This post is partially inspired by a post I wrote on another blog and part from a conversation I had with Briar the other day. It seems hard to deal with texts like Joshua 5 & 6 - i.e. is genocide ok? Recently I was listening to a lecture on morality and the lecturer talked about the possibility of viewing morality in 3 categories:
1) Autonomous: equality, rights, freedom.
2) Community: interdependance, duty, status, hierarchy.
3) Divinity: purity, sin, sanctity.
Apparently Autonomous Morality is what Western philosophers call morality. It is highly rational (Kantian morality is an example of this), e.g. is it ok for two adults who aren't married to sleep together? Autonomous morality would say yes, [Christian] Divinity Morality would say no, Community Morality would ask 'what does our culture and traditions say about this?' The West mostly operates from an autonomous morality, with a mix of the other two. But what does this have to do with genocide in the Old Testament?
I think it's more of a hermeneutical awareness. It has to be noticed that the Israelites didn't work from a rational autonomous morality like the West does. They were Community and Divinity; more concerned about maintaining the commands of the Holy Yahweh [God] than rationalising everything out. I guess I want to note two things here; 1) the Canaan-o-cide is a fulfillment of prophecy made many years before, it was going to come to pass anyway. It is said their inequities had come to fruition and this would have definitely influenced the Israelites if they lived side-by-side.
2) I'm not sure how else they were going to take the land, perhaps the inhabitants would pack up and move off? A natural disaster wipe them out first ready for the Israelites to walk in?
What ever the case God commanded the genocide, and [textually] the Israelites had no quelms executing the order. Which brings me to an interesting thought - how much was God accommodating the development of Israelite e.g. philosophically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually etc. We are riding on the back of thousands of years of development and experience. We can learn in 3 years at Uni what initially took people their lifetimes. As we are still developing so were the Israelites, they hadn’t moved through an ‘enlightenment’ period which emphasized rationality. My guess is that they still thought in what we would call ‘primitive’ thinking, their conclusions perhaps not making a lot of rational sense e.g. the stoning of a family over stolen goods [Achan]. If you get what I mean here, I wonder how much God accommodated them at their stage of development. He operated in a way that made sense to them, but this way of operating is not indicative of all of God, nor revealing all he is nor how he actually operates if we could somehow manage full comprehension of God. My suspicion is that he continues to operate now in a way that makes some sense to us – which is different as we operate differently to the Israelites. For the sake of this post I might continue this line of thought in another post.
2) I'm not sure how else they were going to take the land, perhaps the inhabitants would pack up and move off? A natural disaster wipe them out first ready for the Israelites to walk in?
What ever the case God commanded the genocide, and [textually] the Israelites had no quelms executing the order. Which brings me to an interesting thought - how much was God accommodating the development of Israelite e.g. philosophically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually etc. We are riding on the back of thousands of years of development and experience. We can learn in 3 years at Uni what initially took people their lifetimes. As we are still developing so were the Israelites, they hadn’t moved through an ‘enlightenment’ period which emphasized rationality. My guess is that they still thought in what we would call ‘primitive’ thinking, their conclusions perhaps not making a lot of rational sense e.g. the stoning of a family over stolen goods [Achan]. If you get what I mean here, I wonder how much God accommodated them at their stage of development. He operated in a way that made sense to them, but this way of operating is not indicative of all of God, nor revealing all he is nor how he actually operates if we could somehow manage full comprehension of God. My suspicion is that he continues to operate now in a way that makes some sense to us – which is different as we operate differently to the Israelites. For the sake of this post I might continue this line of thought in another post.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment