The divine command to exterminate Amalek--men, women, children,
and even animals who have no free will--is what in contemporary
terms has been called genocide. Louis Feldman explores how the
earliest systematic commentators on the Bible--the Hellenistic
Jewish philosopher Philo in his many essays on biblical themes; the
mysterious, still unclassified Pseudo-Philo in his "Biblical
Antiquities"; the premier Jewish historian and polymath Josephus in
his "Jewish Antiquities"; and the Rabbis in the Mishnah, Talmud,
and other literature--wrestled with the issues involved in this
divine command, especially its provision that an entire people must
be eternally punished for the misdeeds of their ancestors.
Feldman contextualizes his study of Amalek by considering how
these ancient commentators relate to other cases where God commands
the destruction of whole groups of people: the flood, the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the plague of the first-born
Egyptians, and the command to annihilate the Canaanites. He also
studies accounts of mass destruction where there was no specific
divine commandment--the annihilation of the Hivites because one of
them raped Dinah, the annihilation of the nations of Sihon and Og,
the complete destruction of the inhabitants of Jericho, and the
extermination of the priests of Nob--as well as the challening
issue of why God justifies Phinehas's zealotry, which involved
transgressing the law to kill a Jew and a non-Jew for their
immorality.
All of these biblical passages raise difficult questions and
provide no simple answers. Feldman shows us how ancient
commentators received and struggled with Amalek and other genocide
passages: Psuedo-Philo had the fewest problems and is most
insistent on interpreting the divine command literally, while Philo
turned to allegory to resolve the tensions these passages raised
with the principle that the innocent should not suffer for the sins
of the guilty, and Josephus was concerned to counter the impression
that Jews hate non-Jews. Feldman's study exposes the deep roots of
biblical reception in contemporary political and mo
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