The Reverend Dr Roger Ryan, DPhil.
vicar of St Mary's Summerstown, London SW17
020 8946 9853
My commentary on 'The Book of Judges' in the
'Readings' series is published by
Sheffield-Phoenix Press
'Judges' is available to order from from local bookshops
and on-line at http://www.amazon.co.uk
£15 paperback (p&p free!)
'Judges' is a chapter by chapter commentary written for the interested general reader.
The commentary is a revised and accessible version of my doctoral research at the University of Oxford
(St Peter's College) 2000-05 entitled
‘A Positive Reading of Judge-deliverers in
the Book of Judges: Challenging the Consensus’.
I will be pleased to respond to comments and questions by e-mail from any serious Bible reader about what I have written here on my page or
about what is included below and in my commentary -
click to email me
An extract from 'Judges' by Roger Ryan...
An Invitation
Come with me into the dangerous ancient world of biblical Israel inhabited by heroes, heroines, hissable villains, a chorus of naughty Israelites, countless silent victims and Yahweh, the God of Israel, who does whatever it takes to win his people back from the gods of Canaan to covenant loyalty.
· Read about Othniel who wins a bride as a reward for single-handedly taking a city in which Israel’s warriors show no interest. Could this be a storyteller’s brief outline of an ancient love story? Discover how Israel’s war-hero takes on and defeats a grisly world-class oppressor and brings peace to the land.
· Meet Ehud, Israel’s civil servant, who makes a wooden dagger which he hides beneath his clothing. He gains access to an oppressive king’s private apartment where he commits the perfect murder. Ehud makes his escape and after calling out the Israelite army, slaughters robust Moabite invaders who have oppressed Israel for eighteen years.
· Pause to take in the heroism of Shamgar who is not to be overlooked.
· Marvel at the courageous Barak who charges downhill on foot as he leads his warriors to defeat an oppressor equipped with iron chariots and unknown numbers of infantry.
· Gasp as Jael, the woman who—when home-alone—deceives and slaughters an oppressor charioteer rapist by securing his head to the floor with a tent peg and hammer.
· Sing along with Deborah as she celebrates with glee the triumphs of God because her people are free at last from twenty years of oppression.
· Follow Gideon as he changes overnight from cynic to popular hero. He defeats vast numbers of invaders with a token force by simply standing still and making a lot of noise!
· Be horrified at Abimelech, a nasty man, a very nasty man indeed, who slaughters his rival half-brothers. Then beam with delight as the wheels of retribution turn in his direction.
· Be intrigued by the story of Jephthah who is first betrayed by his family, then head-hunted to be army commander and tribal leader. As the result of a vow vowed under duress, he is obliged to sacrifice his daughter. Be further intrigued when the identity of the story’s prime-mover is revealed.
· Be amused at the stupidity of Philistines who take the bate and attempt to answer Samson’s unanswerable riddle. Discover how Samson, armed only with a dog’s dinner (a bone), is able to slaughter a thousand Philistines! Even though disabled and alone he is still able to kill even more Philistines and to demonstrate that their non-existent god is a creation of their own imaginations.
· Be aghast at the grim stories in the final chapters; weep with the victims and wonder how it is that anyone survives.
· Ponder the complex character of God who manipulates nations and characters as he drives their stories forward. God uses any means available in order to secure the loyalty of wayward Israelites. When reason and argument fail, intimidation and violence are employed. When intimidation and violence fail, God only speaks when he is spoken to.
· Ask, for what purpose did an ancient storyteller collect these violent claret-soaked stories in which mercy, compassion and forgiveness are lacking and retell them in bright, bold colours against the sweeping panoramas of the ancient world? Judges is fraught with shocking episodes of real violence which are presented raw on the page but are neither glorified nor trivialized.
The Book of Judges was written by an ancient scribe who dared to be dark. Do not imagine that you know what is going to happen next or who will do what to whom or why in this intriguing unpredictable distant story-world in which characters take enormous risks with their lives and readers are treated like mature adults.
Copyright © Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007
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ROGER'S STUDIES AND TRAVELS
•
My Year Gone by, I Miss it so!
...from St Mary's Newsletter, January 2008
2007 was the most violent year I have ever known! Its not that I or my family were threatened or attacked or that anyone I know was brutalized. I am referring to what I have read and thought about during the year—in a word, violence. I have a question on my mind: where is God in all this?
My first task in 2007 was to send the manuscript of my commentary on the violent Book of Judges to the publishers. Then I read Niall Fergusson’s book War of the World which is subtitled ‘history’s age of hatred’ and is the author’s presentation of the hundred years after 1900 as the most violent century of modern times. Fergusson says, ‘there was not a single year before, between or after the world wars that did not see large-scale organized violence in one part of the world or another’.
In April I accepted an invitation from The Council of Christians and Jews to attend a ten-day seminar at The International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. I joined twenty other clergy for lectures, presentations and discussions about the mass slaughter of Jews in Germany and Poland by the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. It was no holiday!
In September I applied for a place on a two year part-time MA course in Holocaust Studies in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. I am about to begin the second term and very grim it is too.
In November, on my 60th birthday, my commentary on Judges was published by Sheffield-Phoenix Press.
Why read, study and write about violence? Surely a church minister should be a person of peace who reassures the congregation and parishioners at the beginning of a new year! There is too much bad news and violence in the world. Well that is just the point. My reading and studies begun during last year continue in 2008 because we find ourselves living in a violent and uncertain world. We are only too aware of the twenty six young people who were stabbed or shot to death in London last year, there are two yellow and blue police boards displayed in our parish requesting information about local stabbing and shooting incidents, and overseas in Kenya, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, where members of our congregation have family, the future looks bleak and uncertain.
The reasons for my thinking about the harsh biblical stories in Judges and the story in the Gospel of Matthew about Herod wanting to rid his kingdom of the new born Jesus—which we looked at in the last service of 2007—including violence in our modern world, is in order to consider the big question: where is God in all this?
Some may protest and consider that what I write here is too brutal a statement with which to begin the New Year. I would like it to be otherwise. I want to live in a world where people like or even love one another, where everyone matters to everyone else. I would like to live in a fair, just and peaceful world.
Even though life is not as it should be, we as Christian people have the opportunity to take on the task of locally making it so as far as it depends on us. |