The Abraham Complex

View from the booth:

It's a good sign that the Saudis are sponsoring this event. It's just a pity that it cannot take place IN Saudi Arabia. Because to do so would involve the arrest and possible death or imprisonment of all non-Muslim attendees. The Saudi government is single-handedly responsible for the spread of Wahabbism in the Islamic world and for funneling its oil money (of which there is now more, thanks very much)into 20,000 madrassas worldwide which spread this kind of radical thought. It's difficult for me to believe that when one compares the Saudi purchase of influence and the aura of legitemacy bestowed on it by its generous sponsorship of various Middle Eastern and Islamic studies programs in universities throughout the United States with its insistence on an extreme form of Wahabbism which it likewise generously sponsors, that this conference is nothing more than a publicity stunt.

However, if there is one thing that is redeeming about this talk it is that even the Saudi royal family sees that there is some benefit to talking about differences. This in and of itself indicates some level, however minimal, of willingness to listen to other points of view. And that, in and of itself, is a positive development regardless of the short-term public relations benefits that it might see as the result of this conference. With the rise of radical Shi'ia majorities in, for example, Iran, the Saudis clearly have an understanding that a lack of rapprochement with the West (e.g., Christians and Jews) will lead to revolution - buckets of blood - all over the Sunni world and the concomitant loss of power and money to which they are ultimately and really betrothed to.

Money don't care who owns it.

Randy Shiner

The Abraham Complex

The grave implications of how Islam and Christianity have dealt differently with their Jewish roots.
Avi Beker, The New Republic Published: Thursday, July 10, 2008

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

"Abrahamic religions" has become a widely used term, particularly among interfaith groups, to designate the three major monotheistic religions. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called for an interfaith meeting to be attended by representatives of the "Abrahamic religions," beginning with a Saudi-sponsored conference in Madrid next week. This phrase, focusing on the character of Abraham, seeks to emphasize the shared characteristics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As the first person to establish a covenantal relationship with God based on His role as the sole deity and supreme authority, Abraham is accepted as a prophet by all three monotheistic faiths.

On a theological level, both Christianity and Islam have had to reconcile their belief that Abraham is a true prophet, but that his religion--Judaism--is not the true religion. This inherent need to invalidate Jews as the "chosen people" has had concrete manifestations throughout history--and is at the root of much of medieval and contemporary anti-Semitism. Resolving this seeming paradox has been the first step in healing Christian-Jewish relations, and is a necessary process for Muslim leaders as well before any serious interfaith work can be successful.
Jews themselves have historically recognized the difficult situation imposed on them by their "chosen" status. Sigmund Freud, using his theory of the subconscious, blamed this special categorization (in his words, "the first-born, the favorite child of God") for the world's obsession with and hatred of Jews. In turn, Jews throughout history have looked upon the "chosen" concept as controversial and arrogant, and many have tried to reject or deny it. In 1885, the Jewish Reform movement in America adopted the Pittsburgh Platform, declaring that they didn't wish to be a nation at all and thus reinterpreting the concept of chosenness as part of a moral mission to help the world. About 50 years later, Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist Movement, proposed a Judaism that rejected, in his words, the "anachronistic" and "arrogant" concept of the chosen people that perpetrated "race or national superiority." Early Zionists also tried to escape the fate of "the chosen" in order to be a "normal" nation. Yosef Haim Brenner, an influential writer for the socialist Zionism and the Kibbutz movement, wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century: "I would blot out from the prayer book of the Jews of our day the [words] 'Thou hast chosen us' in every shape and form."

Nevertheless, the concept of the Jews as "The Chosen People" had become a central tenet of both Christianity and Islam. Christianity's relationship with Judaism has long been governed by the "supersessionist theory," established by Paul at the end of the first century, which claims that the followers of Jesus replaced the Jews as the "true Israel." It's a theme that is found in Christian literature as early as the second century, with Christians envisioning themselves as "Israel after the flesh" in order to justify why Jews had fallen out of favor with God. One of the earliest Christian saints, Justin Martyr, refers in 160 A.D. to the Christian Church as "the true spiritual Israel." This urge to discredit the merit of Judaism also explains the Christian obsession with Jews as the killers of Christ--an element in the religion's early attempt to vilify Jews. As characterized by scholar David Flusser, "Christian anti-Judaism was not a coincidental lapse" but a tool serving as "godfather to the formation of Christianity."

