On Violence (1)

...or, "Why are we okay with A Game of Thrones but not 2 Samuel 8?"

Last week I inadvertently began reading 2 Samuel 8 when I intended to read 1 Samuel 8. This was an honest enough mistake but what I found shocked me. I must admit (rather sheepishly) that I have never read 2 Samuel all the way through and somehow (again, ashamedly) I have managed to avoid passages like chapter 8 entirely. Throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies in church history and theology, I somehow missed how violent the Bible can be. I'm sure I knew theoretically that much of the Hebrew Bible contained stories of Israel's conquests and eventual occupation of "the promised land" but I never put two-and-two together until very recently. 

What I've discovered (again, it's nothing new to people who've been better students of the Bible) is that a fairly large section of the biblical story is occupied with what we would now consider to be genocide and indiscriminate murder of men, women, and children at the hands of the house of Israel -- all of which occurs by divine command. Needless to say, this has caused a bit of a crisis for my biblicist tendencies.

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Let's set aside for a few moments my obvious biblical illiteracy (again, much to my chagrin) and focus on the reality of the violence in the biblical narrative as compared to violence in other stories. The question that I have is this: why are so many Christians today squeamish when it comes to the violence in the Bible when so many of us (myself included) so eagerly consume stories of violence presented in film, literature, and pop culture without the same misgivings? Is it just because we believe that the biblical text is inspired? Is it that we fail to take the cultural expressions of violence as seriously as we should? I don't know. 

Here's an example. I find A Game of Thrones to be very entertaining. I've been reading book one of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series while watching the first season of the HBO series by the same name and I have become completely obsessed with the story I've encountered there. Not only does this show not make me feel the least bit squeamish, I find myself rooting for particular characters and hoping that they will be able to overcome the obstacles they face to crush their enemies and preserve (or repair) their "honor". But when I encounter similar stories of violent conquest in the biblical text my "something just ain't right here" alarm goes off and I am thrown into a flurry of distaste and confusion. What's this all about?

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I'd wager that many Christians who may find themselves ill at ease with the violence in the Hebrew Bible would be unlikely to say that Christianity is an inherently violent religion. However, many of the same Christians may be quite likely to say that Islam is inherently violent. However, if religious historian Philip Jenkins is correct, such Christians may want to reinterpret their understanding of the Muslim faith. He writes, 

[T]he Bible overflows with "texts of terror," to borrow a phrase coined by the American theologian Phyllis Trible. The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery. … If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery.

So again, what are faithful Christians to do with the fact that such violence exists and why is it that we are so uncomfortable with violence when it appears in our holy book but so much more comfortable with it when encountered in books, movies, etc.? And what theorists of violence should I be reading to help me wrestle with these questions? (Hannah Arendt's On Violence and Zizek's
Violence: Six Sideways Reflections have already been recommended)