Violence and the Sacred

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Ritual Sacrifice Condoned, Condemned, and Codified! .......2007-01-17

Author Rene Girard's groundbreaking text on ritual sacrifice and violence is nothing short of extraordinary.

Girard tackles the seemingly taboo origins of sacrifice, cultural order as a result, and how violence is as ingrained in our humanity as much as our need for nourishment. Particularly how the act of sacrifice (born out of violence) has influenced societies collective notion of what is "sacred" and what is not.

This aspect of necessary sacrifice and violence has manifested in religious rites, particularly the "theory of the surrogate victim." This key part of Girard's theory of generative violence offers an explanation of the primordial role that religion plays in primitive societies and of man's ignorance of this role.

Girard also discloses the nature of violence not only during life but after death. The passage into death, Girard asserts, "by a member of the community may provoke (among other difficulties) quarrels among the survivors, for this is always the problem of how to redistribute the dead man's belongings. In order to meet the threat of maleficent contagion the community must have recourse to the universal model, to generative violence; it must attend to the advice of the sacred itself."

From modern religious beliefs to the metaphorical tales and parables of mythology Girard shows that violence is a natural outgrowth and need of our physical composition and mental attributes. The truth of Girard's assertions can be found in the historical annals of every race and culture by examining their cultures and beliefs; all of which idealize instead of unilaterally eschew violence through sacrifice. This is not to be confused with the prohibition of murder, for example, which has been and is enforced in nearly every society.

I see Girard's work as unique, powerful, and more important, insightful. This text represents a seminal thrust into previously unchartered territory. A hallmark at five stars without reservation.

JP

A challenging theory of sacrifice.......2006-02-04

In this book, Rene Girard tries to propound a new theory of sacrifice, religion, myth, tragedy, incest, and taboo. His basic thesis is that sacrificing a scapegoat was the way primitive societies overcame the natural lawless violence (mimetic desire) of their societies by re-directing it on a sacrifical victim.

To explain his thesis, Girard studies sacrifical rites of the world and especially the ancient world and primitive societies, as also the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripedes, particulary those that pertain to Oedipus and Dionysos. He gives a radically new interpretation of Oedipal tragedy taking Freud into a radical new direction, and explains why incest was feared because of its effect of leveling distinctions. His interpretation of Dionysos is singularly brilliant.

According to Girard, leveling distinctions or eliminating differences removes the safegaurds that contain violence in primitive societies (he states that our safegaurd - law - is itself based on the concept of sacrifice to restore order) and hence anything that levels distinctions was feared. He also shows how the various sacrifical animals or men have the chracteristics of inside/outside with respect to the community.

The book does have its drawbacks, but is intellectually stimulating. The main hallmark of this work is that it de-mystifies religion and especially represents the most convincing theory of sacrifice and tragedy I have read.

As far as the drawbacks are concerned, the theory is rigorously argued in the beginning but thins out towards the end of the book. As a theory of sacrifice, his evidence supports him. As an interpretation of certain myths and as an explanation of incest and African kingship rites, he is close. However when he streches it to explain origin of religion, kinship rules, all kinds of rites etc., his argument often wears thin.

There is also a question of unanswered ethical import - is sacrifice legitimate because it prevents communities from collapsing?

Girard is wrong about sacrifice.......2005-10-07

When I first read Girard's book, I was impressed with his analysis of violence in relation to religion. I admit that his concept of mimesis is fascinating, although it is not particularly original anymore. I even referred to his theory in my own general book on violence and culture (titled, aptly enough, "Violence and Culture" (Wadsworth, 2005).
However, as an anthropologist who has done subsequent research on religion and violence, I have discovered that he is profoundly wrong about his interpretation of violence and the sacred. For one thing, he equates violence with sacrifice. However, religious violence takes many other forms, and an exclusive focus on sacrifice is more than wrong but downright misleading and counterproductive. What about self-mortification, apocalypticism, religio-ethnic conflict, persecution and intolerance, as well as the hackneyed topics of terrorism and holy war?
Second, his analysis of sacrifice is incorrect. As a non-anthropologist, perhaps he could not know this. But then, if he does not know the cross-cultural facts, he should not be writing on the subject. For one thing, sacrifice is NOT the universal religious practice that he (and Jonathan Z. Smith and others) think it is. For another, most sacrifice has nothing to do with scape-goating; that is one--and a particularly Judeo-Christian--version of it. To impose one religion's conceptions on all religions, or generalize it as characteristic of religion, is ethnocentric and falsifying.
It is very dangerous and unfortunate that this book has been accepted so uncritically. It has set the cross-cultural study of sacrifice, and religious violence in general, back by two or three decades. People think that the definitive analysis of sacrifice has been made, when Girard has described one local version of one small part of religious violence and elevated it to the very essence of both religion and violence. We will look back on this detour with regret.

The Foundational Text on Religion and Violence - General Overview.......2005-09-26

By focusing primarily on Greek tragedy, "primitive" religions, and psychoanalysis, Rene Girard attempts to show the inextricable link between violence and the sacred. Mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and sacrifice produce a system in which unrestrained violence can be controlled. Through the sacralization of these elements, religion becomes a way for the community to maintain internal peace and harmony and prevent the recurrence of reciprocal violence.

Because violence is self-propagating, if uncontrolled, it will overflow and flood the community. Against tradition, Girard holds that sacrifice is not meant to appease a deity. Rather, it is a means to restore harmony within a community, by protecting the community from its own violence. Without sacrifice, violence does not have an outlet and would devastate the whole community. The only way to rid the system of violence is to deflect it onto a sacrificial victim. The sacrificial victim must resemble, yet remain different from, the community, and the victim must lack a champion: the community can strike down the victim without fear of reprisal. Because violence is seen as impure and religion is concerned with ritual impurity, the sacrificial victim must be considered pure of the contagion of violence. The function of ritual then is to purify violence.

The first link to impure violence is the sacrificial crisis. The sacrificial crisis occurs when both cathartic rites and the difference between purity and impurity disappear. The sacrificial crisis can then be defined as the dissolution of natural differences or distinctions, which effects cultural disorder. Social values, order, and peace erode leaving fertile ground for reciprocal and unrestrained violence. Understanding the crisis caused by the disappearance of differences helps understand the terror caused by the birth of twins in primitive societies: the physical similarities caused by twins is problematic - there is no distinction between the two children. The theme in Greek tragedies of "enemy brothers" belies this principle. Two antagonists, like twins, are represented without a degree of difference producing a mythic rivalry.

