HERMENEUTICAL PERSPECTIVES ON VIOLENCE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

PART III

EPILOGUE

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HERMENEUTICAL PERSPECTIVES ON VIOLENCE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Pieter G.R. de Villiers

Revelation 18 is perhaps the passage that has most deeply offfended the moral sensibilities of readers, Christian and non-Christian alike.1

People who have never been persecuted for their faith or vilifĳied, smeared, and imprisoned because of their testimony for Jesus Christ, will have great difffĳiculty understanding these words of John.2

1. Early Christianity and Peace

The conviction that the fĳirst Christians were non-violent was based on pacifĳist pronouncements of well-known early Christian authors such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, Amobius and Lactantius. Thus, Ber-cott, for example, contended on the basis of these pronouncements that, “The church unequivocally equated war with murder”.3 The image of a non-violent, early Christianity is often found in contemporary New Tes-tament scholarship. In his discussion of violence in his monograph on New Testament ethics, Hays reached the conclusion that “from Matthew to Revelation we fĳind a consistent witness against violence and a calling to community to follow the example of Jesus in accepting sufffering rather than inflicting it”. The only possible exception for him is that soldiers were sometimes accepted in the early Christian community without criticism of their involvement in war. According to Hays, violent pronouncements and attitudes in Hebrew Scriptures had no place in the New Testament

1 A.Y. Collins, “Persecution and Vengeance in the Book of Revelation”, in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East (ed. D. Hellholm; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983), 728–749 (737). This article provides useful information on some major discussions on violence in Revelation during the twentieth century. See also A.Y. Collins, Crisis and Catharsis. The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 165–176.

2 A.A. Boesak, Comfort and Protest. The Apocalypse from a South African Perspective (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 133.

3 D.W. Bercott, “The Early Christian View of War”, Journal of Radical Reformation 1 (1992): 48, refers, for example, to Celsus who noted that early Christians refused to do military service. He contrasts this early attitude to later ones: “Although the New Testa-ment writings leave room for doubt on the subject of Christian participation in war, the same cannot be said of the second- and third-century Christian writings”.


248 pieter g.r. de villiers

and were superseded by the early Christian understanding of a merciful God and a future kingdom of peace.4

This popular view creates the impression that violence is not really an issue in the New Testament. Peace and non-violence are so dominant that the few instances of violence are exceptional. Non-violence is in fact regarded as an essential characteristic of the gospel. Hays notes, “With regard to the issue of violence, the New Testament bears a powerful wit-ness that is both univocal and pervasive, for it is integrally related to the heart of the kerygma and to God’s fundamental elective purpose”.5 Such an understanding does not leave much room for debate about violence in the New Testament.

2. The Other Face of Early Christianity

The popular theory of a non-violent, early Christianity is, however, increas-ingly being questioned. It can, for example, be pointed out that some early Church authors already raised concerns about the violent nature of the Bible. These concerns are clear from some early biblical manuscripts in which scribes modifĳied violent pronouncements and replaced them with non-violent readings.6 On a more general scale, and especially after Chris-tianity was offfĳicially recognised, readers of the Bible who retained good relationships with the state, were concerned about its violent passages. In the sixth century, Oecumenius, for example, wrote a commentary on Rev-elation in which he countered its violent passages by repeatedly stress-ing God’s mercy. His allegorical reading of Revelation was, furthermore, a deliberate attempt to tone down any suggestion of violence against the state.7

4 R. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Community, Cross, New Creation. A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 332, 335–337. He observes, for example, that “there is not a syllable in the Pauline letters that can be cited in support of Christians employing violence. Paul’s occasional uses of military imagery . . . actually have the opposite efffect: the warfare imagery is drafted into the service of the gospel, rather than the reverse” (332).

5 Hays, Moral Vision, 314. 6 J. Hernández, Scribal Habits and Theological Influences in the Apocalypse (WUNT 2.218;

Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 92, for example, discusses Revelation 2:22 (“one of the most violent depictions of the exalted Christ’s judgement in the Apocalypse”). He points out how the scribe changed the violent phrase that Christ threw Jezebel on a bed in such a way that it becomes a call to repentance. See also his conclusions (126–131).

7 See P.G.R. de Villiers, “History, Mysticism and Ethics in Oecumenius: A Hermeneuti-cal Perspective on the Earliest Extant Greek Commentary on Revelation”, SHE 33 (2007): 315–336.


hermeneutical perspectives on violence 249

It is especially in modern times, though, that the violent character of the New Testament has become a major topic of discussion.8 Once again, Revelation comes to mind as a good example of such a reappraisal. In a seminal essay with an interesting overview of such criticism by well-known modern authors, Collins early on investigated Revelation 18 from the perspective of its consistent and vengeful attack on Rome, stressing its offfensive nature and tracing some attempts in modern times to cope with Revelation as a violent text.9 As postmodern readings of the Bible, especially from a post-colonial perspective, were developed, even more attention was paid to this issue. Marshall, for example, continued this line of investigation with two books, which raised much debate. In his post-colonial reading of Revelation, he traced its violent pronouncements to tensions among Jewish groups during the Jewish war of 66–70 CE. Accord-ing to his reading, some groups defĳined their own identity vis-à-vis others who compromised their faith by collaborating with their Roman colonial masters. In contrast to Collins, Marshall does not trace the violent lan-guage of Revelation to its author’s strong emotions and difffĳicult personal situation nor to the economic deprivation of its audience. He blames it on John’s ideology and bitter opposition to deviant views. He comes to the outspoken conclusion, “And the violence with which [he] defends those seemingly absolute convictions is chilling”.10

These remarks are indications of the stronger language that is increas-ingly being used in the discussion of the violent nature of New Testament texts.11 These texts are described in very negative terms because of their extreme violent nature.

Scholars, furthermore, have been pointing out other aspects of violent pronouncements in the New Testament. The issue is no longer merely the occasional involvement of Christians in war and physical violence. It goes much deeper and strikes at the core of Christian faith. It is pointed out that some texts indicate how violence determines the essence of

8 For more information on the growing concern about violence, see P.G.R. de Villiers, “Towards a Spirituality of Peace”, Acta Theologica Supplementum 11 (2008): 213–251.

9 Collins, “Persecution”, 729–30. 10 J.W. Marshall, “Collatoral Damage: Jesus and Jezebel in the Jewish War”, in Violence

in the New Testament (eds. S. Matthews and E.L. Gibson; New York/London: T & T Clark, 2005), 48.

11 Another example of such criticism is to be found in T. Pippin, Death and Desire, The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John (Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation; Louisville,: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992); see also T. Pippin, “The Heroine and the Whore: The Apocalypse of John in Feminist Perspective”, in Rhoads, From Every People and Nation, 127–145.



Christian identity. According to Frankfurter, for example, passages like Luke 11:47–51 reveal a preoccupation with violence that determined the identity of such early Christian groups as the one behind Q. In the light of what Hays said about the essential place of peace in the gospel (see the previous section), it is striking to read Frankfurter’s diffferent perspec-tive on the essential place of violence among some groups. He refers to the way in which Luke 11:49–51 mentions gruesome details of the pouring out of prophets’ blood. He suggests that there is more than just distanced reflection on history here. “Violence and gore have become not just the subject but the very matrix of meaningful history. The insiders are to experience violence in the present too as the essence of divine action and Jewish self-understanding”.12 This passage reflects a preoccupation with violence that cannot be regarded as an unhappy example of the way in which some groups from a lower social status tend to think. Frankfurter’s position that such violence, based on a particular self-understanding, is in line with sociological studies that revealed that privileged groups can also become violent. They also nurture violent language, which has destructive potential, often leading to acts of violence. It is, then, not a matter of class. It has to do with identity.

