Secdocument 6178

Making Sense of Old Testament
Genocide: Christian Interpretations of

Herem Passages Christian Hofreiter
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/making-sense-of-old-testament-genocide-christian-int
erpretations-of-herem-passages-christian-hofreiter/
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/12/2017, SPi
OX F O R D T H E O L O G Y A N D RE L I G I ON MO N O G R A P H S
Editorial Committee
D. ACHARYA M. N. A. BOCKMUEHL
M. J. EDWARDS P. S. FIDDES
S. R. I. FOOT D. N. J. MACCULLOCH
H. NAJMAN G. WARD
OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS
Ottoman Puritanism and its Discontents

Aḥmad al-Rūmī al-Āqḥiṣārī and the Qāḍīzādelis
Mustapha Sheikh (2016)
A. J. Appasamy and his Reading of Rāmānuja
A Comparative Study in Divine Embodiment
Brian Philip Dunn (2017)
Kierkegaard’s Theology of Encounter
An Edifying and Polemical Life
David Lappano (2017)
Qur’an of the Oppressed
Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam
Shadaab Rahemtulla (2017)
Ezra and the Second Wilderness
Philip Y. Yoo (2017)
Maternal Grief in the Hebrew Bible
Ekaterina E. Kozlova (2017)
The Human Condition in Hilary of Poitiers
The Will and Original Sin between Origen and Augustine
Isabella Image (2017)
Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition
Laura Quick (2017)
Sartre on Sin
Between Being and Nothingness
Kate Kirkpatrick (2017)
Making Sense of Old

Testament Genocide
Christian Interpretations of Herem Passages
C H R I S T I A N HO F R E I T E R
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Christian Hofreiter 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950097
ISBN 978–0–19–881090–2
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
For Helen, My Love

Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the unfaltering encouragement and wise guidance provided

by my supervisor, Professor John Barton. I am also indebted to the United
Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing a generous
three-year doctoral scholarship, as well as to the Warden and Fellows of
Keble College, Oxford, whose Gosden Scholarship allowed me to lay the
groundwork for the present research during my Masters studies. I also owe
a debt of gratitude to my co-supervisor for the Master’s dissertation, Professor
Markus Bockmuehl, for his insightful comments and suggestions. Portions
of my research were previously published as ‘Genocide in Deuteronomy
and Christian Interpretation’, in D. G. Firth and Philip S. Johnston (eds),
Interpreting Deuteronomy: Issues and Approaches (2012). I am grateful to
Inter-Varsity Publishing for granting permission to include material from
that article into this book.
Without the humour, insights, and camaraderie of Wycliffe Hall’s Study
Room 16, I would no doubt have gone mad or despaired: thank you! The
friendships at St Aldates, the Oxford Pastorate, and the Zacharias Trust made
our time in Oxford rich beyond words. Without the generosity and example of
my parents I would be nowhere. Hannah and Sam also deserve special thanks:
at the time, they had no idea what it meant that Papa was writing a book, but
they were joyfully supportive and excited nonetheless. I love you both more
than I can say. And, Helen, without your love, encouragement and support
I simply could not have done it. Thank you. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes
to the One who made us for himself: ‘Our hearts are restless till they find
their rest in you.’
Contents
1. Introduction 1
Genocidal Texts in the Old Testament 3
The Theological and Hermeneutical Challenge 9
The Method: Reception History 10
Recent Reception-Historical Treatments of Herem and
Related Texts 17
The Structure of the Present Work 21
2. Pre-Critical Readings 22
Reception within the HB, OT, and Apocrypha 23
Reception within the New Testament 25
Philo 28
The Epistle of Barnabas 37
Justin Martyr 39
3. Dissenting Readings 42
The God of the Jewish Scriptures Is Not Good: Marcion
and the Marcionites 43
The Jewish Scriptures Are Partly True, Partly False 48
The Entire Bible Is Not Holy: Pagan Critics 54
4. Figurative Readings 57
Origen 57
Prudentius 87
John Cassian 89
Gregory the Great 93
Isidore of Seville 94
Glossa ordinaria 97
Berthold of Regensburg 105
5. Divine Command Theory Readings 109
Augustine 110
Other Early Church Examples 136
Thomas Aquinas 139
John Calvin 148
6. Violent Readings 160
Christianity and War: The Beginnings 161
The Crusades of the Middle Ages 167
The Medieval Inquisition 194
The Spanish Conquest of the New World (1492–1600) 197
‘Christian Holy War’ in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 201
x Contents
7. Reading Herem from the Dawn of the Enlightenment

until Today 214
Uncritical Readings 215
Dissenting Readings 219
Divine Command Theory Readings 225
Accommodation and Progressive Revelation 226
Figurative Readings 232
Reading Herem in Light of Historical Criticism 240
Violent Readings 244
8. Summary and Conclusion 247
Bibliography 253
Sources predating AD 500 253
Sources AD 500–AD 1500 256
Sources AD 1500–AD 1800 258
Sources and Secondary Literature, AD 1800–present 259
General Index 273
Index of Biblical References 279
Introduction
Genocide in the name of God is not merely an academic problem or a

phenomenon of the distant past. When fighters of the so-called Islamic State
(IS) advanced across northern Iraq in the summer of 2014, members of
religious minorities were often faced with a stark choice: convert or die. The
Yezidi inhabitants of the hamlet Kocho, like many others, refused to abandon
their ancestral religion. And so, on 15 August 2014, at least one hundred
unarmed men and boys were killed in cold blood.1 The village’s women and
girls were abducted, many of them to be sold into slavery, raped, or forced to
marry IS fighters.2
Attentive readers of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian ‘Old Testament’) are
faced with the troubling question: Could it be that similar acts once took place
at the behest of the God of the Bible?3 A number of biblical passages certainly
seem to suggest so. These once obscure verses now feature regularly even in
newspaper columns, to the shock and surprise of believers, agnostics, and
unbelievers alike.4 At their most extreme, the texts enjoin and praise the
practice of herem, which the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament
defines as ‘in war, consecrate a city and its inhabitants to destruction; carry
1
Amnesty International, ‘Ethnic Cleansing on a Historic Scale: Islamic State’s Systematic
Targeting of Minorities in Northern Iraq’, 2014, accessed online at https://www.es.amnesty.org/
uploads/media/Iraq_ethnic_cleansing_final_formatted.pdf
2
Amnesty International, ‘Escape from Hell: Torture and Slavery in Islamic State Captivity in
Iraq’, 2014, accessed online at https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/escape_from_hell_-_torture_
and_sexual_slavery_in_islamic_state_captivity_in_iraq_-_english_2.pdf
3
In what follows I will refer to the collection of scriptures that Christians call the Old
Testament in four different ways, which are each designed to reflect the sense in which a
particular group or groups of readers approached them: as the Hebrew Bible (HB), the Old
Testament (OT), the HB/OT, and the Jewish Scriptures (JS). By HB I intend to designate the
scriptures written in Hebrew; OT designates the scriptures as part of an emerging or established
bipartite Christian canon; HB/OT covers both previous senses; finally, JS is used in contexts
where none of the other senses would be appropriate, e.g. Marcion’s, who neither read the
scriptures in Hebrew nor considered them as a Christian OT.
4
E.g. Economist, ‘To Have and to Hold: Slavery in Islam: Jihadists boast of selling captive
women as concubines’, 18 Oct. 2014, accessed online at http://www.economist.com/news/middle-
east-and-africa/21625870-jihadists-boast-selling-captive-women-concubines-have-and-hold.
2 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

out this destruction; totally annihilate a population in war’.5 This certainly
sounds rather similar to the United Nations’ definition of genocide—‘acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group’, including ‘killing members of the group’.6 While the
specific and highly emotive term ‘genocide’ is certainly anachronistic and open
to substantive challenge, the parallels are chilling.7
Atrocities such as those committed by the IS, which claims religious motiv-
ation and legitimacy for its deeds, illustrate that violent religious texts are of
pressing interest not only to members of faith communities that revere the
scriptures on which they are founded, but to everyone. Such texts and their
interpretation have been, and continue to be, a matter of life and death. A chapter
in this book dedicated to violent readings focuses on this challenge in particular.
In addition, for many believers, these texts call into question the coherence,
plausibility, and trustworthiness of the religious tradition of which they are
part. Many pious Jews and Christians, with moral sensibilities shaped by the
horrors of the Shoah and other twentieth-century genocides, will ask how a
good God could ever have countenanced such behaviour, let alone commanded
and commended it. For many Christians, there is the added tension that
these texts seem to fly in the face of what they take to be central features of
the teaching of Jesus Christ, namely love of enemy, non-retaliation, and the
command to forgive.
There are of course many violent biblical verses deserving of investigation.
The present work focuses on passages related to herem because the devotion to
destruction of entire peoples is arguably the most extreme form of religiously
motivated violence.
The approach taken in the present work combines historical and analytical
elements. It is historical in that it asks how specific authors and groups of
people have in fact interpreted herem passages over time. As such, it is an
exercise in reception history (effective history, Wirkungsgeschichte). For
reasons explained below, the focus of the present work is on reception by
(broadly) Christian readers and by their critics.
The investigation is also analytical in that it seeks to clarify the philosoph-
ical premises underlying the various interpretations. This helps to illuminate
the hermeneutical challenge faced by various interpretive communities and
the ways in which they sought to address them. It also helps present-day
readers to clarify what is at stake in the various approaches and to evaluate
their respective strengths and weakness.
5
Lohfink, 1974: 181; this definition pertains to the verb in the hiphil; the definition of the
corresponding noun includes ‘the act of consecration or of extermination and killing’, ibid.; some 70
of the 80 or so occurrences of ‫ חרם‬in the OT are found in the context of war; see Welten 1980: 160.
6
United Nations, 1951: Article 2.
7
For cogent arguments that genocide is the wrong term, see Copan and Flannagan, 2014.
Introduction 3
Consequently, the present work is directly relevant to the vital contempor-
ary debate concerning religion and violence. Accurate knowledge of the way
certain violent religious texts have been read in practice, rather than ahistorical
speculation as to how they might have been read, brings empirical grounding
and detail to the contemporary debate.
In addition, the ways in which Christians of previous generations attempted
to read these texts while being faithful to the non-violent teaching and
example of Christ might prove fruitful for Christian readers today, who wish
to do the same. Some of these reading strategies might even be, mutatis
mutandis, fruitful for other religious communities. At the same time, the
dynamics and dangers of violent readings can be better understood if they
are studied in concrete historical settings.
This work seeks, then, to address the following questions: What moral
objections, if any, were raised to herem texts in the course of the past two
thousand years? What, therefore, are the theological and hermeneutical chal-
lenges posed by these texts? What answers did Christian authors give to the
various criticisms raised against these texts, what points of criticism did they
themselves raise? And, finally, what evidence is there that the biblical herem
texts were used to inspire or justify genocidal violence?
The following chapters will demonstrate that neither the tensions felt by
pious readers nor the concerns of those who do not regard the JS as holy are
recent phenomena. In addition, a chapter on violent readings will illustrate
that worries about the texts’ violent potential are not entirely unjustified.
However, it will also become clear that certain oft repeated claims, such as
those about the important role that certain OT texts allegedly played during
the crusades, are not borne out by careful historical investigation.
Before describing in greater depth the method of investigation, the pertin-
ent biblical texts will be briefly set out, together with the shape of the
theological and hermeneutical challenge they pose.
G E N O C I D A L TE X T S I N THE OLD TE S TAM E NT
This section sets out with minimal comment the most important herem texts,
in the order in which they appear in the Christian OT canon.8 The vast
8
Texts were selected as being important on the basis of a combination of internal and
external criteria, especially the use of ‫ חרם‬in the HB and their prima facie correspondence to
the UN’s definition of genocide. Consequently, uses of herem other than in the context of war,
such as in the semantic domains of consecration (Lev 27:21.28f; Num 18:14) and of the judicial
punishment for violating the first commandment (Exod 22:19) are not investigated in this book.
In what follows, herem will thus be used exclusively to refer to ‘war herem’, unless otherwise
specified. In terms of canonical order, it should be noted, too, that, since all pertinent texts are

majority of herem texts are found in the context of the exodus, the Mosaic
proclamation of the law, and the conquest of Canaan. As we will see in what
follows, the Israelites are repeatedly commanded to annihilate the inhabitants
of Canaan. In a number of texts that precede the herem accounts in the
canonical order, however, it is sometimes Yahweh himself who is presented
as the agent of the Canaanites’ future destruction; at other times, the latter are
said to be destined to be driven out rather than annihilated.9 The command to
the Israelites in those canonically earlier texts is limited to destroying the
Canaanite altars and to refraining from entering into treaties or marriages
with the Canaanites, lest they be seduced to worship the latter’s gods.10 It
should also be noted that Leviticus widens the moral discourse concerning the
taking of the land, accusing the Canaanites of a number of sins for which the
land is said to have vomited them out.11 A similar moral condemnation is
found in a number of texts in Deuteronomy, where the concept of Yahweh’s
granting land to a people and assisting them in the destruction of its previous
inhabitants is also applied to other, non-Israelite peoples in the region.12
In addition to this more immediate context, the wider canonical back-
ground includes the divine promise of land to the patriarchs, the divine
pronouncement that the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet complete in
Abraham’s day, and, arguably, Noah’s curse on his grandson Canaan.13
Having briefly outlined the contours of the surrounding canonical land-
scape, I now turn to the herem texts themselves.
The first pertinent herem narrative in the canonical order presents herem
not as something that God commands, but as something the distressed
Israelites promise Yahweh in exchange for his aid in battle:
When the Canaanite, the king of Arad, who lived in the Negeb, heard that Israel
was coming by the way of Atharim, he fought against Israel and took some of
them captive. Then Israel made a vow to the LORD and said, ‘If you will indeed
give this people into our hands, then we will utterly destroy their towns.’ The
LORD listened to the voice of Israel, and handed over the Canaanites; and they
utterly destroyed them and their towns; so the place was called Hormah.14
taken from the Law and the Former Prophets, their ordering in the HB is essentially the same as in
the OT. Biblical quotations in English are, unless otherwise noted, taken from the 1989 OUP edition
of the Bible (New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha); in this section, the English terms
translating herem have been italicized. Biblical abbreviations are based on those recognized by the
Logos Bible software (see https://www.logos.com/support/windows/L3/book_abbreviations).
9 10 11
E.g. Exod 23:23.28; 34:11. E.g. Exod 23:32f, 34:12–16. Lev 18:1–30.
12
For moral criticism, see Deut 9:4f; 12:31; 18:10–12; for the extension to other peoples, see
Deut 2:20–2.
13
See e.g. the promises to Abraham (Gen 12:6f, 13:14–17, 15:18–21, 17:5–8), Isaac (Gen
26:3f) and Jacob (Gen 28:13–15, 35:12); for the iniquity of the Amorites, see Gen 15:16; for the
curse placed on Canaan, see Gen 9:18–27.
14
Num 21:1–3.
Introduction 5
The following two herem texts are found in the first Mosaic discourse of
Deuteronomy. The first account reports the herem of the Amorite king
Sihon and his people but does not explicitly relate their annihilation to a
command given by Yahweh:
The LORD said to me, ‘See, I have begun to give Sihon and his land over to you.
Begin now to take possession of his land.’ So when Sihon came out against us, he
and all his people for battle at Jahaz, the LORD our God gave him over to us; and
we struck him down, along with his offspring and all his people. At that time we
captured all his towns, and in each town we utterly destroyed men, women, and
children. We left not a single survivor. Only the livestock we kept as spoil for
ourselves, as well as the plunder of the towns that we had captured.15
The narrative that immediately follows, however, reports both Yahweh’s
commendation of Israel’s destruction of Sihon and his people and his com-
mand to do the same to another people:
When we headed up the road to Bashan, King Og of Bashan came out against us,
he and all his people, for battle at Edrei. The LORD said to me, ‘Do not fear him,
for I have handed him over to you, along with his people and his land. Do to him
as you did to King Sihon of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon.’ So the LORD
our God also handed over to us King Og of Bashan and all his people. We struck
him down until not a single survivor was left. At that time we captured all his
towns; there was no citadel that we did not take from them– sixty towns, the
whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these were fortress
towns with high walls, double gates, and bars, besides a great many villages. And
we utterly destroyed them, as we had done to King Sihon of Heshbon, in each city
utterly destroying men, women, and children. But all the livestock and the plunder
of the towns we kept as spoil for ourselves.16
The following three herem texts, also found in Deuteronomy, all take the form
of direct divine commandments, or laws. In all three cases the reason given for
the command to annihilate is that Israel might otherwise be seduced to follow
other gods.17
The first text looks ahead to Israel’s conquest of Canaan and commands the
annihilation of its inhabitants, the ‘seven nations’:
When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are about to
enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you—the Hittites,
the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the
Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you—and when the
15
Deut 2:31–5; see the parallel account in Num 21:19–31, which does not contain the term
herem but simply states that ‘Israel put him to the sword, and took possession of his land’.
16
Deut 3:1–7; cf. the parallel account in Num 21:33–5, which does not contain the term
herem but does report the killing of ‘all his people, until there was no survivor left’. This total
destruction is sometimes also described as the direct action of Yahweh (Deut 3:21; 31:4).
17
Deut 7:4–16; 13:13; 20:18.

