World Council of Churches
Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches
Reformed Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn

Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF)

INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL CONFERENCE
“Promised Land”

Church Center Bürenpark, Bern, Switzerland
10 - 14 September 2008 

 

Genesis 12 and the Abraham Paradigm concerning the Promised Land¹

Prof. Dr Ulrike Bechmann
University of Graz, Austria

PDF version for downloads

 

Genesis 12 and the other texts about Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and Keturah are strongly related to the theme of “promised land” that plays a fatal role in the contemporary conflict in Israel/ Palestine. The land where Abraham arrives and wanders from north to south is named “Canaan” (Gen. 12:7), but Abraham soon leaves it (Gen. 12:10), because it is far from being a homeland that can nourish his household. Gen. 12:1-7 is the first promise of a land given to Abraham and his offspring, but it is not the only promise within the entire set of stories. And is the land really the main promise? Most themes in the stories that follow are centred on the missing heirs, not on gaining land. Furthermore, there are many other promises in the same line, but in terms of theological setting, Pentateuchal sources and redactions they are very different. Therefore, to discuss the topic of land as a promise to Abraham it is necessary to deal not only with Genesis 12 but with all the texts related to Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Keturah and their sons. The topic of the heirs of Abraham unfolds up to Genesis 25, where the sons of Abraham and Keturah spread out over the region east of Jordan. Also, Genesis 12 is not the beginning of the story of Abraham and Sarah. The story starts in Gen. 11:27, with Sarah as the main figure – and this challenges the interpretation of Genesis 12 as we find it in the tradition of biblical interpretation. 

When “text becomes land”: biblical texts and political processes 

Dealing with biblical texts in historical or political questions is tricky. One has to be aware that biblical texts were never thought of presenting a history but rather a story.² Only in the 19th century did European historicism start to identify the truth of biblical texts with the historical accuracy (understood in modern terms) of what is told. The methods of biblical historical criticism that identified the various “sources” of the biblical text³ were sometimes felt to undermine the basis of belief. Archaeology was developed as a new science. Some famous archaeologists started to dig up sites in Palestine in order to prove the Bible to be “true” in the modern historical sense.⁴ What had been until then textual story was now reconstructed as real history. Markus Kirchhoff calls this process appropriately “Text zu Land” (text becomes land)⁵ and situates it in the context not only of Zionism but also of British Christianity. 

The identification of the biblical promise of land with the Zionist settlement in modern Palestine is part – not source – of the problem that the Jewish immigration into Palestine was and is legitimized in relation to the Torah. It is known that the Zionist movement and the first waves of immigration into Palestine weren’t motivated religiously. The main reasons were European anti-Semitism, the pogroms in Russia at the end of the 19th century, and the insight that the assimilation of Jews in Europe wouldn’t work. The idea of nationalism fostered the idea of a nation for the Jewish people – Jewishness now was seen as adequate to ethnic identity. And European/British colonialism was the presupposition for realizing a forced immigration into Palestine. In fact, in the beginning the idea of a Jewish state didn’t find much applause in the European Jewish Community. But the pogroms in Europe, the growing anti-Semitism in Western Europe culminating in the Shoah, and the reality of an ongoing immigration to Palestine transformed the political idea into a real process of gaining not only land but a state in Palestine.⁶ 

Reference to the Torah and Abraham’s promise of a land for his offspring were used to support the political process and got more and more intertwined with it as time went by. The declaration of the state of Israel 1948 cited the Torah as a reference. But the decisive step of using the religious promise of land to Abraham and his offspring in a nationalistic way took place after the Six Day War in June 1967. The texts of Abraham, as well as other texts concerning the conquest of the land, became relevant for the political conflict. They are now widely used to justify not only the founding of the state of Israel but the conquest and permanent occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The stories of the forefathers and foremothers are located mostly in the West Bank – therefore the nationalistic-religious movement especially insists on this part of the land. The divine promise of the land to Abraham and his offspring is seen as the right of the Jewish people (who envisage themselves as the offspring of Abraham) to come to Palestine, possess it and live in it. It is understood that now, in a time where this was and is politically possible, the divine promise is fulfilled. 

