Part One – Yahweh and the Rest
When one reads through the Hebrew Scriptures from the beginning it doesn't take long before you get into some challenging scenarios in amongst a lot of that extraordinary history. Some of the details of violence, warfare and conquest appear to reach a kind of apex, or nadir depending on your perspective, as Israel starts its march into the Promised Land towards the end of Deuteronomy and into Joshua. Here we find descriptions like, “They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, sheep, and donkey, with the edge of the sword”. (Joshua 6:21 NASB) It all sounds pretty extreme, brutal and ungodly. The regular and continued occurring of this type of bloodshed has lead many critics of the Jewish God Yahweh to agree with the following famous quote by the atheist Richard Dawkins.
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
“The God Delusion”
It comes across as a clever piece of rhetorical flourish, doesn't it? Very smart and very cute. But is it fair? Is it accurate? And is Yahweh nothing more than a reconstituted brute after all when compared to all the deities that were held in the common imagination? How does He measure up against the standard of other well known divinities whose activities were commonly believed and accepted by other societies around this era? The answers to these questions are not that obscure or difficult to find as it turns out. In fact I'm not sure what metaphorical planet Richard Dawkins is from. To make the preceding assertion about Yahweh, as he does so stridently, and to do so in the face of so many other commonly known facts, well it borders on the absurd. There are huge numbers of readily accessible, highly credible stories written down that recount some truly odd behaviours that were engaged in by lots and lots of gods other than Yahweh. To make my point I think a little historical context injected here would be appropriate. I don't know too much about the many pagan gods, and you could fit my knowledge of the Greek gods on a postage stamp. But in spite of these limits the following small snippets of detail are very well known, and commonly accepted facts by all.
The Greek Gods
Ouranos (Uranus) and Gaea were the prime progenitors of the Greek gods.
They had many offspring who were the known as the Titans.
Gaea got sick of Ouranos' unlimited lust and grew tired of bearing endless numbers of children.
To slow things down she got her youngest son Kronos to use a later famous scythe to cut off his father's genitals and throw them in the ocean.
This bold and dramatic action by Kronos put him into the very powerful position as the new ruler of the Titans, and he in turn produced many children with Rhea (his sister).
However, along the line he is warned by others that fate has it in for him. One day his offspring will grow stronger than him and will ultimately overthrow him, so he eats them all while they are babies.
Rhea, while unable to stop him, tricks him and saves the last one of them called Zeus. Many years later he actually vomited up the rest of Zeus' siblings.
After years of savage warfare between the Titans of Kronos and the Olympian gods, the now mature Zeus cuts up and kills Kronos with the same scythe that had been used by him to castrate his Zeus's grandfather. (Note that these gods were engaged in many years of continued and bloody violence)
This victory then puts Zeus in a powerful position just like his father Kronos, so he eats his children too.
And to continue the high standards of virtue already set by him and others Zeus becomes a serial rapist.
We'll skip over the finer details of his activities that include bestiality and incest to move on to Pandora and her impact on mortals.
Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mortals. Zeus was so enraged by this action that he decided to really punish both Prometheus and the mortals. What happened to Prometheus is well known, (you know, chained to a rock...) but what he did to mortals is a bit less straight forward. He had a sort of whip around with all the other gods to create the woman Pandora. She was an amalgam of all their contributions. Her name actually means all-giving or all-gifts.
Then he gave her a jar (not a box) and filled it with all the woes, plagues, pestilence, destruction, hatred and misery that he could find. She was then released onto man with her jar, which at some time was opened, and then emptied of all the sickness and diseases stored in there.
The future history of mortal man was thus determined by this punishment. But remember the mortals had done nothing wrong. All they did was accept the free gift of fire from Prometheus. Such total vindictiveness towards mortals by Zeus was capriciousness in the extreme.
It has been subsequently suggested by many that the Greek and Roman gods actually despised mortals specifically because they weren't gods.
And there are similar bizarre stories about Hades, Medusa, Atlas, Sisyphus, Poseidon, Narcissus, Hercules, Prometheus, Venus, Aphrodite, Dionysus and on and on ad infinitum.
The few details above are only a microscopic dot of information in commonly accepted understandings by the Greeks of the behaviour of a number of their gods. Believe me, if you look into this stuff there is so much more murder, rape, incest, jealousy, out of control rage, matricide, patricide, and infanticide than you and I would care to imagine. Concepts like psychopathy, narcissism and sociopathy spring instantly to mind. And remember this is just the Greeks. Elsewhere there were the Egyptians, the Romans, the Celts, the Mesopotamians, the Nordic gods, Germanic gods, Hindu gods. The Greeks however are very interesting because about 500 years later they gave us Homer and Hesiod, and 1,000 years later they also gave us Plato and Aristotle, and these are supposed to be both the intellectual and cultural seed bed of the western mind..