LORD your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must
utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.18
The next text envisages Israel as living in the land and decrees the annihilation
of an apostate, idolatrous Israelite town:
If you hear it said about one of the towns that the LORD your God is giving you to
live in, that scoundrels from among you have gone out and led the inhabitants of
the town astray, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’, whom you have not
known, then you shall inquire and make a thorough investigation. If the charge is
established that such an abhorrent thing has been done among you, you shall put
the inhabitants of that town to the sword, utterly destroying it and everything in
it—even putting its livestock to the sword. All of its spoil you shall gather into its
public square; then burn the town and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt
offering to the LORD your God. It shall remain a perpetual ruin, never to be
rebuilt.19
The third text is found in a chapter dealing with rules of warfare and
distinguishes the treatment of towns outside the promised land from those
within it. To the former, terms of peace are to be offered, and if they are
rejected all male inhabitants are to be slain, but women, children, and livestock
may be taken as booty.20
The same rule, however, does not apply to the towns of Canaan:
But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as
an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You
shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the
Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the LORD your God has
commanded.21
The next important block of herem texts are narratives found in Joshua that
report the conquest of Canaan. The first and probably most famous is the sack
of Jericho, whose herem is commanded by Joshua:
‘The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. Only
Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she
hid the messengers we sent. As for you, keep away from the things devoted to
destruction, so as not to covet and take any of the devoted things and make the
camp of Israel an object for destruction, bringing trouble upon it. But all silver and
gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into
the treasury of the LORD.’ So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown.
As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout,
and the wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and
captured it. Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the
city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.22
18 19 20
Deut 7:1.2. Deut 13:12–16. Deut 20:10–15.
21 22
Deut 20:16–17. Josh 6:17–21.
Introduction 7
The next city to be taken is Ai; at first Israel suffers a defeat because Achan had
unlawfully taken from the devoted goods, i.e. from the herem, of Jericho. Once
he and his family have been punished,23 however, Yahweh commands the
destruction of Ai, this time permitting booty to be taken:
‘You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king; only its spoil and
its livestock you may take as booty for yourselves. Set an ambush against the city,
behind it.’…When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city
and that the smoke of the city was rising, then they turned back and struck down
the men of Ai. And the others came out from the city against them; so they were
surrounded by Israelites, some on one side, and some on the other; and Israel
struck them down until no one was left who survived or escaped. But the king of
Ai was taken alive and brought to Joshua. When Israel had finished slaughtering
all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and
when all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel
returned to Ai, and attacked it with the edge of the sword. The total of those who
fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand—all the people of Ai.
For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the sword,
until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the livestock and the
spoil of that city Israel took as their booty, according to the word of the LORD
that he had issued to Joshua. So Joshua burned Ai, and made it forever a heap of
ruins, as it is to this day.24
The book of Joshua also contains summaries of the Israelites’ campaign
against five Amorite kings to the south (ch. 10) and against further kings in
northern parts (ch. 11); in both cases several towns are said to have been laid
waste, no survivors being left; the term herem is used repeatedly, for example
in these two summary statements: ‘So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill
country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings; he
left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God
of Israel commanded.’25 ‘And all the towns of those kings, and all their kings,
Joshua took, and struck them with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying
them, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded.’26 The later parts of
Joshua, however, indicate that the annihilation of the Canaanites was not total,
a circumstance that is also apparent from the beginning of Judges.27
The final important herem text is king Saul’s failure to carry out Yahweh’s
command, relayed by the prophet Samuel, to utterly destroy the Amalekites.
The canonical background to this story is the account of Israel’s battle against
Amalek at Rephidim, which includes Yahweh’s statement to Moses: ‘Write
this as a reminder in a book and recite it in the hearing of Joshua: I will utterly
blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.’28 In Deuteron-
omy this promise of divine retribution is rephrased as a command to Israel:
23 24 25 26
Josh 7. Josh 8:2.21–8. Josh 10:40. Josh 11:12.
27 28
See e.g. Josh 16:10, 17:12–13; Judg 1:28–33, 2:1–3, 3:1–6. Exod 17:14.

‘Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how he
attacked you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all
who lagged behind you; he did not fear God. Therefore when the LORD your
God has given you rest from all your enemies on every hand, in the land that
the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out
the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget.’29 While the two
preceding statements speak of annihilation, neither contains the term herem.
In 1 Samuel, however, the term is used several times. The scene is set when
Samuel gives Saul the following command
Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in
opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack
Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both
man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’30
A few verses later, the narrative continues with the partial implementation of
Samuel’s orders:
Saul defeated the Amalekites, from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt.
He took King Agag of the Amalekites alive, but utterly destroyed all the people
with the edge of the sword. Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the
sheep and of the cattle and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was valuable,
and would not utterly destroy them; all that was despised and worthless they
utterly destroyed. The word of the LORD came to Samuel: ‘I regret that I made
Saul king, for he has turned back from following me, and has not carried out my
commands.’…Samuel said, ‘Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not
the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel. And the
LORD sent you on a mission, and said, “Go, utterly destroy the sinners, the
Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.” Why then did you
not obey the voice of the LORD? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do
what was evil in the sight of the LORD?’ Saul said to Samuel, ‘I have obeyed the
voice of the LORD, I have gone on the mission on which the LORD sent me,
I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have utterly destroyed the
Amalekites. But from the spoil the people took sheep and cattle, the best of the
things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the LORD your God in Gilgal.’31
The story ends with Samuel pronouncing the judgement that the kingdom
would be taken from Saul, and with the report that ‘Samuel hewed Agag in
pieces before the LORD in Gilgal’.32
Finally, a similar motif is found in a narrative in which the Israelite king Ahab
spares the life of king Ben-hadad of Aram only to be told by a prophet: ‘Thus says
the LORD, “Because you have let the man go whom I had devoted to destruction,
therefore your life shall be for his life, and your people for his people.”’33
29 30 31
Deut 25:17–19. 1 Sam 15:2–3. 1 Sam 15:1–3; 7–11a; 17–21.
32 33
1 Sam 15:33. 1 Kgs 20:42.
Introduction 9
After this concise presentation of the pertinent texts, I will now briefly set
out the theological and hermeneutical challenge they pose.
THE THEOLOGICAL AND HERMENEUTICAL

CHALLENGE
The moral and hermeneutical difficulty that herem texts cause for pious
readers of the HB/OT can be described in terms of the following incon-
sistent set of propositions—that is, propositions that cannot all be true at
the same time:
(1) God is good.
(2) The Bible is true.
(3) Genocide is atrocious.
(4) According to the Bible, God commanded and commended genocide.
This set becomes inconsistent when combined with the following proposition:
(5) A good being, let alone the supremely good Being, would never com-
mand or commend an atrocity.34
This analytical presentation of the challenge is, of course, rough and
preliminary. It contains a number of ambiguities that are in need of further
clarification. For example, what is the relationship between the ‘God’ of the
first premise and Yahweh of the OT? What does it mean for the Bible to be
true? What, if anything, does premise (2) claim in terms of the historicity
of prima facie historical narratives? Throughout the book I will address these
and similar questions insofar as they are relevant to actualized instances of
reception; in my conclusion I will return to the hermeneutical challenge and
discuss the various options and nuances that emerge from the present study
of reception history.
It should also be noted, however, that even the preliminary fashion in which
the challenge is stated above has not primarily been derived from contempor-
ary philosophical considerations but has been shaped through my interaction
with centuries of actualized reception, thus somewhat mitigating the risk of
imposing alien criteria and concepts on texts from very different ages. Within the
present work, the above presentation of the hermeneutical challenge essentially
34
I owe the idea of framing the challenge in this way to Randal Rauser’s similar presentation
in Rauser, 2009: 28f. In the main part of the book I will be referring to this inconsistent set of
propositions variously as the hermeneutical challenge or the framing dilemma; it is a dilemma in
the sense that it presents the choice of either giving up at least one of the propositions or denying,
against logic, that the set is inconsistent.

functions as a heuristic device designed to clarify the issues involved and to
inform the questions that one might ask with respect to the texts’ reception.
However, the analysis will not be limited to issues that can be framed in the
terms of the dilemma.
The hermeneutical challenge as set out above is structurally the same for
Jewish and for Christian readers of the HB/OT. However, as already men-
tioned, there is a further complication for Christians, who from the very
beginning have read the JS in light of their faith in Jesus Christ, and soon
began to read them through the lens of the writings that were eventually to
comprise the NT. This emerging bipartite canon brought with it additional
tensions, for example the question of the internal coherence between divine
annihilation commands on the one hand and, on the other, Jesus Christ’s
command to turn the other cheek and to love one’s enemy.35
The inherent tensions outlined above do not only pose a challenge to pious
Jews and Christians but also represent an opportunity for those who wish to
call into question or criticize their respective faiths and scriptures; as will be
seen below, critics have indeed at times seized on these texts and tensions,
though possibly not as much as someone with twenty-first-century sensibil-
ities might have expected.
Finally, beyond the matter of hermeneutical tensions for ‘insiders’ and
criticisms by ‘outsiders’, there is the question of imitating what one reads, in
other words the question of whether these texts have been read in ways that
inspired, condoned, or justified violence in the respective readers’ present.
THE METHOD: RECEPTION HISTORY
The present work seeks to illuminate the issues presented above by primarily
asking one question: What have pious readers, more specifically pious Chris-
tian readers, made of herem texts?36
In consequence, this is an exercise in reception history, drawing its data from
the inexhaustible well of ‘[t]he reception of the Bible [which] comprises every
single act or word of interpretation of that book (or books) over the course of
three millennia’.37 In contradistinction to reception tout court, reception history,
according to Roberts, consists ‘of selecting and collating shards of that infinite
wealth of reception material in accordance with the particular interests of the
historian concerned, and giving them a narrative frame’.38
35
Matt 5:39.44.
36
The adjective ‘pious’ is here used simply to denote those readers who read the herem texts as
part of their holy scriptures rather than as, say, objects of non-confessional historical enquiry.
37 38
Roberts, 2011: 1. Ibid., 1–2.
Introduction 11
Before giving an account of why certain instances of reception were
included while others were not, a brief summary of the historical practice of
reception history will serve to place the present work in its historical context.
Biblical Reception History from Antiquity to the Enlightenment
It is commonly acknowledged today that the recorded reception of the Bible

begins within the HB/OT itself;39 another very important early form of
reception is the translation of the HB into Greek;40 in terms of the Christian
Bible, the reception of the OT in the NT marks a crucial next step;41 it continues
in the works of those whom later generations termed fathers of the Church, but
is of course by no means limited to them; it also includes, e.g., the readings of
those termed heretics or pagans by their contemporaries or later generations.
The beginnings of biblical reception history are also found in antiquity; in
terms of Judaism, the formation of the Mishnah arguably marks the start, in
the sense that the reception of the HB by prior generations of rabbis are
collected in it, and are, by virtue of juxtaposition, compared and contrasted.42
In terms of Christianity, Procopius of Gaza (c.465–529), writing in Greek, is
of particular importance, since he adapted to the field of biblical interpretation
the existing cultural practice ‘of collecting scholia on Homer and other
classical texts, and making excerpts from earlier commentaries’.43 While
Procopius may not have been the first Christian to do so, a number of catenae
and commentaries ascribed to him have come down to us and are important
early examples of a Christian collecting and arranging prior exegetical works.44
Among Latin authors, Isidore of Seville (c.560–636) and his Quaestiones in
Vetus Testamentum are an early landmark. They are a florilegium drawn from
a variety of earlier Christian exegetical works to which Isidore had access in
Latin; for the Christian interpretation of the Bible, they represent
39
See e.g. Fishbane, 1988; Reventlow, 1990: 11–23.
40
Most of the Christians whose reception of herem is analysed below did not read ‫ חרם‬texts
sensu stricto at all, since they read the Greek Septuagint (LXX), the Vetus Latina, or the Vulgate.
Where relevant, I will comment on specific Greek and Latin equivalents used by translators and
commmentators in the analysis below. For the LXX, Park provides the following list of equiva-
lents: ἀνάθεμα (19/19), ἀναθεματίζω (11/11), ἀνάθημα (2/2), ἐξολέθρευμα (1/1), ὀλέθριος (1/1),
ἀνατίθημι (3/6), ἄρδην (1/2), ἐξολεθρεύω (23/204), ἀφόρισμα (1/11), (θανάτῳ) ὀλεθρεύω (1/14),
ἐξερημόω (1/18), ἀφανίζω (3/77), φονεύω (1/45), ἀφανισμός (1/48), ἐρημόω (1/53), ἀπώλεια
(1/74), ἀποκτείνω (1/169), ἀφορίζω (1/85), ἀπόλλυμι (3/271). The numbers in brackets indicate
the degree of correlation with the Masoretic Text (MT)’s use of herem, i.e. uses corresponding to
herem/total uses in the LXX: see Park, 2007: 54–5 and Table 3.1 there (56).
41
See e.g. Reventlow, 1990: 52–103; Hübner, 1996.
42
See Kraemer, 1996; Reventlow, 1990: 104–16.
43
Haar Romeny, 2007: 190; see also Emrich, 1994.
44
Haar Romeny, 2007 argues that Procopius’ was not in fact the first Christian catena.

