Inevitabilism is a perspective I use to examine things. It is the reverse of the usual process of isolating the object you wish to study from its normal enviroment, carefully dissecting it, examining each of its properties in turn and then (and only then) trying to deduce out how they all worked to produce the situation occuring in the real world.All the inevitablist needs is the very broadest of glances at what exists, and more importantly where it exists, and for how long. From this most simple of assessments, and using the minimum assumptions, the inevitablist infers what properties the objects in question must possess, to exist in the places they do, in the states they do, and deduces the relationships and forces at work that produced them.
Sometimes, because it takes in everything that is there, rather than biasing its observations toward a single component, it can produce interesting results.
Let me give you a very simple example of how it works:
Remember when you were a kid, and you used to paint with watercolours..? Maybe you painted a bright yellow sun. Then you washed your brush. The water in the glass turned yellow. Then you painted some waves in blue underneath. You washed your brush. And the water turned green. And then, after a whole bunch of other colours and washings, you just got a murky browny-grey mess.
All the colours had mixed.
But then your mother comes in - waving a plate of chips swimming in cooking oil around - saying: "Hey Picasso, take a break and get these chips down your neck." When suddenly a drop of yellowy oil falls off a chip and lands splat in the middle of a puddle of blue on your painting.
And doesn't mix.
Now here, we could go and reach for a chemistry textbook and get down to atoms. But do we need to..? We could just work it out.
We don't need to know anything about water, or oil. All we need to know is they don't mix, and tend to stay together. From this we could infer:
- A cohesive force that tends to stick like to like.
- A repulsive force that tends to push unlike away from unlike.
- They simply do not choose to blend.
All textbook-and-microscope-free. And if we had got the books out, we might have become so mired in the nitty-gritty of the details, that we perhaps wouldn't have bothered writing the third one, because it would seem crazy. And this is the danger of using other people's brains to do your thinking for you.
It is especially dangerous when the subjects under examination are emotive. History for example. There is almost no such thing as an unbiased history book.
So - Let's try something a bit more complex. Let's take a fresh (and hopefully unbiased) inevitabilist look at some of just about the most emotive events in history: Antisemitism and the totally FUBAR'ed pasts of the Hebrews and the Jews. See what we can work out from scratch.
Basically, the tale starts with a group of people, the Hebrews, linked physically by genetic similarites arising from interbreeding in geographic isolation and linked socially simply from spending a long time in close proximity, and culturally solving the problems of cohesion inherrent to any group of people over the size of a couple of hundred.
Here's a little more detail:
So."The Hebrews described in the Old Testament appear to have been semi-nomadic herders of sheep and goats and occasional farmers in areas of the Fertile Crescent from Northeastern Mesopotamia and Iran to the borders of Egypt in Canaan, without knowledge of metal working, sophisticated craftsmanship or a written language. Like other nomadic herders, they were tent dwellers -- as Abraham is described in Genesis 13:3. And, as was common among herders, the Hebrews had a masculine god of the sky and weather. The Hebrews organized themselves around their extended families, and Hebrew families were combined into kinship groups governed by a council of elders that left the head of a family with a sense of self-rule. These heads of families were males with absolute authority over their wives and children, and they were the priests for their families, each family having its own sacred images. "
- Semi-nomadic herders - check.
- Bugger-all technology - check.
- Weather god - check.
- Extended family patriarchal society - check.
So what started this particular, totally unspectacular people off down the path they later followed..?
Egyptians happened to them, apparently.
But before we do anything else, let's depart from the common path, and throw the Bible out of the window. Wheeee - there it goes. Thunk.
No offence, but all this happened a hell of a long time ago, and the Bible, bless its numerous sacred pages is, from a historical POV., a bit like an non peer reviewed page on Wikipedia. Something to be taken with a pinch or two of NaCl. At very best it's storified history, aimed to teach a specific POV. not objective reality. Just because it's been translated into every language under the sun, and nearly everyone who can read has heard of it, doesn't make it any truer.
I mean hell, the Lord of the Rings has been translated into nearly every language under the sun, and nearly everyone who can read has heard of it. It's got a whole bunch of 'historical' appendixes crammed with exhorbitant detail in dead languages, accounts of old races, wars and heroes, geographical notes - the whole kit and kaboodle. And yet more proof - Dwarves. I've seen them. You've seen them, okay, they don't often carry axes, but they're real. And magic rings. Certainly, the gold ring I've been wearing on my finger for the past ten years or so seems to make me invisible to younger women. So maybe, just maybe...
Okay. Sorry Frodo. It's not.
But we don't need books. Just the bare bones, and we'll work the rest out ourselves. So. What do we have to work with..?
The Hebrews, a not-so advantaged race, bumps up against a much more advantaged one, the Egyptians. Skip forward a bit and, by hook or by crook, the Hebrews end up building monuments and Pyramids for Ramses II. That's all we need.
Compared to a semi-arid hillside, and a few goats for company, the bright lights of the big cities of Egypt, the sheer massiveness of the architecture, not to mention all the swishy-hipped, scantily-clad Egyptian girls with their fancy eye-make-up, must have seemed like a whole new world to the Hebrews.
The Egyptian dream.
I don't think they'd have needed to enslave me, I think I might have volunteered. When you're a goatherder, scraping a living off the land, even minimum wage doesn't seem all that minimum.
Maybe one day there's a poster:
"Wanted: pushers of huge stone blocks.Afterall, slavery has it's overheads too. I'll bet you a very small amount of money that it is cheaper per-capita to pay someone minimum wage to do your donkey-work of their own volition, than it is to pop him one on the head, drag him off in chains and then pay a guard to constantly supervise his ass. Mr. Slave is always disgruntled, does a crappy job and you have to spend your nights worrying about slave-revolts. Hmm.
No experience required.
Minimum wage, room and board.
Must bring own loincloth."
This reminds me of the UK after the war, when we needed immigrant workers and the Indians and Pakistannis trooped over to help their old ex-imperialist bosses out. This reminds me of the situation between America and Mexico: 'guest' workers doing all the grotty jobs no nice white-boy wants to dirty their hands with, for minimum pay.
I don't think we ever needed to enslave them. In fact, quite the opposite, we kinda have to beat them off with a stick.
However it started, Pyramids tend to get bigger with the death of each Pharouh. Awfully big. Awfully Expensive. Expensive enough to cripple an economy. Unless corners could be cut. And maybe the corner that was cut, was unfortunately, the one the Hebrews were living in.
Who knows..?
Maybe they just got their hearts broken. You're pushing big blocks of dressed stone. You see the stonemasons chipping away, and think "I could do that." But they won't train you. They don't need more skilled laborers, they've got their own thankyou, and don't want any more. "You just keep pushing the blocks like a good donkey." They say. Maybe you saved your money, got a shave, had a bath, plucked your eyebrows and put on your best tunic and asked some guy with a funny animal-head mask if you could become a citizen. And he laughed, and had you whipped for your impudence. Cos' you're a second class citizen, and always will be. Not worth the water it would cost to spit on you.
But, this is just the beginning of the way. We're pretty much still in Genesis. Time for Charlton Heston to put his vest on.
Moses. We know the tale: Mother chucks him in a river to escape the murders of the first born Hebrews. Grows up, meets Yahweh. Comes back, rescues the slaves, finds some stone tablets, leads them to the promised land. Yadda-yadda.,
Maybe it didn't need to be that grand. Maybe Moses was the world's first Trade Unionist. Maybe he wanted something better for his fellow Hebrew workers. Maybe he was a man with another dream, not the Egyptian one.
Maybe he was Arthur Scargil.
But first, however low conditions might be, there is such a thing as social inertia. Moses Scargil would need something to get his brother Hebrews off their collective arses. And the Egyptian dream, like the elusive American dream does today, would still have carried a weight in the collective imagination.
What to do..?
He can't re-invoke the Hebrew Dream, because however many bells and whistles he put on it, it would still have ammounted to little more than "A couple of goats, and a hillside to call my own." Not much competition against big pointy piles of stone and swishy women with sexy eyes. So.