The issue of violence in biblical texts runs deeper than matters of identity, though, since it also has to do with such a seminal theme as the character of God. The decisive role of the character of God in attitudes and actions was discussed by Childs, who writes that ethics in Hebrew Scriptures offfers wisdom based on the divine-human covenant relation-ship. Ethics has to do with the human response to God’s character. It is a matter of an imitatio Dei. God’s holy character becomes a norm for Israel, as is stated in Leviticus 19:2: “be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”.13 This is not diffferent in Christian Scriptures. Matthew’s Gospel, for exam-ple, reflects a similar understanding in the Sermon on the Mount when it reports Jesus’ call to his disciples to be as perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 6:48).

Violent attitudes and behaviour cannot be separated from theologi-cal convictions as if they are mere add-ons to what people really believe about God. When the character of God is linked with violence, there-fore, the implications are serious. This is illustrated by Cope’s analysis of

12 D. Frankfurter, “Violence and Religious Formation: An Afterword”, in Matthews and Gibson, Violence in the New Testament, 147.

13 B.S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 678–680.



Matthew’s apocalyptic eschatology in which he pointed out how divine rewards for good works and punishments for misdeeds are a dominant focus in it.14 Matthew’s faith community, devastated by the Jewish war and persecution of believers, expected that the future would bring divine judgement of their persecutors and vindication of the righteous. Not only their enemies, though, but also the righteous would be subjected to divine scrutiny. Those who fail the future test, will be punished severely and vio-lently. Those who pass will be rewarded. Even believers exist under the threat that they need to live righteously or face divine retaliation. For scholars like Cope, such an emphasis on God’s violent retribution reflects an arbitrary, tyrannical conception of God.15

Such an image of God also reveals how faith of believing communities is being contaminated by external factors. For Carter, for example, the portrait of divine violence in Matthew’s Gospel, capitulates to and even imitates the imperial violence from which the Gospel seeks to save. In resisting and redeeming the violence of the imperial status quo, the gospel also afffĳirms that some violence, namely the violence of God, the supreme ruler who is “Lord of heaven and earth” (Matt. 11:25), and of God’s agent Jesus, is “legitimate and necessary”.16 The character of God is contrasted with Imperial fĳigures of power, and, ironically, ultimately reflects exploita-tive and violent traits of the very opponents it opposes. Faith, thus, loses its power, and becomes hard to distinguish from the convictions of its pagan context.

There is another implication which needs to be spelled out briefly here. Also at issue is the potential that biblical texts with such an understand-ing of God’s character have to provoke their readers to violent actions. Where communities of faith link the character of God with violent actions,

14 See also the extensive discussion of the way in which the character of God is under-stood in Matthew’s Gospel in D.J. Neville, “Toward a Teleology of Peace: Contesting Mat-thew’s Violent Eschatology”, JSNT 30 (2007): 154.

15 O.L. Cope, “‘To the Close of the Age’. The Role of Apocalyptic Thought in the Gospel of Matthew”, in Apocalyptic and the New Testament: Essays in Honor of J. Louis Martyn (eds. J. Marcus and M.L. Soards; JSNTSup 24; Shefffĳield: JSOT Press, 1989), 122. See also his discus-sion of Reid’s analysis of the contrasting images of God in Matthew’s Gospel on 148. The paraphrasing of Matthew’s text makes for gruesome reading. God is portrayed as “throwing evildoers into a fĳiery furnace, binding them hand and foot, casting them into outer dark-ness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, putting them to a miserable death, cut-ting and breaking them into pieces and crushing them, destroying murderers and burning their city, depriving them of the presence of God, putting them with hypocrites or with the devil and his angels for all eternity”.

16 W. Carter, “Construction of Violence and Identities in Matthew’s Gospel”, in Mat-thews and Gibson , Violence in the New Testament, 102.



as in Matthew’s Gospel, it could lead to violent attitudes, language and actions—despite the fact that Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount contains such explicit non-violent contents. The reception history of biblical texts reveals many examples of such responses.17

These remarks reveal the major change that has taken place in the study of the Bible and the major consequences that biblical scholars face as a result of this new work. More than a decade ago, Desjardins, in a ground-breaking publication, drew attention to the untenable situation that the peaceful nature of the New Testament was being emphasised at the cost of its violent side. He expressed his concern that “the violence-promoting side, though, is equally strong: it also disturbs me, all the more so because I rarely fĳind it discussed in academic and non-academic circles”.18 Since Desjardins wrote his publication, the situation has gradu-ally changed, and the discussion of violence is no longer as sporadic as before. New publications have appeared, which require further reflection and debate—as is also reflected in this publication. There are increasing signs that the study of violence is moving towards the centre of atten-tion in biblical studies, theology and religion. It reflects a debate that is conducted in many other disciplines, partly as a result of continuing wars and international terrorism, which threaten world communities as never before.19 Some of this attention is explained by the seminal role that reli-gion plays in these acts of violence, but the role of religion and religious convictions in violence also underlines the importance and urgency of the debate about violence.

As the topic of violence moves to the centre of attention, there will be more awareness of, and sensitivity to, its presence in biblical texts. During the meeting at which the contributions in this volume were discussed, one of the participants noted that when he was approached to read a paper on violence in his fĳield of specialisation, he was concerned that he would not be able to present a full paper. After he had researched the topic and was involved in the discussions, he was struck by the prevalence of violence in his and other New Testament texts. He had never thought that there was so much violence in the Bible.

17 See further J.H. Ellens, “Religious Metaphors can Kill”, in The Destructive Power of Reli-gion. Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (ed. J.H. Ellens; Westport: Praeger Press, 2007), 44–58, but also the discussion below.

18 M.R. Desjardins, Peace, Violence and the New Testament (Shefffĳield: Shefffĳield Academic Press, 1997), 121, secondary italics; see also Frankfurter, “Violence”, 141, as well as the conti-bution of van Henten, “Religion, Bible and Violence”, in this volume.

19 See the fuller discussion in de Villiers, “Spirituality of Peace”, 213–251.



Acknowledging the nature and extent of violence is an important step towards fĳinding ways of coping with violence. It also begs new questions and stimulates more research as the papers from the conference illustrate. In the chapter that follows, I will briefly draw attention to some seminal points from the papers and then place them in the context of current scholarship on the particular topic.

3. Violence in the Name of and in the Bible

Violence in the Bible, theology and religion can be discussed on two gen-eral levels. There is, on the one hand, violence that is executed by groups who claim the support of the Bible for their actions. This is evident from the history of Christianity which reflects extreme acts of violence, such as the crusades, the inquisition and anti-Semitism. They were executed in the name of God and motivated by references to biblical texts.20 This was particularly the case in terms of war. Such acts and the attempts to justify them from a biblical perspective, are increasingly being criticised.21 This criticism has been most obvious in terms of physical violence.