Everyday life for the average Joe like you and me at that time was an enigmatic, unpredictable and extremely brittle nonstop battle. But the monumentally more violent and chaotic world of the gods was just “over there” on top of Mount Olympus, and this divine realm of course set the template for daily life in the now.
So what did Yahweh, who according to Richard Dawkins was so much worse than this, offer as an alternative to all this capriciousness?.
For a start there was only one of Him and whoever and whatever He was that's all you had to get to know to understand the truth of the divine realm.
He claimed he made everything, but more particularly He says He made it perfect. It was beautiful, plentiful, predictable, sufficient and free.
But for some reason we – as His extra special creation – decided that all this limitless perfection wasn't enough for us and we rebelled, or didn't understand, or didn't trust, or we just did something very stupid. Whatever the reasons we made some very poor choices and compromised all of His creation.
This outcome however wasn't enough to make Yahweh act like a Greek god. He didn't despise mortals. He actually sort us out and said He still loved us and was going to set in train a process where we would be forgiven, everything between Him and us would be put right by Him, and His values of righteousness and love would be shown to be the only truth.
This plan was not simple and straight forward however. There where huge, reality-defining issues at stake and there was a new thing in the universe called “evil” that had to be dealt with.
A lot was going to have to happen. A lot of it would be out in the open, but there would also be behind the scenes activities. But no children were going to have to be eaten, nor was there going to be the necessity of parents being castrated, murdered, or continually raped. Sadly things like these might happen between we humans, but that was clearly because of the “evil”, and not because of Yahweh.
He also had some good rules for us to understand, and if we followed them it would be very much to our benefit and our advantage, and ultimately we would prosper as a direct consequence.
Firstly, we had to accept and acknowledge that all that other rubbish about Titans and Jars of Woe was totally meaningless. He was the only real God and there neither is, nor ever has been, anyone else.
So don't waste your time making idols and images of Him or for Him, and trying to appease Him. They are a waste of effort and resources.
If you are going to speak or use his name, do so carefully.
Put aside some regular time every week to rest and contemplate the significance of his love for his creation, and the quality of your relationship with Him.
Respect your parents.
Be honest, truthful, and morally upright especially in matters of sexual relations.
And don't desire what is not yours what ever that may be. Be content with what you have.
Some Jewish experts have suggested that a summary of all His many laws would sound like, “Be Nice”, and in respect of divine instructions this was radically new.
There will also be a multitude of ritual and sacrifices. There will be laws about food and drink. There will be high standards of behaviour required and generosity of spirit towards others expected.
And there will be sanctions for disobedience. We all need to understand that this thing called “evil” that has infected everything is extremely serious, its implications are far from trivial, and the ignoring of its power will ultimately be the undoing of those who are consumed by it.
Knowledge of all these instructions will be important, but it will be equally important to remember that they point forward to something much greater than they are. They are symbolic and didactic, and they are definitely not the end in themselves.
In fact that greater thing that they point to will be for all eternity regarded as the greatest act that has ever been, or will be. And it will be Yahweh “Himself” that performs it.
I think it is pretty self evident that the distinctions between these alternative presentations of divine reality are clear and unambiguous. It really causes you to wonder where the afore-quoted Richard Dawkins is coming from. I suggest he has hasn't taken much time to try and understand who Yahweh really is, and if he has he has missed the point completely. From the little I have read on Celtic mythology, and Germanic and Nordic mythology, it is pretty clear that there are many similarities in subject matter, behaviours and moral attitudes (or lack thereof) to even the most casual observer. Yahweh on the other hand stands out as completely unique. To put it frankly, there is nothing like Him anywhere else in any other tradition, history or literature. And where in all the other gods is anything happening that might be deemed to be the greatest act in history? The answer is of course nowhere. So lets quickly list some of the obvious differences.
Polytheism verses monotheism. There is only one Yahweh. There is only one true God that you need to know about and engage with. All the rest are ridiculous in the extreme.