Seeking the mechanism that solves the sacrificial crisis, Girard investigates Oedipus the King for further implications. Each protagonist (Oedipus and Tiresias) seeks to quell violence, but both eventually succumb to it. These enemy brothers symmetrically oppose the other, dissolving differences, and both enter into an interdependent duality, in which violence becomes reciprocal. Patricide and incest also suggest the disappearance of differences, and the plague signifies the collective nature of the disaster. At this point, Girard presents the surrogate victim, or scapegoat. If the community is to free itself from the sacrificial crisis, then the reciprocal violence must be deflected onto some individual. Put another way, the community, fallen victim to unrestrained violence, searches for a scapegoat - one arbitrarily chosen - to pin responsibility for the violence therein. In destroying the scapegoat, the community unanimously rids itself of the present violence and restores order and tranquility.

If these hypotheses are correct, religion is implicated, and Girard seeks to examine the origins of myth and ritual. By putting and end to the destructive cycle of violence, sacrificial rites also initiates a constructive cycle. Adherents of sacrifice strive to produce both a replica of the previous crisis and the unanimous victimization of the scapegoat. In doing so, the ritual victim, whether human or animal, represents the original surrogate victim and transforms maleficent violence into beneficial violence, moving the system from disorder to harmony. As such the "original act of violence is the matrix of all ritual and mythological significations" (113). Overtime these rituals become diverse in meaning and presentation. According to Girard, because of the human desire to transform bad violence into good, coupled with the mystery of this transformation, humanity is predisposed to ritual.

Religious festivals also have their origins in sacrifice. The beneficial character of the unanimous violence is projected into the past, and the happy ending results in jubilation. An antifestival, on the other hand, is similar but celebrates the unanimous violence negatively, with asceticism, fasting, and mortification. As such, the festival and the antifestival serve as replacements for sacrifice. The gradual loss of the structure of the sacrificial rite, compounded with the increasing misunderstandings of the purpose of the rite, produce these replacements. The festival and antifestival eventually lead towards a new sacrificial crisis as they cease to be preventative measures for violence, as seen in Euripides' The Bacchae.

The role of mimetic desire and the monstrous double provide the foundation of the sacrificial crisis. With in the sacrificial crisis, both subject and rival desire the same object: violence. Rivalry does not occur because both rival and subject have the same desire, "rather, the subject desires the object because the rival desires it. In desiring an object the rival alerts the subject to the desirability of the object. The rival, then, serves as a model for the subject ... in regard to desires" (145). This mimetic desire serves as the catalyst of the sacrificial crisis, eventually leading to conflict. In tragedy, these antagonists eventually become indistinguishable, but the disappearance of difference happens in oscillation. The oscillation of differences accelerates until the antagonists jointly perceive a monstrous double - a projection of their unity - which serves as a scapegoat upon which they unanimously agree.

Girard next examines the process of divine sacralization. The metamorphosis of maleficent violence into beneficent violence elicits public veneration. The marriage of the beneficent and maleficent within the monstrous double and surrogate victim becomes an incarnation of sacred violence. The term `sacred' respects the duality of life, both positive and negative elements (i.e., urges toward both destruction and peace). The sacred is present in violence, seen in the destructive power of reciprocal violence and in the positive effects of cultural restoration. This union of violence and the sacred, the basis of religion, jars traditional thinking, but humanity's inability to grasp this union perpetuates its effects. At this point, Girard completes his theory on the surrogate victim and sacrifice. Because sacrifice expels and appeases violence, violence can be viewed as a god who is appeased with the sacrifice: again, violence is sacred. Finally, the sacrificial victim, in order to be effective, needs to both represent the community yet be differentiated from it.

In his final chapter, Girard shows how the surrogate victim unites all rituals. Cultures that employ cannibalism rely on the surrogate victim, and rites of passage provide a surrogate victim to leave the community in one stage of life in order to enter another stage - a pattern that recurs in all rites of initiation. The realization that the surrogate victim pervades all of human culture and unites mythology and ritual, leads Girard to see the surrogate victim in other cultural forms: political power, legal institutions, medicine, theater, philosophy, and anthropology.

This book will change your head!.......2005-02-17

Violence and religion have gone hand in hand as far back as we have records, from Dionysian revels and ancient human sacrifice to contemporary fundamentalisms that would destroy entire nations or races to preserve some particular version of Truth. In "Violence and the Sacred," Rene Girard attempts nothing less than to expose the entire history of this alliance.

It is impossible to give an adequate summary of this comprehensive and closely reasoned book. But briefly, Girard argues that - pre-historically - it was precisely acts of communal violence and the resulting shock and collective repression that resulted from these acts that generated our very sense of the sacred. And our continuing violence, in all its forms, is a history of attempts to re-experience transcendence.

(A word of caution: Early on, those with religious convictions may be tempted to conclude that Girard is reducing religion to a form of collective guilt. **He is not.** Girard is a Christian, and has progressed from literary criticism to critical theory to active efforts to promote methods of constructive, peaceful conflict resolution.)

In fleshing out this theory, Girard leans heavily on his insights into the mimetic and violent nature of desire (see his earlier "Deceit, Desire, and the Novel"), and he links mimetic desire, our tendency to marginalize and scapegoat those who are "different," our tendency toward violence, and our experience of ultimate otherness (the sacred). One of the most impressive aspects of this book is that it constitutes, simultaneously, a response not only to the questions of the origins of violence and religion, but to the key 19th century theorists Marx , Freud (the primal horde scenario, and repression), and Nietzsche, **and** to their late-20th century heirs - Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida (differance).

In the end, however, it was not simply Girard's argument that convinced me, impeccable as it seems. Rather, after working through this book, I began to see the mechanisms of mimetic violence in operation all around me - and within me, as well: consumerism driven by manufactured "needs," road rage, sibling rivalry, not to mention shamefully misdirected nationalism.

