"In the ancient world, crucifixion was not only a gruesome and painful death, but was a shameful death, and was the “death of a slave”, in ways that we often do not understand today. As such, the claim that a victim of crucifixion was the Son of God would have been seen as utterly foolish, in ways that may be impossible for a modern person to understand."
Martin Hengel's [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] argues how crucifixion far from being a unique event, has always been the most shameful form of punishment practised by the greco-romans upon criminals and slaves. Hengel argues a 'gospel' of suffering had to be invented to validate the belief, the message of a one crucified in the contextual climate of what it had meant to the Romans.
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"...adequately indicates the content of this scholarly, comprehensive, detailed study of this cruel form of execution in the ancient world. Execution by crucifixion was recognized as the most contemptible degradation that could be heaped on an individual. And it was precisely the natural revulsion against the horrors of crucifixion that made the message of salvation through a crucified Christ such a scandal in the ancient world. The very message constituted “a scandal which people would like to blunt, remove or domesticate in any way possible” (p. 90). ... It helps to explain the appeal of Gnosticism for the early church. Even today, its adherence to “the theology of the Cross” is the basic test of Christendom’s adherence to the apostolic message of salvation."
"1. Crucifixion as a penalty was remarkably widespread in antiquity. It appears in various forms among numerous peoples of the ancient world, even among the Greeks. There was evidently neither the desire nor the power to abolish it, even where people were fully aware of its extreme cruelty. It thus formed a harsh contradiction to the idealistic picture of antiquity which was in augurated by Winckelmann in terms of 'noble simplicity and quiet greatness' (edle Einfalt und stille Grosse). Our own age, which is proud of its humanity and its progress, but which sees the use of the death penalty, torture and terror increasing in the world rather than decreasing, can hardly pride itself on having overcome this ancient contradiction.
2. Crucifixion was and remained a political and military punishment. While among the Persians and the Carthaginians it was imposed primarily on high officials and commanders, as on rebels, among the Romans it was inflicted above all on the lower classes, i.e. slaves, violent criminals and the unruly elements in rebellious provinces, not least in Judaea.
3. The chief reason for its use was its allegedly supreme efficacy as a deterrent; it was, of course, carried out publicly. As a rule the crucified man was regarded as a criminal who was receiving just and necessary punishment. There was doubtless a fear that to give up this form of execution might undermine the authority of the state and existing law and order.
4. At the same time, crucifixion satisfied the primitive lust for revenge and the sadistic cruelty of individual rulers and of the masses. It was usually associated with other forms of torture, in cluding at least flogging. At relatively small expense and to great public effect the criminal could be tortured to death for days in an unspeakable way. Crucifixion is thus a specific expression of the inhumanity dormant within men which these days is expressed, for example, in the call for the death penalty, for popular justice and for harsher treatment of criminals, as an expression of retribution. It is a manifestation of trans-subjective evil, a form of execution which manifests the demonic character of human cruelty and bestiality.
5. By the public display of a naked victim at a prominent place - at a crossroads, in the theatre, on high ground, at the place of his crime - crucifixion also represented his uttermost humiliation, which had a numinous dimension to it. With Deuteronomy 21.23 in the background, the Jew in particular was very aware of this. This form of execution, more than any other, had associations with the idea of human sacrifice, which was never completely suppressed in antiquity. The sacrifice of countless hordes of people in our century to national idols or to the 'correct' political view shows that this irrational demand for human sacrifice can be found even today.
6. Crucifixion was aggravated further by the fact that quite often its victims were never buried. It was a stereotyped picture that the crucified victim served as food for wild beasts and birds of prey. In this way his humiliation was made complete. What it meant for a man in antiquity to be refused burial, and the dishonour which went with it, can hardly be appreciated by modern man.
7. In Roman times, crucifixion was practised above all on dangerous criminals and members of the lowest classes. These were primarily people who had been outlawed from society or slaves who on the whole had no rights, in other words, groups whose development had to be suppressed by all possible means to safe guard law and order in the state. Because large strata of the popula tion welcomed the security and the world-wide peace which the empire brought with it, the crucified victim was defamed both socially and ethically in popular awareness, and this impression was heightened still further by the religious elements involved.
8. Relatively few attempts at criticism or even at a philosophical development of the theme of the boundless suffering of countless victims of crucifixion can be found. At best, we can see it in the Stoic preaching of the drrdOeia and dperrj, the calmness and virtue of the wise man, where in some circumstances the torment of the man dying on the cross could be used as a metaphor. Here cruci fixion became a simile for the suffering from which the wise man can free himself only by death, which delivers the soul from the body to which it is tied. In the romances, on the other hand, crucifixion made for exciting entertainment and sensationalism. Here the suffering was not really taken seriously. The accounts of the crucifixion of the hero served to give the reader a thrill: the tension was then resolved by the freeing of the crucified victim and the obligatory happy ending.
9. In this context, the earliest Christian message of the crucified messiah demonstrated the 'solidarity' of the love of God with the unspeakable suffering of those who were tortured and put to death by human cruelty, as this can be seen from the ancient sources. This suffering has continued down to the present century in a 'passion story' which we cannot even begin to assess, a 'passion story' which is based on human sin, in which we all without exception participate, as beings who live under the power of death. In the person and the fate of the one man Jesus of Nazareth this saving 'solidarity' of God with us is given its historical and physical form. In him, the 'Son of God', God himself took up the 'existence of a slave' and died the 'slaves' death' on the tree of martyrdom (Philippians 2., given up to public shame (Hebrews 12.2) and the 'curse of the law' (Gala- tians 3.13), so that in the 'death of God* life might win victory over death. In other words, in the death of Jesus of Nazareth God identified himself with the extreme of human wretchedness, which Jesus endured as a representative of us all. in order to bring us to the freedom of the children of God : He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? (Romans 8.32)
This radical kenosis of God was the revolutionary new element in the preaching of the gospel. It caused offence, but in this very offence it revealed itself as the centre of the gospel. For the death of Jesus on the cross is very much more than a religious symbol, say of the uttermost readiness of a man for suffering and sacrifice; it is more than just an ethical model which calls for discipleship, though it is all this as well. What we have here is God's communication of himself, the free action through which he establishes the effective basis of our salvation. In ancient thought, e.g. among the Stoics, an ethical and symbolic interpretation of the crucifixion was still possible, but to assert that God himself accepted death in the form of a crucified Jewish manual worker from Galilee in order to break the power of death and bring salvation to all men could only seem folly and madness to men of ancient times. Even now, any genuine theology will have to be measured against the test of this scandal.
