Were you disturbed by the news that Donald Rumsfeld used biblical quotations in headlines of war reports to President Bush so as to command the commander-in-chief's shallow attention? It's so easy to bash Bush. Zionists do this stuff too. The smartest response I've seen to Jeffrey Goldberg's piece in the Times on Netanyahu's biblical thought process re Iran comes from Daniel Luban, who points out that in invoking Amalek, the villains of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, Netanyahyu/Goldberg are citing a controversial section of the bible in which God orders genocide against a people. Luban:
Goldberg clearly does not wish to rattle his right-thinking liberal New York Times
audience, so he conveniently omits all this from his account of Amalek.
However, if Netanyahu’s advisors are right to say that Bibi sees Iran
as the new Amalek, this is a fact with profoundly disturbing
implications. After all, the biblically ordained way to deal with the
Amalekites is not through “smart but tough” diplomacy, “crippling”
sanctions, or even precise and targeted military strikes. Rather, it is
through root-and-branch extermination — that is, wiping Iran off the
map. Goldberg writes that “[i]f Iran’s nuclear program is,
metaphorically, Amalek’s arsenal, then an Israeli prime minister is
bound by Jewish history to seek its destruction, regardless of what his
allies think.” This is not quite accurate. If we take God’s command and
the Amalek analogy literally, then an Israeli prime minister would be
bound not to seek “its [the Amalekite arsenal’s] destruction,” but rather “their [the Amalekites’] destruction.”
I do not in fact believe that Netanyahu wishes to exterminate the
Iranian people, but the Amalek analogy is nonetheless an alarming
indication of the tenor of his thought about Iran. Furthermore, this is
the sort of rhetoric that, when uttered by someone like Ahmadinejad, is
taken quite literally and held up as proof of genocidal intent. When
Netanyahu does it, however, we are supposed to understand that of
course he doesn’t really mean what his advisor’s statement implies, and
that this bloody rhetoric is simply evidence of his hard-nosed and
serious approach to the Iranian threat.
Pres. Obama had best be prepared for the possibility that these self-righteous lunatics will call his bluff and attack Iran, attempting to drag us into a third war.
The Amalek story is of blood-thirsty guerillas that robbed and killed those that lagged behind, or were weak. They were considered to resemble predatory animals, more than humans. They, like predatory animals, held a loyalty to their tribe, but no consideration for others. Successful plunder was a virtue. The killing of as many as possible was a virtue. Its unknown if the Amalekites were retributive for perceived or actual violence done to them, or were just plain plunderers. The warning to "remember the Amalekites" is interpreted in multiple ways by Jewish leadership. Some interpret it as "Take care of all of your community. Don't leave the weak undefended. We are not animals. Our survival, our thriving, is in mutual aid." Others that resemble the Amalekites in attempting to defend against them advocate for anticipatory murder, with a very low bar of criteria whether antipatory war is in fact defensive. Who knows what Goldberg is saying? Hezbollah and Hamas in adopting terror and kidnapping as chosen means of interaction with Israel and Israelis, suggests that they (or some within their group) may in fact have the same blood-thirsty characteristics of the Amalekites. A more appropriate attitude is to distinguish between those within the various camps that want peace and security for their own community, versus those that want revenge or just violent hatred. Certainly the majority of Gazans are primarily civilians, and do not seek to initiate hatred.
