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Many German translations of the Bible use the Hebrew word חרם as a ban ; ḥerem again. In the Tanakh , the Hebrew Bible , it denotes a segregation and transfer of property and persons to YHWH , the God of the Israelites .

The after conquest in the fifth book of Moses anchored spell bid demanded all the surviving people of a conquered city Canaan to kill. Some interpreters call this commandment the ordination of extermination . This should preserve the uniqueness of the Israelites, make ethnic mixing and the adoption of foreign cult customs taboo and exclude the appropriation of spoils of war and slave services by prisoners of war as material motives for conquest. It is not known whether the later commandment reflects real historical practice by the Israelites. The Mescha stele documents such a practice around 850 BC. For the Moabites .

term

The general basic meaning of the common Semitic root ḥrm is: “to separate”, “forbid”, “consecrate” (cf. Arabic: harem ). In Hebrew and Moabite, however, the term is modified and narrowed, since in most cases it is explained by verbs of killing, extermination and annihilation.

" Bann " in the sense of "complete killing, annihilation" is to be distinguished from other meanings of the word, for example from exclusion from a religious community such as the "church ban" (see anathema ) or a legal community ("eight and ban", see ostracism) ).

Tanakh

Oldest evidence

An ordination of annihilation is first documented extra-biblically. King Mesha of Moab boasts on the Mesha stele that he killed “all the people of the city as sacrifices for Kamosh ”, the Moabite god of war , in Atarot , and that he now has “seven thousand men and slaves and women and slaves in Nebo and prostitutes ”. The looted cult objects of the god of Israel, YHWH, were brought to the temple of Kamosch. The rest of the booty was probably distributed among the Moabite warriors.

The Old Testament scholar Walter Dietrich therefore assumes that some descriptions about the early and middle kings, when Israel had a certain military importance, have a historical core. According to 1 Kings 20:42 EU , King Ahab , who is considered a contemporary of Mesha, was rebuked  by a prophet for sparing some of their leaders instead of killing them all during a victorious campaign against the Arameans .

According to the story in 1 Sam 15  EU , King Saul is said to have received the order from the prophet Samuel during a campaign against the Amalekites : Consecrate everything that belongs to him to destruction! Do not spare it, but kill men and women, children and babies, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys! But when Saul spared the best animals and the Amalekite king Agag , he lost the favor of the "kingmaker" Samuel. While Herbert Donner viewed these texts as late and excessively exaggerated fiction, Dietrich only considered the description of the alleged conflicts between kings and prophets to be a late, deuteronomistic overprint. In reality, with the execution of the king "before YHWH", Samuel had only completed what Saul had begun with the destruction of the Amalekite cities.

Dietrich further pointed out that similar war campaigns of King David , in which women were killed, but no domestic animals ( 1 Sam 27.8 f.  EU ), or parts of the booty of the deity ( 2 Sam 8  EU etc.) were consecrated in the As a rule, they were not declared as wars of excommunication because they only served David's own political and economic goals. According to 1 Sam 30,17-26 EU, only the Amalekites were designated  as "archenemies" of Israel and "enemies of YHWH", not David, and were therefore completely killed.

Dietrich concludes from this that wars of excommunication were only called in particularly critical situations, when it was believed that the existence of the entire people and thus the power of their god was at stake. The gain of slaves and booty seemed to be of secondary importance in such exceptional situations. It is also conceivable that in a YHWH war, depending on the severity of the threat, larger parts of the booty were transferred to the deity; in a "normal" war only the life of the enemy warriors, in more severe cases also the rest of the population and the cult objects, in extreme cases the entire booty.

An episode from the time of King Hezekiah (725–696 BC) mentioned in 1 Chr 4.41  EU may also have a possible historical core .

