Did Election Imply the Mistreatment of Non-Israelites?

Extract

As a way of working out and consolidating one's religious identity, the whole-sale slaughter of people (whether in herem, crusade, or jihad) is exactly what it seems to be, no more and no less. The pressure that builds up naturally in the idea of election is here unleashed, and the idea is given its fullest expression. The Conquest tradition is the primary expression and fulfillment of the idea—the Urtext. The biblical idea of election is the ultimate anti-humanistic idea.Jeremy Cott, “The Biblical Problem of Election,” JES 21 (Spring 1984) 199–228, at 204. Thus did Jeremy Cott, in an article published nearly two decades ago, starkly pose the dilemma faced by anyone who seeks to use the Bible as a moral and spiritual guide today. How can one possibly maintain that the conquest tradition, which relates that God called for the annihilation of every Canaanite man, woman, and child, is an authoritative part of Scripture on a par with other items such as the Ten Commandments or the story of the exodus? The logic behind Cott's statement, at first blush, seems quite compelling. Its central premise, which almost all contemporary theologians and biblical scholars would endorse, is that genocide is morally wrong and could not be a practice decreed by God. Furthermore, the command to commit genocide appears to conflict with other basic biblical concepts, innocent along with the guilty.