Saturday, December 31, 2011

Comparative ancient Near Eastern Law


Part Four, “A Phalanx of Lies: How Fundamentalists Bedevil Peace in the Middle East”

Legal Systems in the Ancient Middle East: A Comparison

Written law attended the birth of civilization, and respect for the rule of law is a feature of Middle Eastern life right up till today. Even the lawless nomadic raiders had their unwritten codes. These traditions go back to the Neolithic (8,000-6,000 BCE), when farmers, nomads and traders worked out cooperative arrangements, to make trade possible, even long distance trade.

The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Assyrians, the Hurrians, the Canaanites and the Hittites had evolved legal codes, a millennium before Israel and Greeks. They were inscribed on stone and on clay tablets. Obsolete Western 'educated experts' have long taught their minions, us, that the legal tradition put forth by the writers of the Old Testament, was more progressive, more humane than any before it. That is simply not true.

Remember, the Hebrews were nomads over several thousands of years, and were found from Egypt to Persia, from Anatolia to the Yemen, either raiding villages or working for them, as mercenaries, traders. Around 2,300 BC, some Hebrews found a place to settle down - the Canaanite hill country of Palestine; then they, a small group of priests and officials, needed a unique God, a compelling myth, sacred rites and rituals and a priestly hierarchy identified with (or against) the ruling dynasty.

The various names for God or the gods in the Old Testament reflect the very diverse strains that were knit together in the 24 books of the Torah. Yet they needed a legal system that was unified, clear, just, and for this, they turned not to their own cult rules, but to their civilized neighbors. Their construction of the temple is typical of Near Eastern cities.

Surrounded by old venerable cultures, armed empires now resurgent, the Canaanite Hebrews resolved to evolve their own legal system, aiming to make it as elegant and as utilitarian as the Assyrian, Hittite, Babylonian, Elamite and Egyptian codes. But the cultists wrested control. So the bible contains many injunctions having nothing to do with human perfection – the development of conscience and consciousness.

The examples we cite as authentic, practical, deal with real issues and problems faced by people in the Near East environment; not included with these are the cult laws having no relevance to real issues and problems. Yahweh was the new anthropomorphic God, part storm god, possessing a face, hands, feet, a lap, a beard, robes. It's the standard East Mediterranean type, like Zeus, a storm-god in a storm cloud, flashing lightning and promising rain. The Canaanite Hebrews were pushing a henotheism which was also characteristic of Near Eastern societies.

Archaeology reveals what the bible sought to shut up: the Canaanite Hebrews worshiped a male Yahweh always with a female consort – Asheroth, or Astarte. Surviving are little dioramas that people made out of clay, little altars featuring the Divine Family or the Divine Council (of the Godhead). The word Shekinah in Hebrew, Sakinah in Arabic, refers to the imminence of the God, an Aspect feminine in nature. Rediscovered by the Kabbalists and by Muslim mystical writers, the trope is perennial.

As we explained elsewhere, the religion of the Canaanite Hebrews (Judaeans, Samarians, Israelites) was not the first monotheism. It was not a monotheism at all: the religion of Israel is a henotheism: one God dominating all others. It was in Persia, probably, that our modern monotheistic beliefs derive, as the Persian believed in a benevolent God who loved all his children.

Nor can we say that the bible is the basis of our morality.  Altruism is in-bred: 6-month old babies can present it. Our own law system of course derives from pagan sources: from British common law back through the Anglo-Saxon code to the ancient In the case of the Canaanite Hebrews, God-state injunctions that were tacked on to the real law code, which remained largely unwritten. These cult regulations have persisted till today. I myself keep one – the Sabbath. But the laws that engage us, are those that actually assist a society in surviving in the region's rough neighborhoods, in spreading wealth, and in educating their youth not to hate.

Let us look more closely at the Torah. We begin at Exodus 20. Here the Ten Commandments are explained and applied. But only after mentioning God's number one injunction: That is Exodus 20:7, my favorite verse in the Torah: “Do not use my name to cause harm. If you do, I'll punish you most severely.” The whole ensuing section is lucid. This is clear, relevant legal system continues from Exodus 20 to Exodus 23:20. It compares well with the older civilized codes and no doubt derives from them.

Then everything changes. The text becomes deadly, as if a genocidal maniac had taken up the pen. “My Israelite angel will go to all of your enemies and send you into the land of Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will kill them all.”(Ex.23:23). This is suicidal rant, a mania. Then Yahweh says not to worry about the costs of war: “If you worship me, the Lord your God, I will bless you with food and water and cure you of your illness and wounds In your land no woman will have miscarriages or lack children. What I will give you lives extra-long.”(Ex: 23:27.)

This is writing from a genocidal maniac, a group of them, trying to steal power. Can one imagine a policy more fatal to Israel itself? It is suicide and genocide, at once a pathology and a sociopathy. Yahweh is most crazy and suicidal, inimical, inhumane, because all of the above kingdoms are more powerful than Israel (or expired centuries before) and the Israelites never went up there, into northern Syria, southeast Anatolia. So why the genocide? The grandiose suicidal military injunction to commit genocide? Why does Exodus suddenly change, from a humane, relevant system of laws, reflecting a great Near Eastern tradition, to a series of laws and regulations having no benefits to anyone, yet highly dangerous, leading to militarism, impossible tasks, aggression and mass warfare? Were they after land? Did they see themselves as a mercenary force for some New Age Egyptian pharaoh? Or is it just sickness, an inhumane streak? Was the Old Testament used to dominate other kinds of Jews and Israelites? For sure.

Other legal passages in the OT are just like this: a few lucid prohibitions, like touching a corpse (Numbers 19:10), followed by endless cult laws and ritual prescriptions, leading to a genocidal outbursts, in song if not in deed. See for example Numbers 24:20, Balam's prophecies.

There must be some thirty explicit genocidal passages. As an archaeologist who has worked in Israel, I strongly doubt that those wars of extermination against the peaceful Edomites, Perizzites, Midianites, Sodomites, Philistines, Canaanites and the Jebusites (natives of Jerusalem), ever happened. But some Christians, Muslims and modern Jews do use these writings as 'God-given unique revelations.' And of course the record is abysmal: the popes planned, supplied and executed some 63 'crusades,'
and those popes had no problem justifying their genocidal adventures in the Old Testament. Yahweh commands genocide too many times.

Yahweh was the anthropomorphic god who led the Jews into a big change: the Rise of the Old Male God. Were they imitating Assyrian? From 735 to 722 Israel and Judah were parts of Assyria. In jact, Israel's relation with the Assyrians was deep, persistent and intimate. Assur too was a dominant alpha male, intervening in human history. No Isis, no Ishtar, no Astarte, no Ashteroth. This bible-based exclusion of women from the holy of holies was copied by the Christian clergy, and by the Muslims (after Muhammad). But it was, as it is, an issue, of excluding women, along the power of the Goddess of intuition and mercy. All other ancient Near Eastern cultures featured a co-equal feminine half of the Godhead (except Assyria and Israel).

A too-human Yahweh incites the Israelites to follow Him into war, but the angry god ends up cursing the Hebrews. The Old Testament is not uncritical of the Hebrews and their prophets. One might expect this self-criticism might be taken on by the humans, to help them evolve humane laws.

Like the Qur'an, and the New Testament, the Torah gives instructions not to make graven images – not just statues and pictures of the Holy, but abstractions, thoughts about God, as well. The sacred books become worshiped alongside God by the ignorant. That's shirk (association), a sin. But God cannot be known with the ordinary conceptual mind. It is a living God. That's the essence of any real religion.

Archaeology does not support the biblical stories. There is no evidence for any 'coming into the land.' Archaeology would have revealed that long ago. All that war and destruction, ca. 1,125 BCE, the genocidal violence which is such a feature of the Hebrew bible, never happened.

Not only were the Canaanite Hebrews few in number (maybe around 40,000at most) they were in fact divided among themselves from the start, right up to the present day. In fact, both Judah and Israel became client states and it is archaeologically-proven that is was during these long periods of being a province in a greater empire, that prosperity returned to Palestine.

Looking at the authentic, humane section of the Torah, it is possible to find many parallels in Assyrian, Hittite, Egyptian, Babylonian and late Sumerian legal texts. Even back then, at the end of the second millennium BCE, most Israelites, Samarians and Judaeans, preferred uniform secular law. But a noisy faction of fundamentalists enforced a mock mono-theism, using a new unknown name of God to commit genocide, even against the Jews themselves.

From the beginning of civilization in the ancient Near East, the big effort was to replace revenge with restitution. But with murder, this was a hard ideal to enforce. Whereas morally precocious civilizations like the Hittite, might have had trials by jury, with the right to appeal, many later judges, including Greeks and Hebrews, handed murderer suspects over to the village of the victim, and let them decide. “The dead man's nearest relative has the task of putting the suspect to death.” (Numbers 25:19.)That usually went one way. The standard death was by stoning. Lex talionis – 'an eye for an eye' – came to replace the monetary payments that the oldest systems prescribed. The Canaanite Hebrews were told to create 'cities of refuge' where innocent men (not women) can flee.

The relevant section in the Torah is Numbers 35:16-21. Note the role of hatred in indicting the suspect on capital crimes, its role as a psychological principle, indicating guilt. In verse 22, the innocent man is defended: “But suppose a man accidentally kills someone he does not hate...” Even in brawls causing death, there is no capital crime if there is no hate between the unarmed consensual fighters.

Every Near East society back then had detailed rituals and cult proscriptions, so the Canaanite Hebrews just carried forward this dimension of tribal worship. As for being special, the chosen ones, that is a common sentiment amongst pastoral nomads living in close proximity to civilization (walled towns).

If you have a computer, log on to massada2000.org to see very mean and vicious Jewish American fascists, listing, with photos, all those American Jews, who have been advocating for peace with the Arabs.

This talk of Israel and its bizarre anthropomorphic God-before-the other gods, is highly relevant because the Likud party, backed by ultra-conservative rabbis, is making a bid to 'restore' ancient Israel, as the bible defines its widest borders. The passage they use is Exodus: 23:28-33. “... I will drive them out little by little (gradually) until there are enough of you to take possession of the whole land, from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Euphrates River, from the Mediterranean sea to the desert. I will give you power over the inhabitants of the land, and you will drive out the residents as you advance. Do not make any agreement with them, or with their gods..” (Ex.23:28-30)

True, both the Americans and the Israelis believe they really are 'exceptional,' that is, not bound to international law; but their destiny is to become nations amongst nations, not to lord over them, rousting them, taking over their land. God forbid!

The main players in the contemporary Middle East are all controlled by clerical hierarchies. Gaza, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, are ruled by men with very close ties to fundamentalist clerics. Other nations taking scripture as a blueprint are Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Serbia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some ignorant Americans, too, should be included, for they insist on being actors, while calling themselves arbiters. Most Americans went to Sunday school and still maintain 'a living connection with the bible,' particularly the colored illustrations, still afloat deep in their psyches, but with very little research into the ancient Near East. So the whole bible becomes one book, read out of context, with no context.