the transition to a new epoch. Instead of the originality and creativity we
encountered in the most important biblical interpreters of the era of the church
fathers, here a conscious traditionalism emerges in which the chief concern is to
preserve the exegetical heritage from the first centuries of church history as fully
as possible.45
As far as western Christianity is concerned, this interest in being guided by
the exegetical insights of earlier generations continued unabated into the
Middle Ages.46 In Carolingian times, the method of arranging important
interpretative insights in the form of catenae was complemented by the new
one of presenting them as interlinear and marginal glosses to the biblical text,
which reached its apex in what has become known as the Glossa ordinaria.47
The Renaissance and Reformation emphasis on returning ad fontes, in turn,
often brought with it a clear distinction between the authoritative biblical text
and potentially fallible interpretations;48 however, it should also be noted that
Luther often happily followed Augustine and that Calvin drew on a number
of patristic exegetes while also, importantly, feeling at liberty to disagree with
them.49 As far as I can see, among sixteenth-century reformers a wholesale
rejection of patristic precedents was found only among those whom modern
historical scholarship tends to group together as representatives of the Radical
Reformation;50 some Lutherans, by contrast, went so far as to argue that
preachers should always be ready to support their points by citing opinions
from the church fathers.51 Unsurprisingly, Roman Catholic exegetes were
even more closely bound to the exegetical tradition.52 In fact, some medieval
catenae were reprinted into the eighteenth century in the service of Catholic
polemical purposes.53
While scepticism about tradition was thus an important but not unqualified
component of the Protestant Reformation, Enlightenment thinkers took the
suspicion of tradition to new extremes. According to Gadamer, the modern
European Enlightenment was uniquely radical precisely insofar as ‘it must assert
itself against the Bible and its dogmatic interpretation’.54 The Enlightenment’s
45
Reventlow, 2009: 117.
46
This is of course even more so for eastern Orthodox Christianity, and it also continued to
be the case in Judaism; however, since the present book is located in the academic culture shaped
by the history of Catholic and Protestant Western Europe, I will focus on this aspect of the
history.
47
Ibid., 146–9; Smith, 2009.
48
See e.g. the Church of England’s Articles of Religion XX and XXI.
49
Steinmetz, 1990).
50
E.g. Thomas Müntzer, who boldly claimed “it has never been expressed in a single thought
or demonstrated in any of the books of the teachers of the church from the beginning of their
writings, what is true baptism”; Protestation und Ehrerbietung (1524), in Müntzer, 1973: 53.
51
See e.g. Hendrix, 1990).
52
For examples taken from the rule of Ignatius, see Reventlow, 1997: 209–10.
53
See Reventlow, 1994: 147.
54
Gadamer, 1990 [1960]): 276, English translation 241.
Introduction 13
calling into question of authority went hand in hand with the development of
a critical, historical method: ‘What is written, need not be true. We can know
better. That is the general maxim by which the modern Enlightenment con-
fronts tradition, and by which it finally turns into historical research.’55
This is not the place to provide an account and analysis of the impact that
the Enlightenment and its historical–critical method had on the study of the
Bible; the pertinent point for present purposes is that, in terms of academic
biblical commentary, an Enlightenment approach often meant that ‘[t]he goal
of a commentary was primarily if not exclusively to get behind centuries of
accumulated Christian and Jewish tradition to one single meaning, normally
identified with the author’s original intention’.56
The Recent Resurgence of Reception History
While the scholarly practice of reception history thus waned as a result of the
Enlightenment, it has undergone something of a revival in recent years;
witness, for instance, the launch of four commentary series and of a monu-
mental new theological encyclopaedia, all of which share an emphasis on the
reception of the Bible.57
The resurgence of academic reception history can be traced to various
nineteenth- and twentieth-century sources, but the more recent theoretical
and philosophical underpinnings developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer are of
undisputed and unparalleled importance.58 In the field of biblical studies,
Brevard Childs’ 1974 volume on Exodus broke fallow ground by including a
section entitled ‘History of Exegesis’.59 Ulrich Luz’s monumental commentary
on Matthew expanded on this approach and applied it to the New Testa-
ment.60 While fitting within Gadamer’s overarching account of historical
consciousness, my own approach is not heavily theory-driven and most
similar to Luz’s; I will therefore, in the following paragraphs, briefly situate
the present thesis by comparing and contrasting its methodology with Luz’s
account of his own work and by commenting on a recent criticism of it.
55 56
Ibid., 277 (my translation). Sawyer, Rowland, and Kovacs, 2004.
57
See Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (1998–2010; at http://www.ivpress.com/
accs); Blackwell Bible Commentaries (2003–present; at http://bbibcomm.net); The Church’s Bible
(2003–present; at http://www.eerdmans.com/Products/CategoryCenter.aspx?CategoryId=SE!
CB); Reformation Commentary on Scripture (2011–present; at http://www.ivpress.com/rcs/);
and Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (2009–present; at http://www.degruyter.com/
view/db/ebr).
58
Gadamer, 1990 [1960]; see e.g. Parris, 2009: 32–115, and Thiselton, 1992: 313–43; for an
account of the way in which Hans Robert Jauss developed Gadamer’s approach, see Parris, 2009:
116–69. For other modern predecessors, see e.g. Allison Jr et al., 2009 and Parris, 2009: xii–xiv.
59 60
Childs, 1974. Luz, 1985–2002.

Luz differentiates between Auslegungsgeschichte (‘history of interpretation’
in the English translation of his commentary) and Wirkungsgeschichte (‘his-
tory of the influence of the text’); in Luz’s usage the former, narrower term
refers to ‘interpretations of a text particularly in commentaries’, whereas the
latter designates ‘how the text is received and actualized in media other than
commentaries—in verbal media such as sermons, canonical documents, and
“literature,” as well as in nonverbal media such as art and music, and in the
church’s activity and suffering, that is, in church history’.61
In a recent criticism of Luz’s approach, Mary Callaway points out that,
despite the breadth of genres included in his definition and practice of Wir-
kungsgeschichte, the latter is ‘limited to the Christian history of influence’.62
Therefore, she concludes, his history of influence ‘is not really Gadamer’s
Wirkungsgeschichte at all, because it is limited to readers in the Church’.63
In Luz’s terms, the present work is an exercise in Wirkungsgeschichte
because it is not restricted to the analysis of commentaries but also includes
such verbal sources as polemical treatises, sermons, canonical documents,
poems, songs and inscriptions, and cases of non-verbal reception such as the
massacre of women and children (albeit mediated through verbal records).
The inclusion of discordant voices such as those of Marcion, Ptolemy, Celsus,
Faustus, and Mathew Tindal also seeks to address Callaway’s criticism of
limitation to exclusively ecclesial readings.
Whose Interpretations Were Included, and Why?
Callaway’s critique of Luz highlights the importance of deciding which

instances of reception are included in one’s treatment and which ones are
not. Roberts similarly sees these ‘selection criteria’ as being of paramount
importance for reception history; according to him, any reception historian
must chiefly answer three questions, namely ‘whose responses do they deem to
be of importance?’, then ‘how is the choice of material to be justified, and to
what end is it being marshalled?’64
In the following paragraphs I will seek to answer these questions with
respect to the present work.
My initial interest in conducting this research was to elucidate, by means of
historical and analytical inquiry, the shape of the theological and hermeneut-
ical problem posed by herem texts as briefly outlined above. As a consequence,
61 62
Luz, 2007: 61. Callaway, 2004: 7.
63
Ibid., 9. Luz himself highlights the indebtedness of his approach to Gadamer’s work while
acknowledging that he is ‘doing what Gadamer himself did not want, namely “enquiry into the
effective-history [sic] of a particular work[;] as it were, the trace a work leaves behind” ’ (Lutz,
2007: 62).
64
Roberts, 2011: 2.
Introduction 15
I was primarily interested in the response of those readers who read the herem
texts as part of their holy scriptures—that is, in readers who are ‘pious’ in the
sense that they share the assumption that (1) God is good and (2) the Bible
is true.
I have further narrowed down my focus to pious Christian readers. The
primary reason for this choice is that the bipartite Christian canon contains
specific hermeneutical challenges and resources that substantially differ from
the context in which pious Jews interpret their scriptures. As a consequence,
the present work also makes a specific contribution to the question of how the
two testaments in the Christian Bible are related.
I have, however, by no means restricted my research to reception by pious
readers, but have also included readings of those who denied, say, the premise
that God is good, or that the Bible is true; in fact the readings of Christian
authors were often developed precisely in response to such alternative
approaches and can scarcely be understood properly in isolation from them.
It should also be noted that I did not at the outset operate with a particular
definition of the term ‘Christian’ in mind, beyond an acceptance of the centrality
of Jesus Christ.
Even with these qualifications in place, however, the roughly two thousand
years of Christian reception of the HB/OT offer a wealth of instances of
reception that are impossible to catalogue and analyse exhaustively. The
most important criterion for further narrowing down which instances of
reception to include was the decision to give priority to early or particularly
influential readings.65 I have attempted to review all potentially relevant
patristic sources and have aspired to a similar level of comprehensiveness
only for the medieval crusades; in other respects I have focused on particularly
influential or illuminating readings.66
65
This is essentially the same as Luz’s criterion no. 3 (cf. Luz, 2007: 62).
66
For patristic sources, I consulted all pertinent comments listed under the potentially
relevant verses in the various electronic volumes of the Biblia patristica (available online at
www.biblindex.info). The BiblIndex searchable database and website give access to the inventory
of 270,000 entries published in the volumes of Biblia patristica, 1975–82. They also contain
around 100,000 references prepared by the Centre for Patristics Analysis and Documentation for
its planned eighth volume; these references are in the database inherited by Sources Chrétiennes,
unchecked but in electronic form. Works of Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Theodoret of Cyr,
Procopius of Gaza, and Jerome have been entered, together with Spuria and Dubia related to the
authors of the published volumes. In addition to this material, there are about 500,000 unverified
hard-copy references in boxes (pale listings, handwritten notebooks, or sheets that are difficult to
decipher and handle). Over the course of 2011, the BiblIndex team prepared the bibliographical
references for the 3,000 works represented in these files (see http://www.biblindex.info/presenta
tion). For Augustine, whose work is not indexed in the Biblia patristica, I searched for a variety of
relevant lemmata in the online Giessen edition of his corpus (Augustine, 1995); for the medieval
crusades I carried out similar lemmatized searches in online collections and also consulted various
indices (for details, see Chapter 5).

While there are substantial patristic contributions by Greek authors (notably
Origen), the postpatristic reception focuses on the Latin West and western
Christendom. Nonetheless, contributions by John Chrysostom and Theodoret
of Cyr are included as points of comparison with the western tradition.
Another criterion for selection was furnished by the recognition that the
way in which pious readers deal with violent texts in their holy scriptures not
only is a hermeneutical puzzle for the faithful but has considerably wider
implications. It is relevant to note in this context that a substantial body of
recent literature links monotheism, and biblical monotheism especially, to
violence.67 In this literature, the command to commit ‘the other’ to herem is
sometimes cited as a particularly pertinent example of such violence.68 Against
this background, the biggest contemporary concern with herem texts is,
arguably, the danger that they might be reactualized, that is, read in terms
that justify genocidal violence not only in the distant Israelite past but also in
the respective readers’ contemporary situation. In light of this important and
pressing concern, I have also sought to include instances of reception that
promoted or justified violence.
Finally, in this section it remains for me to answer Roberts’ final question:
‘[T]o what end is [the material] being marshalled?’
At the most basic level, the present collection and analysis of material serves
the goal of reception history as defined by Callaway:
to make readers aware of something they took for granted; to make strange what
was assumed to be natural, to make local what was unconsciously taken to be
universal, and to make historical what seemed timeless. The point is not to
devalue tradition but to make it visible, so that we can better understand our
hermeneutical situation and that of others.69
In light of this thesis, readers of the Bible—especially (but, of course, not
exclusively) pious readers—should be able to better understand their hermen-
eutical situation with respect to herem texts.
Second, both the non-violent figurative readings presented in the third
chapter and the violent quasi-genocidal readings in the fifth are a testimony
to the ‘abundance of the meaning potential in biblical texts’;70 by the same
token, they, along with the divine command theory approaches presented in
Chapter 4, also afford contemporary readers an opportunity to ‘learn from
successful and unsuccessful realizations of the biblical texts’.71 Hence it is
hoped that the present work will help readers of the Bible and of other
religious texts read them with greater care, competence, and nuance.
67
Among the many recent contributions, see e.g. Schwartz, 1997, Assmann, 2003, and
Assmann, 2008.
68
E.g. Assmann, 2008, 113–14 (Deut 13:7–10), 117–18 (Deut 20:16f).
69 70 71
Callaway, 2004, 12f–13. Luz, 2007: 64. Ibid., 65; see Luz’s point 2:5.
Introduction 17
Finally, the present work is an historical–analytical contribution to the
global discourse regarding the relationship between violence and religion,
which has been steadily gaining in momentum since the question rose to the
fore of global consciousness on 11 September 2001.72
RECENT RECEPTION-HISTORICAL TREATMENTS

OF HEREM AND RELATED TEXTS
The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception
Several entries in the recently launched Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its
Reception (EBR) touch on the topic of herem. The article ‘Ban, Banishment
(‫ ’)חרם‬summarizes its occurrence in the HB/OT before tracing its reception
from Second Temple to modern Judaism (but not in Christianity or other
traditions); with respect to the postbiblical reception in Judaism, the article
does not discuss the moral challenge of the extermination command. How-
ever, the use of herem, from rabbinic Judaism onward, to denote banishment
and the emerging differentiation between the more lenient punishment of
niddui (ejection) and the harsher terms of herem are of interest, especially as
they parallel the developing use of anathema (one of the terms frequently used
to translate herem in Greek and Latin versions of the HB) in the Christian
tradition and the emerging ecclesial differentiation between the more limited
excommunication and the harsher, all-encompassing anathema.73
The EBR also contains an article on Amalek and the Amalekites covering
their treatment in the Bible, in Judaism, in literature, and in the visual arts; the
section on Jewish reception refers to rabbinic justifications for the extermin-
ation command, which provide an interesting point of comparison to the
Christian approaches that are the subject of the present thesis. In addition,
some of the literature and visual arts discussed in the article are by Christian
authors; however, these latter sections do not address the morality of the
annihilation commands and are thus not directly pertinent to the question
in hand.74
The EBR’s article on the Canaanites is also of interest; it contains sections
on archaeology, ANE and HB/OT, Judaism, and film. The section on Judaism,
again, summarizes attempts by certain rabbis to address the moral challenge of
the extermination command; it also notes that in films, some of which are
arguably instances of Christian reception, the Canaanites are frequently
72
Among the many publications, see e.g. Hess and Martens, 2008.
73
‘Ban, Banishment (Ḥ erem)’, 2011; ‘Anathema, Anathematism’, 2009.
74
‘Amalek, Amalekites’, 2009.

portrayed as the ‘quintessential “others”’, providing a ‘visual and moral
contrast to the Israelites. They are depicted as more ornamented, more
sensual, more primitive and more corrupt than the Bible’s ancestral heroes.’75
Thomas Elßner
Thomas Elßner’s Habilitationsschrift, published as Josua und seine Kriege

in jüdischer und christlicher Rezeptionsgeschichte, retraces and analyses the
reception of Joshua and his wars from antiquity to the seventeenth century.76
In addition to discussing the reception within the OT and NT, Elßner offers an
analysis of both Jewish and Christian reception, covering Philo, Josephus, the
rabbinical tradition, and Maimonides on the one hand and, on the other,
Clemens, Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Origen, and Augustine, as well as high and
late scholasticism.
The prominence of the book of Joshua with respect to herem means that
there is a substantial amount of overlapping interest between the present
volume and Elßner’s work, which has proved to be a useful guide and point
of comparison. However, Elßner’s exclusive focus on the person and book of
Joshua also means that a number of key herem texts fall entirely outside the
scope of his study, such as those found in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and 1
Samuel; in addition, in contradistinction to Elßner, I have chosen to include
dissenting voices such as those of Marcion and Ptolemy and have considered
numerous instances of reception not included in his work, both in the case of
authors he treats, such as Origen and Augustine, and, naturally, in areas he
does not consider, such as the crusades or the Spanish conquest of the
Americas. Rather than attempting to summarize Elßner’s presentation and
analysis of the pertinent reception history, I will note throughout the book
where my work is indebted to his and where my own views and analysis differ.
Rüdiger Schmitt
Rüdiger Schmitt’s Der ‘Heilige Krieg’ im Pentateuch und im deuteronomis-

tischen Geschichtswerk focuses on the sacralization of war within the various
traditions of the Hebrew Bible.77 However, it also includes a chapter on the
reception of biblical warfare traditions from the Middle Ages to modern times.
Schmitt does not attempt to provide ‘a wide-ranging reception history or the
reconstruction of entire interpretive traditions, but rather the analysis of
typical patterns of reception’.78 His review of selected instances of reception,
75
‘Canaanites’, 2012. 76
Elßner, 2008.
77 78
Schmitt, 2011. Ibid., 204.
Introduction 19
which range from Bernard of Clairvaux to German pro-Nazi OT professor
Johannes Hempel, yields seven patterns, especially biblical warfare texts as (1)
typological prefiguration, (2) allegory for spiritual war, (3) immediate practical
instruction in the literal sense, and (4) delegitimizing human wars. He also
highlights (5) immediate identification with the biblical Israel, (6) identifica-
tion with the biblical Israel on the basis of historical analogy, and (7) emphasis
on non-identity with the biblical Israel. Where appropriate, Schmitt’s import-
ant findings will be compared and contrasted with my own throughout
this work.
Louis Feldman
Louis Feldman’s Remember Amalek! attempts to do for Hellenistic Jewish

exegesis something comparable to what this book seeks to accomplish for
Christian reception: he ‘seeks to understand how three ancient Jewish system-
atic commentators on the Bible…wrestled with the issues involved in [the
divine command to annihilate Amalek]’.79 To this end he examines the works
of Philo, pseudo-Philo, and Josephus with respect to their comments not only
on Amalek, but also on other biblical passages that give rise to similar moral
concerns; these include a number of additional herem texts: the command to
annihilate the seven nations of Canaan, the utter destruction of Og and Sihon
and their people, and that of Jericho. Beyond these, Feldman also considers the
Great Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the plague on the first-born Egyptians,
the annihilation of the Hivites in revenge for the rape of Dinah, the extermin-
ation of the priests of Nob, and the zealous deeds of Phinehas.
With respect to the reception of herem, Feldman’s most pertinent results are
the following: none of the three authors specifically discusses the morality of
the divine command to annihilate Amalek; Josephus alone reports the com-
mand to annihilate the seven nations, justifying it as necessary for the very
survival of the Jewish people; none of the three finds it necessary to defend the
cruel treatment of Og and Sihon; with respect to Jericho, Josephus presents the
actions as justified in the context of war, while Philo does not comment on it
(his biblical exegesis being largely confined to the Pentateuch), and pseudo-
Philo does not specifically mention the killing of men, women, and children.80
Feldman’s work thus provided a very instructive background and point of
comparison for the present volume.81
79 80
Feldman, 2004: ix. See the summary in ibid., 217–25.
81
See the brief section on Philo in Chapter 2, which engages with some of the same material
as Feldman.
Other Pertinent Recent Works
Todd Lake’s unpublished PhD thesis ‘Did God Command Genocide?

