Richard Dawkins loves the tooth fairy. Indeed, there is no more evidence for the existence of the tooth fairy than the God so many people believe in. Correct.
But is affirming the ‘existence’ of the tooth fairy (whatever that would mean) the scope of language about her? No – else parents across the globe be accused of systematically lying to their children, or of deluding themselves into belief that such a being exists without any evidence, and with strong evidence to the contrary.
Question: is affirming the ‘existence’ of God (whatever that would mean) the scope of language about God? No. As said before, talking about God is not a matter of affirming the existence of an extra-big thing that exists. It is more complex than that: it uses symbolic and metaphorical concepts to make sense of the life that we live; to engage ourselves with the mysteries of our existence; to shape our experience of and action in the world in wholesome and good directions; and to inspire, challenge and nurture our emotional selves.
I always find it interesting that Dawkins has never, to my knowledge, suggested that parents stop telling their children about the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, though of course the lack of evidence for their existence is equivalent to that of God.
But, of course, nobody has ever died as a result of belief in the tooth fairy. Nobody has ever made others suffer as a result of belief in Father Christmas. Nobody has set up a school and systematically brainwashed children in the name of the fairies at the bottom of the garden. Indeed – now we’re having an interesting debate. So forget the science of it; forget the lack of evidence for God’s existence and the countless reasons for doubting it; forget all the good reasons that evolutionary biology renders belief in God unnecessary. These are not the questions that matter, for, unless most parents commit similar child abuse to that of Priests, evidence (or lack of) for and against the existence of these beings is not the point (it is, however, the content of most of ‘The God Delusion’). A rather confused argument, then, is used by Dawkins: scoring cheap points on belief in God by using tooth fairy analogies regarding God’s non-existence; but failing to answer the real question of how humans use language about ‘false’ things (like the tooth fairy or God on the clouds), and whether this is a good thing or not.
Saturday 25 October 2008
Bus Theology
I have a few problems with putting a summary of one’s faith on the side of a bus.
This week it has been announced that the British Humanist Association will be placing Alpha Course-style adverts on the sides of London buses this January, reading ‘There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’
I have read a few blogs on this so far. Responses are varied, from:
• Fantastic – now a change to show religious people what a bunch of illogical idiots they are so people stop talking God
• Isn’t this terrible – liberal are at it again, trying to remove God from everyone’s conscience because of their own hardness of heart
• They only say probably no God – therefore there are plenty of opportunities for Christians to tell them just how accurate the Bible is, and how evolution was made by God etc
• Isn’t this wonderful – people are being open about their beliefs. This should encourage Christians to be as well, and create opportunities for dialogue
I agree with some of these more than others, and hope to offer a few thoughts that I haven’t read anywhere else. They focus on a simple question: what is God?
The assumption of these adverts is simple: God is a big man in the sky who doesn’t exist.
The assumption of the Alpha adverts is simple: God is a big man in the sky who does exist, and you can learn some more about him here. He’s the kind of person who you can ask questions to and expect answers from. God is an active subject: he does things, answers people’s questions and tells them ‘what it’s all about’.
I don’t think this, and I think that God is rather different to this big man in the sky.
Yet again, we’re back to Nicholas Lash. God is not, Lash suggests, one of the things that there are, in order that one can doubt God’s existence. In his own words:
‘[atheists] take for granted that ‘belief in God’ is a matter of supposing there to be, over and above the familiar world we know, one more large and powerful fact or thing, for the existence of which there is no evidence whatsoever.’
Or Karl Rahner:
‘God really does not exist who operates and functions as an individual existent alongside other existents, and who would be thus a member of the larger household of all reality. Anyone in search of such a God is searching for a false God. Both atheism and a more naïve form of theism labour under the same false notion of God, only the former denies it while the latter believes that I can make sense of it.’
Or Lash again:
‘Take a word with which we usually have less trouble than we do with ‘God’: the word ‘treasure’. A treasure is what is valued, held in high esteem. Notice that, when we say this, we are not implying that the word is the name of a natural kind the members of which, it so happens, are valued. There is no good going into a supermarket and asking for five bananas, three rolls of kitchen paper, and four treasures. To call something a treasure tells you nothing about it other than that it is treasures, valued, held in high esteem. Smilarly, a ‘god’ is what is worshipped, what someone has their heart set on… To call something a ‘god’ tells you nothing about it other than that it is worshipped.’
