The manifesto – entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence” – is a 1500-page text, which aims to reveal the “truth” about the state of Western Europe today. ⁵ Essentially, it is argued that an “Islamic Imperialism” is taking hold in Western Europe and that this is supported by a “totalitarian” political correctness embedded in the dominant forces in European politics, higher education, and media. The manifesto is compiled in the name of a “Western European Resistance,” for all “European patriots,” and “cultural conservatives,” ⁶ to “prevent the annihilation of our identities, our cultures and traditions and our nation states” ⁷ and to “win the ongoing Western European cultural war.” ⁸ Western culture is seen as radically threatened by modern and postmodern attacks on “the bases of Western culture, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, heredity, ethnocentrism, convention and conservatism.” ⁹ This has supposedly led to a “loss of freedom of expression, thought control, inversion of the traditional social order.” ¹⁰ Multiculturalism is presented as profoundly anti-Christian, ¹¹ leading to “the ongoing Islamic colonisation of Europe through demographic warfare (facilitated by our own leaders).” ¹² The ultimate aim outlined in the manifesto is to curtail the spread of Islam, along with “the cultural Marxist/multiculturalist hegemony in Western Europe.” The hope is that “Europe will once again be governed by patriots” ¹³ in “a monocultural Christian Europe.” ¹⁴

Since 2011, attempts have been made to contextualize Breivik within the far-right networks that disseminate and promote Islamophobic views in Norway, and more broadly in Europe, highlighting the “mainstreaming” of such ideas. ¹⁵ As many have stated, Breivik’s manifesto is a patchwork composition, made up of a cut-and-paste excerpts from a variety of sources, from extremist far-right books, to websites and blogs. The manifesto thus draws attention to the wider ideological circuits that foster hatred against Muslims and condemn multiculturalism. Two central and often overlapping features of the far-right that Breivik draws on are the Eurabia theory and contra-jihadism. Briefly put, the Eurabia theory consists of the view that political leaders in Europe, and especially the European Union, are part of a conspiracy to turn Europe into an Islamic colony; ¹⁶ its central proponents, such as Oriana Fallaci, Bat Ye’or and, Breivik’s favorite, the Norwegian blogger known as “Fjordman” (Peder Nøstvold Jensen), are cited multiple times in Breivik’s manifesto. Contra-jihadism can be characterized by the view that Islam and the West are at war, that Islam is not a religion but in fact a totalitarian political ideology, and that the duty of contra-jihadists is to stop the supposed “Islamification”; contain Islam to countries that already have a Muslim majority; cut all subsidies to Muslim countries, and establish an anti-multicultural political network to replace the current political classes that enable the purported Islamic imperialism. ¹⁷ Ralf Wiederer describes the way in which individuals such as Breivik become part of “amorphous, slightly structured social entities, or associative and cooperative networks of individual and collective actors” and how, as with Breivik, the internet plays a very important role in fostering such connections. ¹⁸ Bruce Hoffman, too, in Inside Terrorism, comments on this new type of terrorist organization, suggesting that although there may be a leadership of sorts in such networks, its role is less that of direct command and control and rather has an inspirational and motivational function. ¹⁹ Accordingly, attending to Breivik’s modes of legitimation and ideological motivation in his manifesto is not an exercise in probing the inner logic of a “lone wolf” terrorist; rather, such an attention can shed light on the broader ideological trends and discourses in which a terrorist such as Breivik is formed.

Reference in the media and scholarship to the Christian elements of Breivik’s ideology varies greatly: from being either non-existent, perfunctory, to brief allusion or denial. Sindre Bangstad, author of Anders Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia, only comments on this issue once: “Behring Breivik describes himself as a ‘conservative Christian.’ However, as was amply illustrated by his deeds and in his tract, he was not in any respects a practising Christian.” ²⁰ Rasmus Fleischer, in turn, outlines different types of fascism in order to attempt to categorize far-right trends in Europe; Breivik roughly falls into what Fleischer calls “mono-fascism.” According to Fleischer, “[m]ono-fascism does indeed insist on a ‘Christian’ identity, but this identity is cultural rather than religious,” apparently lacking in “theology.” ²¹ In a Guardian article written two days after the attacks in Oslo and Utøya, Andrew Brown dismisses any relationship between Christianity and Breivik, as his title makes abundantly clear: “Breivik is not a Christian but anti-Islam.” ²² Brown states that Breivik should not be labelled a “fundamentalist Christian,” and maintains that his views “had nothing to do with Christianity but [were] based on an atavistic horror of Muslims and a loathing of ‘Marxists.’” ²³ Øyvind Strømmen refers to Breivik’s “Christian identity,” as one of the characteristics of his ideological proclivities, although has yet to discuss this identity in any detail. ²⁴ In a publication produced by academics in Norway, Akademiske Perspektiver på 22. Juli [Academic Perspectives on 22nd July], in 2012, discussions of Christianity are more forthcoming, with articles by Jone Salomonsen on paganism, misogyny and Christianity; Jorunn Økland on feminism and Christian tradition, and Øyvind Sørensen more generally on the ideology of the manifesto. ²⁵ However, none are focused on Christianity in any sustained manner, nor do any focus on uses of the Bible. ²⁶