A spiritual revolution rather than material: Yahweh, the one true God. The chosen people. Commandments. Promised land. Let's translate that into Trade-union -speak.
- "Yahweh, the one true God" - Your prospective new employer.
- "Made in his image" - greater equality between management and labour force.
- "The chosen people" - you guys are special, you should be doing better than this.
- "Commandments" - better working conditions.
- "Promised land" - new, luxurious premises, with free water-coolers and a cordon-bleu worker's canteen.
Okay, just once, let's get the bible out:
"Numbers 32:9-13: After they [the spies/scouts] went up to the Valley of Eshkol and viewed the land, they discouraged the Israelites from entering the land the LORD had given them. The LORD's anger was aroused that day and he swore this oath: 'Because they have not followed me wholeheartedly, not one of those who were twenty years old or more when they came up out of Egypt will see the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob— not one except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they followed the LORD wholeheartedly.' The LORD's anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone."
Why didn't they just sit down and die..?
Every Saturday, near where I live, the Shemikler Pazar opens for business. A large open air market, where all the local farmers congregate to sell their fruit and veg. And every Saturday, I shoulder the rucksack, hike for a very sweaty half an hour or so under the noon-day sun - we're talking 40oC sometimes - and then do a spot of broken field-running through swathes of village women with arses the size of VW Beetles. For a person anti-social at the best of times, a small slice of hell. Then I walk home again, my once-light backpack now dragging at my shoulders with a weight of 20 kilos plus.
Every Saturday. Without fail.
I don't have to. I mean, for only a very small difference in price I could just hop in the car, nip to the local supermarket and spend twenty minutes cruising the wonderfully air-conditioned aisles for the weekly greens instead. Root for lettuce and tomatoes surrounded by air-brushed MILFs with arses shaped by hours cycling to nowhere in the gym.
Why haven't I just given up on the whole Pazar thing..?
Well, you see, in the name of my mid-life crisis, I usually walk/run a couple of kilometers to the sea-side every day anyway. Track-suited under the sun. When I get there I spend a half-hour lifting heavy things at the public fitness area, and then go home again. Feeling virtuous, a fraction of my youth reclaimed.
So on Saturdays, the pazar trip becomes a keep-fit routine. The pain involved becomes gain. Hell quietly flees and I am surrounded by a host of fat-arsed angels, all urging me along.
I hope this illustrates the importance of mindset.
So, how do we translate this charming homely into the situation the Hebrews were in..? What changed their mind-set, gave them the strength to carry on..? To not just quietly dissolve, fade from history's pages..?
A tired people, and now the initial glow has worn off, a disheartened people off to some never-never land, having failed to make the grade - their Egyptian dreams pulled out from under their feet like some fabled Persian carpet. Doomed to wander until a generation has died. What do they feel..?
Like assholes.
I suppose being God's chosen people is some consolation.
Is that enough though..? Some big guy with a beard who no-one can see except this Moses guy comes along and says "Hey Hebrews, don't sweat it, you're still cool. Look, you are my favourite guys in all the world. I loves youse guys. You are the shit."
Whenever my little son falls over and busts his knee, and is feeling a little sorry for himself, I pick him up and tell him not to worry, that he rocks, and that I love him, and soon he's all smiles again. Works just fine for a primary-schooler. But, I don't think it's going to cut the mustard forever. A kid soon works out that their dad, unless their dad's a real monster, is bound to tell him he rocks, even if he doesn't really, all that much.
A loving-father God, in the convential sense, wouldn't have had much staying power. Doubt would have crept back in. The Hebrews needed the other kind. The tough-love-test-you-to-breaking-and-beyond kind. The kind whose praise was hard won, but could be trusted. An Old-testament kind of father/God.
The benefit of this spiritual POV. of 'being tested' works by changing your view of suffering. However hard becomes the way, however many stones you get in your sandal, however many children you have to bury - it's all worth it - the journey becomes some kind of spiritual gym and suffering becomes a kind of spiritual currency, an entrance fee to the the promised land, to be paid in blood, sweat and tears. Your suffering and hardship..? Money in the bank.
Which leads us on to the final component required - social cohesion. And Charlton Heston again:
"According to the Old Testament (Exodus 20:1-17), Yahweh commanded that Moses and his followers have no other gods,worship no idol "or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth." He commanded that they should not take his name in vain, that they should keep the Sabbath a weekly day of rest, that they should honor their father and mother, not murder one another, nor commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, and not covet their neighbor's possessions, including wives and servants."
The short version - Don't sass your dad, do not f**k each other over and remember that I'm the only God that matters, so my opinion of you (as being the very best kind of people) is true. And btw. Do what I say.
Social glue.
And so, just like I continue to go to the Pazar every Saturday, the Hebrew race carried on trekking, and eventually reached the promised land of Israel intact as a group. No pain, no gain. And that, I think, will do for the Hebrews. Let's move on to more modern times. Well, not a lot more modern, modernish. AD I mean. But before we do...
Reality Check #1
It must be remembered that religion, and God, are separate entities.
Humans are naturally spiritual beings. For us, developing a spiritual facet to our psychic make-up is as natural as is developing an arm or a leg is to our physicality. Drop any human, anywhere, and sooner or later they will form some conception of God.
A religion, however, does not serve God but the society that creates it. A religion serves the cultural and social needs of the people that form it, it clothes our individual and natural concepts of a supreme being or beings in some generalised aspect which appeals to the, usually very mundane, psychic wish-list of the group mind. It aproaches not God, but God as. And from that aspect, a religion borrows the authority to impress itself as a social force.
All religions could be percieved as forms of idolatry if you like, the worship of (an) idealized self(ves). The greater the lack, the bigger the God required to fill the holes in the group psyche.
So, the God aspect of Yahweh and the old-testament religion of the Hebrews did not rise spontaneously by coincidence. Nor from divine revelation, but from the specific needs of the group, tailored exactly to allow them to continue to exist as a group.
Without the trials and tribulations of the Hebrews, there would have been no Yahweh, and without Yahweh, there would soon have been no Hebrews. The one could not have existed without the other.
The hour makes the man, but it also makes the God.
Okay, let us journey into AD. Here's a quick potted history, you don't have to read it if you don't want to, you could just take my word for it if you like, and skip on. Anyway.
Timeline.
- King David [1005 to 965 BCE] created what was to be called a golden age for the Hebrews.
- King Soloman, David's son. The Old Testament also finds fault with his love of luxury, his marrying pagans and his turning to idolatry.
- Manasseh, king from about 692 BCE, ruled as Assyria's puppet. He gave his support to the god Assur, whose image he placed at the entrance to the temple that Solomon had built for Yahweh. He allowed pagan priests in the "House of the Lord" alongside the priests of Yahweh. The Old Testament described Manasseh as erecting altars for Ba'al worship, practicing witchcraft, using divination and mediums.
Some in Judah were dismayed at Yahweh's toleration of the success of the wicked and the subjugation of the righteous. Merchants in Judah abandoned their identities as Hebrews and adopted foreign dress.First Dispersal
- The Chaldeans (Assyrians) Overrun Judah. Their army went against the Egyptians in Syria. They drove the Egyptians back to Egypt, and while doing so they conquered Judah in 587 BC.
- Eleven years later, the people of Jerusalem rebelled , and the Assyrians responded by burning Jerusalem and tearing down its walls. This was the first dispersal of Jews into neihboring countries: into Babylon, Egypt Arabia, and Mesopotamia. The Old Testament would describe Judah's loss of independence as more of Yahweh’s punishment for his people failings.
- Hebrews found in Mesopotamia a prosperity that the priests of Yahweh had claimed that Yahweh would provide them in Judah. Some of these Hebrews became farmers. Some prospered as merchants, rent collectors, contractors or bankers. Some among them adopted local names, converted to the worship of local gods and were content to remain in Mesopotamia permanently.