If this is the case, is it possible for God not to exist? If God is not a member of the community of things that exist, in the manner that ‘my left shoe’ or ‘Kofi Annan’ exist, but is, instead, that which we have our heart set on, I feel atheism is an impossibility because (Lash, yet again):
All human beings have their heart set somewhere, hold something scared, worship at some shrine. We are spontaneously idolatrous – where, by ‘idolatry’, I mean the worship of some creature, the setting of the heart on some particular thing (usually oneself). For most of us there is no single creature that is the object of our faith… and none of us is so self-transparent as to know quite where, in fact, our hearts are set.
So what, then, is the point of religion? Twofold, suggests Lash: to wean us from the idolatry of worshipping ‘creatures’ (including, I might add, a despotic God who will perform particular favours for you if you pray sincerely enough); and to purify our desire onto the mysterious, life-giving wholeness that life is really about:
Against this background, the great religious traditions can be see as contexts in which human beings may learn, however slowly, partially, imperfectly, some freedom from the destructive bondage which the worship of the creature brings.
--
Ah, Dan. Nice thinking there – but you have two theology degrees and spend huge amounts of time thinking about this stuff. Why should anyone else care/believe you?
Perhaps you shouldn’t, whether you are an atheist or a diehard theist. But here’s why I think you should:
• Theists: the God in whom many churchgoers believe is an idol. Talking about ‘God’ is a complicated business.
• Atheists: the God in whom you don’t believe is an idol. I don’t believe in him either. Yet, I think the language of divinity and the existence of religious tradition forms a wonderful and liberating method of approaching life.
--
I may or may not have convinced you, but convincing you is not my intention: instead, I hope to start a discussion. One of the great things about the Humanists’ campaign is that it does exactly that: makes people think, and legitimises discussion about God and spirituality. If there is something you think I should read/you think I am completely misguided/anything else – let me know. This is interesting stuff, and worth thinking about..
This week it has been announced that the British Humanist Association will be placing Alpha Course-style adverts on the sides of London buses this January, reading ‘There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’
I have read a few blogs on this so far. Responses are varied, from:
• Fantastic – now a change to show religious people what a bunch of illogical idiots they are so people stop talking God
• Isn’t this terrible – liberal are at it again, trying to remove God from everyone’s conscience because of their own hardness of heart
• They only say probably no God – therefore there are plenty of opportunities for Christians to tell them just how accurate the Bible is, and how evolution was made by God etc
• Isn’t this wonderful – people are being open about their beliefs. This should encourage Christians to be as well, and create opportunities for dialogue
I agree with some of these more than others, and hope to offer a few thoughts that I haven’t read anywhere else. They focus on a simple question: what is God?
The assumption of these adverts is simple: God is a big man in the sky who doesn’t exist.
The assumption of the Alpha adverts is simple: God is a big man in the sky who does exist, and you can learn some more about him here. He’s the kind of person who you can ask questions to and expect answers from. God is an active subject: he does things, answers people’s questions and tells them ‘what it’s all about’.
I don’t think this, and I think that God is rather different to this big man in the sky.
Yet again, we’re back to Nicholas Lash. God is not, Lash suggests, one of the things that there are, in order that one can doubt God’s existence. In his own words:
‘[atheists] take for granted that ‘belief in God’ is a matter of supposing there to be, over and above the familiar world we know, one more large and powerful fact or thing, for the existence of which there is no evidence whatsoever.’
Or Karl Rahner:
‘God really does not exist who operates and functions as an individual existent alongside other existents, and who would be thus a member of the larger household of all reality. Anyone in search of such a God is searching for a false God. Both atheism and a more naïve form of theism labour under the same false notion of God, only the former denies it while the latter believes that I can make sense of it.’
Or Lash again:
‘Take a word with which we usually have less trouble than we do with ‘God’: the word ‘treasure’. A treasure is what is valued, held in high esteem. Notice that, when we say this, we are not implying that the word is the name of a natural kind the members of which, it so happens, are valued. There is no good going into a supermarket and asking for five bananas, three rolls of kitchen paper, and four treasures. To call something a treasure tells you nothing about it other than that it is treasures, valued, held in high esteem. Smilarly, a ‘god’ is what is worshipped, what someone has their heart set on… To call something a ‘god’ tells you nothing about it other than that it is worshipped.’