In setting out what he requires in terms of ethical and communal behaviour there are detailed laws that He recorded. He makes it clear in all these laws that he is ….
consistent, as opposed to arbitrary,
moral, as opposed to changeable, or worse valueless, or even sociopathic,
communicative, as opposed to purposely mysterious and unknowable,
present, as opposed to distant,
predictable, as opposed to random and capricious,
concerned with our welfare, as opposed to self absorbed, indifferent, and even contemptuous,
obviously and clearly active in history, as opposed to highly debatable or non-existent interventions,
articulate and concise, as opposed to obscure and obtuse,
reliable, as opposed to unreliable,
righteous, as opposed to evil.
I would like to think that if I had a choice back then, and only knew some of these facts, I would want to consciously throw in my lot with Yahweh and the Jews, which incidentally is what a lot of people did many years later. These were extremely brutal times and He is a total one off. To assert that somehow He is “arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction”, in the light just a few of the facts about Greek gods, is a stretch of credibility that ventures way beyond the reasonable and goes directly to ludicrous. But if Yahweh is so loving, righteous and good ,why is there so much violence, death and destruction in the Hebrew scriptures?
Part Two – Why all the Violence?
Any cursory review of human history shows that at the start of the Neolithic when humans left hunter gathering as a mode of living, discovered agriculture, moved into tribes, and grouped together in semi-permanent settings, they quickly learned that they had more than the brutality of nature and the environment to worry about. They may have found more reliable sources of food, but life and liberty simultaneously became more perilous because there emerged the new menace of neighbouring tribes who might become jealous of their successful crops, fattened livestock, or pretty young daughters. Continued threats of enslavement to, or death by, other groups meant that the protections created by tribal cohesion and social unity were as important to the health of the individual as was food, drink and air.
A whole new paradigm of human interactions became necessary – inter-tribal communication. Now there was a need to move beyond the individual and embrace the collective. From most of history since then it appears that the options for tribes were also quite limited. If you had a small or powerless army, no weapons, not much money, and lots of daughters, you learn to negotiate, inter-marry, and work alongside your neighbouring tribes with a lot of acquiescing and tugging of the forelock. If you had an equivalent type of army to your neighbour you could this choose this particularly new skill of negotiating, although from a position of relatively increased strength. Or you could ditch the talk and just choose fighting. But if you were really lucky, and had lots of daughters who produced lots of sons. And if you had lots of money or its equivalent which you have earned, or looted, and lots of technology, i.e. swords, bows and arrows, and trained horses, well hang the talking altogether. You then just invade, kill, and take whatever you want. Interestingly this third option was the only one with a reasonably guaranteed outcome. So of course it became something to aspire to. And when available it became the popular choice. Have lots of wives who produce lots of sons, and who in turn become your fighters and weapon makers. It is notable that the various ages from this era were named on the strength of the types of weapons used in fighting, i.e. the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron age.
Gods and religion played an important role too, in both the newly acquired need for tribal cohesion and inter-tribal communication. As an illustration of how it worked they’ve found huge underground grain storage silos in Great Britain and archaeologists have discovered cow carcasses at the bottom of the grain. They’ve speculated that they were put there as a sacrificial gift to a particular god so he or she would look after the stores of grain for them. The Celts who they are fairly sure were responsible for this situation were just like all the other bronze/iron Age European societies. They were polytheistic, and most of their religious activities were about offering sacrifices to appease, or to gain the favour, of these gods. . Interestingly an important aspect of the Celt's complicated belief system was that nothing was written down, and that all knowledge, information and details of ritual were held in the memories of their priests the Druids. Apparently they had the most prodigious abilities to hold huge volumes of information. Now this capacity by the priests to retain and control all the knowledge about these invisible and mysterious deities, how to access them, and how to find out just what they desire, would of course give that same priestly class the most incredible power and prestige. And if you’ve got all that ability to control, you would do everything you can to retain it, and even grow its scope, wouldn’t you? So historically there emerged from all this change a new class of tribal sub-leader known as “priests” or “holy men”.
When you were forced by circumstance into interactions and negotiations with neighbouring tribes it would no doubt be made easier if your different religious sensibilities were remotely similar. So the newly established role of tribal god interpreter grew in importance. Furthermore if your gods were conveniently flexible in their rules about the value they placed on another life, then just how brutal you and your comrades were would be equally flexible. Once again, in spite of all the growth in subtle ideas and big communication, a large army trumped everything else. It has ever been thus!
