Don Bailey

12/11/13
This Land Belongs To Us
Dr. Waldmeir
Final Paper
Robert Warrior, Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians. From: Christianity and Crisis, September 11,
1989. (scan)
Matthew Flannagan, Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
(Word file)



Yahweh the Deliverer in Context
Currently, we live in a world that is surrounded by poverty, health issues, ignorance, superiority
complexes, lies, and ill-will. The idea of brotherhood and love is replaced with the lust for personal
success and exorbitant wealth. It truly is a harsh world to live in. Now, let us imagine a world that is
basically even worse than the world we currently live in. Let us imagine a world, in which genocides are
not only supported by Yahweh, but ordered by Yahweh. Let us imagine a world in which Christians
wiped out many villages and cities of Canaanites. This is the world that Robert Warrior wants us
Christians to accept. Warrior does not want us to feel bad about what we did as much as he wants us to
acknowledge what we did and take responsibility for our actions. He wants us to accept that we are the
new Israel and we have taken the land that did not belong to us. Meanwhile, Matthew and Madeline
Flannagan want us to realize that the world is not entirely bad. There is evil in this world, but there is
beauty and god in it as well. One can see the good in anything by interpreting it differently than his or
her predecessors. The Flannagans want us to do this with the readings in the bible that Warrior brings
up when he supports his argument that God proposed a genocide and carried it out. The Flannagans
want to stress the fact that when taken out of context, it may seem like Yahweh did support a genocide.
However, this is not the case. Warrior wants us to accept our wrongdoings and realize that there is still
work to be done currently. Meanwhile Flannagan wants us to understand that when read in context, the
readings do not teach that God commanded genocide, or that Israel carried out an extermination of the
Canaanites. Although both authors have great points as to why they believe what they believe, neither
Don Bailey
12/11/13
This Land Belongs To Us
Dr. Waldmeir
Final Paper
Robert Warrior, Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians. From: Christianity and Crisis, September 11,
1989. (scan)
Matthew Flannagan, Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
(Word file)


one is completely right. All in all, we do need to acknowledge our past mistakes, but at the same time,
acknowledge them in context. It is then that we can live together as a society of people delivered from
oppression.
The bible really does sound at times like a document of barbarism. In Canaanites, Cowboys, and
Indians, Robert Warrior mentions a quote by Walter Benjamin, a Holocaust survivor. There is no
document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. This is actually a very
understandable quote. The bible really does have some very descriptively violent scenes in it about the
will of God. For example, the Book of Deuteronomy in chapters seven and twenty have commands to
the Israelites to destroy them totally and to not leave anything that breathes. This is where
Flannagan makes his very clear point that when taken out of context, one can truly mistake these
commands to be the order of genocide. However, when one takes these words in context, it will make
sense that it is ignorant to take only one portion of the bible without reading on to see how it all fits in
together. In the article Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament, Flannagan
states that, The books of Deuteronomy and Exodus, in numerous places, state that the Canaanites are
to be slowly driven out and expelled from the land. This is not the same thing as killing them
heartlessly. Directly following the quote destroy them totally the text reads make no treaty with
them, and show them no mercy. Dont intermarry with them and dont give them your daughters. Dont
take their daughters for your sons either. Why would the text say this if God wanted all of the
Canaanites dead? You cant intermarry with a dead woman or man, and you cant make treaties with
the deceased either. This is where Flannagan makes his point.
Don Bailey
12/11/13
This Land Belongs To Us
Dr. Waldmeir
Final Paper
Robert Warrior, Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians. From: Christianity and Crisis, September 11,
1989. (scan)
Matthew Flannagan, Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
(Word file)