If this is the case, is it possible for God not to exist? If God is not a member of the community of things that exist, in the manner that ‘my left shoe’ or ‘Kofi Annan’ exist, but is, instead, that which we have our heart set on, I feel atheism is an impossibility because (Lash, yet again):
All human beings have their heart set somewhere, hold something scared, worship at some shrine. We are spontaneously idolatrous – where, by ‘idolatry’, I mean the worship of some creature, the setting of the heart on some particular thing (usually oneself). For most of us there is no single creature that is the object of our faith… and none of us is so self-transparent as to know quite where, in fact, our hearts are set.
So what, then, is the point of religion? Twofold, suggests Lash: to wean us from the idolatry of worshipping ‘creatures’ (including, I might add, a despotic God who will perform particular favours for you if you pray sincerely enough); and to purify our desire onto the mysterious, life-giving wholeness that life is really about:
Against this background, the great religious traditions can be see as contexts in which human beings may learn, however slowly, partially, imperfectly, some freedom from the destructive bondage which the worship of the creature brings.
--
Ah, Dan. Nice thinking there – but you have two theology degrees and spend huge amounts of time thinking about this stuff. Why should anyone else care/believe you?
Perhaps you shouldn’t, whether you are an atheist or a diehard theist. But here’s why I think you should:
• Theists: the God in whom many churchgoers believe is an idol. Talking about ‘God’ is a complicated business.
• Atheists: the God in whom you don’t believe is an idol. I don’t believe in him either. Yet, I think the language of divinity and the existence of religious tradition forms a wonderful and liberating method of approaching life.
--
I may or may not have convinced you, but convincing you is not my intention: instead, I hope to start a discussion. One of the great things about the Humanists’ campaign is that it does exactly that: makes people think, and legitimises discussion about God and spirituality. If there is something you think I should read/you think I am completely misguided/anything else – let me know. This is interesting stuff, and worth thinking about..
Monday 20 October 2008
Good Nose
Good nose, hints of raspberry, soft bouquet with a long finish.
Wine is an interesting phenomenon, and wine buffs even more so: their eloquence in describing the precise nature of a wine, its character and feeling, is often rather amusing.
I don’t drink white wine very often, but did recently with my parents. I noted that the wine tasted of elderflower, which provoked some interesting discussion.
My mother was bemused, thinking that her son had become Oz Clarke. What could that possibly mean? Two things were central to this:
• I was talking rubbish.
• Was I suggesting that simply on the grounds of the briefest of sips I could ascertain that elderflowers were in close proximity to the grapes that produced the wine?
I responded to this with a comment on the nature of the language that one uses about wine. I suggested that drinking wine is a delicate and subtle experience, and one that transcends many of the normal means of talking about the flavours and sensory stimulation that comes from drinking. But is does taste of something, and the elderflower taste that I felt was an imperfect, but helpful, way of talking about it. When understood like this, I don’t think I was talking rubbish.
Also, the suggestion that in order to use that sort of language about elderflowers and the wine there must have been elderflowers in close proximity to it at some significant point in its lifetime, also misses the point. I was not suggesting anything of the sort, but was noting that this particular wine tasted something like elderflowers – I was making no comment on the wine’s history, or no hypothesis regarding its relation to the elderflower of which is tasted.
I wonder if this is rather like God.
Some people think that talking about God is pure rubbish: misleading lies that serve only people’s own self-interest. I don’t deny that this is often the case, yet think the history of Christian theology and the worshipful traditions of the Church have something rather positive to contribute to our living of life.
I wonder if religious language is rather like the words and concepts that we use to talk about wine. They are not the wine, but an imperfect and wholly inadequate attempt to understand the wine, for they are all that we have. And so it is with God: people tell stories about God to provide some narrative unpacking of God’s nature; people talk about God ‘saying’ and ‘doing’ things, though God surely has no voice or hands in any literal sense. This language and these symbols are all that we have in trying to make sense of the deepest levels of our experience, of that which we accept to be true without condition, and of that which inspires, motivates and transforms us.
So what about the Church?