This resistance is a major development, especially because violence has not always had negative connotations. For many centuries violence was not only tolerated, but admired and even glorifĳied. In many societies a hero was honoured and held in highest esteem for bravery in fĳighting and killing of the enemy. Societies despised as weaklings those who feared and eschewed violence.22 Likewise, literature offfers many examples of the glorifĳication of war and violence in poems, novels and fĳilms, as does archi-tecture. From earliest times, imposing buildings and arches were erected to commemorate the conquests of political leaders. This general attitude was also found in religion and in the church. The state by times used the church to legitimise acts of violence, whilst the church would sanction acts of violence by the church. The role of the church in promoting a culture of violence, is, for example, illustrated by how members of peace

20 See the interesting essay by M.B. Pranger, “Monastic Violence”, in Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination (eds. H. de Vries and S. Weber; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 44–57, who shows how Bernard of Clairvaux uses the Song of Songs to call for par-ticipation in the crusades.

21 See the discussion in de Villiers, “Spirituality of Peace”, 213–251, and O. O’Donovan, The Just War Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). The many discus-sions about the theory of a just war indicate the growing resistance against war-mongering in the name of Christianity.

22 J.M.G. van der Dennen, “Hoe men de oorlog verdedigde”, Speling 30 (1978): 61–71.



churches, who refused conscription and military service, faced severe punishment and extreme social sanction in countries that claimed to be religious—with the explicit approval of many churches.

In cases like these, the Bible was often used to promote acts of violence. There is, however, another level on which one can investigate violence. The focus is no longer merely on criticising the violent use of biblical texts, but increasingly scholars shifted their attention to acknowledging and questioning violence in the Bible itself. The culture of violence, it is being argued, is fĳirst of all clearly evident in Hebrew Scriptures. In them, mass killings, reminiscent of ethnic cleansing are regarded as normal or even as an indication of the heroic past of God’s people.23 Christian Scriptures, however, also reflect the “normal” place allocated to violence in society. The Book of Acts, for example, repeatedly refers to physical violence against the early church (for example, Acts 5:40, 7:58, etc.) and against Paul (2 Cor. 11:24–25). Similarly, violence is regarded as a matter of fact when Matthew describes Herod’s murder of children as the type of action that rulers could perform without resistance (Matt. 2:16). In some cases, though, Christian Scriptures seem to condone violence. Van Eck, for example, notes in his contribution on the parable of the tenants in the vineyard (Mark 12:1–12) that both the tenants and the owner in the parable resorted to murder to settle their dispute about the vineyard, as if that was the normal thing to do. He suggests that Jesus tells the parable without any sign of censure, thus creating the impression of endorsing violent resolution of conflict. These forms of violence in the Bible require more attention. Also, there are forms of violence, like the cross as a sacri-fĳice and divine violence in the eschaton. These various forms of violence will be looked at more closely in the following.

4. Forms of Violence

It is not always easy to determine forms of violence—especially since vio-lence often goes undetected behind a mask of civility. It is, for example, often thought that as communities share increasing levels of civilisation and give up physical violence, life will be peaceful. As Pranger observes,

23 See the remarks of R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Miffflin, 2006), 247, who, for example, writes that Joshua’s destruction of Jericho is “morally indistinguish-able from Hitler’s invasion of Poland, or Saddam Hussein’s massacres of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs”.



On the contrary, there are valid reasons to consider civilization a continu-ation of warfare by other means. The ability to recognize diffferent layers of passions, conflicts, and scarcely controlled savagery under the smooth surface of civilized behaviour is, all would agree, part and parcel of cultural sophistication.24

This insight of Pranger is not only valid for contemporary societies. These various “layers” are also to be found in religious institutions of antiquity—as Pranger’s own analysis of monastic violence in mediaeval times con-fĳirms. To determine these forms of violence, as Hanssen observed, one has to “discard all monolithic analyses of violence”25 and investigate it on micro-level—in the case of the New Testament in terms of the various books and their contexts.

There are various forms of violence in the Bible as well. This will become clear when one, as van Henten pointed out in his introductory survey of defĳinitions, understands violence in a general sense as an action that harms someone’s personhood through force. Such actions are not less abusive than physical violence. This insight allows for a more adequate understanding of violence in all its overt and covert forms.

One of the special insights generated by this publication is that violence has a multifaceted character. Though there are clear examples of violence in the New Testament, there are also more covert forms of violence in it, which have gone unnoticed in the past, or still are. Contributions in this volume often refer to these covert forms of violence. One such form of violence has to do with language that forcefully abuses the personhood of others. Verbal abuse as a form of violence is pointed out in several contri-butions in this volume. Violent language could incite or result in violent behaviour. Such a view on verbal violence corresponds to contemporary theories, which stress that language creates realities rather than reflects them. The articles of Tolmie on Galatians, and van der Watt and Kok on John, for example, expose extreme forms of verbal violence.

24 Pranger, “Monastic Violence”, 44. Even stronger are the views expressed in philosoph-ical context by H. de Vries, “Violence and Testimony: On Sacrifĳicing Sacrifĳice”, in de Vries and Weber (eds.), Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination, 14–43. He writes, for example, “War is everywhere, even in the heart of peace, even in peace of heart. There is no way out, no interior refuge, no safe haven, here or elsewhere, which would be without terror or suf-fering” (de Vries, “Violence and Testimony”, 42). It should be added, though, that this does not necessarily allocate ontological status to violence or to acquiescence in violence.

25 S. Hanssen, “On the Politics of Pure Means: Benjamin, Arendt, Foucault”, in de Vries and Weber (eds.), Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination, 252. Though her remarks are made in terms of nationalistic violence, they provide an important methodological insight for all analyses of violence.



The contributions of van Eck and Punt point out other forms of vio-lence. They are political, economic, structural forms of violence. They are found in most forms of patriarchy, classism,26 patronage and in gender and structural27 violence. Examples of these can be found in reflections on Revelation. For instance, although most exegetes would agree that Revela-tion is a liberating book about the destruction of violent structures, Pip-pin, writing from a gender perspective, says, “The Christian Apocalypse of John is limited in its destruction of the forces of oppression. The irony of the grotesque burning of the Whore is that the Christian utopia itself is an oppressive world (for women)”.28 Her remarks reveal how some readers of Revelation can feel violated by the way in which the objects of judgement are portrayed in gender terms and how this judgement is expressed in excessively violent language. Another form of violence was pointed out by Carter in terms of Matthew’s Gospel. In his analysis of the gospel from the perspective of violence, he creatively links the interesting notion of family violence with Matthew 10 as an example of hostility between families in towns.29

Also intriguing are forms of violence that are associated with theologi-cal notions and contents. In his contribution to this volume van Henten draws attention to Schwartz who created a stir in the discipline when she linked monotheism with violence, since it forms identity by exclu-sion rather than inclusion, whilst Collins traced violence to irrational, fundamentalist certainty, and Lüdemann related it to a sense of election.30 Deleuze proposed that the seminal theological notion of judgement is vio-lent in nature. He reviewed the person of Jesus in terms of his relationship with God, noting Jesus’ unselfĳish sacrifĳice as only the preparation for God’s

26 See the insightful remarks by W.R. Herzog, Prophet and Teacher: An Introduction to the Historical Jesus (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005), and the discussion by van Eck, “Jesus and Violence. An Ideological-Critical Reading of the Tenants in Mark 12:1–12 and Thomas 65”, in this volume. Also helpful are remarks by R.J. Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy. Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993), 338–383. Boesak, Comfort, 108–125, and T. Pippin and G. Aichele (eds.), Violence, Utopia and the Kingdom of God. Fantasy and Ideology in the Bible (London/New York: Routledge, 1998).

