Fields of Blood

by Karen Armstrong

  26. Gernet, Ancient China, pp. 71–75.

  27. Granet, Chinese Civilization, pp. 97–100.

  28. Fung Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde (New York, 1978), pp. 32–37.

  29. Classic of Documents, “The Canon of Yao and the Canon of Shun,” in De Bary and Bloom, Sources of Chinese Tradition, p. 29.

  30. Record of Rites 2.263, in The Li Ki, trans. James Legge (Oxford, 1885).

  31. Record of Rites 2.359.

  32. Granet, Chinese Civilization, pp. 297–308.

  33. Record of Rites 1:215.

  34. Granet, Chinese Civilization, pp. 310–43.

  35. Gernet, Ancient China, p. 75.

  36. Granet, Chinese Civilization, pp. 261–84; Gernet, History of Chinese Civilization, pp. 261–79; Gernet, Ancient China, p. 75; Holmes Welch, The Parting of the Way: Lao Tzu and the Taoist Movement (London, 1958), p. 18.

  37. Zuozhuan (“The Commentary of Mr. Zuo”) 1:320, in The Ch’un Ts’ew and the Tso Chuen, trans. James Legge, 2nd ed. (Hong Kong, 1960).

  38. Zuozhuan 1:635.

  39. Zuozhuan 2:234.

  40. Zuozhuan 1:627.

  41. James A. Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War: Comparative Religious Symbolism of Military Violence (Westport, CT, 1981), pp. 110–11.

  42. Spring and Autumn Annals 10:17:4.

  43. Spring and Autumn Annals, 1:9:6.

  44. Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York, 1972).

  45. Schwartz, World of Thought, p. 62; Fung, Short History, p. 12.

  46. William Theodore de Bary, The Trouble with Confucianism (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1996), pp. 24–33.

  47. Analects 12:3 in The Analects of Confucius, trans. and ed. Arthur Waley (New York, 1992).

  48. Analects 15:24.

  49.Analects 4:15, 15:23.

  50. Analects 6:30, in Edward Slingerland, trans., Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge, UK, 2003).

  51. Ibid., Waley translation.

  52. De Bary, Trouble with Confucianism, p. 30.

  53. Schwartz, World of Thought, pp. 155, 157–58.

  54. Analects 12:1, translation suggested by Schwartz, ibid., p. 77.

  55. Ibid., Slingerland translation.

  56. Analects 5:4.

  57. Fingarette, Confucius, pp. 1–17, 46–79.

  58. Analects 12:3.

  59. Analects 7:30.

  60. Tu Wei-ming, Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation (Albany, NY, 1985), pp. 115–16.

  61. Ibid., pp. 57–58; Huston Smith, The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions (San Francisco, 1991), pp. 180–81.

  62. Analects 13:30.

  63. Don J. Wyatt, “Confucian Ethical Action and the Boundaries of Peace and War,” in Andrew R. Murphy, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence (Chichester, UK, 2011).

  64. Analects 12:7, Slingerland translation.

  65. Analects 12:7.

  66. Analects 16:2.

  67. Analects 2:3.

  68. The Book of Mencius 3:A:4, in Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau (London, 1975).

  69. Xinzhong Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism (Cambridge, UK, 2000), p. 28.

  70. Mencius 7:B:4.

  71. Mencius 7:B:4.

  72. Mencius 7:B:2; Wyatt, “Confucian Ethical Action,” pp. 240–44.

  73. Mencius 2:A:1.

  74. A. C. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Science (Hong Kong, 1978), p. 4; Gernet, Ancient China, pp. 116–17.

  75. The Book of Mozi 3:16, cited in Fung, Short History, p. 55.

  76. Mozi 15:11–15, in Mo-Tzu: Basic Writings, trans. and ed. B. Watson (New York, 1963).

  77. A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, IL, 1989), p. 41.

  78. Mozi 15.

  79. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, p. 250.

  80. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, pp. 56–61.

  81. Zuozhuan 2:30.

  82. Zuozhuan, p. 254.

  83. Zuozhuan, p. 243.

  84. Zuozhuan, pp. 97–118; John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London and New York, 1993), pp. 202–8; Robert L. O’Connell, Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War (New York and Oxford, 1989), pp. 171–73; R. D. Sawyer, The Military Classics of Ancient China (Boulder, CO, 1993).

