2017-05-26

“We do not believe in God, but he nonetheless promised us Palestine”

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by Neil Godfrey

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Part of the Uganda Protectorate that was transferred to the British East Africa Protectorate was at one time under serious consideration as a homeland for Jews.

Odd, don’t you think, that primarily secular Jews have led the Zionist movement while pointing to the Bible as the justification for their “return” to Palestine. When the Zionist movement was founded in the nineteenth century it was opposed by religious and most orthodox Jews. Zionism’s founder, Theodore Herzl, argued for a site in east Africa as the best place for a Jewish homeland for the foreseeable future. So what happened?

It was the British who were in large measure responsible for Palestine becoming the designated homeland. Protestant Britain, informed by Western Christian scholarship in a time of colonialism and imperialism, contributed to strong support among non-Jews for the Zionist movement focused on Palestine.

Most religious Jews argued against Zionism, insisting that the Jews were meant by God to remain outside Palestine and return was unthinkable without the messiah.

The secular early Zionists quoted intensively from the Bible to show that there was a divine imperative to colonize Palestine,  or in their discourse, to redeem Eretz Israel. But in fact the Bible is not a very useful text for reinventing a Jewish nation: the father of the nation, Abraham, was not from Palestine, the Hebrews became a nation in Egypt and the Ten Commandments were given to them in Egypt (the Sinai). . . .

(Pappe, I. (2016). “The Bible in the service of Zionism: “we do not believe in God, but he nonetheless promised us Palestine” in I. Hjelm and T. L. Thompson, eds., History, Archaeology and the Bible Forty Years After “Historicity”, 1st ed. Oxon, Routledge, p. 206.)

Eventually a few religious Jews did come to accept Zionism with Palestine as their focus and argued that the time of God’s punishment was coming to an end, that return to Palestine without the messiah was the new divine will.

Despite the several weaknesses of the Bible as a justification for claiming Palestine as the natural homeland of the Jews, the Bible was used to win support from among both Jews and gentiles (especially the British and Americans).

Several studies have shown that the gravitation towards Palestine as the epicentre of Zionist visions and aspirations was facilitated, among other factors, by a very keen and intensive Protestant interest in connecting the Jewish colonization of the “holy land” with divine and apocalyptic Christian doctrines, which saw the return of the Jews as precipitating the second coming of the Messiah. 

The orientation of Zionism towards Palestine followed European scholarly preoccupation with biblical Israel in the age of colonialism and imperialism. (Pappe, p. 207, my bolding)

That scholarship had a strong religious bias. Palestine was viewed as a land that rightfully belonged to Israel and other peoples inhabiting the land at different times were there either illegitimately or temporarily. Essentially non-Jews in Palestine “didn’t count”, Arabs were seen as nomads, and consequently the land was in effect empty, just waiting to be reinhabited by a people without a land.

At the same time, scholarship came to invent a Jewish nation with ancient roots as the rightful occupants. Despite archaeological evidence to the contrary (see, for example, The Archaeological Evidence for Ancient Israel) Jerusalem was depicted as a major centre for a viable Israelite empire from the days of David and Solomon.

A religious narrative was embraced by many secularists as a historical charter of birthright and nationhood. Continue reading ““We do not believe in God, but he nonetheless promised us Palestine””

Quran, Bible — both are powerless without interpretation

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Religion and Atheism
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Scott Atran wrote the following four years ago in response to Sam Harris’s insistence that Islam per se, the Quran in particular, were to blame for terrorist violence. I think such views expressed by Harris are seriously misinformed and potentially harmful.

Context-free declarations about whether Islam, or any religion, is inherently compatible or incompatible with extreme political violence – or Democracy or any other contemporary political doctrine for that matter — is senseless. People make religious belief – whether Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and so forth – compatible with violence or non-violence according to how they interpret their religious beliefs.

And how people interpret religious injunctions (e.g., the Ten Commandments), as well as transcendental aspects of political ideologies, almost invariably changes over time.

