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Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God. By Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014, 352 pp., $16.99 paper.
Many contemporary readers of the Bible are struck by the seeming divide between the God revealed in Jesus Christ and the God who commands the destruction of whole nations and the obliteration of Canaanites during Israel's conquest of the Promised Land. While many Christians simply do not think about the possible difficulties of a loving God commanding genocide, this has not stopped critics of Christianity such as the New Atheists from using portions of Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges as ammunition for their assaults on Christian faith. Truth be told, this seeming contradiction between a God of love and God of wrath is not something new, for as early as the mid-second century a follower of Jesus named Marcion argued that the deities of the OT and NT were different entities. Clearly, there is much at stake in the answer to this question: did God really command genocide in the OT?
To posit an answer to this difficult query comes Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God by Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan. As the title makes clear, this book is dedicated to considering whether or not God really commanded the people of Israel to commit genocide during their conquest of the land of Canaan. After extensive examination, Copan and Flannagan argue that no, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus did not command the senseless slaughter of "everything that breathes" during the Israelite invasion of the Promised Land. Instead, they posit that a careful, contextually and theologically informed, and...