- Those who were taken to Babylon as captives were also allowed to live according to their customs, including a freedom to worship Yahweh. These captives found Babylon a magnificent city compared to what they had known in Jerusalem. Like some other devout people who were to arrive in a big city, they found Babylon filled with wickedness and temptation, and in combating these temptations they clung desperately to their worship of Yahweh.
Clashes with Rome
- In Babylon, they heard derision spoken against Yahweh and they responded defensively. Was not Yahweh, they asked, the god who had formed and made the earth? They concluded that rival gods were false and that Yahweh was the only true god.
- 222–187 BC As a part of his attempt to unify the different cultures of his empire and to eliminate a source of resistance to his authority, Emperor Antiochus III ordered the Jews in Jerusalem to begin worshiping Zeus, and commanded that they end circumcision and their celebration of the Sabbath. In exchange, Antiochus offered Jerusalem the right to govern itself in other respects. Such transformations had been made in his dominions farther east - where Jews worshiped Yahweh under the name of Zeus Sabazions. The Jews resist, and eventually rebel against his successor Antiochus IV in the The Maccabaean war
Second Dispersal
- In the year 66 BC, rebellion spread to Jerusalem, and with whatever weapons the Judeans could find they attacked the Romans. Roman troops in Judea were hopelessly outnumbered, and the Jewish rebels killed many of them.
- Rome crushed the rebellion. It sent to Judea an army that was allowed to plunder, massacre and burn. A Roman blockade of Jerusalem created famine among its inhabitants. Calls for help from Yahweh went unanswered. Roman soldiers poured into the city, and raped and massacred thousands. They left the inner city destroyed and Yahweh's temple burned ruins.
- Rome stationed an army permanently in Jerusalem and forbade the Jews to rebuild their temple. Rome abolished Jerusalem's High Priesthood and Council of Elders. It forbade the Jews from proselytizing anywhere in the empire. According to Rome there was no longer a Jewish nation. Several million Jews remained in and around Judea, but Rome allowed non-Jews to settle in place of the Jews who had died or had been taken away as slaves.
Third Dispersal
- AD 100+ Numerous Jewish communities rose against the Romans. In Cyprus and Cyrene, Jews massacred gentiles in great numbers. Emperor Trajan ended his war against Parthia and brought the great weight of Rome's military might down upon the rebellions. Rome let local majorities have their revenge, which resulted in massacres against the Jews. In Cyprus every known Jew was killed and a law was passed forbidding any Jew, even from a shipwreck, to set foot on the island.
- The last of the Jewish rebellions - After Hadrian returned to Rome, the revolt began. The Roman legion on the outskirts of Jerusalem was caught by surprise and was driven from its encampments. Hadrian sent new armies into Palestine. In two years the rebellion was crushed. Perhaps as many as 580,000 Jews died fighting. The Romans again glutted the slave markets with Jewish captives. Jerusalem was rebuilt as Aelia Capitolina and colonized with non-Jews, and the penalty for Jews entering the city was death. Judea was removed from the map. The prohibition against circumcision was renewed and celebration of the Jewish festivals, observance of the Sabbath, study of the Torah and possession of a scroll of Jewish Law became punishable by death.
- In the First Crusade (1096) flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed. In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France suffered especially. Philip Augustus treated them with exceptional severity. In his days the Third Crusade took place (1188); and the preparations for it proved to be momentous for the English Jews. After unspeakable trials Jews were banished from England in 1290; and 365 years passed before they were allowed to settle again in the British Isles. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320.
- As regards the number of Jews in the Middle Ages, Benjamin of Tudela, about 1170, enumerates altogether 1,049,565; but of these 100,000 are attributed to Persia and India, 100,000 to Arabia, and 300,000 to an undecipherable "Thanaim", obviously mere guesses with regard to the Eastern Jews, with whom he did not come in contact. There were at that time probably not many more than 500,000 in the countries he visited, and probably not more than 750,000 altogether.
During the Middle Ages, Jews divided into distinct regional groups which today are generally addressed according to two groupings: the Ashkenazi (Northern and Eastern European Jews) and Sephardic Jews (Spanish and Middle Eastern Jews). By 1764, there were about 750,000 Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The worldwide Jewish population was estimated at 1.2 million.
"Ah don' know but ah bin tol' - Yahweh's made us big an' bold."
Now. Marching, at however leisurely a pace, for many, many years would probably weeded out all but the leanest, meanest and most fervent of the Hebrew mini-horde. Add to that the tricks and strategies they must have seen or heard of during their time amongst the Egyptians and you've a pretty useful military force. Not to mention that the one true God himself is shouting "It's in the bag guys !!!" from the metaphysic sidelines.
"David was anointed as a future king when he was a young shepherd
( 1 Sam. 16:11-13), perhaps 12-15 years old. He was anointed as King
of Israel when he was thirty years old. (2 Sam. 5:3) ."
But that was the Christian's fault, for riling the Romans up, which those who would become the orthodox jews never forgave them for. The Christians shout: "You bastards killed Jesus" they shout back: "And you assholes got us chucked out of Jerusalem." Not a lot of love lost.
We'd better talk about Christians. And Rome, and politics.
"sent down from heaven... ...at the boy's birth...whatNow, if you didn't know better, you'd think that was part of Isaiah 11, prophesizing the coming of Christ. But it's not, it's the Roman imperial poet Virgil, telling of the coming of Octavius, Julius Caeser's son, who was to become Augustus.
tracks remain Of our old wickedness, once done away,
Shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear...
Untended, will the she-goats then bring home
Their udders swollen with milk, while flocks
afield Shall of the monstrous lion have no fear."
You see, Jesus had some competition.
Julius Caesar was deified on his death, and from 42 BC onwards his adoptive son, Octavian, was known as Divi Filius, which means Son of God. With Augustus, the past evils of civil war were replaced by long peace in Rome, and the imperial cult of the Emperor as a divine being grew to be all encompassing.
Like Jesus, the event of his conception was mysterious: his mother Atia dreamed she coupled with a God in the form of a snake, in the temple of Apollo. And also the rough date of that conception... December the 23rd. Maybe we should celebrate Caeser-mas instead of Christmas..?
Augustus was the materialist counterpart to the spiritualist Christ. And Jesus said once, "Render unto Caeser what is Caeser's, and unto God what is God's" emphasising the difference between politics and religion. They were never going to get on.
And the poor Jews got caught in the middle again, between the two sons of God and their attendent forces, just as they had with the Assyrians and the Egyptians, and got burned. The pharisees gave up Jesus to the Romans originally to quell rising political tensions in Jerusalem, and the Christians still managed to screw it all up.
Now we jump forward again, Augustus Divi Filius centuries dead, his legacy beginning to pale, to one of the last emperors, sitting now in the new capital of Constantinople. Constantine. And the year AD 312, when he converted to Christianity. His motives are still uncertain.
Let's us take a guess too.
Let's imagine Constantine loves the Empire, and it pains him to see it grown fat and old and inefficient. The once marvellous bureaucracy - 150 people running the empire in Augustian times - bloated to about 30,000.
Let's imagine that he's in a bit of a spiritual crisis too. And draws parallels between a sprawling pantheon of minor gods and godesses under Zeus, and the burgeoning bureaucrats under him.
Monotheism is the megamart of religions. All your spiritual requirements under one roof, with escalators and people giving out flyers. Compared to having to go here for your chips, and there for your fish fingers and right away over yonder for that kind of bread you like - its easy-peasy.
The efficiency, from a politic POV. of having only to deal with one deity and his attendent priesthood, rather than a whole bunch of bickering sects, must have appealed. The spiritual bureaucracy at least, could be optimized.
So, with a choice of Christ, or some kind of re-invented super-Zeus who'd somehow hoovered up all his siblings... Constantine was in a quandry.
Let's say Constantine was a fan of Augustus. He couldn't resurrect the old Roman Divi Filius, because he was dead, but he could summon back his less tangiable brother in semi-divinity, Jesus H.
