War in the Hebrew Bible : A Study in the Ethics of Violence

The Hebrew Bible is rich in texts about war, all of which pose challenging questions in biblical ethics. The passages about war that readers often find most disquieting are those in which God demands the total annihilation of the enemy without regard to gender age, or military status. The ideology of the "ban", however, is only one among a diversity of attitudes towards war preserved in the ancient Israelite literary tradition. Applying insights from anthropology, comparative literature, and feminist studies, Susan Niditch considers the full specutrum of war ideologies in the Hebrew bible, seeking in each case to discover why and how these views might have made sense to biblical writers. The study of war thus also might have made sense to biblical writers. The study of war thus also illuminates the social and cultural history of Israel, as war texts are found to map the world views of biblical writers from various periods and settings. Reviewing ways in which modern scholars have interpreted this controversial material, Niditch sheds further light on the normative assumptions that shape our understanding of ancient Israel.