In a previous BNG column, I compared today’s Christian Zionists to Rahab, the fictional “prostitute” who betrayed her fellow residents of Jericho out of fear of the Israelite god Yahweh. Rahab viewed Yahweh’s power and ruthless aggression as proof that Yahweh “is God in heaven above and on the earth below.”
I gave some Christian Zionists the benefit of the doubt by saying they may have found New Testament support in Hebrews 11:31, which honors Rahab for her faith; James 2:25, which honors Rahab for her works; or Matthew 1:5, which honors Rahab for her progeny — most notably David, Solomon and yes, Jesus.
David Haddad
I concluded that we should disregard such “troubling” stories. We all have a moral compass we should listen to despite dogmatic appeals to the contrary. The question remains: How did the New Testament writers come to praise Rahab for enabling the Israelite genocide in Jericho?
Yahweh’s violence was well known to New Testament writers. They knew he inflicted horrible plagues on the Egyptians, drowned the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, ordered fire and brimstone to rain down on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and ordered the Levites to slaughter the 3,000 people who worshipped the golden calf.
After the utter destruction of Jericho and its people, the Israelites went on to destroy the small town of Ai, where 12,000 were killed. The cities of the Amorites were destroyed. Yahweh ordered the destruction of the Amalekites: “Put to death man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
In the logic of the narrative, all the people and animals “deserved” to die.
The New Testament writers were laboring under the same assumptions as the fictional Rahab. They believed the violent God Yahweh was the Creator God. The same God that walked with Adam and Eve in Eden. The same God that said, “Let there be light.” They had read a seamless Old Testament. An Old Testament that went in a straight line from the Garden of Eden to the gates of Jericho.
Modern scholarship shows that Yahweh originated as nothing more than a local war god. Yahweh was worshipped by other groups prior to being adopted by the Israelites. Even to the Israelites, Yahweh was one god among many. And over the centuries, Israelite editors elevated his status. Editors made Yahweh not only the most powerful god, but eventually, the only God. Hence began the idea of monotheism.
“Editors made Yahweh not only the most powerful god, but eventually, the only God.”
Biblical scholar Mark S. Smith holds the position of Helena Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Early History of God. Smith writes that Yahweh began as a regional deity. The god El was the older, supreme God. El was the leader of the divine council of gods. His wife was Asherah. She at one point was even a part of the Israelite religion.
John Day is a prominent British biblical scholar and author of the influential academic book Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. Like Smith, Day argues that Yahweh was not originally the Creator God. El was the head of the Canaanite pantheon. Over the centuries, biblical redactors erased all mention of the divine council. Yahweh gradually assumed El’s role, and they denigrated Asherah.
Another biblical scholar, Thomas Romer, holds the chair for the Hebrew Bible and its Contexts at the College of France in Paris. In his book, The Invention of God, Romer finds Yahweh originally was a warrior deity while El was the older cosmic god. But Hebrew writers edited out the story of El. The void was filled by Yahweh, whom Israelite writers transformed into a universal deity. Biblical redactors stitched the two traditions together: The Creator God of Genesis 1 with the Warrior God, Yahweh. The final form of the Hebrew Bible hides earlier layers.
It is this “final form” that accounts for centuries of theological confusion. By the time the New Testament writers were praising Rahab, the fusion already had been completed. New Testament writers inherited a stitched Bible in which Yahweh appeared as the one true God. They praised Rahab within that fused theological world.
Harold Bloom was Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University for over five decades. Bloom explains how our cultural imagination has for centuries been shaped by a harmonized reading of the Old Testament — one that treats the serene Creator of Genesis 1 and the war god of Joshua 6 as the same deity. Bloom offers a more plausible literary explanation: These figures come from different authors, different eras and different mythic imaginations. They were stitched together by editors.
This is Bloom’s answer to Old Testament apologists who defend the unity of the Old Testament by claiming the death and mass destruction symbolize God’s desire to eradicate evil. The unity is editorial, not original.
What does all this mean for Christian Zionism? Christian Zionism rests on a discredited seamless reading of the Old Testament. Modern scholarship reveals a stitched one. Our moral compass tells us there is no moral basis for Christian Zionism — and modern scholarship shows there is also no biblical basis now that the editorial seams of the Old Testament are visible.
David Haddad is a playwright who lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. His provocative plays include Yahweh the Floorwalker, Somebody Named Shaw, and The Scope of William Jennings Bryan. He is currently writing a new play, Rahab.
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Rahab and the violence of Zionism | Opinion by David Haddad