Maybe Constantine believed in desperation that the one was as good as the other. That JHC would tumble out of the sky in the armour of the legions, and imediately set about restoring the Great Roman Empire to its eternal glory.
With the adoption of Christianity by Rome, its quick spread across the Empire, and then the chaos engenedered by the Empire's fall, the poor Christ-killing Jews - always at risk even during the tolerant and stable times of the pax-romana, always too small, always too stubborn, always too noticible - were now well and truly f**ked.
Now. Onto Shylock. The much besieged hero of Shakespeare's play.
So, barring a brief respite after escaping the clutches of the pyramid builders, the Jews have taken a hell of a kicking down the centuries, but seem remarkably to be keeping on ticking. If they were a car, I'd buy one.
I mean - Romans..? Gone. Babylon..? Gone. Assyrians..? Gone. Mesopotamians..? Gone. Only Egypt seems to still be in the same place. Not a bad record, for a bunch of ex-goatherders.
During the Middle Ages, after they'd been chucked out of Jerusalem by the Romans, and bashed about during the crusades, the Jewish race are cast to the winds, settling wherever they find sanctuary. They settle, but they never seem to be able to stick:
"The Middle Ages were mainly a period of expulsions. In 1290, 16,000 Jews were expelled from England; in 1306, 100,000 from France; and in 1492, about 200,000 from Spain. Smaller but more frequent expulsions occurred in Germany, so that at the commencement of the 16th century only four great Jewish communities remained: Frankfurt, 2,000; Worms, 1,400; Prague, 10,000; and Vienna, 3,000 (Heinrich Grätz, Geschichte der Juden x. 29). It has been estimated that during the five centuries from 1000 to 1500, 380,000 Jews were killed during the persecutions, reducing the total number in the world to about 1,000,000. In the 16th and 17th centuries the main centers of Jewish population were in Poland and the Mediterranean countries, Spain excepted."
So why this continuing cycle of settlement, growth and then expulsion/massacre..?
When I go to the doctor with a headache, he sends me away with some Aspirin. The trouble with Aspirin, is that it doesn't damn well work. Same with Paracetamol. You take one and you still have a headache. Why doesn't the doc just cut to the chase and dash off a quick "Morphine Sulphate 20 mg/mL" on the old prescription pad..? 100% guarrenteed zero-headache probability.
Well, because I'd become addicted to it I suppose, and there are all kind of side-effects. The trouble with a pain-killer that works, is you get used to it working. It makes you functional, but it doesn't make you better.
It's a drug of last resort.
If the ancient Hebrews had been one of my Doc's patients, sat slumped and despondant in his waiting room, he'd have taken one look at then, and written them off. He'd have given them anything they wanted, no quibbles.
And that I think, is a fair comparison with the effect of Yahweh/early Judaism on the ancient Hebrews. Got them back on their feet, gave them such a buzz thet they went out and conquered the Phillistines in a grand euphoric blur.
But then they began to crash. Spiritual Morphine comes with side-effects. It can seriously damage your ability to get on with other people.
Remember waaaaaay back at the start, with the oil and the water, and the cohesive force, and the repulsive force..? A group possessing a cohesive force could be translated as "A bunch of people all sticking together because they are gosh-darned happy with themselves and each other and stay that way because they want to." Similarly, a group possessing a repulsive force translates to "A bunch of people who are pressed together by their property of pushing all others away."
And the thing is, to produce the end result of a distinctive group, either will do.
The Roman pantheon were quite an accomodating bunch. When the (physical) Romans met another group, they'd kinda smarm up to them and hold out the carrot of the pax romana (guarrenteed peace) in one hand, and dangle the Legion's stick in the other. At the same time, metaphorically, the Romans (spiritual) in the forms of their various gods, would mosey over to that groups god, a sky god say, or a sea god, wtf.ever, and say, "Hey, you look a bit like our friend [insert name of most similar member of the pantheon here] why don't you two get busy and hybridize..?"
Everyone's a winner.
But, when you've got only one God. And this God is THE God, with no comparison, theological, magical or catagorical, then, on the spiritual smarm scale, you got nothing. It's black and white: "Ur god iz stoopid, and ourz is kewl, if you wanna be our friend, wave 'X. the Mighty' goodbye."
And the trouble with religion is, it tends to leak. And suddenly, you've got religion all over your nice traditional/cultural bathroom floor. So, a rejection of another's god, ends up being a rejection of quite a lot of other more mundane customs and attitudes as well.
It's like football in England. Put two serious fans of different competing teams together in a confined space...
Then you've got the whole 'chosen people' bit too. Now, even if you do meet another group, and they do say, "Okay, where do we sign up..?" followed by "Cool, so now I'm one of the chosen too, right..?" you're going to have to break their hearts, because it's kinda all about birth. And even then, if they still remain philosophic about it, there's the whole circumcision thang...
"You wanna do what..? Right, that's it, blow this for a game of soldiers."
Okay, so someone from another group can't really become one of the chosen via the route of religion, but what about the other way..? The time honoured tradition of marrying two people of differing races/nations to cement peaceful relations..?
The trouble here is, other things leak into culture too. History for example. And the Hebrews had had a pretty bad time of things in the past. Their first meeting with another well established race - the Egyptians - had ended up with them being enslaved. This has repercussions.
For example:
"As described in the Old Testament, Samson was both a leader in the fight against the Philistines and had a weakness for Philistine women. The Book of Judges describes Samson as burning Philistine crops and killing a thousand Philistines in a place called Ramathlehi, which means "the hill of the jawbone." Judges 15:17 describes this as the place Samson killed Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. According to the Samson legend, the Philistine woman Delilah learned from Samson that he was a Nazirite and that if his hair was cut he would lose his strength. As Samson slept, Delilah cut his hair - he lost his strength, was captured and had his eyes burned out with a red hot poker."
What can we take away from this story..? "Don't get into bed with foreigners..."
Now, let's look at Judaic marriage customs:
"Jewish leaders in different branches generally agree that possible assimilation is a crisis, but they differ on the proper response to intermarriage. [However]All branches of Orthodox Judaism refuse to accept any validity or legitimacy of intermarriages."
So, you can't join them spiritually, nor sexually, how about economically..?
Before we look at that, let's have a quick gander at Jewish inheritance laws:
If a man dies, his possessions are divided by his sons. His wife can either take her Ketubah or can live off her husband's estate for as long as she wishes.
If there is a firstborn son, he receives a double portion.
The daughters are supported off their father's estate until they get married.
Each daughter receives a dowry from the father's estate.
If there aren't any sons, the estate passes to the daughters.
If a woman dies, her husband inherits all her possessions.
If she has no husband, her sons (or daughters, if there aren't any sons) inherit her possessions.
If she doesn't have any children (or grand-children) the estate goes to the deceased's father.
If the deceased doesn't have a father, the estate goes to the deceased's brothers (or sisters, if there aren't any brothers), or, if they are no longer alive, their descendants.
The key points are - Dowries, money going down the male side, and the firstborn gets a double share.
So first off, a jew does not marry outside of his (or her) group. ie. Any money that comes into the group from outside, does not walk off again. It stays and makes friends with the other jewish money. Also money gets concentrated in famillies down the lines of the firstborn sons. Fathers also try to marry their daughters up, rather than down, which would mean rich famillies would tend to attract even more money via marriage dowries and quickly go nuclear, economically speaking.
A few last things to think about. Small group size, interbreeding, marriage and birthrate. Needless to say, most, if not all marriages are (carefully) arranged. You don't want to end up marrying too many cousins. Like the money, genes also stay in the group, good or bad. This produces three effects:
- A low group birthrate, which keeps the group small. (Even now it's still low, from 2000-01 it rose by 0.3%, compared to a worldwide average of 1.4% - that's about 80% slower).
- Famillial connections between, most probably, all the members of the group over time. Which means what..? Group-wide Nepotism.