Deuteronomistic war ideology

By far the greatest number of mentions of the ordination of annihilation can be found in the context of Deuteronomic history and originate from the religious-nationalistic war ideology of the priesthood in the late royal period and in the time of the Babylonian exile . In retrospect, the Israelites' conquest of the land in Canaan is portrayed as a rapid, almost uninterrupted sequence of extermination ordinations of the local population, which were carried out on the direct orders of YHWH (e.g. under Moses in the Negev and in the East Bank: Num 21, 3  EU , Dtn 2.34  EU , Dtn 3.6  EU , Jos 2.10  EU , then under Josua, Nun's son also in the West Bank: Jos 6.17-21  EU , Dtn 7.2  EU , Jos 10.1  EU , Jos 10,28-43  EU , Jos 11,1-23  EU ). Great emphasis is placed on establishing that no one was left alive in the conquered places. Significantly, a king plays no role at all in this context. Warfare is nothing more than a people's affair; but the one who actually wages war is YHWH himself.

A violation of the ban would doom Israel itself ( Jos 6,18  EU ) and the guilty party would have to be exterminated along with his whole family and his cattle in order to appease the wrath of God ( Jos 7,24-26  EU , Jos 22, 20  EU ). This deliberately brutal depiction of the conquest is certainly fictional and is not supported by the archaeological findings either. So was z. B. Jericho has not been inhabited for centuries when the city was supposedly doomed by Joshua. In this context, KL Younger emphasizes the similarity with Assyrian, Egyptian and Hittite war reports, which are also strongly stylized and hardly depict the actual war events. However, in the ancient oriental models, the extermination of entire cities is never religiously motivated, but only through the general “badness” or insubordination of the inhabitants.

The legal justification for the ordination of annihilation is the so-called "law of war" ( Deuteronomy 20, 1–20). Walter Dietrich considers the order that all the indigenous people of Canaan listed in Dtn 20.17  EU are to be consecrated to extermination, as a tightening of a relatively moderate pre-exilic regulation, in which the lives of women, children and old people could still be spared (and those in distant areas also remained valid Dtn 20.14  EU ). Norbert Lohfink suspects that the “law of war” came into being during the reign of King Joschiah of Judah, who wanted to use it to justify his territorial expansion policy, which was exemplarily illustrated by the conquest stories. The ban command was reinterpreted here by one of the divine vowed renunciation of loot into an extermination of the enemy population demanded by the divine, in order to counter the intimidation propaganda of Assyria with something comparable. The Jewish population should be encouraged by the idea that the assistance of YHWH alone was enough to not only defy a military superiority such as the Assurs, but even to defeat it.

Change of concept

In other text layers of the Tanach , the individual elements of the herem concept fall apart. On the one hand, the mere transfer of goods (such as houses, land and cattle) as well as services to the temple in Jerusalem could already be viewed as “setting apart” and “consecration” for the deity, and thus approached the pure offering of votive offerings. These goods were not destroyed; however, their use was reserved exclusively for priests. Goods and people once consecrated as banned property could under no circumstances be released again (e.g. Lev 27.28  EU , Num 18.14  EU ).

On the other hand, the herem term in late prophetic-apocalyptic literature was also transferred to the warfare of other peoples, for example to Sennacherib's campaign against King Hezekiah of Judah, 701 BC ( 2 Kings 19.11  EU , Is 37.11  EU ), but where YHWH continued to be the actual belligerent, even when he turned against his own people. Ultimately, the term becomes more and more a mere synonym for a crushing defeat ( Mal 3.24  EU ), or appears only as a poetic, antiquated stylistic device ( Sach 14.11  EU ).

After returning from exile in Babylon, the “ban” was no longer directed against external enemies, but primarily against one's own compatriots if they had fallen away from the Yahweh faith ( Dtn 7.26  EU ) or were guilty of similarly serious crimes such as sorcery and / or sexual intercourse with animals ( Ex 22.19  EU ). For such cases (but only after a careful examination of the evidence) not only the stoning of individuals was planned, but also the destruction of entire cities, with all gold, silver and copper being given to the "treasure of YHWH" (i.e. the temple treasure in Jerusalem ). The fact that even the apostate's cattle must be killed, and the remaining booty must be offered in a large pile as a burnt offering (“Holocaust”), corresponds to the most far-reaching form of the ban command ( Dtn 13 : 13-19  EU ). Even if Jews wanted to keep their non-Jewish wives, they were expelled from the community, whereby the confiscation of their property was also regarded as a “ban” ( Ezra 10.8  EU ). This “threatening backdrop” no longer served to ward off an external threat (which would have been impossible anyway due to the military insignificance of the returnees), but rather to maintain one's own group identity. The execution or non-execution of the ordination of annihilation was thus stylized as the standard for obedience or disobedience to YHWH, and thus as evidence of an intact or disturbed relationship between the people of Israel and their God. Apparently the fear of a loss of national-religious identity has already taken on delusional features.