  85. Sun Tzu, The Art of War: Complete Texts and Commentaries, trans. Thomas Cleary (Boston and London, 1988), p. 56.

  86. Art of War 3.

  87. Selections from the Sunzi, in Sources of Chinese Tradition, trans. De Bary and Bloom, p. 217.

  88. Art of War, Cleary translation, pp. 81–83.

  89.Art of War, Cleary translation, p. 86.

  90. Sunzi, 5, De Bary and Bloom translation.

  91. Fairbank and Goldman, China, pp. 53–54.

  92. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, pp. 172–203; Schwartz, World of Thought, pp. 215–36; Fung, Short History, pp. 104–17.

  93. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, pp. 170–213; Schwartz, World of Thought, pp. 186–215; Max Kaltenmark, Lao Tzu and Taoism, trans. Roger Greaves (Stanford, CA, 1969), pp. 93–103.

  94. Daodejing 37, in Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, trans. D. C. Lau (London, 1963).

  95. Daodejing 16, Lau translation.

  96. Daodejing 76, Lau translation.

  97. Daodejing 6, Lau translation.

  98. Daodejing 31, in Lao Tzu, Greaves translation, p. 56.

  99. Daodejing 68, in Lao Tzu, Greaves translation, p. 56.

  100. Daodejing 22, in Sources of Chinese Tradition, trans. De Bary and Bloom.

  101. Shang Jun Shu, cited in Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, p. 64.

  102. Schwartz, World of Thought, pp. 321–23.

  103. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, pp. 61–65.

  104. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, pp. 207–76; Schwartz, World of Thought, pp. 321–43; Fung, Short History, pp. 155–65; Julia Ching, Mysticism and Kingship in China: The Heart of Chinese Wisdom (Cambridge, UK, 1997), pp. 236–41.

  105. Shang Jun Shu, cited in Mark Elvin, “Was There a Transcendental Breakthrough in China?” in Eisenstadt, Origins and Diversity of the Axial Civilizations, p. 352.

  106. Shang Jun Shu, cited in Graham, Disputers of the Tao, p. 290.

  107. Shang Jun Shu 15:72, in Hsun-Tzu: Basic Writings, ed. and trans. Burton Watson (New York, 1963).

  108. Shang Jun Shu 15:72.

  109. The Book of Xunzi 10, cited in Graham, Disputers of the Tao, p. 238.

  110. Hanfeizi 5, in Han Fei Tzu: Basic Writings, ed. and trans. Burton Watson (New York, 1964).

  111. Hanfeizi 5.

  112. Ching, Mysticism and Kingship, p. 171.

  113. Xunzi 21:34–38, in Xunzi: Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York, 2003).

  114. Fairbank and Goldman, China, p. 56; Derk Bodde, “Feudalism in China,” in Rushton Coulbourn, ed., Feudalism in History (Hamden, CT, 1965), p. 69.

  115. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian 6:239.

  116. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, 6:87, cited in Fung, Short History, p. 204.

  117. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, pp. 99–101.

  118. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, cited ibid., p. 141.

  119. Schwartz, World of Thought, pp. 237–53.

  120. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, pp. 145–57; Derk Bodde, Festivals in Classical China: New Year and Other Annual Observances During the Han Dynasty, 206 B.C.–A.D. 220 (Princeton, NJ, 1975).

  121. Cited in Lewis, Sanctioned Violence, p. 147.

  122. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian 8.1, cited in Fung, Short History, p. 215.

  123. Fung, Short History, pp. 205–16; Graham, Disputers of the Tao, pp. 313–77; Schwartz, World of Thought, pp. 383–406.

  124. Fairbank and Goldman, China, pp. 67–71.

  125. Joseph R. Levenson and Franz Schurmann, China: An Interpretive History: From the Beginnings to the Fall of Han (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1969)
, p. 94.

  126. De Bary, Trouble with Confucianism, pp. 48–49.

  127. Yan tie lun 19, in Sources of Chinese Tradition, trans. De Bary and Bloom, p. 223.

  128. Hu Shih, “Confucianism,” in Encyclopaedia of Social Science (1930–35) 4:198–201; Ching, Mysticism and Kingship, p. 85.

  129. De Bary, Trouble with Confucianism, p. 49; Fairbank and Goldman, China, p. 63.

  4 ♦ THE HEBREW DILEMMA

  1. Genesis 2:5–3.24. Unless otherwise stated, all biblical quotations are taken from The Jerusalem Bible (London, 1966).

  2. Genesis 3:17–19.

  3. Genesis 4:10–11, in The Five Books of Moses, trans. Everett Fox (New York, 1990).

  4. Genesis 4:17–22.

  5. Genesis 4:9.

  6. Genesis 12:1–3.

  7. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origins of Its Sacred Texts (New York and London, 2001), pp. 103–7; William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, UK, 2001), pp. 110–18.

