Lesson 5: The Religion of Warfare In this lesson, I will repost two articles of mine from 2015.   The first provides quotations from the Quran, and the second quotations from Islam’s Sahih Bukhari .   From these, readers can see that Islam is only a religion of ‘peace’ if one understands peace as the result of submission —submission to Allah and to Islam.   More honestly, it is a religion of submission that engages in jihad as a matter of course to make others submit to it.   Of course, this applies more to some than to other Muslims.   Yet this fact does explain much of Islamic history and the present day Islamic terrorist groups in various parts of the world.   The purpose of this lesson is to identify some of the important and authoritative texts that undergird the understanding of Islam as a religion of warfare. What Does the Quran Say about Treatment of Jews and Christians? (3 February, 2015) The Quran seems to offer different advice on what to do with persons of other fai

Lesson 4: Ethical Considerations on Israel’s Clearing of Canaan from its Inhabitants Introduction What shall we do with Old Testament texts dealing with Israel's clearing of Canaan from its inhabitants?   While not the least surprising in the history and culture of the Ancient Near East, the story poses a potential ethical challenge when it appears in Holy Scripture and as an event called for by God.  Putting people to the sword hardly sounds moral.  It sounds like an evil military force like ISIS or Hamas.  We might view it as ethnic cleansing and genocide. Ancient Near Eastern peoples practiced people displacement and annihilation.  For example, in 1595 BC, Mursilli I (a Hittite) captured Babylon.  He removed the temple treasure and scattered the people.  This was a pattern throughout the region and over many centuries.   The stories of such practices are told on steles erected by rulers and depicted on walls and cliffs throughout the Ancient Near East.   Israel’s conquest of C

  Lesson 3: Israel’s Theology of the Land in Deuteronomy 26 Deuteronomy 26 provides a theology of the land of Israel and of the Israelites as a people.   Two opposite dimensions of Israel’s identity are brought together in this chapter: as a landless people, and as a people of the land.   These two identities work together to explain the unique identity of Israel and of the land in Old Testament theology. First, the Israelites affirmed their original, landless identity .   They did not lay claim to the land of Canaan on the grounds that they had always dwelt there.   Their origins were nomadic and as slaves .   Their first ancestor, Abram, was a ‘wandering Aramean’ (v. 2).   The Aramean tribes’ appear in history as people from northern Mesopotamia (northern Syria and eastern Turkey today), and Abram’s family does connect with this area.   When Abram left Ur of the Chaldeans in southern Mesopotamia, he and his family settled in Haran, where his father, Terah, died and was buried (Ge