Christian Theology and the ‫ ’חרם‬contains a lengthy section that intends to
demonstrate the different ways in which herem texts were read before and
after what he terms ‘the Augustinian revolution’.82 Lake’s main conclusion is
that, for interpreters prior to Ambrose and Augustine, ‘it was important to
insist that such events had not occurred, [while] Ambrose was willing to
accept their historicity’.83 This, he argues, was because the ‘Alexandrines’
had assumed the immorality of herem.84 As the analysis below will show,
however, this conclusion lacks proper warrant and is in fact mistaken, even
with respect to Origen, who was perhaps the ancient Christian interpreter
most ready to accept the possibility of non-historical elements in the Bible.85
John Thompson’s Reading the Bible with the Dead sets out to investigate
‘how the church has read important but difficult parts of the Bible;’86 Thompson’s
interest, however, is not merely antiquarian but is aimed at an unapologetically
contemporary benefit, which is based on the conviction that ‘the Bible is better
read and used when traditional commentators—the teachers and preachers of the
early church, the Middle ages, and the Reformation era—are invited to join us in
a conversation about the meaning of Scripture for our own day’.87 The texts he
discusses are grouped around three broad themes, namely violence and abuse,
domestic relations, and women in church leadership. In the first category
Thompson includes chapters on Jephtah’s daughter and the imprecatory psalms;
herem texts, however, do not feature.88
In addition, several commentaries in the reception-focused series men-
tioned above, unsurprisingly, also include excerpts or summaries of pertinent
readings.89 A number of additional recent works include pertinent sections on
historical reception but are primarily attempts to set out constructive Chris-
tian readings of herem; they will accordingly be discussed in Chapter 6, as
instances of Christian reception, rather than at this point. Brevard Childs’ The
Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture, as its title suggests, does
not address the questions of herem narratives; his analysis of the Christian
reception of the OT book does, however, contain a number of relevant
methodological observations.90 Finally, a summary with my analysis of some
of the materials included in the present book was published in a chapter on
Deuteronomy.91
82 83 84
Lake, 1997: 19–111. Ibid., 62. Ibid., 74.
85
Lake’s argument is not helped by a number of obvious mistakes, e.g. the attribution of the
same quotation, wrongly, to Irenaeus (quoted in English) and a few pages later, correctly, to
Origen (quoted in French): Ibid., 31, 42. It would be tedious to engage with an unpublished work
to the extent of regularly footnoting such discrepancies; I have therefore not done so.
86 87
Thompson, 2007: ix. Ibid., 216.
88
Ibid., 33–48 (Jephtah’s daughter), 49–70 (imprecatory psalms).
89
E.g., in the Ancient Christian Commentary Series, Lienhard, 2001 and Franke, 2005.
90 91
Childs, 2004. Hofreiter, 2012.
Introduction 21
THE S TRUCTURE OF THE PRESENT W ORK
The second chapter briefly summarizes the reception of the principal herem
texts within the HB/OT and the Apocrypha, in Hellenistic Judaism, in the NT,
and in the Christian era before the JS came under sustained criticism by
Marcion.
The third chapter presents dissenting readings, that is, criticisms of herem
and similar texts by Marcion, Ptolemy, Celsus, and others.
The fourth chapter traces the development of figurative readings from
Origen, who deploys them in his response to the kind of criticisms presented
in Chapter 2, to their predominance in the Glossa ordinaria, and to their uses
in a medieval sermon.
The fifth chapter is dedicated to an approach of moral criticisms of herem
texts that focuses on the divine command to carry out the annihilation, paired
with the conviction that God is just and that therefore whatever he commands
is also just. This view is an expression of what is commonly called divine
command theory ethics; the chapter traces its application to herem texts from
Augustine via Thomas Aquinas to John Calvin.
The sixth chapter focuses not on the hermeneutical challenge posed by
herem texts, but on instances in which they have been read so as to inspire or
justify violence; it begins with adumbrations of these themes in the works
of Ambrose and Augustine and then focuses on the medieval crusades, the
inquisition, the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and English holy war
theory and practice.
The seventh chapter presents ways in which herem texts have been read
since the dawn of the Enlightenment. It includes dissenting readings such as
those by the English Deist Matthew Tindal, presents restatements and modi-
fications of approaches that were first developed in antiquity and the middle
ages, and ends with approaches that apply historical critical scholarship to a
Christian reading of herem texts.
Finally, there is a brief summary and conclusion.
Pre-Critical Readings
In this chapter I will very briefly consider the reception of the major
herem texts, as defined and set out in the introduction, in a number of
corpora that fall outside the main focus of the present work, namely in the
HB/OT itself (including the Apocrypha), in Second Temple and Jewish
Hellenistic literature, as well as in the NT and in Christian authors before
Marcion. These readings are ‘pre-critical’ in the sense that they predate
Marcion’s seminal criticism and do not address herem in terms of a moral
challenge.
The following presentation does not attempt to be exhaustive, nor does it,
in general, contain original engagement with primary sources;1 rather this
section only provides a sketch of the texts’ reception prior to the kind
of Christian reception in which I am particularly interested. It is included
in recognition of the fact that ‘[n]o one comes to the text de novo, but
consciously or unconsciously shares a tradition with his predecessors’;2
gaining a sense of the kind of reception that preceded is therefore an
important aspect of attempting to understand specific instances of reception
by later, Christian authors.
In addition to the very brief overviews, the sections on Philo, Barnabas and
Justin Martyr are somewhat more detailed and include an analysis of primary
sources. The type of readings found in them is in fact the primary way in
which Origen responds to criticisms of OT warfare texts; it is of particular
historical and hermeneutical interest, therefore, that, as far as we can tell, such
readings were not developed in response to criticism but were already com-
mon among certain interpreters of the Bible at the time when Origen took up
the gauntlet thrown down by Marcion and Celsus.
1
I am indebted to the treatments of (1) the inner biblical and early Jewish reception of Joshua
and his wars in Elßner, 2008: 22–81; (2) the reception of herem in the same sources in Park, 2007:
30–114; and (3) the reception of herem in Hellenistic Judaism in Feldman, 2004.
2
Childs, 1974: xv.
Pre-Critical Readings 23
RECEPTION W ITHIN THE H B, OT, AND APOCRYPHA
From a historical–critical perspective, the question of what in the Bible is

earlier and what is later (and therefore, at least potentially, an instance of
reception) requires the dating of the various sources and editorial stages, or, at
minimum, the determination of their ages in relation to one another. This
approach to biblical interpretation, however, is relatively recent and has not, to
date, played a major role in interpreting herem texts as Christian scripture. In
what follows, texts that are found ‘further down’ in the ordering of the canon,
for example texts in the Psalms or in the Apocrypha, are therefore considered
instances of the reception of herem texts that occur ‘further up’.
In terms of the ordering of the canon, the Latter Prophets and the Writings
are to be considered first. Herem does not constitute a distinct theme in them;
however, the term is sometimes used in judgement oracles in what appears to
be the general sense of complete destruction.3
In the Psalms, the conquest of Canaan and the defeat of its kings is
remembered at various places: Yahweh is celebrated as having struck down
many nations, killed mighty kings, Sihon, Og, and all the kingdoms of Canaan,
and given their land as an inheritance to Israel;4 as having driven out the
nations and planted Israel in the land, or as having given them the land in
possession;5 or simply as having given them the lands, or the heritage, of the
nations (without reference to what happened to the land’s previous inhabit-
ants).6 The Israelites, for their part, are said to have taken possession of the
wealth of the peoples.7 However, they are also criticized for not having
destroyed them: ‘They did not destroy the peoples, as the LORD commanded
them, but they mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did.’8 The
term herem, however, is used in none of these verses in the Psalms.9
A similar motif is found in the prayers of repentance in Ezra and in
Nehemiah. Ezra addresses the situation of contemporary mixed marriages
by referring back to Yahweh’s prohibition of intermarriage with the Canaan-
ites because of their depravity. If those in mixed marriages do not separate
from their pagan spouses, their goods are to become herem and they are to
be banned from the congregation of the exiles.10 Nehemiah recounts that
Yahweh gave the Israelites kingdoms and people, and they took possession of
3
See e.g. Isa 34:2.5 (object: all nations and their armies; Edom), 43:28 (object: Jacob); Jer 25:9
(object: all the nations, except Babylon), Jer 50:21.26, 51:26 (object: the land of Merathaim; the land
of the Chaldeans; Babylon’s entire army); Mal 4:6 (object: the land); Dan 11:44 (object: many).
4 5
Ps 135:10–12, 136:17–21. Ps 44:2–3, 78:55, 80:8.
6 7 8
Ps 105:44, 111:6. Ps 105:44. Ps 106:34–5.
9
The verb in the final quotation, translated destroyed, is ‫שמד‬ׁ (LLX: ἐξολεθρεύω; Vul: disperdere).
10
At Ezra 9:1–2.11f and 10:8 different words are used for the goods (‫ )חרם‬and for the
person (‫)בדל‬.

the land; he placed the Canaanites into their hands to do with them as they
pleased, and they captured the land.11
Within the Apocrypha the conquest of the land is referred to in Judith,
where Achior, the ‘leader of all the Ammonites’, tells king Holofernes the
history of the Jews:
They drove out all the people of the desert, and took up residence in the land of
the Amorites, and by their might destroyed all the inhabitants of Heshbon; and
crossing over the Jordan they took possession of all the hill country. They drove
out before them the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Shechemites, and
all the Gergesites, and lived there a long time.12
In Ecclesiasticus, the sun’s standing still and the destruction of the enemies
are recounted. The Hebrew version uses the term herem.13 Some of the reli-
giously motivated slayings recounted in Maccabees can also be plausibly
construed as reception of herem.14
Finally, the reception of herem found in the Wisdom of Solomon empha-
sizes Canaanite depravity and God’s judgement to a degree that is not found in
any single text of the HB:
Those who lived long ago in your holy land you hated for their detestable
practices, their works of sorcery and unholy rites, their merciless slaughter of
children, and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood. These initiates
from the midst of a heathen cult, these parents who murder helpless lives, you
willed to destroy by the hands of our ancestors, so that the land most precious of
all to you might receive a worthy colony of the servants of God. But even these
you spared, since they were but mortals, and sent wasps as forerunners of your
army to destroy them little by little, though you were not unable to give the
ungodly into the hands of the righteous in battle, or to destroy them at one blow
by dread wild animals or your stern word. But judging them little by little you
gave them an opportunity to repent, though you were not unaware that their
origin was evil and their wickedness inborn, and that their way of thinking would
never change. For they were an accursed race from the beginning, and it was not
through fear of anyone that you left them unpunished for their sins.15
The above instances of reception within the HB, OT, and Apocrypha are,
unsurprisingly, of particular importance for later Christian readings; after all,
the books in which they are found were considered by most Christians to have
11
Neh 9:22–5; NB, these verses do not contain verbs explicitly denoting killing or
extermination.
12
Jdth 5:14–16; the emphasis is on driving out (ἐκβάλλω), but destroying (ἐξολεθρεύω) is also
mentioned in relation to Heshbon.
13
Sir 46:46; see the analysis in Elßner, 2008: 38–48.
14
See ibid., 61–3. However, Elßner also suggests that a certain moral distancing is implicit in
the language used to describe a massacre carried out by Judas Maccabeus and his men in
imitation of Joshua’s sack of Jericho (2 Macc 2:13–16); see also ibid., 69–70.
15
Wis 12:3–11.
canonical authority. In addition to these readings, Park discusses instances of
reception of herem in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Pseudepigrapha, but
these appear to have been of only marginal (if any) importance for Christian
reception.16
With respect to the present work’s framing dilemma, it is important to note
that none of the texts presented above betrays scruples of the nature expressed
in the dilemma. The narrative of conquest and annihilation is reported
straightforwardly, with religious exultation. While some texts highlight the
‘driving out’ traditions more than the extermination language, this is at most a
subtle toning down and is not found across the sources.17
RECEPTION WITHIN THE NEW TESTAMENT
The earliest record of a specifically Christian reception of herem texts is found

within the pages of the NT. Since there is no obvious dependence of any of
these texts on another, they will conveniently be presented here in their
canonical order.
Luke–Acts
Park, to whose work on inner biblical and early Jewish reception I have
referred above, recently suggested that herem is a major hermeneutical key
to the Lukan oeuvre: ‘Luke seems to present the concept of herem as a
foundation of Jesus’ teaching and of Jesus’ life as voluntary and mandatory
herem to redeem his people who are supposed to be mandatory herem.’18 The
main point of Park’s analysis of pre-Lukan readings of herem is in fact to
establish this very thesis; since his argument is mostly about pre-Lukan
reception and Luke–Acts, it lies outside the focus of the present study,
which is why I do not engage with it in substantial detail.
However, it should be noted that the categories of mandatory and voluntary
herem, and of being (a) herem, are foundational to Park’s argument and that
he bases them on his canonical and reception-historical reading of herem. For
Park’s analysis to be sound, therefore, at least two conditions have to be met:
(1) the categories of mandatory and voluntary herem, and the concept of being
(a) herem, must be demonstrably present in earlier sources; (2) their actual
presence in, and importance for, Luke–Acts also needs to be demonstrated. At
16 17
See Park, 2007: 66–98. For a similar assessment, see Elßner, 2008: 81.
18
Park, 2007: 167.

