Interesting Links...
Review of Radiohead at Madison Square Garden – In preparation for Bonnaroo this weekend. Hopefully I get to hear some of their new stuff.
Archaeologists Uncover More Clues Regarding Edomite Civilization – This article relates to the relatively recent debate over whether David and Solomon truly presided over a large kingdom as opposed to a small tribe.
Metacritic.com – This is a great site for music reviews and how I found out about Sufjan Stevens and others. They aggregate rankings from reviews to give each album that comes out an overall score. They have these lists for the last 5 years or so and they also show aggregate critics top ten lists each year. It’s a great way to find out about new music.
And while there are a lot of Da Vinci Code articles that abound, here is a well done series of four articles that each explore the issue from a different angle.
Da Vinci Code and Historical Christianity Part I
Da Vinci Code and Historical Christianity Part II
Da Vinci Code and Historical Christianity Part III
Da Vinci Code and Historical Christianity Part IV
Da Vinci Code and Historical Christianity Part V
Da Vinci Code and Historical Christianity Part V Continued
Da Vinci Code and Historical Christianity Part V Continued Again
Da Vinci Code and Historical Christianity Part VI
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
#47 Canaanite Genocide
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations... then you must destroy them totally... and show them no mercy. Do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them... as the Lord your God has commanded you.”
These statements found in Deuteronomy and Joshua serve as the backdrop to one of the hardest stories in the Bible to reconcile with my beliefs and with the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us, Jesus. It is the story of the genocide of the Canaanites. It is with that in mind that I picked up Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide edited by Stanley Gundry. It contains essays by four scholars, C.S. Cowles, Eugene Merrill, Daniel Gard, and Tremper Longman. What made it especially interesting for me was that I had read some of Longman’s other work that he has done with Dan Allender, so that was at least one familiar voice.
The four essays widely varied in quality. While I liked Longman’s article, I thought that Cowles, who was the least conservative of all of them, actually had the best argument. I thought Merrill’s arguments were poor and would put Gard above Merrill but below Longman. Without a doubt, the three conservative articles shared the most in common in that they all defended the idea that God had actually told Moses and Joshua to conquer the land just as is recorded in the Bible. They solve the tension for themselves by jamming the proverbial square peg in the round hole and saying, “look it fits!” Cowles, to put it simply and most accurately, solves the problem by denying that the Bible records God’s command to the Israelite leaders accurately.
To critics who would say that Cowles selection of scripture is arbitrary he would respond thus,
“... how can we speak of Jesus as the embodiment of deity when he not only fails to incarnate Israel’s image of a warrior God, from whom ‘good and evil comes forth,’ but discloses its exact opposite?.. what is our criterion for selection [of Scripture]? John Wesley would answer in a flash: Jesus! As the full and final revelation of God, Jesus is “the criterion” for evaluating Scripture, the prism through which the Hebrew Scriptures must be read.”
For Cowles, Jesus is the “canon” so to speak. Now from what I’ve read from others who have read Karl Barth, this sounds like the logical extension of his idea that Jesus, as opposed to the Bible, is the true Word/Revelation of God. To loosely paraphrase N.T. Wright who put it something like this in a panel discussion with Anne Rice: Jesus didn’t say all authority has been given unto the books and letters which you chaps will go on to write. He said all authority has been given unto me. Ostensibly, to bring a modern reformed voice into the discussion, Cowles quotes John Stott who says, “our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance... and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ.”
(Disclaimer: I am pretty sure that none of the above mentioned writers would absolutely deny any kind of inspiration in Scripture).
Cowles goes on to say that “Jesus exercised an audacious prophetic authority over the Torah and on how it was to be interpreted... The benchmark of divine revelation in the era of the new covenant was no longer the Word of God mediated by Moses but by Jesus.” He then traces the evolution of the Israelite beliefs, from blaming bad events on God (2 Sam. 24:1) to blaming bad events on Satan (I Chron. 21:1). He goes on to say it was not that the revelation of God was ever full of malice and genocidal intentions but that the Israelites misinterpreted and distorted God’s command. He points out how God’s command to annihilate everything was conveniently modified as the conquest went on.
