Bloodguilt, Curse, and 2 Sam 21

The dynamics of retribution and divine characterisation in 2 Samuel 11–20 are compared and contrasted with the formulation of divine violence in 2 Samuel 21. The famine that breaks out in the land and the expiation of the land through the deaths of Saul’s sons are attributed to natural consequences of breaking an oath and incurring bloodguilt on the land. The famine is not a divine punishment, but a consequence for unatoned bloodguilt. The oath is sworn in God’s name, the land is a ‘possession of the LORD’ and the slaughter takes place ‘before the LORD.’ Yet overall there is little divine characterisation, and the famine takes place because of a lack of divine intervention, rather than a result of divine punishment.

He Shall Repay the Lamb Fourfold

When retributive divine punishment against David in 2 Samuel 12 includes the death of David and Bathsheba’s newborn child, troubling issues surrounding God’s character are identified by many commentators. In order to examine the divine violence against David’s household in 2 Samuel 11–20 in Part 1, the terms punishment and retribution are defined. Punishment is pain imposed on a person judicially determined as guilty, either through declaration by an authorised party or through transgression of an established law. By this definition, David’s newborn is not individually punished but either collectively punished as part of David’s household, or the victim of collateral damage. Retribution is distinguished from natural consequences that proceed from transgressions, and defined as backward looking, proportional payback for an offence. Elements of Kant’s formulation for retributive punishment are introduced.

Does God Command and Punish in the Garden of Eden?

Most interpretations of Gen 2–3 center the motifs of divine command, human obedience, and divine punishment. These ideas, however, are not intrinsic to the narrative. They represent only one possible way of interpreting certain semantic and narrative ambiguities in the story. One can also read Gen 2–3 as a story about a divine warning and a consequential decision. This alternative reading does a better job making sense of the narrative details and better reflects the unique way the J source of the Pentateuch understands how God interacts with humanity.

The Impact of Covid-19 on Abrahamic Fundamentalist Groups

This contribution discusses the question whether there is a general interlinking between the fundamentalist perception and practice of Abrahamic religions by some believers or groups and their (in-)ability to cope with pandemics such as Covid-19, or if this assumption is misleading. With the help of selected examples from fundamentalist groups of the Abrahamic religions, it will be shown that some fundamentalist actors see Covid-19 as a divine punishment and make use of the pandemic for radical mobilization of their members, while other religious groups and leaders concentrate on the resilience and healing aspects of their followers during the pandemic. The different responses of coping lead to the question whether monotheistic religions might be more susceptible to fundamentalist reactions to pandemics than other religions.

What Reason Wrought

This chapter recognizes scholarly debates about the Enlightenment; some indict the movement for failing to live up to its ideals. Nonetheless, the Founding Fathers were traditionally understood to have been shaped by Enlightenment values. These curricula reject that understanding. They repudiate Enlightenment values, including secularism, tolerance, the social sciences, social reform, internationalism, and those values’ possible influence on the new nation. The curricula instead indict the Enlightenment as godless and reject its appreciation of reason and science as threats to the authority of the Bible. The genuine eighteenth-century Enlightenment is, for these curricula, the religious revival known as the Great Awakening. These textbooks also assert that France’s commitment to humanism warranted divine punishment in the French Revolution, and that its reprehensible politics differentiate it from American virtues. This chapter concludes with some implications of what rejecting the Enlightenment entails for modern America culture.

Biblical Portrayal of Ethiopia as a Challenge to Western Perspectives of Africa

Africa has been presented as underdeveloped and backward until the adventure of colonial architects. Archaeological remnants and structures, some of which are still standing to date, portray a different reality seemingly echoed by the biblical account. The endowment of Africa with natural resources, evidence of processing abilities and references to established kingdoms occasionally used as instruments of divine punishment of Israel or provision of refuge suggests a much more advanced situation than has been routinely presented by historians. The biblical record which has been proven for its reliability and historicity provides us with the impetus to re-analyse key texts in order to re-examine the views that have been posited. The Western tendency to undermine Africa's advancements is well known. This article therefore considers the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch as a point of reference to African realities reflected throughout the biblical text.

Discussion: Making Sense of Public Sensemaking Relative to the COVID-19 Crisis

Disease outbreaks motivate human groups to engage in sensemaking efforts to give meaning to the event. These sensemaking processes often involve narratives framing where a disease comes from, how it spreads, and how to prevent and cure infections. At least four generic narratives are typically used as symbolic resources make sense of disease outbreaks: A medical science narrative and three lay narratives, i.e., (1) infectious disease as divine punishment, (2) infectious disease as caused by actions of outgroups (3) infectious disease as caused by evil elites. The contributions to this Special Issue are discussed in relation to this narrative sensemaking perspective.

Revelation after the Holocaust

The challenges which the Holocaust presents to reflections, especially Judeo-Christian, on divine revelation may be introduced by surveying how some poets, philosophers, and psychologists who have debated the seemliness of finding meaning in its barbarity have identified the search for this meaning to be intrinsic to conscience and necessary to human resistance against the banality of evil. However, by being the Nazi attempt and failure to exterminate the Jewish people in particular, the Holocaust must be defined in ways that address the sense of betrayal and abandonment fostered in its Jewish victims by their biblical conceptions of being the recipients and bearers of divine revelation. These definitions represent the Holocaust either as an event continuous with Jewish heritage and history, or so discontinuous as warranting either their negation or reformation in ways that suggest the contours of a new revelation. The many Jewish biblical and theological models guiding reflection on the Holocaust militate against reductionistic positions which represent it as a divine punishment and open up to representing the Jewish people as a Servant given to participate in the anguish which God nurtures for the created world. The extent to which the Holocaust was facilitated by Christian theological contempt for Judaism, and the extent to which this contempt was fostered by Christian scripture and tradition, all these stand to reveal the need for Christians to renew their understanding of Christian-Jewish relationships in general and of the relationship of Christology to Jewish suffering in particular.

Imaginaries of Empire and Memories of Collapse

Producing parallel narratives of the fall of Kaifeng in 1127 and the sack of Constantinople in 1204, Ye Mengde 葉夢得 (1077–1148) and Niketas Choniates (c.1155–1217) chronicled the collapse of these imperial centres in an effort to reconstruct post-conquest political communities in exile. While Ye and Niketas were deploying different conceptual frameworks of political authority and literary blueprints for memoirs, their writings documented personal displacement as well as cultural and political trauma writ large. By recording and commemorating the chain of events that culminated in the collapse of the Northern Song and Byzantine Empires, both authors were converting oral anecdotes into cultural memory. Ye and Niketas devised ex post facto explanations for the fall of Kaifeng and Constantinople as the consequence of the actions of failed monarchs and corrupt courtiers — and, to a lesser extent — the forces of divine punishment.