The Religious Roots of Violence: Judaism

For Judaism, the Exodus story line is the most problematic. Traditionally, Exodus is supposed to convey the following point: a liberating God heard the cries of an oppressed people and intervened in history to save them. It’s a story of human freedom through divine deliverance. Violence, however, taints this story.

At best, Exodus is a story about God's liberating violence. It teaches that God's violence and violence done in God's name are legitimate means to achieve justice. God liberates the enslaved Israelites. Yet God achieved this goal through vicious violence, including the murder of every firstborn in Egypt as well as wiping out the "entire" army of the pharaoh. Israel, moreover, is created through the massive displacement and destruction of other peoples, laying claim to a land that belonged to others by conducting a bloody conquest under the banner of divine will.

God tells Abraham: "To your descendents I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Cannanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites." (Gen 15:18-21).

"When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you… and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy…" (Deut 7:1-2, 5-6)

Remember that Native Americans were wiped out by European settlers who saw Indians as Cannanites, Indian land as the equivalent of Canaan and themselves as God's chosen people. You make think that times have changed, that these ancient texts no longer have real relevance. You would be wrong.

(To be Continued)