this point I simply note that I remain unpersuaded that either of these
conditions is in fact met in Park’s work.
There are, however, two passages in Acts that directly address the conquest
of Canaan. Both occur in the context of a retelling of God’s deeds in the history
of Israel.19
First, in his speech before the Sanhedrin, Stephen retraces Israel’s story and
speaks of the conquest in these terms: ‘Our ancestors in turn brought it [sc. the
tent of testimony] in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God
drove out before our ancestors.’20
Largely following the detailed analysis in Elßner, I note three pertinent
points: (1) the text’s focus on the tent of testimony results in Joshua’s being
cast in the role of a tradent of the true faith rather than in that of a conquering
military leader; (2) there is no mention of the annihilation of the Canaanites—
rather they are said to have been driven out (ἐξωθεῖν); and (3) the Israelites do
the dispossessing, God does the driving out.21
Stephen’s speech thus highlights certain elements of the biblical tradition
and not others.22 While it is possible to speculate that the selection of the
expulsion traditions over the annihilation traditions is indicative of a (slight)
discomfort with the practice of herem, we certainly find no explicit distancing,
let alone criticism.
The second instance of reception of the conquest in Acts renders it unlikely
that Luke toned down the language of Stephen’s speech because of moral
scruples; Paul begins his speech to Israelites and God fearers in the synagogue
in Pisidian Antioch by recounting the deeds of ‘the God of this people Israel’.
Having rehearsed Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and the forty years in the
desert, Paul continues: ‘After he had destroyed [καθελών] seven nations in the
land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance.’23
The annihilation of the seven Canaanite nations is rather more clearly in
view in this verse than in Stephen’s speech. There is no hint, in this passing
reference, of any perceived moral problem.24
Hebrews
There are two references to Joshua and the conquest in the letter to the Hebrews.
The first is located in the context of a warning against unbelief. Following a
prominent pattern found throughout Hebrews, the author contrasts negatively
19
See the paragraph on reception in the Psalms quoted here (p. 23).
20 21
Acts 7:45. Elßner, 2008: 83–7.
22
E.g. ‘driving out’ rather than ‘annihilation’ is predicted in Lev 20:23 and in Deut 4:38 and
18:12.
23 24
Acts 13:9. See the analysis in Elßner, 2008: 87–9.
the achievements of an OT figure with the surpassing work of Jesus: ‘if Joshua
had given them rest, God would not speak later about another day’.25 Joshua’s
work is thus presented as inferior to what is offered in Jesus; there is, however,
no hint of a disapproval of the conquest per se. It should also be noted that
readers and hearers of the letter in the original Greek would probably have
noticed the homonymy between Joshua and Jesus, whose names are identical
in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin;26 while this fact was to become a very important
element in later Christian reception (as we will see further on), it is not yet
developed in Hebrews.
The second reference is found in the eleventh chapter, which is ‘a version of
the exemplary list that can be described as a list of attested examples’.27
Following a presentation of the actions taken ‘by faith’ by the patriarchs,
Moses, and the exodus generation, the author moves on to the conquest: ‘by
faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days’.28
The placement of this episode in the list of exempla implies that the actions
of Joshua and the Israelites at Jericho are seen not only as morally unprob-
lematic but as exemplary. However, the focus is on the Israelites’ faith and on
the crumbling of the walls rather than on the annihilation of Jericho’s
inhabitants.
In the next verse the author contrasts the prostitute Rahab with the other
inhabitants of Jericho, to whom he refers as ‘the disobedient people’ (τοῖς
ἀπειθήσασιν). The verb ἀπειθεῖν generally designates an ‘unwillingness or
refusal to comply with the demands of some authority’29 and, in the NT
specifically, disobedience with respect to God.30 It thus implies moral guilt
on the part of the townspeople of Jericho. It is not clear, however, what divine
command they may have refused to obey. The perspective of Deut 7:1–2 and
20:16–18 certainly does not envisage an option of Canaanite ‘compliance’; nor
does the Jericho narrative in Joshua. It is possible, however, that the author of
Hebrews inferred the possibility of salvation from the example of Rahab, who,
through faith, received the Israelite spies in peace, with the result that she did
not perish together (συναπόλλυμαι) with her compatriots.31
While Hebrews does not specify the way in which the other inhabitants of
Jericho perished, the entire passage presupposes a high degree of familiarity
with the biblical narratives. The focus, however, certainly is not on the fate of
the people of Jericho; it is on the praiseworthy faith of the Israelites and of
Rahab. There is, finally, no indication of any moral qualms about the herem
of Jericho.
25
Heb 4:8. 26
‫שע‬
ׁ ‫יהו‬/Ἰησοῦς/Iesus. 27
Lane, 1991: 317.
28 29 30
Heb 11:30. Louw and Nida, 1988. Elßner, 2008: 94.
31
Heb 11:31.
James
In the Epistle of James, Rahab is again put forward as an example, here in the
context of the author’s argument that ‘faith without works is dead’. He asks:
‘[L]ikewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she
welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road?’32 The focus
here is solely on Rahab’s works, or on faith in action. While the term ‘spies’
and the act of sending them out by another route alludes to the potential or
impending violent conflict surrounding the episode, it never really enters into
view.33 There is no indication, however, that the author felt any moral
reticence concerning the wars of conquest or the herem of Jericho.
Other NT Developments of the Herem Theme
Apart from these direct references to persons and events featured in the book
of Joshua, a number of additional NT concepts and narratives can plausibly be
seen as developments of OT herem motifs, for example the deaths of Ananias
and Sapphira, Paul’s use of anathema, and the themes of eschatological
judgement and spiritual warfare. These themes would certainly be relevant
to a comprehensive Wirkungsgeschichte (reception history) of herem in the
broadest, Gadamerian sense; however, constraints of space and focus preclude
their discussion in the present work.34
P H I LO
Philo’s reception of the Bible generally, or of herem specifically, does not of

course fall directly within the purview of a study of Christian reception.
However, a brief consideration of relevant aspects of his interpretative
approach is pertinent for at least three reasons. First, his style of exegesis
exerted a very considerable influence on the Christian interpretative tradition,
especially via Clement and Origen, as well as via Ambrose and Augustine; in
fact Christians at times embraced Philo so wholeheartedly that the Byzantine
catenae attributed excerpts from his works to ‘bishop Philo’.35 Second, his
32 33
Jas 2:25. See Elßner, 2008: 94–100.
34
On Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11), see e.g. Park, 2007: 136–41; on the relationship
between herem, excommunication, and anathema, see e.g. the articles ‘Ban, Banishment
(Ḥ erem)’, 2011 and ‘Anathema, Anathematism’, 2009; for the divine warrior motive in the
NT, including in terms of spiritual warfare and eschatological judgement, see e.g. Longman and
Reid, 1995: 91–192. See also the use of herem in the context of eschatological judgement in
Qumran (analysis in Park, 2007: 74–6).
35
Runia, 1993: 3.
work sheds considerable light on the interpretative and apologetic strategies
that a pious reader with a Hellenistic education might employ when com-
mending certain problematic biblical texts to a wider audience. Third, Philo’s
work reflects contemporary criticisms of the Bible by outsiders. A comparison
of Philo’s interpretative strategies with those of later Christian writers can
therefore contribute to an understanding of what is distinctively Christian in
the various readings and of how far their treatments reflect concerns that they
shared with some of their non-Christian forbears or contemporaries.
‘Defensive’ versus ‘Positive’ Allegoresis
Any consideration of Philo’s hermeneutics must include a discussion of allegor-

esis; however, rather than entering the theoretical debate, which stretches back
millennia, of what exactly allegoresis is and of when, if ever, it is an appropriate
way to read texts, I will at this point simply provide a very short summary of its
historical emergence. Instead of front-loading theoretical debate, I will then,
throughout the book, offer analysis and comment on the use of figurative
readings in the context of actual, specific instances of reception.
Allegorical interpretation or allegoresis is one of the oldest ways of reading
texts non-literally, which at its most basic level simply means understanding a
text as saying something other than what it seems to say.36 The historical
emergence of this hermeneutical practice is related to the interpretation of the
classical texts of Greek culture, especially the mythological poems of Homer
and Hesiod, whose religious, philosophical, and moral content had become
problematic for new generations of Greek thinkers. While some, like Plato,
held that the classics ought to be discarded, others were instead advocating
that these texts be read allegorically.37
In the context of interpreting difficult, potentially offensive texts, such as
herem narratives, however, it is vital not to lose sight of the important
distinction between ‘defensive’ and ‘positive’ uses of allegory—that is, between
‘“defensive” allegoresis (rescuing the poets and their myths from charges of
intellectual naïvety and impiety) and “positive” allegoresis (claiming the poets’
authority for the interpreter’s own doctrines)’.38 In this context one should
also be aware that, for the early period of allegoresis, it is in fact quite difficult
to know which of the two forms was more prevalent. These two modes of
allegoresis were not entirely dissimilar, however; for ‘[i]n either case, the
underlying motive force was (and would continue to be) the cultural need to
36
Dawson, 1992: 3.
37
Plato’s rejection of the mythical poets included a critique of allegory; see e.g. book ii of the
Republic (Plato, 1974: 376–92).
38
Trapp, 2012: 62–3, 62.

maintain the authority of the revered classics in the face of new (philosophical)
traditions of thought’.39
A similarly twofold motivation appears to have guided the Alexandrian
Jewish interpreters who, as far as we can tell, were the first to apply allegoresis
to the Bible;40 in their case ‘the application of the text to the reader’s case was
so habitual and instinctive that acquaintance with the Greeks produced
nothing more than refinements of a spontaneous practice’.41 On the one
hand, there are instances of ‘defensive’ allegoresis, occasioned by the fact
that in Hellenistic Alexandria the JS seem to have been subjected to a Sachkritik
(critical assessment) not dissimilar to that levelled at the epics of Homer. On the
other hand, the ‘positive’ use of allegory was designed to show that the philo-
sophical ideas that Hellenistic Jews and their contemporaries found persuasive
had already been disclosed in the ancient, sacred writing of the Jewish people.
Important early examples of biblical interpretation in Hellenistic style are the
Epistle of Aristaeus (Aristeas) and the fragments of Aristobulus, but the prime
exponent is of course Philo himself.42
In Philo’s case, criticisms of the Bible certainly appear to have played a role
in a number of his allegorical readings and to have shaped the apologetic
thrust of some of his less allegorical writings. However, it must be emphasized
again that, regardless of its origins, allegoresis in Philo’s day was by no means
always defensive.43
Since criticism of the Bible was to play an important role in shaping the later
Christian reception of herem texts, it is worth considering what kind of
criticisms were levelled at the Bible in Philo’s day. Where he explicitly refers
to critics, they appear to fall into one of the following three categories:
believing Jews who have what may be termed ‘honest questions’ about prob-
lematic passages; apostate Jews who seek to justify their apostasy through a
harsh critique of their former tradition; and, finally, gentiles intent on mock-
ing the Jews.44 The criticisms seem to have focused on anthropomorphism,
parallels with pagan myths, parallels with profane history, and the triviality of
some of the narrated events.45 In the main, therefore, these criticisms do not
seem to have been concerned with questions of morality and ethics, such as
would be most relevant to the reception of herem.46
The following section shows that Philo does indeed allegorize certain texts
whose literal interpretation he would demonstrably have found to be
39
Ibid.; also Dawson, 1992: 12.
40
Allegory, as distinct from allegoresis, is of course found in the OT itself, e.g. Jdg 9:7–21. On
the influence of Homeric scholarship on Jewish exegesis, see Niehoff, 2011.
41 42
Edwards, 2013: 714. See Siegert, 1996: 144–62; Stein, 1935: 4–5.
43 44 45
So also ibid., 5. Ibid., 5–8. See ibid.; Siegert, 1996: 142, n. 62.
46
In an early homily by a Jewish rhetorician (‘pseudo-Philo’) there is evidence for criticism
leveled at the Spirit’s actions, namely for not preventing Samson from sinning: De Sampsone,
24ff, in Pseudo-Philo, 1980.
problematic; it will also be seen, however, that neither is allegoresis his only
approach to dealing with difficult texts nor are his allegories necessarily
inspired by criticisms.
Passing over Problematic Texts in Silence
While, as was just noted, there is not much direct evidence for criticism of the
morality of the JS by outsiders in Alexandria, some of Philo’s own moral
reasoning suggests that herem texts would have posed significant problems for
him. This can be shown from two sections of De specialibus legibus. In the first
section Philo lays out the principle of individual responsibility and rejects the
punishment of family members (especially children) for the wrongdoing of
their relatives (especially parents) as deeply unjust. In the second section Philo
offers comments on the laws of war in Deut 20, which include the command to
annihilate entire populations, and decides to pass over that command in
complete silence.
In the first section Philo extols the law that ‘fathers should not die for their
sons nor sons for their parents, but each person who has committed deeds
worthy of death should suffer it alone and in his own person’.47 He roundly
condemns those
cruel of heart and bestial of nature…who either secretly and craftily or boldly and
openly threaten to inflict the most grievous sufferings on one set of persons in
substitution for another and seek the destruction of those who have done no
wrong on the pretext of their friendship or kinship, or partnership, or some
similar connexion, with the culprits.48
To illustrate this point, Philo describes a case involving the unjust treatment of
a debtor’s innocent relatives in his own day, before articulating again his strongly
felt moral objection: ‘If they were companions in error, let them also be com-
panions in punishment, but if they had no association with the others, never
followed the same objects…why should they be put to death? Is their relationship
the one sole reason? Then is it birth or lawless actions which deserve punish-
ment?’49 The drift of the rhetorical questions suggests that Philo is inclined to
think that punishing individuals for their parents’ or children’s wrongdoings is
morally outrageous and that he expects his audience to agree with him.50
With Philo’s insistence on individual, personal responsibility in mind,
I now turn to the second section of his treatise. There he comments on the
laws of war in Deut 20, which, he says, demonstrate ‘that the Jewish nation is
47
Philo, De specialibus legibus, III, 29, 153; the reference is Deut 24:16. All quotations from
Philo are from Philo of Alexandria, 1929–62.
48 49 50
Ibid., 158. Ibid., 165. See Feldman, 2004: 21.