All this discussion of symbolic identification is highly pertinent, because we know that politics in the Middle East matured to become a series of multi-ethnic empires, based on written law, trading widely and afar, featuring a concentration of technical expertise due to tolerance of people with different skin colors, languages and gods.

The earliest written legal texts so far recovered date from 1952 BCE and 1965 BCE, promulgated by Ur-nammu, the first king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, in southern Iraq. Curiously, he tells us he had to take care of some security issues before he could focus on economic abuses. These law-givers were all reforming kings, proactive in implementing them, enforcing them, often rolling back established practice. It was a constant effort to prevent freemen and their families from falling into slavery because unpaid debts were punished. It was an effort to replace revenge with restitution. As we will see, the crime of murder was so inflammatory that the state (including Israel's) had no choice but leave that to the villages where the crime occurred. Even today, revenge distorts thinking on all sides, the Americans included.

The common view is that the Old Testament conformed with ancient Near Eastern traditions in the law of lex talionis: 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But the earliest legal systems of the Sumerians, found in Ur, home and school of Abraham, did not go that way, but assessed payment in 'coin' i.e. precious metals, chiefly silver, as restitution for damage to property, injury of person or animal, or slander. False witness was punished. Oaths were taken. Witnesses sworn in. This arrangement was adopted by many other ancient 'primitive' people, in an effort to curb tribal blood feuds.

In the late third millennium BCE, we have the Laws of Lipit-ishtar, King of Isin, the spiritual center of Old Sumeria (centered on Nippur). He carries forward the Neolithic achievement. Only fragments remain, but one can see that, in some ways it is superior to our own codes. Here's just one example: “if a man's wife has borne him no children, but a prostitute from the street has borne him children, he, the man, shall provide corn, oil and clothing for that prostitute. She should not dwell in a house with your wife but she should have a place of her own.”

Not surprisingly the Qur'an delineates the exact same law, adding that the man must provide an independent shelter for the mother of his child, even if a prostitute. As for Abraham, he was caught out on just this issue.

In the Akkadian language, the earliest laws date to 1947 BCE, found at Tell Harmal, just outside Baghdad. These are known today as the Laws of Eshnunna. They begin with a list of maximum prices for a variety of common commodities and tasks, followed by 48 sections. Here's just one sample: “If a man becomes insolvent so that he sells his house, when the buyer resells it, the original owner shall be entitled to redeem it, as first buyer.”

Many educated people have heard of the laws of Hammurabi, but again, they believe they are inferior to the Jewish scriptures. But that is untrue, a self-serving myth. First of all, one might wonder if these legal systems were ever enforced. The answer is yes. Hammurabi, we know, was proactive, moving aggressively to roll back abuses. He also reformed and ordered Akkadian/Babylonian language and alphabet. In fact, all literate ancient Near Eastern kings (and the people) seemed to subscribe to the primacy of justice. Law was seen to meet the demands of justice, social and personal, particularly in times of transition.

Here is a section relevant to today: “If a builder has built a house for a man and has not made his work sound, so that the house he has made falls down and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.” That's a bit harsh but no doubt saved more lives than it took. It's the way they protected themselves against earthquakes.

Hammurabi ruled from 1795 to 1750 BCE, the same time that we first hear about the Hebrews. It was generally accepted that the author of Exodus 20-23:19 was well versed in Near Eastern traditions, particularly those of the Hittites, the Canaanites, the Assyrians, as well as the earlier Sumerian and Babylonian traditions of Hammurabi.

The most humane and lucid of these codes seem to be the Hittite codes. Several survive, discovered in Bogazkoy, in north central Anatolia. Piecing these together, the scholar O.R. Gurney writes: “Evidently the Hittites avoided the tendency towards stagnation inherent in the process of codification, and did not hesitate to reform their laws in accordance with changing needs.”

The Hittite method conforms to the tradition of Mesopotamia, offering first a hypothetical case, then the ruling, with optional reference to precedent. The Hittites followed this format. Here the scholar Gurney sums it up: “An outstanding feature of the Hittite legal procedures is the immense trouble taken to ascertain the facts.” In the Middle East today, facts are not crucial, not determinative. So we've fallen a long way from the Hittites.

Reformation and adaptation of the establish written codes was most advanced among the Hittites. “Retribution plays an inconsequential part in comparison with the principle of restitution.” They had a complex feudal system: everybody knew his or her responsibilities. The Hittites used negotiation to manage the many petty kingdoms of southern and western Anatolia, including Troy. Almost always when they conquered a new territory, they tried to keep the sitting king and his administration in place.

Curiously, murder was not discussed in these old codes, except the murder of a merchant, which the state protected, demanding hard cash (silver) and property, as restitution. The Israelites mention murder, but support an extrajudicial solution: hand the guy over to the relatives and friends of the murdered victim, which usually meant a horrible death (stoning) with no trial. See Deuteronomy 19:11-13. All Mideast law codes stumble on this impulse towards vengeance - till a reform Jewish sect became popular during the fall of the Roman empire.

Christ says he carries forward the Law, but of course, he reforms it. He says “all food is sacred” and “love your enemy” and “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He does not call himself the Son of God but the Son of Man (both are old Near Eastern expressions). His plea for love and mercy proved sacred and was adopted by many people who were not-Jewish.

Both Judaism and Christianity owe much to Zoroastrianism. Eternal life, angels and archangels, the devil, an apocalypse – a showdown between the good and the evil, black robes for the clergy, a more rigorous monotheism, a belief in a benevolent God who loves all his people – these are all Zarathushtri ideas and precepts.

The Christian New Testament features genocide in its last book, the Revelation of St. John. A very angry Yahweh destroys the earth, taking his chosen few, and condemning everyone else to painful oblivion.

As a student of Gnosticism, I'm used to such lurid imagery in scripture, but the modern Christians have only the Book of Revelation. They think ikt is unique when it is not. Foolishly, they think it is a blueprint for people of the earth in the 21st Century. Many US presidents, leaders, officers, believe in the coming Apocalypse. Some believe they may have a role in it. I only hope my government not be so utterly penetrated by the Iranians.

We could partake of the spirit if only we could cut off all the inner talking, that banal commentary, always after the fact, the source of worry, schemes, et al. Speech and reading have so colonized our heads that we think thinking is seeing. A whole range of hidden capabilities (powers) remain just outside our ordinary view of ourselves.

Economic law was as critical in ancient times as it is now. In the ancient empires, the temple and the palace, priest and king, constituted a diode through which labor was divided. The secular-religious divide goes back at to 3000 BCE. Capitalism began in the Middle East, during the Neolithic, though I should add that long-range trading goes back to the Paleolithic. The empires usually published prices for essential commodities, but these were not so much controls as benchmark maximum prices.

Christ expressed how he thought by trashing the money-changers at the temple. That a message for today, as both Europe and North America have been grievously damaged by a small group of very rich men, who were allowed to do what they did (crimes) for a decade before the housing bubble burst and the leading investment banks could neither pay their creditors (clients, depositors and other banks) nor borrow themselves. Strangely, the president sought 'to cause no harm' to the confidence of the markets, so he failed to restructure the financial industry. Meanwhile, the big banks took their bailout (to the tune of some $2.7 trillion), but, because the mistrust was so institutionalized, the banks and investment houses, big private share-holders, failed and fail to invest in America, in new jobs, new infrastructure and new companies, to meet a vast emerging global demand.

Christianity was a healthy religion while in minority. The Gospels teach how to work on oneself, how to perfect one's Self, once deciphered. But that ended when it became a state religion, in Rome and Constantinople. We are taught it was essential to our history and progress. Yet there occurred some 63 crusades, genocidal wars instigated and planned by popes in Rome. Violence was repeatedly used against non-Christians, and like the ancient Hebrews, the Christians saw themselves as a movement against matriarchy, the Family of Gods, and also against human sacrifice (in those northern areas not ruled by Rome).

Christianity could have been the best of the 200 real religions on earth. Jesus' moral injunction 'Love your enemy' could have been instituted, amplified, explored, to great effect and affect. Medieval and modern history would have been different, with flowers everywhere. For the ethical code – love your enemy - conforms with genetic reality – were are brothers and sisters all - and also releases groups and individuals from their fears, their grudges, their murderous identities. Such a high moral path would have cleared the decks so that the human earthlings could have focused on larger challenges: poverty, education, long-distance trade, climate change, environmental degradation, human exploitation. Though Christ's injunction seems impossibly idealistic, it is actually a practical tip, a key, scientifically based: we all come from the same source. It would have muzzled demonization, the meaning of the inner commandment: 'thou shalt not kill.'

This is highly relevant today. Such has been internecine killing, and trans-national conflict in recent decades that even scientists see warfare as being built in genetically. Not so. Human craniums are unusually thin. There were too few people long ago, to need to compete. Indeed, other people were relatives who helped keep very dangerous animals from eating children. All those war-loving genes are actually genes developed for hunting. If warfare was really built-in, humans would have destroyed themselves long ago.

But the human brain has weaknesses in neuronal architecture. We have fight or flight circuits, deep in the hippocampus. The brain tends to see everything in black and white, 'us or them.' The brain also trusts people dressed in white more than people dressed in black. Yet certainly such weaknesses can be
seen through and neutralized. Rather than judge others (and be judged), find ways of talking. Give gifts. If we followed our brains, we would have never out-migrated, and the humans would have evolved in another animal. Humans are self-creating organisms, as neuroscience emphasizes, and that is played out not just in subjective experience, but objectively, socially, politically, as well.

In discussion of the history of law, we started with the Sumerians. They were the ones who originated our own method: first, the statement of a hypothetical case, then the ruling, its reasons, with explicit reference to precedent. Over two millennia, this tradition was handed down to the Akkadians, the Assyrians, the Elamites and the Persians, Ugarit and the Hittites.

Codifying laws suggests stagnation: a decent law system is one which is constantly being amended. That's not easy if you carve the laws in stone. But the Hittite changed their laws according to need. “Hittite law was a growing organism, and the different versions of the 'code' probably represent successive stages in its development.”

Curiously, there is a document from the time of Hattusilis III, where the king and his court, study an incident occurring a half century before, when the young Mursilis II banished the Queen Mother to another city, where she died. Was Mursilis guilty of murder? Was such a move ethical?

This shows the force of conscience amongst the Hittites. In primitive countries, revenge rules. Civilization has sought to distinguish between civil and criminal codes and strive for restitution, not revenge. Neither the gods or the state pursue revenge, at least ideally. Unlike the Egyptians and the Jews, the Hittites even made murder a crime with a big fine. Here's a translation of a bit of cuneiform Hittite: “If anyone kills a man or a woman in a quarrel, he makes amends for him or her by giving four persons (slaves or family members) and the victim's heir, gets the murderer's house.” (from The Hittites by O.R. Gurney, p/ 93). In summing up Hittite law, Mr. Gurney says “...the text shows a spirit of careful and unbiased investigation which may perhaps be taken as typical of Hittite administration as a whole.”