27 The term “structural violence” has been debated extensively in philosophy. It has been used in some instances to call for and legitimise counterviolence. For a discussion and examples, see Hanssen, “Politics”, 236–237.

28 Pippin, “Heroine”, 144.29 Carter, “Construction”, 97.30 J.J. Collins, “The Zeal of Phinehas. The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence”, JBL 122

(2003): 3–21; R.M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); G. Lüdemann, The Unholy in Holy Scripture: The Dark Side of the Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).



greater violence in the end time. “The denial of self is the fĳirst step in the destruction of the self, both one’s own self and that of another. Together they reinforce the system of judgement, which is a system of terror”.31

Equally thought provoking is Boer’s postmodern and materialist analysis of prophetic literature. For Boer the utopian vision of anarchistic proph-ets was disempowered and turned into mediocrity by the hegemonistic discourse of later Christianity.32 One of the strategies of the hegemony is to co-opt prophecy into the canon. This resulted in prophetic radicalism becoming mediocre, used by “largely middle class, elderly and conserva-tive churches, who practice a liberal, hand-wringing, approach to social justice that incorporates the prophets among their central texts”.33 This prophecy was tolerated as a sub-culture, but only within the constraints of the hegemony’s ideology. As soon as these constraints are transgressed, hegemony intervenes through censure. It does so subtly, claiming, for example, that it is non-violent and tolerant. In reality it seeks to maintain its dominance and will do so by brutally asserting itself. “Hegemony is, then, the dominant ideological structure in a given society, the exercise of power without direct violence”.34

Equally provocative is Boer’s suggestion that not all forms of violence are illegitimate. He fĳinds that Ezekiel’s gender violence is as unacceptable as racial and sexual violence. Political violence is, however, the only way to end hegemony’s violence.35 Ezekiel contains a form of acceptable politi-cal violence with which the violence of hegemony can be overcome.

[Political violence] may, unfortunately, be required in the light of the impli-cations of hegemony with violence, hegemony being the originary and usurping violence of a social structure whose violent character has been efffaced. Indeed, as Žižek argues, the highest form of violence is that which

31 See M. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace. A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 291.

32 See also van Aarde’s remarks in this volume about the questionable nature and func-tion of a hegemony.

33 R. Boer, “Ezekiel’s Axl, or Anarchism and Ecstacy”, in Pippin and Aichele (eds.), Vio-lence, Utopia and the Kingdom of God, 24–71 (42).

34 Boer, “Ezekiel’s Axl”. Boer’s example in this case is Ezekiel; Boer focuses on the debate in which the implied author of the book was regarded as mentally instable, if not schizo-phrenic and misogynist. See also similar remarks by Pranger, “Monastic Violence”, 44–57.

35 Boer’s remarks reflects the debate about violence, war and power that is promi-nent in philosophical circles. For one example of this debate and of the important socio-policital implications of one’s understanding of violence, see Hanssen, “Politics”, 236–252 and for a discusion of the link of politics as “the struggle for a lesser evil”, for a mitigation, reduction or even an abolition of violence, see de Vries, “Violence and Testimony”, 14–43.



coincides with the absence of violence, that is, this supreme violence “deter-mines the ‘specifĳic colour’ of the very horizon within which something is to be perceived as ‘violence’ ”.36

He then concludes,

And this is where the daring suggestion of Jan Tarlin (1997) fĳinds its place: he argues that in the very pornography (which he understands at the conjunc-tion of sexual representation and violence) of Ezekiel’s texts may be found a utopian glimpse that breaks the hegemonic shell. It is then a sad reflection on our own situation—and it seems of Ezekiel’s texts—that the strength of the originary, hegemonic, violence requires something like Ezekiel or Axl Rose to offfer the possibility that it may be broken.37

Boer’s discussion draws attention to hidden, indirect forms of violence. They often hide themselves from scrutiny, since the establishment masks them with a cloak of respectability. Such covert or indirect forms of vio-lence in hegemony are real—as the fate of peace churches throughout the centuries proves. These religious groups were tolerated by societies, but were subjected to incarceration and extreme forms of punishment when they resisted military service.

There is a type of violence that one sometimes also fĳinds in academic scholarship, which is similar to this hegemonic violence. In a thought-provoking article, Nicklas points out the violent implications of New Tes-tament scholarship in the period of National Socialism in Germany.38 The overt and covert forms of anti-Semitism in publications of well-known New Testament scholars from those times on this topic make for chill-ing reading. It is even more disconcerting that this violence was hidden behind the respectability of high academic standards. The rationality and academic quality of such scholarship reminds one of Nietzsche and his comments about the violent nature of reason itself.39 All this suggests that scholarship can take on a violent character—not only when it motivates violent social action, but also when it exercises a hegemony that is intoler-ant of dissenting views.

Finally, attention should be drawn to one of the most disconcerting forms of violence and one which was mentioned previously when the

36 Boer, “Ezekiel’s Axl”, 24.37 Boer, “Ezekiel’s Axl”, 42.38 T. Nicklas, “Vom Umgang met biblischen Texten in antisemitischen Kontexten”,

HvTSt 64 (2009): 1895–1921.39 The discussion of violence in biblical texts will benefĳit much from interdisciplinary

discussions, as this insight of Nietzsche indicates.



violent character of God was discussed. This form of violence has not been addressed in contributions to this volume, though it deserves more atten-tion because of its serious implications. It has, however, been mooted recently in an essay by Neville on the Gospel of Matthew. He notes that studies on violence in the Gospels generally focused on specifĳic episodes like the temple episode or the two swords (Luke 19:45–8; 22:35–8 et par), neglecting the more problematic divine violence at the end of the present age when God will violently punish those who acted immorally. One could argue that such retributive violence enables one to condemn violence on the part of believers and regard it as a call to them to refrain from any vio-lent action. One should, however, not overlook the consequences of the image of a vengeful God. It could nurture a culture of fear rather than a mature, integrated morality.40 If God rectifĳies all things by violent retribu-tion, furthermore, it implies a negative, desperate world view, namely that violence ultimately prevails. Or, even worse, “as history reveals, it is but a small step from afffĳirming God’s entitlement to exact vengeance to advo-cating violence in defence of God’s cause on the part of those aligned with God’s will”. Such a position implies “what might be called proleptic moral suasion—the power to shape moral imagination, character and behaviour here and now”.41 Nicklas, in his contribution to this volume, penetratingly writes about the dangerous consequences of this view that opponents will be destroyed. It could encourage people to treat dissenters without mercy and eliminate them. All these perspectives on violence are illuminating, providing insights into the place of violence in the Bible and its role in violent attitudes, behaviour and acts.

