The violence of the Old Testament preserves the messianic bloodline. When we understand the four reasons God commands violence in the Old Testament, it frees us to rightly understand Israel’s conquest of Canaan.ġ. Why is it that evangelicals often seem to misunderstand God’s command to “show no mercy” to the Canaanites as simply an instruction to “kill a lot of bad guys?” Could it be that the reason we often sanitize the violence of the Old Testament is because we don’t understand why it is necessary to the biblical storyline? If anyone had a heartbeat, whether soldier or man or woman or child or livestock, it had to be stopped. In his call for Israel to war against the Canaanites, God wanted to be clear that he demanded the life of all of them. In his order at the diner, Ron Swanson wanted to be clear that he demanded all the bacon and eggs. There’s a danger that we reinterpret God’s call to Israel to “completely destroy” the Canaanites in Deuteronomy 13 and 20 as hyperbole for simply defeating their enemies. Ron Swanson’s concern that his order would be misunderstood reminds me of a similar concern I have about evangelical approaches to Israel’s conquest of Canaan. Concerned the server will misunderstand him, he says “Wait, I’m worried what you just heard was, ‘Give me a lot of bacon and eggs.’ What I said was, ‘give me all the bacon and eggs you have.’ Do you understand?” In a brief clip, he attempts to order all the bacon and eggs at a diner.
See also Ares Roman Mythology Romulus and Remus.If you know anything about the TV show Parks & Rec, you know that Ron Swanson loves bacon. The Campus Martius, a large field outside Rome where soldiers exercised, was sacred to Mars. They also honored the goddess Bellona, who appeared as Mars's sister, wife, and daughter in various myths. Soldiers throughout the empire offered sacrifices to Mars before and after battles.
Ritual ceremony that follows a set pattern
Pantheon all the gods of a particular culture For many years, Roman priests continued to wear the old-fashioned armor and to perform ritual war dances during the March festivals of Mars. Numa also established an order of priests called the Salii to guard the shields. Believing that the shield was vital to the well-being of Rome, Numa had 11 identical shields made and hung all 12 of them in a shrine to confuse any thief who might try to steal Mars's shield. One story about Mars relates that the god's sacred shield had fallen from the sky in the time of the early Roman king Numa Pompilius. Picus, a Roman god who took the form of a woodpecker, was Mars's companion. The wolf and the woodpecker, animals involved in the saving of the twins, were sacred to Mars. Romulus later founded the city of Rome, and the Romans believed that Romulus's divine father would come to their aid in times of crisis or disaster. According to the story of the founding of Rome, Mars was the father of Romulus and Remus, twin boys born to a human priestess and raised by a wolf. Mars's high place of honor in the Roman pantheon comes in part from his role as an ancestor of Rome. The Romans honored him with festivals in his month, March, which occurs at a time of the year when new growth begins in the fields and military campaigns resume after a winter break. As the Romans became increasingly warlike, Mars gradually developed into a god of war, but he never lost his connection with agriculture and the plant world entirely. He was originally associated with vegetation and fertility. They came to identify their own war god, Mars, with the Greek war god, Ares, but Mars was a more dignified and popular figure.Īccording to legend, Juno, the queen of the gods, gave birth to Mars after being touched by a magic plant.
The Romans admired Greek culture and absorbed Greek deities into their own. He began as a protector of agriculture but later became the god of war, honored throughout the realm of the conquering Romans. Mars was a major Roman deity, second only to Jupiter* in the Roman pantheon.