The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament both contain narratives, poems, and instructions which describe, encourage, command, condemn, reward, punish and regulate violent actions by God, individuals, groups, governments, and nation-states. Among the violent acts included are war, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, murder, rape, genocide, and criminal punishment. The texts have a history of interpretation within the Abrahamic religions and Western culture that includes both justification of and opposition to acts of violence.
Definition
The definition of what constitutes violence has changed over time. In the twenty-first century, the definition has broadened considerably to include acts that used to be seen as acceptable. Modern scholarship on violence in the Bible tends to fall into two categories: those who use modern ethics to critique what they see as the violent legacy of monotheism, and those who approach the topic from a historical and cultural perspective. The Bible reflects how perceptions of violence changed over time for its authors and its readers.
Biblical writers defined and interpreted violence in culturally specific terms based upon the values of the age in which they lived. The biblical writers used their own themes, cultural explanations, and theological logic to define violence as a problem in four general categories. They define as violent anything that destroys the inter-relationship, interdependence and wholeness of life and its environment; they depict scheming, arrogant and dishonest speech, especially that aimed at oppressing the poor, as violent in its effect; violations of justice are defined as particularly egregious forms of violence in an early understanding of natural law; and violations of purity and sanctity are seen as a kind of violence that defiles the land, its people, and the sanctuary. It is accompanied by disgust on the part of the biblical writers.
In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
Terms
Hamas
, meaning 'violence, wrongdoing', is the Hebrew Bible's primary term for violence and it is first used in : "the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence." It occurs sixty times in the Hebrew Bible, is almost always used to identify physical violence (; ), and is used to describe human, not divine, violence.
"However, the word hamas in the Old Testament also appears in the contexts of sin and injustice against God and one's fellow-man, judicial affairs, structural violence and the theodicy problem". Hamas may refer to verbal or even ethical violence. "Sometimes the word refers to extreme wickedness (; ) where physical violence may or may not be [involved]." "The term Hamas sometimes appears as a cry to God in the face of injustice (Jer. 6:7)." Exodus 23:1 and Deut. 19:16 characterize a false witness as (a “violent witness”). The notion that a false witness threatens life and well-being appears in fuller form in the Psalter."
In the Torah the terms (rob) and (oppress) are frequently used in combination to describe the human violence of taking/robbing/plundering as oppression of the poor which may or may not include physical, verbal or other types of harm. They are also used both separately and in combination throughout the remainder of the Hebrew Bible describing robbing the poor (Isaiah 3:14, 10:2; Jeremiah 22:3; Micah 2:2, 3:2; Malachi 1:3), withholding the wages of a hired person (cf. Deuteronomy 24:14), political oppression (Hosea 12:7), charging oppressive interest (Ezekiel 22:12), and oppressing the outsider in their midst (Ezekiel 22:7) as acts of violence.
Haram
The Hebrew verb ḥāram connotes [complete annihilation] (New Revised Standard Version, “utterly destroy”; Deut. 7:2); the noun which is derived from it () is sometimes translated as meaning "the ban" and it denotes the separation, exclusion and dedication of persons or objects which may be specially set apart for destruction to God (Deuteronomy 7:26; Leviticus 27:28-29). Historian Susan Niditch says "the root h-r-m links together several biblical non-war and war usages of the term ... under the heading of sacrifice."