For example, on the eve of the Second World War, political and Church leaders in Fascist Italy and Spain claimed that Catholicism and Democracy were inherently incompatible, and many Calvinist and Lutheran Protestants believed that God blessed the authoritarian regime. As Martin Luther proclaimed, “if the Emperor calls me, God calls me” – a sentiment that Luther, like many early Christians, believed was sanctified by Jesus’s injunction to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Nevertheless, the principles of modern liberal democracy first took root and grew to full strength in The European Christian and Colonial heartland. As Benjamin Franklin expressed it in his proposal for the motto of the new American Republic: “Rebellion against Tyranny is Obedience to God.”

Or, as the Coordinating Council of Yemeni Revolution for Change put it, an Islam of “basic human rights, equality, justice, freedom of speech, freedom of demonstration, and freedom of dreams!” (National Yemen, “The Facts As They Are,” Youth Revolutionary Council Addresses International Community, April 25, 2011).

That there is a cruel and repugnantly violent contemporary current in Islam, there is no doubt. Factions of the Christian identity movement, the Tamil Tiger interpretation of Hinduism as necessitating suicide attacks against Buddhist enemies*, Imperial Japan’s interpretation of Zen Buddhism as a call to a war of extermination against the Chinese, all have produced cruel and barbarous behavior that has adversely affected millions of people.

(Bolded emphasis is mine)

* Since 2013 we have seen the rise of murderous violence by Hindus and  Buddhists against Muslims in India and Myanmar/Burma.

 

 

 

 

2017-05-25

Ladies Parking

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by Neil Godfrey

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They do things differently in foreign countries, as I was reminded this evening shortly after landing in Bangkok, Thailand. I would be surprised if many immersed in Western ways would be familiar with an entire floor in a multi-storey carpark being reserved for females. (No, there’s no religious reason; Thailand is a Buddhist nation.)

Here’s a close-up:

Presumably it’s a space where women can feel safe from violent and rapacious men. We are warned in public announcements at airport railways stations not to touch any stray dogs here. Rabies being the reason. The parking floor is a depressing reminder that wild dogs aren’t the only threat.

Damn. It’s actually been a good day and I should have posted something more positive. Will try again tomorrow.

2017-05-22

Part 2: Why Luke traced Jesus through Nathan rather than Solomon

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by Neil Godfrey

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This post is a direct continuation from Why did Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy through David’s son Nathan and not Solomon?

Unfortunately we cannot track down the beginning of the Jewish tradition that the messiah was to emerge from David via his son Nathan. Marshall Johnson considers suggestions that it began in the days of the later Maccabees with priests challenged the legitimacy of monarchical rule but finds them flawed.

Zechariah 12:10-14 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn . . . .  The land shall mourn, each family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shim′e-ites by itself . . .

So according to Marshall we can do nothing more than rely on the scant evidence we do have that indicates that at the time the “Old Testament” book of Zechariah was written the family of Nathan had significant prominence in Judea. Who that Nathan was at that time we do not know. He could have been David’s son or he could have been the prophet. What we do know is that at some point the Nathan in Zechariah 12:12 was identified with both the son of David and the prophet. Marshall believes that the best we can do at this point is accept Eusebius’s explanation that Nathan was given his place in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus as a result of a difference of opinion among Jews over the ancestry of the Messiah. See the previous post: Matthew’s genealogy represented one school of thought; Luke’s genealogy represented another school of thought that believed the “curse of Jeconiah” in the book of Jeremiah made any messianic line through David’s royal line impossible. Jeremiah 22

24 “As I live, says the Lord, though Coni′ah the son of Jehoi′akim, king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off 25 and give you into the hand of those who seek your life, into the hand of those of whom you are afraid, even into the hand of Nebuchadrez′zar king of Babylon and into the hand of the Chalde′ans. 26 I will hurl you and the mother who bore you into another country, where you were not born, and there you shall die. 27 But to the land to which they will long to return, there they shall not return.” 28 Is this man Coni′ah a despised, broken pot, a vessel no one cares for? Why are he and his children hurled and cast into a land which they do not know? 29 O land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord! 30 Thus says the Lord: “Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days; for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah.”

The best available explanation for Luke tracing the line of the messiah through Nathan, therefore, is that there was a division of viewpoints among Jewish scribes over the possibility of David’s royal line yielding the messiah and Luke expressed the alternative school of thought to the one represented in Matthew. Johnson also believes that the internal evidence in the Gospel of Luke indicates that the author had a strong motive to want to give Jesus a prophet as an ancestor. Nathan, identified as a prophet as well as son of David, therefore, takes on a special significance in this gospel. So what is the evidence that the author or final redactor of Luke-Acts had a particularly strong interest in giving Jesus the messiah descent from a prophet?

1. “There is throughout the Lukan corpus an appeal to the prophets of the OT as witness to the validity of the ministry of Jesus”

The OT prophets are regularly labelled as “prophets of old” (προφήτης των άρχαίων), setting Jesus apart as the new prophet:

— Luke 9:8, 19; Luke 1:70; Acts 3:21.

OT prophets are frequently referenced, sometimes called “holy”:

— Acts 3: 18, 24; 7: 42; 10: 43; 13: 40; 15: 15; 26: 27; Luke 18: 31; 24: 25, 27, 44

Individual prophets referenced, and most notably David is listed as one of the prophets:

— Isaiah: Luke 3:454: 17; Acts 8: 28; 28: 25; cf. 7: 48 — Joel: Acts 2: 16 — Samuel: Acts 3: 28; 13: 20, 27 — Moses: Luke 24: 27; Acts 3: 22 — Elijah: Luke 1: 17; 4: 25-6; 9: 8, 19, 30 ff., 54 — Elisha: Luke 4:27 — David: Acts 2: 30

Luke includes the prophets in the end-times banquet (unlike Matthew): Luke 13: 28

Luke 10:24 “For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” Continue reading “Part 2: Why Luke traced Jesus through Nathan rather than Solomon”

2017-05-21

Why did Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy through David’s son Nathan and not Solomon?

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by Neil Godfrey

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I’ve set out the genealogies at the end of this post but I think anyone interested in reading this post will already be aware of the differences between the family trees of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Matthew’s genealogy looks “right” since it leads to Jesus through David and his son Solomon. But Luke’s looks odd. No Solomon. None of the famous kings of the Old Testament. It’s as if Luke followed the family line of Jesus through the back doors and side alleys or secret closets on the trail of some nobodies. David’s son is named as Nathan. The only Nathan most of us know about is Nathan the prophet who confronted David over his murder of Uriah and adultery with his wife.

An interesting explanation for this oddity in the Gospel of Luke is offered by Marshall D. Johnson in The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies (2nd ed, 2002).

Before we look at that explanation we need to note the evidence for the genealogy being “less than reliable” as a historical record.

[I]s this list a Lukan construction, or was it shaped in some prior tradition which Luke has incorporated? And, if the latter is true, then to what extent can we expect to find here a congruity with Luke’s purpose in writing the history of Jesus and the earliest church? . . . [I]t cannot be assumed that the lists as we have them in Matthew and Luke were taken over without modification or redaction from the Palestinian Jewish-Christian church.

There are two indications which seem to support this view:

(1) Repetition of names in the list after David, some of which appear to be anachronisms, possibly suggesting that this list had its own history. Among these repetitions are: variations of Mattathias (five times), Jesus (twice), Joseph (three times), Simeon (Semein), Levi (twice), and Melchi (twice). The question of anachronism enters the picture here in light of the history of the usage of Jewish personal names. Jeremias points out that the use of the names of the twelve patriarchs of Israel as personal names cannot be traced to pre-exilic times; thus, ‘when Luke, in the early period of the kings, names in succession Joseph, Judah, Simeon, and Levi as the sixth to ninth descendants of David, it is an anachronism which proves the pre-exilic section of the genealogy to be historically worthless’.1

1 Jeremias, Jerusalem, pp. 330-1, notes that the first occurrences of the names Joseph, Judah, and Simeon as personal names among the Israelites or Jews are to be found in Ezra, Nehemiah, and I Chronicles, while the name Levi occurs as a personal name first among the Maccabees and in NT times.

Material since published in the Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum has tended to confirm the view that these names, together with the name Jesus (Joshua), were not commonly used among the Jews until the Ptolemaic and especially the Roman periods. It appears that there was a steady increase in the use of Hebrew biblical names from the Ptolemaic to the Roman periods, including the names Joseph and Jesus.

Thus, the Lukan list most probably does not derive from an actual genealogy of Joseph or Mary, but should be considered in light of the generally midrashic use of this Gattung in Judaism. This means that it is legitimate to inquire into the purposes for which it was constructed and for its inclusion in this gospel.

(pp. 230f, my formatting)

In the list below I have underlined the repeated names and coloured red the sequence of four anachronisms.

The second indication that the list has been shaped by the author of the gospel is it’s unusual location in between the baptism of Jesus and his temptation in the wilderness:

(2) The genealogy is incorporated into a framework similar to that of Mark, that is, between the account of Jesus’ baptism and his temptation. This is to say that Luke was not led to include the genealogy at this point merely because of a sequence found in his sources. Moreover, the break in the ‘Markan’ sequence at this crucial point would seem to suggest that Luke had some specific purpose in mind for the genealogy as well as for its position. (p. 231)

So why Nathan? 

The reason Luke traces Jesus’ ancestry through Nathan, Marshall Johnson argues, is to emphasize the prophetic nature of Jesus’ ministry and the prophetic mission of the church arising from his work. Nathan was traditionally known as a prophet of notable significance.

That’s his conclusion. So what is his argument to support it?

Marshall Johnson begins by exploring references to Nathan in early Jewish and Christian traditions. He cites four passages:

1. Zechariah 12:10-14

10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a first-born. 11 On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rim′mon in the plain of Megid′do. 12 The land shall mourn, each family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; 13 the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shim′e-ites by itself, and their wives by themselves; 14 and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.

All four names appear in the pre-exilic section of Luke’s genealogy of Jesus.

In a later rabbinic Aramaic version of the above Zechariah passage, the Targum on Zechariah, Nathan is identified as both the son of David and the prophet.

But that’s a late document, so is there any evidence that such an identification had an earlier provenance? Continue reading “Why did Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy through David’s son Nathan and not Solomon?”

2017-05-18

“You Must Learn How to Listen to the Land”

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by Neil Godfrey

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The title is the heading of the opening chapter of A Land Without Borders: My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank by Nir Baram (and translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen). I was alerted to the book by listening to an interview with its Jewish author on a Radio National program.  Most of my reading has been of the works of older scholars. What attracted me to this book was that its author is an Israeli born in 1976 and I wanted an insight into his post 1967 perspective. What really drew me in was the following message:

I grew up in Israel in the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank worked in Israel and shared the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa with us every day. Since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, and with greater vigor after the Second Intifada broke out in 2000 and the Israeli government built its “security fence” (the separation wall that runs along the Green Line in some sections, but mostly sits deep in the West Bank), separation between West Bank Palestinians and Israelis became more rigid, more planned. As a result, the Palestinians ostensibly disappeared from our streets and most Israelis stopped going over the Green Line. Many Jewish teenagers I spoke with have never met a Palestinian in their lives — not even one! — while Palestinian kids eyed me curiously because I was the first Jew they’d ever met. But even older Israelis, who used to maintain both working and personal relationships with Palestinians from the West Bank, have not seen one for many years.

In fact, . . . most Israelis . . . have no inkling what the West Bank looks like today or how its inhabitants conduct their lives. . . . (my bolding)

Now that does not sound good. I am looking forward to following Nir Baran’s travels.

Among so many who claim to speak for one side or the other, there is, according to Baran, a pervasive ignorance of the reality of the daily lives of both Jews and Arabs in the West Bank. Images of certain selected persons and events flash on our TV screens and it is so easy for us to think those images represent far more than they in fact do. Baran’s purpose in his travels:

Mostly I wanted the people right in front of me to tell me their stories, and at times to prod them to follow the course of what they told me to its logical outcome, to chafe their political dreams up against the sharp stones of reality, and to leave my readers room to equivocate, to formulate their own positions.