In my opinion, this is a very important book. By exposing the mimetic nature of violence and its subtle, often hidden workings, Girard - like a good therapist - gives us a tool to identify and begin to change deeply entrenched patterns of response, in ourselves and the world. But this is not a self-help book. It's a mature work of social and critical theory, and is definitely not light reading. If you take on "Violence and the Sacred," stick with it. It will change the way you see the world!

The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict)

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Fascinating text

The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict)
R. Scott Hesburgh, Theodore M. Appleby
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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ASIN: 0847685551

Book Description

Terrorists and peacemakers may grow up in the same community and adhere to the same religious tradition. The killing carried out by one and the reconciliation fostered by the other indicate the range of dramatic and contradictory responses to human suffering by religious actors. This book explains what religious terrorists and religious peacemakers share in common, what causes them to take different paths in fighting injustice, and how a deeper understanding of religious extremism can and must be integrated more effectively into our thinking about tribal, regional, and international conflict.

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Fascinating text.......2001-06-03

R. Scott Appleby's work is a deeply intriguing in-depth study of the role that religious actors presently play in international politics, exploring both positive functions filled and negative. He also outlines ways in which actors might be involved in beneficial capacities in the future. In my reasonably limited experience, this text constitutes perhaps the most even-handed treatment of its subject material, and has served men as a very valuable resource. Recommended highly for students of international politics.

Violence, Utopia and the Kingdom of God: Fantasy and Ideology in the Bible

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Guns and Roses meets the Hebrew Prophets

Violence, Utopia and the Kingdom of God: Fantasy and Ideology in the Bible
George Aichele
Manufacturer: Routledge
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ASIN: 0415156688

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This book explores the presence of the fantastic in Biblical and related texts, including apocrypha and the Talmud, and the influence of Biblical traditions on contemporary fantasy writing, cinema, music and art. The contributors apply a variety of critical concepts and methods from the field of fantasy studies, including the theories of Tolkien, Todorov, Rosemary Jackson and Jack Zipes, to Biblical texts and challenge theological suppositions regarding the texts which take refuge in science or historiography. Violence, Utopia and the Kingdom of God presents a provocative and arresting new analysis of Biblical texts which draws on the most recent critical approaches to provide a unique study of the Biblical narrative.

Customer Reviews:

Guns and Roses meets the Hebrew Prophets.......2000-03-14

Okay, I don't know how seriously this book is meant to be taken, but I'll go by the general heuristic that its best not to take anything too seriously. That said, the book is a collection of short essays by various individuals with a postmodern bent to it. The book relies on "fantasy theory" to explore the profuse collection of folklore and wisdom that is the Bible. The book earns five stars simply out of the bizarreness of topics presented, and originality of ideas.

For instance, one of the articles (Ezekiel's Axl) begins, "What if Axl Rose, tempermental singer from the heavy metal band Guns n' Roses, and Ezekiel, eccentric prophet from the Hebrew Bible, were to be compared with each other?" The reader can only stammer out . . . Dude man you've gotta be flipping me. One can only imagine the scene, some guy is sitting around reading the Book of (no doubt manic depressive but divinely inspired) Ezekiel one day and listening to (equally manic depressive and divinely inspired) Axl Rose as screaches out something to the effect of "Take me down to the Paradise City . . . ", when suddenly it occurs to him Paradise City = Kingdom of God.

Customer Reviews:

Great Insight........2006-04-14

She does a great job telling the stories of these women with a feministic view, but notice the tombstones before the chapters. She takes the whole Bible out of context. "She was wounded for our transgressions?" Not in my Bible. Great stuff, but the her "tombstones" upset me.

"On Telling Sad Stories.".......2005-11-26

"Feminists have called upon bible readers to focus on the women in various texts, to read their stories through feminine eyes, so that we agonize over the rape of Tamar or the dismemberment of the unnamed woman of Judges 19."

Feminist approach:
In his review of Contemporary hermeneutics, John Newport classifies feminist Biblical scholars, in three groups. One seeks to just explore the biblical books, narratives, themes and characters relevant to modern woman situation. Another require a reading of the whole text from a female perspective, evaluating the gender impact. A third group is motivated by demolishing the 'patriarchy myth', exposing scriptures innate prejudice against women, but the social approach is the uniting theme of all three.

Biblical Terror Narratives:
In an upper-level seminar on Women's Studies, intended to develop deeper thinking with regard to the various roles of women in the Hebrew bible text and what can be learned from them. The in-depth study included some of the tragic stories and writings about women in the Old Testament within a variety of different literary genres and from a variety of different viewpoints, in the context of other ancient Near Eastern texts. Critical analysis, with an informed awareness of the sociological gender-biases that have molded both the text and its traditional interpretations are examined. Readings included:
- Reading the Women of the Bible, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, (2003)
- Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, Alice Bach (Ed), (1998)
- Discovering Eve, Carol Meyers, (1991)
& Texts of Terror, Phyllis Trible, (1984)

Texts of Terror:
Focusing on four Hebrew bible violent tragedies, Trible seeks to reinterpret, in memoriam, the sad stories of those four ancient women: Hagar, Tamar, unnamed concubine, and Jephthah's daughter whose tragedy haunted me as a teenager. Trible, while inviting the reader to recognize the tragedies of those women, ignored and/or neglected in a male-dominated interpretation. Using rhetorical criticism, probing the language of the text, examining the narrative flow of textual ideas, and expecting a reader response to her analysis.

Response to Sad Stories:
James Williams of Syracuse University, who praises the book as a series of exegetical essays, relates her texts to other biblical narratives, but neglects to show how the stories fit into the greater drama of the Hebrew Scriptures. He has come to the final conclusion that: "Trible does not communicate a sense of larger biblical patterns."

In memoriam..........2004-10-08

Phillis Trible, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, is a noted authority on feminist interpretation and literary analysis of biblical stories of the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament. From the start of her career, Trible has addressed the topic of how gender and gender/sex relationships are represented in the bible. She looks for biblical themes that have a 'depatriarchalizing principle', which she admits is a relatively minor theme in the biblical texts.