I don't think JG is quite prescribing genocide! Tricky little headline you've got there: He would seem to, but he's not. Not by a long shot. What he does do is describe Netanyahu's fears in terms of this age-old Jewish archetype of evil; and we may understand the archetypal Jewish response in this context, too, and understand Netanyahu as animated by this whole set of mythologies and signifiers. I wrote a bit about this, too: http://golgonooza.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/iran_a... The take-home point is simply that to the extent that Netanyahu figures Iran as Amalek, we Jews and Israelis should worry about what that makes us…
Oh, bible history, one of my favorite subjects, inscrutable at times, but one of my favorites nevertheless. I think we need to look at this history in the context of the region's political status at the time. The Armana letters clearly indicate that it was Egyptian territory, controlled, occupied, annexed, call it what you like, it was governed by Egypt (in the decentralized/proxy sort of way they did it in those days). So the story of the people living there is likely to reflect the wider Egyptian narrative. And that is what I think the Amalek story derives from, in part if not wholly. It is an adaption of the Egyptian expulsion of the Hyksos story. It also has echoes of the story about the other race that was exterminated, the giants, the last of whom was Goliath. I have heard the extermination narrative in other contexts. On a small Pacific Island that I had the pleasure of living for some time, one of the favourite evening stories was the tale told of how such and such a tribe had been routed/exterminted by the story tellers. Before they had the good fortune to get rid of them, the such and such tribe had been a bugbear preventing harmony or progress or whatever. The versions I have heard always have the same theme. It is the scapegoat story, look up Girard on wiki, he has a great theory about how scapegoating is related to mimetic desire. Anyway, the scapegoat urge is one of those things like the dualism urge that needs to be tamed and this is where Jesus comes into the story. He says he is the last scapegoat, with his arrival there can be no more impediments preventing us from achieving what the scapegoats always stop us from achieving, as well as being generally disgusting (that bit is always in the story and often involved the such and such tribe in a bestiality scandal. :-) Back to the point about the demise of the scapegoat, all we have left between us and paradise is ourselves, no matter how great the obstacles, they can't stop us from reaching our destiny. It is called redemption. I think the bible is largely a set of reflections of prior narratives that seem to be dynamically endogenous (constantly arising, so to speak) Thanks for listening . :-)
"They, like predatory animals, held a loyalty to their tribe, but no consideration for others." Then the Likudniks are the modern Amalekites. What do you suggest doing with them?
Richard, the story is pure propaganda. Your disingenuousness is really annoying.
P.S. This fruitless scapegoating has not been abandoned, it is going on right now in Sri Lanka, amongst other places.
I wrote this on the thread about Goldberg's article. It bears repeating here to counter Witty's claim about the identity of Amalekites, which is easily resolved with a Google search. ============================================================ "The rabbis teach that successive generations of Jews have been forced to confront the Amalekites: Nebuchadnezzar, the Crusaders, Torquemada, Hitler and Stalin are all manifestations of Amalek’s malevolent spirit." — Goldberg Why doesn't Goldberg tell the truth? Amalekites are non-Jews. All of them. Me included. If an Amalekite gets in the way of any Jewish desire, rabbinical law is 'describe it as evil against the Jews and kill 'em'. As the 2nd C author of the Zohar , Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, wrote: "The best of the Gentiles should be killed." A modern-day Rabbi will tell you 'Hey, we dont do that anymore', and then in the next breath will tell you that in matters of rabbinical law, the original teachings trump anything that he (the Rabbi) comes up with today. The original teachings rule. So what some guy wrote 2,500 years ago trumps today. Dealing with this shit is like dealing with unthinking Christians who cite a Bible reconstructed in the 20th C to say what the ruling pastor wants it to say, then claim 'It's the Word of God'.
The Bible was also written in Greek originally. There have been so many translations upon translations upon translations that who knows what the original said. (If anyone wants to attempt reading it, one of the few extant copies of the original Bible written in ancient dead Greek is at the University of Leipzig.) It always surprises me that Christians call it The Word of God, when it was written by mortals 60 to 300 years after Jesus died. Who would accept a verbatim book today about what General George Washington said on such-and-such an occasion in 1762? Only a nutcase. The same with the Torah. It was written in the 3rd C BC when the rabbis were invited to enshrine their oral teachings at the Library of Alexandria.
The Old Testament (the Jewish Bible or Tanakh) was written in Hebrew, though later translated into Greek. The New Testament (the Christian part) was written in Greek. When you say "60 to 300 years after Jesus died" you are implicitly giving up one of the more powerful arguments against the literal truth of the Gospels, which is that there is remarkably little evidence (outside of the Bible itself, which as you note is not actually contemporanous) that Jesus ever existed in the first place, and Christian mythology is a rather obvious hodge-podge of elements borrowed from earlier cults.
Gee Witty, you wouldn't happen to have any proof of the "Amelek" story. Besides the Bible, I mean. Because, Richard, if you want to be a Biblical literalist, hasn't God said in no uncertain terms, that He will never give us this type of help again? Gosh, Zionists would make good Christians. They have the exact same sense of Biblical inerance. Witty, if you learn to read you Torah like a Jew instead of a Christian, things will be a lot clearer to you.