I’m reminded of another work I recently completed, one by an older Palestinian. It is also worth picking up for an insight into the realities on the ground: Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh. That was a poignant insight into the perspective of an older generation too soon fading away. But now I look forward to reading a younger perspective on both the present and future.

Nir Baram: http://nirbaram.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Motivations of a “Mythicist”

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography
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From the Preface to The Evolution of Christianity by L. Gordon Rylands, 1927 (with my highlighting in bold):

The purpose of this book is to state as clearly and as concisely as possible, and to co-ordinate, the results lately obtained along different lines of inquiry by investigators of the origins of Christianity. The subject is wide and complex, and different inquirers have necessarily specialized in different directions. Sufficient results have now been secured to make a co-ordination possible and useful. I wish to say emphatically that the book is in no sense an attack upon religion in general, or upon Christianity in particular. There are, in fact, men who believe that the disappearance of the historical Jesus will have the effect of making religion more spiritual and more free. Professor Schmiedel has affirmed that his inmost religious convictions would suffer no harm even if he felt obliged to conclude that Jesus never lived; and I have no doubt that when advanced theologians have accepted this conclusion, as they have accepted many others which for a long time were bitterly resisted, they will discover that, nevertheless, Christianity can continue to exist. Kalthoff, indeed, argued that when an ideal—or, to use his expression, a prophetic—Christ has been substituted for the theological Christ, Christianity will be liberated from bonds which hinder its spiritual and ethical development, and will be capable of being raised to a higher plane.

The motive which prompted the writing of this book, however, was not to support that or any other point of view. I undertook the study of which it is the fruit solely with the desire of discovering the truth. And it should be obvious that that endeavour can be successful only in the absence of ulterior motive and of the wish to establish any particular conclusion. I was attracted to the subject of the book by its importance and fascination as a purely historical problem. So far as I had any bias at all, it was in favour of the historicity of Jesus, since I had not previously seen sufficient reason to doubt it; but I found this hypothesis untenable. And the farther I went the more impressed I became with the inadequacy of theologians and traditionalist critics, with whom the search after truth seemed to be subordinate to the maintenance of a particular point of view. So far as textual criticism is concerned, indeed, the work that has been done is admirable ; but in the treatment of the historical and mythological problems involved theological scholars have been lamentably superficial, if not sometimes wilfully blind. (pp. vii-ix)

Continue reading “Motivations of a “Mythicist””

2017-05-17

How Philo-Semitic British Israelism Morphed into Anti-Semitic White Supremacism / Christian Identity

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by Neil Godfrey

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In a former life I was mixed up with British Israelism (the belief that the Anglo-Saxon races are the “lost ten tribes of Israel”) so recently I was interested to find a new research paper by J. M. Berger using British Israelism as a case study in how an innocuous if eccentric belief system was able to evolve into today’s antisemitic white supremacist Christian Identity movement. (I have posted details of Berger’s paper at the end of this post.)

The church I once belonged to embraced British Israelism as one of its core doctrines. When I wanted to learn more about the details of this belief-system I tracked down an old book-lined room of old wooden desks and chairs and tended by an old man representing what appeared to be the last gasping remnant of the “British Israel Association” in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I purchased some very old literature with quaint titles that I still have with me:

Most of those publications hold a special place for Jews: the Anglo-Saxon nations (British and American) may have been declared the descendants of the tribe of Joseph but the British royal family was esteemed as a branch of the Davidic dynasty. The tribe of Judah, the Jews, were welcomed as inheritors of the promise of “the sceptre” that would continue unbroken until the coming of the Messiah.

So how could such a belief system evolve into a racist, even a violent, outfit?

It is impossible to cover the details of Berger’s discussion here but I can hit a few highlights. (This post does not do justice to Berger’s theoretical argument.)

It will be helpful to understand some basic principles of British Israelism.