The Hittites also composed annals – records of the king. Again we see the probing, the self-questioning. History is full of lessons, and must be read. A few centuries after the Hittites went down, Herodotus, who lived in former Hittite territory, opened to the West the study of history and other cultures – anthropology.

Hittite civilization had always been multi-ethnic. They had a many god and goddesses as they had towns and tribes. They saw their gods everywhere. The home might have a hundred gods and goddesses: a god for the pots and pans, another for water; a goddess of fire, and another for weapons. In this, they resembled the Sumerians. Instead of demanding subservience to one God above others, a kind of monolatry, as in Assyria and Israel, the Hittites collected the (statues of) all gods and goddesses in their kingdom, and stood them up in the temple. This how they dealt with fanaticism. The bible has these primitive Gentile people worshiping the painted clay, idols, but indigenous people do not think the statue is the God itself. The statue was just a thing. But the Abrahamic religions all prosecute people who possess sacred icons. Genocide occurred over this issue.

The Hittite Empire arose in Anatolia in the Bronze Age, around the time Abraham was preparing to migrate from Ur. Right down to 640 BCE, the Hittites were revered. The battle of Kadesh in 1288 BCE was a draw, but Hittites migrated south nonetheless. Abraham purchased the cave of Malapach from two Hittites. The Jews wanted to marry inside the clan, but Esau, Jacob and Solomon all had Hittite wives. 

The Hittites were crack warriors, introducing iron for armor and points.The Greeks, originally nomads from the Caspian region, carried forward this iron-killing tradition. They forgot about the Hittites who, like the Sumerians, were overrun several times, extinguishing their polity buit not their culture. The Hittites never forgot the Sumerians: Gilgamesh was a big hit for them. The Israelites never forgot the Hittites, ev en though they come on stage just as the Hittite kings leave it. In Hittite-controlled lands, capital-punishment existed for only those guilty of heinous treachery against the state, rape and sex with animals. Woman got a fair shake, as they did in early Sumer. Female gods were included in the all-inclusive Hittite pantheon.

Everyone thinks he or she possesses conscience, like everybody thinks he can do. “We love, possess individuality and consciousness.” That is not true for most: these attributes are hard-won, after decades of self-confrontation. What we see in the Middle East today is a collapse of conscience. In this light it is requisite to remember our proper Anatolian heritage, an analytical view of humanity which did not discriminate between gods but was open to all faiths, as long as the people obeyed the law.

This study is part five of “A Phalanx of Lies: How Fundamentalists Bedevil Middle East Peace.” We wish to slay no one's sacred cow. If you bought into the Judaean-Christian tradition, you should be delightfully surprised that religion, revealed religion, need not be tied to war and genocide.

Because the Hittites were so humane, they attracted the gratitude of Egypt. Always ready to negotiate, they were often invited in to regions, in and around Anatolia and in North Syria. Hittites traveled freely, with little fear. They sided with nobody. Such a people cannot last. By the year 650, everybody, even the Greeks, had forgotten about them.

This might be be disturbing to Jews and Christians who thought they represented the advanced nations. But the Hittite gift is more profound: the study of history, an openness to all gods, a non-genocidal mythology and an impartial rule, where men and women are held equal. Even the slave has definite rights, the violation of which is punishable by law, no matter how wealthy one is.

The Hittites did not practice genocide. They usually conducted their foreign affairs through negotiation. Political treaties read like broker's bets. Even the Hittite and Egyptian queens exchanged letters. Peace reined for decades, and new towns grew up like mushrooms.

Our purpose is not to deny the bible but to restore it to its context, and to see it for what it is. Genesis is a collection of Near Eastern stories, written perhaps in Babylon, and/or received through the common Canaanite high culture, in the 530s to 540s BCE. The Torah is a collection of historical narratives, written centuries after the fact (a few passages from the prophets excepted). There is some reason to believe the Pentateuch was composed during exile in Babylon. In any case, it was seemingly used by returning rabbis to wrest back control over temple sites and community synagogues throughout Palestine, from poorer Canaanite Hebrews of Judah who had avoided deportation.

For purposes of understanding genocide, this exercise in comparative law holds the promise of neutralizing the innumerable atrocities committed by 'the children of Abraham.' Though most priests, pastors, rabbis and mullahs do not plot genocide, or echo wanton demonization, almost all clerics do use their position in a hierarchy, a latter-day organized religion, to reinforce, embroider and rarify their egos. Many dehumanize other Abrahamic religions, or secular folk. Some plot genocide.

The way to stop it is to shed light on it. That is what “A Phalanx of Lies” aims to do.

-by John Paul Maynard
Harvard University
The author is moderator/instructor of the online discussion group 'Islamic Civilization' hosted by the Graduate Alumni association of Harvard University.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Abraham' Staff






ABRAHAM'S STAFF: HOW LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE SCRIPTURES HAS LED TO HATE SPEECH AND GENOCIDAL PROJECTS IN THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST


It was in the Near East that the written legal system originated. But now the holy land is lawless and fit only for war and revolution. What gives? How did this happen?

I am afraid one has to look at the clerics and their texts. Narrow, ridiculous interpretations of the scriptures are presented to their congregants as holy truth. They believe the bible and the Qur'an were written by God, and so are perfect, beyond any analysis or criticism. Furthermore, some aggressive clerics are using the scriptures as a blueprint for action. For many clerics and their students, there is the temptation to hate and defame and demonize their counterparts in other traditions. Together with this judgment is a phasing out of the humanity of the other. Genocide is then just a few steps away.

Of course this is highly embarrassing, scandalous, and tragic. These militant clerics go against their own scriptures. We know which passages they are using as policy justifications, directives and even as blueprints. The way to counter these scriptural 'initiatives' is by exposing them to light.

Genocide needs its own science. The West has not been able to counter radicalization of ordinary men and women by 'Islamic' terrorists using religion as justification, law and identity. All Muslim terrorists have one thing in common: they do not know their own faith. If they can read, they still cannot approach their scriptures critically, to understand them. One has to study history, ancient and modern, multiple languages, comparative religions (such as the various heresies), all based on what we know about ourselves from evolutionary psychology, genetic haplogroups, and ultimately, from forensic psychology and neuroscience.

Till the Middle East went nuclear, we thought genocide was a function of totalitarian states. The murder of 6 million Jews and 2 million gypsies and some 1 million disabled, was deemed 'scientific' by NAZI leaders. All that 19th C. racialism became a boil on the nose of the German fascists.

The USSR under Stalin put to death many peoples, even its wounded war heroes. Chairman Mao is credited with killing 72 million Chinese, many of them loyal communists. Then, more recently, Rwanda, the Congo, the rampage of the Lord's Resistance Army, led by a kahen (or Cohen) or sorcerer, in Arabic. So we tend to see genocide as a secular affair, industrial, forgetting the role of religious bigotry, both today and in the Medieval past.

Most clerics do not have any scientific education. It is not important to them to study the bible in its context. According to them, it all comes from God. But...to anyone who has read these books in their originals, in Hebrew, Greek and Arabic, and compared those texts to their English translations, sees quite clearly the mistakes and the ambiguities. Human fingers are all over these books. As for Christ he called himself son of man, not Son of God.

Here, we look at how ambitious extremists, led by clerics, use the scriptures to commit genocide. Let us start with those claiming to be Christians. These sick Christian hypocrites were masters of this kind of war. From 1089 to 1648 there were some sixty three genocidal 'holy wars' instigated, organized and funded by Roman popes.

The Protestants also are good at it, particularly slow-motion genocide. Basing their strategy and operations on Exodus 23:28-33, the radical right-wing Jews have adopted this method also. Being so recently victims of genocide themselves, and being completely innocent, the Israeli right and many militant Jews around NYC, are using the holocaust to displace and basically dismantle Arab society in Palestine. It does not matter that the Arabs played no role in the holocaust. It does not matter that it was Arab governments not the Palestinians who attacked Israel in 1948. Meanwhile, the radical clerics of Iran see this 'blind identification' of America to the bible and therefore to the Israeli state, to the point where Israel leads the USA, culturally, politically,and find therein an unprecedented opportunity to prepare their own versions of genocide, against the allied oppressors.

Unfortunately, this includes the manufacture of (compact) nuclear bombs and the missiles (Sehab-3s) to deliver them. Some of the American candidates for president, have vowed publicly to open up offensive operations against the Persians. If that happens, the Iranians could close down the Straits of Hormuz, through which passes some 30% of the world's oil, either by dumping mines into the main channel, or scuttling a few supertankers in it. Iran would hurt itself, by the pain and embarrassment it would cause to the world, by jacking up petroleum prices by some 50%; but the mess would redound on the Americans and the Israelis.

Even as we speak, technicians in Iran are preparing a ballistic missile which they intend to use on Israel and the Americans (at Manama, Kuwait, Qatar)). They will not possess a little-nuke-on-a-missile till about 2016, however. All the more reason to examine the thinking of the Marji'oun, the (Twelver) Irani Shi'a hierarchy of clerics, of imamate persuasion and law. The clerical leaders selectively choose passages from the Qur'an for their justification of planned genocide. Meanwhile, in Israel, a half-million Jews, many Americans, led by bigoted rabbis, have basically stolen the Arab half of Palestine.

Our civilization is based on law. Fundamentalist clerics however believe themselves above civil and international laws and norms. Why go that way? Why abandon law? Israel and Arab Palestine were created together, and legally, one depends on the other. But the Jewish and Arab leaders have never accepted this. Why? Their scriptures say 'no deals with unbelievers.'

America is a player (not an arbiter). Its biblical fundamentalist majority reads its bible as the direct word of God and applies it to today's situation in the Middle East. 'The bible brings it all together, into focus' said one pastor. In the American south, Christian Zionists clerical officers commonly run for elected offices. Presidents all believe in the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse is of course an Iranian idea. I find it dangerous that America's leadership should be so infiltrated by the Iranians. One reason the leading Republicans refuse to think about ameliorating suffering amongst US common citizens, is this: God rewards those he loves best; the poor, crippled, and sick are all destined to be destroyed. So why bother helping them. Would not go against God's plan for them?

These fundamentalists who find in scripture as justification, guide and blueprint for conquest or for terror, or to steal land, or render government ineffective (as in the USA), have committed an abomination, cheapening not just the Sacred, not just killing off millions, but betraying the spirit of Abrahamic law, and quite often, turning on their own people, other clerics, in a bid exterminate them, their minds and bodies and especially their books.