The tradition of the Church in which I am most comfortable is fairly high Anglicanism. It takes these concerns rather seriously, and attempts to address them through the sounds of beautiful music, the smell of incense, the sight of one another and the priest, the touch of a hand being shaken, and the taste of bread and wine. Boring, dull ritualism, some say. Again, no doubt that this can be the case. But I wonder if this focus on the sensory engagement of one’s self with the mysteries of divinity might provide some excellent opportunities to pick up some of the elderflowers in the wine, or the Godness of the divine.
Wine is an interesting phenomenon, and wine buffs even more so: their eloquence in describing the precise nature of a wine, its character and feeling, is often rather amusing.
I don’t drink white wine very often, but did recently with my parents. I noted that the wine tasted of elderflower, which provoked some interesting discussion.
My mother was bemused, thinking that her son had become Oz Clarke. What could that possibly mean? Two things were central to this:
• I was talking rubbish.
• Was I suggesting that simply on the grounds of the briefest of sips I could ascertain that elderflowers were in close proximity to the grapes that produced the wine?
I responded to this with a comment on the nature of the language that one uses about wine. I suggested that drinking wine is a delicate and subtle experience, and one that transcends many of the normal means of talking about the flavours and sensory stimulation that comes from drinking. But is does taste of something, and the elderflower taste that I felt was an imperfect, but helpful, way of talking about it. When understood like this, I don’t think I was talking rubbish.
Also, the suggestion that in order to use that sort of language about elderflowers and the wine there must have been elderflowers in close proximity to it at some significant point in its lifetime, also misses the point. I was not suggesting anything of the sort, but was noting that this particular wine tasted something like elderflowers – I was making no comment on the wine’s history, or no hypothesis regarding its relation to the elderflower of which is tasted.
I wonder if this is rather like God.
Some people think that talking about God is pure rubbish: misleading lies that serve only people’s own self-interest. I don’t deny that this is often the case, yet think the history of Christian theology and the worshipful traditions of the Church have something rather positive to contribute to our living of life.
I wonder if religious language is rather like the words and concepts that we use to talk about wine. They are not the wine, but an imperfect and wholly inadequate attempt to understand the wine, for they are all that we have. And so it is with God: people tell stories about God to provide some narrative unpacking of God’s nature; people talk about God ‘saying’ and ‘doing’ things, though God surely has no voice or hands in any literal sense. This language and these symbols are all that we have in trying to make sense of the deepest levels of our experience, of that which we accept to be true without condition, and of that which inspires, motivates and transforms us.
So what about the Church?
The tradition of the Church in which I am most comfortable is fairly high Anglicanism. It takes these concerns rather seriously, and attempts to address them through the sounds of beautiful music, the smell of incense, the sight of one another and the priest, the touch of a hand being shaken, and the taste of bread and wine. Boring, dull ritualism, some say. Again, no doubt that this can be the case. But I wonder if this focus on the sensory engagement of one’s self with the mysteries of divinity might provide some excellent opportunities to pick up some of the elderflowers in the wine, or the Godness of the divine.
Thursday 9 October 2008
Dancing Weddings
I went to a wedding recently. The bride and groom had met through morris dancing, and so decided that their day would include a huge amount of the stuff. So, there was midday dancing in the park, plenty of warm beer and people dressed up, as well as a procession of dancing from the park to the bandstand.
When it came to walking up onto the bandstand itself – where the ceremony was to take place – a particularly well-known tune was played: ‘Simple Gifts’, a Shaker (dancing quakers from Manchester in the 18th century) tune. This was adapted by Sydney Carter into the tune of the well-know schoolboy hymn, ‘Lord of the Dance’. Which made me think about two things.
Firstly, here were two people doing some rather unusual things at their wedding. No hotel, white dress, church service, flowers etc. But people getting married in the public park, with stacks of dancing and a mood of great celebration.
Secondly, I thought about the hymn ‘Lord of the Dance’. I wonder if this isn’t such a different thing to the experience I had on that day. Sydney Carter writes about the words to the hymn:
‘I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. By Christ I mean not only Jesus; in other times and places, other planets, there may be other Lords of the Dance. But Jesus is the one I know of first and best. I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.’
I find Carter’s imagery of Christ as the dancing incarnation fascinating, as well as considering the concept of God being someone calls us to dance with him. A beautiful image, for sure, but what does the dance consist of?
Perhaps the dance consists of discovering, slowly and often painfully, who it is that we are, and then wishing to share who we are with others, that they may discover who they are. This process of being led into dance by others, through dancing finding our true identity, and then calling others still into this dance of life is rather wonderful.