- An effective mainatainance of genetic isolation and therefore also a preservation of any distinctive physical features irrespective of where the group lives, or what peoples they move amongst.
Anyway, for economic alliances, the second, the prospect of nepotism, is the important one. Why would a jew need to ally with you..? If he needs trusty workers, he has relations. If he needs a start-up loan, he probably has an inroads to one of the big money famillies. He's got a decent chance of being literate, and numerate - due to the demands of Judaism on its believers to pass on the Torah to their (male) children, and the jewish traditional infatuation with the Kabbalah and numerology, so he doesn't need a bookeeper or an accountant...
Okay, so forget the business and romantic alliances, how about just partying hearty..? Surely everyone likes to have a good nosh, then get good and drunk..?
Weeeellll, yes and no, sure, a Jew can get drunk and stuff his or her face. But only within the prescriptions of the Kashrut - which is a wee bit finicky about how food and wine is prepared. You'd have to plan your pub-crawl really carefully, and forgo the tripe and pigs-trotters at the end.
Reality Check #2
But this is all getting a bit mired in detail. Not very inevitabilist. Let's step back a little. Okay, so, sexually, nutritionally, and economically, a very insular people. Just from the details, we'd be forgiven for thinking maybe they were all massively xenophobic fanatics. But we don't like details. They cloud the issue as much as they reveal.
Of course they were always going to be like this. Or, they wouldn't be there at all.
This is a people who've been regularly shunted throughout history from one territory to another. What more sedentary races forget, especially in this time of ample medi-care and antibiotics is that a new territory means new diseases, or new varients of old ones. And what vectors disease..? Physical closeness, of which sex is about as close as you can get, and food and drink. Holding yourselves as physically aloof as possible from a new social enviroment, at least initially, becomes not about the niceties of custom and tradition, but of survival.
Maybe there were sects of Jewish culture that were a bit more touchy-feely, but they all caught colds and died. Just throwing it out there. But certainly, their lifestyles as classic 'Wandering Jews' would tend to reward the owners of the cold shoulder, and punish the possessers of the big hug and a kiss.
Money, also means life. In my survival bag, hung near the door in case of earthquakes, is stashed a couple of thou in paper money, and some gold coins, as well as water, food, spare nappies and space blankets. If historically, as a society, you've regularly been booted out of your collective houses at short notice, or had your communal front door kicked in by a mob and had to run out the back, then you don't want to be leaving your cash knocking about in someone else's hands. You want to be able to take it with you, because it might make all the difference wherever you settle next.
Jewish customs are what they had to be.
Anyway, I promised you Shylock, and he hasn't really appeared much. Sorry. The archetypal persecuted Jew, looking for a bit of come-back, and getting burned.
Let's imagine Shylock entering Venice as a boy with his familly, on the run from *somewhere*. Luckily, at that time Venice is politically stable, the people fairly content, and an air of tolerance blows along the canals. They get lost. Dad stops someone, and asks for directions. But he's new here, so how does he know where to go..? He doesn't.
He doesn't need to. Jews are conspicuous, physically, and sartorially. Jews are insular, if there is a colony of Jews here already, there'll be a jewish quarter. So all papa has to do is ask a random native is: "Where are the people who look like me..?"
Shylock's family enter the Jewish quarter, somebody either puts them up for free till they're on their feet, or asks a pittance. Somebody gives Shylock's dad a job. He's educated, educates his (male) children and he's hardworking. Maybe on his travels he's picked up a new technique for doing or making something on the way. Or maybe - since venice trades a lot across the mediterranean - he learned some snippet of market information that no-one else knows from some other jew he met once. Wtf.ever - He get's rich. People want to marry their daughters to his sons, he gets richer. Then he dies, and Shylock, the first born, gets a double share. Shylock then marries into another rich family, with an only daughter. The Father of the daughter promptly dies, and boom, Shylock's as rich as all stink.
Go Shylock.
The other merchants of venice however, aren't so pleased. This upstart jew has gone from a complete nobody to a potential competitor just like that, when it took their big, unweildy and in-fighting prone famillies generations to get where they are today. Grrr.
Anyway. Shylock doesn't care. He give up on hard work and starts lending money out intstead. And that's his downfall.
USURY definitionThe practice of lending money out, with interest, was extremely contentious back in those days.
usu·ry
noun pl. usuries - ries
- The act or practice of lending money at interest, now specif., at a rate of interest that is excessive or unlawfully high.
- Interest at a very high rate.
"...financial oppression of Jews tended to occur in areas where they were most disliked, and if Jews reacted by concentrating on moneylending to non-Jews, the unpopularity — and so, of course, the pressure — would increase. Thus the Jews became an element in a vicious circle. The Christians, on the basis of the Biblical rulings, condemned interest-taking absolutely, and from 1179 those who practised it were excommunicated. Catholic autocrats frequently imposed the harshest financial burdens on the Jews. The Jews reacted by engaging in the one business where Christian laws actually discriminated in their favour, and became identified with the hated trade of moneylending."Now, if he'd stuck to microloans within the jewish community, he'd probably have been okay. But the trouble with being stinking rich is that potentially, you can lend someone who needs a lot of money, a lot of money.
And sometimes that person who needs a lot of money, won't take 'no' for an answer. Especially if that person is otherwise powerful, a prince a king or whatever.
So, terms are agreed, money is lent, everybody's happy. But then things get all fucked up. A battle that was a sure thing is lost, a ship sinks on a sunny day. It happens. And Shylock turns up, or someone like Syhlock turns up, wringing his hands and saying "Er, sire, hmmm, you know that, er, gazillion Dubloons I lent you last Tuesday..? Er.., not to be pushy at all but... hmm - my drycleaner bill is getting f**king ridiculous..."
He's just a man. The king is a king. What's going to happen..? That's right, a big vicious-circle is about to fall on Shylock's head and royally screw him up.
It's not rocket science.
You remember school..? You remember that swotty kid in the front row, with dubious personal habits, weird clothes and zero social skills..? How he always did his homework, and always got A's while your mum and dad were having fits at your solid collection of B-'s..? You remember how you punched him that one time, really hard, when the teacher was out of class..?
Remember..?
It wasn't that kid's fault he was smart, wasn't that kid's fault he'd been brought up differently, it was just that there's always one of those kinds of kids in a class, and that kid, was that kid.
Now, imagine if that same kid was walking around the playground with a couple of hundred dollars hanging out of his pocket, and the teachers had just gone on strike.
Reality Check #3:
You see, half the problem is mainly that people are bad. Even you. Yes. You. And the other half of the problem..? That people are good. Yes. You. You are good. And bad. And good again. And oh, wait for it, bad. Usually we are bad for reasons that seem good at the time. When the times allow goodness to get the various jobs of life done without too much extra work, we're good. But when the times demand badness, we'll do that too. Most of us anyway, or at the very least, enough of us to really f**k things up for the few who resist. Don't beat yourself up about it, it's called adaptive behaviour. It's been saving our collective asses for bazillions of years.
Don't believe me..? Two guys lost in the desert. Really, really hungry. One of them sits and waits for chlorophyll to evolve in his skin. The other one kills him, steals his water canteen and eats him. What he can't eat today, he cuts into strips and dries in the sun. Waste not, want not.
The moral of the story: If you kill and eat your friends, you survive to get married and have children.
Nah, that's not really the moral of the story. The real idea you have to take away from the scenario is: don't get lost in the desert.
And that's the lesson we, as a species seem to keep missing. We keep being surprised when things go pear-shaped. We watch on the news that some people in some country have trapped a bunch of other people from that country in a wooden church and then set fire to it. We gasp and turn to our spouse/friend/colleague and say "My God, that's terrible. How can they do this..? It's inhuman !!!" But it's obviously not inhuman, because it was humans that were doing it, not extraterrestrials.
What we should really turn to our spouse/friend/colleague and say is "What conditions caused this to happen, and how can we stop those conditions from arising again..?"
But we don't, because then we might actually have to do something. Gasping is easier. And so is posting it on youtube so other people can add comments like "Dude - thatz fucked up." and "Pwnd".
And don't tell me we've somehow gotten 'better'.
The first picture is from a modern American POW. facility. 21st century torture from a country that supposedly is the most advanced - culturally, technologically and politically - in the world. The second, a picture from the infamous Stanford Prison experiment, which had to be ended when, after only six days, the randomly appointed psychology-student 'guards' began to seriously abuse a set of equally randomly appointed 'prisoners'.
Six days. After over two thousand years of human cultural and social development... Six days. Improvement..? Better..?
Conclusions:
So. What can we pull out of this morass of death and faith..? It continued, the cycle - pogroms in newly Stalinist Russia, the infamous Nazi Holocaust - but since nothing much has happened in the last 70 or 80 years or so, already we've convinced ourselves it'll never happen again, that we've changed. That we are nice people. That we'll never ever turn on our neighbors in a crisis - not to cry on their shoulders - but to kill them and take what we want, or kill them simply to feel that we are doing something to alleviate our own frustrations and despair. Even though we see evidence of people doing just that almost every year.
Because we're good.
But we're not. Most of us just live in situations where the buffer zone between amenable and ape-shit crazy is wider, that's all.
But I'm straying. The Jews. Antisemitism. God and God as. Religion. Persecution. Cycles.
The concept of being God's chosen people. Of being tested, of the promised land. Well, the Jews are back in Israel now, along with nuclear weapons. They learnt that lesson at least. Never be helpless amid potential foes. Their second exodus only took them about 2000 years. Was it worth it do you think..? This Hansel and Gretelesque trek through the forests of mankind's darkest deeds leaving a trail of mangled and despoiled bodies in their wake..? Just to get back to square one..? I mean, in snakes and ladders, that's bad.
I wonder did they never consider that the very religion that gave them the strength to endure as a people against the severest of oppressions was the very same thing that damned them to suffer the same fate again and again..?
There are other elitest groups around that bond themselves to each other's aid, the Masons, the Opus dei perhaps, maybe even things so mundane a Rotary groups. But they keep themselves to themselves - secret, hidden away, remaining integral to the societies they move in. Wise move, don't you think..?
But I suppose there exists some merit, some degree of heroism, in publicly refusing to bend, to blend; to worship in the manner of your choosing no matter what. An inalienable individual right. Of choice. But only if the negative consequences of that choice, end with you.
Two poor little Juden Boys. With their little stars. About the same age as my daughter is now. Lived little lives full of fear and uncomprehension. Then died, probably badly, probably in pain. Dunno about you, but if I look too long, I tear up.
I wonder, did they choose..?
Before the road that led from Egypt to Jerusalem and out of it, and back again, was Abraham. And the story I most remember from the bible class I attended, many moons ago now, is the one where God tests Abraham's obedience. And Abraham's choosing God over his own son. Isaac getting bound to a rock. A sacrifice. His own father's knife at his throat.
There's a happy ending of course, God's angel stays his hand, and some poor quadruped gets the chop instead. If I'd been Isaac though, after going through all that, I'd have demanded a really great Christmas present that year, I dunno, a new bike or something.
But I wonder if we miss, in all the blather about obedience and rewards, something simpler:
That God did not want the father to kill his own child in His name.
And yet, that father of the two boys above, possessors of the cloth stars and the serious eyes, and a multitude of fathers of Jewish children before him, that's exactly what they did. In subscribing to a lethal religion, in refusing to swallow their pride and change, to adapt, to assimilate themselves into other cultures, before it became too late... They condemned a legion of children, their sons and daughters, to death. In God's name. God as.
God's chosen people. Is that idea all that different from the concept of a master race..? Was Hitler jealous..? Is that what really motivated him..? There is irony in that. But not the good kind.
(To be edited in:
Hi Tab,
Basically, the tale starts with a group of people, the Hebrews, linked physically by genetic similarites arising from interbreeding in geographic isolation and linked socially simply from spending a long time in close proximity, and culturally solving the problems of cohesion inherrent to any group of people over the size of a couple of hundred.
Here's a little more detail:
The Hebrews described in the Old Testament appear to have been semi-nomadic herders of sheep and goats and occasional farmers in areas of the Fertile Crescent from Northeastern Mesopotamia and Iran to the borders of Egypt in Canaan, without knowledge of metal working, sophisticated craftsmanship or a written language. Like other nomadic herders, they were tent dwellers -- as Abraham is described in Genesis 13:3. And, as was common among herders, the Hebrews had a masculine god of the sky and weather. The Hebrews organized themselves around their extended families, and Hebrew families were combined into kinship groups governed by a council of elders that left the head of a family with a sense of self-rule. These heads of families were males with absolute authority over their wives and children, and they were the priests for their families, each family having its own sacred images.
What we have to remember is that, despite common opinion, the Hebrews or Jews were not the only Semitic race, but that the term [i]Semite[/i] means a member of any of various ancient and modern people originating in southwestern Asia, including Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Ethiopian Semites. I have heard Arabs say that Europeans had accused them of anti-Semitism because they had said that the Jews regard themselves a privileged people and refuse to see themselves as part of the Semite people.
It isn’t even the fact that the legendary Abraham separated himself from his people to start a monotheistic religion, since the Moslems regard Abraham as their spiritual Father too. It is more the fact that Jews have this exclusiveness written into their scripture, although they fail to see that much of their scripture is critical of their spiritual Way. The New Testament words of Jesus seem to apply (Mat 3:9), “And do not think to say within yourselves, we have a father, Abraham. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”
Egyptians happened to them, apparently.
But before we do anything else, let's depart from the common path, and throw the Bible out of the window. Wheeee - there it goes. Thunk.
No offence, but all this happened a hell of a long time ago, and the Bible, bless its numerous sacred pages is, from a historical POV., a bit like an non peer reviewed page on Wikipedia. Something to be taken with a pinch or two of NaCl. At very best it's storified history, aimed to teach a specific POV. not objective reality. Just because it's been translated into every language under the sun, and nearly everyone who can read has heard of it, doesn't make it any truer.
There is no doubt that much of the OT-History, especially prior to Joshua, is legendary. You only have to speak to Egyptologists when going through the ruins of temples on the Nile and they will tell (and show) you how much of the rest of the presumed “historical books” of the Bible have their origins in Egyptian legends amongst others. In a way then, Egypt did influence the group of tribes known as Israel very significantly and the short period of Monotheism in Egypt may have fuelled the abrahamitic monotheism and make them aspire to independence after a period of being a vassal state (or perhaps less) of Egypt.
The Bible history has epic tendencies perhaps because it is probably inspired by the Bhagavata and other religious epics indicating that there was a move towards monotheism in various cultures around about 4 B.C. If indeed the Bhagavatas borrowed or shared the attribute or title Purusa of their monotheistic deity from the philosophy of Sankhya, this could also be an indication that it wasn’t uncommon to borrow from or share with other cultures at that time. This obviously makes the legendary beginnings of Israel very murky and pre-historic.
Compared to a semi-arid hillside, and a few goats for company, the bright lights of the big cities of Egypt, the sheer massiveness of the architecture, not to mention all the swishy-hipped, scantily-clad Egyptian girls with their fancy eye-make-up, must have seemed like a whole new world to the Hebrews.
There is no doubt that the Israelites had difficulties with their independence, as the whole story of the Exodus shows, but also later accounts of Kings swayed to seek alliances with the larger states around them, choosing the most opportune chances but often ending up with the wrong one. This led ultimately to the loss of ten of the twelve tribes, leaving only Judah and Benjamin in the “land of milk and honey” after various defeats and deportations, and especially the Babylonian exile. During this time the prophets continually warned Israel that this kind of opportunist policy deprived them of their independence – especially their spiritual independence, bringing all the more idolatry into the country and undermining trust in JHWH.
Moses. We know the tale: Mother chucks him in a river to escape the murders of the first born Hebrews. Grows up, meets Yahweh. Comes back, rescues the slaves, finds some stone tablets, leads them to the promised land. Yadda-yadda.,
Maybe it didn't need to be that grand. Maybe Moses was the world's first Trade Unionist. Maybe he wanted something better for his fellow Hebrew workers. Maybe he was a man with another dream, not the Egyptian one.
Moses is too a legendary figure and most of what we know about him is borrowed from Egypt or Babylon, especially the legend of Sargon. His role is certainly similar to the humorous sketch you have made and in fact Tony Benn has said, as a Christian, that this story amongst others awoke socialist ideals in his heart. So you are not far off after all.
The historicity of the Exodus is doubted, although it could be the overdramatisation of an early source – which Charlton Heston and Cecil B. DeMille duly overdramatised again. A best it was an escape from slavery by an insignificant number of tribesmen that were probably considered unable to survive and left to their own means. The spiritual story of the forty years of wandering through the desert seems to support this theory, bringing forth, as it seems, a hardened group of tribesmen with a mystical religion that finally took over a large area in the half-moon between Egypt, Babylon and Assyria.
A spiritual revolution rather than material: Yahweh, the one true God. The chosen people. Commandments. Promised land. Let's translate that into Trade-union -speak.
*"Yahweh, the one true God" - Your prospective new employer.
*"Made in his image" - greater equality between management and labour force.
*"The chosen people" - you guys are special, you should be doing better than this.
*"Commandments" - better working conditions.
*"Promised land" - new, luxurious premises, with free water-coolers and a cordon-bleu worker's canteen.
And - bingo - Exodus.
This would be true if the story did not also show a spiritual pathway, whether it can be historically positioned at the time of the story, or at the time of the telling of the story. The whole legend around Moses, the burning bush, the exodus and the receiving of the law, are filled with incidents which, even if they are occasionally difficult to translate into modern times, had a spiritual relevance at the time of the story-telling – probably after the Babylonian exile.
The journey of the Israelites out of Egypt, especially shown on that map, does not explain forty years of wandering until the final entrance into Canaan – unless it is understood mystically. As a historical record it would amount to documented mass-murder and if you look closely, the Israelites only entered Canaan after the largest number of those who left Egypt had died – including Moses. Therefore the grounds on which Moses had persuaded the Israelites to leave Egypt were bogus and unfulfilled on the basis of the accusation that they “had done evil in his sight”.
So, how do we translate this charming homely into the situation the Hebrews were in..? What changed their mind-set, gave them the strength to carry on..? To not just quietly dissolve, fade from history's pages..?
[…]
Whenever my little son falls over and busts his knee, and is feeling a little sorry for himself, I pick him up and tell him not to worry, that he rocks, and that I love him, and soon he's all smiles again. Works just fine for a primary-schooler. But, I don't think it's going to cut the mustard forever. A kid soon works out that their dad, unless their dad's a real monster, will always tell him he rocks, even if he doesn't really, all that much.
A loving-father God, in the convential sense, wouldn't have had much staying power. Doubt would have crept back in. The Hebrews needed the other kind. The tough-love-test-you-to-breaking-and-beyond kind. The kind whose praise was hard won, but could be trusted. An Old-testament kind of father/God.
The benefit of this spiritual POV. of 'being tested' works by changing your view of suffering. However hard becomes the way, however many stones you get in your sandal, however many children you have to bury - it's all worth it - the journey becomes some kind of spiritual gym and suffering becomes a kind of spiritual currency, an entrance fee to the the promised land, to be paid in blood, sweat and tears. Your suffering and hardship..? Money in the bank.
Which leads us on to the final component required - social cohesion.
I think that what you are describing here is more than “social glue” at work – if the story has any historical truth. One thing is that the story assumes that the listeners or readers of that story assume that it has some bearing on the way they came to be a nation, even if it is legendary. The second thing is that the story tells them something about their relationship to God, which according to the story was bought dearly by the generation which died before they could enter the Promised Land, but of which they have no personal memory, but some may at the time of telling have experienced the Babylonian exile. On the wave of the liberation from exile they received the story of an original liberation from Egypt, the great deeds of God and how he helped them gain the land which they have just received back.
(Nehemiah 8:1+8):
1) And all the people gathered as one man into the plaza before the Water Gate. And they spoke to Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses, which Jehovah had commanded to Israel.
8) And they read aloud clearly in the Book of the Law of God, and they gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.
Nehemiah may also not be reliably historical, since it is highly valuable spiritually, but it seems to explain a lot. It is said that the Levites went around telling the people not to weep, saying, “Be quiet, for today is holy, and do not be grieved.” It is easy to see why, since the discreditable release from exile was covered by a heroic and blessed exodus in the face of Pharaoh. The Jews had a history and a covenant; they were blessed by divine fortune and had a divine calling.
Humans are naturally spiritual beings. For us, developing a spiritual facet to our psychic make-up is as natural as is developing an arm or a leg is to our physicality. Drop any human, anywhere, and sooner or later they will form some conception of God.
A religion, however, does not serve God but the society that creates it. A religion serves the cultural and social needs of the people that form it, it clothes our individual and natural concepts of a supreme being or beings in some generalised aspect which appeals to the, usually very mundane, psychic wish-list of the group mind. It aproaches not God, but God as. And from that aspect, a religion borrows the authority to impress itself as a social force.
This is a bit like the question of what came first, the chicken or the egg? Whilst I agree that religion does serve as a social force, I believe that Alan Watts was correct when he said that the spiritual development of mankind – his psychological development – is a question of personal and collective maturity. The maturity of a society relies greatly upon its social cohesion [i]and[/i] its spiritual development, which serves the well-being of that society in a manner that is in our time merely a subject for imagination and hope.
It is really not a question of whether a religion is theistic or not, but a question of personal spirituality and deliberate meditation and contemplation as an indication of a “psycho-hygiene”. Human beings are generally hung up with an identity problem from adolescence onwards and go throughout life with some kind of coping strategy, but without really answering the questions on their mind. Religion is a more or less effective method of answering these questions – and almost invariably requires us to move in a direction that is different to the way we would otherwise move.
The problem is that real religion is a question of personal inspiration or cultural development. According to Alan Watts, collectives have phases of development similar to individuals, with the first phase of childhood, then puberty, adulthood and old age. In the childhood phase, we take a somewhat superficial approach to life, fail to see the complexity and detail, but take things at face value. During the phase associated to puberty, large portions of society rebel against the naivety of the childhood phase and start to question much of what has carried it up to this point. This reactionary phase isn’t resolved by adulthood, but we find a working solution – however, it is a phase of crisis which is only resolved (if at all) when we reach the age of reflection and wisdom (old-age). When society reaches this phase, it reflects on the symbolism of childhood and discovers that it had the answer to its identity problems all along, but either lacked the depth of insight, the ability to differentiate, or the personal integrity to see the answers before its eyes. The task then, lies in prolonging this phase indefinitely – which is the subject of prophecy.
All religions could be percieved as forms of idolatry if you like, the worship of (an) idealized self(ves). The greater the lack, the bigger the God required to fill the holes in the group psyche.
I disagree a little. I believe idolatry to be the artificial extension of our identity, using objects (idols), ideas (projection), or power. Some forms of religion, like fundamentalism, and some methods could become idolatrous, but healthy religion actually solves the problem – like I said above, it is sadly only a healthy society or person that has a healthy religion.
In the year 66 BC, rebellion spread to Jerusalem, and with whatever weapons the Judeans could find they attacked the Romans. Roman troops in Judea were hopelessly outnumbered, and the Jewish rebels killed many of them.
Rome crushed the rebellion. It sent to Judea an army that was allowed to plunder, massacre and burn. A Roman blockade of Jerusalem created famine among its inhabitants. Calls for help from Yahweh went unanswered. Roman soldiers poured into the city, and raped and massacred thousands. They left the inner city destroyed and Yahweh's temple burned ruins.
