Bloody, Brutal, and Worth Reading?
A Review of Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric?
By William Webb and Gordon Oeste
William Webb’s previous work, the unfortunately titled Women, Slaves and Homosexuals, was an influential book as I developed my own hermeneutical approach to Scripture. I was looking for a way to make sense of what seemed to me like the clear message of the Bible regarding women and same sex behavior without picking and choosing what texts I did or did not like. When I saw that Webb had co-authored a new book dealing with violence and rape in the Old Testament, I knew I would check it out. Fortunately, I was invited to a theology book reading club and picked Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? for my month.
Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? is an exhaustively researched and well documented academic exploration of “troubling war texts” found in the Old Testament. At the same time, Webb and Oeste openly discuss their personal struggles with these texts which helps maintain engagement while working through extensive pages of their research. The result is a book that is simultaneously engaging to the head and the heart.
The book is over 360 pages plus nine (yes, nine!) appendixes that are available online. The length makes a comprehensive summary impossible here. In brief, Webb and Oeste carve out a hermeneutical middle ground between what they call traditional views (those that emphasize God’s actions are always just and, therefore, there is no ethical dilemma) and anti-traditional views (those that claim the Scriptures are not inspired and/or simply reject the Old Testament as reprehensible).
To establish their “realigned traditional” view (i.e. the middle way), they begin by reassessing the questions brought to these text. Consistent with Webb’s previous work, Scripture must be understood within its own context. Thus, comparing Old Testament laws to modern day international war crime law represents bad hermeneutics. Instead, Webb and Oeste argue that we must consider the text in contrast to its own contemporary cultures and other ancient near Eastern (ANE) war texts.
Seen in this light, Webb and Oeste argue, the Old Testament reveals a God who is actively moving His people towards His ultimate ethical good while also accommodating their cultural and historical location. This does not, they admit, solve all problems but helps us see the troubling texts in a different way.
The strength of the argument presented in Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? largely rests on their review of other ANE texts. Since that is not my area of expertise, I cannot assess how faithfully they represented the available texts and/or if they left out any counter examples. However, the evidence they do present is compelling—both from the ANE texts and from the internal texts of the Old Testament.
Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? is an important text because it 1) brings our attention to biblical texts that are challenging but which it is tempting to ignore, 2) highlights the shortcomings of existing answers on both ends of the spectrum, and 3) requires us to consider the text in new ways that may not be our default approach, thereby strengthening our biblical engagement regardless of whether we ultimately agree or disagree. To their credit, Webb and Oeste do not present their work as the final answer to the questions. Instead, they have given a new conversation piece to help us as we seek to be faithful readers of the Bible. I recommend the book to anyone who has struggled with the troubling texts of the Old Testament and to those who have never stopped to consider that some texts may be troubling.