Of primary importance is the distinction between the terms Israel and Jew. Israel is said to refer primarily to the ten tribes who made up the Bible’s kingdom of the north, based at Samaria, while the term Judah, from which we have Jews, was the name of the southern kingdom with its royal city of Jerusalem. Thus Israel refers to the northern ten tribes, the kingdom conquered by Assyria in the 720s, while the Jews belonged to the southern kingdom up to the time of the Babylonian captivity.

The promises made to Abraham were primarily racial or national. Yes, grace was promised (through Christ) but so was race. Multitudes of progeny, many nations and kings, dominance of the political landscape and super-abundant possession of wealth were promised Abraham’s descendants. Those promises became more specific when the dying Jacob passed on blessings to his sons, assigning each one, a future tribe, a particular destiny. The eldest son of Joseph was Ephraim and his descendants were to become a “multitude of nations” while his brother, Manasseh, was to become “a great nation”.

According to the argument these promises were never literally fulfilled in Bible times.

But around the mid-nineteenth century a few people did see two brother peoples, one a multitude of nations and the other a great nation, who did possess all the wealth and military dominance that they believed had been promised to Abraham’s descendants, specifically to the two sons of Joseph: the promises to Ephraim were seen fulfilled in the British Commonwealth of Nations and those to Manasseh in the United States of America.

After ancient Israel (the northern ten tribes) were taken into captivity they eventually migrated (as prophesied) to the north and the west, reaching the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, northern France.

But none of this was antisemitic. Quite the contrary, as Berger rightly notes, it was philo-Semitic. British Israelism had a place for all the tribes of Israel: the Jews had been promised not national wealth but a perpetual royal dynasty. Luckily the prophet Jeremiah was able to rescue some of the royal daughters (descended from David) at the time the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar was ravaging his way through Jerusalem and eventually relocate them in Ireland where they united with another branch of Judah’s royal family line.

In the last days the British royal family would belatedly acknowledge their true identity and hand their throne over to Jesus at his return. The British and American nations would recognize at last that they were Israelites and Jews would convert to Christianity and everyone would live happily ever after.

The earliest copy of John Wilson’s formal ideological statement of British Israelism dates from 1850, although a Preface the 1876 edition is dated 1840.

So that was British Israelism as it was known for around 100 or so years — up to the time of the Second World War. Bizarre, yes, but surely harmless.

There was a tiny seed, however, that some generations after its publication (see insert on John Wilson) was coopted for lunatic and violent ends. That seed was the passing claim that all of today’s races descended from the three sons of Noah, with those from Ham being the children of the curse. (Ham, recall, was cursed by Noah for apparently taking advantage of his drunken stupor.)

Yet the fact that the Jews were designated a place apart from certain other tribes of Israel would eventually prove to be a wedge that could too easily be exploited in an increasingly anti-Semitic environment. Notice the following lonely paragraph penned by John Wilson in his Lectures on our Israelitish origin (1876 edition):

We have adverted to the case of the other house of Israel, which as being left in the land, and having generally borne the name of “Jews,” are supposed to have remained distinct from all other people. We have seen that the best portion of them must have become mingled among the Gentiles; and the worst of the Gentiles—the Canaanites and Edomites, children emphatically of the curse—having become one with them, they have become guilty of the sins of both, the curse of which they have been enduring ; that they have nothing in the flesh whereof to boast, and cannot obtain possession of the land by the old covenant ; that they can only obtain a peaceable settlement as being viewed in the One Seed Christ, and as being joined to the multitudinous seed to come, especially of Ephraim. (p. 368)

Ominous. But a reflection of the times. The descendants of Shem, Noah’s eldest son, wrote Wilson, had “the greatest natural capacity for [religious] knowledge” (p. 28) and it is from them that the tribes of Israel and the “other white races” descended. Wilson even uses the “Semitic” to refer to all of these descendants of Shem, not only the Jews.

Rising tide of anti-Semitism

Continue reading “How Philo-Semitic British Israelism Morphed into Anti-Semitic White Supremacism / Christian Identity”

Back again

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Vridar

Vridar is not dead; the eight day hiatus was the result of one more hiccup in my transition to a new lifestyle in a new part of the map. This time next week I’ll be on my way to living overseas once more for a few months so we’ll see how organized and Vridar-productive I remain then.