I wonder as well if the wedding wasn’t a good example of this: two people expressing their identity and love for each other, dancing with their friends. Anyone who saw them (in a busy park on a Saturday), as well as all of the guests, knew that this was something profoundly different to the usual ‘white wedding’ – and they liked it, and were blessed by it.
When it came to walking up onto the bandstand itself – where the ceremony was to take place – a particularly well-known tune was played: ‘Simple Gifts’, a Shaker (dancing quakers from Manchester in the 18th century) tune. This was adapted by Sydney Carter into the tune of the well-know schoolboy hymn, ‘Lord of the Dance’. Which made me think about two things.
Firstly, here were two people doing some rather unusual things at their wedding. No hotel, white dress, church service, flowers etc. But people getting married in the public park, with stacks of dancing and a mood of great celebration.
Secondly, I thought about the hymn ‘Lord of the Dance’. I wonder if this isn’t such a different thing to the experience I had on that day. Sydney Carter writes about the words to the hymn:
‘I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. By Christ I mean not only Jesus; in other times and places, other planets, there may be other Lords of the Dance. But Jesus is the one I know of first and best. I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.’
I find Carter’s imagery of Christ as the dancing incarnation fascinating, as well as considering the concept of God being someone calls us to dance with him. A beautiful image, for sure, but what does the dance consist of?
Perhaps the dance consists of discovering, slowly and often painfully, who it is that we are, and then wishing to share who we are with others, that they may discover who they are. This process of being led into dance by others, through dancing finding our true identity, and then calling others still into this dance of life is rather wonderful.
I wonder as well if the wedding wasn’t a good example of this: two people expressing their identity and love for each other, dancing with their friends. Anyone who saw them (in a busy park on a Saturday), as well as all of the guests, knew that this was something profoundly different to the usual ‘white wedding’ – and they liked it, and were blessed by it.
Ethnic Cleansing
At camp this year an interesting subject came up for discussion: how is it that Scripture contains tales of merciless ethnic cleansing in the OT, which is never condemned anywhere else; and why did this stuff make it into the Canon of Scripture in the first place? After a brief conversation this weekend I thought I would offer my thoughts.
There are several points that I want to make:
1. The nature of the historical material in the OT is not the same as modern history. It was a dynamic entity, and did not amount to eyewitness accounts of actual events.
2. This encourages us to explore different ways of reading the material, and may have something constructive to say in answer to this question.
--
An example.
In 2 Kings 22, the High Priest Hilkiah finds the book of Deuteronomy in the Temple. This comes right at the end of four books of history, centring on Israel’s ups and downs with kings and all the rest. The canonical order of the books (ie, Deuteronomy, then the Deuteronomistic history) encourages the reader to read the history in light of the road map. This, of course, is a fairly standard literary device.
What if, though, the history happened first? What if the road map was written after the events that it makes sense of?
Josiah’s reform in 2 Kgs 23 seeks to address many of the things that Israel has failed to do in the Deuteronomistic history, and which were outlawed in parts of Deuteronomy. A friend’s OT exam paper once asked whether the writers of Deuteronomy (known usually as ‘D’) and the Deuteronomistic history were ‘pawns of Josiah’. While this might be a little strong, the sense, I think, is about right – Israel’s history was not written by eyewitnesses, but by people seeking to make sense of the present with reference to the past.
--
If this is the case, what then of the book of Joshua? What of the destruction of Jericho and Ai?
Tales of origins are a central component of our identity. People write creation stories (like Gen 1-3) and calling stories (like Gen 12 and Ex 3) to make sense of where they are now by referring to where they have come from. I wonder if Joshua might be a similar story? A story of people making sense of their current situation by writing stories about how the present came to be.
I am very comfortable with using the category of ‘myth’ in the interpretation of Scripture. Some are less so.
-
At camp I talked about Deuteronomy 7, in which the notion of ‘herem’ is introduced. ‘Herem’ is the word most often used about this ethnic cleansing, and is an interesting word grammatically: firstly, it is usually used in the active causative (e.g., “you will cause them to be ’herem’”); and secondly, it means ‘to set aside for destruction’ – in modern Judaism, if someone is ritually put out of the community they are said to be ‘herem’.
