as the present embodiment of the land of promise. ...That approach, however, amounts to a particular interpretive trajectory that is not required by the tradition, and it disregards the Deuteronomic if: that the land is held conditionally. This interpretive position, like every interpretive position, requires a careful reading of carefully selected texts. More crucial is the recognition that while the land tradition is of immense importance for the textual tradition, Judaism as it took form in the fifth century BCE was in fact not uniform and represented a variety of interpretive possibilities. Specifically, there were many Jews in exile who were not smitten with the land of Judah and who did not feel compelled by faith to return to the land. One compelling alternative to land theology is the recognition that Judaism consists most elementally in interpretation of and obedience to the Torah in its requirements of justice and holiness. Such intense adherence to the Torah can be done anywhere at all. Thus, land theology is, at least in some traditions of Judaism, relativized by the recognition that Judaism is a “religion of the book” (the Torah) and consists in the practice and interpretation of texts. Robert Alter has noted that Judaism is primarily a “culture of interpretation” that refuses absolutizing any conclusions from the text; we may assume that this includes absolutizing conclusions about the land…” (ch. 3)

Distinctions between Modern Israel & Biblical Israel

“...there is a huge difference between the ancient Israel of the biblical text and the contemporary state of Israel. While defenders of the state of Israel insist upon the identity of the two, many more-critical observers see that there is a defining difference between a covenant people and a state that relies on military power without reference to covenantal restraints.” (Q&A)

"...[T]he state of Israel can, like any nation-state, make its legitimate political claims and insist upon legitimate security. But appeal to the ancient faith traditions about land promise in order to justify its claims carries little conviction except for those who innocently and uncritically accept the authority of that ancient story. At most, appeal to the land tradition can “energize the base,” that is, evoke support from adherents to the ancient promise. Such an appeal, however, carries little if any force for any who are outsiders to that narrative. It is no claim to be used in negotiations because it is grounded in theological claims to which Israel’s adversaries will give no weight. ...The appeal to the biblical promise must simply be set alongside very old claims made by the Palestinians." (ch. 3)

On Chosenness — what about the "unchosen"?

“The matter of other peoples who are not chosen is a very important element in any talk about the chosen people. In the tradition of the ancestors in Genesis, there is clearly an awareness of the other peoples and an effort to make a place for them as those who are blessed by the life of Israel. ... One can, moreover, see at the edge of the Old Testament an inclusion of other peoples in the sphere of God’s attentiveness, an inclusion that intends to mitigate any exclusionary claim by Israel. In Amos 9:7, in which the prophet intends to critique sharply the pride of Israel, he makes a claim that God enacts exoduses for other peoples as well as for Israel:

Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? says the Lord. Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?

In the later lines of this poem, the prophet names ancient Israel’s two most immediate enemies, the Philistines and the Arameans, as recipients of God’s deliverance. The text does not go so far as to name them as chosen of God, but the claim may be implied. Of course, it is this same Amos who says in his polemic against Israel:

You only have I known [chosen] of all the families of the earth; Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” (3:2)

In this verse, the prophet acknowledges the singular chosenness of Israel, but it is that chosenness that evokes harsh divine judgment. The evident tension between Amos 9:7 and 3:2 indicates the edginess of the claim of chosenness, thus chosen for obedience but without monopoly of God’s saving deeds, especially when presumed upon. (ch. 2)

Making Room for the Other

“Welcome to the other appears to be a romantic dream in the world of real politics, and certainly current Israeli policy would find such openness to the Palestinians to be absurd. But if welcome to the other is considered romanticism, so ultimate exclusion of the other is a suicidal policy, because the other will not go away and cannot simply be wished away or forced away. As a result, the question of the other becomes the interpretive key to how to read the Bible. The other can be perceived, as in Zionist perspective, as a huge threat to the security of the state and the well-being of the holy seed. Conversely, the other can be perceived as a neighbor with whom to work at shalom.” (ch. 1)

Brueggemann's Suggestion for How Christians Should Respond to the so-called "Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"

“In the end, Israelis and Palestinians are finally neighbors and have long been neighbors. When ideology coupled with unrivaled power is preferred to sharing the neighborhood, the chance for neighborliness is forfeited. Christians must pay attention to the possibility for neighborliness and must refuse protection and support for neighborhood bullies. Christians must support political efforts to strengthen the hand of the “middle body” of political opinion among Israelis and Palestinians to overcome the dominance of extremists on both sides who seem to want war and victory rather than peace and justice. Christians must call for new thinking in the U.S. government and do some new thinking that no longer assumes the old judgments about the vulnerability of Israel. Prophetic faith is characteristically contemporary in its anticipation of the purpose of God; it insists on truth-telling that is attentive to bodily suffering, and it refuses ideological pretenses. It will tell the truth in the face of distortions that come with ideological passion and unrestrained power. When truthfulness about human suffering is honored, new possibilities of a just kind can and do emerge. Thus, being able to differentiate between old mantras and urgent truthfulness is a beginning point for faithful engagement in the real world.” (Q&A)

“God’s Holy Mountain” by Oscar (Asher) Frohlich

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Returning to My Disagreements with Brueggemann’s Politics

In the introduction to Chosen? (2015), Brueggemann alludes to his previous book on this topic, The Land (1977). He admits that that book needs revising, as it didn’t contend with Palestinians’ suffering under Israeli occupation. Yet he is quick to emphasize right off the bat (and in pretty much every chapter) that he continues to support the state of Israel wholeheartedly, considering its continued existence necessary for the security of Jews worldwide:

“Mindful of the long history of Christian anti-Semitism and the deep fissure of the Shoah [e.g. Holocaust], we have surely been right to give thanks for the founding of the state of Israel and the securing of a Jewish homeland. But the issues have altered dramatically as the state of Israel has developed into a major military power that continues administrative-military control of the Palestinian territories.” (Acknowledgements)

For alternative perspectives, I recommend anti-Zionist Jewish perspectives like here, and here, and here, and here. In short, shipping all Jews off to a settler colony is not the solution to bigotry and violence against Jews; instead, every culture actually dealing with its antisemitism is.