I recall several posts I was wanting to do. Now, what’s first on the list ….. something about British Israelism and its morphing into Christian Identity…..

 

2017-05-09

Sad Day for Indonesia

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by Neil Godfrey

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Today’s news about the conviction of, and two year jail sentence handed to, Ahok (governor of Jakarta; official name = Basuki Tjahaja Purnama) for blasphemy is a kick in the guts for many Indonesians (and Australians who frequently visit Indonesia, like me).

Solo is a major city in the central island of Java and associated with very conservative Muslims, including — in the past — terrorists who don’t think it anywhere near conservative enough. (I found Solo boringly, depressingly spartan, ascetic, etc, compared with other parts of Indonesia I have spent time in.) But Indonesia is a kaleidoscope of cultures, lifestyles, languages, races, histories, and my experience in Solo scarcely compared with my time in other cities of Java and miscellaneous islands between Malaysia and Australia. Personally I have experienced nothing but positive vibes from every Indonesian I have met, even though I look and sound so totally white non-Muslim Australian.

I can never forget a time I was in Java soon after a devastating earthquake in the island of Sumatra nearly a decade ago. I came across many groups attempting to raise funds by all sorts of creative means and when one of them approached me I was more than willing to give generously, and I did. What surprised me, though, was how, on looking around after I dropped some cash into a bucket, literally multiple scores (hundreds?) of eyes were all focused on me, the tall, white, out of place Westerner — and they were all smiling, some giving me a thumbs up. I had no idea that it would mean so much to them that a westerner would help them out like that — or that it would mean so much if a westerner turned his back or gave a mere pittance.

These are not the people I know when I read about the Ahok “scandal”.

I have to admit I have never visited Aceh, though. Aceh has the reputation of being unlike any other part of Indonesia in that it is an ultra conservative Muslim enclave intent on living under the barbaric precepts of medieval religious doctrines and has long been at something of a quasi state of war against the rest of Indonesia and its national government.

Everywhere else I have been throughout Indonesia I have known only, nothing but, friendly, smiling faces, happy talk and banter, friendship either real or potential.

So I was surprised to see the extent of popular support for extremist parties over the current Ahok “scandal”. What keeps coming to mind is that figure I was taught way back in a high school history class: that Hitler’s Nazi party came to power with a mere 30% of the popular vote. Violence and threats of violence do indeed too often intimidate the meek and mild.

Oh my god, for all the problems I have with the current democratically elected Indonesian leader (he approves of the shooting dead of drug smugglers for pity’s sake) I do hope his efforts to ban Huzb ut-Tahrir and their ilk have the desired effect.

 

2017-05-08

A Dangerous New Americanism?

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by Neil Godfrey

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Part of the reason for my delay in posts has been extra time I have been taking on studying a new report by J.M. Berger on the emergence of violent extremist groups. Hopefully the post will be up soon: it addresses that quaint old British-Israelism belief that the lost ten tribes of Israel became the British Commonwealth of nations and the United States of America, and how and why that positively philo-Semitic group of adherents evolved into the anti-Semitic and violent extremist Christian Identity movement.

Meanwhile, I have just learned of another article by J.M. Berger that appeared on online a couple of weeks ago and that is based on the same report I have been studying:

A Dangerous New Americanism published by War on the Rocks:

https://warontherocks.com/2017/04/a-dangerous-new-americanism/

2017-05-05

Crow Smarts

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Evolution, Science
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It’s been a long time since I bought a children’s book — until today. Or at least it arrived today. I heard about it on a science show, Kids book goes inside the crow’s smart bird brain, and could not resist.

Look at this:

The New Caledonian crow shapes a hooked tool to extract grubs from logs.

And this:

The damn clever thing shapes another digging tool by tapering it so that it has a thick end for holding and a pointy end for digging into crevices.

