by VorJack
Over at NPR, there’s a discussion over which book is more violent, the Qur’an or the Bible. Historian Philip Jenkins, author of The Lost History of Christianity and Jesus Wars, comes down on the side of the Bible. That is, he believes that the Bible is more bloody and violent:
“By the standards of the time, which is the 7th century A.D., the laws of war that are laid down by the Quran are actually reasonably humane,” he says. “Then we turn to the Bible, and we actually find something that is for many people a real surprise. There is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide.”
Jenkins is referring to the stories in the OT of the early Hebrews completely destroying other tribes, killing everything but the women they took as slaves. Right now the archeology shows that this probably never happened, but the stories now exist in the Bible. Another scholar provides a counterpoint:
Andrew Bostom calls this analysis “preposterous.” Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, says there’s a major difference between the Bible, which describes the destruction of an enemy at a point in time, and the Quran, which urges an ongoing struggle to defeat unbelievers.
I start to see a problem. Calling either book “violent” ignores the fact that it’s the community who read the book who actually bring the violence about. If the readers decided to interpret the violence as symbolic, literary or from a previous dispensation, then the violence in the book is academic.
Notice that no one is arguing that the Lord of the Rings is more violent than the Bible. It might be true, but no one cares because no one is apt to use the Rings trilogy as justification for violence. (well, except the frodologists, but they’ve been quiet lately)
I suspect this is part of what Bostom is getting at. The descriptions of genocide in the OT are time-bound to a certain age, and should not be considered guidance for modern conflicts. So these stories are supposedly not germane to this discussion. But this ignore the complex and frighteningly creative ways that believers have used their holy texts.
Puritans arriving in the New World likened the continent to Canaan and the inhabitants to Canaanites. A story from ancient time became, typologically, a guide for present action and helped to justify the treatment of the Native Americans. Bostom is right that the Bible issues no clear instructions that this is to be done, but that’s cold comfort to the natives.
So there’s the problem: its not so much the text as the way that people use it that matters. And I suspect that this is completely unpredictable. Let’s say we gave the Bible to that philosophical cliche, the Man from Mars. Our Martian would read all the passages in about economic justice (“Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you.”). Do you think he would predict that the wealthiest country in the world would be predominately made up of people who venerate this book, and that most of them would be perfectly comfortable with their consumer capitalism?
Or take Pre-millennial dispensationalism for example. As Slacktivist has shown in his deconstruction of the Left Behind books, a few snippets of texts produced centuries apart have been stitched together to form an apocalyptic scenario which justifies some truly dubious attitudes. Is there any way that someone a few hundred years ago could have predicted this? If you can read the Bible and end up with the Left Behind series, you can end up with anything.
Rather than looking at the texts themselves and pronouncing them peaceful or violent, it would seem better to recognize that believers are freely able to interpret or ignore passages. The article ends:
In the end, the scholars can agree on one thing: The DNA of early Judaism, Christianity and Islam code for a lot of violence. Whether they can evolve out of it is another thing altogether.
But tradition, economics, politics, personality and chance all contribute to how portions of that DNA are expressed, and which portions are ignored all together. Each generation, and each community, decides for itself how best to use the holy texts. That being the case, arguing about which genome contains more violence seems beside the point.
Both books are fertilizer for terrorism, warfare, and injustice of every kind and magnitude. Regardless the message of peace preached by Jesus or the fairness preached by Mohammed, like the law, the books are full of loopholes allowing and or tacitly requiring any type of behavior an adherent might engage in to further their personal or political goals.
I would argue it goes beyond a tacit requirement, there are outright directives that one must stone someone to death for certain sins. The trouble with these books is that those professing any adherence to a particular part of them are being intellectually dishonest when they reject whatever bits seem currently unacceptable. It would be like reading a physics textbook and professing a belief in gravity but insisting that, for some reason, Newton’s laws of motion don’t really apply. I know the term “intellectually dishonest” can raise some hackles because it seems like an accusation and an assault on the character, but I stress this doesn’t automatically make someone a bad person.
This blog entry is related to the problems brought up in other previous posts, particularly regarding what makes a Christian and if Christianity in particular represses reason. These issues got heated and complicated, but I would argue that in simple terms, religions are inherently what their foundation is. They are much more besides that, but I’d say the foundation remains threaded in there somewhere. If their foundation says do this, don’t do that, it is still a fundamental of the religion, despite the fact that people may have drifted into radically different interpretations over the years. Today, the average Christian and Muslim is pretty non-violent (in the west at least, though both groups seem to be happy to throw stones or set children on fire given the opportunity in the Middle East and Africa), but I would argue that this is in spite of, not because of, their religion. They have instructions, but they are using whatever tools are at their disposal to justify to themselves not following them.
Clearly it doesn’t make them bad people, in fact it is very good for society overall that they are no longer following these instructions, but then they do follow others because they still draw inspiration from the same well, they just don’t want to drink the water in a certain corner of it. This highlights an internal inconsistency that they seem able to live with but remains no less illogical.
Religions will earn my respect when they edit out these passages that condone violence, or at least add footnotes saying “God doesn’t want you to do this any more.” I agree that at least some of the OT violence is puffery. For example, it would appear that Jericho was destroyed by an earthquake, rather than by warfare, and we are still waiting for the discovery of the remains of the Egyptian troops that supposedly pursued the Hebrews leaving Egypt.
I think comparing these two books wouldn’t be without it’s problems. I mean, both of these books are pretty violent. So ranking one horrible act over another may seem pointless. I know I’m being a weenie, but I’m more interested in just how violent both are (which would probably be discovered in the comparison)!
Also, on an odd side note, I always thought certain violent acts in the bible to seem odd (more so than my regular violence). Mainly the apparent craze for stoning people to death, and the idea that those rocks are also praising God at the same time.
What’s worse, cancer or aids?
You’re right there is a lot of violence in Lord of the Rings, but, then, it’s about fictional folk, isn’t it? Whereas, the Bible and the Quran are full of violence, but…, well, come to think about it, they’re all about fictional guys, too, aren’t they?
“That being the case, arguing about which genome contains more violence seems beside the point.” – can’t help it but, are humans are more violence than religions?
Archaeological evidence suggests that humans were largely non-violent until about 6000 years ago.
I think the fact that the books being violent is a mood point, because I think it is our faith, and lack of ability to understand and accept another type of faith, which is sad.
one’s faith*