However, this particular book, 'Texts of Terror', addresses the situation from a different view - these are stories in which women suffer tremendously under the weight of different kinds of patriarchal and male-dominated societal mores. Trible employs feminist critique and literary analysis to four particular stories - that of Hagar, Sarah's maid and mother of Ishmael; David's daughter Tamar; the daughter of Jephthah, sacrificed for her father's promise; and an unnamed concubine from Judges 19, who was brutalised in an astonishingly violent episode in the bible. These stories are offered up in way of a memoriam - the text has graphic openings with tombstones to each of the women, including an epitaph for each.

Trible offers her own translations of the Hebrew texts, translating as literally as possible in most instances. She goes into great detail, drawing out the contradictions and paradoxes in the stories, and makes every aspect important. These are sad stories, as Trible says, and they deserve honesty as they come to us. Trible highlights in her introduction various pitfalls - placing the stories in a disconnected past, recasting the Hebrew stories in a solely New Testament context, and to find an inappropriately happy or redemptive ending in these without allowing the honest conclusion, that sad stories have sad endings. Her idea is rather to let the texts speak and be difficult to wrestle with, in the same manner as Jacob wrestled with the mysterious figure near the Jabbok river. We should not let the stories go until they bless us, but be aware that they may not bless us in the manner we expect.

This is an excellent book for students and scholars. There are multiple indexes (subject, scripture, Hebrew word, author/editor), extensive footnoting, and well-supported scholarship. These chapters come from the Beecher Lectures at Yale. As scholar Walter Brueggemann states in the foreword, Trible's work with the method of rhetorical criticism, operating on the presumption that every word is intentional and nothing is left to chance, is equally true of Trible's own words.

Trible's purpose, beyond the scholarship, is to offer honest and sympathetic readings of these texts of terror in the hopes that we as modern readers will recognise the kinds of conditions and issues still operative in the world, and work to end such terrors.

Different readings of difficult stories.......2000-12-20

While this book was originally published several years ago, the stories it presents may be new to many, even to practicing Jews and Christians. When was the last time you heard a sermon on the rape of Tamar? Trible's readings of these stories may also be new to many readers. I was so engaged by her work on these difficult texts that I literally could not stop reading until I had finished the whole book. I especially found interesting her insightful word studies. But the most significant aspect of Trible's book is her "reclaiming" of these stories so that they can be used to motivate us to work actively for justice so that others are not victims of such terror.

Texts of Terror.......2000-07-25

This is one of the most eye opening books I have read! Tribble writes clearly and candidly. Her stories of what happens to some of the women in the Bible are frightening. She is good at reading between the lines. Her chapter on the Levite's concubin in Judges is truly frightening. Her book definately makes the point that the Old Testament writings by and large were not kind to women. This is putting it mildly!

Origins of the Sacred: The Ecstasies of Love and War

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Out of the Garden of Eden . . .
Young is right: we need gods who dance.
I need this book again!
best book I've read in past 5 years

Origins of the Sacred: The Ecstasies of Love and War
Dudley Young
Manufacturer: St Martins Pr
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ASIN: 0312064322

Customer Reviews:

Out of the Garden of Eden . . ........2006-02-15

To many people Mr. Young's thesis will seem to be outlandish. Yet, he is the one author I know of who actually tries to seek out the origins of religion using modern research into chimpanzee behavior. I wonder what Jane Goodall thinks of it? First there was Freud's Totem and Taboo, a mere root to Young's amazing tree. As he writes, " . . . the Darwinian-Freudian-Foxian root-stock on to which I would graft the story of alpha-shaman." I'm not sure exactly how to take him, but it is dazzling stuff. Since there was no impartial observer in the Garden of Eden, perhaps he is correct.

Young is right: we need gods who dance........2000-07-24

"To be both primitive and sophisticated is almost always a sign of religious genius." (a favorite quote from OOTS)

When I first read this book in 1993, it expressed wonderfully just about everything I'd ever thought, half-thought, or vaguely suspected about the sacred and the human psyche and their interactions at the most primal levels.

The author is a professor of literature, and he approaches the subject more like a poet than a scholar of religion, which no doubt makes for its own set of flaws; but I quite enjoyed the book's refreshingly personal and passionate note.

More than merely thought-provoking, the work is beautiful and even thrilling at times -- ruffled by the Divine breath of pneuma, indeed. I recommend it as a unique addition to the library of serious Pagans, pan(en)theists, polytheists, nature mystics, and/or deep ecologists.

I need this book again!.......1998-06-06

I am kicking myself for ever loaning out this book!!! After three years without it, I've decided I must purchase it again.

Origins of the Sacred was one of the most unique books I ever read combining both evolutionary biology with a development of the sacred and profane-- Eliade, Campbell, Jung: none of them prepared me for this book. It is a must read for anyone interested in humankind's pursuit of a mythology of the sacred.

--D. Allred

best book I've read in past 5 years.......1998-03-11

scholarly, well-researched, often humorous look at development of human notions of what is sacred and how it became so.

Sacred Fury: Understanding Religious Violence

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Typologies of Religious Violence

Sacred Fury: Understanding Religious Violence
Charles Selengut
Manufacturer: AltaMira Press
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ASIN: 0759103623

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This textbook applies insight from the social sciences and history to a wide range of violence inspired by religious motivations.

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Typologies of Religious Violence.......2005-06-02

Recognizing the unique relationship between religion and violence, Charles Selengut examines the phenomenon of religious violence from five different perspectives: the holy war, psychological, eschatological, civilizational, and sexual/bodily perspectives. Each of these perspectives, or typologies, has its own logic system, nature, and dynamics, and Selengut applies each typology to modern and historical examples of religious violence.

The holy war perspective examines the scriptural call and religious duty to engage in violence. According to this perspective, religious violence is not a cover up for economic or cultural struggles, but religious conflict and violent encounters are sacred struggles on behalf of religious truth and divine revelation. Holy wars are situational moments of divine-human cooperation to further God's plan for justice and redemption. As such, holy wars seek to bring about an improved human order: wrongs in human history must be made right.