It is necessary, however, that the study of these various forms of vio-lence should be conducted with care, as is clear from some criticism of recent research. This includes the occasional critical remark, for example when Carter suggested that research on Matthew’s Gospel has not linked violence convincingly enough with class or gender. Then there is the more general criticism which questions the validity of some research on violence in the Bible. Kaminsky, for example, challenges some of these authors who linked violence to monotheism and election to be more nuanced about their positions. He writes,

Just as it is quite dubious that monotheism and exclusivism can be linked causally to violence, it is questionable to link absolutism and certitude to

40 Neville, “Teleology”, 135, 139. 41 Neville, “Teleology”, 134.



violence. There is a misplaced bias against fanaticism that links the idea of fanaticism to evil. Fanaticism can be directed towards human good; in fact, many of the world’s greatest religious fĳigures rightly could be called fanat-ics. The single-minded dedication to a cause that is associated with fanati-cism can produce an Osama Bin Laden, but it has also produced Mother Teresa.42

More outspoken was Johnson on, inter alia, Schwartz’s book on mono-theism, discussed above and on Delaney’s publication on Abraham.43 He discovers in their analyses their clear ideological predilections and social-scientifĳic reductionism, and then notes that the authors do not seem,

to appreciate that cultures not influenced by the Bible—with “other sto-ries” and sometimes with “many gods”—have shown themselves more patri-archal, exclusive, violent, and negligent of children than those shaped by the Bible. Most of all, their intellectual embrace is not sufffĳiciently large to entertain the possibility that the Bible may be dealing with experiences of a reality inaccessible to social-scientifĳic reduction, may be grappling with truths more elusive and compelling than “identity formation”, may indeed be revealing a world both more capacious and gracious than that of aca-demic utopias.44

These remarks remind one to reflect carefully on the complex nature of violence in the Bible. Listing these forms has, however, heuristic value. Readers of biblical texts are provided with the necessary insights to rec-ognise existing and potential forms of violence in the Bible. There is also another reason why it is helpful to determine forms of violence. It is, for example, informative when a particular form of violence appears only in a small number of biblical books. The prominence of divine violence at the end of time in Revelation and Matthew’s Gospel contrasts with its absence elsewhere in biblical texts. It is less striking in Pauline literature and in other Gospels.45 This questions the importance or relative status of such violence. The fact that some forms of violence are prominent in some books and lacking in others, provide hermeneutical keys to deter-mine their signifĳicance.

42 See J. Kaminsky, “Violence in the Bible”, SBL Forum. http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=159.

43 C. Delaney, Abraham on Trial. The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

44 L.T. Johnson, “How Not to Read the Bible”, Commonweal 126 (1999): 24.45 Neville, “Teleology”, 157, notes that eschatological violence is less prominent in the

Gospel tradition(s). He suggests that it is, therefore, possible to “hold tightly to Matthew’s record of Jesus’ mission and message, while sitting loosely to his vision of eschatological vengeance”.



The fact that violence has many forms, begs the question whether some of these forms are more destructive than others. How do these forms relate to each other? It is also a question whether the understanding of violence is broadened so much by this diversifĳication that it may tend to trivialise violence.

5. Early Christians as Agents of Violence

Closely linked with the previous remarks about various forms of violence, is the need to distinguish between agents of violence. It is methodologi-cally necessary to analyse who the “agent” or the initiator of violent behav-iour is and who is on the receiving end of violent treatment.

An analysis of this kind will help to question some assumptions that have prevented an adequate understanding of violence. By drawing atten-tion to the agents of violence in the Bible, contributions in this volume question the untested conviction that violence is one-directional, as if early Christians were the objects and victims of violent behaviour. It becomes clear from biblical texts that, though they were indeed persecuted and killed, Christians were also perpetrators of violence or condoned the use of violence. Passages like Matthew 23, and remarks in Galatians and Revelation reflect extreme forms of verbal violence by their authors and characters.

The issue of agency also helps to note the signifĳicant point that vio-lence is not perpetrated by people only. Impersonal institutions and structures can also be violent. Several contributions in this volume men-tion the structural violence of the state or institutionalised religion (the synagogue/temple hierarchy).

An analysis of the agents of violence in the New Testament also draws attention to the issue of divine violence. It reveals that Christ and God are often depicted as perpetrators of violence, even on the level of physi-cal violence. The way in which this is portrayed has serious theological implications. In the case of Revelation, the texts seem to suggest that the opponents of God will be destroyed at the end of history. It is not often that such remarks are evaluated critically for their potential to instigate violence. Nicklas, in his contribution, penetratingly asks the important theological question about the dangerous consequences of this view about the future destruction of opponents and the malpractices that may result from it. It could encourage people to treat dissenters without mercy and eliminate them already now. This potential violence, in turn, forces one to take the hermeneutical issue seriously. Nicklas suggests that other



non-violent perspectives in Revelation must be emphasised to counter the potentially negative consequences of this destructive and agonistic portrayal of God.

With such remarks, Nicklas joins the ranks of scholars like Pippin, who argue that the interpretation of biblical texts can have devastating conse-quences and can promote violence at various levels. The problem is not merely exegetical or historical, as if it is merely a matter of pointing out agents of violence in the texts or in early Christianity. It is a debate with singular consequences for the discipline, and, for that matter, for religion in general. If the text can speak so easily about divine violence, some of its contemporary readers may well legitimise, continue and even intensify their violent actions and behaviour in contemporary society. Such readers in turn become agents of violence, motivated and inspired by the text. The morality of New Testament studies requires that the agency of vio-lence, also divine violence, be challenged.

6. Violence as Perception

Some of the observations made above have already suggested that often violence cannot be determined in an objective manner. It is often a mat-ter of perception. Violence reflects experiences and feelings of people in their particular contexts. It is also perceptual in the sense that some people would feel violated by events that others would regard as normal, legitimate and necessary.

6.1 Perceived Violence in Biblical Texts

Although biblical texts are often without clear references to their contexts, scholars reconstruct contextual information to explain how the experi-ence of early Christians determined their violent behaviour, language and attitudes. Thus, for example, Desjardins ascribes the verbal violence in Jesus’ vituperative outburst in Matthew 23 to the deep frustration of early believers over the limited success of their witness to the gospel. The early Christians were ostracised and their leader was killed by their pow-erful opponents. As a result they regard their opponents as evil and hold the Jewish people as a whole responsible for Jesus’ death. Their hatred is clear in Matthew 27:24–25. Desjardins criticised the destructive contents of this passage, pointing out how the passage functioned in later times as a source for anti-Semitism and noting that “the only redeeming factor to these verses is that the author himself was Jewish”. Though he rejects



its violence, he continues, “The tone, then, is understandable, given the historical context . . .”46

Frankfurter develops a similar perceptual understanding of violence when he links various forms of violence the way in which believers expe-rienced their identity.47

Jesus-focused identity . . . could be constructed along various axes—halakic, as in Revelation; political as in Matthew; or cosmic/anthropological, as in John. That is, legends of violence allowed a subset of Jews to feel diffferent from other Jews by virtue of imagining themselves persecuted by those other Jews. Intriguingly, these insiders could construe their intimate enemies from within Jewishness, as in Matthew or Revelation (or Paul in Galatians 1), or they could relegate the term “Ioudaios” entirely to the enemy, as in John. No doubt there were regional and historical factors as well as social dynamics that contribute to these various polarities in self-defĳinition.48

Other scholars ascribe the violence in some New Testament texts to the believers’ relationship with Roman imperial discourse—a topic that is dis-cussed in several of the contributions in this volume. It should be remem-bered how diffferent experiences of Roman rule could be. Paul promoted respect for Roman authority (Rom. 13). His experience difffered radically from that of other early Christians in Asia Minor who responded in an excessively hostile manner to the Roman Empire.49 Clearly, then, percep-tions of one and the same state varied strongly. Another response against Roman rule was spelled out by Carter, who argued that tension between the powers also explained Matthew’s perspective on violence. According to him, Matthew’s Gospel constructs violence theologically:

[Matthew’s Gospel] regards [violence] as central to the sinful human soci-etal situation from which Jesus is to save people (1:21); as deeply enmeshed in and expressed by the current elite-dominated, imperial, societal struc-ture; as inevitable to the conflict over the competing societal visions that come into sharp collision through Jesus’ life and death; and as crucial to the divine completion of that salvation in Jesus’ return and resultant judgment. In resisting and redeeming violence of the imperial status quo, the gospel

46 Desjardins, Peace, 69–70. See further P. Berger, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1969), 164, for the classical sociological description of minority groups in a religious context who regarded others in their context as hostile and oppressive. Here, the violent implications of such a “we/they” attitude are spelled out.