10. When Paul talks of the 'folly' of the message of the crucified Jesus, he is therefore not speaking in riddles or using an abstract cipher. He is expressing the harsh experience of his missionary preaching and the offence that it caused, in particular the experience of his preaching among non-Jews, with whom his apostolate was particularly concerned. The reason why in his letters he talks about the cross above all in a polemical context is that he deliberately wants to provoke his opponents, who are attempting to water down the offence caused by the cross. Thus in a way the 'word of the cross' is the spearhead of his message. And because Paul still understands the cross as the real, cruel instrument of execution, as the instrument of the bloody execution of Jesus, it is impossible to dissociate talk of the atoning death of Jesus or the blood of Jesus from this 'word of the cross'. The spearhead cannot be broken off the spear. Rather, the complex of the death of Jesus is a single entity for the apostle, in which he never forgets the fact that Jesus did not die a gentle death like Socrates, with his cup of hemlock, much less passing on 'old and full of years' like the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Rather, he died like a slave or a common criminal, in torment, on the tree of shame. Paul's Jesus did not die just any death; he was 'given up for us all' on the cross, in a cruel and a contemptible way.
The theological reasoning of our time shows very clearly that the particular form of the death of Jesus, the man and the messiah, represents a scandal which people would like to blunt, remove or domesticate in any way possible. We shall have to guarantee the truth of our theological thinking at this point. Reflection on the harsh reality of crucifixion in antiquity may help us to overcome the acute loss of reality which is to be found so often in present theology and preaching." [M.Hengel, p.99-103]
(Besides the named topic matter, there's a line on the very first page which mentions aletheia as a "wandering" that is divine - "theia ale"; I thought that a rich splitting of the word. Gives many ideas.)
From "The Ugly Truth about the ADL"... It's surreal how such a seedy organization can be seen as legitimate...
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In 1985, the ADL proudly gave its Torch of liberty award to Las Vegas "businessman" Morris Barney Dalitz. The award ceremony, a strictly black-tie affair, was given front-page attention in the League's monthly Bulletin, which praised Dalitz as a great philanthropist who had donated generously to the ADL over the years. Dalitz's "generosity" was motivated by a lot more than an impulse to help out a favorite charity. As one of the most important figures in organized crime over a period of sixty years, and as a lifetime right-hand man to organized crime's 20th-century "chairman of the board," Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz was well aware of the fact that the Anti-Defamation League was, from its founding, a powerful secret arm of the National Crime Syndicate. Without the ADL's undaunted "public relations" work on behalf of organized crime, the United States would have never been flooded with illegal drugs, and gangsters like Dalitz and Lansky would have long ago been carted off to the penitentiary. Dalitz was one of the kingpins of the Prohibition-era bootlegging business. He, along with three other gangsters, Morris Kleinmah, Sam Tucker, and Louis Rothkopf, ran the Cleveland underworld. Their self-described "Jewish Navy" smuggled rotgut whiskey across the Great Lakes from Canada into the Midwest United States.
On the Canadian side of the lakes, the booze was manufactured by the Bronfman Gang, led by Sam and Abe Bronfman, second-generation Romanian immigrants whose father had been brought over to Canada by the B'nai B'rith-allied Baron de Hirsch Fund and had set up a string of whorehouses. Sam and Abe used their Pure Drug Company, which was established with the help of the Hudson's Bay Company, to manufacture, illegal whiskey during the Canadian Prohibition (1915-19). When Canada legalized booze and the U.S. instituted its ban a year later, they were all ready to become the major suppliers to the gangsters south of the border.
U.S. government documents from the Prohibition era claim that over 34,000 Americans died of alcohol poisoning drinking the Bronfman brew. Today, Sam Bronfman's son Edgar is a national commissioner of the ADL and the head of its powerful New York Appeal. We will pick up the trail of Edgar Bronfman later in our story.
Following Prohibition, Moe Dalitz became the un- disputed crime boss of Cleveland, expanding his criminal operations (gambling, labor racketeering, money laun- dering, tax evasion) from Hollywood and Las Vegas to Miami. One of his Miami "investments," a nightspot called the Frolic Club, was a joint venture with Lansky.
When Lansky moved into Cuba to open his first offshore gambling, narcotics, and money laundering ha- ven, Dalitz was brought in as a privileged partner. When Lansky and the other directors of the National Crime Syndicate decided that his longtime partner Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel had become a liability and had to be assassinated, it was Dalitz who assumed the lion's share of Siegel's Las Vegas casino interests—interests he still holds today
Lansky and Siegel had formed the original Murder, Inc.—otherwise known as the "Meyer and Bugsy Gang"—to enforce the creation of a National Crime Syn- dicate overseeing the Prohibition-era illegal liquor and narcotics traffic. From the very outset, Dalitz had been a member of the national commission of the crime syndi- cate. Up until Lansky's death in 1983, Dalitz was a regular visitor to the crime boss's Miami Beach condo, and was widely presumed by law enforcement officials to be one of the primary heirs to Lansky's crime empire.
Just two years after Lansky's death, Dalitz was pub- licly surfaced as an ADL philanthropist. It was a sign of the times. By the beginning of the 1980's "Decade of Greed," drug money—narco-dollars—had already re- placed petro-dollars as the primary source of liquidity to fuel the stock market and real estate speculative bubbles facilitated by the Carter and Reagan administrations' de- regulation of the banking and brokerage industries. As the power of drug money grew, so too did the political and financial clout of the ADL Junk bond swindlers like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, and dope bankers like Edmund Safra—not to mention Moe Dalitz—regularly poured millions into the ADL war chest. In return for this largesse, the ADL publicly branded anyone who chal- lenged the clout of organized crime as a dyed in the wool anti-Semite.
The lionizing of mobster Dalitz was the ADL's way of boasting that their public relations work over a seven- ty-year period had paid off.
_________________ And here we always meet, at the station of our heart / Looking at each other as if we were in a dream /Seeing for the first time different eyes so supreme / That bright flames burst into vision, keeping us apart.
Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
The Greek letter phi (Φ) was already common among the Anatolians in what is now Turkey. Psi (Ψ) appears to have been invented by the Greeks themselves, perhaps based on Poseidon's trident. For comparison, here is the complete Greek alphabet:
'aleph, the ox, began as the image of an ox's head. It represents a glottal stop before a vowel. The Greeks, needing vowel symbols, used it for alpha (A). The Romans used it as A.