Why has this religious argument increased since 1967 more than since 1948? My thesis is that in 1948 the founding of the state of Israel was legitimized through the international community (UN resolution 181). Even with the resistance of the Arab countries and the Palestinian population, there was a backing by the UN. In contrast, the war of 1967 and the extension of Israeli control to the occupied territories was delegitimized by the UN (UN resolution 242). To cling to the occupied West Bank and Gaza, to stay in the land and extend the process of settlements to the West Bank needed broader argumentation. Religious arguments became prominent – and for a certain time they hindered the Western Christian communities from protest. Not long after the Shoah, who would dare to argue against a Jewish religious belief? Churches that after the Shoah were reconsidering the traditions of anti-Judaism in Christian theology and trying to set up Christian-Jewish dialogue had nothing to say against the claiming of the biblical stories for the Jewish and Israeli community.⁷ 

Indeed, similar arguments were used by some Christian groups in order to prove the truth of the Bible. For the Christian Zionist movement or messianic Christians, the modern state of Israel was seen as the fulfilment of the heavenly promise and even as the beginning of the messianic time.⁸ Protests of Palestinian Christians went unheard. Their problems with the justification of the occupation on the basis of the Bible were not recognized.⁹ Palestinian Christians were only beginning to be part of the theological and religious leadership of the Christian churches in Palestine.¹⁰ Palestinian contextual theology was developed from the 1980s on.

The longer the occupation, the more a nationalistic-religious Jewish movement of the settlers developed, with a nationalistic use of the biblical text and the stories of Abraham. Hebron, the grave (and therefore centre) of the forefathers and foremothers is home for the fiercest settlers and centre of a veneration of the murderous settler Baruch Goldstein as a martyr.¹¹ In combination with the texts of Exodus, the Palestinians as well as the neighbouring people are seen as “Amalek” (cf. Deut. 25:17-19) who have to be destroyed or driven out of Palestine. These arguments are not only used by nationalistic Israeli groups, especially the settler’s movement.¹² They are also spread by Christian Zionists or messianic groups, who support the settlers politically for their own purposes. This support is given not only through finance and political influence but also in building up and nourishing biblicist, fundamentalist arguments to secure the settlement process. These people use the Bible to support the building of illegal settlements, with all the well-known consequences of violence—land expropriation, closures, checkpoints etc. On this Christian approach, criticizing the settlements and occupation of the Palestinian regions is seen as criticizing the Bible itself and God’s will to get the land fully into the hands of the Israeli state—his own people—as God has promised in Genesis 12.

Several reactions towards this theo-political attitude are possible. One is to insist that the Bible is not a handbook for political decisions and is not accepted as a common basis for life. In fact, any political organization has to insist on a political basis and laws, including human rights standards, international laws and treaties. The settlements are based on an occupier’s law¹³ that ignores the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), and unfortunately the settlers are allowed to act even against Israeli law. Nevertheless, if the politicians responsible are influenced by a literal understanding of the Bible, this will influence their political stance, as shown clearly by US policy in recent years.

One of the most urgent duties for Western churches and the World Council of Churches is to react to these challenges—and to react on several different levels. They cannot be tackled merely by separating theology and politics on a theoretical level nor by setting up projects on a practical level. They have to be tackled through a differentiated theological stance and the will to challenge this deadly theology. The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) is good and helpful in documenting and partly supporting Palestinians in conflicts with settlers and military forces of Israel. But another important task is to react to the theological support and grounding of the occupation. There are two aspects of Christian theology to challenge: a) The theological tradition of Jewish-Christian dialogue, which in order to take responsibility for the Shoah, and its prehistory in Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, puts itself on the side of Israel unconditionally¹⁴ and b) the theological tradition of Christian fundamentalism, claiming the everlasting promise to Abraham to be fulfilled in making the West Bank fully part of Israel. These different tasks are taken up in the various activities and theological debates of WCC and other Christian institutions. 

This paper discusses only the biblical arguments for Abraham’s promise of the land as being fulfilled through the state of Israel. What can be said to this biblicist approach from the perspective of biblical theology and exegesis? The following remarks aim to give a hermeneutical key for what is to be learned from the work with the paradigm of Abraham and what has to be stressed in a theological debate about biblical justification of Israel’s use of land. 