We earlier mentioned the need for a whole new paradigm of human communications between groups. And now we ask which one became the most popular? Well that's easy, it was warfare. Use your resources to create an efficient, brutal and easily replenish-able fighting machine and your ability to steadily increase your resources, grow your power, and satisfy your lusts will simultaneously grow and thrive. As a consequence the new job description of warrior-king or ruler-general inevitably took over. Think of Alexander the Great, Cyrus the Great, and Thutmose III, “the Napoleon of Egypt”. Then to have with you a group of so-called priests, who were polished in the arts of magic, story telling and showmanship, and who were educated, literate, articulate and charismatic, it meant your power to control your tribe would be significantly enhanced. Combine this with a goodly supply of uneducated, superstitious, poor but fit young men and Bob's your uncle. Therefore we observe the simultaneous growth and importance of armies, efficient weapons, and complex and flexible religious myths all serving the same purpose – Power! Religion it turns out became nothing more for many leaders than a utilitarian adjunct to military psychology, or a skill of how to motivate your troops and maintain tribal cohesion. That sounds cynical and I'm sure it was only seen as a tool of state by those perceptive enough to recognize its potential to control the mind. Everybody else probably believed it. For the illiterate and uneducated, which was just about everybody else, it was their answers to the big questions.
Also under-pining all this control of everything there was also the ever-present phenomenon of slavery, or to put it another way, a large store of disposable humans who you could use for all the grotty, unpleasant and dangerous stuff you didn't like doing. And how do you get more slaves? Well it was not usually done by negotiation, although trading in slaves became an important part of common currency. You got them most easily by violence. It seems that brutality and violence once again became the negotiation method of choice.
So we come down to a specific time in history where Israel was in the process of taking possession of some already occupied land in Canaan. Which of the three options previously suggested were the process of choice in their taking over. Well as it turns out the answer to this is not that simple. It appears that Yahweh was a lot more subtle and thoughtful than all his equivalent mythical, psychopathic and brutish other gods. To find out how Yahweh negotiated we need look no further than how He dealt with Pharaoh. As the ruler of Egypt he was the current controller of the Jewish tribes who Yahweh wanted to take back and set free. You'll find the story in Exodus 5 – 14.
Yahweh started off by sending Moses and Aaron to talk with Pharaoh and explain the situation. Several hundred years before the Egyptians had welcomed a small group of their prime minister Joseph's family. But now they grown and multiplied in number in astronomical ways, and in the process they had ended becoming a race of slaves who according to many reports were being exploited unreasonably. As Yahweh's mouthpiece Moses and Aaron simply put to Pharaoh the now famous request to “let my people go.” Pharaoh was of course not accustomed to being told what to do. He took the stance that any experienced, hubristic despot would, and told them to go jump. Over the next little while shows of magic where exchanged to demonstrate the power dynamics of each side. The one consistent theme that occurred over the next few months was that Pharaoh's “heart was hardened.” And it got harder and harder.
As an aside, in some places it says that “Pharaoh's heart was hardened” and in other places is says “the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart”. This initially seems to suggest that Yahweh Himself was manipulating Pharaoh's emotions. Read further on and it says that Yahweh's intentional hardening of Pharaoh's heart was supposed to somehow show God's authority. But the desired outcome was the removal of Israel with a minimum of fuss, and their eventual return to the promised land, so why God would intentionally create impediments to that outcome is not explained. Perhaps there is another way that this expression might be translated. Anyway for whatever reason Yahweh, Moses and Aaron's attempts at reasoned communication achieved nothing. Over time the ante was upped repeatedly and the result was more of Pharaoh's intransigence. It then followed that the consequences of his defiance towards Yahweh meant ever increasing woes and troubles for Egypt.
At this point it seems reasonable to ask the $64 question, “Who was setting the agenda here?” You see Yahweh began the process by wanting to talk. It was Pharaoh who said, “No!” And the death of every first born was not the next action in the process. It came very much later. The ensuing plagues themselves saw a gradual ratcheting up of the pressure till it achieved breaking point. And once again, “Who was setting the agenda?” Yahweh could only deal with what was before him, and that was being dished up by Pharaoh. So yes Yahweh ended up being violent, but it was reactive and not proactive violence.
Come forward now about 40 years to the conquest of Canaan. Who in this particular longer list of encounters determined which particular method of inter-tribal communication would be the method of choice? In Chapter 10 we find that the inhabitants of Gibeon purposely making peace with Israel. So as a method of communication it clearly was available as an option. Unfortunately a group of surrounding tribal kingdoms who knew only violence joined together to gang up on Gibeon. The people of Gibeon immediately had to cash in their treaty with Yahweh as they called on Joshua to help them defend themselves from this lynch mob. Their combined forces of Israel and Gibeon pummeled the surrounding kingdoms, but in that process nobody seems to have grasped the obvious – try and negotiate with Yahweh and it might not be to your disadvantage.
