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

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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.

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

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.

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