Why are Abrahamic Religions so Violent?
Why? Because they were born in blood, and raised on blood, and are all about ‘the Blood.’ They comprise a violent patriarchy whose initial act was an attempted blood sacrifice of the child, Isaac, by his father, Abraham, the Patriarch of the Abrahamic stem, with the seal of the covenant transferred to animal sacrifice (the ram in the thicket) when the angel, Gabriel, appeared to tell Abraham God was just kidding, just in the nick of time. Abrahamic religions continue to be furthered through Mosaic purity and pollution laws, and are all about ‘pure’ or ‘legitimate’ patrilineal blood lines and inheritance. (The phone book, where still published, is a violence, with its preponderance of paternal names, until the last five minutes of historical time, the only ‘legitimate’ or legal names.) ‘Sin’ can only be expiated through blood, blood guilt can only be expiated through blood sacrifice or mock blood sacrifice (communion, the Eucharist), and blood is spilled through sacrifice in Holy War.
The Judeo-Christian Abrahamic religions are a hot (bloody) ideological mess. Anthropologically, they fit all the metrics of a ‘Cattle Cult.’ A Cattle Cult lives by raiding, pillage, mass murder, genocide, kidnapping of women and children, theft and rapine. The god narrative of a Cattle Cult holds that the local, tribal creator god gave all of the animals, all of the women, all of the children, all of the lands, and all of the resources to the dominant men of the tribe at the Creation, for them to steward, own and control(sound familiar?). So, when the men of the tribe raid, rape, murder, steal and pillage, they accrue no blood guilt (‘sin’), as all these chattel and properties really belonged to them all along, having been granted to them at the Creation by God, and so really they’re just taking these chattels back into their own hands, where they belong according to Holy Writ.
A perfect example of this conviction is seen in Moses’ injunctions to the warriors and warrior priests around their genocide of the Midianites: “Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, these you keep alive for yourselves….”
31:6 And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand of every tribe, them and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand.
31:7 And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.
31:8 And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.
31:9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.
31:10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.
31:11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.
31:12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.
31:13 And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.
31:14 And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.
31:15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
31:16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.
31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
31:19 And do ye abide without the camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever hath touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day.
31:20 And purify all your raiment, and all that is made of skins, and all work of goats’ hair, and all things made of wood.
31:21 And Eleazar the priest said unto the men of war which went to the battle, This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD commanded Moses;
31:22 Only the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead,
31:23 Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water.
31:24 And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and ye shall be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp.
The girl children abducted from their school in Nigeria by Muslim Fundamentalist militia members, then to be subjected to unimaginable, continual sexual tortures, are no different than those ‘girl children’ spoken of by Moses in Numbers 31. They are little different than the women and children victimized in what amounts to a doctrinally decreed Rape Culture, and perpetrated in kind, in every ‘righteous war’ among Judeo-Christians worldwide, ever since the words of Moses made the practice Holy Writ.
(Judeo-Christianity is a designation that includes ‘the Three Main Orthodoxies,’ Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, that Mohammed called the “People of the Book,” also tracing Muslims’ lineage back to Abraham through Ishmael, the son of Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s adolescent slave, whom Abraham raped in order to beget Ishmael, both slave and son later relegated to the desert to die when the Patriarch begat a legitimate son with Sarah, according to the heinous apologetics of the tale.)
The story was a sick favourite of Christian artists throughout the Renaissance and early Modern period, as with this painting by Mattias Stomer, “Sarah leads Abraham Hagar,” painting (circa 1638):
Or this similarly repugnant version of the scene, illustrating the same Bible verse, Gen. 21:8, by Louis-Jean-François (1725–1805):
Another favourite scene for illustration is Abraham ejecting Hagar and their son from the tent at Sarah’s urging. This one is commonly used in Bible study materials with no artist attribution. Even Sunday School teachers express themselves as horrified by the senseless cruelty of Abraham:
Here is a Neo-classical etching, anonymous:
Here are some pearls compiled by Franklin Veaux:
1 Samuel 15:3: Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants [some translations have this as “sucklings”], cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.
Psalm 137:9: Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us, he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. (Interestingly, this is exactly what the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch sailors did to the Native infants in the West Indies. In fact, it’s been a common genocidal tactic of invading armies since biblical times.)
1 Peter 2:18: Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.
Deuteronomy 25:11–1: If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
Exodus 21:7–8: When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.
Luke 14:26: If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters — yes, even their own life — such a person cannot be my disciple.
Nice!