ready for agreement and friendship with all like-minded nations whose
intentions are peaceful, yet is not of the contemptible kind which surrenders
through cowardice to wrongful aggression’.51
According to Philo, the laws of war pertain to ‘those who renounce their
alliance’ and ‘revolt…and shut themselves up within their walls’. He also
claims that the Israelites were commanded to act patiently, to ‘wait for a
time, not letting anger have free play at the expense of reason, in order that
they may take in hand what they have to do in a firmer and steadier spirit’. He
highlights that an offer of peace must first be made and that, if the opponents
accept it, the treaty is to be welcomed ‘for peace, even if it involves great
sacrifices, is more advantageous than war’.52 Two aspects of Philo’s moral
judgement are evident here: peace is to be preferred to war; and decisions are
to be made on the basis of reason, not of passion. In addition, the context he
envisions for war is one of breach of a treaty and a revolt, not one of conquest.
If the offer of peace is rejected, however, Philo continues,
they must proceed to the attack invigorated by enthusiasm and having in the
justice of their cause an invincible ally. They will plant their engines to command
the walls and when they have made breaches in some parts of them pour in
altogether and with well-aimed volleys of javelins and with swords which deal
death all around them wreak their vengeance without stint, doing to their
enemies as the enemies would have done to them, until they have laid the
whole opposing army low in a general slaughter. Then after taking the silver
and gold and the rest of the spoil they must set fire to the city and burn it up, in
order that the same city may not after a breathing space rise up and renew its
sedition, and also to intimidate and so admonish the neighboring peoples, for
men learn to behave wisely from the suffering of others.53
Clearly Philo is not suggesting that Moses taught an ethic of non-violent
pacifism. He speaks approvingly of a ‘general slaughter’. However, this violence
simply amounts to ‘doing what their enemies would have done to them’ and is
limited to ‘the whole opposing army’ (τὸν ἀντιτεταγμένον ἅπαντα στρατόν). By
contrast, Deut 20:13 requires the killing of all male inhabitants and, in the case
of Canaanite cities, of everything that breathes (Deut 20:16). Neither text in
Deuteronomy, however, requires the enemy cities to be burned down.54
According to Philo, the reason for slaughtering certain opponents is pragmatic
in that it precludes renewed sedition by the offending city and also sends a
powerful signal to others who might be tempted to follow its example.
51
Ibid., 224.
52
Philo, De specialibus legibus, IV, 219–21; no mention is made of the imposition of forced
labour at Deut 20:11.
53
Philo, De specialibus legibus, IV, 222–3.
54
This is solely required for apostate Israelite cities, from which no booty was to be taken at
all (Deut 13:16).
Philo then articulates a principle known today as noncombatant immunity:
in line with Deut 20:13–14, but in contrast to Deut 20:16–18, he points out
that women are to be spared, ‘married and unmarried, since these do not
expect to experience at their hands any of the shocks of war, as in virtue of
their natural weakness they have the privilege of exemption from war ser-
vice’.55 A little later he adds:
When [the Jewish nation] takes up arms it distinguishes between those whose life
is one of hostility and the reverse. For to breathe slaughter against all, even those
who have done very little or nothing amiss, shows what I should call a savage and
brutal soul, and the same may be said of counting women, whose life is naturally
peaceful and domestic, to be accessories of men who have brought about the war.56
‘Breathing slaughter against all, even those who have done very little or
nothing amiss’ is the kind of charge that moral critics might well have raised
against herem; but of course Philo does not accuse his people (much less
Moses, or God) of having a brutal and savage soul. Rather he passes in
complete silence over the herem verses (16–18) that follow at this point and
continues his commentary from verse 19 on, claiming that ‘so great a love for
justice does the law instil into those who live under its constitution that it does
not even permit the fertile soil of a hostile city to be outraged by devastation or
by cutting down trees to destroy the fruits’.57 While this omission of the
thorniest verses is glaring for those who are familiar with the unabbreviated
biblical text, it also constitutes a certain form of reception (or, more precisely,
‘non-reception’).58 In fact this may well be the most widespread way in which
Christians and Jews have ‘received’ the herem texts over the centuries.59
55 56 57
Philo, De specialibus legibus, IV, 223. Ibid., 225. Ibid., 226.
58
For an early Christian example of selective reception and non-reception, see e.g. Clement of
Alexandria, Stromateis, II.xvii.88.3, in which Clement extols the virtues of the law of Moses,
including the demand to make an offer of peace even to a hostile people (Deut 20:10), but does
not mention the harsher elements of Deut 20 at all; however, at Stromateis I.xxiv.162, in the
context of praising the virtues of Moses as a general (and claiming that the celebrated Greek
generals of old had learnt their lessons in strategy from him), Clement does not shrink from
mentioning slaughter: ‘[Moses] routed and exterminated [τροπωσάμενος ἀπέκτεινεν] the enemies
who had previously settled in that land by assailing them from the rough road in the desert—this
showed the quality of his generalship’ (Clement of Alexandria, 1991: 142 and 216–17).
59
This final suggestion is, of course, an argument from silence par excellence. It should be
noted, too, that it is conceivable that Philo’s Greek text of Deut did not contain the verses
commanding herem, in which case the non-reception (excision) would have happened at an
earlier stage. However, there appears to be no evidence for such omission in any of the surviving
manuscripts or other ancient witnesses. Furthermore, in De specialibus legibus Philo does not
typically quote laws verbatim and in extenso but rather sums them up and rearranges them
topically, a practice that lends itself to omissions. These considerations, together with the moral
objections he explicitly raises against punishing children along with their parents and against
killing women in war, make it much more likely that he simply chose not to mention the difficult
herem commands. For the manuscript evidence, see the apparatus in Wevers, 1977: 239–40 and
the comments in Wevers, 1995: 327ff.
Uncritical Readings Combined with ‘Toning Down’
Despite Philo’s moral reservations on group punishment (reservations detailed

in the previous section), his works contain comments on herem texts that do
not evince the same scruples. Nevertheless, even in these instances there appears
to be a slight ‘toning down’ of the biblical texts.
In his account of the life of Moses, for instance, Philo introduces the
Promised Land in the most innocuous of terms, describing how the Israelites
‘came to the outlying districts of the country in which they proposed to settle.
This country was occupied by the Phoenicians. There they had thought to find
a life of peace and quiet, but their hopes were disappointed.’60 When, however,
he turns his attention to the first herem narrative in the Pentateuch (Num
21:1–4) a few sections later, he underlines that the Canaanite king of Aram
launched an unprovoked attack on the Israelites and presents the actions of
the Israelites in the following way:
“The end is often determined by the beginning. Here, at the entrance of the land,
let us strike terror into the inhabitants, and feel that ours is the wealth of their
cities, theirs the lack of necessities which we bring with us form the desert and
have given them in exchange.” While they thus exhorted each other, they vowed
to devote to God the cities of the king and the citizens in each as firstfruits of the
land [ηὔξαντο τῆς χώρας ἀπαρχὰς ἀναθήσειν τῷ θεῷ τὰς πόλεις τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ
τοὺς ἐν ἑκάστῃ πολίτας], and God, assenting to their prayers, and inspiring
courage into the Hebrews, caused the army of the enemy to fall into their
hands. Having thus captured them by the might of their assault, in fulfilment of
their vows of thank-offering [τὰς χαριστηρίους ὁμολογίας] they took none of the
spoils for themselves, but dedicated the cities, men and treasures alike [τὰς δὲ
πόλεις αὐτοῖς ἀνδράσι καὶ κειμηλίοις ἀνιερώσαντες], and marked the fact by
naming the whole kingdom “Devoted” [ἀνάθεμα].61
Philo here does not express any moral concerns about the events he describes;
on the contrary, the Israelites are presented as acting out of deeply pious
motives: ‘they judged it irreligious to distribute the land until they had made a
first-fruit offering of the land and the cities’.62 For Philo, then, it is possible to
conceive of the killing of human beings as a sacrifice that is acceptable to God.
In addition, his reading also contains a pragmatic argument: he claims that
one aim of the actions described was to strike terror into the Hebrews’
opponents. This text is, to my knowledge, the first instance in which herem
is described as an offering of first fruits to God.
It should also be noted, however, that, while the objects of herem are first
described as ‘the king and those who are in the city’, the second occurrence
60
The context is Amalek’s attack on the Israelites in the desert and the ensuing battle (Ex
17:8–16); see Philo, De vita Mosis, I, 214ff; also Feldman, 2004: 19–20.
61 62
Philo, De vita Mosis, I, 250ff. Ibid.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
ungovernable. The Mediterranean, Italy, Rome, blue skies and
classical cities,—what are they all to me?
Give me back one hour of Scotland;
Let me see it ere I die.
They conveyed him back by slow stages, seeing this and that
continental sight on his homeward-route, but hardly knowing what
he saw. He was in London again for a week or two in June and July
1832, attended medically in a hotel in Jermyn Street. Brought thence
by sea to Edinburgh, he passed a night, a day, and another night, in a
hotel in St. Andrew Square, in a state of utter unconsciousness; and
on the 11th of July they took him to Abbotsford. On their way thither
through the old familiar scenery he began to recognise places and
objects, and to mutter their names,—Gala Water, Buckholm,
Torwoodlee; and, when they approached Abbotsford itself, and he
caught sight of its towers, he sprang up in such a state of excitement
that they could hardly hold him in the carriage. “Ha! Willie Laidlaw!
O man, I have often thought of you,” were his first words, after his
old friend and amanuensis Laidlaw, who was waiting in the porch,
had assisted the rest in carrying him into the house, and seating him
in a chair in the dining-room. The return of consciousness which this
recognition signified became more and more marked, at least at
intervals, in the two months and ten days through which he still
lingered. He talked with those of his family who were about him,
could be shifted from room to room or even wheeled in a Bath chair
through parts of his grounds, and could listen to readings and seem
to take an interest in them. Once he insisted on being placed at his
writing-table, with paper, pens, and ink before him in the
accustomed order, and wanted to be left to himself; but, when the
pen had been put into his hand and his fingers refused to hold it,
tears trickled down his cheeks, and he gave up the attempt. There
were, as often in such cases of brain-paralysis, some days of almost
frantic vehemence, when it was painful to be near him; but these
were succeeded by a feeble quietude and a gradual ebbing-away of
life. On the 21st of September 1832, with the ripple of the Tweed
heard by those who stood round his bed, Sir Walter Scott, then only
in the sixty-second year of his age, breathed his last.
In the Diary itself the narrative of those closing years of Scott’s
life is broken short at the point where they were bringing him back
from Italy as a dying invalid. The last few months are a total blank in
the Diary; where, indeed, the entries for the later years of the
included seven are scantier and more intermittent than those for the
earlier. But it is not solely as an exact autobiographic record of the
incidents of so many memorable years of a memorable life that the
Diary is now of interest. Implicated in that main interest, and
catching the attention of the reader again and again as he advances
through the pages, are certain recurring particular informations as to
Scott’s character and ways which possess an independent interest,
and may be reverted to separately.
Bound up, for example, with the proofs furnished by the Diary of
Scott’s prodigious literary industry, there is plenty of minute
information as to his habits of composition and his rate of
composition. I do not like that word “composition” in any such
application, thinking it a miserable word for the description of the
process by which a great writer marshals the contents of his mind
and commits them to paper; but the word is current, and may serve
for the nonce. Well, Scott’s rate of composition was about the fastest
known in the history of literature. Of all his predecessors in the
literary history of the British Islands, Shakespeare seems to have
been the likest to him in this particular of fluent facility and swiftness
of production. “His mind and hand went together,” is the well-known
report concerning Shakespeare by his literary executors and editors:
“his mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered
with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his
papers.” One has an impression, however, that Shakespeare, with all
his facility when he had the pen in his hand, had it less constantly in
his hand, was less “eident” in the use of it (as our good northern
phrase goes), than Scott,—whether because he had less actual need
to be “eident,” or because verse, which was Shakespeare’s main
element, is intrinsically more difficult, takes more out of a man in a
given time, and so is less favourable to “eidency,” than the prose
element in which, latterly, Scott worked all but exclusively. At all
events, “eidency” and “facility” taken together, the result, in the mere
matter of quantity, was larger from Scott’s industry than from
Shakespeare’s. But it is with the “facility” that we are now concerned,
and with the proofs of this “facility” which are furnished by the
Journal in particular. The mere look of the handwriting is one of
these,—that rapid currente calamo look, without hesitation, and with
hardly an erasure, stoppage to point, or any such thing, and with the
words almost running into each other in their hurry, which is
familiar to all who have seen facsimile reproductions of any portions
of the copy of Scott’s novels, when they were written with his own
hand, and not dictated. That, however, is a characteristic common to
all his writings; and the specific interest of the Diary in this
connection is that it gives us definite information as to the amount of
writing per day which Scott usually got through in his currente
calamo style. In entry after entry there is note of the number of
pages he had prescribed to himself as a sufficient day’s “task” or
“darg,” with growls when for any reason he had fallen short of it, and
smiles of satisfaction when he had exceeded it; and from one entry
we ascertain that his maximum per day when he was in good vein
was eight pages of his own close manuscript, making forty pages of
the usual type in which his copy was set up by the printers. One can
compute the difference between that rate and any other rate of which
one may happen to have knowledge or experience; but there is no
need to conclude that Scott’s rate is to be passionately desired or
universally aimed at, or that, because it suited Scott, it would suit
others. On the contrary, one sees some disadvantages, even in Scott’s
own case, counterbalancing the advantages of such extreme rapidity.
He was aware of the fact himself; and he once quotes, with some
approbation, an admirable maxim of Chaucer on the subject:—
“There n’ is no werkman, whatsoever he be,
That may both werken well and hastily.”
That Scott was an exception,—that he was, like Shakespeare, one of

