Understanding the enemy

The Israeli prof. Szlomo Sand’s thesis on judaic origin has late become a sensation. In short, he means that the cultural and racial origins of present Jews are complex, and their consciousness has only been national for 2 centuries. Before that, it was religious. How do you mention to this?

He is right, but at the same time his thesis requires a fundamental correction, as it is possible to prove the existence of a national sense of judaic community in ancient times. The racial-ethnic origin of the people of Israel was very complex from the very beginning, not only since the failure of their homeland, which occurred in the first century after Christ. This is no secret to ancient and biblical historians, although the wider audience knows small about it.

The Bible reader can learn from Genesis that the Israelites came from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, besides called Israel, who was the father of 12 sons, the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel. However, this Genesis account, based on past household memories, is not historical. From a later perspective, he consciously paints a pattern perfect. callback that religion does not require a naively literal Bible!

The deeper thought is that the tribes of Israel, inhabited in a land formerly called Canaan, should form a brotherhood. They were not joined by an ad hoc alliance, but by a lasting bond. This bond was pictured like the household bond of members of 1 clan. The expected ancestors of the tribes were presented contractually as brothers. In the same way, Genesis had previously recognized all the nations of the planet as relatives, from Noah. The interhuman and national bond was understood as a household bond.

The actual cultural background of the Israelites was immensely complex. They lived in their country, present called the country of Israel, Palestine and Holy Land, somewhere from the 13th century before Christ. Then the country called itself Kanaan. Where did they come from?

The group came with Moses of Egypt only part of their ancestors, and it was not “raceally pure,” for the Book of Exodus mentions that a group of another people fled with the ancestors of Israel. And the others? In the hills of Canaan, there were shepherd tribes of Aramaic origin (hence the biblical phrase “your father was a erring Aramaic). The name Hebrews moves distant from the concepthabiru, which meant various refugees surviving on the border of civilization, specified as later Cossacks. Finally, they entered Israel by the way of assimilation, alliance, and marriages of many local Canaanites whose language besides gave birth to Hebrew.

The proportions are unknown to us, but it should be assumed that the center of crystallization was the group of Moses and Joshua with religion in God JHWH, whose worship ruled out the worship of another gods. These were the beginnings of monotheism. Since then, religion has become the origin of the identity of the Israelites, but besides surviving in 1 country – and yet in 1 country. That is, in the land of David and Solomon, of whom 2 twins were formed, Israel in the north and Judah with Jerusalem in the south.

At this stage, mixing with another population may have weakened. However, mixed marriages remained. After the Assyrian invasion in the area of Samaria and Galilee, they yet accepted local worship and blended in. Then, but not at once, there was a charge among the Jews that the Samaritans were racially alien; however, they considered themselves to have continued Israel before the invasions.

It was only after the deportations to Assyria and Babylonia and then the return (ages VIII–VI), that fear arose of melting in the sea of neighboring peoples. That is why Ezra, the spiritual leader of Judea, about 400 years before Christ, demanded that the Jews send off abroad wives with their children. However, the list of those who did so is not impressively long.

Notabene was then defined to the end by the Biblical judaic religion. Since then it makes sense to talk about Jews in a religious-national sense. The word hebrew itself comes from “Jud” (with a French pronunciation) and means individual from Judea.

Abducted to Assyria and Babylonia and emigrating to Egypt, and later to the Hellenist countries and Rome, they kept group separate, though any of them assimilated. However, we have news about spiritual and moral separatistism of Jews (negatively seen by others), about awareness of their origin, about the avoidance of mixed marriages, about strict penalties for adultery. As a result, large separate judaic communities were formed in Babylonia and elsewhere. Although judaic monotheism was missionary, in ancient papers the number of persons identified as pagan proselytes is not besides great.

The supply of "fresh blood" existed during this period but did not dominate. The population growth flowed mainly from demography. Jews then rejected as a crime the abandonment of newborns as abortions (this is written by Josephus, Pseudo-Focilides, and Philon of Alexandria, and the Bible mostly counts human life from conception). Otherwise, the advancing Gentiles would arrive slower. Then it was besides an crucial origin in Christendom’s growth.

Newer historians of the thought defend the thesis that national consciousness in today's sense developed full only in the 19th century, and before that 1 should talk about cultural awareness. This is inappropriate, especially for Jews.

Let us take the thought of a nation as seen in the above. The nation would arise as a consequence – not a origin – of national ideology, forming awareness of the population. So it starts with the elite. The basis for this ideology can be cultural community, a country seen as homeland, religion. usually the nation develops on the basis of the state.

It turns out immediately that all these elements happen in ancient judaic consciousness. The Old Testament created by the Hebrew elites shaped the judaic sense of identity and distinctness (before, as it implies, not very clear). The base was the country of Israel, and at times its own state. There was a strong awareness of God's election, which made up his people and created them. Earlier diversity of origin gave way to conviction of unity and separateness. As a result, in the second century BC, erstwhile the Machabese judaic state was reborn, it was a national, militant and ideologically crystallized state. I would add in brackets that there is another late known book, David Goodblatt, "Elements of Ancient judaic Nationalism" (Cambridge 2006). Its author rightly recognizes national traits in ancient Jews.

The land of Israel, the base of the nation, was then occupied by the Romans. After the judaic uprising in 66–70 BC. The Romans made a large slaughter and took many inhabitants as slaves. However, the judaic consciousness was so shaped that it survived the shocks, though mostly outside the homeland. The descendants of Jews and Samaritans in the country of Israel itself became any Christians, and after many centuries of Muslim regulation – Palestinians.

The Bible’s ideas on these matters have influenced the reasoning of the nation straight or indirectly in the countries of European culture. This is clearly seen in the United States and South Africa, by Protestant visitors treated as the fresh Promised Land. But besides in Europe itself the concept of national bond presented in the Old Testament served from the mediate Ages as a pattern.

The norms of separateness shaped in the ancient diaspora were not always strictly observed, but it was adequate for the judaic religious-national consciousness to persist despite linguistic, cultural and racial changes. For example, Ethiopian black Jews, from black proselytes. The Jews did not live in isolation, and so mixed marriages and extramarital relationships, even if not daily, made it hard to talk of racial purity here. Especially since she was never there.

A well-known example is the conversion to Judaism in the 8th century to the Khazar States on the Black Sea, a people related to the Turks. A number of them entered the Polish judaic community, although the Judaism of the Chazars was a variety different than the Talmudic 1 (a tiny Karaim group represents it today). However, Polish Jews came mainly from the judaic population from the west of Europe, which, thanks to convenient conditions, increased importantly in numbers, as everywhere mixing with locals.

This reminds us together that Judaism is primarily a religion, rooted in the Hebrew Bible and developed in Mishnah and the Talmud—although its followers, or at least any of them, feel a nation. For the second reason, however, we rightly compose “Jews” in capital letters, like the names of nationality. Surely, contrary to racists, there is no specified thing as the judaic race. On the contrary, Jews are an highly diverse group in this regard. They separate themselves on the level of religion and culture and may feel connected by Christians to different nations. For Christians, this is an indication that relations with Jews are better understood in spiritual terms than in political-national terms.

Michał Wojciechowski
The author is simply a secular theologian, prof. of the Theological Faculty of the University
Warmia-Masurian