Beth, the house, may have derived from a more rectangular Egyptian alphabetic glyph of a reed shelter (but which stood for the sound h). The Greeks called it beta (B), and it was passed on to the Romans as B.
Gimel, the camel, may have originally been the image of a boomerang-like throwing stick. The Greeks called it gamma (Γ). The Etruscans -- who had no g sound -- used it for the k sound, and passed it on to the Romans as C. They in turn added a short bar to it to make it do double duty as G.
Daleth, the door, may have originally been a fish! The Greeks turned it into delta (Δ), and passed it on to the Romans as D.
He may have meant window, but originally represented a man, facing us with raised arms, calling out or praying. The Greeks used it for the vowel epsilon (E, "simple E"). The Romans used it as E.
Waw, the hook, may originally have represented a mace. The Greeks used one version of waw which looked like our F, which they called digamma, for the number 6. This was used by the Etruscans for v, and they passed it on to the Romans as F. The Greeks had a second version -- upsilon (Υ)-- which they moved to to the back of their alphabet. The Romans used a version of upsilon for V, which later would be written Uas well, then adopted the Greek form as Y. In 7th century England, theW -- "double-u" -- was created.
Zayin may have meant sword or some other kind of weapon. The Greeks used it for zeta (Z). The Romans only adopted it later as Z, and put it at the end of their alphabet.
H.eth, the fence, was a "deep throat" (pharyngeal) consonant. The Greeks used it for the vowel eta (H), but the Romans used it for H.
Teth may have originally represented a spindle. The Greeks used it fortheta (Θ), but the Romans, who did not have the th sound, dropped it.
Yodh, the hand, began as a representation of the entire arm. The Greeks used a highly simplified version of it for iota (Ι). The Romans used it as I, and later added a variation for J.
Kaph, the hollow or palm of the hand, was adopted by the Greeks forkappa (K) and passed it on to the Romans as K.
Lamedh began as a picture of an ox stick or goad. The Greeks used it for lambda (Λ). The Romans turned it into L.
Mem, the water, became the Greek mu (M). The Romans kept it as M.
Nun, the fish, was originally a snake or eel. The Greeks used it for nu(N), and the Romans for N.
Samekh, which also meant fish, is of uncertain origin. It may have originally represented a tent peg or some kind of support. It bears a strong resemblance to the Egyptian djed pillar seen in many sacred carvings. The Greeks used it for xi (Ξ) and a simplified variation of it forchi (X). The Romans kept only the variation as X.
'ayin, meaning the eye, was another "deep throat" consonant. The Greeks used it for omicron (O, "little O"). They developed a variation of it for omega (Ω, "big O"), and put it at the end of their alphabet. The Romans kept the original for O.
Pe, the mouth, may have originally been a symbol for a corner. The Greeks used it for pi (Π). The Romans closed up one side and turned it into P.
Sade, a sound between s and sh, is of uncertain origin. It may have originally been a symbol for a plant, but later looks more like a fish hook. The Greeks did not use it, although an odd variation does show up as sampi (Ϡ), a symbol for 900. The Etruscans used it in the shape of an M for their sh sound, but the Romans had no need for it.
Qoph, the monkey, may have originally represented a knot. It was used for a sound similar to k but further back in the mouth. The Greeks only used it for the number 90 (Ϙ), but the Etruscans and Romans kept it forQ.
Resh, the head, was used by the Greeks for rho (P). The Romans added a line to differentiate it from their P and made it R.
Shin, the tooth, may have originally represented a bow. Although it was first pronounced sh, the Greeks used it sideways for sigma (Σ). The Romans rounded it to make S.
Taw, the mark, was used by the Greeks for tau (T). The Romans used it for T.
The Greek letter phi (Φ) was already common among the Anatolians in what is now Turkey. Psi (Ψ) appears to have been invented by the Greeks themselves, perhaps based on Poseidon's trident. For comparison, here is the complete Greek alphabet:
* Until recently, it was believed that these people lived in the Sinai desert and began using their alphabet in the 1700's bc. In 1998, archeologist John Darnell discovered rock carvings in southern Egypt's "Valley of Horrors" that push back the origin of the alphabet to the 1900's bc or even earlier. Details suggest that the inventors were Semitic people working in Egypt, who thereafter passed the idea on to their relatives further east.
Shlain is a gynocentrist who bemoans the displacement of the goddess culture with patriarchy in his book Alphabet vs. the Goddess. He traces rigid systems of patriarchal society to writing, codifications, and literacy - the left brain,, and liberal systems of the goddess cults to images, pictographs, oral culture - the right brain.
He, for instance, distinguishes the Spartan and Socratic liberality to them never leaving written records in comparison to Athenian severity and Aristotle's misogyny to written abstractions. Some of it is quack, but it has some interesting parts, esp. when it comes to the Old Testament commandments.
"Catholics adopted the symbol of the peacock to represent resurrection, renewal and immortality. This came from the ancient legend that the flesh of the peacock did not decay. Thus we find paintings and mosaics with the peacock as early as the 3rd century on the walls of the catacombs of Rome, a symbol of the exchanging of the mortal earthly body for the glorified body and eternal life of the glorified soul in Heaven.
Also the medieval bestiaries tell us that the peacock sheds its old feathers every year and grows newer, more brilliant ones each year, a sign of renewal, and the feathers were used to decorate churches at Easter and Christmas. You can also find the peacock in many mosaics and images in baptisteries of ancient Catholic churches in the East and West.
Because of this belief that the peacock’s flesh did not decay after death, the peacock became a symbol of Christ, and, as such, early Christian paintings and mosaics use peacock imagery. When the peacock displays its tail, it looks like hundreds of eyes are watching us. Because of this, the peacock has been associated with the all-seeing eye of God Who sees all actions and all people, meaning that nothing escapes the universal Justice. The peacock also came to symbolize the all-seeing Catholic Church, who watches over her children continually, day and night.
Peacock decorative motifs
Peacocks were common decorative motifs on old churches and buildingss The eyes of the peacock feathers also symbolize the beatific vision, the direct perception and knowledge of God as He truly is, enjoyed by Angels, Christ, and the Saints in Heaven, which was another reason it was a decorative motif on medieval tomb sculptures.