those workmen who could work both well and hastily,—was owing
doubtless to the fact that, in this also resembling Shakespeare, he
brought always to the act of writing a mind already full of matter,
and of the very kinds of matter required for his occasions. One has
but to recollect the extraordinary range and variety of his readings
from his earliest youth, the extraordinary range and variety also of
his observations of men and manners, and the extraordinary
retentiveness of his memory, to see that never since he had begun
authorship could he have had to spin, as so many have to do, the
threads of his ideas or imaginations out of a vacuum. At the same
time, and this notwithstanding, there is something more to be said,
when the comparison is between Scott as an exceptionally rapid
worker and Shakespeare as the same. Scott had a standard of the
kind of matter that would answer for the purposes of his literary
productions; and, though a very good standard, it was lower than
Shakespeare’s standard for his writings. When Shakespeare was in
the act of writing, or was meditating his themes by himself in the
solitude of his chamber, or in his walks over the fields, before he
proceeded to the act of writing, we see his mind rolling within itself,
like a great sea-wash that would rush through all the deeps and
caverns, and search through all the intricacies, of its prior structure
and acquisitions,—so ruled and commissioned, however, that what
the reflux should fetch back for use should not be any wreckage
whatsoever that might be commonly relevant and interesting, but
only things of gleaming worth and rarity, presentable indeed to all,
but appreciable in full only by kings and sages. Hear, on the other
hand, in Scott’s own words, the definition of what satisfied him in his
dealings with the public. “I am sensible,” he wrote, “that, if there be
anything good about my poetry, or prose either, it is a hurried
frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young
people of bold and active disposition.” That Scott was grossly unfair
to himself in this under-estimate will be the verdict now of universal
opinion; and I shall have to touch again upon that point presently.
Meanwhile there is one other difference to be noted between the two
men in respect of that very circumstance of their marked similarity
in one characteristic which has led us to view them together.
Shakespeare’s boundless ease and fluency in writing did not prevent
perfection in his literary execution. His grammar, with all its
impetuosity and lightness of spring, is logical and accurate to the
utmost demands of the most fastidious English scholarship; and,
though he would have repudiated with scorn the name “stylist,”
invented of late as a title of literary honour by some of our critics,
and it would be profane to think of him under that execrable and
disastrous appellation, he wrote always with the sure cunning of a
disciplined artist in verbal expression,—an artist so highly self-
disciplined that his art in such matters had become an instinct.
Scott’s habitual style, on the other hand,—his style when he is not
strongly moved either by vehement feeling or by high poetic
conception,—is a kind of homely and comfortable slipshod,
neglectful of any rule of extreme accuracy, and careless even of the
most obvious grammatical solecisms. It is not exactly with reference
to this difference between himself and Shakespeare that there occurs
in one passage in his Diary a protest against being compared with
Shakespeare at all. But the protest is worth quoting. “Like
Shakespeare!” he exclaims, noticing the already formed habit of this
perilous comparison among his most ardent admirers in his own
lifetime,—“like Shakespeare! Not fit to tie his brogues!” It was the
superlative of compliment on Scott’s side; but its very wording may
be construed into a certain significance in connection with that point
of dissimilarity between the two men to which I have just adverted.
Shakespeare never wore “brogues.” In our present metaphorical
sense, I mean; in the literal sense, I would not be sure but he may
have found such articles convenient quite as often as Scott did. There
were muddy roads about Stratford-on-Avon as well as about
Abbotsford.
It would be wrong not to mention, however briefly, the
confirmation furnished by the Journal of all our previous
impressions of Scott’s high excellence among his fellow-men, not
only in the general virtues of integrity, honour, courage, and
persevering industry, but also in all those virtues which constitute
what we call in a more particular sense goodness. “Great and good”
is one of our common alliterative phrases; and it is a phrase which
we seem to require when we would characterise the kind of human
being that is entitled to supreme admiration. We feel that either
adjective by itself would be inadequate in such a case, but that the
doubling suffices. Another of our alliterative phrases, nearly the
same in meaning at root, is “head and heart.” Only when there is a
conjunction in a human being of what we call “heart” with what we
call “intellect” are we quite satisfied even in cases of ordinary
experience; and only when there is the conjunction of “great heart”
with “great intellect” do we bow down with absolute veneration
before this man or that man of historical celebrity. Common and
simple though this word “heart” is, there is a world of unused
applicability in it yet in many directions. In the criticism of literature,
for example, it supplies a test that would make havoc with some high
reputations. There have been, and are, writers of the most
indubitable ability, and of every variety of ability, in whose writings,
if you search them through and through, though you may find
instruction in abundance, novelties of thought in abundance, and
amusement in abundance, you will find very little of real “heart.”
There is no such disappointment when you turn to Scott.
Benevolence, charitableness, tolerance, sympathy with those about
him in their joys and their sorrows, kindly readiness to serve others
when he could, utter absence of envy or real ill-will,—these are
qualities that shine out everywhere in his life and in the succession of
his writings, and that receive, though they hardly need, additional
and more intimate illustration in his Journal. Positively, when I
contemplate this richness of heart in Scott, and remember also how
free he was all through his life from those moral weaknesses which
sometimes accompany and disfigure an unusually rich endowment in
this species of excellence,—for, born though he was in an old Scottish
age of roughish habits and not over-squeamish speech, and carrying
though he did the strong Scottish build of that age, and somewhat of
its unabashed joviality, to the very last, his life was exemplary
throughout in most particulars of personal conduct,—positively, I
say, with all this in my mind, I can express my feeling about Scott no
otherwise than by declaring him to have been one of the very best
men that ever breathed.
Of the interest of the miscellaneous contents of the book, as
including individual incidents in Scott’s life, sketches of the
physiognomies and characters of his Edinburgh contemporaries and
London contemporaries, descriptions of scenes and places, curious
Scottish and other anecdotes, literary criticisms, and expressions of
Scott’s opinions on public questions and on men and things in
general, no adequate idea can be formed except from itself. As to
Scott’s opinions on all the various questions, public or private, on
which he had occasion to make up his mind and express what he felt,
we may venture on one general remark. They are shrewd opinions,
and often or generally just,—the judgments of a man of strong
natural sagacity, and mature business-experience, adhering in the
main to use and wont, but ready for an independent consideration of
exigencies as they arose, and for any clear and safe improvement.
Even in politics, though his partisanship in that department was
obdurate, avowed, unflinching, and sometimes uproarious, his
shrewdness in the forecast of what was possible, or his private
determination in favour of what he thought just and desirable, led
him sometimes,—especially where Scottish nationality was
concerned, and the Thistle seemed to be insulted,—into dissent from
his party, and the proclamation of opinions peculiarly his own. It is
when we leave the plain ground of such practical and everyday
questions, and either ascend to those higher levels, or descend to
those deeper, at which the human intellect finds its powers more
hardly tasked,—it is then that we observe what is usually reckoned a
defect in Scott in comparison with many who have been far inferior
to him in other intellectual respects. There was little in his mind of
what may be called the purely noetic organ, that faculty which
speculates, investigates, deals with difficult problems of science or
philosophy, and seeks in every subject for ultimate principles and a
resting-ground of final conclusions. He either refrained from such
exercises of mind entirely, or was content with proximate and easily
accessible axioms. Even in literary criticism, where he might be
supposed to have been most at home, it is sagacious extempore
judgments that he offers, honest expressions of his own immediate
likings or dislikings, rather than suggestions or deductions from any
code of reasoned principles. So in matters of higher and more
solemn concern. From that simpler kind of philosophy which has
been defined as a constant Meditation of Death Scott did not refrain,
because no good or serious man can. There is evidence in his Journal
that in his solitary hours he allowed himself often enough to lapse
into this profoundest of meditations, and rolled through his mind the
whole burthen of its everlasting mysteries. But the inscrutable for
Scott, in this subject as in others, began at a short distance from his
first cogitations or his inherited creed. “I would, if called upon, die a
martyr for the Christian Religion,” he writes once in his Diary; and
no one can doubt that the words were written with the most earnest
sincerity. But, when we interpret them duly by the light of other
passages, and of all that we know independently, it is as if we saw
Scott standing upright with flushed face and clenched hands, and
saying to those about him who might want to trouble him too much
on so sacred a subject,—“This is the faith that has been transmitted
to us from far-back generations; this is the faith in which millions of
abler men than I am, or than you are, have lived and died; I hold by
that faith, without seeking too curiously to define it or to discuss its
several tenets; and, if you come too near me, to pester me with your
doubts and questionings, and new inquiries and speculations, and all
the rest of your clever nineteenth-century metaphysics, I warn you
that the soul of all my fathers will rise in me, and I shall become
dangerous.” In plainer words, on this subject, as on others, it was in
Scott’s constitution to rest in that kind of wisdom which declines
thinking beyond a certain distance.
Here, again, and in a new connection, we come round to
Shakespeare. In him, no one needs to be reminded, the noetic faculty
existed in dimensions absolutely enormous, working wonderfully in
conjunction with his equally enormous faculty of imagination, and
yet with the incessant alertness, the universal aggressiveness, and
the self-enjoying mobility, of a separate mental organ. Hence those
glances from heaven to earth and to the underworld which earth
conceals, those shafts of reasoned insight into the roots of all things,
those lightning gleams of speculation to its last extreme, that wealth
of maxims of worldly prudence outrivalling and double-distilling the
essence of all that is in Bacon’s Essays, those hints and reaches
towards an ultimate philosophy both of nature and of human life,
which have made Shakespeare’s writings till now, and will make
them henceforth, a perennial amazement. Well, after what has just
been said of Scott, are we bound, on this account, to give up the
customary juxtaposition of the two men? Hardly so, I think; for there
is a consideration of some importance yet in reserve. I will introduce
it by a little anecdote taken from the Journal itself.
People are still alive who have had personal acquaintance with
Miss Stirling Graham,—the lady who died as recently as 1877 at the
venerable age of ninety-five years, and who, some fifty or sixty years
before that, was famous in Edinburgh society for what were called
her mystifications. These consisted in her power of assuming an
imaginary character (generally that of an old Scottish lady), dressing
up in that character, appearing so dressed up unexpectedly in any
large company in a drawing-room, or even in the private study of
some eminent lawyer or judge, and carrying on a long rigmarole
conversation in the assumed character with such bewildering effect
that her auditor or auditors were completely deceived, and supposed
the garrulous intruder to be some crazy eccentric from a country-
house or some escaped madwoman. It was on the 7th of March 1828
that Sir Walter Scott witnessed, in the house of Lord Gillies, after
dinner, one of those “mystifications” of Miss Stirling Graham; and he
describes it in his Journal thus:—“Miss Stirling Græme, a lady of the
Duntroon family, from whom Clavers was descended, looks like
thirty years old, and has a face of the Scottish cast, with a good
expression in point of good sense and good-humour. Her
conversation, so far as I have had the advantage of hearing it, is
shrewd and sensible, but noways brilliant. She dined with us, went
off as if to the play, and returned in the character of an old Scottish
lady. Her dress and behaviour were admirable, and her conversation
unique. I was in the secret, of course, and did my best to keep up the
ball; but she cut me out of all feather. The prosing account which she
gave of her son, the antiquary, who found an auld wig in a slate-
quarry, was extremely ludicrous; and she puzzled the Professor of
Agriculture with a merciless account of the succession of crops in the
parks around her old mansion-house. No person to whom the secret
was not entrusted had the least guess of an imposture, except one
shrewd young lady present, who observed the hand narrowly, and
saw that it was plumper than the age of the lady seemed to warrant.”
From a note appended to this entry by Mr. Douglas we learn what Sir
Walter said to Miss Stirling Graham on this occasion, by way of
complimenting her on her performance after it was over. “Awa’,
awa’!” he said; “the Deil’s ower grit wi’ you.” There was, he saw,
something supernatural in her when she was in the mood and
attitude of her one most congenial function. All the gifts that were
latent in the shrewd and sensible-looking, but noways brilliant lady,
flashed out upon others, and were revealed even to herself, in the act
of her personations.
With the lesson in our minds which this little story supplies, we
may return to the matter of Scott’s reputed deficiency in the
speculative or purely noetic faculty:—Noetic faculty! Noetic
fiddlestick! This faculty, with a score of others perhaps for which our
meagre science of mind has no names, you will find in Scott too, if
you know how to look for them. When and where would you have
looked for the noetic faculty in Nelson? Not, certainly, as he was to
be seen in common life, a little man of slouching gait, with his empty
right arm-sleeve pinned to his breast, and gravely propounding as an
unanswerable argument in his own experience for the immateriality
of the soul the fact that, though there was now an interval of half a
yard from the stump of his lost arm and the place where his fingers
had been, he could still sometimes feel twitches of rheumatism in
those merely spectral finger-tips. No! but see him on his own great
wooden three-decker, as he was taking her into action between the
enemy’s lines, when the battle-roar and the battle-flashes had
brought the electric shiver through his veins, and he stood among his
sailors transmuted into the real Nelson, seamanship incarnate and a
fighting demigod! So, with the necessary difference for the purpose
now in view, in the case of Scott. His various faculties of intellect
were involved inextricably somehow in that imaginative faculty
which he did possess, and also in enormous degree, in common with
Shakespeare. When Scott was engaged on any of his greater works,—
a Lay of the Last Minstrel, a Marmion, a Lady of the Lake, a
Waverley, a Guy Mannering, an Antiquary, an Old Mortality, a
Heart of Midlothian, an Ivanhoe, or a Redgauntlet,—when he was so
engaged, and when the poetic phrenzy had seized him strongly,—
then what happened? Why, then that imaginative faculty which
seemed to be the whole of him, or the best of him, revealed itself
somehow as not a single faculty, but a complex composition of
various faculties, some of them usually dormant. This it did by
visibly splitting itself, resolving itself, into the multiplicity of which it
was composed; and then the plain everyday man of the tall upright
head, sagacious face, and shaggy eyebrows, was transmuted, even to
his own surprise, into a wizard that could range and speculate,—
range and speculate incalculably. It was, I say, as if then there were
loosened within him, out of his one supposed faculty of phantasy, a
simultaneous leash of other faculties, a noetic faculty included, that
could spring to incredible distances from his ordinary self, each
pursuing its appropriate prey, finding it, seizing it, sporting with it,
and coiling it back obediently to the master’s feet. In some such way,
I think, must be explained the splendour of the actual achievements
of Scott’s genius, the moderate dimensions of his purely reasoning
energy in all ordinary circumstances notwithstanding. His reasoning
energy was locked up organically, let us say, in his marvellous
imagination. And so, remembering all that Scott has left us,—those
imperishable tales and romances which no subsequent successes in
the British literature of fiction have superseded, and by the glamour
of which his own little land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
formerly of small account in the world, has become a dream and
fascination for all the leisurely of all the nations,—need we cease,
after all, from thinking of him in juxtaposition, due interval allowed,
with England’s greatest man, the whole world’s greatest man, of the
literary order, or abandon the habit of speaking of Sir Walter Scott as
our Scottish Shakespeare?
CARLYLE’S EDINBURGH LIFE[9]
PART I.—1809–1818
Early in November 1809 two boys walked together from
Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire to Edinburgh, to attend the classes in
the University there. The distance, as the crow flies, is about sixty
miles; and the boys took three days to it. The elder, who had been at
College in the previous session, and therefore acted as the guide,
generally stalked on a few paces ahead, whistling an Irish tune to
himself. The younger, who was not quite fourteen years of age, and
had never been out of Dumfriesshire before, followed rather wearily,
irritated by the eternal Irish tune in front of him, but mainly given up
to his own “bits of reflections in the silence of the moors and hills.”
The elder of the two boys was a Thomas Smail, afterwards of some
note as a Burgher minister in Galloway; the younger was Thomas
Carlyle.
Of the arrival of the two boys in Edinburgh on the 9th of
November 1809, after their third day’s walk of twenty miles, and of
Carlyle’s first stroll, that afternoon, under Smail’s convoy, through
some of the main streets, to see the sights, one may read in his own
Reminiscences. What he remembered best of that first stroll was the
look of the Old High Street, with St. Giles’s Kirk on one side and the
old Luckenbooths running up the middle in its broadest part, but
chiefly the amazing spectacle to which he was introduced when Smail
pushed open a door behind St. Giles’s Kirk, and he found himself in
the outer house of the Court of Session, amid the buzz of the lawyers
and others walking up and down, with the red-robed judges hearing
cases in their little throned enclosures.
Content with the description of that first stroll, he leaves us to
imagine how, in the first days and weeks of his residence in the city,
he gradually extended his acquaintance with it by further rambles,
and by inspection of this and that interesting to a young stranger.
The task is not difficult. The lodging which Smail and he had taken
between them was, he says, “a clean-looking, most cheap lodging,” in
the “poor locality” called Simon Square. The locality still survives
under that name, though hardly as a square any longer, but only a
poor street, at the back of Nicolson Street, on the left hand as one
goes southwards from the University, and accessible most directly by
an arched passage called Gibb’s Entry. From that obscure centre, by
walks from it in the mornings, and returns to it during the day and in
the evenings, we can see the little Dumfriesshire fellow gradually
conquering for himself some notion of the whole of that Edinburgh
into which he had come. It was the old Edinburgh, of less than
100,000 inhabitants, which we think of so fondly now as the
Edinburgh of Scott before his novels had been heard of and when his
fame depended chiefly on his poems, of Jeffrey in the early heyday of
his lawyership and editorship of the Edinburgh Review, and of the
other local celebrities, Whig and Tory, immortalised in tradition and
in Cockburn’s Memorials.
It was chiefly of the externals of the city that the boy was making
his notes; for the living celebrities, as he tells us, were hardly even
names to him then. Scott and Jeffrey, he says, may have been in the
peripatetic crowd of wigged and gowned lawyers he had seen in the
hall of the Parliament House on the day of his arrival; but the only
physiognomy he had marked there so as to know it again was that of
John Clerk of Eldin. A reminiscence which I have heard from his own
lips enables me, however, to connect his first days in Edinburgh with
the memory of at least one Edinburgh worthy of a still elder
generation. It was on the 18th of December 1809, or just six weeks
after Carlyle’s arrival in Edinburgh, that the well-known Dr. Adam,
Rector of the High School, died; and I have heard Carlyle tell how the
event impressed him, and how he went to see the funeral procession
of the old scholar start from the High School yard at the foot of
Infirmary Street. With a number of other boys, he said, he hung on
by the railings outside, looking in upon the gathered assemblage of
mourners. He seemed to remember the scene with peculiar
vividness; for, after picturing himself as a boy hanging on by the
High School railings, and watching the incidents within, he added,
“Ay me! that moment then, and this now, and nothing but the
rushing of Time’s wings between!”[10] He had a liking to the last for
old Dr. Adam. I have heard him say that any Scotsman who was at a
loss on the subject of shall and will would find the whole doctrine in
a nutshell in two or three lucid sentences of Dr. Adam’s Latin
Grammar; and I had an idea at the time that he had used this brief
precept of Dr. Adam’s little book in his own early practice of English.
At the date of Dr. Adam’s death Carlyle had been for six weeks a
student in the University, with pupils of Dr. Adam among his fellow-
students on the same benches. One can see his matriculation
signature, “Thomas Carlyle,” in his own hand,—a clear and good
boyish hand, differing considerably from that which he afterwards
wrote,—in the alphabetically arranged matriculation list of the Arts
Students of the session 1809–10. It is the sixth signature under the
letter C, the immediately preceding signature being that of a
Dumfries youth named “Irvine Carlyle” (spelt so, and not “Irving
Carlyle,”) of whom there is mention in the Reminiscences. It is clear
that the two Carlyles were drawn to each other by community of
name and county, if not by kin, and had gone up for matriculation
together.
The College of those days was not the present complete
quadrangle, but a chaotic jumble of inconvenient old class-rooms,
with only parts of the present building risen among them, and
finished and occupied. The classes which Carlyle attended in his first
session were the 1st Humanity Class, under Professor Alexander
Christison, and the 1st Greek Class, under Professor George Dunbar.
From an examination of the records I find that among his class-
fellows in both classes were the aforesaid Irving Carlyle, and Lord
Inverurie, afterwards seventh Earl of Kintore, and that among his
class-fellows in the 1st Greek Class was the late venerable Earl of
Wemyss, then Lord Elcho. Neither from the records nor from the
Reminiscences can anything be gathered of the history of the two
classes through the session, or of the place taken in each by the
young Dumfriesshire boy among the medley of his fellow-students,
from 150 to 200 in number. The Latin class-room, we do learn from
the Reminiscences, was a very dark room, so that Professor
Christison, having two students of the name of Carlyle, never
succeeded in distinguishing the one from the other; which was all the
harder, Carlyle thought, because the other Carlyle, Mr. Irving
Carlyle, was not only different physically, being “an older,
considerably bigger boy, with red hair, wild buck teeth, and scorched
complexion,” but was also the worst Latinist in the whole class.
Carlyle himself had been so well grounded in Latin at Annan School
that probably he could have held his own in the class even against
Dr. Adam’s pupils from the Edinburgh High School. To the end of his
life, at all events, he was a fair Latinist. To Greek he never in later life
made any pretence; and whatever Greek he did learn from Dunbar,—
which can have been but small in quantity,—must have faded
through disuse. He retained, however, a high admiration for the
Elementa Linguæ Græcæ of Dr. James Moor of Glasgow,—which
was, I suppose, the Greek grammar then used in Dunbar’s class,—
thinking it the very best grammar of any language for teaching
purposes he had ever seen.
While we know so little of Carlyle’s Greek and Latin studies in
his first University session, it is something to know that he was a
pretty diligent reader of books that session from the College Library.
Having examined a dusty old folio of the library receipts and
outgoings, which chances to have been preserved, I am able to report
that Carlyle had duly paid, before December 1809, his deposit or
security of one guinea, entitling him to take books out, and that, in
that month and the succeeding month of January 1810, he had out
the following books, in parcels or in succession, in the following
order:—Robertson’s History of Scotland, vol. ii.; Cook’s Voyages;
Byron’s Narrative, i.e. “the Hon. John Byron’s Narrative of the Great
Distresses suffered by Himself and his Companions on the Coast of
Patagonia, 1740–6”; the first volume of Gibbon; two volumes of
Shakespeare; a volume of the Arabian Nights; Congreve’s Works;
another volume of the Arabian Nights; two volumes of Hume’s
England; Gil Blas; a third volume of Shakespeare; and a volume of
the Spectator. This is a sufficiently remarkable series of volumes for
a boy of fourteen to have had out from the College library; and other
books from other libraries may have been lying at the same time on
the table in the small room in Simon Square which he shared with
Tom Smail. What is most remarkable is the run upon books of
voyages and travels, and on classic books of English literature, or
books of mere literary amusement, rather than on academic books.
Clearly there had been a great deal of previous and very
miscellaneous reading at Ecclefechan and Annan, with the already
formed result of a passion for reading, and very decided notions and
tastes as to the kinds of books that might be worth looking after. But
how, whether at Ecclefechan or in Annan, had the sedate boy been
attracted to Congreve?
At the close of Carlyle’s first college session in April 1810 he
returned to Ecclefechan. He was met on the road near the village, as
he tells us so touchingly in his Reminiscences, by his father, who had
walked out, “with a red plaid about him,” on the chance of seeing
Tom coming; and the whole of the vacation was spent by him at
home in his father’s house. It is not, therefore, till the beginning of
the session of 1810–11 that we again hear of him in Edinburgh. He
then duly matriculated for his second session, his signature again
standing in the alphabetical Arts matriculation-list immediately after
that of his namesake “Irving Carlyle” (now spelt so). His classes for
this session were the 1st Mathematical Class, under Professor John
Leslie, and the Logic Class, under Professor David Ritchie; and I
have found no note of his having gone back that year, or any other,
for a second course of Latin from Professor Christison. In the 1st
Mathematical Class, consisting of seventy students, he had again
Irving Carlyle on the benches with him; in the Logic Class, consisting
of 194 students, the same Irving Carlyle was one of his fellow-
students, and the late Earl of Wemyss was another. What he made of
the Logic Class we have not the least intimation; and it is only by
inference that we know that he must have distinguished himself in
the Mathematical Class and given evidences there of his unusual
mathematical ability. As before, however, he found variation, or
diversion, from his work for the classes by diligent reading in his
lodgings. Between Saturday the 1st December 1810 and Saturday 9th
March 1811, I find, he took from the University library the following
books in the following order:—Voyages and Travels, the 15th volume
of some collection under that name; a volume of Fielding’s works; a
volume of Smollett; Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind; a book
called Scotland Described; two more volumes of Fielding’s works;
Locke’s Essay in folio; another volume of Fielding; a volume of
Anacharsis, i.e., of an English Translation of the Abbé Barthélémy’s
Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece during the middle of the
Fourth Century before the Christian Era; and a volume of some
translation of Don Quixote. His choice of books, it will be seen, is still
very independent. Reid’s Inquiry and Locke’s Essay connect
themselves with the work in the Logic Class; but the other volumes
were evidently for mere amusement. Whether it was still in the
lodging in Simon Square, and with Smail for his chum, that these
books were read, is uncertain. His comradeship with Smail
continued, indeed, he tells us, over two sessions; but the lodging may
have been changed. It was still, doubtless, somewhere near the
University.
For the session of 1811–12 the Matriculation Book is not
alphabetically in Faculties, but general or mixed for the three
Faculties of Arts, Law, and Medicine. There were 1475 students for
those three Faculties conjointly; and “Thomas Carlyle, Ecclefechan,”
appears among them, his matriculation number being 966. That
session, his third at the University, he attended the 2d Greek Class,
under Dunbar, the 2d Mathematical Class, under Leslie, and the
Moral Philosophy Class, under Dr. Thomas Brown. In the Greek
Class, which consisted of 189 students, he had among his class-
fellows the late venerable Sir Robert Christison, Sir Robert’s twin-
brother, Alexander Christison, the late Earl of Wemyss again, his
brother, the Honourable Walter Charteris, a Thomas Murray from
Kirkcudbrightshire, afterwards a well-known citizen of Edinburgh,
the inextinguishable Irving Carlyle, and an Andrew Combe, whom I
identify with the subsequently well-known Dr. Andrew Combe, the
brother of George Combe the phrenologist. In the Mathematical
Class, which numbered forty-six, there were several Dumfriesshire
students besides himself; and it was in this 2d Mathematical Class, if
the tradition is correct, that Carlyle took the first prize,—another
Dumfriesshire youth, who lived in the same lodging with him, taking
the second. I have turned with most interest, in this session, to the
“List of Students attending Dr. Thomas Brown’s Class,” preserved in
the peculiarly neat, small handwriting of Dr. Brown himself. It was
the second session of Brown’s full tenure of the Professorship of
Moral Philosophy in succession to Dugald Stewart, and the fame of
his lectures was at its highest. The class consisted of 151 students;
and among them, besides Carlyle and his inseparable Irving Carlyle,
and a Robert Mitchell and a Paulus Aemilius Irving, both from
Dumfriesshire, there were Duncan McNeill, afterwards Lord
Colonsay, his brother, John McNeill, Sir Andrew Agnew, David
Welsh, afterwards Dr. David Welsh and Professor of Church History,
and a James Bisset from Aberdeenshire, whom I identify with the
late Rev. Dr. Bisset of Bourtie. Some of these were outsiders, already
in the Divinity or Law Classes, who had returned to the Moral
Philosophy Class for the benefit of Dr. Brown’s brilliant lectures,—
notably young David Welsh, who had already attended the class for
two sessions, but was full of enthusiasm for Brown, whose
biographer and editor he was to be in time. Carlyle, I am sorry to say,
was not one of the admirers of the brilliant Brown. Over and over
again I have heard him speak of Brown, and always with mimicry
and contempt, as “a finical man they called Brown, or sometimes
Missy Brown, that used to spout poetry.” This can hardly have been
out of disregard for metaphysics as such, for he had much respect for
Dugald Stewart, the then retired professor. The dislike seems to have
been partly personal, partly to the new kind of highly ingenious
metaphysics which Brown was trying to substitute for the older and
more orthodox Scottish Philosophy of Reid and Stewart. At all
events, it is worthy of note that those brilliant lectures of Thomas
Brown, which James Mill and John Stuart Mill admired so much in
their published form, regarding them as an introduction to much
that is best in modern British Philosophy, had no effect, in their
actual delivery, on the hard-headed young Carlyle, but fell upon him
as mere dazzle and moonshine.
As Carlyle tells us incidentally that he was in Edinburgh in the
summer of 1812, it is to be supposed that he spent less of that
vacation than usual in his Dumfriesshire home. I find also that he
matriculated rather late in our books for the session of 1812–13, his
name not appearing in the first or main matriculation list, but only in
a supplementary list, and then as “Thomas Carlyle, Hoddam,
Dumfriesshire.” His father had by that time given up his trade of
mason, and had left Ecclefechan to try a small farm in the
neighbourhood. The number of students matriculated that year in
the three faculties of Arts, Law, and Medicine, was 1503; and
Carlyle’s matriculation number was 1403. The classes in which he
was enrolled for that session, his fourth and last in Arts, were Leslie’s
2d Mathematical Class (attended a second time, we may suppose, for
such higher instruction as might be fit for very advanced students),
and the Natural Philosophy Class, under Professor John Playfair. In
this last session, accordingly, as a student only of Mathematics and
Physics, with no distraction towards either Classics or Mental
Philosophy, Carlyle may be said to have been in his element. He
worked very hard in both classes, and distinguished himself in both.
My own impression, from talks with him on the subject, is that he
was, by acknowledgment of professors and fellow-students, easily
supreme in both. Leslie’s second class that year numbered but forty-
one students, and it was natural that his most distinguished student
in two previous sessions should now be familiar with him and receive
his especial notice. Certain it is that of all the Professors of
Edinburgh University in Carlyle’s time Leslie was the only one of
whom he spoke always with something of real gratitude and
affection. The affection was mixed, indeed, with a kind of laughing
remembrance of Leslie’s odd, corpulent figure, and odd rough ways;
and he would describe with particular gusto the occasional effects of
Leslie’s persistent habit of using hair-dyes, as when a streak of pink
or green would be observable amid the dark-brown or black on those
less accessible parts of his head where the chemicals had been too
liberally or too rashly applied. But he had a real esteem for Leslie’s
great abilities, and remembered him as a man to whose
mathematical instructions, and to whose private kindness, he owed
much.——A greater Hero with him in Pure Mathematics than even
Leslie, I may mention parenthetically, was the now totally-forgotten
John West, who had been assistant-teacher of Mathematics in the
University of St. Andrews for some time from about 1780 onwards,
and of whom Leslie, Ivory, and all the other ablest mathematicians
sent forth from that University, had been pupils. Of this man, whom
he knew of only by tradition, but whom he regarded as, after Robert
Simson of Glasgow, the most original geometrical genius there had
been in Scotland, I have heard him talk I know not how often. He
would sketch West’s life, from the time of his hard and little-
appreciated labours at St. Andrews to his death in the West Indies,
whither he had emigrated in despair for some chaplaincy or the like;
he would avow his belief that Leslie had derived some of his best
ideas from that poor man; and he expressed pleasure at finding I
knew something of West independently, and had a copy of West’s
rare Elements of Mathematics, published in 1784. That book,
obsolete now, was, I have no doubt, a manual with Carlyle while he
was studying Mathematics in Edinburgh University, as I chance to
know it had been with Dr. Chalmers at St. Andrews in his earlier
mathematical days.——Of Leslie’s colleague, the celebrated Playfair,
formerly in the Mathematical Chair, but since 1805 in that of Natural
Philosophy, Carlyle had a less affectionate recollection personally
than of Leslie. Sharing, I believe, the common opinion of Playfair’s
great merits, and minutely acquainted with the facts of his life, as
indeed he was with the biographies of all persons of any mark with
whom he had come into contact, he rather resented a piece of
injustice which he thought Playfair had done to himself. There were
131 students in the Natural Philosophy Class in 1812–13; and Carlyle,
as he assured me, was single in that whole number for having
performed and given in every one of all the prescribed exercises,
mathematical or other. Another Dumfriesshire student, who came
next to him, had failed in one, and that the most difficult. Naturally,
at the end of the session, he expected that his certificate would
correspond to his distinction in the class; and it was of some
consequence to him that it should. But, when he called at Playfair’s
house for the certificate, and it was delivered to him by a man-
servant, he was a good deal disappointed. The usual form of the
wording for a good student was to the effect that the Professor
certified that so-and-so had attended the class in such and such a
session and had “made good proficiency in his studies.” In Carlyle’s
case there was a certain deviation from this form, but only to the
effect that he had attended the class and that the Professor “had
reason to know that he had made good proficiency in his studies.” I
can remember Carlyle’s laugh as he told me of this delicate
distinction; and I have always treasured the anecdote as a lesson for
professors. They ought to be very careful not only in noting talent on
the benches before them, but also in signifying what they have
noted, if only because, as in Playfair’s case, they may be sometimes
entertaining an angel unawares, and some angels have severe
memories.
We have thus brought Carlyle to the summer of 1813, when he
had completed his Arts course in the University of Edinburgh, and
was in the eighteenth year of his age. Though qualified, according to
the present standard, for the degree of M.A., he did not take it; but in
that he was not in the least singular. In those days hardly any
Edinburgh student ever thought of taking a degree in Arts; as far as
Edinburgh University was concerned, the M.A. degree had fallen into
almost complete disuse; and not till within very recent memory has it