The relation of biblical text and history: necessary differentiations 

Differentiating biblical and modern terminology

If we talk about Genesis 12 and the Abraham paradigm relating to “promised land” we have to clarify what precisely we are talking about. The gap between biblical times and terminology and modern times and terminology is not easy to bridge. A similar name is not a guarantee for a similar meaning. One of the dangers is a continuous use of “Israel” that doesn’t differentiate between “Israel” in the biblical sense (“Israel” is used in very different ways within the Bible itself and needs to be differentiated even in biblical terms!) and the modern state of Israel, or the Israelis as people, or Israel used for the Jewish people as a whole. The same is true for other terms such as “land” or “Abraham”.  

For many problematic uses of “promised land”, it is less the biblical text as such than the exegesis of these texts that contributes to a theological legitimization of the violent oppression or even expulsion of Palestinians in order to gain land for the state of Israel. There is an urgent need for a meticulous terminology in not confusing history and story or identifying historical and modern terminology. This should be underlined for the sake of Christian God-talk as well as for the sake of the Palestinians and Israelis. Constructing other people’s identity (for Palestinians or Israelis or Jews) as it is done by Christian Zionist theology (or even Protestant dogmatic theology) is paternalistic and unacceptable. Even if one were to insist on using biblical terms directly as a political basis, there would still be some problems concerning Abraham and the concept of land in Abraham’s paradigm. The Bible itself does not back this interpretation.

Abraham’s stories as theological (in fact fictional), not historical texts

The stories about Abraham are theological texts, but they use the form of a historical narrative. They are by no means “historical” in the modern sense of telling what (more or less) really happened at the time narrated. The interest in writing “history” in a modern sense only started in modern times in Europe with the rise of historicism. For the ancient Near East the normative time was the past and any changes had to be found in the past or the beginning of creation. This can clearly be noticed in the setting of the ideal time: it is paradise at the beginning of creation. Texts of the ancient Near East as well as biblical texts have a very different agenda concerning “history”. They are literary stories that deal with problems of their time in form of stories of the past. In fact these stories are either new or taken up and retold and reworked through a redactor – and sometimes retold and reworked several times. After the redaction of the Torah was finalized (this seems to be at the beginning of the 4th century BCE) this process was transformed in re-telling the biblical stories within the literature of early Judaism. Texts such as the Book of Jubilees, the Testament of Abraham and other texts of early Judaism can be described as a re-written Bible.¹⁵ It is the same process of reworking the stories of the past to promote relevant theological positions. If in fact the stories of Sarah and Abraham convey historical information, it is not regarding the narrated time of Abraham, but regarding the time they are written. They portray the forefathers and foremothers as acting as models for the problems of their time, and these backgrounds can be reconstructed. Abraham and Sarah, as they are narrated, are figures of a narrative.  

Two lines of the scientific theories in Old Testament studies support this view, but that can only be indicated here.

a) Archaeology in the Holy Land was started in order to prove the “historical” basis of the biblical stories. After more than 100 years of archaeology there are more and more confirmations that the history of the land Palestine and the peoples living there differs very much from the story as it is told in the Bible.¹⁶ Put this together with the ongoing and matching research of the exegesis of the Old Testament, and the theological nature of the texts as narratives comes to the foreground.

b) Today there is a great variety of methods in analyzing biblical texts: from historical-critical method to canonical approach¹⁷ to literary criticism and reader-response-criticism. Most researches interpret the biblical text as being written after the Exile (586 BCE), reflecting these traumatic experiences and trying to articulate a theology that still claims JHWH as God of Israel and transforms it to the new conditions of Israel’s life in Babylon. This is also true for most of the texts about Abraham and Sarah. Therefore Abraham’s starting point for his journey to Palestine reflects the way from Babylon on – just like the people of Israel who hoped to go back the same way. Abraham is narrated with positive and negative sides, aspects of identity building processes (e.g, circumcision as part of the covenant), and attitudes towards foreign people (in Egypt, Gen. 12:10-20), towards law (Genesis 15) and the Temple in Jerusalem (Genesis 22) are put on him. The effect of these long processes of redaction is a great diversity and plurality in the narratives of Abraham – in fact there are many fathers Abraham.¹⁸ The plurality also within the reception – from Abraham as the true and first observer of the law (Book of Jubilees) to Abraham as a person of belief only (Paul) proves that the biblical text offers all these various aspects of Abraham that can be identified and elaborated through further interpretation. They bear testimony to the different process of the emergence of the text.  