Interesting: It also has echoes of the story about the other race that was exterminated, the giants, the last of whom was Goliath. Another version of the Greek titans? One of the things I remember from Anders Nygren's Eros and Agape (1934?), or the difference between love in Christian religion and Greek philosophy, not to be confused with the contemporary use of Eros, is that he suggested that the Titans who had been destroyed before the humans were built from the soil were the origin of the "soul". The remnant of the ancient gods, the godly spark inside, so to speak. But I read it really long ago. Rene Girard Wikipedia, Scapegoat. You once alluded to a book, I found highly interesting. But I can't find the info anymore. Really sad. This shows me again we share some basic interests.
Excellent comments moonkoon!
Mostly, it works like this: In Judaism, Jews serve God. In Zionism, God serves the State of Israel, the Jewish State. Now, unless they lied to me at Hebrew School, didn't God state, several times, that relations between Him and the Jews had changed, and He would no longer support a Jewish State, due to our consistent failures to observe His commandments? How do Zionists get around that? And if you look around you, it is impossible not to notice that God's relation with the Jews, as described in the Old Testament, has changed, a lot. To start with, where the fuck did He go? I do not remember God being shy in Bible days. If He had something to say or do, He did it. What happened? Look, if I knew what the consequences where going to be I would never have coveted his wife, or his ass. But now I know God hates bi-sexuality.
well,maybe. The Jewish Encyclopedia says: Simon ben Yoḥai is preeminently the anti-Gentile teacher. In a collection of three sayings of his, beginning with the keyword "tov" (Yer. Ḳid. 66c; Massek. Soferim xv. 10; Mek., Beshal-laḥ, 27a; Tan., Wayera, ed. Buber, 20), is found the expression, often quoted by anti-Semites, "Tov shebe-goyyim harog" (="The best among the Gentiles deserves to be killed"). This utterance has been felt by Jews to be due to an exaggerated antipathy on the part of a fanatic whose life experiences may furnish an explanation for his animosity; hence in the various versions the reading has been altered, "The best among the Egyptians" being generally substituted. In the connection in which it stands, the import of this observation is similar to that of the two others: "The most pious woman is addicted to sorcery"; "The best of snakes ought to have its head crushed" (comp. the saying, "Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar"). http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=...
Israel loves the Iranians! If they end up slaughtering them, it's only because terrorists are cynically hiding in their midst.
Also, I don't personally believe bar Yohai wrote the Zohar. I think Moses de Leon wrote it himself. It's full of anachronisms.
Rowan you deserve a big applause for intellectual honesty in noting that maybe MRW was mistaken. (Not to mention your knowledge base for spotting it.) Too often we all probably sit by silent when someone says something wrong if it otherwise seems to be "on our side." Stand-up thing to do, dude. As they sometimes say hereabouts, goodonya.
Netanyahu’s narrative as conveyed by Goldberg…how fantastical! Truly brilliant in its disingenuous ability to glom together nearly everyone who has opposed organized Jewish clan (and even those like Stalin who also partnered with it) and scapegoat them all as possessed by the demon-like Amalek, who is “shape-shifting, impervious to logic and eternal” and hates the Jews simply because they are Jews. It might be titled: A Sociopath’s Explanation for Why the World Despises Him — “They’re All Under the Sway of Amalek!” What is so frightening about this narrative is not only that it provides a convenient psychological and historiographical means for Jewish Tribalists to remain in perpetual arrested development and avoid accountability for their own behavior, but that it is also of a kind with the narrative adopted by many Leftists, liberals and secularist-extremists who seem to believe that the world’s many problems (and their own) can be traced to a larger “Amalek” called religion in general and Christianity in particular. [cont'd]
[cont'd] Yuri Slezkine plausibly argues that the 20th Century was “The Jewish Century.” The widespread ethos of Jewish arrested development and refusal to accept accountability for its own behavior and consequential plight, today adopted by the contemporary secular Western Establishment and culture, suggests he may be right.
ARTICLE – "Moses high on Mt Sinai: Israeli study" , AFP, 03/04/08 (EXCERPT) Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy. "As far as Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Dr Shanon told Israeli public radio…. ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/04/217...