The psychological perspective examines violence in terms of social collectivity, envy, anger, and frustration. Religious conflicts are psychological dilemmas that exist and take form within religion. Rene Girard believes the desire to emulate others (mimetic desire) leads to envy, jealousy, competition, and aggression. For Girard, religion seeks to provide sacred outlets for collective violence, thereby permitting violence against outsiders (scapegoats). The cognitive dissonance theory claims that when two religious beliefs are inconsistent psychic distress and discomfort result. There is an inherent drive for cognitive consistency, and religious militants refuse to compromise their beliefs and champion violence to force society to conform to their beliefs. Another psychological perspective sees violence as an act of symbolic empowerment: groups who believe they are victims of oppression use violence to show others their power and self-worth.

Apocalyptic religious violence seeks to establish God's order through a cataclysmic event in which the forces of good and evil do battle. Apocalyptic events, as terrible and as violent as they are, are welcome as harbingers of the kingdom of God - when suffering will end and divine rewards will be distributed. Violence, within violent apocalyptic groups, is not viewed as necessarily evil, but loyalty to an ungodly society without transforming it to the kingdom of God is evil. Therefore, violence is necessary to bring about the kingdom of God, and as such the emphasis is not on the destruction of the old, but on the glories of the emerging order. Catastrophic apocalyptic groups believe it is their obligation to initiate the coming apocalypse through violence. Mystical apocalyptic sects encourage violence, suicide, and self-mutilation, in order to transcend this corrupt and unredeemable world. Utopian groups remove themselves from an immoral society, which will be destroyed, and establish their own religious lifestyles different from society.

The civilizational perspective argues that world conflicts in the twenty-first century will be classes and battles between the world's civilizations, composed of several nation-states sharing the same religion and historical identity. Each civilization has a unique worldview, history, morality, and land - sacred and divinely given. Violence is seen as a response to a perceived threat to its religious culture, sacred lands, and/or historical identity. Religious terrorists are not loyal to a nation but to their religious civilization. In a time of globalization, to see conflict as limited confrontations between two nation-states is to miss the international religious unity prevalent in the world.

Finally, Selengut analyzes religious masochism, religious martyrdom, and religion and sexual violence. Religion calls upon the faithful to show obedience through physical commitments, self-sacrifice, and violence: the corporeality of religious violence. Religious masochism and sacred pain are essential parts of religious life. Pain is not something to be avoided but is a way of serving and participating in God's work. Martyrs act out of the belief of an afterlife, the sacredness of the group's goals, and willingness to serve God and to destroy God's opponents. Martyrs believe their death will earn immediate salvation and will bring divine vengeance upon their enemies. Sexual abuse, a problem within all religions, requires analysis of the unique relationship between theology and social organization: religious leadership being viewed as a sacred elite, the secrecy of religious decision makers, religious ideology (of suffering), and religious socialization and conformity.

Selengut concludes that religious violence is ultimately about conflicting sacred visions, prophetic pronouncements, and eschatological expectations. Selengut advocates a holistic understanding of religious violence, taking into account the historical, scriptural, eschatological, and psychological factors operative in the specific event. Selengut, finally, outlines six strategies for reducing religious violence: produce a theologically informed laity, have the state intervene to limit violence, include charismatic leaders in solutions, incorporate religious symbols in the public arena, use religious and secular institutions in conflict mediation, and have meaningful dialogue between religions.

The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism

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Startling and Moving
Doesn't Bother With Context
Unjustified Violence, in Search of an Identity, Then and Now
Great Read
Helpful Summary of Monotheistic Violence.

The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism
Regina M. Schwartz
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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The Curse of Cain confronts the inherent ambiguities of biblical stories on many levels and, in the end, offers an alternative, inspiring reading of the Bible that is attentive to visions of plenitude rather than scarcity, and to an ethics based on generosity rather than violence.

"[A] provocative and timely examination of the interrelationship of monotheism and violence. . . . This is a refreshing alternative to criticism-biblical and otherwise-that so often confuses interpretation with closure; it is an invitation to an ethic of possibility, plenitude, and generosity, a welcome antidote to violence, as important for its insights into memory, identity, and place as for its criticism of monotheism's violent legacy."—Booklist

"Brilliant and provocative, this is a work demanding close attention from critics, theologians, and all those interested in the imaginative roots of common life."—Rowan Williams, Bishop of Monmouth

"A stunningly important book."—Walter Brueggemann, Theology Today

"Artfully rendered, endlessly provocative."—Lawrence Weschler, New Yorker

Customer Reviews:

Startling and Moving.......2007-06-26

Almost every page of Regina Schwartz' book on the Hebrew Bible flashes with startling insights. Her most basic (and I think most helpful) overall observation is to note the pervasive issue of scarcity functioning throughout the Old Testament. Land is scarce, blessings are scarce, and this scarcity drives characters into conflict, and conflict leads to concerns over identity and possession (Who's in and who's out? Who gets what?). Hence her chapter headings run like this: "Inventing Identity", "Owning Identity" etc. Schwartz' "scarcity leading to identity formation" key for reading the Hebrew Bible opens a great deal of fresh interpretive space. Get this book, then reread the Old Testament again, as if for the first time.

Doesn't Bother With Context.......2006-09-16

The author like so many others lumped all Christian denominations and seeminingly monotheistic religions together as one. No, not all Christians are the same. Furthermore, the author took many verses in the Bible out of context, rather than choosing to see it as a whole, he instead sees it in pieces, as being contradictory, not bothering to take seriously WHY the Bible made certain statements.

Unjustified Violence, in Search of an Identity, Then and Now.......2006-07-03

"The issue I am focusing attention on is the price of imagining collective identity under one principle and banishing the rest--it doesn't have to be one god, it can be one nation, one kinship group, one territory." Regina Schwartz

Violence and Monotheism:
Monotheism is a deep, complex concept with a multifaceted history, complicit with violence, and the demand of allegiance to one god, is accompanied by aggression against those of other beliefs, is Dr. Schwartz conclusion, based on her study relating violence to Monotheism. Unfortunately, tales of violence may have been exaggerated in the Hebrew narratives to impress, while it receded when Hebrew Monolatery developed into Monotheism. Sometimes peoples that have a monotheistic religion are in fact very pluralistic and tolerant.