Secdocument 6178

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Secdocument 6178

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Making Sense of Old Testament

Genocide: Christian Interpretations of

OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS

Ottoman Puritanism and its Discontents

Making Sense of Old

For Helen, My Love

I am grateful for the unfaltering encouragement and wise guidance provided

7. Reading Herem from the Dawn of the Enlightenment

Genocide in the name of God is not merely an academic problem or a

2 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

G E N O C I D A L TE X T S I N THE OLD TE S TAM E NT

4 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

6 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

8 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

THE THEOLOGICAL AND HERMENEUTICAL

10 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

THE METHOD: RECEPTION HISTORY

Biblical Reception History from Antiquity to the Enlightenment

It is commonly acknowledged today that the recorded reception of the Bible

12 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

The Recent Resurgence of Reception History

14 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

Whose Interpretations Were Included, and Why?

Callaway’s critique of Luz highlights the importance of deciding which

16 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

RECENT RECEPTION-HISTORICAL TREATMENTS

The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception

18 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

Thomas Elßner’s Habilitationsschrift, published as Josua und seine Kriege

Rüdiger Schmitt’s Der ‘Heilige Krieg’ im Pentateuch und im deuteronomis-

Louis Feldman’s Remember Amalek! attempts to do for Hellenistic Jewish

20 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

Other Pertinent Recent Works

Todd Lake’s unpublished PhD thesis ‘Did God Command Genocide?

THE S TRUCTURE OF THE PRESENT W ORK

RECEPTION W ITHIN THE H B, OT, AND APOCRYPHA

From a historical–critical perspective, the question of what in the Bible is

24 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

RECEPTION WITHIN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The earliest record of a speciﬁcally Christian reception of herem texts is found

26 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

28 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

Other NT Developments of the Herem Theme

Philo’s reception of the Bible generally, or of herem speciﬁcally, does not of

‘Defensive’ versus ‘Positive’ Allegoresis

Any consideration of Philo’s hermeneutics must include a discussion of allegor-

30 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

Passing over Problematic Texts in Silence

32 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

34 Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide

Uncritical Readings Combined with ‘Toning Down’

Despite Philo’s moral reservations on group punishment (reservations detailed

That Scott was an exception,—that he was, like Shakespeare, one of

You might also like