Not only Abraham! The promise to end the barrenness of Sarah

What belongs to the Abraham paradigm with regards to its meaning? What characteristics or personal qualities or values are conveyed by “Abraham”? Very often Gen. 12:1-9 is seen as the Abraham paradigm, covering all the promises Abraham is given throughout the following narratives. Gen. 12:1-9 seems in a way to sum up Gen. 11:27-Genesis 25. As with any summary it overlooks the various stories and is therefore – as with any overture – written at a very late date (see the next point). Gen. 12:1-9 outlines Abraham’s journey to Canaan in response to the word of God, his travel through the country, his building altars and worshipping Elohim until he comes to Beersheba, the promise from God of a “land that I will show you” (v. 1) and the promise of being a great nation.

Many scholars see a break between v. 9 and v. 10. The endangering of Sarah by Abraham (Gen. 12:10-20) and the totally selfish argument of Abraham are seen as one of the earlier traditions about Sarah and Abraham.¹⁹ In a way Abraham and Sarah represent through this wandering the Egypt part of the history of the exile as well as they represent Babylon through their way from Ur and Haran. Egypt is the second diaspora of the Israelites during and after the Exile. But even if we consider Gen. 12:1-9 alone, this summary is with regard to its contents not sufficient to be called the Abraham paradigm. It is more the tradition of interpretation that has singled out this piece of text than the text itself which actually starts from Gen. 11:27 and unfolds itself until Genesis 25. The topoi “land” and “Abraham” alone do not cover the entire story. Without an heir there would be nobody to inherit the land, but an heir is only possible through his wife.

It is patriarchal interpretation that highlights this particle of text and ignores the women of Abraham, who are necessary for the promise to be fulfilled. Indeed, the starting point of the story of Sarah and Abraham is found in Gen. 11:27. Abraham and Sarah are part of his father’s journey to Haran. But “Sarai was barren; she had no child.” (Gen. 11:30) The fact of her barrenness is stressed: to add “no child” repeats it. Therefore, at the beginning of the story the main problem is underlined.²⁰ Abraham then gets the call of God (Gen. 12:1) to leave the region of his childhood and go to a land that will be shown to him; a land that will be given to his offspring. This call is often interpreted as a test of Abraham’s obedience. But the real problem is not leaving home, it is the timing. At this point in the story, Abraham still has several possibilities to have sons and daughters; Sarah has none. But the call to leave exacerbates the problem of Sarah’s barrenness. For Abraham, leaving the family cuts out any possibility of a second marriage within the extended family. He no longer has the chance to remarry within his clan and have children with other wives from his clan. Now the barrenness of Sarah is no longer her problem alone but also Abraham’s. And the barrenness of both creates the suspense: how can the promise to be a great nation or people in Gen. 12:7 be realized? This masterly introduction of human hopelessness and divine promise sets the story in motion.

In the end, Abraham has no land to possess on his own (except the cave for Sarah in Genesis 23).²¹ He lives in a convivium with other people and this is not seen as bad. What is fulfilled is the promise of heirs. Three wives and eight sons stand at the end of the story (Gen. 25:1-6) and they are spread over the whole region. They also are depicted as part of the Abrahamic “nation building”, and the brothers are set in a complex relation to one another. Ishmael is part of the covenant (Genesis 17); he also is the father of a blessed great nation (Genesis 25).²² Father Abraham has to be shared with the Arabs of the whole region in the east and south, who have called themselves Ishmaelites since the fourth century BCE.²³

Yes, the problem of the barrenness at the beginning of the story is solved in the end! And Abraham’s offspring lives in the land and its surrounding regions, as promised in Genesis 12. But what does this mean in terms of property, ownership or possession?

Abraham and Sarah as a model for living in exile

What “land” will mean to Abraham and Sarah unfolds its meaning throughout the story. The narrative explicates what land, people, promise are thought of and in what way these issues are set into reality. Most of the texts were written during the exile and post-exile period (after 586 BCE) after the land was lost! These texts discuss these problems by using remembered narratives, and in doing so they construct their history as well as their future. This is necessary in building up a new identity to explain how Israel is able to live in Judah/Jerusalem under Babylonian and later Persian rule, how the diaspora communities of Babylon and Egypt can relate themselves to the people in Judah, how the people of Judah are related to the wider region and its inhabitants. How this identity is constructed depends on the context. The concepts also differ in social levels, class, gender and even ethnic affiliation. Not every voice is represented equally, some voices have to be reconstructed, and some voices may have been lost.