  8. George W. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation: The Origins of Biblical Tradition (Baltimore and London, 1973); P. M. Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy (Leiden, 1985); D. C. Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan (Sheffield, UK, 1985); James D. Martin, “Israel as a Tribal Society,” in R. E. Clements, ed., The World of Ancient Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives (Cambridge, UK, 1989); H. G. M. Williamson, “The Concept of Israel in Transition,” in Clements, World of Ancient Israel, pp. 94–114.

  9. Finkelstein and Asher, Bible Unearthed, pp. 89–92.

  10. John H. Kautsky, The Politics of Aristocratic Empires, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ, and London, 1997), p. 275; Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, CT, 1957), pp. 331–32.

  11. Joshua 9:15; Exodus 6:15; Judges 1:16, 4:11; I Samuel 27:10. Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1973), pp. 49–50.

  12. Cross, Canaanite Myth, p. 69; Peter Machinist, “Distinctiveness in Ancient Israel,” in Mordechai Cogan and Israel Ephal, eds., Studies in Assyrian History and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography (Jerusalem, 1991).

  13. This theme has been explored in more detail by Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (Cambridge, UK, 2012), pp. 103–60.

  14. Norman Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible in Its Social World and in Ours (Atlanta, 1993), pp. 115, 163.

  15. Leviticus 25:23–28, 25:35–55; Deuteronomy 24:19–22; Gottwald, Hebrew Bible, p. 162.

  16. I have described this process in A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (London and New York, 1993).

  17. Psalms 73:3, 73:8, 82:8, 95:3, 96:4ff, 97:7; Isaiah 51:9ff; Job 26:12, 40:25–31.

  18. Genesis 11:1–9.

  19. Genesis 11:9.

  20. Genesis 12:3. Strictly speaking, Yahweh called Abraham from Harran in modern Iraq; but his father, Terah, had left Ur but only got as far as Haran. Yahweh himself backdates the call to Abraham, taking responsibility for the entire migration, telling Abraham: “I … brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans” (Genesis 15:7).

  21. Hazony, Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, p. 121.

  22. Ibid., pp. 122–26.

  23. Genesis 12:10.

  24. Genesis 26:16–22; cf. 36:6–8.

  25. Genesis 41:57–42:3.

  26. Genesis 37:5–7.

  27. Genesis 37:8, Fox translation.

  28. Genesis 37:10, Fox translation.

  29. Genesis 41:51, Fox translation.

  30. Genesis 41:48–49.

  31. Genesis 47:13–14, 47:20–21.

  32. Genesis 50:4–9. After Jacob’s death, the brothers were permitted to take his body back to Canaan, accompanied by “a very large retinue” of chariots and cavalry, while their children and possessions were held hostage in Egypt.

  33. Genesis 12:15, 20:2, 26:17–18, 14:11–12, 34:1–2; Hazony, Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, pp. 111–13, 143.

  34. Genesis 14:21–25.

  35. Genesis 18:1–8, 19:1–9.

  36. Genesis 18:22–32.

  37. Genesis 49:7.

  38. Genesis 49:8–12, 44:18–34.

  39. Exodus 1:11, 1:14.

  40. Exodus 2:11.

  41. Hazony, Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, pp. 143–44.

  42. Exodus 24:9–11.

  43. Exodus 31:18.

  44. Exodus 24:9–31:18; William M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge, UK, 2004), pp. 121–34.

  45. E.g., Judges 1; 3:1–6; Ezra 9:1–2.

  46. Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago, 1997); Hector Avalos, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (Amherst, NY, 2005).

  47. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (New York and London, 1990); Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (New York and London, 2001).

  48. Joshua 24; S. David Sperling, “Joshua 24 Re-examined,” Hebrew Union College Annual 58 (1987); S. David Sperling, The Original Torah: The Political Intent of the Bible’s Writers (New York and London, 1998), pp. 68–72; John Bowker, The Religious Imagination and the Sense of God (Oxford, 1978), pp. 58–68.

  49. Exodus 20:3, Fox translation.

  50. Susan Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Ethics of Violence (New York and Oxford, 1993), pp. 28–36, 41–62, 152.

  51. Compare a similar deal in Numbers 21:2.

  52. Joshua 6:20.

  53. Joshua 8:25.

  54. Joshua 8:28.

  55. Lauren A. Monroe, Josiah’s Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement; Israelite Rites of Violence and the Making of a Biblical Text (Oxford, 2011), pp. 45–76.

