GOD - Chapter 13 (Genocidal)

"You must not let anything that breathes remain alive" (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)

So starts Barker on his 13th chapter of GOD. Unfortunately this is the kind of quote that readers of the book would become accustomed to (as well as, I assume, readers of the original text.) The single-minded destructive impulse of the ancient Hebrew culture, given voice by their deity, alone, stands the most jarring presence in GOD. The clang of death is more persistent than Barker's: His light addresses under the proof texts are sometimes pandering, or even inappropriate, but he is just treating these insane proclamations with what we would expect had these vituperations emerged from some other source.

Barker continues, provocatively calling upon The Holocaust:

"Noting that all genocides are morally equivalent in their purpose, we still might ask what was the numerically largest genocide in history. The European Holocaust, with estimates ranging between 4 & 17 million (depending on who is counting & whom you count)...The "American Indian Holocaust" following the arrival of Europeans, committed by many Catholic & Protestant actors over centuries, was harder to count. If we add European diseases to the massacres, an estimated 80 to 90% of the population of the Americas was annihilated over that period, perhaps totaling more than 50 million lives by many acts of genocide. But by far the largest single act of genocide, in numbers & percentages related in the 6th & 7th chapter of the book of Genesis."

Deuteronomy contains many of the
divine admonitions to kill

Pow. That statement is latent with a moral quandary for the Christian & the Jew: If we accept that your scripture is historical fact, your god is a murderer literally beyond compare. If you do not accept that this happened historically, then your book is a lie masquerading as an accurate chronicle of historical events. Choose one -- YHWH is the greatest of the purveyors of Genocide, or the allegedly inerrant 'good book' is not a direct look into The Real.

Barker continues:

"The population of the earth at that time is estimated at about 20 million humans...he decided to shut down his experiment by killing them all & reboot with a tiny remnant: "And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, & it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, 'I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-- people together with animals & creeping things & birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them" (Genesis 6)

Whoops! We know what happens next in this story, a tale as old as time, the greatest incident of mass killing of all time:

Rendering of Genesis 6, 'Noah's Flood'

"Noah's flood was a swift &gruesome genocide of 20 million people. That was 99.99996 % of the entire human race. Picture the children clinging to their desperately parents. As you watch them succumb to the waves, you can join them as they sing praise to God"

While much of this is pulp, & Barker is no stranger to the most opportunistic & unfair of jabs, much of what he says is completely warranted. Such as this commentary on Deuteronomy 20: "Kill all the people but not the poor trees!" Of course, YHWH is not expressing caring for the well-being of the arbors in that verse, he is clarifying to his favoured warriors what they can & cannot destroy, & what they can take as plunder or utilize for their own purposes. Much of the 'Good Book' is warfare, whom to kill, whom to attack, what is permissible to do to cities that are defeated etc. The Old Testament is an extremely millitaristic & volatile meditation upon the Hebrew's inflated sense of their strength & power. If their actual ability, power, & influence was that great, Palestine would not be regarded as a backwater in the 1st century CE. I can imagine there existing some dissent among the internal Roman political elite around 70, 'just let it go! What is it worth?' Everything, if you believe the Bible.

Another of Barker's commentaries, upon Numbers 31, is glib but accurate:

"God was less humane than the Israelites. They wanted to keep boys & women alive, but God said 'only the virgins.' The bible doesn't say what the priests did with their 'Lord's tribute' of 32"

Much of what passes for 'Atheist' critque, especially from the Movement & its figures, is like I said glib, but most of the time is not overstatement. If we take the various stories of slaughter, overarching Hebrew chest-banging, & rape seriously, than the Bible is not 'the greatest story told,' it is probably among the most horrific, something of a provincial Salò, lacking the clarity or relevance of Passolini's film.

Any sense of religious ecumenacalism or inter-faith tolerance is absent in texts like Deuteronomy 13. In fact, we often hear of YHWH grumbling about the other deities that were his apparent competition in the years in which this archaic text was written, & then modified (& modified & modified.) YHWH himself becomes lost in my experience, as I continue critically through Barker's text. I am less & less able to take the deity of YHWH seriously as a figure, & more convinced that the YHWH concept is the collective cultural ego-concept that the Hebrews gave life to in their Old Testament. In Deuteronomy, the author of the text orders the chosen to murder entire cities in which others propose any religion beside the YHWH cult. If Christians & Jews today stated that they were unable to support the idea of religious tolerance & pluralism, it is my belief & stated conviction that this would be completely true. They cannot. Look at the 'fundamentals' in books like Deuteronomy: The ideological content is extreme religious xenophobia , masculinism gone astray, & fevered fantasies of rape & destruction.