(Then there are the glaring facts that Israel is racist about which Jews it prioritizes; has a long history of mistreating Shoah survivors; and discriminates against Jews who show support for Palestine. If an ethnostate is truly the only way to keep all Jews safe, Irael is majorly failing that assignment.)

But back to the book: Brueggemann takes for granted that modern Israel is the correct response to the problem of worldwide antisemitism — in essence, to what he calls the “continuing vulnerability of Jews.” Still, he sees that Israel’s military has “long since moved past the vulnerability of the beginning of a fragile state” (Q&A).

So keep the state, but reduce its military; that’s Brueggemann’s solution in a nutshell — at least insofar as he states it in this book. To be fair, this text’s goal isn’t to formulate an airtight “solution” to the violence against Palestine. Still, what solution Brueggemann does suggest in Chosen? can be summed up in this bit from the Q&A at the end:

“There is, in my judgment, no realistic hope for any two-state solution. For all of the pretense and obfuscation of Israel, it never intends to allow a viable Palestinian state, so two-state negotiations simply buy more time for the development and expansion of the state of Israel.

It may be that the solution will be found in a one-state solution that insists upon well-protected human rights for Palestinians while the Israeli occupation is fully recognized. A settlement will require an even-handed engagement by the Great Powers (including the United States) as well as acts of greater courage and political will by the immediate parties to the conflict.”

Again, I know it’s not his goal to come up with a perfect solution, but I have so many questions about this version of a one-state solution. For one thing, will Palestinians be made full citizens of Israel in order to ensure their rights are protected? Or will they permanently be second-class (non-)citizens / trapped in this limbo of not being allowed to exist as their own recognized state? What about their right to self-representation? Furthermore, must Israel remain an ethnostate in order to be this supposed safe-haven for all Jews?

My last comment on Brueggemann’s perspective is that, if he does understand that Israel is the oppressor of the Palestinians, he still — at least as of the writing of this book in 2015 — has work to do in un-internalizing a mindset that pretends the two sides are equally responsible for this “conflict.” Indeed, the use of the term “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” in the book’s very title highlights this issue — this term implies equal footing between the two sides, rather than making it clear that Israel is the aggressor and any violence that Palestinians respond with is resistance to that aggression, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and yes, even genocide.

Along with the book’s title, other comments throughout the text imply equal footing between Israel and Palestine. Here are two examples, both from chapter 1:

“…Israeli Zionists want Palestinians to go away. Conversely many Arabs wish Israel would go away. But they will not.”

Palestinians’ and Israelis’ fear of the other, said to be grounded in the Bible, has been transposed into a military apparatus that is aimed at the elimination of the other…”

Both of these comments fail to emphasize the different sources of these wishes and fears for Israelis versus Palestinians. For Israel, the wish that Palestinians would “go away” is a desire to take the land from — to literally seize and dwell in the homes — Palestinians. Meanwhile, any Palestinians who wish Israelis would just “go away” are wishing to be left alone in their own homes that they built, the agricultural lands they have long tended.

Same with their respective “fear of the other”: Israel spins propaganda to represent Palestinians as hateful and antisemitic, a threat to Israeli’s peace, taking incidents of resistance out of context to do so; Palestinians’ fear of Israelis is based in real and recurring incidents of ethnic cleansing, imprisonment and torture, and daily deprivations and insults.

To speak of the desires and fears of both sides as if they are equivalent, without carefully emphasizing the power dynamic between oppressor/oppressed, colonizer/colonized, is negligent and dangerous. It does nothing to “take seriously” “the brutalizing, uncompromising policy of Israel toward the Palestinian people and their political future” (Q&A) as Brueggemann purports as his aim.

This article, “The Myth of the Cycle of Violence,” discusses the problems with treating Israeli and Palestinian violence equally.

Wrapping up

I am very curious to know whether and how Brueggemann’s perspective between the time of this book’s publication in 2015 and today. How did he respond to the explosion of violence in 2021? To October 7, 2023, and Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza? Does he continue to believe that the state of Israel is necessary for Jewish well-being worldwide? I only did a cursory search; if anyone has any information on Brueggemann’s views today, please do share.

Or if you have thoughts of Brueggemann's take, share that too!

Finally, if anyone has suggestions for more texts I should read as I explore the relationship between scripture and modern Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine, let me know!

Stay tuned for more summaries and reviews. In the meantime, one source I recommend but won’t be reviewing is Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s recent newsletter post “Debunking the conquest narrative.”

#christians for palestine #biblical studies #biblical israel #modern israel #walter brueggemann #reading and studying the bible #bible tag #zionism #essays #review #long post #chosen? reading the bible amid the israeli-palestinian conflict #log #spring 2023

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