Violent Interpretations:
"Biblical narratives are infinitely interpretable, and interpretations of the Bible have been put to any and every political purpose. The number of ante-bellum clergy who used the Bible to justify slavery is astonishing." Regina Schwartz, a promoter of Ethics and Non violence says, adding, "The Bible..., not only as a spiritual guide and a handbook of truth, but also as a manual of politics. As though all this authorizing of scripture doesn't make biblical interpretation hazardous enough,..."
She interprets the Bible as describing peoples who were in conflict, competing for their needs, of material resources, in the ancient world, as they are today. Biblical narratives reflect that violence against peoples who worship other deities, leaving us a legacy of intolerance, and sometimes authorizing such intolerance as God's own command.

Themes and Findings:
The author's scheme is logical, analytical and thematically compelling, briefly; Violence, in search of identity, Covenants to confirm identity, Land to conserve identity, Legislation to guard identity and limit internal conflict, Nationalism to strengthen identity, Memory to preserve identity.
She proposes that the injunction "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" promotes intolerance to other people, and their beliefs. The Bible, debates Dr. Schwartz, has bequeathed not only narratives of violence, but has promoted an ethic of charity and social justice; taking care of the widow, the orphan, and the poor. The Bible also offers alternative visions toward the neighbor, of peace and generosity, of forging alliances with the foreigner, and we could highlight them. The prophets emphasized visions of bounty and peace, of the lion laying down with the lamb, thus, overwriting the violent themes of winners and losers.

The Curse of Cain:
The Curse of Cain invites a fresh analytical re-reading of the Hebrew Bible narratives without prejudice or bias. Dr. Schwartz proposes Cain's violence was the first sin against God and humanity. Her study plan is impressive, and her interpretation of the narrative is both bold and lucid, analyzing the perplexing stories to discover a psychological motive for the unjustified violence, and evaluates its implications.

Great Read.......2003-09-10

This is a truly brilliant book.

Helpful Summary of Monotheistic Violence........2000-04-08

This book is a useful introduction to the idea that Western religious identites are formed through exclusionary violence. As such, it is an important book that could be a great resource for adult education in churches and synagogues. However, Schwartz does not really say anything that hasn't been said before, or rather she doesn't engage with a slew of writers who have made similar associations between identity and violence (Adorno being the most uncompromising example). For a more satisfying look at how the critique of identity looks when applied to biblical criticism, see Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's _But SHE Said._ Still, Schwartz's accessible prose opens these challenging questions to a wider readership than has previously been attempted.

A Season in Bethlehem : Unholy War in a Sacred Place

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Seasons to Remember
A Daring Journey...
Biased and inaccurate
Shows how thugs can get sanctuary in churches
An excellent book

A Season in Bethlehem : Unholy War in a Sacred Place
Joshua Hammer
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

Newsweek's Jerusalem bureau chief Joshua Hammer arrived in the West Bank in October 2000 -- just after Ariel Sharon made his inflammatory visit to the Haram al-Sharif, otherwise known as the Temple Mount. Sharon's trip ignited the worst violence the Middle East had seen in decades. Overnight, the peace process gave way to an ever-worsening cycle of attack, revenge, and retaliation, destabilizing the entire region, killing thousands, and culminating in Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian towns in 2002.

A Season in Bethlehem is the story of one West Bank town's two-year disintegration, as witnessed by a reporter who was there from the beginning. Woven together from Hammer's own firsthand reportage plus hundreds of interviews, it follows a dozen characters whose lives collided on the streets of this biblical city. They include a Bedouin tribesman who rose to become the commander of Bethlehem's most feared and brutal gang of gunmen; the beleaguered governor, an opponent of the al-Aqsa intifada, who believed he had a mandate to stop the violence, only to discover that Yasser Arafat was undermining him; a Christian businesman who watched helplessly as his community was squeezed between Muslim militants and the Israeli army; an eighteen-year-old female honors student turned suicide bomber; and an Israeli reservist, son of a leader of the Peace Now movement, who wrestled with his left-wing convictions as he rode to battle through the predawn streets.

The narrative reaches a climax with a moment-by-moment recreation of the epochal drama that drew many of these characters together: the thirty-nine-day siege of the Church of the Nativity. A clear-eyed chronicle of deepening chaos and violence, in which Hammer lets the opposing sides speak for themselves, A Season in Bethlehem is both a timely and timeless look at how longstanding religious and political tensions finally boiled over in a place of profound resonance: the birthplace of Jesus.

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"Newsweek's Jerusalem bureau chief Joshua Hammer arrived in the West Bank in October 2000 -- just after Ariel Sharon made his inflammatory visit to the Haram al-Sharif, otherwise known as the Temple Mount. Sharon's trip ignited the worst violence the Middle East had seen in decades. Overnight, the peace process gave way to an ever-worsening cycle of attack, revenge, and retaliation, destabilizing the entire region, killing thousands, and culminating in Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian towns in 2002. A Season in Bethlehem is the story of one West Bank town's two-year disintegration, as witnessed by a reporter who was there from the beginning. Woven together from Hammer's own firsthand reportage plus hundreds of interviews, it follows a dozen characters whose lives collided on the streets of this biblical city. They include a Bedouin tribesman who rose to become the commander of Bethlehem's most feared and brutal gang of gunmen; the beleaguered governor, an opponent of the al-Aqsa intifada, who believed he had a mandate to stop the violence, only to discover that Yasser Arafat was undermining him; a Christian businesman who watched helplessly as his community was squeezed between Muslim militants and the Israeli army; an eighteen-year-old female honors student turned suicide bomber; and an Israeli reservist, son of a leader of the Peace Now movement, who wrestled with his left-wing convictions as he rode to battle through the predawn streets. The narrative reaches a climax with a moment-by-moment recreation of the epochal drama that drew many of these characters together: the thirty-nine-day siege of the Church of the Nativity. A clear-eyed chronicle of deepening chaos and violence, in which Hammer lets the opposing sides speak for themselves, A Season in Bethlehem is both a timely and timeless look at how longstanding religious and political tensions finally boiled over in a place of profound resonance: the birthplace of Jesus. "

Customer Reviews:

