Allegory and the Ban

The third and fifth papers of the SBL war session were not as helpful, so I will not discuss them here, but I will talk about the fourth. This was entitled “Allegorical Interpretation of the Ban and the Plain Sense of the Text: Reading the Herem Law for Ethics” and given by Jerome Creach. He sought to read the herem laws theologically, i.e., through a theological lens. He ended up following Moberly’s reading of the herem laws, who read them in light of the Shema. Moberly argues that the herem laws were metaphorical laws to show how one is to love Yahweh with all of one’s heart. These nations are not the actual nations, but are representative for various internal evil tendencies. The Rahab and Gibeonite stories are indicative of this, as they are not exterminated. The other panelists were not impressed with Creach, and all of them said that we should not try to play exegetical games with the text, but instead recognize its inherent violence and deal with them as they are. Deal with them for most of the panelists mean reject the text.

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