47 On examples in modern times of extreme forms of violence in the name of identity, see de Vries, “Violence and Testimony”, 41, and his discussion of Derrida.

48 Frankfurter, “Violence”, 142; my italics. 49 L.L. Thompson, The Book of Revelation. Apocalypse and Empire (New York/Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1990).



also afffĳirms that some violence, namely the violence of God, the supreme ruler who is “lord of heaven and earth (11:25), and of God’s agent Jesus, is legitimate and necessary”.50

Matthew, according to Carter, challenges the majority discourse of his time with a theological point,

Violence is not just a means of coercion in the service of greed or power or furthering elite interests, though it is indeed that. The gospel discloses/constructs it to be an activity of the devil, an activity that rejects the gospel of God’s empire when and as it afffects the present way of life (so 11:23; 10:22; 24:9 . . .). The particular, though not exclusive, penchant for violence among male elites suggests that power groups in a patriarchal and vertical society fĳind the announcement of God’s purposes, whether proclaimed by prophets, by Jesus, or by disciples, to be especially disturbing or threatening to the status quo and their self-interest. Household members are also threatened. Violence is constructed as the way of the world. Signifĳicantly, it is the gospel that provides the perspective that unmasks the true cosmic and theological nature of the social-political-religious violence.51

These are examples of how scholars explain the relationship of New Tes-tament texts with Jewish and Imperial discourses of their times. They illustrate the perceptual nature of violence and explain why certain texts reflect violent perceptions that do not match historical information about the world in which they were written. Violence, thus, has a subjective character, which means that it cannot always be measured by objective, fĳixed criteria. That is why Frankfurter pointed out that violence in an early Christian context is closely connected with imagination: “It would seem that sectarian movements have the capacity to imagine themselves persecuted even in largely peaceful times and among various economic strata—to erupt in fear and vengeance over what to observers might be the smallest indignities”.52 This process will be illustrated when the recep-tion of biblical texts is analysed, as will be done next.

6.2 Reception of Violence in Biblical Texts

The perceptual nature of violence is also clear when one investigates how later readers interpreted biblical texts and discovers how their situ-ation determined their understanding quite substantially. The link with the reader’s context is so strong, that receptions of the Bible can difffer

50 Carter, “Construction”, 105. 51 Carter, “Construction”, 105. 52 Frankfurter, “Violence”, 144.



or change dramatically in one and the same society and culture. Yeo, for example, points out how Chinese Christians regarded Revelation as the one book in the Bible that consoled them in times of persecution during the Cultural Revolution. Other Chinese Christians from the same time, however, were less positive about the book. They resisted Revelation’s negative image of the state, because it polarised Chinese Christianity and prevented productive co-operation with the state. Later on, a new generation of Christians in China found Revelation important because it presented a vision of wholeness and meaning. This new generation read Revelation without relating it to persecution. It was read more for its non-materialistic, spiritual contents.53

The perceptions can vary even more in their intensity. It is striking that the scholarly view on the “offfensive” nature of Revelation, formulated by Collins in the superscription to this contribution, is found in fĳirst world countries with their growing peace movements and with their focus on human dignity and rights. This is clear also when Pippin criticised the gender violence as equally offfensive as physical violence.

It is intriguing to compare these readings of Revelation, which take offfence at its contents, with the reading of Boesak, also quoted in the superscription above.54 As an outspoken supporter of Martin Luther King and his non-violent movement, Boesak is known to have sacrifĳiced much in his quest for justice within the apartheid establishment in South Africa with its structural violence. For him Revelation represents the divine judgement on an evil, violent state. His appreciation of the book was gen-erated within an experiential reality of, as he formulates it, violent anger at exploitative and destructive powers. In similar vein, the Chilean New Testament scholar, Richard, argued that Revelation provided important insights on the destructive consequences of globalisation.55 It is also in another third-world context (in this case Brazilian) that Westhelle, in con-trast to Pippin, experienced Revelation as a liberating book for women,

53 K.K. Yeo, “Hope for the Persecuted, Cooperation with the State, and Meaning for the Dissatisfĳied: Three Readings of Revelation from a Chinese Context”, in From Every People and Nation. The Book of Revelation in Intercultural Perspective (ed. D. Rhoads; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 201.

54 See Boesak, Comfort, and the contribution of de Villiers, “Exegetical Perspectives on Violence in Revelation 18”, in this volume. The same tension is to be seen in the various contributions in Rhoads (ed.), From Every People and Nation.

55 See P. Richard, Apocalypse: A People’s Commentary on the Book of Revelation (Mary-knoll: Orbis, 1995); also P. Richard, “Reading the Apocalypse: Resistance, Hope and Libera-tion in Central America”, in Rhoads (ed.), From Every People and Nation, 146–164.



because it helped women to challenge their miserable circumstances (poverty, alcoholism of their husbands and the patriarchal management of their settlements) and to identify them as the beast in Revelation 13.56

The perceptual nature of biblical scholarship is again illustrated by these remarks. What is offfensive to one is a matter of comfort to another. As Carter observed, “The discussion is complex, diverse, and invested. Violence often exists or does not exist in the eye of the politically com-mitted beholder”.57 The notion of “invested” in this quotation is especially noteworthy.

Thus, the notion of violence has to be clarifĳied in any debate. One can too easily speak of “defĳinitions”, which list objective criteria and charac-teristics of violence. In postmodern settings, such defĳinitions with their modernist assumptions and sub-texts are questioned, because violence is part and parcel of experiential realities and often has a subjective ele-ment. This explains why new forms of violence are articulated by victims who explain how they felt violated in particular situations. This happened, for example, in the case of structural and gender violence where minority groups began to reflect on and express their experiences over against the oppression of dominant groups.

When one takes into consideration that violence is perceptual and is closely linked to subjective experiences, it further indicates how difffĳicult it will be to determine more or less serious forms of violence. Paul advised churches to accept the authority of the Empire, but the author of Revela-tion experienced that Empire as a murderous tyranny, which threatened the existence of the church. Any attempt to give preference to one of these two perspectives, would in itself represent a violation of the experi-ences of the involved people.

7. Violence within Early Christian Discourse

Violent pronouncements in biblical texts are anchored in their authors’ symbolic universe. Such symbolic universes relate to or contrast with other existing discourses (for example, Jewish, Christian or Graeco-Roman), as has become clear from remarks made above. This implies that one is always involved in a discursive analysis. One is always engaged in

56 P. Westhelle, “Revelation 13: Between Colonial and the Postcolonial. A Reading from Brazil”, in Rhoads (ed.), From Every People and Nation, 183–199.