When read in context, it is very highly unlikely that the authors of these texts actually meant the
language that was used in these texts. Flannagan insists that quotes such as destroy totally and do
not leave anything that breathes, and destroy men and women, young and old are just words of
encouragement to be triumphant in ones mission. These are not words that are meant to be taken
literally by the readers. The language is meant to be taken hyperbolically. It is all just exaggerated
speech. Flannagan goes on to say that these aggressive quotes could just mean drive them out,
attack them, defeat them or beat them. It is not meant to be literally. A philosopher at a
conference at the University Of Notre Dame named Alvin Plantinga said this. During UFC fights, fans
cheer on to finish him or crush him. During rival football games, opposing fans scream cheers such
as kill them or destroy them. These fans are not trying to see their favorite team commit mass
murder. They are just cheering them on. Flannagan is just suggesting that maybe the same was being
done in the scripture. If this is true, then the differences between the separate texts can be easily
explained. Also, it supports the fact that the texts do not teach that God commanded genocide.
Flannagans method of reading the bible is mostly the historical method. He believes that the present
can be understood only with reference to the past. Therefore Flannagan is parlaying the idea that the
bible needs to be read in its entirety to be taken in to context. Individuals need to understand the
history behind the stories they selectively choose to quote. If bits and pieces are taken out and quoted,
even Flannagan admits to the fact that it sounds as if God commanded genocide. Flannagan goes on to
say, I want to suggest that this strict, literal reading is mistaken. Reading these texts in isolation from
the narrative in which they occur risks a distortion of the authors intended meaning.
Don Bailey
12/11/13
This Land Belongs To Us
Dr. Waldmeir
Final Paper
Robert Warrior, Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians. From: Christianity and Crisis, September 11,
1989. (scan)
Matthew Flannagan, Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
(Word file)


This all sounds good at first. However, there are some negatives about Flannagans approach.
Firstly, just because the complete annihilation and destruction of the Canaanites did not happen does
not mean that God did not want it to happen. It is very obvious that God had a strong distaste for the
Canaanites. God had patiently waited over 400 years until the Canaanites would be ripe for judgment.
By the Israelite attack on Canaan, God accomplished two things. First, He brought righteous judgment
on the deserving Canaanites. God directed this destruction, however, less against Canaanite people as it
was against Canaanite religion as a whole. The Canaanite gods and goddesses engaged in all kinds of
sexual acts including incest and bestiality. Not surprisingly, worshipers of these deities engaged in ritual
prostitution. They also did infant scarification as well. So God definitely had an issue with the
Canaanites. But the Canaanites were still not completely wiped out. Furthermore, the bible is not in
chronological order. It is edited and interpreted in many different ways by many different people. This
jumbles up the passages and interferes with the chronology of the bible that Flannagan insists upon. The
main flaw in Flannagans claim is that even if you take the bible in context, God still has an undeniably
negative attitude toward the Canaanites. This is where Warriors argument starts making sense.
Robert Warrior, an American Indian himself, relates the strife of the Canaanites to the strife of
the American Indian people. He draws similarities in how both people were struck down by the chosen
people and lost their land. He truly believed that the underdeveloped populations will be destroyed and
wiped out by the developed and privileged. The developed and privileged happened to be the Pilgrims
according to Warrior. They left their previous land that caused them pain and suffering to embark on a
journey to a new land of opportunity. This is vaguely similar to how the Israelites went from exile to a
Don Bailey
12/11/13
This Land Belongs To Us
Dr. Waldmeir
Final Paper
Robert Warrior, Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians. From: Christianity and Crisis, September 11,
1989. (scan)
Matthew Flannagan, Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
(Word file)


land of milk and honey. In both situations, the people that originally were in the land were replaced by
the chosen people according to Warrior. The Darwinist theory of the strong will survive was actually
put into place. Both the Canaanites and the Native Americans were the weak ones. This relates to
Warriors point of Yahweh having two images. There is God the deliverer, and God the conqueror. In the
case of the Canaanites and Native Americans, it was God the conqueror that took away their land to
deliver it to his chosen people. Warrior goes on to say that even the covenant that God made with
Abram was a covenant of deliverance and conquest. The covenant begins when Yahweh comes to
Abram saying, Know of a surety that your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs,
and they will be slaves there, and they will be oppressed for four-hundred years; but I will bring
judgment on the nation they serve and they shall come out (Gen. 15:13-14). Yahweh then goes on to
say that Abrams descendants will receive the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Kenites, and much more.
According to Warrior, this is not just history. He thinks that this is happening even now. The Native
Americans are the Canaanites and we the Americans are the Israelites.
Warrior just wants us to admit, and come to terms with the fact that we are the chosen people
by God. He wants us to be self-conscious of that fact and realize that there is a lot of work to be done.
American Indians are still suffering and enduring poverty. The reservations we forced them onto are
poverty stricken and we are not fixing the problem. According to Warrior, we are still passively
perpetuating that we have a claim this land. The end goal of Warrior is that he wants us to admit that
we are the new Israel. However, he just wants us to be better than our ancestors in how we live out the
role of being Gods chosen people. Are we going to continue the tradition of ignoring the suffering that
Don Bailey
12/11/13
This Land Belongs To Us
Dr. Waldmeir
Final Paper
Robert Warrior, Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians. From: Christianity and Crisis, September 11,
1989. (scan)
Matthew Flannagan, Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
(Word file)


