Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses

Q. How did you like the book? A. Mostly, I did like it and learned from it. Philip does a good job of covering the bases of the violent verses in the Old Testament, so that people who think the Koran stimulates violence will have a bit more to think about. I was disappointed in his solutions, though. Philip ends up as a Christian apologist, so it seems. But we have to remember that his whole career is wrapped up with Christianity studies so he is not likely to kill the golden calf. Q. You seem cynical about his motives. Are you? A. Well, Philip has taken on a noble task, trying to combat prejudice toward Islam by showing how violent the Bible really is. He writes about those who wanted and today still want to eliminate the Old Testament from the Christian Bible, but he rejects that notion. I should say, I am not a Christian anymore, though I once was a baptized and confirmed Episcopalian. I was even an altar boy. When years ago I read those violent verses in the Old Testament that Philip discusses, I was thoroughly repulsed and puzzled also. I never understood how all this violence and hatred could be reconciled with the Jesus of the bible stories. So I kind of fell away from organized religion. I do not regret it. Philip is trying to provide some way for Christians to reconcile these violent verses with their beliefs today of how Christians should be. He does mention the new atheists like Dawkins, but Philip never really explores what the world might be like just to give up belief in the Bible. I think his next book should discuss that, just giving up the Bible. Obviously, that could never happen in a few generations, but by maybe 2300 it could, huh? Q. If you say so, I really do not know. But I do know that people are always going to need some spiritual backbone, whether from the Bible or from some other source. A. I recommend Taoism, Buddhism, the Course in Miracles, and the modern mystic, Vernon Howard.

Q. Did you learn anything reading this book? A. A lot. Or maybe it was a review of things I knew at one time but had forgotten. Q. And what was it you learned? A. The organized religions based on written works, scriptures, rest on precarious foundations. Jenkins knows a great deal about religious history and history in general. To pull together the various threads in this book, he really must be blessed with a comprehensive mind. Plus, he has courage, because most people are not going to like his message. Q. And the message is? A. The Bible, especially the Old Testament, and the Koran, too, but to a lesser extent, have reportings of what we would today call genocidal behavior, wholesale massacres, by some of the biblical heroes we worship most, such as Moses and Joshua. These are written in scriptures as dictates from the one true God. Jenkins discusses thoroughly how people have attempted to deal with these violent passages in the Bible in various ways. It's not at all certain that these passages are historically accurate, but their canonization in the Old Testament means, to literalists, that they should be followed as the true word of the true God. Q. So how did you feel during the reading and upon finishing the book? A. I felt, first, that Jenkins has shown that the Bible is no better than the Koran when it comes to possibly promoting violence, but violence today, as he also proposes, is not caused by these violent scriptures. Individuals will read them, or not, and turn them to their own particular purposes. Q. Other feelings? A. Fear. Q. About? A. That the total crushing of the Canaanites by the early Jewish people was actually sanctioned, even required, by God. It could, of course, be true. God could be a very particular higher power with certain goals and ends in mind. But it scared me because, if that is the truth, then I may be the next person annihilated. But by the end of the book, Jenkins gives readers several means by which to soften this fear. Besides which, if this is the truth of God and this world, then, as has been said many times in the past, that's just the way it is, ours not to reason why. Q. So the book made you think. Is it hard or easy reading? A. It is in between. I knew nothing of Jenkins before reading this book, but he's prolific on many topics. He knows how to write for the lay readership.