A New Book about Divinely Sanctioned Violence in the Hebrew Bible Points to Ancient Tensions between Judaism and Christianity

To modern readers, the injunction that appears in the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua to “drive out” the inhabitants of Canaan, which appears to command their mass slaughter, raises disturbing questions. Daniel Hawk, a professor of Old Testament at the Ashland Theological Seminary, attempts to address such questions in his recent book The Violence of the Biblical God, arguing—to put it simply—that God must from time to time condone bloodshed in trying to make His will manifest in a dysfunctional world. In his review, Shai Held praises Hawk for dismantling many commonplace but flawed approaches to these questions, but also has some sharp criticism: