With God we will gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies. (Psalms 60:12)
Human concerns and needs are reflected in the characteristics of the god they worship. We can chalk up the many faces and changing nature of “most high” supernatural agent in the monotheistic religions to this fact: gods are designed and revised to meet the needs of a people. As a group leader, a god an lead his people in many ways. One way is in war.
As Karen Armstrong and many others have pointed out, “Yahweh was the god of war.”(13) In fact, that was the original specialty of the high god of the Old Testament. And it created a problem. As Armstrong relates, “He had no expertise in agriculture or fertility, and so many Israelites, as a matter of course, performed the ancient rituals of Baal and Anat to ensure a good harvest, because Baal was the power that fertilized the land.”(14) This provoked jealousy in Yahweh (i.e., the supporters of this god).
Why would the Biblical god be so concerned about warfare in some books of the Bible, unconcerned in others? Times and social environments change. For example, during Jesus’ time, the issue wasn’t so much about a boundary war, but about a revolution within that boundary.
Primate alphas lead their group in war. The ‘most powerful man on earth’ was once considered to be the president of the United States. Why? Because of the great resources he could control, including military might. Even today the U.s. president serves as the commander-in-chief. As for the Bible alpha, in early incarnations he definitely led his people on campaigns to attack and defeat the others. As expressed in verses such as these:
Blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” (Genesis 14:20)
The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Exodus 14:14)
All these kings and their lands Joshua conquered in one campaign, because the LORD, the God of Israel, fought for Israel. (Joshua 10:42)
Worship the LORD your God; it is he who will deliver you from the hand of all your enemies.” (2 Kings 17:39) (15)
As a mighty, supernatural alpha, a god is also capable of empowering his earthly captains. Messiahs justify and buttress their own roles by declaring they have a god on their side. They have a special relationship. And so they draw upon preexisting sentiments within their group, and the innate instincts of primates in general, to their own advantage. Chimpanzees, baboons, macaques, and humans all take more seriously other primates that have a close alliance with an alpha. So Jesus didn’t say, “I am god.” Rather he spoke of being the very special “son of.” That way he could justify his actions as a religious revolutionary. This very old tactic is still used today. “I have a special relationship with the greatest one.”
The god-as-war-leader phenomenon is not exclusive to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tree of belief. For example, in the 5th century BCE these words were spoken about the Egyptian god Ra (also Anum-Ra):
“Hail Ra in your rising,
Anum, the Might of the Gods….
You pass by the sandbank of the waving water, and your enemies are felled.” (16)
Now that’s a god you’d want to follow. Provided your needs included battling enemies.
Why do gods sometimes have the face of warriors? Because the creators of gods are primates. Primates are group-living social species with the need and instinct to protect their territory and resources. What’s more, we tend to forget that in ‘primitive’ cultures there was no distinct line between religion and politics. In fact, you might say that religion served as the rudimentary form of government. As Scott Atran wrote, “In tribal cultures, religion was inseparable from polity.”(20) Even today, it seems many citizens are unwilling to make a complete separation. Why? My guess is that people tend to relate better to the idea that do’s and don’ts and should’s and shouldn’ts appropriately come from an entity with parent-like connotations: a committed concern for it’s ‘children’ and unquestionable authority.
There may, in fact, be a link between the war-god (outside-threat-oriented) and the law-making, moralizing (do’s and don’ts, inside-threat oriented). That link is group size coupled with the existence of competing groups. As Frans L. Roes and Michel Raymond have outlined in their paper, “Belief in Moralizing Gods,”
“Cross-cultural analysis support this line of thought: more competition between societies is found in environments rich in resources and larger societies tend to occupy these environments, large societies engage in external conflicts at higher rates and are more often characterized by beliefs in moralizing gods . . . we speculatively picture the historical chain of events giving rise to a belief in moralizing gods.”(21)
The moralizing god says, “You must behave in a way that maintains group harmony. And you must help protect the group.” This second element of a god as war-leader and troop-recruiter is reflected in these two verses from different religious trees:
“If, however, you do not fight this religious war, then you will certainly incur sins for neglecting your duties and thus lose your reputation as a fighter.” Bhagavad Gita, 2:33 (19)
“Therefore let those fight in the way of Allah, who sell this world’s life for the hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward.” Qur’an, 4.74 (20)
What of those today who worship a god with the face of a war general? They are likely living in a setting where there is a real or perceived enemy to their way life. And so the call upon their most high commander-in-chief to lead them. The almighty.
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(13) Armstrong, K. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions, Knopf, New York, 2006, p.45
(14) Armstrong, K. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions, Knopf, New York, 2006, p.64
(15) See also: Genesis 35:5, Genesis 49:8, Deuteronomy 9:3, Deuteronomy 11:23-25, Joshua 21:44, Judges 20:35, 1 Samuel 7:10, 2 Samuel 7:23, 2 Samuel 8:6, 1 Kings 5:3, 2 Kings 19:34-35, 1 Chronicles 14:14-15, 2 Chronicles 14:13-15, Psalms 18:17, Psalms 18-29, Psalms 44:5, Ezekiel 30:22
(16) Quirke, S. The Cult of Ra: Sun-Worship in Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson, New York, 2001, p. 61
(17) Atran, S., In God’s We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, p. 120
(18) Roas, F. L. & Raymond, R., “Belief in Moralizing Gods,” Evolution and Human Behavior, Vol. 24(2), 2003.
(19) Prabhupada, A.C. Bhaktivedanta, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, Collier Books, NY, 1972.
(20) http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=114839