As for God, He is very clear: “Do not use my name to cause harm. If you do, I will punish you especially severely.” (Exodus 20:7)


Middle East as an Arena for Aberrant Abrahamic Clergy -

Israel, Gaza, the Shi'i Hizbullah in Lebanon, Egypt, Somalia, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia – all feature rulers who are clerics, or who rule in close consultation with fundamentalist clerics. For them, the scriptures provide both a motivating justification, and blueprints for how to proceed. It starts by demonizing people who do not think as they do. Israeli zealots led by rabbis have settled upon the West Bank of Palestine. That's Israel's legal twin: both came into being, legally, at the same time, together. So the elimination of one by another removes, cancels out, the original basis of law.

Just to the north, Hizbullah sits in bunkers with their missiles. Their patron, Iran, is busily enriching uranium and developing an ICBM (the Shehab-3 ballistic missile). The Iranians are led by clerics and a few very short- one line passages in their scriptures which command resistance against the Jews and Christians.

The Christians fundamentalists in the southern parts of the USA also think the bible justifies Israel's expansion and its apartheid. Two Republican presidential candidates say they will launch a ground war against Iran, if elected. The Iranians can easily mine the Straits, or scuttle a few supertankers in the main channel of the Straits of Hormuz.

Genocide and Scripture Amongst Abraham's Children -

The 'revealed' God-writings of the Abrahamic religions feature passages where God commands its followers to kill and commit genocide. The last book of the Christian bible is particularly egregious: the Apocalypse was just one of the many ideas brought back to Palestine when the Jews returned from exile in Babylon. They are all Persian, derived from Zarathushtra and from the Magi. But why let one's head be colonized by an Iranian idea?

The United States is a player, not an arbiter. I say 'player' because even educated Americans fall for Sunday school imagery and narratives. The declare their allegiance to the 'Judaeo-Christian tradition', knowing very little about that, but which they believe is the source of their morality.

As for morality, it is inborn: babies present altruism, and children will cry and get angry at perceived injustices. The US legal system is a variation of English common law, itself based on the unwritten Anglo-Saxon legal code, very detailed, and based on restitution, not revenge. The Anglo-Saxons were Germanic tribes and we know these tribes featured equality before the law, women's rights to choose their mates, to divorce and inherit, the jury system. (Note: Today, the English common law tradition persists as a vestige in the UK, the USA, Canada, AnZac, and in British and American colonies . The rest of Europe follow Napoleon's rendition of Roman law)

Rightfully, Americans suspect their culture and economy is tied to the Middle East. Most of us first learned about the holy land through biblical stories. These biblical images and the narratives which go with them, float freely in our psyches. Since Americans are chosen also, they need not obey international laws and norms or find solutions to social problems.

In the USA, exceptionalism is something pushed publicly without any sense of shame or humility. The right wing Jews laying claim to Arab land are accessing their own version of exceptionalism. But if you read the Torah, God curses the Jews. 'I will never run with them again.' The truth is that Jews are just ordinary people. As an ethnic group in the United States, they do not come out on top in intelligence and knowledge tests, and have not done so in thirty years. (data from NY state).

The Male God Yahweh and Its Context -

Archaeology has clarified many points. Right down to the fourth century BCE, Yahweh was worshiped alongside his divine consort, Ashteroth, or Astarte. We know that because altars, figurines and little dioramas made of clay, have been found during excavations. The tradition of civilization, initiated by by Sumer, and refined by the Akkadians, the Assyrians and the Hittites, is seen in a shared, characteristic duality. God has a feminine and masculine aspect. This changed when Asshur used Asshur as God of State. Assyrians fought and defeated the Israelites three times between 738 and 722 BCE, carrying off ten of the twelve tribes. (Note: they were never heard of again, but can be traced. Many were settled in Iran and Central Asia. The Pashtuns have a good case for being one of them).

Most Americans believe that the Jews invented monotheism and so represent progress. But it is the opposite. The other ancient law codes do not exhibit genocidal tendencies. But forget about written documents. Anyone can see the unity of experience, and a close look at another human, reveals that we all come from the same exact source. Monotheism is a logical corollary.

Early priestly Judaism recognized other gods beside Yahweh. Did not Yahweh say “have no gods before me?” The bible mentions Ba'al, and Astarte. There are some 9 words for God in the bible. Yahweh is the only one who is described in anthropomorphic terms. He gets angry like a crazed old man, and one hears of his hands, his voice and his human form – an old man with beard in a Billowing Cloud, holding bolts of lightning in his hand. Standard storm God made angry by Assur.

Yahweh is only one of some five names for God in the Old Testament. It is only used some 25 times, whereas Elohim is used some 600 times. Elohim is of course a plural. Other words for God are El, the Canaanite counterpart of the Sumerian Ea and/or Enlil. El, Elyon, El Shaddai, Shaddai, Yah – these are all discrete traditions. Only with reference to its context can the bible be understood. That context is first and foremost is a great North Semitic linguistic family.

Of course the bible is not one book, though it becomes so when used as a political crutch or conspiratorial directive. Judaism, Christianity and Islam were made into mass organized religions, generations after their prophets walked the earth. All were hijacked by aggressive interests, at points, by clerics with no shame.

Of course, the actual (pre-) history of Palestine is much more interesting than the bible has it. So let us embark on a little voyage of discovery.

How They Solved the Divisiveness in the Recent Past -

The Ottoman Turks, with their millet policy, countered the genocidal impulses of the clergies, by forcing the religious leaders of all the sects, to live together in Constantinople. There, these divisive clerics had their fangs pulled: the men of God came to know each other. That was enough to banish the revenging crazed theomania (except for Shi'a populations in eastern Anatolia, which the Sunni Ottomans fought almost continuously).

Upon the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the British occupied Palestine and Transjordan. They thought originally to make Palestine one state. Later, they envisioned a two-state solution.

With the end of the Second World War, the Americans took up this two-state idea, and so did the new United Nations. Neither Arabs or Jews (their leaders) wanted a two-state solution. Come May 14, 1948, Independence Day, they fell on each other in a genocidal embrace.

The situation is particularly tragic because the Palestinian civilians were passive non-combatants. It was the Arab armies, deploying around 20,000 soldiers, which attacked the Jews, who could mobilize some 500,000 and who had their own plan to evict Palestinian civilians. Some 700,000 Palestinians were rousted from their homes, by Israeli officers backed up by clerics reading scripture.

But this violence in no way changes the original law from which Israel and Palestine were born. Legally, the legal status of one depends on the other having that status also. Of course this is anathema, beyond the pale, for many clergy. Both the Israelis and the various Arab combatant nations, were poorly led. There was much unnecessary suffering by non-combatants. Then there became in the Holy Land, cycles of violence, genocidal acts, committed both by Muslims and Jews and Christian Arabs as well (e.g., George Habash).

The Cursed Crutch of Exceptionalism -

One aspect of the problem involved assumed special status in God's eye. The Americans have a long tradition of exceptionalism, though her best leaders, warded off such an assumption of superiority. Abraham Lincoln called the USA “the almost chosen nation.” One can argue that exceptionalism is more dangerous than colonialism. Look what the Germans and the Japanese did. Both were out to get empires, like the other Europeans had. But note that each was atavistic, referencing Teutonic and Shinto religious law and imagery. Then there was the lie of race: that the Jews were Semites, which is only partly true. And there is no German or Jewish gene, genotype or haplogroup, or any markers.

Look, every child in every nation deserves to be one of the chosen people. But what happens when grown men begin to believe themselves superior over 'other races, other sects?' Where does the cult of nationalism lead? Empires of course were multi-ethnic, pooling capital and technology, the gifts of diversity and rule of law. The legal systems of ancient Near East empires are superior to any cult law, even though the temple was an importqantr part of the economy. Ancient Israelite and Judaean laws were not imperial: the Canaanite Hebrews knew they were once nomads. They went their own way, borrowing heavily of course, but inventing a God called Yah, or Yahweh. Many think Jews were designated the chosen people in the Torah, but Torah also has Yahweh cursing and condemning the Jews, just as often. The truth is that Jewish people are just people. Likely the Arabs, they came from (the same) nomadic traditions, and both the Arabs and the Jews are the most urbanized or urban-cultured people in the world. Hence their facility with money and the media.

Let all the peoples see themselves as special, as chosen. The benevolent One God loves all her children. But many Americans and many Israelis still hold that the Jews were God's chosen people. Sure, the crazed angry genocidal Yahweh says this, but he also curses the Hebrews and the Israelites and Judaeans on several detailed occasions. Both characterizations are incorrect.

The Jews are just ordinary people. They do not score highest on intelligence and knowledge tests, in the United States or Europe. They resemble their cousins, the Arabs, in being originally nomadic people who became more urbanized than the farmers. That is no contradiction.

Some of the terms are now inappropriate. Genetic research now invalidates a Semitic ancestry: actually some six separate haplogroups are found amongst people living in the Middle East. None corresponds to the Semitic. Linguistically, the term is apt, though it should be kept in mind, that Hebrew died out as a spoken language, to be revived in modern times.

Who are the Semites? The Hebrews? Yahweh?

As a scientist I can point to a few discoveries. The unfolding of the Neolithic in the Fertile Crescent (10,000 to 6,000 BC) featured subsistence farming and the evolution of pastoral nomadism. Those first cities depended on long distance trade, and that meant the nomads had to be brought in, paid and held to their word. This neolithic order, tying together farmer and nomad and trader, is the source of the desert codes which later, much later, became the Near Eastern traditions. The Abrahamic legal systems are an even more recent effort to get back to something much deeper than civilization. They are, of course, the desert religions of pastoral nomads – or wannabees.

Included is a separate article for those who want and need objective information about these words: Semite, Yahweh, Hebrew, Israelite, Samarian, Judaean, Arab, Persian. We have a special section on Hittite law, and on Assyria's God Ashur. The Hittites had a multi-ethnic empire 1600 to 1620 BCE centered in north central Anatolia. It's system of laws is the most humane and benevolent and lucid, most exacting, of all Near Eastern law codes. Slaves could bring their masters to court, women had equal rights to men, and new laws were regularly promulgated (instead of being fixed forever). While the Israelites abandoned the murder suspect to his victim's family and friends (Numbers 35), the Hittites held trials by jury. The Israelites also advocated public trials for manslaughter, but for cold blooded murder, based on hate, there is to be no trial: the suspect is simply handed over to the victim's relatives in their own village. In reading Numbers 35:9-34, one can see the futile efforts the state is making, to stave off revenge. Revenge killed many innocent men (and women). The standard penalty – execution by the victim's relatives – cannot be denied the people. But special 'cities' are to be designated, wherein the suspect may flee and not be dragged off to a public stoning. The ancient Israelites are right to see hate as the determinative between cold blooded murder and manslaughter.