57 Carter, “Construction”, 90.



understanding how a particular author responds to other experiences. A text should, therefore, be read in relationship with other competing or complementary texts. In the symbolic world of a text from Christian Scrip-tures, for example, traditions and pronouncements from both Hebrew Scriptures and early Christian witness should be kept in mind when vio-lent pronouncements are interpreted. An author does not merely create a text, but his work is also being created by the textual world that the author inhabits. In the case of violent pronouncements, this implies that the text of an author is the result of his or her traditions on violence. At the same time pronouncements in his or her traditions about righteous-ness and peace should also be taken into account. Fairness towards the text requires that one respects its integrity and takes into consideration all information that illuminates parts of a text. Violent pronouncements in a text should be read and qualifĳied by non-violent remarks, images and motifs in other places in the same text. This has been done in some of the contributions in this volume, where the violence in a particular text has been interpreted in terms of other motifs in the same text (see, for example, van Aarde, van der Watt and de Villiers). All this implies that one should relate particular texts in the New Testament to early Christian discourse.

First of all, then, there are perspectives on violence and non-violence in the Bible which form a background against which specifĳic violent remarks should be understood. The New Testament in general does not call believ-ers to war. In terms of the Sermon on the Mount, furthermore, no one is to be violent toward others. Violence and sufffering are to be endured rather than inflicted.58 Disciples of Jesus are also instructed to love their enemies. Secondly, the discourse in which violent pronouncements are embedded often explains that they should not be interpreted literally. The holy war motif taken over in Revelation from sacred traditions is, for example, fun-damentally revised and changed into a non-violent symbol. Revelation, thus, becomes a Christian war scroll in which the saints’ participation in the holy war is restricted to witnessing. They do not shed blood or kill anyone.59 As Boring notes,

58 Desjardins, Peace, 62, thus, notes, “A double-edged exhortation emerges, then, from the New Testament: do not be violent toward others and do be willing to sufffer the vio-lence of others, following Jesus’ example and that set by his earliest followers”.

59 Bauckham, Climax, 210–237.



None of the violence in the scenes of chapters 6–16 is literal violence against the real world; it is violence in a visionary scene of the future, expressed in metaphorical language (9:7) . . . The sword and fĳire by which the evil of the earth is judged (and even “tormented”) are not literal swords and fĳire but metaphors for the cutting, searing word (1:16, 11:5).60

Though this is important and points to the essential non-violent quality of Revelation, it does not solve the problem of violence completely. Even where scholars agree that the language of Revelation is metaphorical, they point out various other problems. The reception history of Revelation reveals that not all readers understand or accept that its violent language is not meant literally. There are many historical examples of how Revela-tion motivated violent actions,61 but in recent times the verbal violence in Revelation has caused serious concern. Thus Okoye observes that the negative impact of Revelation’s violent language should not be underesti-mated. He writes that biblical texts that poetically express divine retribu-tion as sexual violence could have a fatal attraction and could feed the cultural imagination in a negative manner. He refers to Volf ’s observa-tion that the violence of the divine word is no less deadly than the vio-lence of the literal word.62 The symbolic nature of Revelation’s language is, therefore, open to misunderstanding and abuse, even though there is a strong case to be made for its essentially non-violent nature. What is true, however, is that more research is needed on the gap between non-violent readings of biblical texts and their violent reception in the history of interpretation.

The link between violent pronouncements and the greater discourse in which they are found requires, thirdly, that they should be read in terms of contrasting or related motifs like peace, love and justice or even the more general Christian narrative. It could be done by relating violent pas-sages to non-violent pronouncements. This would not be enough. They should be linked also with key elements of the biblical narrative in the broadest sense of the word. This will help to determine the importance of

60 M.E. Boring, Revelation (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox, 1989), 116; my italics.61 Frankfurter, “Violence”, 148, showed how martyrdom inspired later readers of Revela-

tion to retaliatory actions. The peasant uprisings in Reformation times are one example. For more covert forms of violence inspired by Revelation, see B. Rossing, The Rapture Exposed. The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (New York: Basic Books, 2004). Note again also Pippin, “Heroine”, 96–103, who pointed out how readings of Revelation contribute to the continuing exploitation of and violence against women.

62 J.C. Okoye, “Power and Worship: Revelation in an African Perspective”, in Rhoads (ed.), From Every People and Nation, 110–126.



violent passages. Neville, for example, pointed out how violence should be understood in the light of the fact that the beginning, middle and end of the Christian discourse are portrayed in terms of paradisiacal motifs.63 For Volf such a link between violent pronouncements and the greater discourse would mean reflection on “key junctures in the drama of Jesus Christ, notably the cross and the second coming”. He interprets the cross as “a divine embrace of the deceitful and the unjust . . . In an act of sheer grace, justice and truth would be suspended, and a reconciling embrace take place”.64 The suspension of justice takes place to establish a world of justice and truth. The sacrifĳice of Jesus on the cross ended the cycle of violence. “I believe . . . that the biblical texts narrate how God has neces-sarily used the sacrifĳicial mechanism to remake the world into a place in which the need to sacrifĳice others could be eschewed—a new world of self-giving grace, a world of embrace”. The motif of peace is also used to spell out the weight of violent passages. O’Donovan, for example, stressed that they should not be placed on the same level. Peace is not the “answer” to violence, as if peace and violence are two equally important motifs. Peace is characteristic of God’s creation, while violence intrudes.65

The relationship of violence to early Christian discourse and its seminal motifs has also been discussed in contributions to this publication. Van Houwelingen points out how Paul was transformed from his violent ways to become a fĳighter for God through peaceful means. This is an important insight which co-determines Paul’s proclamation in all its facets. Weren makes similar suggestions when he shows how violence in the Johannine episode of the adulterous woman is suspended or challenged by non-violent motifs. Although Jesus considers the woman guilty so that she

63 Neville, “Teleology”, 133–134. He warns that one should not set up a dichotomy between violence in Hebrew Scriptures and its antithesis of the New Testament. There are also violent behaviour, rhetoric and imagery in New Testament texts. In addition to Neville’s valid remark, it should be remembered that Hebrew Scriptures also contain pas-sages on divine compassion, love and care within which violent passages or pronounce-ments should be understood. For a discussion of ethics in Hebrew Scriptures, which is also relevant for the interpretation of violent passages in them, see P. Copan, “Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics”. http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=45&mode=detail.

64 Volf, Exclusion, 294, but see also other salient remarks on 291–294.65 See the discussion in O’Donovan, Just War. Neville, “Teleology”, 134–135, refers to the

“ontology” of peace, which is presupposed in the Christian narrative. Violence is not “pri-mal reality”, but a “distortion and desecration of God’s original intention for the world”. See also the discussion in de Villiers, “Spirituality of Peace”, 213–251. Several articles in de Vries and Weber, Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination, refer to philosophical discus-sions about this issue.



should die a violent death, motifs of forgiveness and mercy weigh heavier and ultimately explain why she is not killed.66

There is a fourth perspective that sheds light on violent passages in the Bible. Divine violence is sometimes characterised as contra-violence in order to cope with its place in biblical texts. Hays described Jesus’ cleans-ing of the temple as a prophetic act of protest against an unjust system.67 Jesus did not try to usurp power over the temple by violence.68 In Revela-tion, again, the violence of the hostile world is the context within which it is suggested that divine judgement should be understood. The text responds to the violence that is endemic to the world of the author. But this perspective of contra-violence seems to make interpreters uneasy, since the severity of the divine judgement is often mentioned. Bruegge-mann, for example, drew attention to this when he noted, “There is, to be sure, nothing innocent about Israel’s rhetoric of violence and conse-quently there is nothing innocent about Yahweh. But then, neither Israel nor Yahweh pretends for one moment to live in a world of innocence”.69 Ultimately the question why such severe forms of contra-violence are nec-essary, remains unanswered.