This could be identified as the death of Jewish society as it was. The dispersal saw the Jews join those Jews already outside of what had been Israel, and reform a completely different society and religion. The Pharisees became the Rabbis and the synagogue took the place of the temple, as teaching took the place of sacrifice. But until this phase was reached, as you have told us, there was the utmost suffering in the hands of the Roman authorities and those Christians who were gaining authority within the empire.
During the crusades, the Jews suffered the unsophisticated enthusiasm of the Christian marauders, who were so blind as not to see their own hypocrisy when killing in the name of love. The wisdom of Christ and his early followers hadn’t survived the end of the epoch, but Christian theology had naively been adopted in the medieval Christianity of the “Holy Roman Empire” and previously as the church entered into union with the Roman Empire, although it was also the age of numerous controversies, because it lacked the maturity of its predecessors and very soon it also conflicted with individuals of a spiritual maturity that was beyond the ruling theology. This church saw the Jew as the enemy of Christ, indeed as the killers of God.
"sent down from heaven... ...at the boy's birth...what
tracks remain Of our old wickedness, once done away,
Shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear...
Untended, will the she-goats then bring home
Their udders swollen with milk, while flocks
afield Shall of the monstrous lion have no fear."
Now, if you didn't know better, you'd think that was part of Isaiah 11, prophesizing the coming of Christ. But it's not, it's the Roman imperial poet Virgil, telling of the coming of Octavius, Julius Caeser's son, who was to become Augustus.
You see, Jesus had some competition.
Or rather, Jesus was adopted into this line of deified human beings without understanding was the Incarnation was really about.
So, barring a brief respite after escaping the clutches of the pyramid builders, the Jews have taken a hell of a kicking down the centuries, but seem remarkably to be keeping on ticking. If they were a car, I'd buy one.
I mean - Romans..? Gone. Babylon..? Gone. Assyrians..? Gone. Mesopotamians..? Gone. Only Egypt seems to still be in the same place. Not a bad record, for a bunch of ex-goatherders.
During the Middle Ages, after they'd been chucked out of Jerusalem by the Romans, and bashed about during the crusades, the Jewish race are cast to the winds, settling wherever they find sanctuary. They settle, but they never seem to be able to stick:
"The Middle Ages were mainly a period of expulsions. In 1290, 16,000 Jews were expelled from England; in 1306, 100,000 from France; and in 1492, about 200,000 from Spain. Smaller but more frequent expulsions occurred in Germany, so that at the commencement of the 16th century only four great Jewish communities remained: Frankfurt, 2,000; Worms, 1,400; Prague, 10,000; and Vienna, 3,000 (Heinrich Grätz, Geschichte der Juden x. 29). It has been estimated that during the five centuries from 1000 to 1500, 380,000 Jews were killed during the persecutions, reducing the total number in the world to about 1,000,000. In the 16th and 17th centuries the main centers of Jewish population were in Poland and the Mediterranean countries, Spain excepted."
The biggest trouble with the Jews was the fact that they had lost their place to shine and be special. Wherever they went, they coped with the situation and even managed to bring forth geniuses and gain wealth, but they also were separate. They were rarely given the chance to integrate, but in Al-Andalus (Iberian peninsular) there was finally a long phase (711-1492) of peaceful coexistence under Muslim rule where Jewish philosophy and culture could flourish. However, on January 2, 1492, Muhammad XII of Granada surrendered complete control of Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella, "The Catholic Monarchs", and the flourishing period was over.
So why this continuing cycle of settlement, growth and then expulsion/massacre..?
As you say, the problem with Judaism is its distinctiveness – but I think that the main problem was really that Christianity had entered a new age of insecurity. With the sending of Columbus across the ocean, it became clear that the world was quite different to how Christians had seen it in their naivety. It wasn’t flat and Columbus was called to sail to India going away from land, with a crew that foresaw themselves sailing over some precipice. To counter the feeling of free fall, the “Catholic Monarchs” decided to make sure that at least at home, everything is nicely Catholic and required that their Jews convert or suffer expulsion. The problem was that in their insecurity, they didn’t actually believe that the “Conversos” had really converted, and they needed someone to clear the issue up – enter the Spanish Inquisition.
It is quite clear that Jews didn’t mix because it meant that their identity is immediately called into question and the thought of the Ghetto wasn’t particularly attractive for non-Jews. The word "ghetto" actually comes from the word "getto" or "gheto", which means slag in Venetian, and referred to a foundry where slag was stored, just coincidentally located on the same island as the area of Jewish confinement. Jewish ghettos in Europe existed because Jews were viewed as that they were foreigners due to their non-Christian beliefs in a Renaissance Christian environment. As a result, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities. Ghettos have been places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and tall, crowded houses, although there were some exceptions. Residents had their own justice system. Around the ghetto stood walls that, during pogroms, were closed from inside to protect the community, but from the outside during Christmas, Passover, and Easter Week they were used to prevent the Jews from leaving during those times.
In the 19th century, Jewish ghettos were progressively abolished, and their walls demolished, following the ideals of the French Revolution, however the Nazis re-instituted Jewish ghettos before and during World War II in Eastern Europe. There was even a “ghetto” in full view of the Pope in Rome, but nobody thought of this as particularly problematic.
This is a people who've been regularly shunted throughout history from one territory to another. What more sedentary races forget, especially in this time of ample medi-care and antibiotics is that a new territory means new diseases, or new varients of old ones. And what vectors disease..? Physical closeness, of which sex is about as close as you can get, and food and drink. Holding yourselves as physically aloof as possible from a new social enviroment, at least initially, becomes not about the niceties of custom and tradition, but of survival.
This may also have been a way in which ghettos “backfired” on the societies which implemented them.
So. What can we pull out of this morass of death and faith..? It continued, the cycle - pogroms in newly Stalinist Russia, the infamous Nazi Holocaust - but since nothing much has happened in the last 70 or 80 years or so, already we've convinced ourselves it'll never happen again, that we've changed. That we are nice people. That we'll never ever turn on our neighbors in a crisis - not to cry on their shoulders - but to kill them and take what we want, or kill them simply to feel that we are doing something to alleviate our own frustrations and despair. Even though we see evidence of people doing just that almost every year.
Because we're good.
We avoid the question of mature religion, “Who are you?” and instead we tell people who the others are. Because we don’t know who we are, we become insecure when someone not only knows who they are, but looks at us as though they know us too. Anybody who prospers under bad conditions is a threat to those who only just survive under acceptable conditions. Even if it wasn’t religious madness that caused animosity towards the Jews, it was this insecurity. When the Shoa happened, the world was confronted with its shame; because the Germans had efficiently done what everybody had thought should be done. Once somebody has committed the atrocity and it is real, those who had harboured the thought reel back and say, “No, not that!” but it was precisely that which they had imagined – although perhaps not in technicolour.
But unfortunately, whilst this was happening and Jews were being shipped all over the Atlantic in search of a harbour that would take them, and shortly afterwards, the solution was found and the Jews brought to Palestine, the original home of the Jews and seemingly the Zionist dream was being realised.
I wonder did they never consider that the very religion that gave them the strength to endure as a people against the severest of oppressions was the very same thing that damned them to suffer the same fate again and again..?
I wonder too, but I have little hope that they could understand why something they couldn’t help being brought them such brutal treatment.
God's chosen people. Is that idea all that different from the concept of a master race..? Was Hitler jealous..? Is that what really motivated him..? There is irony in that. But not the good kind.
I think that Hitler, coming from the background he did, was jealous of the Jews – but of their wealth and influence in his days. Who knows whether he saw his concept of a master race as opposition to the concept of “God's chosen people”?
I think there may be a degree of inevitability in the story, but only if the various participants refused to use their own ability to identify right from wrong.
Anyway, before we get carried away with the pretty pictures, let's imagine the sum total of our remembered experiences as the pool in which the letters form in the picture right at the top, and the differing areas of the vast network of neurones in our brains as the series of wave-generators around its circumference.
