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.