The peacock is a destroyer of serpents and the bestiaries tell us it could swallow the poisonous venom without harm. It then used the poisons it swallowed to create its colorful plumage. For this reason, its blood was believed to dispel evil spirits, and its feathers and meat to cure snake-bite and sickness. St. Augustine affirms this belief of the antiseptic qualities of the peacock flesh in The City of God:
“For who but God the Creator of all things has given to the flesh of the peacock its antiseptic property? This property, when I first heard of it, seemed to me incredible; but it happened at Carthage that a bird of this kind was cooked and served up to me, and, taking a suitable slice of flesh from its breast, I ordered it to be kept, and when it had been kept as many days as make any other flesh stinking, it was produced and set before me, and emitted no offensive smell. And after it had been laid by for thirty days and more, it was still in the same state; and a year after, the same still, except that it was a little more shriveled, and drier.” (Book 21, chapter 4):
Peacocks are also known to eat poisonous plants with no ill effects, another reason why their feathers are a symbol of incorruptibility and immortality."
"belongs to the antiquity, where it equally expressed immortality. Ancient established the symbolic value of this bird on the tradition about incorruptibility of its meat. That is why Pythagoras moves the soul of immortal writers, as, for instance, Homer, into the peacock. In this selection of bird for the migration of souls, some writers saw hint to the immortality of soul. Tertullian expressed it very clearly and definitely: «Platon’s students assert that the souls immediately enter into bodies, but not into the previous and frequently not into the human as Evforb, which is converted into Pythagoras, but into the bird, and Homer is converted into the peacock. Despite to this, they proclaim, that the soul accurately returns again to the earth for the residence in the flesh, preferring to better assume of the condition of immortality, than to completely deny its, and to knock the door of truth». - «Nimirum magna merces bonis in animalia quaecunque restitui. Pavum se meminit Homerus Ennio somniante... Damnatus est igitur Homerus in pavum, non honoratus» (Tertullianus. De resurrect. Carnis. Cap. I. - De anima. Cap. 33). But some scientists do not recognize popular belief about incorruptibility of meat for the sole, and they assume that the circle, formed by peacock’s tail, had to this influence because and circle, and the snake, circularly located, indicated immortality. Even form of tail is assigned the very origin of the Greek name ταώς (peacock). Ancient Greeks likened the figure of peacock’s tail to stars or to eyes; its golden circles on blue background of remaining feathers easily could direct to such comparison, which brought Greeks to the dedication of this bird to Juno, the goddes of sky and the goddes of stars, why Ovidius is called the peacock: «Junonis volucrum quae cauda sidera portat» (Metamorph. XV, 385). As a result of the same understanding, with deification (consecratio) of Roman empresses allowed peacockes to raise their souls to the bosom of Juno as the goddes of stars. That is why on the medals in the honor of these rites empress is depicted as that sitting on the peacock, that raises her to sky. The inscription – «sideribus recepta» - completely corresponding to this value. With deification of emperors the eagle, dedicated to Jupiter, substituted peacock. Emperor Adrian place gold peacock with precious stone in temple Juno (Pausanias 1. II. Cap. 17). All researchers of the Christian antiquities consider peacock in the Christian symbolism for the symbol of the resurrection: «Sunt qui (pavonem) resurrectionis symbolum esse arbitrentur. Quorum sane etsi veteruin patrum auctoritate non constet, tamen nulla satis gravi ratione reprobari potest, sententia» (Origenis III. Р. 98). Furthermore, Christians focused special attention on legend about incorruptibility of peacock’s meat. To this perhaps were directed their words of Apostle Paul (1 Kor.15, 53). This legend was so positively accepted that St. Augustin said: «Deus creator omnium dedit carni pavonis mortui ne putresceret» (De civit. Dei. Lib. XXI). We already above noted how the circular shape of peacock’s tail gave to this bird the value of immortality and eternity. The same can be noted, also, on the Christian monuments. Meanwhile the peacock is placed also in the relationship with four times of the year, whose symbolic value is known. As the symbol of resurrection peacock was depicted with those symbols, which related to the paradise in its different symbolic nuances. We see that constantly the symbols indicate the relationship of the sacrament of communion to the resurrection and to the paradise. In the identical value and the peacocks, as the symbols of resurrection, are depicted on the mural paintings and on the inscriptions with the symbols of this sacrament. This formula «in pace», as we frequently saw, embraces all values, which are contained in the images, which seemingly they supplement by its words – «in pace fidei resurrecturm». Peacock on the branch make the same sense – «in pace fidei resurrecturm» as one can see in the votive crown of Emperor Leo VI (886-912)."
_________________ And here we always meet, at the station of our heart / Looking at each other as if we were in a dream /Seeing for the first time different eyes so supreme / That bright flames burst into vision, keeping us apart.
Not this lecture in particular but the series itself. Maybe not for everyone, but this had a lot of interesting information in it. 36 lectures is a lot, and you will definitely make use of the 2x speed function in the settings, but still a few of the lectures were gold. I have nearly finished the series, and, being what he is (or claims to be 7th day adventist ) some of Veith's lectures labour the point about the deliberate blasphemies of Rome and Jesus as saviour yada yada but nonetheless, you may find value.
Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
I have not read it yet, but this is a classic book that supposedly presents Jesus as the greatest salesman ever… and how the advertizement industry picked up...
In any case, in Hebraic history, it is explained the altar was so dark, that in order that light may reach a vast horizon more efficiently, the lamp was spread out in 7 branches, and arranged in such a manner that each of the 3 pairs of branch fall one behind the other from the central One called the 'leader' or the 'messiah'.
This way, the ones that are behind the central most One, not only throw light at the corners and cover a wider arc, but transfer their light to the ones before them in front, and the ones before them to the ones before them, in a genealogical fashion.
So the central One or the messiah who bears the central light is "empowered" by those behind him and stands as their representation, bearing it for them.
There is some politics behind the 7-open-menorah later turning into the 6+1-closed-hexagram.
Its interesting, in nature though, in the V-formation, it is the central leader which goes out first that alerts the others at the farthest periphery behind it, who simply follow the signals from one's next of neighbour and so forth, from centre outwards to the edges. If I am not mistaken, it is not the bird at the extreme edge that first alerts and the alert then carried over to the centre...
