Abstract
The challenge posed by the ethically problematic passages in the Christian Old Testament extends far beyond the confines of the academy. Handling the divinely commissioned conquest of Canaan, the generous application of the death penalty, slavery, and the treatment of women in the Old Testament, becomes a challenge for all aspects of faith and practice. The far reaching implications of these ethical challenges make The Immoral Bible especially applicable to a wide audience extending from the scholar to the interested parishioner. It is clearly written and easily accessible, making it an excellent resource for non-academics. Additionally, the extensive footnotes interacting with a wide variety of scholarship make it a useful resource for the interested scholar.
The purpose of the volume is not to answer or resolve the ethical problems provoked by the Old Testament, rather it provides metacommentary on the ways biblical scholarship has responded to these challenges in the recent past (1). Davies surveys five common approaches to Old Testament interpretation that have been used to address difficult passages. Each chapter is structured along the same general format: an introduction to the approach along with any key interpreters, followed by an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses. The chapter then closes by applying the approach to Joshua 6–11 as a test case.
Davies opens the first chapter with a survey of the ethically challenging material encountered in the Old Testament. He systematically moves through the legal material (4), narratives (6), prophets (7), and Psalms (9) before coming to the violence and holy war tradition typically associated with the Canaanite conquest detailed in the book of Joshua (11–15). Davies chooses to utilize this final textual difficulty as found in Joshua 6–11 as a test case for each approach because of the attention it draws from skeptics and critics of the biblical text.
Chapter two surveys the evolutionary approach, which was popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This approach suggests that Israelite religion underwent historical progression and development. Ethically challenging passages, therefore, could be relegated to an earlier, less-developed stage in Israelite history (22). Chapter three introduces the cultural relativists’ approach, which utilizes cultural relativity to imply ethical relativity (44). Each culture constructs ethics differently, thus a culture may only properly be judged by its own standards. Joshua 6–11 may be repulsive to modern readers, but when judged by ancient Near Eastern conceptions of morality, it ceases to be problematic. The fifth chapter surveys two forms of the canonical approach. The first is the “canon within a canon” approach, in which one part of the biblical text is granted greater interpretive authority (64). Joshua 6–11, therefore, can be de-emphasized and even overlooked while passages better fitting the expositor’s moral persuasions can assume greater interpretive authority. The second canonical approach is that of Brevard Childs (76), in which a biblical passage must be read and interpreted in light of the entire canon. Ethically challenging passages may seem offensive when read in isolation, but Childs advocates reading them in light of the overarching message of the biblical canon (80). Chapter five introduces the paradigmatic approach, suggesting that biblical directives may be reduced to foundational principles. These principles may then be used to develop modern religious ethics (101). The modern interpreter, therefore, is concerned with understanding how the Israelites arrived at their ethical directives, and reproducing that process in the modern world (110). Chapter six discusses the reader-response approach. Davies defines a “reader” according to Judith Fetterley’s description of the “resisting reader” who does not passively receive a text, but rather, critically engages with it (120–121). The reader enters into a dialectic process of questioning and challenging the text, as the text questions and challenges the reader (136). This approach is justified as being the very process seen at work in the biblical text itself. The biblical authors did not unquestioningly accept the faith they received, but rather, wrestled with it and challenged earlier traditions, producing the diverse perspectives preserved in the biblical canon (132–133). Davies closes the book with a concluding chapter surveying the findings for each approach discussed in the volume (139–147).
Though Davies does not intend to advocate one approach over another, he acknowledges his preference for the reader-response method (2). He introduces all of the approaches clearly and provides fair assessments. He interacts with a wide range of scholarship without burdening the text with overly technical discussions. This volume would serve as an excellent introduction not only to the Canaanite conquest narratives, but also to the broader subject of Old Testament methodology.