Admittedly, Breivik describes himself as not an “excessively religious man,” although at the same time as “a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.” ²⁷ It is emphasized in the manifesto that “we” “believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform.” ²⁸ It is insistently stated that: “This makes us Christian.” ²⁹ However, what is and what is not “cultural Christianity”? What is deserving of the label “theology” or “practicing Christian,” and according to whose authority? What if Islamophobia is inextricably caught up in a fealty to Christianity, at least rhetorically, in some circles? And how can we be so sure that Breivik’s ideology has nothing to do with Christianity without acknowledging and then examining more closely how, why and in what ways Christianity is used in the manifesto? What assumptions about Christianity underlie the dismissal of Breivik as a far-right Christian terrorist? While I cannot answer all these questions in this article, my aim is to begin addressing them through close attention to the references to, and uses of, the Bible in the manifesto.

Biblical reception history, I suggest, provides a promising disciplinary perspective for teasing out the inner logic of the far-right ideological currents in contemporary Europe. In Akademiske Perspektiver på 22. Juli [Academic Perspectives on 22. July], Jorunn Økland describes how reception history traces the ways in which “cultural (canonical) texts are recycled, and how they change meaning by being used in new contexts or are interpreted in new ways.” ³⁰ The critical reader is not looking for, or emphasizing, “the author’s unique thoughts or articulations, but rather for what is selected or discarded, elaborated or criticized amongst the included sources.” ³¹ If we want to understand Breivik’s manifesto, Økland argues, it is worth asking critical questions about the material he uses, cites, and reinterprets. ³² The collection Akademiske Perspektiver på 22. juli, aims to generate debate on the multiple factors that are relevant to frame Breivik’s acts of violence, by bringing together a number of interdisciplinary viewpoints. ³³ Building on this attempt to widen the parameters of the debate, I follow Økland’s pointer about the use of particular sources, and thus at the same time seek to hone in on one particular question that requires further attention, namely: How is the biblical material used in Breivik’s manifesto?

The references to the Bible do not form a major part of the manifesto. ³⁴ They are, however, by no means negligible, with at least 62 explicit references to biblical texts, along with exegetical comments, as well as 27 references to “the Bible” more generally. These are drawn from across the biblical corpus. ³⁵ The majority of the biblical references can be found in a section under the heading “The Bible and Self-Defence.” ³⁶ This section is situated within a larger part entitled “Christian Justification of the Struggle,” ³⁷ in Book 3 of the manifesto (“A Declaration of Pre-Emptive War.”) ³⁸

Breivik begins with an allusion to Popes Urban II and Innocent III granting favor to “martyrs of the church, those men and women who, by virtue of their suffering, assists in the intercession for all Christians” [sic], stating that in the twelfth century such favor was extended beyond crusaders of a particular context, to all. ³⁹ Moving to Pope Benedict XVI, the question is raised as to whether he would condone a new crusade. Answered in the negative, Breivik concludes that Christianity in Europe has been abandoned. It is then for “we, the cultural conservatives of Europe” to initiate “coups against the given multiculturalist European regimes and contribute to repell Islam from Europe for a third time.”[sic] ⁴⁰ The biblical references that follow are situated within the framework of religiously motivated warfare. The hermeneutical assumption is that the Bible is not antimilitaristic, but can in fact furnish motivation, legitimation and encouragement to fight for the cause, a hermeneutical move that can also be seen in interpretations of the Bible in World Wars I and II.

The biblical references are plucked from the pages of the Bible and generously scattered in the relevant section in such a way so as to suggest a wide and thereby representative biblical scope. Individual verses are ripped out of their chapter, book, their surrounding narrative, logic and context, from Genesis to Revelation. Methods of sustained reflection, interpretation and commentary on the meaning of a biblical passage are waived in favor of a raw exhibition of biblical verses paraded one after another, seemingly haphazardly. Despite this ostensibly raw exhibition, Breivik’s Bible emerges with a clear message: God is not a pacifist, the Bible encourages violence as self-defense of the Christian God and his seemingly exclusively European people; additionally, proponents of an anti-multiculturalist and anti-Muslim position are effectively soldiers of Christ, following a biblical tradition of righteous warfare. I will first discuss the use of the Bible to legitimate violence as self-defense, then the motivational powers of the Bible appropriated to fuel the contra-jihadist cause, followed by the claims that God is a fellow fighter, before commenting on the assumptions towards, and treatment of, the Bible more broadly.

In The Invention of the Biblical Scholar: A Critical Manifesto, Yvonne Sherwood and Stephen Moore draw attention to the anxiety arising as to what place the Bible has in modernity. ¹⁰⁵ The Bible, they write, “epitomized for the secular Western mindset, more than any other single cultural emblem, the irrational, the delusional, the medieval, the morally questionable,” and it symbolized “that which was remote, archaic, and – precisely – behind the times: the time before the modern, the other than the modern.” ¹⁰⁶ Moore and Sherwood argue that biblical studies has contributed to this notion of the Bible by analyzing it primarily as an ancient collection of documents, with the help of modern methods of inquiry and interpretation. This arguably nurtured the view of the Bible as an alien in the modern world, antithetical to modern values and norms. ¹⁰⁷ Moore and Sherwood suggest that the Bible is increasingly recognized as a key site on which foundational, but unsustainable, ‘modern’ separations have been made. ¹⁰⁸ For Breivik and the far-right ideology he draws on, the Bible does indeed become strategically antithetical to modern values and norms. Breivik’s Bible emerges as a key site for foundational separations – pre-modern and postmodern, self and other, original-traditional Bible and modern-post-modern Bible – that must be sustained in order for the pro-European, anti-Islamic ideological machinery to function. The Bible becomes a split site, occupying on the one hand a position as a pre-modern symbol for an original “Europe,” and on the other hand, as a perverted ally of mainstream modern and postmodern perspectives. In the fracture between the ancient and the modern, Breivik’s Bible is a Jekyll-and-Hyde body of books that can metamorphose according to whose hands it falls into.

Økland points out that “tradition” in Breivik’s manifesto is less a matter of specific content and more a rhetorical locus to pitch a battle against contemporary society; ¹⁰⁹ this holds also for the way in which an original Bible and a traditional Europe are conflated. For Breivik, the Bible and the Christian church must, Økland argues, be treated as dead objects whose authority cannot be challenged, rather than facets of a living tradition. ¹¹⁰ At the same time, however, Breivik’s use of the Bible performs a collapse of the space between ancient-Bible and modern-Europe. His “dead” unquestionable Bible comes to life to haunt the modern world as an exemplar of a postmodern hypertext. Lamenting the divide between ancient and modern, and feeding on it to inaugurate a shift “back to the Bible” and, in a simultaneous move, back to a pre-modern Europe, Breivik’s Bible is simultaneously dragged out of its pre-modern guise to be clad in militaristic uniform and put to the service of a contemporary far-right agenda. Like a postmodern collage, Breivik cuts his Bible irreverently into manifold pieces to be stuck onto a contemporary context and thus play the role of divine justification of, and collaboration in, terrorist violence. In the name of a God of Christian conservative terror, a God of European patriots, a Bible is called for that will be suitably edited to underpin a European culture characterized by a ferocious othering of Muslims. Scattering snippets from the biblical archive into his 2011 hypertext instead of attending to the varieties, complexities and contradictions of the Bible, particular biblical words are neatly laid out in the manifesto as if to be snorted like lines of cocaine in order to arouse enthusiasm, motivation and confidence. Breivik’s Bible is also, then, a version and view of the Bible that has come back to haunt the “proper” uses of the Bible in the modern, secular West. By critiquing modern society and culture for its divergence from the pre-modern Bible and its “original” meanings, the biblical archive becomes a crucial prop for the reform of Europe as well as a motivating and legitimating device for acts of terror.