"Without the daily state of emergency provoked by the temptations of the enemy, the high tension of religious life would rapidly decline into a state of ponderous non-aggression. Normally this field is characterized by the development of a two-enemy-economy that allows a back and forth between real and imaginary stressors. The highly current Islamic concept of a near and a remote enemy (in which the USA and Israel currently occupy the role of the external evil) is derived from this. Only Judaism managed largely without the devil, as it had the Egyptians and, after them, the Canaanites. These were followed by a long line of concrete oppressors, from the Babylonian kings to the German racists, who spared their victims the effort of merely imagining evil.
As a rule, however, one can always be sure of non-imaginary opponents, as the monotheistic provocation inevitably stirs a backlash among those provoked, sooner or later. There can be no Aten cult without the reaction of the Amun priesthood, no Judaism without the displeasure of the other peoples, no Christianity without the scepticism of the non-Christians, and no Islam without the unwillingness of the non-Muslims. Even in the early days of the Empire, educated Romans were so disturbed by the separatism of the Jews that they gave them the title ‘enemies of the human race’ (originally coined by Cicero to ostracize pirates)." [God's Zeal]
"With regards to qiyam (“standing, to stand,” esoterically “to be awake, to have gnosis”) and the Imām (“the one who stands before”):
“[Henry] Corbin believed, with justification, that the Qiyamat was a purely esoteric event, and had nothing whatsoever to do with legitimacy … Corbin introduces the typically Ismaili concept of ‘the Imam -of-one’s-own-being’: whoever has gnosis of self has gnosis of the archetypal Imam and in effect ‘becomes’ the Imam [i.e. spiritual adoptionism] … An event such as the Qiyamat consists of an intersection between history and the timeless ‘Nowever’; to drag it down to the level of blood again is to ruin it. In a sense, anyone can be the Imam; in a sense, everyone already is the Imam … Following Corbin, we can experience the Qiyamat in the alam-i mithal or Imaginal Plane, and receive its gnosis direct and unmediated. The Qiyamat survives, and we can participate in it. Through it, the ‘Nowever’ remains always accessible.” (Source)
In the following pre-Islamic examples, take note of the references to “the Standing One”—which primarily references the metaphysical divine Principial (thus the supra-physical Imām or Qutb as ‘Pole/Pillar’) who is also pre-existent (and thus Stands “before”):
John answered them, saying, “I baptize with water: but there Stands one among you, whom you know not.” — John 1:26 (compare the Mandaean supra-physical “Hidden Adam”, and the “Hidden God/Power” of the Elkasaites)
Incomprehensible Air, without beginning or end. In this is the Father who sustains all things, and nourishes those things which have a beginning and end. This is He who has Stood, Stands and will Stand, a male-female power as the preëxisting Boundless Power, which has neither beginning nor end, existing in oneness. — “Apophasis Megale” of Simon Magus, via Hippolytus in G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, p.173.
The Lord said, “Blessed is he who is before he came into being. For he who is, has been and shall be.” — Gospel of Philip
To reiterate: “He who has Stood, Stands and will Stand” (qiyam/qiyamat) and “who is, has been and shall be” is both pre-existent and metaphysically primary, and in such way stands “before” (thus in the Gospel of Philip it is “he who is before he came into being”). This is arguably prefigured in the pre-existent, supernal “Pattern/Image” upon which is established the “Perfect copy” of the Jewish Tsaddiq (Righteous Pillar), who is said to be “the Foundation of the World” (Zohar 1.59b) and who was exemplified in James-the-Tsaddiq “for whose sake Heaven and Earth came into being” (Gospel of Thomas, Logion 12). In anthropomorphic representation the pre-existent “Standing One” is synonymous with the “Hidden Adam” of the Mandaeans, the “Hidden God” of the Elkasaites, the “Perfect Man” of the Naassenes, and “Sat Purusha” (True Person/Being) of the Upanishads. In addition, “(He who has) neither beginning nor end, existing in oneness” is synonymous with Melchizedek who is “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; he remains a priest continually”—note that in the 11QMelch Dead Sea Scroll, Melchizedek is considered to be a Heavenly Being. From the perspective of traditional philosophy and metaphysics, the Standing One corresponds with the “First Logos” of Philo and the “Word of Truth” in the canonical Letter of James 1:18 (compare also Philo’s “first-born of God” and James’ “first fruit” of God, once again indicating metaphysical primacy and the divine Principial).
“He who has Stood, Stands and will Stand … Who is, has been and shall be” (“he who is before he came into being”) is arguably also the archetypal Imām “the one standing before”—and this present writer believes that this does not simply refer to the physical Imām who leads the community in prayer, but primarily it must originate in the trans-personal Authority of the pre-existent, divine Principial: “the Imam -of-one’s-own-being”, the supernal Self."
