book report - The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence by M. C. Fleischer (2018)

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The title is so ambitious, how could I say no to Mr. Fleischer's offer to read his book in exchange for a review? After reading it, I have to say I wish it was available to me four years ago after I read Paul Copan's book, Is God a Moral Monster? (2011)

Fleischer refers to Copan's book and follows some of his arguments. In both cases, some of these arguments leave frustrated and unsatisfying. Copan's response to the calls by God to commit war crimes is to note contemporary ancient near eastern (ANE) hyperbole. He also points out the Bible's own writers have enemy lists which include tribes which earlier histories claim of total annihilation of without any attempt at cover-up. In other words, Copan says, the command was inflated, the fulfillment was inflated, and the result was minimal, but none of this was problematic to ANE readers, so why should it be to modern readers? As a conservative evangelical, I found Copan's thesis hopeful, but also threatening to my commitment to the inerrancy of the Bible, before I came to realize not everything biblical is Christian.

Fleischer takes a different tack, but before I present it, I think it helpful to contrast him with another writer on the same topic, John Dominic Crossan and his recent book, How to read the Bible and still be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis through Revelation. (2015) No longer an evangelical with a commitment to inerrancy, I could read the no-longer-threatening Crossan and learn from him. He proposes in this book the cyclical nature of conservatism and progressivism among the contributors to the Bible. He has no issue seeing the work of editors and redactors and pseudonymous authors proposing divinely inspired theology, Jesus being the pinnacle, and other authors reeling those ideas back in. For example, he notes Paul's letters claiming both the enslaved and the free are one in Christ, but later disputed Pauline letters give instructions on how slaves should obey their masters. In the case of Joshua's invasion, we find God promising to drive out the nations by natural means, but when they get to the promised land, slaughter is commanded.

For Copan, the humanity of the Bible only interferes with its colloquialisms, e.g. when God said kill all the men, women and children, he meant win a battle. For Crossan, the Bible is thoroughly human with true glimpses of the divine but a lot of claims of divine authority for banal ends. Fleischer is somewhere in between.

Fleischer speaks the evangelical Bible speak. He uses the Bible well. He uses the Bible to interpret the Bible. He quotes prolifically from a wide range of preachers, Bible teachers (like Copan), and Bible scholars. He wants us to find and use the common ground of Jesus loved by both the Biblical inerrantist and the Biblical skeptic. The book is written for both of us. Ultimately, we are Christians, not bibliatians. So we need to see the perfection of Jesus as our guide. How did he read the Bible? How did he use the Bible? But Fleischer builds his case from Genesis, before he gets to Jesus. The skeptic may find the initial going hard, but the payoff is worth it. The inerrantist will fully enjoy the the bulk of the book then be challenged towards the end. An author who can challenge both sides of an audience has done a really good job, and Matthew Curtis Fleischer is that author.

I have provided this review without any promises for a good review in exchange for a copy of this book and I recommend it.

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