125 8 What about War and Violence in the Old Testament? Ingrid E. Lilly O frequent critiques of the Old Testament is that its angry God sanctions and even instigates religious warfare. In the next breath, the critic oen points to the Crusades as a concrete example of how Christians acted on this biblical sanctioning. Indeed, in the fol- lowing excerpts of a Crusade speech, we see countless allusions to Old Testament ideas: [we will ght] a race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race . . . ey destroy the altars, aſter hav- ing defiled them with their uncleanness ... and the holy places which are now treated with ignominy and irrever- ently polluted with the filth of the unclean ... [Crusaders,] wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves. at land which, as the Scripture says, ‘ floweth with milk and honey’ was given by God into the power of the children of Israel. Jerusalem is the center of the earth ... [l]et this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: ‘It