In the comments on a recent post, someone mentioned that a particular interpretation of the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac “does violence to the text.” Given that the text itself features the use of violence, and those who read violent texts like these are sometimes led to engage in acts of violence themselves, I found myself wondering whether some sort of “just war” theory might apply to Biblical interpretation.
To put it bluntly, is it appropriate/moral to treat violent texts in a way that does violence to them?
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