"Maria per aurem impregnata est. (Mary is impregnated through her ear) — St Ambrose
The bodily locus of the virginal conception was not portrayed in early Christian acts as the vagina, but the ear: ‘The conception was by hearing’, wrote John of Damascus. In early iconography the Holy Spirit is not portrayed as coming into Mary’s body physiologically by sexual transmission, but spiritually by attentive hearing… the conception was by right hearing of the Word of God. — Thomas C. Oden, Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology, 292
(Before proceeding, it is interesting to note that the Akkadian khāsīsū means: 1. aperture of the ear, 2. (faculty of) hearing, 3. understanding. An Akkadian cognate, khāssū, denotes a person who is “wise”)
With this in mind, consider the following verses:
He that has ears to hear, let him hear. — Matthew 11:15
And he said unto them, He that has ears to hear, let him hear. — Mark 4:9
He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches. — Revelation 3:22 & 2:7
Know you not that you are the Temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? —1 Corinthians 3:16
It would further seem that this “hearing” was not simply by way of the sensory ear, but primarily the ontological cognition of the divine Word, leading to Gnosis of the divine Truth. The following verses/quotes expand on this subject:
Sanctify them through your Truth: your Word is Truth. — John 17:17
They [the heavenly messengers] took the Letter of Truth [Letter=Word] and put it in the hand of Yohana [i.e. John, from Yo-ḥanan = “He (YHWH) is gracious”]. ‘Take it, Rab Yohana’, say they to him, ‘Truth’s Letter, which has come here to thee from thy Father’. Yohana opened it and read it and saw in it a wondrous writing [cf. the Qur’ān’s supernal umm al-kitāb]. He opened it and read in it and became full of Life [thus Yohana’s other name, Yaḥyā ‘he lives’]. ‘This is’, says he, ‘what I would, and this does my soul will’. — G.R.S. Mead (transl.), Gnostic John the Baptizer: Selections from the Mandaean John-Book, London: Watkins, 1924, p.47
The Wisdom [sophia] that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. — James 3:17
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of His own will begat he us with the Word of Truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. — James 1:17-18
They [the Alexandrian women Therapeutae] take no heed of the pleasures of the body, and desire not a mortal offspring, but an immortal one, which only a soul which is loved by God is able to give birth to, by itself, because the Father has sown in it lights of intelligence which enable her to see the doctrines of Wisdom. — Philo, De Vita Contemplativa, 68
It is interesting to remember that when Philo addresses the significance of Miriam singing in the story of Exodus, he describes her as representing sense-perception that has been made ‘pure and clean’ (Agr. 80), perhaps then also virginal … The Therapeutae may have accepted Wisdom’s promise, and— reading allegorically—may have brought this promise of future fruit forward in time, so that now those who participate in the community do not desire mortal but immortal offspring in their present experience. — Joan E. Taylor, ‘Spiritual Mothers: Philo on the Women Therapeutae’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 23 (2002), London: The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd, pp.54 & 58
“I am the Image of the Invisible Spirit, and it is through me that the All took shape, and (I am) the Mother (as well as) the Light which she appointed as Virgin, she who is called ‘Meirothea’, the incomprehensible Womb, the unrestrainable and immeasurable Voice … I am a single one, since I am undefiled. I am the Mother of the Voice [cf. the Quranic umm al-kitab “Mother of the Book”], speaking in many ways, completing the All. It is in me that knowledge dwells, the knowledge of [things] everlasting. It is I who speak within every creature, and I was known by the All. It is I who lift up the Speech of the Voice to the ears of those who have known me, that is, the Sons of the Light … I am the Womb that gives shape to the All by giving birth to the Light that shines in splendor. I am the Aeon to come. I am the fulfillment of the All, that is, Meirothea, the glory of the Mother. I cast voiced Speech into the ears of those who know me. And I am inviting you into the exalted, perfect Light.” — Trimorphic Protennoia, Nag Hammadi Library (Codex XIII)
And in the great Jordan a pure seed was formed … and came and was sown in the womb of `Nisbai [Elizabeth], so that from it a child might come into being, a prophet of the great Father of Glory … and he shall be called Yahia Yohana [from ḥanan = “grace, favour”], the prophet of Kusta [truth/righteousness]: the apostle who dwelt at the city of Jerusalem [James the Righteous?]. — E.S. Drower (transl.), The Haran Gawaita and the Baptism of Hibil-Ziwa, Vatican City, 1953, p.5
And, behold, there came a voice saying: Hail, you who have received grace [=ḥānān]; the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women! … And, behold, an angel of the Lord stood before her, saying: Fear not, Mary; for you have found grace [ḥanan] before the Lord of all, and you shall conceive, according to His Word. — The Protoevangelium of James, 11
Into [Mary’s] presence the angel came, and said, Hail, you who are full of grace [ḥanan]; the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women […] Then the angel said to her, Mary, do not be afraid; you have found favour [ḥanan] in the sight of God. [cf. Yo-ḥanan = “He (YHWH) is gracious / with Favour’] — Luke 1:28-30
And [Mary] had chosen seclusion from them. Then We sent unto her Our Angel (of Spirit) and it assumed for her the likeness of a perfect man [cf. the Mandaean Enosh Uthra as Divine Man]. — Qur’an 19:17
He [the ‘Eagle’ of the Living Gnosis] descended unto her [Miryai], folded before her his wings, settled down by her, narrated and proclaimed to her; and they held out the loved hand of Truth to each other. He embraced her in potent embracing, lay her down and set her on the throne. ‘Miryai,’ he speaks to her, ‘with favour [ḥanan] look upon me, remember me in the Life’s presence. I am thy Good Messenger, the Man [Enosh Uthra], who gives ear to thy discourse. I beseech thee for the high Truth, the Truth which the Jordans have chosen’. — Mead (transl.), Gnostic John the Baptizer: Selections from the Mandaean John-Book, p.70)
Adam saw the woman standing next to him. The light-filled Epinoia immediately appeared to him She raised up the veil that dulled his mind. He sobered up from the dark drunkenness And he recognized his own counterpart …
[Sophia, our sister, came down Descending innocently So as to regain what she had lost. Therefore she was called Life. The Mother of the Living The one from the Providence of the Authority of Heaven By her assistance people can achieve perfect knowledge.]
I appeared as an eagle perched on the Tree of Knowledge!
[Which is the Epinoia from the pure Providence of Light.]
In order to teach them And raise them up from sleep’s depths.
[For the two of them were fallen and aware of their nakedness. Epinoia appeared as a being full of light She enlightened their minds.]
— Apocryphon of John
Awake and arise from your sleep, and hear the Words of our Letter. Remember that you are a song of kings. Consider the slavery you are serving. Remember the Pearl, on account of which you were sent to Egypt [i.e. the created, corporeal world] … Like a messenger was the Letter, which the King sealed with his right hand … It flew in the likeness of an eagle, the king of birds [elsewhere a dove of sublime Peace]. It flew and alighted beside me, and all of it became Speech for me … My Letter, my awakener, I found it before me on the road. And, as with its Voice that awakened us, so also with its Light it was leading me. — Johan Ferreira (transl.), ‘The Hymn of the Pearl’, Early Christian Studies 3, Sydney: St Paul’s Publications, 2002.
Consult your heart and you will hear the secret ordinance of God proclaimed by the heart’s inward knowledge, which is true faith and divinity. — Hadith"
J.-Xt. sadomasochistic sexualization of YHVH's vengeance; Israel, the Whore and the Whoring of Israel:
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"The book (Hebrew Bible) begins with a word to the prophet, introducing the fornication language—and explaining its meaning.
(1:2) When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea: “Go, take for yourself [i.e., marry] a woman of fornication(s) [eshet zenunim] and [have] children of fornication(s) [yalde zenunim], for the land fornicates greatly [zanoh tizneh] “from after” [me’achere] the LORD.