In this article, I have tried to tease out what ideological work the Bible does in Breivik’s manifesto. What do the biblical texts do in the manifesto? What is the Bible and what function does it play for Breivik and his fellow ideologues? ¹¹¹ My analysis of the biblical references in the manifesto has shown them to perform the function of legitimating violence glossed as self-defense, and of motivating a violent battle against multiculturalism and Islam as soldiers of Christ, with the aid of a militant God. Additionally, the notion of an “original” Bible is used as a symbol for an original Europe, free from modernity, multiculturalism and Muslims. The retrieval of Europe goes hand in hand with a strong, ecclesial authoritative guide to the so-called “original” pre-modern meaning of Scripture unsullied by modern attitudes and values. ¹¹²

Since 2011, both Bangstad and Strømmen have reported on individuals, figures, groups and planned terrorist attacks citing Breivik as an inspiration. ¹¹³ Despite the fact that the manifesto could be described dismissively as a “pastiche” ¹¹⁴ or a “cut-and-paste document,” ¹¹⁵ it is undergoing a “canonization” as a far-right tract through the endorsement of its message and author in some – not negligible – circles. Mario Borghezio, for example, a representative of the Italian Northern League and member of the European Parliament, expressed praise for the manifesto only a few days after the massacre on Utøya. ¹¹⁶ Franco “Bifo” Berardi recounts how Borghezio, live on Italian state radio “claimed that he shared Breivik’s ‘opposition to Islam,’ including his call for a ‘crusade’ by Christians against Europe’s ‘drift toward Islam.’” ¹¹⁷ Borghezio added that a significant number of Europeans share Breivik’s views. In his work on far-right extremism in Europe, Øyvind Strømmen draws attention to the way in which Islamist terror and extremism have been amply highlighted in politics and the media, while far-right extremism has largely been downplayed or ignored. ¹¹⁸ Why is “Islam” so easily appendaged as a label to terrorist forces and figures, while Breivik’s Christian affiliations and their entanglement with far-right extremism are ignored or side-lined? Do we share the contra-jihadist belief in Islam as somehow more political and politicized than Christianity? Are the aspects that link Breivik to Christianity and the Bible not engaged with because they appear exceptional within secular modern Europe? Or, on the contrary, because they appear unexceptional within the old debates about “religion and violence” but remain mystified in the complex causal web of politicized violence? Does Breivik’s use of the Bible signal the failure of biblical studies to proselytize appropriate methods and means of understanding the Bible in the modern world, or does it merely convey a reactionary corollary to such trends from the margins of society? And, what happens if those margins gravitate from the periphery and encroach on mainstream culture in order to whip up hatred and mistrust of Muslims, disguising the rhetoric in euphemistic terms such as ‘European cultural identity,’ ‘European norms and values,’ ‘Christian conservatism’ and ‘cultural Christianity’?

Moore and Sherwood conclude The Invention of the Biblical Scholar with the suggestion that “by engaging anew with the formative history of our discipline, we can investigate and interrogate the process whereby critical discourse on the Bible became a means for the consolidation of certain antitheses foundational to modernity.” ¹¹⁹ Identifying and challenging foundational antitheses in their relationship to the Bible, such as those Breivik and his ideology revel in, is of paramount importance. But this challenge is also necessary as a debate outside the academic operations of biblical studies. ¹²⁰ How, where, and in what ways the discursive wrestling over public biblical material is played out in relation to the uneasy categories of “religion” and “politics,” are quite possibly some of the most urgent questions today. ¹²¹ John J. Collins suggests that there is a need to continuously point to the radical diversity of the biblical archive along with the question of how to read and treat its texts ¹²² – concerns at the heart of reception history. To butt against a monolithic Bible that spawns “certitude that transcends human discussion and argumentation,” ¹²³ as Collins puts it, is to keep demonstrating the ways in which the Bible functions as a cultural chameleon, changing its colors according to its contexts. But the Bible is also a political animal of a less congenially adaptive kind. Taking account of the behavior patterns of biblical texts in extremist ideology might contribute in crucial ways to better understand contemporary far-right discourse, the ever-changing roles of religion in Europe, and the complex, ongoing interactions between culture, politics and the biblical archive.