In the books of the Chronicle, the consecration to go down mostly only appears in reference to the Deuteronomistic historical work; the term has apparently been supplanted by more contemporary ( Hellenistic ?) concepts of war.

In the Septuagint is herem with the Greek term anathema reproduced, originally also called a consecration gift, "that you (the gods) sits" (cf .: Luke 21  EU ). Otherwise, the meaning of anathematizein as "curse" already prevails in the New Testament ( Mk 14.71  EU , 1 Cor 16.22  EU etc.). This provided the basis for the later excommunication of the Christian churches.

Impact history

Judaism

In Judaism, the biblical term Cherem is understood as the exclusion of a person from Jewish society and / or the exclusion from religious rights and functions with a punitive character ( excommunication ). In the Babylonian Talmud , a distinction is made between the less far-reaching Nid (d) ui (temporary exclusion from the community in order to persuade a persistent wrongdoer to repent) and the severe sanction of the permanent Cherem. First of all, the Niddui is pronounced there, combined with the hope of penitence on the part of the opponent. If this bends, the niddui will be resolved within a 30-day period, provided that there is a request for revocation. Otherwise the cherem is pronounced. While a person occupied with the Niddui has limited legal capacity, those occupied with the Cherem are prohibited from all contact. In addition, they are not allowed to wash their hair or clean their clothes. In the event of death, the coffin is covered with a stone (stoning). These penalties were made even more severe in the Gaonean period. The Brit Mila was prohibited . The marriage of children of the banned persons was also prohibited. People with the cherem were treated like non-Jews, which resulted in exclusions from school, cleaning bans ( mikveh ) and the refusal to be buried in Jewish cemeteries .

The cherem was pronounced as a verdict in the synagogue on the Torah scroll, with the shofar being blown and all those present extinguishing their candles. Inflationary use of the Cherem made its importance decline.

The most famous case of Cherem was that of Baruch Spinoza .

Christianity

While the concept of the consecration of material goods through their destruction remained a singular phenomenon that never became widespread (if only because it contradicted the economic interests of the victors), the (carried out or even intended) physical destruction of hostile groups or of Groups that did not allow themselves to be integrated into the prevailing society, subsequently repeatedly justified with the Deuteronomistic demand: You should exterminate evil from among you ( Dtn 13.6  EU ). Jürgen Ebach gives as examples:

  • The sermons and calls for the First Crusade led to pogroms against the European Jews before they left for the Holy Land , who until then had largely lived undisturbed among the Christians.
  • The sense of mission of Puritan settlers in New England , and their "land grab" in the 17th century, initiated the extensive extermination of the natives in the medium term (combined with a marked climax in the witch hunt );
  • The German war theology in the First World War presented the fighting as a judgment of God, and the opponents as enemies of God. So was z. B. Liège equated with Jericho , and the professor of theology Karl Dunkmann justified the violation of Belgian neutrality with Dtn 2.26ff EU , which describes how King Sihon and his cities are doomed because they do not allow  the Israelites to pass through allowed their country.
  • Even in the rabid anti-communist rhetoric of the McCarthy era in the United States, there is still a fear of subversive elements within oneself, controlled by foreign, evil forces.

However, Ebach emphasizes that this type of interpretation was always aimed at exercising imperial rule over the subjugated or minorities who were to be converted, while the Deuteronomist ideology of war arose under exactly the opposite conditions: During the time of exile and afterwards, the Israelites themselves had to lose their religious identity and fear their physical existence, not their opponents. The ban threat against parishioners was in fact a radical act of religious self-criticism, not a missionary attempt. It is therefore part of the tragedy of history that later it was precisely the Jews who were identified as the evil element that was to be "eradicated" from the center of Christian society.