The root ZNH is used four times in this verse, in the same forms found in the introductory words of the oracle in 4:12–14. Contrary to popular interpretation, Hosea is not instructed to marry a prostitute; and there is no indication in the following report that Gomer, the woman he did marry (v. 3), was ever a prostitute. Rather, he is to marry a “woman of fornication[s].” The abstract plural noun “zenunim” suggests multiple sexual acts and consequently a promiscuous disposition or nature. Applied to the children as well, it must have the same meaning. It appears here for the first time—possibly Hosea’s creation—and is the same noun used in 4:12 in the expression “a spirit of fornication[s].” Here the reported sign-act is meant to reinforce the basic message that the land has committed grievous fornication against its husband/owner. “Land” in Hebrew is feminine, and the symbolism is transparent: the children are the inhabitants. In the accusations that follow it is sometimes the mother, sometimes the children, sometimes the earth itself that is in view. But the dominant image is that of the wife who has abandoned her husband for other lovers (specified here as “the Baals,” 2:13 [Heb. 15]; cf. 2:16–17 [Heb. 18–19]), who offer her bread and water, wine and oil, flax and wool. But the gifts, Hosea insists, are the LORD’s, bestowed by the true “fertility god” and Israel’s true husband/master.
The target of Hosea’s accusations appears to be some kind of “fertiliity cult” that seeks the benefits of nature by propitiation of the storm god Baal (here belittled by pluralizing as “the Baals”)—or by worship of YHWH as though he were Baal. And the charges in 4:11–14 suggest that sexual acts were part of the cult itself or at least thought to help secure the desired benefits. But we lack information about the actual practices, and it is impossible to determine how much of the description may simply be caricature of licentious practices at rural sanctuaries—analogous to the practices associated with convention centers and places of pilgrimage in other times and places. Moreover much of the detail may be generated by the simple choice of ZNH/fornication as the metaphorical language of denunciation—following common practice of using sexual slander to heighten an accusation. What is clear is that the prophet is not targeting simple prostitution as described in the texts examined earlier. On the other hand, the notion of “sacred prostitution” as ritual sex in the service of the cult is equally problematic, despite the hold it has gained in virtually every textbook and commentary.
Hosea’s use of the language of fornication to describe worship of other gods as “affairs” with other lovers depends on an underlying metaphor of the (covenant) bond between God and Israel as a marriage relationship. And it seems to have been occasioned by practices at local sanctuaries of the Northern Kingdom that involved sexual activity of some sort. Thus Hosea’s metaphorical usage remains close to the basic meaning of ZNH as it works multiple variations on the theme.
In a number of passages in the Pentateuch (all recognized as exilic or postexilic) ZNH is used simply to describe the worship of other gods— not only by Israelites who may be induced to adopt the foreign practice but by their own devotes. Thus Exodus warns against making a covenant with the “inhabitants of the land “ (34:15–16):
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“For they will fornicate [wezanu] after their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and invite you, and you will eat from their sacrifice. (16) And you will take wives from among their daughters for your sons, and their daughters will fornicate [wezanu] after their gods and will make your sons fornicate [wehiznu] after their gods.” Here “zanah,” “to fornicate,” is simply substituted for the verb “to walk” in the common expression for allegiance to a deity (or political leader), “to walk after” (that is, “to follow”).
Leviticus 20: 5 condemns any Israelite who “fornicates after Molech” (a deity associated with child sacrifice). Deuteronomy 31:16 warns that after Moses’ death the people will “fornicate after the strange gods of the land” into which they are entering, forsake the LORD, and break the covenant that he made with them. Judges 2:17 describes the cycle of apostasy that followed each act of deliverance by the judges whom the LORD had raised up: “They did not listen even to their judges; for they fornicated after other gods and bowed down to them.” Judges 8:27 reports that all Israel “fornicated after” the ephod (cult object) that Gideon had made and set up in his city, and Judges 8:33 says that as soon as Gideon died, the Israelites again “fornicated after the Baals, and made Baal-berith their god.”
In Jeremiah and Ezekiel, personification of Israel as a promiscuous woman (introduced by Hosea) is continued—with new elaborations. In Jeremiah 3:1 the prophet asks whether Israel, who has “fornicated with many companions,” can return to the LORD. His reply underscores the impossibility by stressing the brazen and hardened nature of Israel’s “fornication” as that of a common prostitute with no sense of shame (2– 3):
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“Look up to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been laid [K shuggalt; Q shukkabt]? By the roadsides you sat [waiting for lovers]. . . . You had the forehead of a fornicator-woman [ishshah zonah], you refuse to be ashamed.”
Jeremiah 3:6–9 picks up the language of Hosea to summarize the LORD’s indictment against the Northern Kingdom, comparing the divine judgment to divorce and condemning the Southern Kingdom for following the same path. The marriage metaphor is central here and the language of fornication is paired with that of adultery:
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(6) The LORD said to me in the days of King Josiah: Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and fornicated there?
(7) And I thought, “After she has done all these things she will return to me;” but she did not return, and her false sister Judah saw it.
( . . . Because Rebel Israel had committed adultery, I cast her off and gave her a bill of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and fornicated.
(9) Because she took her fornication [zenutah] so lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree.
Ezekiel 16 presents an elaborate allegory (in 63 verses!) of Jerusalem/ Israel as the LORD’s unfaithful wife. From her origins as an unwanted child of mixed Amorite and Hittite parentage her history is traced. Abandoned at birth in an open field, she is spied by the LORD passing by, who says to her “Live!” (v. 6). Growing “like a sprout in the field,” she arrives at full womanhood, “naked and bare” (v. 7). When the LORD passes by again, he sees that she is at the “time of love” (‘et dodim), and so he “covers her nakedness,” “pledges himself to her,” and enters into a covenant with her (v. . Five verses then detail the LORD’s adornment of his bride, her fine food, her beauty, and her fame among the nations, all as the LORD’s gift. In verse 15 the accusation begins, employing the root ZNH some twenty-one times:
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“(15) But you trusted in your beauty, and fornicated because of your fame, and you poured out your fornications [taznutayik] on any passerby.
(16) You took some of your garments, and made for yourself ‘colorful shrines’ and fornicated on them. . . .
(17) You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and my silver that I had given you, and made for yourself male images [tsalme zakar] and fornicated with them.” The accusation continues by detailing Israel’s devotion of the fine garments and food that the LORD had given her as coverings for the images and as offerings and also charges her with child sacrifice (20–21).
Further descriptions of cultic(?) transgressions follow (24–25):
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“You built yourself a platform [ geb] and made yourself a lofty place [ramah] in every square; at the head of every street you built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, and spread your legs to every passer-by, and you multiplied your fornications.”