When dispossessing the current inhabitants of the Promised Land, Israel are to not do several things:
• Make no covenant with the numerous –ites
• Show them no mercy
• Do not intermarry with them
• Smash their asher poles and other items of idolatrous regalia
These show several things:
• Making no covenant and intermarriage require these people to be alive – ie, not having been ethnically cleansed
• The only violence is to be committed against the objects of their religions
No violence against people is talked of in Deut 7, and the other elements of their commands expressly require the current inhabitants of the land to be alive.
--
I wonder if, then, the book of Joshua is a myth. That is, a good story, expressing huge truths about the nature of Israel and its land; its commitment to the worship of the one God, YHWH; its stimulating a strong sense of national identity through great tales of military victory; and offering a symbolic manifesto for the way in which Israel is to act in the present: expressing Joshua-like unswervingness in following YHWH’s call.
The cogs are turning! The slippery slope has been engaged! Surely if this ethnic cleansing didn’t happen then the story is a load of rubbish? Doesn’t the ‘truthfulness’ of Scripture require the history it records to be ‘accurate’ (whatever that means)?
Not at all.
The Psalms are poetry; the Proverbs are based on sayings; Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes defies genre. Reading texts – any text – well requires us to, in the first instance, determine its genre, for only once this has been done can the development of good questions to ask the text be commenced. Different genres require different modes of analysis.
History in the modern sense (ie, eyewitness accounts of actual events) is a concept alien to the ancients. Instead, history and myth were rather more closely linked than many would care to believe: people made sense of their situations by telling stories, by embellishing them with meaningful additions, and by faithfully continuing the tradition of these stories’ influence on the present.
So what is the genre of Joshua, and what are its concerns? Well, the genre is not modern history, and is more like myth – meaningful stories told to make sense of particular things about the world. As a result, it is not remotely concerned with the ethical questions regarding the merciless destruction of cities and their inhabitants. This means one of two things:
- this makes it even worse. Not being concerned about such obviously immoral things shows an unforgivable hatred of the human race.
- the text is concerned with other things; its scope is beyond these factors, and to get hung up on these factors risks missing the real point of the narrative, which was written as a story, not as an account of actual events.
It won’t surprise you, I’m sure, to know that I veer much towards the second option, while acknowledging that there are substantial interpretation difficulties when dealing with the stories of Joshua. I hope that this attempt to voice and explore some of them might be helpful.
There are several points that I want to make:
1. The nature of the historical material in the OT is not the same as modern history. It was a dynamic entity, and did not amount to eyewitness accounts of actual events.
2. This encourages us to explore different ways of reading the material, and may have something constructive to say in answer to this question.
--
An example.
In 2 Kings 22, the High Priest Hilkiah finds the book of Deuteronomy in the Temple. This comes right at the end of four books of history, centring on Israel’s ups and downs with kings and all the rest. The canonical order of the books (ie, Deuteronomy, then the Deuteronomistic history) encourages the reader to read the history in light of the road map. This, of course, is a fairly standard literary device.
What if, though, the history happened first? What if the road map was written after the events that it makes sense of?
Josiah’s reform in 2 Kgs 23 seeks to address many of the things that Israel has failed to do in the Deuteronomistic history, and which were outlawed in parts of Deuteronomy. A friend’s OT exam paper once asked whether the writers of Deuteronomy (known usually as ‘D’) and the Deuteronomistic history were ‘pawns of Josiah’. While this might be a little strong, the sense, I think, is about right – Israel’s history was not written by eyewitnesses, but by people seeking to make sense of the present with reference to the past.
--
If this is the case, what then of the book of Joshua? What of the destruction of Jericho and Ai?
Tales of origins are a central component of our identity. People write creation stories (like Gen 1-3) and calling stories (like Gen 12 and Ex 3) to make sense of where they are now by referring to where they have come from. I wonder if Joshua might be a similar story? A story of people making sense of their current situation by writing stories about how the present came to be.
I am very comfortable with using the category of ‘myth’ in the interpretation of Scripture. Some are less so.
-
At camp I talked about Deuteronomy 7, in which the notion of ‘herem’ is introduced. ‘Herem’ is the word most often used about this ethnic cleansing, and is an interesting word grammatically: firstly, it is usually used in the active causative (e.g., “you will cause them to be ’herem’”); and secondly, it means ‘to set aside for destruction’ – in modern Judaism, if someone is ritually put out of the community they are said to be ‘herem’.