The Near Eastern Imperial Traditions, as Precursors -

The Hittites are the probable precursors of the Greek historians, Herodotus in particular, but also Thucydides, and perhaps also of the Israelites and Judaeans as well. The documents which we have from north central and eastern Anatolia, dating to around 1,600 - 1200 BCE, show very public declarations of conscience, appointed days of rigorous self-criticism; and their state exhibited an openness to all peoples and their gods and goddesses. Queens were important for the Hittites, in this world and the next. For a new Hittite king, the errors of one's predecessor had to be brought to light and discussed, because that was the only way that the demands of the present,can be seen for they are and therefore responded to intelligently. While Yahweh commands the Israelites to attack Assyria, the Hurrians, the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Canaanites, Babylon, Akkad, telling them never to make treaties with them, the ancient Near Eastern empires all preferred to win other societies over with no recourse to violence. Diplomacy was more advanced than warfare (iron wasn't even used till about 1000 BCE). The Sumerians, the Elamites, the Assyrians and the Hittites were all masters of soft power as well as hard power. High Sumerian culture, images and narratives, colonized all but the most primitive of heads.

On his way to Palestine Abraham departed his native Sumer (Shinar) for Harran, an ancient city in north Syria then under Hittite or Hurrian control. All the old Near East empires mention in their clay archives, the Habiru.

Though law as we know it - written laws held in common by a nation or some larger polity - originated in the ancient Near East some five thousand years ago, Those venerable multi-ethnic empires – Sumer, Babylon, Akkad, Assyria, Egypt, the Hurrians, the Persians and the Hittites, Phoenicia and Ugarit, even the barbaric the Greeks – attempted to replace revenge with restitution. By the time of the Torah, this project had been abandoned. As you probably know, or should know, the bible commands that suspected murderers be handed over to the relatives of the victim, in the village where the murder happened. It usually led to a terrible death, traditionally by stoning, with no trial. See Numbers

Wise observers are struck by the manifold failure of conscience, all around. Each of the three major Abrahamic religions has let itself be used for genocidal purposes. The sharp distinction each religion makes, between believers and non-believers, has contributed to innumerable genocidal acts and campaigns down through history. In the Middle East these scriptures do not simply justify heinous actions, they serve as blueprints for conquest.

Getting to the Answers – why on earth the clerics hate? -

What is the source of this evil, and why and how on earth do clerics bear so much of the blame? Don't they represent what is higher in humanity? And why has the Middle East, the source of written law, become so lawless? Obviously international norms and laws do not apply, either in the scriptures or in the politics.

Religion always goes off the track when it buttresses and embroiders the ego. The personality is made during life, by conditioning. The essence, which cannot talk, is completely smothered by personhood. Any advance spiritually, entails seeing through, 'eating' or weakening the lower selves. This truth conforms to pathological psychiatry, which sees many illnesses as stemming from rigid, fixed ideas. Why believe anything coming out of the human head?

We speak of 'the economy,' 'the party' 'the bible' 'the devil' but these are just crude abstractions hiding discontinuity and contradictions. The bible is not a book but some 24 books, each presenting a different view of Judaism. It immediately turns false and harmful when it divides people into 'us and them.' Any religious group which puts itself up as the only way to God, is not qualified to address any political issue.

Why this evil, this genocidal speech and indeed, murderous action, coming out of some power-seeking 'holy men?' Isn't the Middle East the source of all written law?
The situation becomes all-locked-up – jammed. Why?

Why the clerics? Because they are the ones teaching exclusivity and superiority, to the masses. Ignoring the fact that we all come from the same source, these mean people are quick to demonize the other. Images of genocide, divine injunctions to slay the unbeliever, are part of our scripture, which has been and is highly unfortunate.

The USA, like Israel, believes it is exceptional, that God is guiding them, that they are the saved, destined for rapture, while all others, those who don't steal identity from the bible, are condemned by Yahweh to eternal agony. Or they are destroyed outright. These are, again, Iranian ideas that have colonized the heads of some 200 million Americans.


It is not that science and universities teach doubt and critical thinking. Such critical thinking – standing off from one's mentation – is required to perform any task well. Even driving a car requires doubting images generated by the head, like daydreams, or erroneous interpretations of the highway ahead. To be a technician or a worker or an artist – all requires critical thinking. The one exception, of course, in religion, scripture, and this is most unfortunate.

I believe in these religions because they can make life interesting, particularly for communities in the hinterland. The Catholic church, for example, provides services to people in countries where the state can't help. The evangelical Protestants, led by the Southern Baptist Convention, go against Christ's own injunction to help the poor, to provide charity, because they believe God has ordained suffering for those sick or destitute.

Taking the bible as one's only source, one appoints oneself as one of the chosen people, dividing oneself from others. Other religions are vilified, disparaged, ignored. The basis of the bible, its context, is also ignored. The inner meaning of the scriptures are ignored.

But today even the Americans have been exhausted by their revenge. Looking at the spectacular growth of its Top Secret empire, with at least 1,300 secret organs, all compartmentalized, established since 9/11, I am horrified that in that vast sea of 'cleared' personnel, there is practically no interest in the 'enemy,' very little language training in Arabic, Pashai, Shinwari Balouch, Bhrahmi, and Pashto and Pukhtu. Nor is there any real study or understanding of, say, Greater Persia.

The US president can fly armies through the sky, but lack of native language skills, of the Qur'an, and other literature, together with a near complete ignorance of Great Persia as an historical polity, precludes any tactical political capability: American troops could not even become players in the changing Afghan political scene. They depended on intermediaries: translators, Afghan s oldiers and police.

As Americans we are engaged up to our necks. We are proud to call ourselves champions of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Never mind that the Muslims gave us science and medicine. not as a just arbiter, but as a player. For identify ourselves with the 'Judaeo-Christian tradition.” But why do not these subscribers ever study these traditions, what they call their own?

The proper destiny of each of these two nations, Israel and the United States, is not to lord over and dominate others, but to be nations amongst nations.
The results are insidious, genocidal. Three of the Republican candidates for president believe that the US should invade Iran. Meanwhile in Teheran, clerics and their disciples dream about nuking the US 5th Fleet in Manama, Bahrain.

In the US, the Republican presidential candidate Rich Perry calls himself “an Apostle of Jesus Christ,” putting himself on the level of a Peter or Luke or Mark, while calling his farm “Niggerhead” and signing death warrants for people likely not guilty. He makes sure no Confederate monument is ever moved or 'countered' with ones marking civil rights movement. Perry claims solid allegiance to America, but is the informal leader of the Texas secession movement. His weird campaign scream “I will never apologize for America!” is extraordinary, a precursor to genocide.

This is the kind of man who could prove lethal to millions. Listening to his Southern Baptist clerics, he just might nuke Iran and encourage the Israelis to 'cleanse the land.' Such a man is already hated overseas. He brings the whole country down, turning many back to the Democrats. But many people in the US would vote for him, if they had no other Republican party choices.

The new rulers of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia are also listening to their muftis, but here the secular educated are the only qualified people for the top slots. But that does not mean the clerics do not have a say. I only wish they obey and honor their own revealed traditions.

Hypocrisy is all around us, and hypocrisy breeds anger -

All that evil needs is good people saying and doing nothing. Even the media investigators and the scholars, are afraid to deal with genocide squarely. That is because they might be called 'unholy' and 'against the word of God.' Any Jews who publicly advocates for peace with the Arabs, eventually ends on a website www.massada2000.org, with a picture and defamation in lewd terms. These orthodox Jews, just their rabbis and a few congregants, will skewer anyone advocating for a Palestinian state as 'anti-Semitic.'

Clerics are lurking just behind the rulers of Iran, Israel, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and in the United States as well. The new rulers of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia are also listening to their muftis.

They are appealing to a higher law, so as to recruit, deploy, so to take land, regain it, or to murder, assassinate, or eradicate 'all of that race and sect who resist us.'

Big interests have exploit the situation. Huge weapon manufacturies and intelligence organs reveal unholy incest between private business and their government departments. The US government sees Israel as the only true ally in the Region, now that Egypt and Turkey have politely excused themselves from their place in the American security scheme. Such a narrow interpretation of the scripture, calling for the eradication of the Arab Palestinians, is of course in direct opposition to American and Christian and Jewish ideals, their core principles.

Clerics can often be co-opted by governments. Governments can be co-opted by clerics. We are talking of soft power – low frequency influences over decades. But also of hard power, but that's the consequence of such fundamentalist thinking:

Scriptures, taught in Sunday school often with color illustrations of the Holy Land, form, for many of us, our earliest idea of the Middle East. Most have not gone beyond that Sunday-school level. These very early images and narratives from the scriptures float freely, deep in our psyches.

Most governments in the region pay their clerics a small stipend. Think how many times clerics and brutal dynastic strongmen have joined up to kill 'non-believers?' More likely, the lethal prejudice is seen as 'cleansing,' as the bible puts it, and force need not be used. Just prejudice. Reduce the alien to the status of slave.

Smaller groups of clerics hold more 'low frequency' soft power than transient prime ministers, kings and their appointees. It does not matter where one looks - Israel, Gaza, Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the USA – religious leaders and their disciples are in charge, just behind the scenes.

The perversion stems from a highly biased divisive mentality, originating in scripture. Most of us are set up, as it were, because he have biblical imagery floating deep in our unconscious. Demonization of other faiths or non-faiths is of course the necessary first step to genocidal actions and policies.
The Sunni HAMAS leaders of Gaza say again and again that they will wage war against Israel and the Jews till they no longer exist. Many lead rabbis in New York and in New Jerusalem want the Land cleansed – all Arabs out of 'Eretz Isra'il,' which should expand to its biblical proportions: 'from the Nile to the Euphrates.'

Curiously, most Americans do not know the situation in occupied Palestine, or how much money America gives to Israel and the state of Israel. I've worked for the state of Israel, as an archaeologist with the Rockefeller Museum. I have great respect for the high court, the Israeli supreme court, even though it has ceased to be as independent and impartial as it once was.

As a non-Muslim specialist in Islamic land law, I've visited enough archives and visited some courts in session. I am alarmed and distressed, that Islamic law – fiqh and shari'a – should be so disparaged by the West. We are correct in condemning certain 'Islamic' practices, such as stoning, the cutting off of hands and the gouging out of eyes, the repression and restriction of women, terror and jihad. But each of these is a later addition, taken from other legal traditions. Let me explain.

The stoning law came through the Old Testament, which the early Muslim scholars took as God's word. The cutting off of hands is a Byzantine penalty, justified by the passage in the New Testament, where Jesus supposedly says: “If yours right hand offends thee, cut it off. If your right eye offends thee, pluck it out.” Terror is condemned in Qur'an, from the plotting to the act, the act itself, the flight, and the consequences on this earth and the next. Why don't the terrorists fear God or just let Him judge? Why do they usurp God's own purpose, using crazy 'takfir', completely betraying their religion in both letter and spirit.? Because they never studied the Qur'an analytically.

