In the Old Testament we repeatedly find that hideous cruelty is given
divine sanction. The utter annihilation of all the inhabitants of Canaan by the
Beni-Israel was commanded by Moses in the name of God. The command was to slaughter all
males but the Beni-Israel were to keep the women for their own use. (Deut 20:13:15)
Among the
lessons ordered to be read in Anglican churches are two chapters from the Book of Kings (2
Kings, 9 and 10). In them we learn that Elisha, the prophet, sent one of his subordinates
to Ramoth-gilead to anoint as King of Israel a ruffianly
captain named Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat. This gangster, nothing loath, hurried off at
once to Jezreel where Joram, the reigning monarch, was residing, and murdered him and his
guest, Ahaziah, King of Judah, as they were riding in their chariots. Jehu then visited
Jezebel, the Queen Mother, and ordered the eunuchs to throw her out of a window of her
palace. The street dogs afterwards devoured her corpse. The next feat of this hero was to
have the seventy sons of Ahab put to death and their heads brought to him in baskets. Then
he proceeded to slaughter the rest of Ahab’s kinsmen and the brothers of Ahaziah. His
crowning achievement was the massacre of all the worshippers of the Phoenician Baal
residing in the kingdom of Samaria, having first deceived them by a very gross lie. God
told him that he had done right in his eyes, and that because of this his descendants
until the fourth generation should sit on the throne of Israel (2 Kings 10:30). The
Prophet Hosea thought differently from the author of Kings. He represents Yahweh (God) as
saying: “I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu.” (Hosea,
1:4.) Which of these two Biblical writers was really the mouthpiece of God: the author of
the Book of Kings or Hosea? Both of them could not have been inspired in this respect!
The so-called
Law of Moses, which is now known to be highly composite and took many centuries to grow,
contains many kindly and sensible enactments, but has also brutal and barbaric features.
Let us consider one example here. In Numbers, Chapter 5, a strange rite is exacted from a
woman whom her jealous husband suspects of infidelity. A magical test is applied. The
husband must bring his wife to the priest, who takes an earthen vessel containing holy
water. Dust from the floor of the Tabernacle is then put into the water. The woman’s
hair is loosened, and “a meal offering of jealousy” is placed in her hand.
Having sworn her innocence, the woman is made to drink “the water of bitterness”,
after the priest has pronounced a curse, written it down in a book, and washed it off
somehow into the holy water.
Should the woman
be guilty, her belly will swell and her thighs rot away. There was no similar test for the
infidelity of a husband.
That there are
bad laws in the Pentateuch the Fundamentalist is precluded from denying by his professed
loyalty to the letter of the Bible, for Ezekiel represents God as saying that he gave the
Bani-Israel “statutes that were not good, and judgements whereby they should not
live.” (Ezekiel, 20:25)
A number of
psalms breathe the cruellest hatred towards personal enemies. The sufferings of
individuals of both sexes and all ages are gloated on. Let us take Psalm 109, for example.
The ferocious poet craves the vengeance of God on innocent and guilty alike:
“Set
thou a wicked man over him:
And let Satan
stand at his right hand.
When he shall
be judged, let him be condemned;
And let his
prayer become sin.
Let his day
be few;
And let
another take his office.
Let his
children be fatherless,
And his wife
a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg:
Let them
seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the
extortioner catch all that he hath;
And let the
stranger spoil his labour.
Let there be
none to extend mercy unto him:
Neither let
there be any to favour his fatherless children.”
(Psalms, 109:
6-12)
If God inspired the writer of these diabolical words, who inspired
Jesus when he said “Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.”
(Matt 5:7)? Did the author of Psalm 109 obtain mercy from the heavenly Father Jesus
preached? Or did he go into the outer darkness where there is “wailing and gnashing
of teeth”? Let the Christian Fundamentalists explain how they solve the dilemma.
Take again the pathetic poem (Psalms 137), which has many elements of
beauty, beginning: “By the river of Babylon,
there we sat down, yea, we wept.” The sadistic hatred of the last verse largely
spoils what has gone before.
“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones
against the stones.” (Psalms 137:9.)
Fancy a Christian congregation singing this to the accompaniment of a
magnificent organ!
The New Testament is generally more humane in its ethics than the
Old. Yet it is the New Testament that teaches, in unmistakable language, the loathsome and
paralyzing doctrine of eternal torture, physical and mental, for sinners and unbelievers.
The God of the Revelation is a far worse being than the God of the Pentateuch, and the
ferocious gloating of its Christian author over the smoke that arises out of the fiery
pit, where the enemies of his faith suffer “unto the aeons of the aeons”, is
echoed in the works of the early Christian fathers (Tertullian is a notorious example),
and in those of the Catholic saints and theologians of the Middle Ages.
Thomas Aquinas
writes:
“Nothing should be denied the blessed that belongs to the
perfection of their beatitude… Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints
may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it,
they are allowed to see perfectly the suffering of the damned.”