The crows here have straight beaks, not slightly curved ones, and eyes more to the front of their heads than do other species of crow. Since these traits enable a more efficient use of tools (more difficult to work them with a curved beak and harder to get the aim right with eyes further apart) it appears that tool use has favoured the evolution of these smarter crows.

If like me you want to catch up with what the kids are reading and learning, check it out….

2017-05-04

How John the Baptist Was Reshaped by Each Gospel

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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The following is adapted from a 1975 article by Morton S. Enslin, John and Jesus. Enslin argues that the evidence in the gospels does not support the common view that Jesus began his career as a disciple of John the Baptist. In fact Enslin argues that when we examine the gospel narratives in sequence it is far more probable that the paths of John and Jesus never crossed. 

Enslin, relying upon the account of John in Josephus, believes John was a preacher who stood completely apart from Christian origins. This presumed historical John was considered to be a powerful threat to the authorities who had him executed.

From this starting point Enslin sees the evangelists writing alongside an independent John the Baptist movement and each one (at least after Mark) in succession contrives in his own way to make this John more “Christian”.

The Gospel of Mark

John suddenly appears without explanation. He is preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

John did baptize . . . and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. (Mark 1:4)

Jesus appears and is baptized.

There is no hint that John recognizes Jesus as the greater one who is to come after him.

After emerging from the water God announces to Jesus (no one else apparently hears) that he is his son:

Thou art my beloved son…. (Mark 1:11)

Continue reading “How John the Baptist Was Reshaped by Each Gospel”

2017-05-02

Realities behind Australia’s national myths

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society
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The things they never taught us in school!

Two works I have read recently have been eye-openers for me.

When visiting Macquarie University (Sydney) a few years ago I was struck by a rather untypical statue on campus:

I could never figure out why or what it was about until I saw a photo of the same on the back cover of a book, Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution by Raelene Frances. Professor Frances’s opening paragraph explains:

In the pages of this book you will meet many women who have sold sex at some stage of their lives. The first is called simply ‘Joy’. For eighteen months in 1995-97 her larger-than-life figure leant against a red door-frame on the corner of Yurong and Stanley Streets in East Sydney. Being a statue, she is not really a sex worker. Or is she? The story of Joy became something of sensation in the mid-1990s, not just because she was said to be the only statue of a prostitute on display in public anywhere in the world, and not just because she personified the seedier side of Sydney. Surrounding the creation ofjoy was a quite extraordinary mystery. . . . 

The story of Joy, as well as the history of her statue, follows.

The above is just introduction to what particularly “struck” me, something that had never crossed my mind in my sheltered innocence and protective armour of national myths. Australian myth-peddlers and exploiters love to play on our belief in the “hard country” in which we have managed through toughness of character to survive. The “outback” is life-threatening and cannot be tamed, but it presence has been a major factor in the moulding of our “national character”. Tough, resourceful, loyal to mates — traits we associate with the pioneers who settled there to plant cattle stations and with those who worked for them. Writers like Henry Lawson helped to grow the myth.

So it comes something of a . . . surprise, let’s say, to read what apparently enticed men from the city to seek adventure and a financial start there and “build our nation”:

A woman like Japanese prostitute Matsuwe Otana would no doubt have had many European and Chinese customers who were engaged in the pastoral industry, as well as the mines and the ports. Drovers or pastoralists in town on business or for a rest welcomed the services provided by the karayuki-san. More commonly, Europeans took Lheir sexual pleasures closer to the stations on which they worked. Here they had access to a plentiful and cheap, if not always willing, supply of Aboriginal women.

The use of Aboriginal women as ‘stud gins’ is a recurring theme across the northern frontiers, from the late nineteenth century in Western Australia and Queensland, and until the 1920s and 1930s in the Northern Territory. . . . .

In the Northern Territory, too, young Aboriginal women were used as ‘bait’ to attract or hold European men to station jobs. Writer Xavier Herbert maintained that the women had to be there: without available women, men would refuse to work on remote stations.”

Oh. Suddenly puts the myth in a different light. Best not tell the children.

Then there’s the Anzac myth. Continue reading “Realities behind Australia’s national myths”