Religious violence is a problem in the world today. We have seen too many cases where fundamentalist terrorists kill innocent people in the name of God. Recently in Paris and San Bernardino, radical Islamic terrorists murdered innocent people in the name of Allah. But radical Islam is not alone. We have also seen fundamentalist terrorist attacks in the name of the Christian and Jewish God: Recently a Christian terrorist murdered innocent people at an abortion clinic in Colorado Springs, and Jewish terrorists murdered a Palestinian family in Duma in a revenge attack. The name of God differs—Allah, Christ, Ha-Shem—but the religious motivation for violence is palpable. Is there something wrong with religion that it gives rise to the murder of innocents? This is a problem that we cannot escape.
These recent examples of religious violence stem from fundamentalist versions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. These are the three major monotheisms, all Biblically based or derived. Is there something wrong with Biblically derived monotheism that gives rise to religious terrorism—to murder in the name of God? Some people have argued that the answer is yes. This calls for careful reflection.
The doctrine of holy war (ḥerem in Hebrew) is mentioned or implied many times in the Hebrew Bible and is prominent in the Book of Joshua.1 When the Israelites approach Jericho, Joshua commands the army, “Yahweh has given you the city. The city and everything in it are to be dedicated (ḥerem) to Yahweh” (Joshua 6:16–17). This means that the city is to be razed and every living thing in it killed—including men, women, children and animals—as a way of “dedicating” them to God. According to the doctrine of holy war, victory belongs to God, and all the spoils of war are his. The message seems to be that war is not for material gain but only for the glory of God.
Such is the ideology of holy war. A moment’s reflection—and the testimony of the historical evidence—tells us that it rarely ever happened this way. The reality of war is conquest for material gain: territory, trade routes, taxes, power, natural resources. Even in the Biblical accounts of holy war, the spoils are often kept by the victors. The ideology of holy war is an overlay that masks the pragmatic motives for war. This same religious ideology—war’s justifying face—is found throughout the ancient Near East. The Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II crows about his victories, “I massacred them, carried off captives from them, razed, destroyed and burnt (their) cities.” Why did he do this? Because the god Ashur wanted him to destroy the rebellious enemy. The enemy is a threat to the cosmic order.
Similarly, when the Moabite king Mesha writes about his victorious war against Israel, he describes it as the victory of Chemosh, his god. The Mesha Stele says, “Chemosh said to me, ‘Go and seize Nebo from Israel,’ and I went in the night, and I battled against it from the break of dawn until noon, and I took it, and I killed all of them—7,000 men and boys and women and girls and maidens—for I dedicated [the verb of ḥerem] it to Ashtar-Chemosh, and I took from there the vessels of Yahweh, and I dragged them before Chemosh.” Here Chemosh is the god of cosmic order, and Israel is the chaotic enemy.
The ideology of warfare in the ancient Near East is aptly described by Assyriologist Mario Liverani as a clash between order and chaos. The king is the defender of order. He “had a direct and legitimate link with the gods … On the contrary, the enemies were ‘godless’ or were abandoned by their gods, or were supported by inferior deities.”2 Only by conquest could the enemy be civilized and chaos contained. The enemy was wrong or misguided, since they worshiped false or ineffective gods. Liverani concludes, “The comparison between the two ‘faiths,’ one being the correct one and the other simply delusional, brought an obvious outcome.” The king must uphold the divine order, and the enemy is inevitably destroyed.
There is a problem with this religious justification for violence—in antiquity and today—but the Bible is not its source, nor is monotheism. The problem is a false ideology, one that gives a066 justification for war and killing in the name of God or the gods. Wars are fought by states or polities for material gain. The religious ideology of holy war, which has trickled down into the religious motivation for religious terror, is a mask, a justification and a deception. It deceives its practitioners and its victims. Ashur does not want the death of the people of Laqe, nor does Yahweh want the death of the people of Jericho, nor does Chemosh want the death of the people of Nebo. Nor does Allah want the death of people in California. These are fictions that overlay national, ethnic and religious dreams of conquest and power. From Ashurnasirpal to ISIS, the motivation for war and terror is cloaked in an ideology of divine blessing and justification. But conquest is an assertion of power, not of moral worth. We have seen enough war and mass murder to figure this one out.
The Bible and Biblical monotheism are not the source of religious violence. The problem stems from a toxic mix of religion and nationalism, or of religion and ethnocentrism. Freud diagnosed this as a group neurosis, which he called the “narcissism of minor differences” (e.g., the minor differences between Sunni and Shia—or between Muslim, Christian and Jew). What is the solution? Although it may seem undramatic, I am partial to the Enlightenment idea of the separation of church and state. This separation opens a space for religious plurality and respect for differences of belief and practice. The dangers of religious fundamentalism are restricted and marginalized when they are separated from the state’s monopoly on lawful violence.
People will still kill other people—just as chimpanzees kill other chimpanzees—but at least this rule reduces licit killing in the name of God. The separation of church and state is fragile in the West and is nonexistent in the Middle East. If we peel away the religious justification for institutional and state violence, then we can see violence in its true naked cruelty. As the sixth commandment says, murder is a crime, all the way down. It is a deception to say that it is, or ever was, holy.
Religious violence is a problem in the world today. We have seen too many cases where fundamentalist terrorists kill innocent people in the name of God. Recently in Paris and San Bernardino, radical Islamic terrorists murdered innocent people in the name of Allah. But radical Islam is not alone. We have also seen fundamentalist terrorist attacks in the name of the Christian and Jewish God: Recently a Christian terrorist murdered innocent people at an abortion clinic in Colorado Springs, and Jewish terrorists murdered a Palestinian family in Duma in a revenge attack. The name of God differs—Allah, Christ, Ha-Shem—but […]
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1. See Philip D. Stern, The Biblical Ḥerem: A Window on Israel’s Religious Experience (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991); Susan Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993); John J. Collins, Does the Bible Justify Violence? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004).
2. Mario Liverani, The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 510.