When dispossessing the current inhabitants of the Promised Land, Israel are to not do several things:
• Make no covenant with the numerous –ites
• Show them no mercy
• Do not intermarry with them
• Smash their asher poles and other items of idolatrous regalia
These show several things:
• Making no covenant and intermarriage require these people to be alive – ie, not having been ethnically cleansed
• The only violence is to be committed against the objects of their religions
No violence against people is talked of in Deut 7, and the other elements of their commands expressly require the current inhabitants of the land to be alive.
--
I wonder if, then, the book of Joshua is a myth. That is, a good story, expressing huge truths about the nature of Israel and its land; its commitment to the worship of the one God, YHWH; its stimulating a strong sense of national identity through great tales of military victory; and offering a symbolic manifesto for the way in which Israel is to act in the present: expressing Joshua-like unswervingness in following YHWH’s call.
The cogs are turning! The slippery slope has been engaged! Surely if this ethnic cleansing didn’t happen then the story is a load of rubbish? Doesn’t the ‘truthfulness’ of Scripture require the history it records to be ‘accurate’ (whatever that means)?
Not at all.
The Psalms are poetry; the Proverbs are based on sayings; Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes defies genre. Reading texts – any text – well requires us to, in the first instance, determine its genre, for only once this has been done can the development of good questions to ask the text be commenced. Different genres require different modes of analysis.
History in the modern sense (ie, eyewitness accounts of actual events) is a concept alien to the ancients. Instead, history and myth were rather more closely linked than many would care to believe: people made sense of their situations by telling stories, by embellishing them with meaningful additions, and by faithfully continuing the tradition of these stories’ influence on the present.
So what is the genre of Joshua, and what are its concerns? Well, the genre is not modern history, and is more like myth – meaningful stories told to make sense of particular things about the world. As a result, it is not remotely concerned with the ethical questions regarding the merciless destruction of cities and their inhabitants. This means one of two things:
- this makes it even worse. Not being concerned about such obviously immoral things shows an unforgivable hatred of the human race.
- the text is concerned with other things; its scope is beyond these factors, and to get hung up on these factors risks missing the real point of the narrative, which was written as a story, not as an account of actual events.
It won’t surprise you, I’m sure, to know that I veer much towards the second option, while acknowledging that there are substantial interpretation difficulties when dealing with the stories of Joshua. I hope that this attempt to voice and explore some of them might be helpful.
'Je suis seule'
I was on holiday in the south of France last week. One morning I went to the supermarket to buy some food, and saw a homeless man at the exit. I did my shopping and came to leave.
I find homelessness a very difficult thing to deal with: firstly, I am conscious of the balance between helping people in the most effective way possible and the most direct way possible: ie, giving a homeless person a pound may be more direct, but it may have a less positive effect on their overall well-being than giving that pound to a charity, say (this is a complex debate, and my presentation is a simple one – the empowerment of one’s own money, even if it spent on ‘unhelpful’ things, is something that the second of my options for the pound misses). Secondly, I find it completely unacceptable that people are homeless in our society. We are one of the richest countries in the world – it is unacceptable. I share the disgust of an Australasian tribesman in a recent C4 documentary that anyone in such a rich country can be without somewhere permanent, warm and secure to live.
One thing that I have done is to buy things for people. Nothing too special usually: some orange juice, more often than not, sometimes a cup of coffee. So when I walked out of the French supermarket I saw that the homeless man (accompanied by his sleeping dog) had a baguette by his side. I walked past, and then turned around, for I had two baguettes in my hand – ‘a baguette, sir?’, I asked in my GCSE French. ‘Non, merci. Je suis seule.’ – for those whose French is worse than mine: ‘No thanks – I’m on my own.’ He was on his own, and so didn't need another one.
I was so moved it was incredible. Mary’s song in the Magnificat says that the Lord ‘has put down the mighty from their seat – the rich he has sent empty away.’ I felt amazingly humbled by the man’s response:
• In one of Rob Bell’s better moments he chastises Christians for praying that God will feed the hungry when we have more than enough to eat.
• Mother Teresa said the sea is made of many small drops – small actions that affirm God within us and within others start to change the tide.
• A homeless man (called ‘Christian’, as I later found out) in a brief encounter gave the best rebuttal of our Western consumerism that I have ever heard: I have enough already, and I don’t need any more. But coming from a marginalised person with far less than myself it seemed rather more powerful.