An interesting proposal, related to the previous suggestion, is that divine judgement is to be understood as a healing action, as, for example, expressed in Revelation 22:2–3. With such a notion, the divine response to violence is given a milder character. In this passage the tree of life in paradise is described as “for the healing of the nations”. This verse devel-ops the metaphor in the Hebrew Scripture of God as the healer of nations. The healing does not come easily, since it means that infection and rot must be cut out. In Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11, and especially 51:8–9, “Babylon will suddenly fall and be broken. Wail over her! Get balm for her pain; perhaps she can be healed”. The divine judgement and anger are neither arbitrary nor destructive. They are intended to heal and thus stands in the service of salvation.70

66 Weren elsewhere points out how mercy plays a seminal role in Matthew 25, a text that is otherwise violent. W.J.C. Weren, “Matteus 25. De minste der mĳnen”, in De Bĳbel spiritueel. Bronnen van geestelĳk leven in die Bĳbelse geschriften (eds. F. Maas, J. Maas and K. Spronk; Zoetermeer: Meinema; Kapellen: Pelckmans, 2004), 535–542. See also Neville, “Teleology”, 131–161, for a full and informative discussion about eschatological violence in Matthew.

67 Hays, Moral Vision, 334. 68 Hays, Moral Vision, 335. Hays concludes from this, “It is difffĳicult to see how such a

story can serve as a warrant for Christians to wage war and kill”.69 W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament. Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Min-

neapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1997), 243–244.70 Brueggemann, Theology, 254–255.



8. Methodology

In many of the publications on violence there is little methodological reflection on how violence in texts should be analysed. One of the few examples of how violence can be uncovered systematically is provided by Carter. He drew up extensive tables in which he analysed violence in Matthew’s gospel in terms of agency, types of violence and objects of vio-lence. His useful analysis provides a comprehensive overview in which violence by the elite, the imperial powers, synagogues, groups, towns, families, Satan, Jesus, God, enemies of God and the disciples are listed. His approach can be applied fruitfully to other books, so that more infor-mation can be added and a model of interpretation in terms of the Bible as a whole can be developed.71

Too often dated views on language stand in the way of a proper under-standing of violence. In the light of the fact that words do not have mean-ing, but meaning is expressed in words, it is necessary to explore those linguistic categories that indicate violence like “war”, “murder”, “kill”, “persecute”. The Greek-English Lexicon provides eleven words for the sub-domain violence.72 Violence should, however, also be studied in terms of actions like Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, the cutting offf of the ear in Gethsemane (Luke 22:50), the cross and violent incidents in Acts (Paul’s persecution of the followers of Jesus; Acts 9:1; 13–16; see also the contribu-tion by van Houwelingen in this volume). In other words, there is a need to determine what linguistic data qualify to be taken into account for the study of violence.

In addition, it is necessary to keep in mind that each term for violence has a multi-dimensional character. Thompson mentioned how,

[a] myriad of qualities; behavioral traits; religious commitments; psychoso-cial understandings; and social, political interactions coalesce into a term like tribulation. At times it may gain impetus from social boundary (for

71 Multi-dimensionalty can be understood in other ways too. Thompson, Revelation, 191, discussed his views on the multi-dimensional nature of some terms for violence: “A myriad of qualities; behavioral traits; religious commitments; psychosocial understandings; and social, political interactions coalesce into a term like tribulation. At times it may gain impetus from social boundary (for example, if a Christian is brought before the authori-ties), but the theme is more prominent in the religious committments and psychosocial understanding of the seer”.

72 J.P. Louw and E.A. Nida (eds.), Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (Introduction and Domains; vol. 1; New York: United Bible Societies, 1988), §20.1–11. See their introduction (vi–viii) for the underlying linguistic model of their lexicon.


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example, if a Christian is brought before the authorities), but the theme is more prominent in the religious committments and psychosocial under-standing of the seer.73

9. Appropriation of Violent Texts

Once the exegetical work has been done, there still remains the challenge to reflect on the way in which biblical passages on violence can be appro-priated in a contemporary world. Two examples will illustrate what this implies. In his contribution to this volume, Decock considers the idea of God’s judgement as a means of bringing creation to its completion. He then continues, however, with the remark that in times that many consider a “just war” as an oxymoron and using force against people is regarded with growing impatience, it becomes difffĳicult to make sense of divine violence. He then poses a question, which is increasingly being asked in contempo-rary society with its growing sensitivity to violence: “Should God not be able to achieve these with non-violent means?” With this question, Decock moots one of the most vexing aspect of violence in the New Testament. In his analysis of eschatological violence, Neville argues along similar lines. He refers to Read’s distinction between disciples who should confront evil non-violently and God’s fĳinal judgement. He questions her statement that non-violent confrontation of evildoers is not pertinent to scenes of end-time judgement. This would imply that violence could only be vanquished by greater violence—with the consequence that violence has not been overcome. Or, even worse, “For if one accepts that God’s ways are, indeed, our ways, only more forceful and potent, that is but idolatry (understood theologically) or projection (understood psychologically)”.74 The implica-tions could be that followers of Jesus may well authorise violence here and now, appealing to eschatological violence on God’s part.75 Neville sug-gests that the believing community can rightfully hope for eschatological vindication, which could mean the restoration of wholeness of the lives of

73 Thompson, Revelation, 191.74 Neville, “Teleology”, 149–150; on 152 he suggests that it may even be regarded as blas-

phemy, “for what could be worse than projecting on to God our basest and most unim-aginative quality?” See B.E. Reid, “Violent Endings in Matthew’s Parables and Christian Nonviolence”, CBQ 66 (2004): 237–255.

75 Neville, “Teleology”, 151, asks how valid an expectation of eschatological violence on God’s part is “when the writing of a harassed community of faith becomes canonical scripture in the hands of those with temporal authority and in the hands of a religious majority?”



those who sufffered as well as a verifĳication of Christian epistemology and the ethic of Jesus. This need not, however, imply eschatological violence. The expectation of divine vengeance against perceived enemies, he ulti-mately considers self-defeating.

These remarks illustrate what major challenges await those who reflect on the relevance of biblical texts in a contemporary setting.

10. Conclusion

This article has offfered some hermeneutical observations about violence in the light of the contributions to this volume within a wider range of publications in New Testament studies as a discipline. The debate about violence is in several respects new and underdeveloped, though it has shown progress. A major step forward in the discussion of violence was the recognition, for example, that Christianity is not merely about people who sufffer violence at the hand of its persecutors, but also about Chris-tianity itself perpetrating violence in many forms. Another signifĳicant development was the openness and the growing concern about the con-sequences of violent pronouncements and motifs in biblical texts and in the understanding of God’s character and actions.

These two developments reflect a commendable self-critical position of researchers and an awareness of what violence, potential destruction and power games underlie seemingly innocuous language. The new awareness and openness includes the willingness to account for the darker side of the sacred texts of Christianity, and also a growing determination to break with destructive practices that are perpetrated in the name of religion and Christianity. Whilst much has been achieved, as is clear from what has been written in this volume and elsewhere, much remains to be done, especially since violence is now perhaps one of the most serious threats to humanity and creation.


HERMENEUTICAL PERSPECTIVES ON VIOLENCE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

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