Scot McKnight is an American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, theologian, and author who has written widely on the historical Jesus, early Christianity and Christian living. He is currently Professor of New Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.
Some of our readers are simply unbothered by some Old Testament texts while some of our readers are undone by them, and two particularly notable themes are the war-bride or war-rape texts and the genocide, or total-kill, texts.
In William Webb and Gordon Oeste’s new book, Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric, we encounter a forceful argument that presses against traditional ways of minimizing war bride/rape texts while holding more firmly onto genocide texts.
The argument works like this: since war bride/rape texts are given in a permission framework and genocide texts as imperatives, the latter are permanent and revelatory of God’s normative will while the former are more accommodated and therefore not so revelatory.
It is the presence of command vs. permission that separates the two. Therefore, war-bridge and war-rape texts are minimized.
The authors defeat this contention. They defeat it, in my view, decisively.
They consider that the war-rape instructions in the Bible exemplify God’s accommodated ethic (affected by a fallen world, involving real ethical problems) whereas the total-kill instructions exemplify his unaccommodated ethic (pure and pristine, involving only perceived ethical problems).
Our realigned-traditional position will argue that the war-rape and total-kill texts, while obviously describing different human acts, both reflect God’s accommodated ethic as he communicates within a fallen world.
So here are two fundamental texts for these two themes, war bride/rape here and then after this text the one on genocide or total-kill. Now, Deut 21:10-11
When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God hands them over to you and you take them captive, suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry…
It is the italics (suppose you see, or “if”) that diminishes the connection to God. It is accommodation to the way things were back in those days, so it is claimed.
But the genocide texts are not “suppose” or “if” but “Do this!”
Deut 20:16-17
But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the LORD your God has commanded…
So, a distinction is drawn between permission and command.
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