There are very different answers given in the texts about “Abraham” and “promised land”, as there may have been shared answers about how to cope with living in exile and later in the diaspora in Babylon/Egypt, but also how to live in the land under foreign rulers.

Therefore, the Abraham-Sarah texts discuss such problems as:

• How to live in a land under foreign rule

• How to worship God without a temple

• How to settle in an unknown, even possibly hostile, land

• How to rely on God’s promise for a better future without results at hand

• What does this “promise” mean after the historical catastrophe of the loss of Jerusalem?

Abraham and Sarah are living a mirror-image of the life of the people in exile.

• Ur (=Babylon) was the origin for Abraham and Sarah, from where they went to a land unknown to them and landed in Canaan. The exiled population went back to the roots of Abraham and Sarah, into Babylon, unknown to them.

• Abraham went forth on the call of God, but the exiled people had to go on the call of the Babylonian rulers, seen as a punishment of God.

• Abraham and Sarah lived their lives long only on the hope for the fulfilment of the promise of God, even without a sign of this fulfilment.

• Abraham and Sarah managed to live in a land with foreign people and foreign rulers.

• Abraham worshipped God without a temple in calling on his name and in direct contact with God.

Later on, the narrative about Abraham and Sarah may also function as encouragement for those in the diaspora: Palestine or Judah may be a forlorn and poor place compared with the living conditions in the diaspora.²⁴ The narrative could be understood as a call to overcome the hesitations, to come back to their forefathers and foremothers and occupy the land as Abraham and Sarah did. Occupying here is understood in a totally different sense from Deuteronomy.

The many and various concepts of land within the Abraham-Sarah paradigm

If there is a process of “Text zu Land” (from text to land), the question is how to deal with the conflicting concepts of land. Interwoven into the stories about Abraham, Sarah and Hagar and their sons, these concepts are very different.

• Land as a place for the more important people who will be Abraham’s and Sarah’s offspring and live on the land (Genesis 12);

• Land that will be such a place in future after 400 years of exile in Egypt (Genesis 15, late Pentateuchal redaction);²⁵

• Land on which it is possible to live without possessing it (Genesis 23);

• Land with different other people to live with (Genesis 14; 20);

• Land that is not sufficient (Abraham has to leave the land because of hunger Genesis 12; 20);

• Land that can be shared, because it has enough for all (Abraham-Lot);

• Land that is defined through very different borders (Gen. 13:14; 15; 25);

Abraham never possesses the land, never kills or expels people from the land in order to take it as a living. He can share the space with Lot, and he leaves without hesitation when there is not enough to live on. Abraham’s problem is not land but again his failing offspring.

Many promised lands: the question of borders

As I noted at the beginning, the same word does not always entail the same meaning. What it means to possess land is exemplified through stories, and it is not possible to combine these stories in a single concept. This can be shown with the example of the borders of the promised land. Borders are one of the main problems within the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Any attempt to justify any borders through texts related to Abraham is confronted with contradictory concepts regarding the extension of the land. Three of these concepts will suffice to illustrate the problem.

First is the border concept presented when God leads Abraham onto a hill and shows him the land of his not yet born offspring.

“The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” So Abram moved his tent, and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to the Lord.” (Gen. 13:14ff)

Ernst Axel Knauf identified the hill geologically as “height Nr. 913” and asked, “What would Abraham have seen?” And he reconstructs that the biblical notion of what Abraham would have seen is far from being a fictional landscape. Indeed, he would see from Beth El in the north to Beth Zur in the south, which is a well-known territory. It is the province “Jehud” during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian period.²⁶ Gen. 13:14ff is directed to the people who live in the province Jehud at that time. They are told that this province is indeed the land that was promised to Abraham. At the same time, the text attempts to stop any dreams of a land much bigger than Jehud, of reconquering the north, or of a revolt against Babylonian or Persian rule. This promise is to strengthen those who stayed behind in Jehud. They indeed can claim to be the offspring of Abraham and that the land as given to them. This is a clear position against the theology of those who are still in Babylon or even those who came back from Babylon and tried to take over the rule in Jehud. The struggle over the leading positions between those from the Exile and those who had stayed in the country can be sensed in Nehemiah. Those coming back from the Exile claim that the “people of the land” are the ones who caused the catastrophe and are not the one to lead the country. Gen. 13:14 is comfort and reinforcement for the Judeans and a challenge to the other, returning side.