The accusations now shift to the subject of political alliances and are expressed using the same “fornication” language (26–29):
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“You fornicated with the Egyptians, your lustful [literally, ‘large-membered’] neighbors, multiplying your fornications, to provoke me to anger. . . . You fornicated with the Assyrians, because you were insatiable; you fornicated with them and were still not sated. You multiplied your fornication with Chaldea, the land of merchants; yet even with this you were not sated.”
Finally, Ezekiel compares the promiscuous wife with an “ordinary” prostitute:
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(30) How sick is your heart, says the Lord GOD, that you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen fornicator-woman [ishshah-zonah];
(31) building your platform at the head of every street and making your lofty place in every square! Yet you were not like the fornicator [zonah], because you spurned fees [etnan]. [You were like] the adulteress woman [ha’ishshah hammena’apet], who receives strangers [zarim] instead of her husband!
(33) Gifts are given to all fornicators [zonot]; but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from all around for your fornications.
(34) So you were the opposite of other women; in your fornications you were not solicited to fornicate [zunnah]; you gave payment [etnan] when no payment [etnan] was given to you; you were different.
The LORD now pronounces judgment on Jerusalem, addressing her as a “zonah” (35) and summarizing her offenses in much the same language that precedes the judgment, with added references to her brazenness and nakedness (36). As punishment she will be handed over to all her past lovers and her nakedness exposed before them (37). Although the language of “fornicating” is used throughout this passage to characterize her offenses, the punishment is described in verse 38 as the punishment decreed for “those (f. pl) who commit adultery [no’apot] and pour out blood [i.e., ‘murder’].” The description of the punishment combines language of an enemy’s assault and plunder of a city with the image of a woman being publicly abused (39–41):
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“I will deliver you into their hands, and they shall throw down your platform and break down your lofty places; they shall strip you of your clothes and take your beautiful objects and leave you naked and bare. They shall bring up a mob against you, and they shall stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords. They shall burn your houses and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women; thus I will make you stop fornicating [wehishbattik mizzonah], and you shall also make no more payment [etnan].”
The same language, with additional erotic/pornographic detail, is found in Ezekiel 23, which describes the “fornications” of the two sisters Oholah and Oholibah (representing Samaria and Jerusalem). Here the generalizing noun “taznut” meaning “fornication(s)” is used of the male lovers (translated as “lust” by NRSV and NJPS) as well as the promiscuous sisters. But here the accusations are entirely concerned with foreign relations: Samaria’s “fornication” with the Assyrians (vv. 5–10) and Jerusalem’s “fornication” with the Babylonian Chaldeans (vv. 11–31).
It is clear from these latter examples particularly, that the metaphor of the promiscuous bride of YHWH has developed a life of its own, generating new applications and associations, while continuing to feed on, and reinforce, current views of prostitutes and sexual promiscuity. Its afterlife can be traced through the New Testament and into Christian apologetics—but that is another world of religious rhetoric." [Phyllis Bird: Christopher Faraone, Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World]
Gilman is a liberal out to cure the anti-semitic views against the jews, and there are lectures on youtube and articles on the net on the Jewish body language including the jew's foot, nose-job, and circumcision, etc.
He traces half the role to "civilized" Jews against the nomadic jews, and is of interest in that respect.
"‘What have I in common with Jews?’ Kafka asked in his diary in 1913: ‘I have almost nothing in common with myself.’ By 1945, European Jews had a catastrophic history in common. ‘Jews are people who are not what anti-semites say they are,’ Philip Roth once wrote, but it is Gilman’s contention in this book that the Jews have tried to become indistinguishable from their enemies: that in the process of assimilation they have had to internalise the anti-semitism of their host nations. Since the Middle Ages the Jews of Central Europe, in order to survive, have had to recognise an unacceptable Jew within – and disown him. What this has in practice entailed is that most virulent, because most contradictory, form of anti-semitism, Jewish anti-semitism. Gilman describes this as the inevitable double bind of the outsider: the only acceptable Jew is the non-Jew. In his view, ‘the ubiquitousness of self-hatred ... has shaped the self-awareness of those treated as different perhaps more than they themselves have been aware.’ He does not make the unacceptably glib point that the Jews simply colluded in their own destruction, but he does make it plain that a lot of powerful anti-semitic polemic had been written by Jews as well as non-Jews before the Nazis. There was, as it were, a great tradition of Jewish anti-semitism.
If self-hatred has been integral to the experience of the Jews, so too has resilience. You don’t meet Hittites these days in European cities. Gilman implicitly makes the point that self-hatred may be, among other things, a kind of self-protection, part of the emotional rigmarole of survival in largely hostile countries. The history of the Jews, as of any dispersed people, has been the history of their obvious, and not so obvious, difference from the various cultures they have inhabited. But it has also been a history, as Gilman makes clear, of the persistent need of some of these cultures to clarify the nature of the difference in order to eradicate it. Jewish Self-Hatred is a historical account, and an attempted psychological explanation, of the co-operation of the Jews in this project. ‘Self-hatred,’ Koestler wrote in 1946, ‘is the Jew’s patriotism.’
The essential difference, the most manifestly unacceptable thing about the Jews, has been what anti-semitic writers have construed as their ‘hidden language’. Whether it was Hebrew, Yiddish or ‘corrupt’ German, it was seen as a language of ancient and furtive allegiances, something dangerous that needed to be translated out. It is, of course, impossible to imagine a culture, or an individual, without a category of the unacceptable, though some people feel the need to be more militant in their discriminations than others. Gilman uses psychoanalytic ideas of projection and internalisation to explain the stubborn ferocity of anti-semitism. In the difficult theoretical section with which he begins the book, he does not consider the problematic question of whether insights derived from a psychology of the individual are suited to a broader context. And he writes of projection – finding the unacceptable parts of oneself in other people – as a mechanism rather than as part of the process of a relationship. His initial discussion of self-hatred turns into a rather over-schematic story in which homogeneous groups of people, Insiders and Outsiders, are driven by irresistible psychological mechanisms to act out the stereotypes ascribed to them."
) some of Veith's lectures labour the point about the deliberate blasphemies of Rome and Jesus as saviour yada yada but nonetheless, you may find value.
. . . Because Rebel Israel had committed adultery, I cast her off and gave her a bill of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and fornicated.