Pneuma's view....

Like many things I present on this blog, I have not formed a definitive position. I don't believe for a moment that God ordered genocide....yet I am not sure if he ordered some kind of spiritual destruction which was misconstrued and carried out as literal destruction, or if "satan" had something to do with the OT atrocities (including both sacrifice and genocide....and harsh judgements) or if they thought they heard God...but didn't. Does Girard's theory apply to many of the things that happened in the OT? The sacrifice of one scapegoat after another....the safety valve to release the mounting pressure caused by mimetic rivalry? I don't know. Pneuma had some interesting views on these threads, ones that I will have to give some more thought. Here are some snippets from his posts:

I see God as giving these commands, but as God is spirit every thing He breathes must be taken by the spirit and understood by the spirit. And I think this is where Israel of old screwed up, because they took literally that which is only to be understood in spirit and went and literally did what God said to do. And as I have said we can see this same scenario played out time and again throughout history mostly by Gods own people, thinking to do God a service they literally killed millions of people.

.......all scripture is God breathed and must be understood in the spirit, that God is the same God recorded in both the old and new testament and the people of old screwed up just as badly then as they do today, misunderstanding Gods commands and went about doing things literally that were to be done spiritually, killing in the name of God thinking to do Him service.

It says that they went to war with the HOLY INSTRUMENTS.
What is our holy instrument of war?
Is it not the WORD of God, the SWORD of the Spirit.
When God destroys His enemies He does so by making them His friends.

And Pneuma is not the only one who sees things this way. It just so happens that Gregory Boyd is doing a series on the OT on his blog Random Reflections. In a recent post he talked about the views of Vernard Eller as explained in his book called War and Peace: From Genesis to Revelation

Boyd writes:

the fact that the New Testament clearly reveals that the warfare God wants us to fight is "not against flesh and blood" but against principalities and powers (Eph 6:12) lends support to Eller's view. Since we're supposed to read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, it makes sense to suppose that God wanted the Israelites to engage in spiritual warfare rather than "flesh and blood" warfare. And this supports the conclusion that the Old Testament folks simply erred in allowing their "Nimrodian" mindset to adversely affect the way they heard Yahweh speak to them.

Pneuma, if I've misrepresented your views in any way.....please let me know.