Is knowledge of Christianity and Judaism much better? My main complaint is that situation is actually more interesting than the clerics have it. For they do not pursue advanced degrees in the social sciences, hence lack the analytical skills required to understand the various diverse books that make up our scriptures. Yet they set themselves up as teachers...

The human brain has a system mechanical weakness: it sees people in terms of 'us and them.' Have we condemned the Middle East to war because we can't get over this neurological fault. We are, after all, all part of the same family. And for sure, God loves all his people. And sends prophets to them.

The Christians have not been able to learn the history of their religion, how it changed. Both Judaism and Christianity were widespread and very diverse, with each town having its own liturgy, texts and ways of working in the world. But the rabbis and the priests and mullah all went to work, grabbing power in various states and cities, with the result that the religions we know today, are like 'Broadstreet,' very flat, smooth, easy going, with few demands.

Readers of the Old Testament are struck by the commandments and the punishments, the wrath of God and His love for his chosen favorites, the Jews. But the bible curses, and damns the Jews just as many times as it calls them chosen. As for the reality, Jews are just people, ordinary people. Being highly urbanized, they do well in trade and the media. They do not top intelligence and knowledge tests in the USA. That belongs to children of Asian and Northwest European ancestry. American-born children of Southern Europe (including Latinos) also often do better. Of course there are, have been, many accomplished scientists of Jewish heritage, but most have turned their back on Judaism the religion. They may light candles on Hanukkah and Passover, but that's it.

Both Jewish and non-Jewish populations perceive themselves as different from non-Jewish ones, and that is simply not true. We will look at the haplogroups in question.

Many American Jews are professionals, some are scientists, but these individuals do not read the bible as a blueprint for oppression. Many have turned their back on organized religion. Most have no relation to Israel. Contrast these great scientists with the clerics. The modern religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – have been dumbed down and homogenized. In ancient times, there were many kinds of Judaism. Every town had its own liturgy, rituals and texts. Now only two forms of Judaism survive: the rabbinic and Christianity.

Islam might be included but Islam is a rigorous monotheism. Instead of giving God anthropomorphic features (like Yahweh), they give 99 names. This allows the Muslim to incorporate these virtues and powers into his own being. Extremist interpretations of Islam depend on a few verses from the Qur'an, plus some dubious ahadith. The organized religion(s) of Islam came generations after Muhammad's death.

About 40% of the Qur'an is just bible stories retold. Muhammad grew up with Jews: there were a number of Hebrew tribes in and around Medina. His 'Medinan Constitution' grants complete equality between all citizens. So it is appropriate to discuss the bible, for Muslims buy into the genocide, too, using biblical narratives and imagery.

The books of Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Joshua feature genocide – slaying entire races, populations, civilizations, by command of God. As an archaeologist who has worked in the Palestine, I have reason to doubt that some of these atrocities, such as the Coming into the Land, ever happened. The archaeological evidence just is not there. But the spirit of genocide is well justified in the Old Testament, and alive and well in today's Middle East.
The word Yahweh occurs only 25 times in the Old Testament. The name 'yah' might be construed as 'to be' in North Semitic tongues. “I am as I am” and the phrase “be and it is” points to an ontological dimension of this deity (or was later so interpreted). That's the only truly universal feature of Yahweh, the man-shaped God. The ancient Jews could only be what they were – members of much larger polity – so the root word is 'El.' Also mentioned El Elyon. Even later, when the Psalms were written, the word 'El' is used, as in Psalm 50:1. 'Elohim – the third word in the Torah – is a plural. The West reads the first line as: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But Semitic languages do not have tenses: 'created' could mean 'creates' or is wont to create'. The first word 'In the beginning', bereshith might better be translated as 'through beginnings.' Elohim is plujral, so the correct translation is: “Through beginnings the goddesses are creating the earth and the skies.”

Linking Up with the Genuine Islamic Reform Movement -

I trust the reader knows about the genuine Islamic reform tradition, the ideas of Jalal ad-Din al Afghani and his student Muhammad Abdou. Being colonized by the Europeans in the 19th C., these men were not exactly pro-western. But they blamed the clerics for the weakness, the backwardness of their own societies. “Learn from the West” was their constant refrain.

Contrast that with the Ikhwan al Muslimiyya, the Muslim Brotherhood, who, though not colonized by the West, nevertheless commanded Muslims to make war (reject) on everything Western. If you explain this paradox, please let me know.

Al Afghani said: “I lived in the East, saw many Muslims, but found no Islam. I lived in the West with no Muslims around, but found Islam.”

Let us not be intimidated by the Muslim clergy. They are scholiasts, most knowing some Arabic, but lacking the skills to understand the text and its original context. Only a small percentage have ever studied in a secular university, to learn the social sciences, like anthropology, history, economic geography, comparative religions; so, almost all of them, just do not know their own past, or anything about other religions except the badmouthing. For example, almost all adult Muslims suspect that Muhammad's way was different from that commanded by the later-arising mass organized Muslim religion. But they lack the background in Near Eastern archaeology and in history and in comparative religions, to ever be able to source Muhammad's own environment. The man had traveled widely, and no doubt ran into (eastern) Christians and Zoroastrians (in Hira, Iraq, capital of the Lakhmid polity).

(Noted: It is known that Muhammad traveled extensively, but scholars hesitate to say where. But close inspection of Islam shows strong Zarathushtri influences. He may have reached Mesopotamia in his long-distant trading. It is certainly within his (and his camels') capabilities. I suspect he visited Hira on the Shatt an Al Arab south of Baghdad, the center of Lakhmid civilization. Hira was an ancient center of learning where Muhammad would have listened to medical savants, to Zarathushtris and Magians, as well as Jews and Christians and Sabaeans and Mandaens. Muhammad said “I feel a cool breeze blowing from India.” Maybe he traveled as far as Afghanistan. There is one story about him where he speaks Pashto to his own Arab warriors. I heard the story in Afghanistan. It goes like this: There was a group of Pashtuns in Muhammad's army. They got into scraps with the numerous Arabs. Muhammad called them all together, and said to them, in perfect Pasho “Everyone knows Pashto is the language of hell.”)

Zooming into the Holy Land -

We call it the Arab-Israeli dispute but others are involved. Players include Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, France, Britain and other European powers, including Russia. And, of course, the USA, and the UNO. Note that the USA is more of a player than an arbiter. These international players complicate and distort the situation in Palestine. The players are polarized, with Muslims caring only for Muslims, Jews for Jews, Christians for Christians. But, as we will see, these outside 'players' might have a role in brokering a peace. But that depends on putting down the bible and the Qur'an. Or listening more carefully to what they really say).

Palestine is the Holy Land and we respect that skein of traditions: Natufian, Canaanite, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Christian, and Islamic. But again, even the most sacred spaces get corrupted by the humans. Religion becomes politics: the clerics nurse genocide then go for power. Other are demonized and repressed, innocent people persecuted. This is unfortunate because, as the Torah says: “Do not use my name to cause harm. If you do, I'll lay waste your soul.” (Ex. 20:7)

Still, the hard-line militant clerics will not back off, even though God commands us all to cause no harm, especially using God's name, that is, identifying one's cause with God's, as if God's aims were identical to human personal ones.

In the Middle East too many clerics and extremists and politicians are talking to God. All real religions teach that you cannot know God with the ordinary conceptual mind.

How can one ever die to the small self, the personality, if one uses a religion as a crutch or a buttress or a conceptualized view? Organized religion is the outer crust of each of these genuine living traditions of human development and perfection. Ego marries a set of images – myths- a narrative which is self-serving, yet failing to even touch the essence.

The reader may object. Why trash the great revealed traditions? Why question or analyze God's word, in the Bible(s) and the Qur'an? The answer: on this earth, the good and the bad often go back-to-back.

Everyone, it seems, is bent on self-improvement – being a better person – but the good and the bad in a man or a woman grows equally. Quiz yourself: You meet a beggar, part of you wants to give money, another says no. You are a healthy human if both impulses come from the same place in yourself. It is I, me, who decides how to act, not some program. But genocidal clerics and self-righteous missionaries and mercenaries believe they have conquered the evil in themselves. They are 'good' people.

Being self-righteous, they can do great damage. At times, they use scripture to trump rivals. Their salient characteristic is a lack of self-doubt, of shame. These people would be perplexed if you said “I doubt my thinking and my feelings, from step to step.” Or “All the power and glory goes to God.” Or “These wars between the Abrahamic religions is abominable to God.” Or “Why do you dress differently from the rest of us?” These kinds of questions I've asked clerics again and again, and they really do believe they represent God.

But you will see these people move to take power (and land) using unlawful means. These ambitious, arrogant, manipulating men, dressing in a different way, usually in black or white, prove to be men-of-action, sweeping away civil law and the humanistic tradition, because God commands it. When they break secular laws, they justify their actions by appealing to a 'higher' law.

At the same time, the populace is poorly served: rote prayers, rote readings from the scripture - you pay for all this, even if there is nothing in it that can be used to perfect the individual or open her. The religion becomes a buttress reinforcing the little ego which is driven by the super-ego, a pressure barely conscious to many individuals. The true paths to God may be manifold, but they are not found in the scripture because the truth is a living truth, aimed at setting us free.

It is not just that they are ignorant of their own traditions, but that they become self-willful, arrogant, even when hiding behind a great moral teaching. The governor of Texas calls himself the “apostle of Jesus” equating himself with Peter, Mark et al. He knows no demotic Greek so cannot see for himself the mistranslations. Nor does he know the context in which Jesus lived and those after him. He traces his traditions back to the Jews. Some American evangelicals are militant fundamentalists who (quietly) hate all Jews “because they killed Christ” and “still deny him.” Muslims of course “are the children of Satan.”

Once you reach this level, you can see how (some) humans corrupt that which is most holy. They believe they can talk with God, strip people of their money, distract and distort presidential campaigns, which advocating genocide. For example, one side demands complete control over Jerusalem, driving out families from the other side who have lived there for over 400 years. How can such a city ever be holy? If it was to them holy, then it could be shared, easily.

The Arabs teach hatred of Jews in their schools when of course, they are closely related to them. Judging by the similarities in their languages, they are cousins who lived in proximity to each other for long periods, and on more than one occasion. All humans come from the same source, and any serious ethnic differentiation is ultimately an error.

What Science Now Knows and Teaches -

Attention to this fact – that we come from the same source - plus recognition of the living unity of experience – will lead in one simple step to monotheist understanding. Monotheism is the corollary of the Intellible Unity of all that is. But one side claims to be the inventor of monotheism, and therefore the teacher of the others, to whom one must follow, if one wants to go to heaven and not be damned.. But of course the Bible, Old and New Testaments, recognizes other Gods besides Yahweh - Ba'al, or Bel, and Astarte, the two key Ugaritic deities. The Book of Genesis reflects both the Sumerian culture and the Canaanite culture: the flood, the storm God, 'heathen' in worshiping multiple gods, at least in the eyes of the ancient Israelis. But intelligent people back then saw these 'many gods' as just aspects of the One True Lord, all-powerful, and present. For the people of the Middle East, he is the Storm God.