Very different is the second concept of borders in Genesis 15: Abraham falls into a deep sleep and receives the promise of innumerable offspring. He divides in two animals that are consumed by fire (foreshadowing the burnt offerings of the temple) and gets the promise that his offspring will live in a country from the Nile to the Euphrates – but in the future, and only at the end of exile and diaspora.

Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” (Gen. 15:13-21)

Genesis 15 is one of the latest texts and belongs to the redaction of the Torah. It connects Exodus and Genesis by linking the Exodus story to the Abraham traditions (especially Gen. 15:14-16). It includes the diaspora of Egypt and Babylon, naming the Nile and Euphrates, and enumerating different peoples within these borders. The names of the peoples are mostly fictive or didn’t any longer exist at that time – and some never existed.²⁷ Genesis 15 is the most far-reaching description of land and its borders. At that time the Persians were rulers over a vast empire of which Jehud was a very small province, with no possibility of political self-determination. But the Jewish communities in the empire had a kind of civil and religious autonomy. Against this background, the concept bears an eschatological note and reclaims any landscape with Judeans in it as the inheritance of Abraham. Maybe that eschatological note conforms to Is. 19:23-25, as Knauf suggests.²⁸ But it also can be understood as reflecting the diaspora. Living there can be interpreted as the beginning of the fulfilment of the divine promise, if the borders of the rivers are not seen as political borders for an independent country. If the rivers are borders of the spreading Jewish communities, the promise is fulfilled through the diaspora, where Judeans – beginning to become the Jewish communities – could live, all in all, an acceptable life.  

Thirdly, Genesis 25 belongs to the Priestly code and holds a different view of land. It leaves out Egypt and the Euphrates, but it depicts as land the region of Syria, Palestine and northern Arabia, where all eight sons of Abraham are living. It extends from the south (with Ishmael) to the west (Isaac) and the east (the six sons of Keturah) and covers the wider region of Jordan including the desert regions in the south and north Arabia. Again: No definite borders in a political sense, but a region with people thought of belonging together. Genesis 25 (as well as Genesis 17) builds up a regional identity within the Persian empire. It unites and connects people as belonging together that live in between empires, here with Persia as the ruler of the land. It is more a concept of space than of of land, a concept of people within the space who belong together through circumcision, their common father, a covenant with God, and the promise to be a great nation. Genesis 25 binds the people together without possessing a land with borders. It is the same possibility as in Genesis 12: living on the land without ruling or possessing it. This is according to the promise of Gen. 12:1-2. Abraham is called to a land where he will be a great nation and has a great name. Nothing is said about ruling it! Instead Genesis discusses the relation to other peoples.

Abraham and Sarah in Egypt: depicting the diaspora

Genesis 12 names the land to where Abraham is sent Canaan; he wanders through it from north to south and then further to Egypt because of hunger (Gen. 12:10-20). Canaan was the name the Egyptians used for Palestine; Abraham is mainly bound to places where he builds an altar or stays. He seems to stay only a short time, then he leaves the land and wanders further south to Egypt. There are not only different concepts of land, but also different concepts of Egypt, the Pharaoh, and his people. Egypt is depicted as a hostile country of oppression in Genesis 15, but Genesis 12 differs strongly in this respect. In the beginning Abraham fears that the Egyptians are brutal. He has to learn that Egypt is a friendly and nourishing place and that the Egyptians respect the law, even for foreigners. Abraham is the one who is full of prejudices and hostility (Gen. 12:10-20). He has to learn through Sarah’s fate that these prejudices fall back on him and Sarah in a destructive and endangering way. God has to intervene in order to save Sarah and his own promise of heirs. The same line is followed in Genesis 20 about the kings of the South, where Abraham is described as ger, a foreigner. Again, the kings of the land are not as evil as Abraham fears. The only conflict about land and water erupts within his own family: Lot and Abraham have to part (Genesis 13).

