Len’s Reviews > God's Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible > Status Update
Len
is on page 270 of 304
"...the entire myth of conquest—which extends through several biblical books and is internally wildly inconsistent—and kicks it off with a picture of going up against giants. The Goliath story, written long after the time of David, reinforces the image of the monstrous enemy. These giant stories aren’t reports of monsterization in the moment, but retrojections imagining Israelites as heroic monster-slayers."
— Aug 28, 2024 06:59PM
Like flag
Len’s Previous Updates
Len
is on page 270 of 304
"Let’s not gape in amazement that such things were said and done, as if they’re a thing of the past. We still do this. Those monstrous descriptions of Jews and Muslims haven’t gone anywhere, and continue to serve as justification for violence." I guess that's the closest we'll get to this author acknowledging the dehumanization of Palestinians by Israel
— Aug 28, 2024 07:03PM
Len
is on page 270 of 304
"I’m writing this as I live on Lenape tribal lands where European colonists, seeing what is now the United States as their promised land, their Canaan to conquer, monsterized diverse Native peoples in many ways." Yes, AND?GIRL COME ON THE LINK IS RIGHT THERE
— Aug 28, 2024 07:02PM
Len
is on page 270 of 304
I can't believe the author writes this with ZERO mention of the occupation of Palestine: "This pattern in the biblical writers’ views of the distant past, times already ancient to them, doesn’t only reinterpret the Israelites as heroic—it reinscribes God as reliably on the side of the conquerors of indigenous populations."
— Aug 28, 2024 07:01PM
Len
is on page 270 of 304
"Real-time monsterization does one kind of damage. The fantasy of having long ago vanquished a monstrous enemy—with God’s help—does another. As the inhabitants of Canaan are reinterpreted as monstrous, we witness the biblical writers’ creation of monsters, and of their own identity in contrast: They are giants, We are altogether distinct, and what’s more, we’re heroic and God is demonstrably on our side."
— Aug 28, 2024 07:00PM
Len
is on page 270 of 304
"Biblical giants are born to be conquered. Their form intimates a kind of ancientness: they are the Before people. Even the giants who have nothing to do with the Israelites—the indigenous populations conquered by the Ammonites, Moabites, and so on—are the Before people of those lands...The monsterized foreigners are giants to be slain, food to be eaten, and animals to be killed."
— Aug 28, 2024 06:58PM