Now after all that can you imagine a deputation of Israelis knocking on the front door of Jericho and pointing out to the Canaanites that Yahweh was giving the city and surrounds to them, so how much time would they need to move out? Would they appreciate some help? Once again violence appears the only option, and once again we ask, “Who was setting the agenda?” Actually recent archaeology seems to suggest that Jericho wasn't a functioning city at this time, and was most likely a military outpost inhabited mainly by soldiers and their support staff. This would indicate even more that only one method of negotiation would be considered appropriate, i.e. fight! And of course that's what happened. Once again Israel and Yahweh could only react to what was in front of them.
On the subject of the expression in the book of Joshua that all women and men, young and old were put to the sword, well there are no findings of skeletal evidence of it. What archaeology has found is consistent with the military outpost scenario, i.e. lots of bones of grown males as you would expect from an army base. There is also some modern archaeology that suggests some of the other places taken over through this conquest may have been almost ghost towns, with their use by dates passed over for the former inhabitants. The capturing of these towns may have just required the removal of some residual military as in the Jericho story.
Now while the stubbornness of Pharaoh before the Exodus, and the possible population of Jericho at the time of its destruction, are only two pieces of evidence they do indicate some obvious facts. These were brutal and violent times and had been for many millennia. Most inter-tribe negotiation was done via the sword. And who was it that determined that this would be the case? Was it Yahweh, or was it mankind? I think the answer to that is obvious. So how do Yahweh and Israel achieve their objectives? They use the only means at their disposal – to fight. Knowing all this doesn't make reading Joshua 11 and the descriptions of the extent of their campaign in Northern Canaan any easier. There's a lot of sword use with the resulting rivers of blood implicit in the descriptions.
In fact as you go further through the book of Judges and onwards into Kings the carnage doesn't appear to dissipate to any significant degree. Ruth is a pleasing, although very small, respite. And while it is heavy going, it's very important to acknowledge that these events, and the recorded history of conquest and warfare, are only difficult to our pampered, privileged, insular and very recently acquired modern sensibility. People at the time of Paul for instance, who existed under the brutal and arbitrary control of Rome would have taken all this stuff in their stride I suggest. Walking out of your village past the rows of crucifixions with the victims in various stages of natural destruction, exposure to birds and vermin, and the consequent insanity that this excruciatingly horrible and slow death meant. Well, they may have thought that the quick end from a soldier's sword would be a welcome alternative. If you draw a line from the start of the Neolithic through the ensuing 12,000 years or so it would actually be extremely difficult to find an extended period where the history described in the Hebrew Scriptures was not the natural order. The clinically efficient and technologically advanced mass murder that was perfected in the 20th century shows we are really getting a whole lot better at it all.
Perhaps if these people who possessed a fight only mentality had actually taken notice of what had happened to Gibeon, and how Yahweh through Israel helped them and subsequently protected them from their violent neighbours, their futures might have been a little different.
Finally there was another unique or distinctive feature of Yahweh's character in among all this that separated Him from all other deities that we haven't mentioned before. It was something that was clearly evident in the wash up of the march from Egypt to Mount Sinai. In all the other religions, and mostly through the priestly class, individuals or groups were instructed in what they needed to do to gain their many god's approval, or least soften the impact of their quite often nasty disapproval. When sufficient sacrifices were delivered then the god might act, although this action was never guaranteed. It was all extremely random and unpredictable. On the other hand Yahweh didn't wait till an unknown but totally arbitrary volume of sacrifices were offered. He acted first and delivered Israel from the slavery of Egypt. Or to put it another way, the salvation of Israel was given by Yahweh first, and without the requirement of endless sacrifices or appeasements. It was a free gift that was established on the fact of His love for Israel, and His grace and forgiveness.
Now Israel was delivered, saved, and free, and everyone had made it to Sinai, Yahweh supplied them with some really important laws. He made it clear that to observe all these laws was crucial, but what was more vital was that they understood the reasons for their motivation. Their obedience to Yahweh was premised on remembering that it was Him who had delivered them from bondage. That was why they should keep these laws. Salvation first, responsibility and obedience second. You will not find this kind of benevolent behaviour in any other bronze age (or any age for that matter) alternative deity. It sounds a bit like the future gospel of Jesus doesn't it?
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