I am a child of the contemporary consumer culture. I type this blog on a £1300 laptop, listen to podcasts on my ipod, spend £20 each month on my phone bill, and buy £3 cups of coffee. For Christian to tell me that he didn’t need what I was offering because he already had enough seemed pretty upside-down. But then the last shall be first, and the mighty have been put down from their seats.
--
So each day that I went shopping Christian was there. I bought him a bunch of grapes on each day after that one, figuring that he probably didn’t already have some. We chatted a little, and he wished me a happy day each time. Our parting goodbye was rather ruined by my appalling ineloquence in French, but the sentiment was there: meeting him was one of the highlights of my holiday, and I’m sure he enjoyed the grapes that I have bought him.
I have blogged before about the significance of giving in our lives, and how we often discover who we are by giving of ourselves, rather than receiving from others. We gain infinitely more by giving of ourselves than we could ever hope to acquire through chasing after more and more of whatever we seek. St Francis was right: it is in giving that we receive.
So Christ. Born to a single mother, a displaced family of refugees, disgraced as a result of his disputed paternity. Spent his life with the dropouts, the down-and-outs and the nobodies. He learned that often it is these people, rather than the religious, who know what life is really about.
I find homelessness a very difficult thing to deal with: firstly, I am conscious of the balance between helping people in the most effective way possible and the most direct way possible: ie, giving a homeless person a pound may be more direct, but it may have a less positive effect on their overall well-being than giving that pound to a charity, say (this is a complex debate, and my presentation is a simple one – the empowerment of one’s own money, even if it spent on ‘unhelpful’ things, is something that the second of my options for the pound misses). Secondly, I find it completely unacceptable that people are homeless in our society. We are one of the richest countries in the world – it is unacceptable. I share the disgust of an Australasian tribesman in a recent C4 documentary that anyone in such a rich country can be without somewhere permanent, warm and secure to live.
One thing that I have done is to buy things for people. Nothing too special usually: some orange juice, more often than not, sometimes a cup of coffee. So when I walked out of the French supermarket I saw that the homeless man (accompanied by his sleeping dog) had a baguette by his side. I walked past, and then turned around, for I had two baguettes in my hand – ‘a baguette, sir?’, I asked in my GCSE French. ‘Non, merci. Je suis seule.’ – for those whose French is worse than mine: ‘No thanks – I’m on my own.’ He was on his own, and so didn't need another one.
I was so moved it was incredible. Mary’s song in the Magnificat says that the Lord ‘has put down the mighty from their seat – the rich he has sent empty away.’ I felt amazingly humbled by the man’s response:
• In one of Rob Bell’s better moments he chastises Christians for praying that God will feed the hungry when we have more than enough to eat.
• Mother Teresa said the sea is made of many small drops – small actions that affirm God within us and within others start to change the tide.
• A homeless man (called ‘Christian’, as I later found out) in a brief encounter gave the best rebuttal of our Western consumerism that I have ever heard: I have enough already, and I don’t need any more. But coming from a marginalised person with far less than myself it seemed rather more powerful.
I am a child of the contemporary consumer culture. I type this blog on a £1300 laptop, listen to podcasts on my ipod, spend £20 each month on my phone bill, and buy £3 cups of coffee. For Christian to tell me that he didn’t need what I was offering because he already had enough seemed pretty upside-down. But then the last shall be first, and the mighty have been put down from their seats.
--
So each day that I went shopping Christian was there. I bought him a bunch of grapes on each day after that one, figuring that he probably didn’t already have some. We chatted a little, and he wished me a happy day each time. Our parting goodbye was rather ruined by my appalling ineloquence in French, but the sentiment was there: meeting him was one of the highlights of my holiday, and I’m sure he enjoyed the grapes that I have bought him.
I have blogged before about the significance of giving in our lives, and how we often discover who we are by giving of ourselves, rather than receiving from others. We gain infinitely more by giving of ourselves than we could ever hope to acquire through chasing after more and more of whatever we seek. St Francis was right: it is in giving that we receive.
So Christ. Born to a single mother, a displaced family of refugees, disgraced as a result of his disputed paternity. Spent his life with the dropouts, the down-and-outs and the nobodies. He learned that often it is these people, rather than the religious, who know what life is really about.
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