Christian vilification of "the Chosen Jews" inspired several waves of violence, such as the attacks on the Jewish communities in Europe that followed Pope Urban II declaration's in 1095 of a "Holy War" led by the "race beloved and chosen by God." During the Second Crusade half a century later, Peter the Venerable incited his troops to liberate the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem as a way to confirm the rejection of the Jews and the election of the believers in Christ. The supersessionist theory also motivated the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 from Spain, as the Jewish refusal to convert clashed with the Spanish claim to be replacing the Hebrews as the new "Chosen People" who would transform Spain into "God's Land," and the royal family into the new "House of David." Even Hitler used Christian theology to justify his slaughter of Jews, writing in Mein Kampf, "By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work." For him, the choice was unequivocal: "There cannot be two Chosen People," he once said. "We are God's People."

It took Christianity 2,000 years of policies that persecuted and demoralized Jews to arrive at Vatican II, the hugely significant gathering in 1965 that confronted the charge against the Jews as the killers of Christ. By removing the collective blood guilt from "the Jews of today" and in ancient times, the gathering's pronouncement allowed the recognition by the Catholic Church of the Jews as "Thy Chosen People" and led later to Pope John Paul II's declaration, during his historic 1986 visit to the Synagogue of Rome, that the Jews are "our elder brother." Some elements of the supersessionist theory still sporadically appear in Christian theology--such as in the Dominus Iesus document, written in 2000 by the current Pope, Benedict XVI, who has stressed a desire "for the instant in which Israel will say yes to Christ." But the 1965 modifications in the doctrine and the reconfirmation of the strong Jewish roots of Christianity have contributed mightily to a more harmonious relationship between the two religions.

Islam faces a similar theological need to explain away Jewish "chosenness." But unlike Christianity, the Muslim displacement theory does not base itself on being the "New Israel;" instead, it recasts the Jewish prophets as Muslims by creating a direct link with Ishmael, the son of Abraham, the "first Muslim" according to the Koran. As philosopher Abraham Geiger (later the founder of Reform Judaism) wrote in his 1833 doctoral thesis, Did Muhammad Borrow from Judaism?, the need to distance Islam from its Jewish roots explains much of the anti-Jewish sentiment in its theology. Sheikh Abd Al Rahman Al Sudayyis, the imam of the most important mosque in Mecca, said as much in February 2004: he described the existence of Jews as a major challenge to "our religious principles, historical rights, and past glories"--a conflict "of creed, identity, and existence." The denial of the role Judaism played in the foundation of Islam is a significant part of Islamic theology.

Vilifying or killing Jews is a recurring motif in Muslim holy texts. An oral tradition from the Prophet Mohammed, for example, contends that the rivalry with the Jews will continue until the end of the days: "The Last Hour will not come until the Muslims fight against the Jews," it reads, "and the Muslims will kill them until the Jews will hide themselves behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say: 'O Muslim, the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.'" The Koran accuses the Jews, repeatedly, of falsehood, distortion, and of being "corrupters of the scriptures." It argues that the Jews did not deserve to be the chosen people, and because of their sins they are condemned to "degradation in this world." Islam's obsession with Judaism is no less serious than the Catholic Church's before Vatican II--and, unfortunately, it has become even more severe in the past few decades.

So, much of the Muslim world's current hatred of Israel has theological roots. The return of the Jews to their homeland, and even worse, their victories over Arab armies, is seen as a contradiction of the fact that Jews are supposed to be relegated to a life of dispersal and humiliation. In 1968, for example, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar University referred to the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967 as an "unexpected event [that] occurred before a roguish Zionism whose adherents had been destined to dispersion by the Deity," and quoted the Koran (2:61): "And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon [the Jews] and they were visited with wrath from God."

