Bibliographic Essay
My interpretation and contextualisation of ‘Violence and the Bible' depend on the following: Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Sur le pouvoir symbolique', Annales 32.3 (1977), 405-11; David Riches, ‘Aggression, War, Violence: Space/Time and Paradigm', Man n.s.
26.2 (1991), 281-98; David Riches, ‘The Phenomenon of Violence', in David Riches (ed.), The Anthropology of Violence (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986]), pp. 1-27; Johan Galtung, ‘Cultural Violence', Journal of Peace Research 27.3 (1990), 291-305. More recent theorisations of violence among anthropologists are Bettina Schmidt and Ingo Schroder (eds.), Anthropology of Violence and Conflict (New York: Routledge, 2001), and Goran Aijmer and Jon Abbink (eds.), Meanings of Violence: A Cross Cultural Perspective (Oxford: Berg, 2000). Among biblical scholars who have framed discussions of violence and the Bible, John J. Collins's ‘The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence', Journal of Biblical Literature 122.1 (2003), 3-21 provides an important starting point, while contributions to David Bernat and Jonathan Klawans's Religion and Violence: The Biblical Heritage (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008) make important progress towards a critical analysis of violence in Hebrew Bible and New Testament literature. From that volume, Ziony Zevit's ‘The Search for Violence in Israelite Culture and in the Bible' provides a thorough overview, including discussion of the biblical Hebrew vocabulary for ‘violence'. Subsequent volumes have focused on specific types of violence featured in the Bible, such as war - B. E. Kelle and F. R. Ames (eds.), Writing and Reading War: Rhetoric, Gender, and Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2008) and B. E. Kelle, F. R. Ames and J. L. Wright (eds.), Warfare, Ritual, and Symbol in Biblical and Modern Contexts (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2014) - ritual violence - Saul Olyan (ed.), New Perspectives on Ritual Violence in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) - and textual practices - Raanan Shaul Boustan, Alex P. Janssen and Calvin J. Roetzel (eds.), Violence, Scripture, and Textual Practices in Early Judaism and Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Jonathan Klawans discusses violence and biblical ritual structures in ‘Pure Violence: Sacrifice and Defilement in Ancient Israel', Harvard Theological Review 94.2 (2001), 133-55. Bruce Lincoln theorises ancient Mediterranean ‘sanctified violence', focusing on divine combat, military defeat, millenarian revolt and ‘mortification of the flesh', in ‘Sanctified Violence', in Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Ronald S. Hendel addresses the contemporary utilisation of biblical themes to justify violence in ‘The Bible and Religious Violence', Biblical Archaeology Review 42.2 (2016), 22, 66. For discussion of the psychology of the modern ‘apocalyptic' application of biblical themes, see James W. Jones, ‘The Divine Terrorist - Religion and Violence in American Apocalyptic Christianity', in Blood That Cries From the Earth: The Psychology of Religious Terrorism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 88-114. For a condensed treatment of violence within modern ‘biblical religions', see the chapters onJewish, Christian and Muslim traditions by Ron Hassner and Gideon Aran, Lloyd Steffen, and Bruce Lawrence in Michael Jerryson, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Margo Kitts (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
More on the topic Bibliographic Essay:
-
Conflictology -
Ecology -
Economy -
Finance -
History -
Law -
Medicine -
Philosophy -
Religious studies -