If anyone can claim to be the first monotheist, it would be the prophet Zoroaster. Only after 2003 was the city of Balkh excavated, and the diggers went right through the Greek period to the Old Iranian. Zarathushtra may have lived as early as 2,200 BC, over a thousand years older than Judaism. We don't know. When the Jews were exiled to Babylon, in Iraq, they obviously studied with the Zarathushtris and the Magians, because the Hebrews adopted so much from those religions.

Need we name these elements? Angels, the Devil, the idea of life after death, the very notion of a good and benevolent God who loves all his people. The Magians dressed clerics in black robes to distinguish them from 'the uninitiated.' So still today do rabbis and priests and ministers.

The Persian Connection -

Zoroastrians believe human life is a show-down between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, so popular in America today is the idea of the Apocalypse, an Iranian idea that thoroughly penetrated America's non-scientific populace, including all the last presidents, many security officials and officers. Biblical fundamentalism and Zionism is so strong amongst the Americans that we have long feared US president, senators, DOD staff, a few generals, using the Bible as a blueprint, like the extremists amongst the Jews, for war and conquest (of the oil). If the righteous will be called to rapture, then killing the non-chosen is perfectly legitimate because God will destroy them anyway.


Unless one has lived in a desert, one cannot know the Middle East, how the anxiety over rain kept playing with people's heads. The Storm God was universal, for it was He who brought the rain, who appeared out of a cloud, lightning flashing. Such a God of gods is found throughout the Middle East, including Greece: Zeus often appears as lightning in a cloud, just like Yahweh

In the Old Testament and in the Book of Revelation, God commands genocide, repeatedly. Why? Why this strange big angry jealously self-obsessed man-God, who loves just one of his many children, aiming to destroy the rest? As we will see, Yahweh was likely modeled on the God of the Assyrians, Asshur, an angry male God demanding submission and sacrifices. We know that one of the original Twelve Tribes was the Asser – the Assyrians.

Working at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, I had access to all the data, and to the best Israeli archaeologist, so can say with certainty, that the entire episode of 'coming in to the land' with all the war and destruction, and the replacement of one people by another – that definitely did not happen to the Jews. So they're off the hook. The Jews were peaceful Canaanite hill people: we know that from archaeology: the crude heavy unglazed ceramics, so much more primitive than the pottery of the Philistines. The Philistines were Greeks; their over-sized ceramics feature dolphins leaping and octopus and ships sailing.

One ugly thing about the bible is that it defames all other non-Jewish people. Even today in the USA the bible is informing national politics. In America, some 160 million adult Americans deal with the Middle East through the bible.

But, as Albert Einstein said: “A culture does not need a revealed religion to be moral.” Actually, religiously obedient people score slightly lower than non-religious folk on morality tests. If you believe you know, or if you believe you are 'preferred by God,' then one need not worry about earthly human laws.

Taking Refuge in Science -

Here's a truth born out by modern neuroscience and physics but first discussed in Alexandria in the 3rd C. by Plotinus (205-270): “To any vision must be brought an eye adapted to what is to be seen.”

This applies to ill-willed self-serving ethnic or sectarian or class 'visions' i.e., dreams, fantasies, hallucinations, and plots and schemes, causing harm, either directly or indirectly. As Muhammad Qurayshi (d.632) said: “There is no harm, and no benefiting from harm, in Islam.”

The Collapse of Conscience -

We all wonder how and why so many “men of God” falter in morality, even supporting genocide. I guess they don't doubt their heads, or analyze their own thought and behavior. If they could see, they would not want to dress up in robes and vestments, because their seeing of themselves, if that ever happened, would neutralize anything coming out of their heads. But that is not happening.

There are some 200 real religions on the planet, most small. As read elsewhere in this paper, a real religion has to meet demanding criteria. Obviously, one does not grow spiritually by causing harm. Obviously we are all family, all cousins, so it is an abomination in the eyes of God, that Abraham's children should champion hatred for each other. True religion is against war, intimidation, theft of land, and unnecessary injury and death. A real way to God would neutralize the person, allowing her essence to grow. But such a way is very rare.

The more recent genocides in Darfur, Sudan, in Bosnia and Serbia, in Rwanda, and the slow-motion one in Palestine, has been caused by clerics who believe a book is channeling God's wish for his chosen few. Without radical clergy, Abraham's children, terror and genocide in the Middle East would not be possible.

As soon as anyone uses religion, a way, to buttress, reinforce, one's ego, it deviates. One has lost one's way. Spiritual growth is at the expense of personality. It is personality which surrounds and presses down the essence (which cannot talk). So the self has to be seen through, weakened.

Why Arabs and Jews, who are cousins ethnically and linguistically, and neighbors, are assumed to be unable to work together. “They can't get along.” But they can, if not manipulated by extremists. I remember working in Jerusalem back in the late 1970s. Some 80,000 Arabs came to work in Jerusalem each day. The ideal retail Jewish-owned business type featured Jewish up-front service personnel, managed by an Arab, with his or her on-call backup workers, who is controlled by the Jewish owner. I mean to say, back then there was some trust.

The hatred of Israel and Jews in general is taught in many 'Islamic' schools, even in the public secular schools of Muslim communities. It might seem that whole generations are being taught to hate. Israel rightly seeks a real peace, where such hatred so longer prompts hotheads to slaughter innocents.

But the Israeli right, and their American backers like Irving Moskovitch, have done something equally unconscionable: they have stolen, are stealing, an entire country. Arab Palestine. But even if they drive all the Arabs out, Palestine will always remain stolen land. As such, it's a grievous aggravation which will trigger repeated cycles of war and terror.

As we will see, Israel and Arab Palestine were conceived together, the one depending on the other, legally, since they come from the same international rulings in 1946, backed by the Americans, who pushed for the two-state solution.

But the extremists amongst the Arabs and the Jews did not want any coexistence. In fact, they determined to seize each others' land. In 1948, some 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes, the Jews often using terror. The tragedy is that the Palestinians were not even belligerents: it was the four Arab armies, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq, who attacked.

The Israelis managed to persuade the Americans and others that “we are surrounded by a hundred million Arabs.” Even today they manage to portray themselves that way. Back in 1948, the Arab states could only deploy some 20,000 soldiers. The Israelis mobilized over 500,000 combatants.

There is something really stupid in trying to fight and oppose with weapons, a force much, much stronger than you and your community. Imagine if the Palestinians had opted for non-violent means – civil disobedience. They would almost certainly have a country by now.


Not Dreaming but Falling Back on What We Know -

Humans of course are all closely related. Nobody is further distant than 38th cousin. Jews and Arabs are four to twelve removed (as cousins) to each other. They shared common ancestors back at the time they were both nomadic tribal federations. Given the similarities in their languages, they must have lived with or along aside each other, in many places, on many occasions.

People use the word 'Semitic' racially, genetically, as a vestige of the terrible pseudo-science of racial groups. There is no Semitic gene, but there are several haplogroups that are found amongst the people who call themselves 'sons of Shem.' One, the J1 haplogroup, is found in the Yemen, Ethiopia and in North Africa. Another, called J2, is found in West and Central Asia, South Europe and North Africa. The J original haplogroup is found in Socotra, Oman, Greece, the Czech Republic and Turkey. There are found also amongst 'Semites' the L and the T haplogroups. L is found along the East Mediterranean littoral, as well as in West and Central Asia. The T group is found in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, South and West Asia, and the Med.littoral. The H haplogroup is found in Arabia, Central Asia, Nepal, India, Iran. The E 1b1b haplogroup is found in East Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean littoral, including the Balkans.

So one sees the complexity of the societies, all the various roots and routes, coming up out of Africa and breaking out through the Middle East. While Semite is not a racial term, it is an accurate linguistic one. And since we are studying scriptural thought, language is a better indicator than ethnic fantasies. The language family that concerns us, the Afro-Asiatic family, contains the Semitic languages. Since Akkadian is the oldest of the Semitic languages, we are correct in making northern Mesopotamia the point of origin. Hebrew and Arabic are both North Semitic tongues, and reflect the great Semitic migrations into Canaan and Mesopotamia by nomads speaking Aramaic.

The ancient Middle East was in motion, with sea nomads and land nomads. The early civilizations – Sumer, Babylon/Akkad, the Hurrians, the Amorites and Kassites, Persia, Egypt, the Phoenicians (sea nomads), the remarkable Hittites, Judah, Samaria and Israel – the hill people of the Ugarit (Canaan) civilization (both); the Minoans (sea) and the Greeks (sea); Byzantium (sea but allied with nomads); the Islamic civilization, centered in Medina, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Bursa, and Istanbul; the Seljuk Turks, Egypt under the Mamelukes, the Ottomans, the Mongols: all feature a profitable synergy between the settled folk, the traders, and the nomads.

Note: The USA is a nomadic nation, if not in domicile then in work, and closely resembles the Mongol empire. Both were born in holocausts, genocide, but matured, folding into itself, talented people from all countries. The Europeans brought disease, killing off the Natives, so did the Mongol hordes (Europe's plagues). The Mongols tried repeatedly to take Japan and Germany, being offended by such strong statism. Both created very expensive postal services. The people in both ate much too much meat. Of course we see the great khan as a dictator. But Chinghiz, Batu, Hulagu, Monke, Kubilai – they may have been serial killers but they were not prejudiced. They had a fear of priests and mullahs, even their own shamans, which they executed if they became in any way powerful. Contrast that to the USA, its southern part, where presidential candidates call themselves 'Apostles of Christ,' (Rich Perry) and don't hesitate to break their commandment against bearing false witness, to their own president, no less.

But let us return to the main stream. Human life on earth has not always been myth and superstition. Science was always relevant to the emerging humans – just to survive, indigenous peoples have to know how to do a 100 things perfectly. Today, one needs know to do nothing, know nothing. So the Great Dumbing Down is occurring because elements of selection are no longer in play. This refers to both genes and memes.

We will discuss relations between farmers, nomads and long-distance traders in a bit. Here we want to point to the little images of identity we have in our heads. Of course this kind of thinking is decidedly not Semitic: the Semites came to believe that all such images were like idols and therefore devilish. Yet still today even modern people identify themselves with ethnic or sectarian or class imagery. That's unfortunate, and deadly. For true identity is not an image in the head, but a living contact with reality.


The Story of Our Species is Much More Interesting -

The true story of mankind in and around the Middle East is much more interesting than the bible says. The Sinai and the Yemen were both early escape routes for the African tribes. Then we observe the Neolithic revolution, and the spread of farming and stock-breeding into Europe (from 6,000 to 3,000 BC). The invention of civilization as we know it, occurred of course in Southern Iraq. Since the bible was written in this Near Eastern environment, one must study comparative languages, ancient history and the history of religions, to understand it.