is taking place, or are we going to help one another and glorify God in the process? Warrior would
prefer the second option. This is all great, but where Warrior goes awry is when he starts to explain his
literal interpretations of bits and pieces from the bible. As Flannagan preferred the historical method,
Warrior preferred the Narrative method. To Warrior, stories or personal experiences are especially
appropriate for making complicated subjects comprehensible to others. This is how he explains his idea
that the suffering of the Canaanites at the hands of God are still going on today with Native Americans.
He basically takes literal meanings in the texts that Flannagan repeatedly said not to take literally and
spews them onto the papers of his essay. He uses them to express how exactly he feels about God the
conqueror. Warrior goes on to explain that the indigenous people should be made at the center of
Christian theological reflection and political action. They are the last remaining ignored voice in the
text, except perhaps for the land itself. Warrior goes on to say that critical works rarely mention the
Old Testament texts that talk about the sufferings of the indigenous people. When they do, they express
little to no concern on their rights as humans or their status of being indigenous. Therefore, Warrior is
stating that if the Canaanites are kept in the middle of it all, people will read the entire bible instead of
just the parts that justify why the indigenous people were kicked off. Warrior goes on to say some very
prolific words. No matter what we do, the conquest narratives will remain. As long as people believe in
the Yahweh of deliverance, the world will not be safe from Yahweh the conqueror. Warrior is stating
that Christians must learn to be a part of the story without making themselves the entire story. If this is
done, then we all can live without being oppressed.
Don Bailey
12/11/13
This Land Belongs To Us
Dr. Waldmeir
Final Paper
Robert Warrior, Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians. From: Christianity and Crisis, September 11,
1989. (scan)
Matthew Flannagan, Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
(Word file)


However, Warrior has some negative points in his argument as well. I agree with his comparison
of the Canaanites and the Native Americans. However, I dont think that the Canaanites were this
innocent clan of individuals that did not deserve any punishment. They worshipped pagan Gods that
Yahweh warned many of, and did despicable rituals that spit in the face of Yahweh. Either way, they
were technically on the land first. This makes them indigenous. But Warriors defense of the Canaanites
is a bit extreme. One can tell that he is a little biased since he is Native American. His literal
interpretations of bible texts show that he is committing the fallacy of misplaced literalism that
Egyptologist James K. Hoffmeier noted in Flannagans essay. Warrior is, allowing a misconstruction of a
statement in evidence so that it carries a literal meaning when a symbolic or hyperbolic or figurative
meaning was intended. This was what James K. Hoffmeier said.
Therefore, if both Flannagan and Warrior are both not entirely correct in their arguments, what
exactly is the whole truth? Flannagan wants us to take texts in context and understand not only the
history behind them, but also understand that some of the language was meant to be hyperbolic.
Warrior, at the root of his argument, wants us to understand that if we want to live together as a society
that is not oppressed, we should accept our wrongdoings. He states that we should accept our position
as the chosen people, but acknowledge that there is still work to be done to live the way Yahweh
intended us to live on his land. If we take Warriors words of wisdom in the context that Flannagan
stresses us to read it in, then Warriors points will seem less extreme and biased. With the combination
of both arguments, one can truly come to the idea that neither author is completely right or completely
wrong. Both authors have strong arguments and both authors also have weak parts. By eliminating the
Don Bailey
12/11/13
This Land Belongs To Us
Dr. Waldmeir
Final Paper
Robert Warrior, Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians. From: Christianity and Crisis, September 11,
1989. (scan)
Matthew Flannagan, Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
(Word file)


aforementioned weak parts of their arguments, and combining the aforementioned strong parts of their
arguments, one can come to the solution that Warrior and Flannagan both were trying to come to.
Although both authors have great points as to why they believe what they believe, neither one is
completely right. All in all, we do need to acknowledge our past mistakes, but at the same time,
acknowledge them in context. It is then that we can live together as a society of people delivered from
oppression.