  56. Mesha Stele 15–17, in Kent P. Jackson, “The Language of the Mesha Inscription,” in Andrew Dearman, ed., Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab (Atlanta, 1989), p. 98; Norman K. Gottwald, The Politics of Ancient Israel (Louisville, KY, 2001), p. 194; cf. 2 Kings 3:4–27.

  57. Mesha Stele 17.

  58. H. Hoffner, “History and the Historians of the Ancient Near East: The Hittites,” Orientalia 49 (1980); Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible, p. 51.

  59. Judges 21:25.

  60. Judges 11:29–40.

  61. Judges 18.

  62. Judges 19.

  63. Judges 20–21.

  64. I Samuel 8:5.

  65. I Samuel 11:18.

  66. Gottwald, Politics of Ancient Israel, pp. 177–79.

  67. Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible, pp. 90–105.

  68. I Samuel 17:1–13; Quincy Wright, A Study of Warfare, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1942), 1:401–15.

  69. 2 Samuel 2:23.

  70. 2 Samuel 5:6.

  71. I Chronicles 22:8–9.

  72. Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine (Minneapolis, 1993), pp. 504–5.

  73. I Kings 7:15–26.

  74. Richard J. Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament (Cambridge, MA, 1972), passim; Ben C. Ollenburger, Zion, City of the Great King: A Theological Symbol of the Jerusalem Cult (Sheffield, UK, 1987), pp. 14–16; Margaret Barker, The Gate of Heaven: The History and Symbolism of the Temple in Jerusalem (London, 1991), p. 64; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Worship in Israel: A Cultic History of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1966), pp. 201–4.

  75. I Kings 9:3; David Ussishkin, “King Solomon’s Palaces,” Biblical Archaeologist 36 (1973).

  76. I Kings 10:26–29.

  77. I Kings 9:3, 5:4–6.

  78. I Kings 4:1–5:1.

  79. I Kings 5:27–32, which contradicts I Kings 9:20–21. The Deuteronomist authors were eager to blame Solomon’s idolatry for the catastrophe, be
cause of their reform.

  80. I Kings 11:1–13.

  81. I Kings 12:4.

  82. I Kings 12:17–19.

  83. Psalms 2:7–8, 110:12–14.

  84. Psalm 110:5–6.

  85. Andrew Mein, Ezekiel and the Ethics of Exile (Oxford and New York, 2001), pp. 20–38.

  86. Amos 2:6.

  87. Amos 3:10.

  88. Amos 7:17; 9:7–8.

  89. Amos 3:11–15.

  90. Amos 1:2–2:5.

  91. Isaiah 1:16–18.

  92. Gottwald, Politics of Ancient Israel, pp. 210–12.

  93. Finkelstein and Asher, Bible Unearthed, pp. 263–64.

  94. Ibid., pp. 264–73.

  95. 2 Kings 21:2–7, 23:10–11.

  96. Psalms 68:17; Ahlstrom, History of Palestine, p. 734.

  97.Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book, pp. 91–117; Calum M. Carmichael, The Laws of Deuteronomy (Eugene, OR, 1974); Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford, 1997); Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford, 1972); Joshua Berman, Biblical Revolutions: The Transformation of Social and Political Thought in the Ancient Near East (New York and Oxford, 2008).

  98. 2 Kings 22:8.

  99. Exodus 24:3,7; Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book, pp. 121–26.

  100. Exodus 24:4–8. This passage was inserted into the older traditions by the reformers; it is the only other place in the Bible where the phrase sefer torah is found.

  101. Deuteronomy 6:4.

  102. Deuteronomy 7:1–4.

  103. Deuteronomy 28:64, 68.

  104. 2 Kings 22:11–13.

  105. 2 Kings 23:5.

  106. Jeremiah 44:15–19; Ezekiel 8.

  107. 2 Kings 23:4–20

  108. Levinson, Deuteronomy and Hermeneutics, pp. 148–49.

  109. Deuteronomy 7:22–26.

  110. Deuteronomy 13:8–9, 12.

  111. Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible, pp. 65, 77.

  112. I Kings 13:1–2; 2 Kings 23:15–18; 2 Kings 23:25.

  113. 2 Kings 24:16. These numbers are disputed.

  114. Ezekiel 3:15; Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book, p. 152.

  115. Mein, Ezekiel, pp. 66–74.

  116. Anshan is called Elam in the Hebrew sources.