Seasons to Remember .......2005-06-03

This is thought provoking, courageous journalism! This is a great read, thoughtful, powerful imagery allows reader to make sense of insensibilities, and also makes it difficult to take sides. I saw no signs of favoritism to any involved parties, just a fact filled, well researched account of 40 or so days in what one would have to describe as a crucible. This is difficult to tackle subject matter, thankfully Mr. Hammer had the sense and fortitude to endanger himself and his loved ones in an effort to tell a story that had to be told, and, hopefully, more widely read. I cannot help but to compare Mr. Hammer to Ernie Pyle and his home-spun, natural ability to accurately describe war in its own urgent undertones, making the reader sense the palpable tension that must exist there to this day. I would highly recommend this to anyone trying to understand the nature and history of this conflict, or to university students involved in Mid-eastern studies. ab/

A Daring Journey..........2005-05-19

Joshua Hammer goes to a place where most of us would never dare. "A Season in Bethlehem" is an intricately woven passage that takes the reader on an emotional journey delving into the minds, bodies and souls of its characters. Hammer writes, "This is a part of the world where every square foot of land is invested with deep meaning." And it's on that note where the book begins its quest to find reason for the violence and destruction that has brought so much suffering to the people living in the region today.

Unlike most articles and material I have read on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, this book brings to the forefront some insight into why and how the chaos exists. The author makes a bold choice to humanize almost every character in this book, whether one considers them good or evil. But it's that choice that makes this book unique, it allows the human story from all sides to unfold. And for some that's a place where most people would rather not go. But if there is ever going to be change, it's a place where we have to go...

Biased and inaccurate.......2005-03-14

A Season in Bethlehem : Unholy War in a Sacred Place is a biased and highly inaccurate book.

Not much more to say.

Shows how thugs can get sanctuary in churches.......2005-02-04

This looks like sober reporting. After all, it states that "Israel invaded" Bethlehem "on April 2, 2002, and besieged the Church of the Nativity." What could be more objective and unbiased?

Well, just about anything would have been more objective. After all, the problem wasn't the Israeli soldiers. It was a gang of Arab terrorists who, um, invaded the Church of the Nativity in order to try to get away with their crimes.

Still, I did have an obvious question. Just how complicit were the Christians with the Arab terrorists? Were they hostages? If they were, I would have hoped that the Vatican would have complained more loudly about it. Or were they siding with the thugs?

Hammer explains that the Christians offered the Arabs "sanctuary" in the church. And that the terrorists could keep their guns. It's nifty how the author thinks he can excuse everyone. The terrorists were just trying to find well-earned sanctuary. And the Church can't be blamed for supporting the Human Rights of all thugs!

Well, I think such a whitewash has the opposite effect. I know some very decent Arab Christians. But when I see stuff like this, it makes it difficult for me to sympathize with them. I know that many people have been pressured into siding with (or at least tolerating) the thugs. But there is no excuse for open support of terror.

As a minimum, every reputable Christian leader should have unambiguously denounced the takeover of the Church of the Nativity and should have supported Israeli efforts to arrest the terrorists and bring them to justice. But instead, the author tries to explain that such an idea was impossible, given the untrustworthiness of the Israelis. And he blames Israel for allowing Jews to live in the West Bank at all!

I happen to think that the Israelis were quite trustworthy. But such an issue was separate from the fact that thugs were occupying the Church of the Nativity. Would we have been so slow to denounce an occupation of the Kaaba by Christian terrorists?

I do not recommend this book. Its bias is so great that it is hard to trust what it says anyway.

An excellent book.......2004-06-28

This is an enjoyable and fascinating work spotlighting the human side of a well-known incident.

Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence

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Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence
James G. Williams
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Bible & Other Sacred Texts | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 006069453X

War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence

Average customer rating:

Peace and non-violence ideology should fit more in Christian Theology!
Great History, Little Theology
An awesome study in Old Testament War mentalities
The book on this subject
This book is extremely informative, but often hard to read.

War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence
Susan Niditch
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Judaism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Ethics | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Bible & Other Sacred Texts | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0195098404

Book Description

Texts about war pervade the Hebrew Bible, raising challenging questions in religious and political ethics. The war passages that readers find most disquieting are those in which God demands the total annihilation of the enemy without regard to gender, age, or military status. The ideology of the "ban," however, is only one among a range of attitudes towards war preserved in the ancient Israelite literary tradition. Applying insights from anthropology, comparative literature, and feminist studies, Niditch considers a wide spectrum of war ideologies in the Hebrew Bible, seeking in each case to discover why and how these views might have made sense to biblical writers, who themselves can be seen to wrestle with the ethics of violence. The study of war thus also illuminates the social and cultural history of Israel, as war texts are found to map the world views of biblical writers from various periods and settings. Reviewing ways in which modern scholars have interpreted this controversial material, Niditch sheds further light on the normative assumptions that shape our understanding of ancient Israel. More widely, this work explores how human beings attempt to justify killing and violence while concentrating on the tones, textures, meanings, and messages of a particular corpus in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Customer Reviews:

Peace and non-violence ideology should fit more in Christian Theology!.......2006-07-03

War Ethics/Theology:
Professor Niditch fresh examination of the narratives on war in the Hebrew Bible allows Westerner readers to evaluate how much has changed in the views on war since ancient times to the 21st century ongoing 'War on terror.'
Understanding of war and its ethical issues, the nature of which is vast in scope, must consider the Hebrew Bible as a starting point. The Hebrew Bible preserves a tradition that continues in an unbroken connection from a period of time and has been used as a justification to all stances on the moral question of war throughout history. Obviously, God is not against all wars, and since Jesus is always in perfect agreement with the Father (John 10:30), so we cannot argue that war was only God's will limited to Old Testament times, since God does not change (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17). Yet, in NT Jesus blessed peace makers, calling them the Sons of God, while war was always considered a result of sin (Romans 3:10-18)

Vengeance as Command:
In the Hebrew Bible, the LORD God ordered the Israelites to: "Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites" Numbers 31:2, "However,... do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them--the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites--as the LORD your God has commanded you." Exodus 17:16 proclaims, "The LORD will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation." Also, "Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; make war on them until you have wiped them out." 1 Samuel 15:18.
In a recent thesis to Harvard University, Mark Hamilton states,"War songs such as (Song of Moses,) Exodus 15 and (Song of Deborah,) Judges 5 are very archaic Hebrew and celebrate Israelite victories from the time preceding the Israelite monarchy under David and Solomon. However, most of the other biblical texts are somewhat later. And they are edited works, collections of various sources intricately and artistically woven together."