RE: Netanyahu comes up with new prerequisite for statehood: Palestinians need to 'educate their children for peace ARTICLE – "Moses high on Mt Sinai: Israeli study", AFP, 03/04/08 (EXCERPT) Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy. "As far as Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Dr Shanon told Israeli public radio…. ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/04/217...
That would probably be "The White Goddess", by Robert Graves. The word used in the Greek originals for the love of God for man and vice versa is Agape. It was switched, on some flimsy pretext, to caritas in the King James Version. Christian love is Agape. Agape is thoughtful, unconditional, self sacrificing and so on. To my way of thinking Eros and Agape are closely related. Christianity owes much to the Greeks and the Egyptians and (dare I say?) the Zoroastrians via Mithras as well as Judaism. I often wonder when the story of the Visitation of the Magi was introduced into the narrative. :-) You might be interested to read a polemic I penned on the subject a while ago. (I posted it on Xymphora). It is hard to find time for mythic contemplation in the face of all this static. But I did mange a few more versions of the story of Psyche. I find this is a much studied tale, and rightly so, for it is the story of our soul. As far as I can make out, it covers pretty much the whole history and destiny of mankind. I have been struck with the similarities between events in the story and our history. The last bit of the story about Psyche's enforced journey to the underworld is particularly interesting when viewed at as a metphor for modernism. The story goes that Psyche's last torment or test required she descend to the realm of Persephone, the underworld, and retrieve, using the golden box she was given by Aphrodite (who was calling the shots), a portion of the beauty of Persephone. She actually accomplished this deed and survived the return journey. But not without a few tips from the love she thought had abandoned her. Eros (Cupid) had never lost his love for Psyche and contrived to find ways to help her to accomplish the impossible tasks given to her by the miffed Aphrodite. So with the help of some coins in her mouth for the ferryman and some biscuits for the dog, she was able to do a Houdini act and escape from Hell. But then she snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. All the trials she has endured have caused her beauty to fade, she was looking tired and haggard. Concerned that Eros would grow cold because of her waning beauty, psyche starts to eye off the box. True, the contents of the box were meant for Aphrodite, but she was already the most beautiful of all the Gods, let alone man. She was only doing it for Eros… So she peeps into the box, to glimpse the magic scent of Persephone's beauty. The stuff of Gods proved to be the Scent of Death for Psyche. She swooned and fell to the ground, dead as a doornail. Galileo also peeped into the golden box and spied the Scent of Death. His inadvertent discovery spelled the the fall of man. He lost his sacred notion and became "another brick in the wall", living in "a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing". His only identity came from participating in the new social, industrial and political machines. Visited by alienation and madness and conscripted and sanctioned to murder one another, professionally, of course. Many prefer suicide to the travesty, even the young succumb. So here we are, lying dead on the ground like Psyche. What next? Well if the story of Psyche is anything to go by, it turns out OK. The only reason Psyche got as far as she did was because she never was forsaken by her true love, Cupid. Cupid loved her even though she was a mere mortal. As we know, mortals are often envious of the Gods and can become downright malicious. "How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?" Yet Cupid fell in love with his enemy. He couldn't help himself. We too, know of the power of love. We know maternal love We know brotherly love We know passionate love We know of affection, compassion. We know how to love our enemy. Nothing else in this world is capable of the latter. According to the story, it is the root of our fortune. And it triumphs in the end. It is our destiny and our salvation It ushers in the new dawn… The quote is from The Parable of The Madman – "The Gay Science", by Friedrich Nietzsche
That would probably be "The White Goddess", by Robert Graves. No, that I would remember, I think. But thanks for your long comment. To my way of thinking Eros and Agape are closely related. yes, I think they are. Nygren's (Lutherian) strategy is though to show how obviously Greek philosophy influenced the early Church fathers, its an element that doesn't belong. For him there are essential differences. I have the really, really vague memory–sorry– that eros for him is like steps upward towards perfection, a development, while agape is associated with grace–to put it really blankly–you get God's love somehow for free. I'll look into your comment more carefully with a little more time. I'll return to this
If I could correct, that is if I was logged in, I would delete the last line. I'll look into your comment more carefully with a little more time. I'll return to this