See also

literature

  • Hofreiter Christian (2012): Genocide in deuteronomy and christian interpretation. in: Interpreting Deuteronomy. Issues and approaches. Firth, DG, Johnston PS (eds), IVP Academic. ISBN 978-0-8308-3989-6
  • Jürgen Ebach: The legacy of violence. A biblical reality and its impact history. Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, Gütersloh 1980. ISBN 978-3-579-00378-8
  • Norbert Lohfink: Article ḥrm. In: Theological dictionary to the Old Testament , Vol. III, Sp. 192-213, 1982.
  • Norbert Lohfink: The layers of the Pentateuch and the war. In: ders. (Ed.) Violence and non-violence in the Old Testament. Quaestiones disputatae, Vol. 96, 1983.
  • Article Bann, II. Biblical. In: Hans Dieter Betz, and others (ed.): Religion in history and present. Concise dictionary for theology and religious studies. P. 1087, 4th edition, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-16-146941-0 .
  • Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger: Meaning and function of Herem in biblical-Hebrew texts , Biblische Zeitschrift, Vol. 38, pp. 270–275, 1994.
  • Walter Dietrich , Christian Link : The dark sides of God. Vol. 1: Arbitrariness and violence. (Here especially the chapter: JHWH and the ban pp. 195-201), 4th edition, Neukirchener Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-7887-1524-3 .
  • Walter Dietrich: Ban Wars in the early royal times. In: W. Dietrich: From David to the Deuteronomists. Studies of the Historical Lore of the Old Testament. Contributions to the science of the Old and New Testament, Vol. 156, pp. 146–156, 2002.
  • F. Crüsemann: Imagination of violence as part of the original story. Ban requirement and legal order in Deuteronomy . In: F. Schweitzer (Ed.): Religion, Politics and Violence. Pp. 343-360, Gütersloh 2006.
  • Andreas Gotzmann : Ban. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 1: A-Cl. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02501-2 , pp. 256-258.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article “ḥrm” by Norbert Lohfink, in: G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (eds.): Theological dictionary to the Old Testament , Vol. III, Sp. 193, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1982
  2. ↑ Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger: Meaning and function of Herem in biblical-Hebrew texts , Biblical Journal, Vol. 38, p. 271 f.
  3. ↑ Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church , First Volume, A bis Barcelona, ​​p. 1389, founded by Michael Buchberger , Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, ISBN 3-451-22001-6
  4. ↑ Herbert Donner: The rejection of King Saul , meeting reports of the Scientific Society at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Vol. 19/5, Steiner, Wiesbaden 1983
  5. ↑ Walter Dietrich: Bannkriege in the early royal period , 2002, p. 151 ff.
  6. ↑ Walter Dietrich, Christian Link: The dark pages of God , p. 199, 2002.
  7. ↑ a b Walter Dietrich: Bannkriege in the early royal times , p. 147, 2002
  8. ↑ Walter Dietrich, Christian Link: The dark pages of God , p. 192, 2002.
  9. ^ KL Younger: Ancient Conquest Accounts: a Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing , Journal of the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement series 98, Sheffield 1990.
  10. ↑ Norbert Lohfink: The layers of the Pentateuch and the war , pp. 70, 74 f., 1983
  11. ↑ Walter Dietrich: Bannkriege in the early royal times , p. 149, 2002
  12. ^ Walter Dietrich: Bannkriege in the early royal times , pp. 148 f, 151; 2002
  13. ↑ Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger: Meaning and function of Herem in biblical-Hebrew texts , Biblische Zeitschrift, Vol. 38, pp. 274–276
  14. ↑ Walter Dietrich, Christian Link: The dark pages of God , p. 201, 2002.
  15. ^ Julius H. Schoeps, Neues Lexikon des Judentums, Cherem , p. 164
  16. ↑ The nidui is initially fixed for 30 days, but can be extended for a further 30 days and is only canceled if the person concerned shows genuine repentance and asks permission to return to the community. Otherwise, at the end of the set time, the Nidui will pass into the Cherem.
  17. ↑ Jürgen Ebach: The legacy of violence. A biblical reality and its impact history , especially chapter: Stations in the impact history , pp. 70-106.