To be fair, Cowles attempts to point out that the Israelites acted in good faith based on what they understood of God’s will, much as a Crusader might have done back in the middle ages. He compares an Old Testament treatment of the unbeliever to the New Testament treatment by quoting Jack Ford and A.R.G. Deasley: “There can be no doubt that, armed with the Christian gospel and endued with the Holy Spirit, Paul would have entered Canaan as he entered Corinth to show God’s triumph over evil in transformed lives.”
He closes with the following,
“Where was God in Israel’s genocidal conquest of Canaan? In the ‘lost hopes,’ the ‘charred past,’ the “extinguished future,’ of the babies, the infants, the little children – all the ‘Julieks’ of Canaan. It was in those like Melchizedek, the priest of God Most High, and Rahab, who might have glorified God had they been given the chance.” [His quote marks are in reference to Elie Wiesel’s book “Night”.]
These statements found in Deuteronomy and Joshua serve as the backdrop to one of the hardest stories in the Bible to reconcile with my beliefs and with the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us, Jesus. It is the story of the genocide of the Canaanites. It is with that in mind that I picked up Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide edited by Stanley Gundry. It contains essays by four scholars, C.S. Cowles, Eugene Merrill, Daniel Gard, and Tremper Longman. What made it especially interesting for me was that I had read some of Longman’s other work that he has done with Dan Allender, so that was at least one familiar voice.
The four essays widely varied in quality. While I liked Longman’s article, I thought that Cowles, who was the least conservative of all of them, actually had the best argument. I thought Merrill’s arguments were poor and would put Gard above Merrill but below Longman. Without a doubt, the three conservative articles shared the most in common in that they all defended the idea that God had actually told Moses and Joshua to conquer the land just as is recorded in the Bible. They solve the tension for themselves by jamming the proverbial square peg in the round hole and saying, “look it fits!” Cowles, to put it simply and most accurately, solves the problem by denying that the Bible records God’s command to the Israelite leaders accurately.
To critics who would say that Cowles selection of scripture is arbitrary he would respond thus,
“... how can we speak of Jesus as the embodiment of deity when he not only fails to incarnate Israel’s image of a warrior God, from whom ‘good and evil comes forth,’ but discloses its exact opposite?.. what is our criterion for selection [of Scripture]? John Wesley would answer in a flash: Jesus! As the full and final revelation of God, Jesus is “the criterion” for evaluating Scripture, the prism through which the Hebrew Scriptures must be read.”
For Cowles, Jesus is the “canon” so to speak. Now from what I’ve read from others who have read Karl Barth, this sounds like the logical extension of his idea that Jesus, as opposed to the Bible, is the true Word/Revelation of God. To loosely paraphrase N.T. Wright who put it something like this in a panel discussion with Anne Rice: Jesus didn’t say all authority has been given unto the books and letters which you chaps will go on to write. He said all authority has been given unto me. Ostensibly, to bring a modern reformed voice into the discussion, Cowles quotes John Stott who says, “our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance... and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ.”
(Disclaimer: I am pretty sure that none of the above mentioned writers would absolutely deny any kind of inspiration in Scripture).
Cowles goes on to say that “Jesus exercised an audacious prophetic authority over the Torah and on how it was to be interpreted... The benchmark of divine revelation in the era of the new covenant was no longer the Word of God mediated by Moses but by Jesus.” He then traces the evolution of the Israelite beliefs, from blaming bad events on God (2 Sam. 24:1) to blaming bad events on Satan (I Chron. 21:1). He goes on to say it was not that the revelation of God was ever full of malice and genocidal intentions but that the Israelites misinterpreted and distorted God’s command. He points out how God’s command to annihilate everything was conveniently modified as the conquest went on.
To be fair, Cowles attempts to point out that the Israelites acted in good faith based on what they understood of God’s will, much as a Crusader might have done back in the middle ages. He compares an Old Testament treatment of the unbeliever to the New Testament treatment by quoting Jack Ford and A.R.G. Deasley: “There can be no doubt that, armed with the Christian gospel and endued with the Holy Spirit, Paul would have entered Canaan as he entered Corinth to show God’s triumph over evil in transformed lives.”
He closes with the following,
“Where was God in Israel’s genocidal conquest of Canaan? In the ‘lost hopes,’ the ‘charred past,’ the “extinguished future,’ of the babies, the infants, the little children – all the ‘Julieks’ of Canaan. It was in those like Melchizedek, the priest of God Most High, and Rahab, who might have glorified God had they been given the chance.” [His quote marks are in reference to Elie Wiesel’s book “Night”.]
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