Many contemporary Muslim adversaries of Israel draw from the most derogatory and bellicose anti-Jewish expressions in the Koran to justify current attitudes. In a recent sermon, Al Sudayyis called Allah to annihilate the Jews, "the scum of the human race, rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs [quoting from the Koran]." The Saudi government has put their own theological spin on the Russian-produced anti-Jewish tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, adding references to the "Jewish sense of superiority in the world" and blaming the Jews for deceiving the world into thinking that "they are the chosen people and that God wants them to once more take possession of Palestine, the promised land."

There's an irony, then, in King Abdullah's call for a dialogue of "Abrahamic religions." Saudi Wahhabism is responsible more than any other segment in Islam for the most extreme interpretation of their religion's superiority--and the resulting pathologies that have come from the need to deny Islam's historical entwinement with Judaism. As religious leaders from around the world gather in Madrid next week under the auspices of the Saudi government, history teaches us that only by finding a way to reconcile the existence of Judaism with the existence of Islam--a difficult but fruitful process undertaken by Christians in recent decades--can a productive dialogue actually begin.

Avi Beker is the Goldman Visiting Professor at Georgetown University at the Department of Government and the former Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress. He is the author of The Chosen: The History of an Idea and the Anatomy of an Obsession.

Rethinking Judaism and Christianity

July 08, 2008
Rethinking Judaism and Christianity
Another discovery may shed light on the period prior to the birth of Jesus, and add to discussions about Judaism and Christianity. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/world/middleeast/06stone.html?sq=jesus&st=nyt&scp=4&pagewanted=all

What is called "Gabriel's revelation" is a stone tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew writing. It describes a prominent national leader who died and came to life after three days.

A day after an article about the stone appeared in the New York Times, a Hebrew translation of the Times article began on the front page of the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz. That evening two professors from the Hebrew University appeared on a major television news program to discuss its significance.

Analysis of the stone has appeared in a prominent journal serving the professions of archaeology and biblical studies. Experts quarrel about individual words that are blurred, and may be crucial to the interpretation. The provenance of the stone, or its history and authenticity, may yet be subject to dispute.

Given the standing of scholars who have invested their time in the stone, we can at the least speculate about its impact on conceptions of Judaism and Christianity at about the time of Christ.

A prominent conclusion is that an important element in the story of Jesus is not unique. Jewish ideas of that time and earlier also conceived of a messianic figure who would die and come back to life.

Add this to readings of Jesus' preaching that find them similar to ideas expressed by Hebrew prophets for several hundred years. The conclusion is that Jesus did not differ from other individuals circulating in the Jewish community. The Roman occupation was oppressive. It produced not only the rebellion of Jesus as described in the New Testament, but two widespread uprisings of Jews, including one civil war. It is not surprising that the period included messianic figures who were said to produce miracles, and predicted an end to suffering.

The New Testament is not the work of Jesus, but appeared several decades after his death. The claim that he is the messiah, along with reports of his virgin birth and resurrection came from his followers. They worked to elevate his status, and distinguish themselves from the Jewish establishment. Ideas about the corruption of Jewish leaders, their lack of morality, and their inflexible preoccupation with small details of law appear in the New Testament, and made their contribution to anti-Semitic stereotypes promoted by Christian Churches subsequently.

Jesus might have had the standing to earn a place in a Hebrew Bible if it was not for his followers. It is they who declared war against the Jews, and made it difficult for Jewish scholars over the years to view with equanimity the affinity between Jesus and Judaism.

Writing by Christian and Jewish scholars in recent decades have contributed to a rapprochement that sees Jesus not only as a Jew, but as one who reflected sentiments apparent in Jewish thought at the time of his life. Commentators see the Holocaust as impacting on the work of Christians about Judaism. Jewish scholars have contributed their own evolving ideas about Christianity. Pope John Paul II symbolized the new spirit when he referred to Judaism as Christianity's older brother while on a visit to Jerusalem in the year 2000.

No one should expect Christian churches to fold themselves into Judaism, or to be received as Jews as a result of the stone called Gabriel's revelation. Theological tensions remain. Religious movements resemble government bodies and large corporations. The perpetuation of their structures, key personnel, laws, traditions, and customs take priority over new ideas that challenge what is well established.