Justifying Violence:
War narratives that pervaded the Hebrew Bible suggested to Marcion of Sinope that the God of the Old Testament is different from the loving Father of whom Jesus spoke in the New. Those texts continue to raise difficult questions about social and confrontation ethics, that you encounter on many issues in our violent times. Niditch struggled to give answers to those primitive ideologies, by reviewing the entire display of biblical wars, analyzing their writers ideologies, to find out if they made sense then on total annihilation of the enemy without regard to gender, age, or military status. Her examination, assumptions, and tools are sophisticated, utilizing anthropology, comparative ethics, and literary criticism hoping to justify the adverse attitudes in her complicated case through exploring the history of violence, killing and terror from Joshua to Samson. But the 'ban' ideology remains a very violent proto type of ethnic cleansing. However, it is only one among a range of attitudes towards war preserved in the Hebrew scripture literary tradition.

Conclusions:
Niditch feminist tinted epilogue quotes Rabbinic tradition and Midrash to contradict ancient scripture with post-biblical Judaic literature that even enjoins pity for the enemies. She concludes that such ideology of peace and non-violence should fit more in Christian theology! She describes the ban as a sacrifice for a (Pagan) God who appreciates human sacrifice. If pagan enemies are totally annihilated because of their sins, so what about innocent babies? She concludes, "A society under siege, Israel must be purified and cleansed of contaminating influences. Hopefully the whole of civilized nations follow pace.

Great History, Little Theology.......2006-05-21

In the Old Testament there are seven different ideologies of war (why and how did the Jews wage war).
1)The Ban as God's Portion.
The word "ban" or herem (hrm) is the slaying of men, women and children, as well of livestock. It includes destruction of cities and cultural artifacts, with no survivors left behind. In this particular ideology, herem is not just to destruct, but to devote to destruction: it is a vow, a consecration, a setting apart and a sanctifying for God. Thus, it is not necessarily incompatible with life-affirming ethics; it regards the victims with respect (I noticed a parallel here with the Aztecs' view of sacrifice). The idea was probably borrowed from neighboring civilizations. See for instance the famous MESHA INSCRIPTION (p.31), in which the Moabite king Mesha sacrificed Israelites to his god Kemosh, just as the god instructed him.In most cases the invocation of herem comes from military leaders, not from God.

2)To root out what is regarded as impure, sinful forces hurting the relationship between Israel and God: the Ban as God's Justice. in this context, the enemy is demonized and reified as "the Other," "them."

3)Priestly Ideology of War.
No destruction of cities or enemy goods.

4)Bardic tradition of war.
War as sport, game, quest for glory. Stick with a warrior code.

5)Ideology of tricksterism.
(War ethic of the underdog)

6)Ideology of Expediency.

7)Ideology of non-participation.

I bought and read the book to clarify some theological doubts as to whether God really ordered the slaughter of Israel's enemies. However, Niditch did not dwell on such matters and developed her research topic from a strictly historical point of view.My questions are still unanswered.

An awesome study in Old Testament War mentalities.......2005-01-02

Niditch opines that Old Testament perspectives of war do not take on an evolutionary or linear development. These perspectives of war co-exist side by side, overlap, and sometimes contradict each other. Niditch names seven perspectives on war, and, using an interdisciplinary approach, interprets how each perspective identified and molded Israel's self-understanding. The 'ban as sacrifice' is similar to a quid pro quo deal with God: all of the lives of the enemy (humans being the most sacred creation) for their land. The 'ban as justice' roots out abhorration of those who worship other dieties. The 'priestly attitude' towards war is similar to the 'ban as justice' but intwines purity concerns. The 'bardic testaments' on war glorify warriors and courage and institute themes of dueling and taunting. The 'trickster perspective' allows for the powerless to decieve those in power in order to achieve military agendas. 'Wars of expediency' allow for anything to be done to approach objectives, while the 'non-participation perspective' (different from non-violence) teaches not do participate in war, becuase Yahweh will do the dirty work.

Niditch's book is methodically researched and takes an objective approach to scripture. She does not exonerate God in some of the more disturbing passages, but explains what the scriptures actually say. At times her writing style leaves something to be desired, but overall, her work is enlightening and provocative.

The book on this subject.......2000-08-05

Susan Niditch has produced an invaluable study of a vital subject. This is not, however, primarily a book about the ethics of war, which draws upon the resources of Hebrew Bible to address a modern topic. The subtitle is, therefore, a bit misleading. This is a thorough examination of biblical texts on warfare using Niditch's own reformulation of tradition-history. It functions as a brilliant updating of the work of Gerhard von Rad on Holy War. She is able to bring the developments of the last several decades, including some contemporary literary observations which combine well with her tradition-history perspective, into the discussion. To her credit, Niditch does not hesitate to challenge and correct the venerable von Rad when necessary. Of course, the end product has much to say about the problem of war in our own time. It does so indirectly, but not inadvertantly. Those hoping for a discussion of the ethics of war need to be prepared for a deep dive into the Hebrew Bible and a long journey through it before coming up for air. Nevertheless, it is a journey well worth the effort.

This book is extremely informative, but often hard to read........1998-11-11

A reader seeking a resolution of the ethical contradiction implicit in a just and loving God who demands the total annihilation of those that oppose his arbitrarily adopted people groups will probably be disappointed. She states that such an inquiry is beyond the range of this book. She does, however, offer a complex identification of the various implementations of warfare in relation to God, and she suggests some well justified theories as to their particular sources and cultural contexts that gave rise to each of the trajectories. The material for engaging in an exploration of the ethical paradox of the Merciful God versus the Destroyer God exists in this book, and the library of reference material furnishes a field for beginning an inquiry of this kind. This book helps us in our study of the Old Testament because it supplies a means of identifying various literary systems of violent passages and a method of analyzing these systems. It also provides an extremely rich portrayal of the warring facets of Hebrew culture that is helpful in understanding the culture as a whole. I personally learned a great deal not only about the Old Testament's approach to violence but also about intensely academic and technical writing in general. All of this knowledge will be useful to my study of the Old Testament as well as any further contact with similar writing.

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