This short overview clarifies that in Genesis the promise of land for the offspring of Abraham is conceptualized in very different ways depending on the theological context of the texts. Totally different from the theological traditions of Genesis and in sharp contrast with them are the concepts of the Deuteronomistic tradition. There, land obviously is construed exclusively, in possessing it, with the licence to expel those who live there and take it over. Deut. 7:22 asks Israel to comfort itself with the thought that the other people around them are meant to be eaten by the not yet vanished beasts rather than themselves. In the same line, the book of Joshua describes a total conquest of the land with no other people left.

These are at first sight terrible texts when compared to biblical standards such as Gen. 1:27, where all human beings are created in God’s image. Are these passages texts of terror?²⁹ A closer look shows us that even these texts are written at a time where Israel was defeated and had lost its land. Many references indicate that they are written to explain this loss—even the book of Joshua. A lot of passages tie together living in the land with conditions: Everybody has to fulfil the entire law—otherwise the land is lost. Promise and curse often go together. Deuteronomy and Joshua tell through their story why Jerusalem was destroyed. The condition (living according to the law) was fulfilled only once and will never be fulfilled again. Joshua is not written to repeat the process.³⁰ It is written as a narrative to explain what Israel could have had—and that it is not God who is responsible for the disaster but the people themselves. Even within the book of Joshua there is an indication that not even then are the whole people able to stick to the law (cf. Joshua 7). The absoluteness of defeat is explained through the absoluteness of failure of Israel.

What can only be indicated here has been described on various occasions. There is a plurality of concepts of promised land, even within the stories around Abraham, and even more within the whole Bible. There is not just one idea of the land, of the borders, of the way to live on the land, or the people on it. By no means do we have only one concept of land, of promise, of Abraham’s offspring. Habel identified six concepts of land,³¹ and maybe there are more still. The different biblical texts reflect the plurality of theological positions during Old Testament times, as we can study, for example, in the controversies of Jeremiah with other prophets (Jeremiah 7) or with the women of Judah (Jeremiah 44).  

Even if we can now read one conclusive Abraham-Sarah-narrative after the processes of redaction and canonization, we have to be aware that this redaction has bundled together texts of different times and opinions, written in very different contexts. The redaction of the Torah binds together the creation stories, the narratives about the forefathers and foremothers, the Exodus together with the traditions of Sinai and the wandering in the desert, and the traditions of the book of Deuteronomy. Altogether these narratives represent very different theological concepts that stand in opposition and conflict.

In this respect, the Bible also represents what is found later on in Jewish religious literature: the decision to preserve not just one of the voices but all or at least most of them as the basis for further theological debate. And this debate went on, not any longer within the Torah but outside the Torah, in prophetic texts, in wisdom texts, in texts that are thought of as “apocrypha” and last but not least in commentaries bound to the Mishnah and then the Talmud.

The stream of commenting and discussing with arguments started with the Torah and never stopped. This is the case until now, and therefore there is not just one Jewish or Christian interpretation of “promised land”. Whoever opts for one biblical text as a foundation or legitimization for political decisions falls into a fundamentalism that is bound to their political option. Contrary to their own claims, fundamentalists don’t have the Bible as their agenda; they have their own political agenda that leads them to use certain biblical texts and interpretations. Therefore, hermeneutical questions have to be considered.

3. Hermeneutical reflections

Despite the missing historical background, the biblical text was and is meaningful for religious communities (Jewish and Christians) in building up their identity.³² In fact, often a myth or a fictional story is more relevant for building up identity or in influencing actions, even on a political level, than pure facts. Felt discrimination, for example, or narrated oppression, even if it is not relevant for our own life, can mobilize more constructive or destructive energy than any real history. This is as true for modern times³³ as for ancient times.

Therefore, the texts about Abraham and the divine promise have a certain impact on identity-building processes. This was and is a historical fact for the times the texts came into being as well as in the following times when religious communities took the texts as their religious basis through canonization.

In what spirit do we read the texts ourselves?

Reading the Bible is an interaction. It is a discussion between two subjects, the reader and the text. Indeed, whether and how a biblical text is taken into consideration is clearly bound to the questions, options and needs of any reader. This is not meant as a simple confirmation of everybody’s feelings. It is the same process as during the emerging of the texts. Choosing between the different concepts means that there is a necessity to clarify our own options and attitudes concerning the political basics and theological basics. It is necessary to talk about options and attitudes about how religious texts are related to modern political concepts.

