Session 1 Lesson Plan:
Reflect in buzz groups on the following questions:
“A nation under God…God bless America”. – The end of President Obama’s broadcast telling the world that bin Laden had been shot dead. a) Is God violent? b) Could the President have justified all the militarism and violence of his ‘nation under God’ from the
Bible?
Feedback
Input – The Warrior God
Group Work: a) Those who have justified their wars and violence by appealing to the warrior God, God on our side, i.e.
Ulster Covenant, Easter Proclamation, and to biblical holy war narratives, are they right; or have they distorted and abused the biblical text?
Feedback
Input – Violence Against Women
Group Work: a) In a patriarchal world, is it male warriors who construct a male god who then sanction bloody conquest, land grabbing and whatever the land contains, gold or oil? b) Does a male, all powerful God also sanction and justify violence against women? Think of how women are treated in war and violent conflicts! If true, how do we deconstruct patriarchy and male constructs of
God?
Feedback
Plenary Discussion: a) Is the Hebrew Bible inherently violent? b) What struck you in this session; what questions/issues has it raised?

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A dominant theme in the Hebrew Bible is the warrior God. God appears to be the key activist.
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All reading of the Bible is interpretation; therefore, interpretation of war narratives is problematic.
The texts themselves are already interpretations, theological and mythological, written centuries after an experience or event.
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In relation to the warrior God texts, we can take a mythological or historical view of early Israel’s story. Do the texts represent literal history, theological history or theo-myth?
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Early Israel was surrounded by neighbour mythology, and used some of it in its writings in subversive and counter-cultural ways.
 Israel’s neighbours did believe that their gods would fight for them but they had no concept that the army was not to fight.
 “The Lord will fight for us, and you have only to keep still” (Exodus 14 v 14). God will fight, Israel will not. The Exodus is celebrated in military language, but not as military action of the Israelites.
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All of the battle narratives in the Hebrew Bible are written as theo-myth and the most historical dimension is the historical context of Israel’s existence, not the battles.
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To read the narratives literally is to fail to grasp the reality of Israel’s minority existence and to miss the point of the narratives’ poetry and myth.
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The image of the warrior God is theo-mythical imagination cast in the story form of near-eastern neighbours, but radicalised through the renunciation of the use of horses, chariots and military technology.
 Israel is to “stand still” or “stop fighting” as it can be translated “and know that I am God” (Psalm 46 v 10).
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The warrior God tradition and holy wars ended with the establishment of the Davidic State. Now
Israel had a king “like all the nations” (I Sam. 8 v 5), which meant a standing army, horses and chariots, and battles to be fought. The prophets saw this as the rejection of God’s leadership or lordship.

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The Hebrew Bible includes stories of violence against women, which appear to have divine sanction.
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This may not be surprising since the entire Bible is set in a patriarchal context and reflects patriarchal concerns. Critical discernment is a must, since there is nothing ethical about Abraham passing Sarah off as his sister for Pharaoh’s sexual pleasure, in order to save his own life.
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Patriarchy un-names women, downgrades women like Miriam to elevate the male Moses and justifies violence against women in the text.
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There are four major narratives of violence against women in the Hebrew Bible. Hagar and Tamar and two with no names, who are victims of very brutal male violence.
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Judges 19 vv 1-30 tells the horrific story of an unnamed concubine from Bethlehem:
“The betrayal, rape, torture, murder and dismemberment of an unnamed woman is a story we want to forget but are commanded to speak. It depicts the horrors of male power, brutality, and triumphalism; of female helplessness, abuse and annihiliation. To hear this story is to inhabit a world of unrelenting terror that refuses to let us pass by on the other side.” (Phyllis Trible)
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Judges 11contains a brutal story of the violence against the unnamed daughter of Jephthah. It portrays
God as a violent land thief as well as requiring violent human sacrifice.
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If God gives Jephthah victory, he will offer human sacrifice, the first to appear at his door in his victorious homecoming. It is the unnamed daughter.
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Even though Jephthah tore his clothes and grieved he could not go back on his promise, nor does God give him any way out. “As so often happens when a male warrior and a male deity plan together, the result is violence against women.” (Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer)
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The letter to the Hebrews cites Jephthah as a hero of faith – “who through faith conquered kingdoms…became might in war…women received their dead by resurrection” (Hebrews 11 vv 32-
35). So Jephthah is a hero of faith, but his wife did not receive her daughter back by resurrection!
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Is this the word of the Lord? Or do we need to look for the word of the Lord between the lines? A literal reading is impossible and to read literally is to read through the lens of the Babylonian myth of redemptive violence.
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Read as theo-mythic reflection on Israel’s exilic experience, albeit using female imagery, is to hear a different voice. It is a cry to repent, the repeated Hebrew SHUV, meaning turn, return. It means to reverse course.

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The brutalised violence and violent God images are not the divine will. The warrior God does not sanction war or violence. We read these brutal texts of violence in their exilic (displaced, dislocated) context as a cry of repentance, a turning away from the ideology of violence to a different way of life.