New discoveries may nonetheless blunt antipathies between religious communities as they pass from scholars to professors of religious history and theology, and eventually to teachers in religious schools and preachers. We may also hope that something will come out of an invitation for an Israeli rabbi to attend an interfaith conference in Spain, organized by the World Muslim League, and sponsored by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2008/07/03/israeli_rabbi_invited_to_saudi_interfaith_meeting/

The applause would be louder if the conference was in Saudi Arabia, and if a Saudi official did not deny that an Israeli rabbi had been invited. http://www.gulf-news.com/news/gulf/saudi_arabia/10226693.html

Currently we have to rest with the realization that it has been a while since Christian authorities burned Jews. Hopefully it will not take as long for the jihads to stop, and for leaders of all the Muslim countries to welcome Israel's presence in the Middle East.

Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Home tel: 972-2-532-2725
Cell phone: 054-683-5325
Fax: 972-2-582-9144
msira@mscc.huji.ac.il

Posted by Ira Sharkansky at July 08, 2008 04:57 AM

Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

July 6, 2008

Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” Mr. Boyarin said.

Given the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, as well as the concern over forgery and charlatanism, it will probably be some time before the tablet’s contribution is fully assessed. It has been around 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and they continue to generate enormous controversy regarding their authors and meaning.

The scrolls, documents found in the Qumran caves of the West Bank, contain some of the only known surviving copies of biblical writings from before the first century A.D. In addition to quoting from key books of the Bible, the scrolls describe a variety of practices and beliefs of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus.

How representative the descriptions are and what they tell us about the era are still strongly debated. For example, a question that arises is whether the authors of the scrolls were members of a monastic sect or in fact mainstream. A conference marking 60 years since the discovery of the scrolls will begin on Sunday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the stone, and the debate over whether it speaks of a resurrected messiah, as one iconoclastic scholar believes, also will be discussed.

Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming months.

“I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it,” said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. “I didn’t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

Much of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.

Ms. Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.

A chemical examination by Yuval Goren, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the verification of ancient artifacts, has been submitted to a peer-review journal. He declined to give details of his analysis until publication, but he said that he knew of no reason to doubt the stone’s authenticity.

It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation,” also the title of their article. Mr. Knohl posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.
When he read “Gabriel’s Revelation,” he said, he believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis, and he has published his argument in the latest issue of The Journal of Religion.

Mr. Knohl is part of a larger scholarly movement that focuses on the political atmosphere in Jesus’ day as an important explanation of that era’s messianic spirit. As he notes, after the death of Herod, Jewish rebels sought to throw off the yoke of the Rome-supported monarchy, so the
rise of a major Jewish independence fighter could take on messianic overtones.

In Mr. Knohl’s interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone’s passages were probably Simon’s followers, Mr. Knohl contends.

The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, he says, pointing to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet — “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice” — and other lines that speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.

To make his case about the importance of the stone, Mr. Knohl focuses especially on line 80, which begins clearly with the words “L’shloshet yamin,” meaning “in three days.” The next word of the line was deemed partially illegible by Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is “hayeh,” or “live” in the imperative. It has an unusual spelling, but it is one in keeping with the era.

Two more hard-to-read words come later, and Mr. Knohl said he believed that he had deciphered them as well, so that the line reads, “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says “Sar hasarin,” or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of “a prince of princes,” Mr. Knohl contends that the stone’s writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

Ms. Yardeni said she was impressed with the reading and considered it indeed likely that the key illegible word was “hayeh,” or “live.” Whether that means Simon is the messiah under discussion, she is less sure.

Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said he spent a long time studying the text and considered it authentic, dating from no later than the first century B.C. His 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.

Regarding Mr. Knohl’s thesis, Mr. Bar-Asher is also respectful but cautious. “There is one problem,” he said. “In crucial places of the text there is lack of text. I understand Knohl’s tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two to three crucial lines of text there are a lot of missing words.”

Moshe Idel, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University, said that given the way every tiny fragment from that era yielded scores of articles and books, “Gabriel’s Revelation” and Mr. Knohl’s analysis deserved serious attention. “Here we have a real stone with a real text,” he said. “This is truly significant.”

Mr. Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.

But there was, he said, and “Gabriel’s Revelation” shows it.

“His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.”