It helps to know about the humans. A long perspective is necessary. Civilization is a recent development. The conditions under which we live today are not those under which our species evolved. Our common ancestors were tighter emotionally, much more physically active, and challenged more in their thinking: they had to be scientists in order to survive. Back then, an individual had to know how to do a 100 things well, just to survive. Today, one need not know anything.

Some 25,000 years ago the human brain began to shrink. We've lost 10% of our gray matter. Gray matter is what you want: brains with more of it are more intelligent. So we've lost something. Over one hundred brain modules were given over to writing and reading, how many more for speech. What was all that cerebral space used for before humans learned to talk?

There is the raging argument over violence and the humans, with many buffs of the genome claiming that war is wired into human genes. Even a casual glance at the 20th C. would confirm and prove that it was so. But no. Those 'war-like' genes were developed for and during hunting. Still, most social scientists think in terms of war, that it endemic to modern and ancestral human life.

We have to be very careful here. Our very definition is at play. Are we born killers?

The human skull is bulbous and like fine porcelain, compared to the thicker Neanderthal, Australopithene, ape and monkey skulls. If people were getting beaten over the head, obviously the species could not have survived. Furthermore, there were so few people back then that human contacts were kin-on-kin. Humans out-bred, a very strange thing to do when you think about it, but exogamy is absolutely definitive of the species Homo Sapiens sapiens.

Exogamy, done properly, during peace, opens vistas between clans, tribes. War is usually diverted by marrying off a daughter to smooth things over. That girl/woman will accede to higher status than if she stayed at home. Many have been the women diplomats down through the ages. We will explore womanly techniques of statecraft in a bit. Here, I just stress the principle of exogamy – of reaching outside one's clan for mates – will figure in to the success of nations, empires as well as tribal federations.

Contrast this to the Israelis and Arabs today, hating each other when they should be sexually and intellectually curious. Both subscribe to racial purity, and that is dead wrong. The Twelve tribes of Israel were made of different ethnic groups: the tribe Assur is the Assyrians; Dan is a Greek culture which we know (by ceramics) which had as its centers, the Spring of Dan, in the shadow of the Golan heights. Gath is also Philistine. Others were likely Moabite, Jebuisite, Amorite, Ammonite, or came from Canaan.

Speech and the Colonization of the Human Brain -

The people of Abraham are often called the People of the Book, but this is a misleading definition. Remember, our brains have shrunk as they became colonized by speech. Spiritual work goes against the ordinary conceptual associative mind, to reclaim this earlier heritage, this earlier possibility. So all real religions strive for an alert quiet inside. Nor should one make 'graven images' (thoughts) in reference to God or other humans. Neuroscience says our thoughts are crude gestalts. Even the world we share, our perception 'real' world, is a fabrication made by the brain.

Modern humans arose some 200,000 years ago, in Africa. It seems we were talkers from the beginning, which meant that for each of us, some 200 parts of the brain (modules) were taken over, colonized. So we lost something as well. One can either perceive or associate, but not both in any given second, for the same pathways are used by both. Hallucinations are something else, and we know our common ancestors had very active imaginations (magic). Indeed, inside most of us are biblical or Qur'anic illustrations, in color, featuring men dressed in robes, animals, fruit trees, prophets, even God himself. These still cause hallucinations in many of us.

Putting It All in Perspective -

The great human story is the migration of the species up from South and East Africa into the northern grasslands and savannah and steppe; and from there cross over into Europe (via Gibraltar) or along the Sinai peninsula and through Palestine, or crossing from Ethiopia to Yemen via the Dahlak archipelago.

So the first discovery of the Middle East was exciting: the break-out, the valiant Natufians being just one group. The first evidence for human-on-human violence is a cave on Mt. Carmel, in Israel. Some 17 individuals were found thrown into an ancient cistern. Natufian skulls speak of their once magnificent wanderings. Round, bulbous, with a thin cranium.

At root, the Semitic modality features just this breaking out: the ancient decision to leave the place of one's origin (Africa). Yemen and Egypt and Palestine and in southern Spain, featured the first non-African cultures and populations. But what drew them north? Were there not glaciers two miles thick?During the last ice age, humans moved north. As the ice fell back, so did the rains with them. A little soil accrued, and out of this, the plants migrated north, bringing in the large mammals, which the humans followed. Our people were all hunters and trappers. As hunters, we specialized in bringing down large mammals. All other human ways died out.

What adventures can satisfy such a race? Has not modern culture deprived us all of many 'extra-sensory' frequencies of awareness? It may be that, to make the humans out of the apes, one had to dumb down the subject. Those 'buffers' were removed in the late Pleistocene, so we hear, but the after-effects still linger. Such a theory would account for and explain why, we are so utterly stupid and un-integrated, psychically.

The second most important influence of the Middle East occurred after the ice fell back, and farmers started raising crops. Agriculture slowly spread into Anatolia up through the Balkans into Europe. Agriculture reached the British Isles some 3,000 BC, just as civilization was emerging in southern Iraq. Scholars have debated where agriculture was spread by strong Mid East tribes using copper weapons, compound bows, chariots and written law; or if farming arrived through gradual diffusion. Recent genetic analysis has revealed that some 1/5th of European genes actually derive from the Middle East.

Genetics has devastated ethnic identity: we are all hybrids. There is no German gene. There is a Japanese gene, but only 5% have it. All the other genetic material comes from Korea, Okinawa, China or from the indigenous Ainu tribes.

Readers may have been mislead when non-scientists trumpet the tracing of a “Cohen” marker down three thousand years, but did not tell the truth: that many millions carry that exact same marker, and they are not Jewish.

The spin is endless. The only markers for a Jewish ethnicity relate to diseases, most due to interbreeding. Fortunately, they are rare.“We are as mixed as America” said one Israeli (Rafael Shadur). But the clerics make a cult of ethnicity, putting themselves up as God's exclusive chosen people.

The nomads being no less tribal, pay great attention to their geneologies. They find themselves in the Torah, coming up through Abraham and Moses, both nomadic interludes.

Go back to classical Hellenic and Roman times and you will find people of Jewish faith in much greater numbers. They organized caravans across the Sahara, and assisted the rulers in keeping their books, pooling capital (taxes)Damascus, Ashkelon, Medina, Yemen, Cyrenaica, Anatolia, Persia, Bukhara, and in Abyssinia. Just as they were instrumental in trade and finance in Europe, Jews were even more important in the Middle East.

Some one/tenth of the population of Roman Empire may have been Jewish. Muhammad had special relations with some of the eight Jewish tribes living in and around Medina, and north, in Khaibar, the center of Jewish culture in the Hejaj. Khaibar exists today and if you walk there and look, you''l find no difference between Arab and Jewish genomes. As for the Palestinian Arab genome, it is estimated at about 22% ancestral Jewish (and 3% Norman). Amongst Semites there is little variation: one cannot use genetics to say who is or is not Muslim or Jewish: there exist no such markers.

The Strange Origins of Civilization -

Eight thousand years before the biblical time period, civilization as we know it arose. Nine thousand years ago rose up a town, the first human town as far as we know, in central Anatolia, Chatal Huyuk. In Jericho, in occupied Arab Palestine, townspeople built walls and towers some eight thousand years ago. Then there occurred the single strangest event in the Holocene (now called Anthropocene, from 10,000 BC to the present) which was the appearance in the ancient city of Eridu in Southern Iraq of a tribe of nomads – the Sumerians. The year: 3,120 BC, when the first Sumerian artifacts are found.

Whether the Sumerians were land nomads or sea nomads is not clear. They spoke an agglutinative language, the oldest Asian language family. They seem to have been invited into the marshy land between the two rivers (Tigris and Euphrates). They took up the indigenous pottery and building traditions, then built a string of successful urban civilizations.

We are all Sumerians, because they first: invented and deployed the wheel, for pottery and for wagons and chariots; writing, the whole thing coming out of the need to keep accounts, the earliest imperial bookkeeping. They used mathematics to make exchanges and predictions and geometry to track the stars and the planets, and to build and determine the ownership of tracts of land. They were the first to make beer, and use soap. They built large floor looms, weaving not just fabric but mats and walls, even tents, as well as tapestries. They built the first large structures, and used irrigation successfully for the first time, digging a web of canals which connected the seven original Sumerian cities. Those were the first cities: Eridu, Erech, Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Shurrupak/Isin, Nippur.

Urban life was a big hit, and Sumerian culture spread to North Africa, Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, to Persia and India. Thanks to writing, we know about the Babylonia, Egypt, the Hittites (the most gentle and liberal of the empires), the Phoenicians and the impressive Canaanite civilization, of which Israel and Judah were a part. Surrounded by big powers, Israel expanded when these empires collapsed. But these periods of independence, were also times of stagnation. The rule of Hezekiah might be an exception, since I know something about how he used the land. But Hezekiah was vassal of Assyria longer than he was an independent king. Being plugged into the Assyrian empire was to harvest all the innovations which its ethnic constituents brought. It meant being able to trade in safety, even long distance trade. So many more commodities were available, and more jobs.

The Politics of Symbolic Appeal Trumps Practical Peace -

A marvelous future awaits all Middle East peoples. The various economies all have what each needs. But the politics of the practical needs trump (for once) the politics of symbolic appeal. Genocidal thinking need be exposed for what it is, be it Christian, Jewish or Islamic. The scriptures get twisted.

Our time in history is 'the failure of ideologies.' Even if your well-being comes from Molloch, from material, from money, there is a mystery afoot. Ideologies are discredited here as well and give way to practical prescriptions.

“The letter of the law killeth the spirit of the law.” The great imperial judges, the kings of Sumer, Egypt, Akkad, Assur, Canaan, and Hattusas, knew this and fought against it. As Hammurabi wrote (carved in stone): “For my first years I fought foreigners to give us security. But then I was ready to restore justice to the land, at home.” The Near Eastern effort was to replace revenge and retribution, with restitution. Quite normally, the law was upgraded and reformed every few decades. Quite normally, the new king examined possible mistakes of his father, his predecessor, for signs, for solutions to new, pressing political problems. Our own fixation with the bible does not put us ahead of people with no revealed tradition. Quite the contrary. We have used the scriptures to justify our hate and to reinforce our egos and to enforce conformity and to prosecute others unlike ourselves. God forgive us, for we did not see how demonization led to the murder of innocents.


The author is, amongst other things, the moderator/instructor for the online discussion group on Islamic civilization, hosted by the graduate alumni association, Harvard University. His critique of Islamic law can be found at www.middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com. His blog on Arab revolution is at www.arabrevolutions.blogspot.com. You can communicate with him at johnpaulmaynard@post,harvard.edu.