A
few months ago I enjoyed reading Philip Jenkins’ The Lost History
of Christianity (2009), so I was intrigued when I saw a link to
an essay
in the Boston Globe on harsh passages in the Quran and in the Bible.
Jenkins opens by reporting that the September 11 hijackers had been instructed to meditate on two lengthy suras from the Quran which “make for harrowing reading”.
God promises to “cast terror into the hearts of those who are bent on denying the truth; strike, then, their necks!” (Koran 8.12). God instructs his Muslim followers to kill unbelievers, to capture them, to ambush them (Koran 9.5). Everything contributes to advancing the holy goal: “Strike terror into God’s enemies, and your enemies” (Koran 8.60).
He
then points out that at a more domestic level Sura 4.34 has been used to
justify violence. This is how the text reads in a translation offered by Ahmad
Shafaat who offers a commentary on
the passage:
Men are (meant to be righteous and kind) guardians of women because God has favored some more than others and because they (i.e. men) spend out of their wealth. (In their turn) righteous women are (meant to be) devoted and to guard what God has (willed to be) guarded even though out of sight (of the husband). As for those (women) on whose part you fear ill-will and nasty conduct, admonish them (first), (next) separate them in beds (and last) beat them. But if they obey you, then seek nothing against them. Behold, God is most high and great. (4:34)
I
am not a Quran scholar nor even a Quran reader and hence reluctant to
say much about these passages. But the following comment by Jenkins prompts
me to stress one of what are probably quite a few key differences between the
Bible and the Quran:
The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery.
Is
that so? I don’t know. But while Jenkins is right to stress that all Scriptures
need interpretation and maybe even right to claim that there is a process of
forgetting and remembering passages, he seems to overlook the simple fact that
the Bible contains a variety of books and genres which individually and as a
canonical whole function very differently from the suras of the Quran.
What is the evidence for the statement above? Jenkins thinks of “frightful portions of the Bible...ordering the total extermination of enemies, of whole families and races - of men, women, and children, and even their livestock, with no quarter granted.” But can we find any such passage in the Bible? I am not so sure.
There are narratives in which God orders or expects the extermination of a people. Most of these belong to the traditions about the conquest of Canaan. How these stories relate to historical events is much debated today, as is their role and significance for biblical faith. But what is clear is that they are not commands to the reader. They can only be read as “ordering the total extermination” of contemporary “enemies” by an act of imagination and interpretation which is far from obvious.
Jenkins then refers us to Psalm 137 which “begins with the lovely line, ‘By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept’” and “ends by blessing anyone who would seize Babylon’s infants and smash their skulls against the rocks.” It is a frightening prayer, to be sure, but again this pained outcry of an oppressed nation is not a call to arms.
“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord” (Deuteronomy 32:35) is not a passage Christians should suppress and forget but one we ought to remenber and treasure as a warning against taking vengeance into our own hands (Romans 12:19).
The Quran was written over a comparatively short period of time with individual suras addressing readers on pretty much the same level, except for the hermeneutical principle that chronologically later passages can abrogate earlier verses. (This is a complicated matter, given that the suras are not arranged in the chronological order of their origin.)
The Bible by contrast was put together over a very long period of time and speaks to readers in many and different ways and only rarely by way of direct command. It has its centre in Jesus Christ who is spoken of as the Lion from the tribe of Judah and presented as a slaughtered Lamb.
Much, much more would need to be said here, not least because there are other passages to which Jenkins appeals. But my point is that Jenkins seems to have paid no attention to genre and genre is critical for all interpretation. Here is the summary Philip Jenkins offers:
Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions . . . all are in the Bible, and occur with a far greater frequency than in the Koran. At every stage, we can argue what the passages in question mean, and certainly whether they should have any relevance for later ages. But the fact remains that the words are there, and their inclusion in the scripture means that they are, literally, canonized, no less than in the Muslim scripture.
The
majority of biblical passages to which he refers are not in fact commands to
readers of the Bible but commands within Biblical stories and some are not even
commands at the level of the narrative. Even texts that may legitimately be
called commands to the readers implied at first, albeit embedded in narratives
(Exodus to Numbers) and speeches (Deuteronomy), are not now canonized as
commands, not when we talk about the Christian Bible. There is therefore no
need for a “holy amnesia” with regard to “dark passages” in the Bible. Even “texts of
terror” are “useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training
in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