Is it possible to extract whatever you need from the Bible? Is there no authoritative reading? May anybody legitimize violence in the same way as justice and freedom? If one formulates these alternatives: Yes, it is possible – and it is done! But it is exactly having conflicting stories within the same Bible that turns out to limit any simple or one-sided confirmation of our own political position. There are lots of corrections to the texts of terror in the Bible, and texts that outperform them in various respects. It seems plausible that some texts are written not to be imitated, but to illustrate the implications of violence, hate or patriarchalism. Maybe sometimes the commentators themselves were alerted by some traditions!

But how is it possible to hinder the use of texts of violence and terror to suppress texts of peace and justice? Are there texts in the Bible that can be given priority from a certain perspective?

The stories of the Bible offer experiences of human beings with God, whether for good or for bad. Some of these texts describe their situation as dominated by violence – but violence hasn’t ceased until today. The biblical texts don’t hide these realities, neither violence against (and from) women, nor slavery, hunger or the seizure of land. They tell us stories about perpetrators and their victims, not so we may imitate the perpetrators but as a starting point to recognize ourselves and the violence of our time. And they use various literary means to object to this violence. They invite us as readers to take part in the narrated world and they lead us to take a stand within the story. Our own world with our own options confronts the fictional world. Through this, our own option or attitude to the text is formed. If we have opted for a just God who stands on the side of the oppressed, we will never welcome violence against the poor even in a fictional story. Narratives of violent acts hope to produce abhorrence. This is the message they want to deliver! It strengthens the attitude that violence is not acceptable between human beings. And a text about God fighting and killing the “other” is questioned by texts about God protecting the “other”. Only those who want to oppress, expel, or kill can find support through such texts – but they have to be challenged by the other texts.

Reading these texts leads us back to our own options and attitudes. Do we want justice, or are we willing to oppress people and deprive them of human rights? These options determine how biblical texts are understood. The Abraham paradigm of a land promised to his offspring offers many possibilities, even if someone tries to read them literally and wants to legitimize political processes. It is not God’s promise to Abraham that causes the conflict. It is the conflict about land and a settler’s attitude that enables Christian and Jewish groups to refer to Abraham as legitimizing their stand. As shown, a close reading of the texts about Abraham and his wives contradicts this view – and therefore leads back to the groups themselves. What has to be questioned is the political option and attitude that lies behind the concept of promised land. Is it an option for solidarity and justice? Or for politically exclusive rights? Are not human rights valid for all in all places and all times? Or are they thought of as relative at some times? Discriminatory and oppressive attitudes have to be challenged.

What we need is a practical critique of religions³⁴ that includes the impact and consequences of religious attitudes in our discourses.³⁵ If theology should be unable to find theological answers to this critique of religious texts, it would be in fact necessary to limit such normative basics of religion, here the Bible.³⁶

But where can we get the appropriate priorities and perspectives on biblical texts? And who is able to make them effective? Who is the subject that gives priority to grace instead of law, justice instead of retaliation, delegation of vengeance to God instead of violent action? The question of the attitude and option of the community arises. The spirituality of living together coincides with the spirituality of reading and understanding the Bible and can lead to concrete political stands or actions.  

One example is the United Reformed Church of South Africa, where this Christian community has read the Bible in accordance with their political options. The Afrikaner idea of being the chosen people legitimized apartheid.³⁷ But the United Reformed Church, together with the World Council of Churches and the wider community of Christians stood against this interpretation. This “correction” together with the actions that followed contributed the end of the apartheid. No authority can really hinder biblical interpretations that legitimize oppression. It needs the resistance of all other Christian communities to stand firm against an interpretation that supports oppression and violence in the name of Abraham and God’s promise.

Situations of this sort challenge the picture or notion of God that we have. Is there an option for an inclusive concept of God, who loves everybody unconditionally? Is there an attitude of unlimited solidarity with the poor and oppressed? And concerning the Abraham paradigm: do we read the texts in an inclusive or exclusive sense? Is there an option for texts that demand pro-existence for others within and outside the land?

Biblical interpretations that encourage oppression seem to have an unholy appeal. In order to restrict these effects it is necessary to strengthen the commitment of Christian people and communities. Already too many confessions came too late!

Footnotes