THE MYTH OF THE CHOSEN PEOPLE
Source: french Article by JPCiron — (Google translation) — https://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/religions/article/le-mythe-du-peuple-elu-231678
Persecuted, the Puritans fled England in the 17th century, and arrived in America. They identified their exodus with the stories and characters of the Old Testament, and came to persuade themselves to be the People of the Covenant arriving to a new Promised Land.
This identification of the first settlers has continued unabated until today. Thus, Lionel Ifrah (5) maintains that, considering themselves heirs to the Hebrew People, and living as close as possible to the Bible, the Americans (and in particular the Evangelical Churches) have adopted its mental structures. Which would be one of the main reasons for the strong bond between the USA and Israel.
In this Article, I focus on the founding myth: that of the Hebrew People, who come to be elected / chosen, leaving Egypt for the Promised Land of Canaan. In addition, we will take the opportunity in passing to clarify whether this election really has a component of superiority or a particular destiny.
The Article is made up of two parts:
> Get informed
> Analyze
The Jackdaw slams the squalls by touching the clouds. It is said that from up there, he saw more than one myth go by ... image: Chocard (known as yellow-billed Alpine Jackdaw): very intelligent high mountain bird, from the Corvidae family. (photo JPCiron)
Note that my approach is benevolent, but without complacency. In (*) I describe the path that led to this Article.
>>> GET INFORMED
To form your own idea on the subject of the Article, there are I believe three ways: 1 to consult academic opinion; 2 listen to the experience; 3 read the original texts.
> The Academic version (wikipedia) is crystal clear: The election of the Jewish people in no way implies any superiority over other nations. This status is only a bearer of responsibility and a generator of sacrifice.
The true biblical meaning of the chosen people is therefore the reverse order to the anti-Semitic accusation: it is about remaining humble and responsible for a message of universal love. The Jewish interpretation is that this is a burden, a difficult and primary mission, and not the slightest meaning of superiority.
> The version of the experience sometimes appears in sharp contrast: Yuval Noah Harari explains to us that “the Jews - my people - also believe that they are the most important thing in the world. Name any human achievement or invention, they'll be quick to claim credit for it. To know them intimately, I also know that they are sincerely convinced of it. "
Y. N. Harari notes that many Jews “believe that the Jewish people are the central hero of history and the ultimate source of morality, spirituality and knowledge''. And stresses that "Jewish orthodoxy even today persists in believing that Jews are inherently superior to all other human beings." (1)
Albert Einstein said: “For me, the Jewish religion is, like all other religions, the embodiment of a primitive superstition. And the Jewish people to which I proudly belong, and whose mentality I feel deeply anchored, does not have a form of dignity different from other peoples. In my experience, they are no better than other human groups, even though they are protected from the worst excesses by their lack of power. Otherwise, I do not perceive anything 'chosen' about them.” (2a)
> Reading the Bible allows - on a number of themes - to support what some may think as well as what their opponents may think... But many verses nevertheless suggest a certain 'consecrated' dominance. Here is an example [among many others (Deut. 7: 6) (Deut. 7:16) (Deut. 4:27) (Deut. 4:33) (Deut. 10.11) etc etc]:
“The Lord spoke to Moses (…) He said (…) when you have crossed the Jordan and entered the land of Canaan, you will drive out before you all the inhabitants of the land (...) You will take possession of the land, and you will settle there; for I have given you the land, to be your property. You will divide the country by lot, according to your families. (…) But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the country before you, those of them whom you leave will be like thorns in your eyes and stings in your sides, they will be your enemies in the country where you are going to settle. And it will come to pass that I will treat you as I had resolved to treat them.” (Numbers 33: 50-56)
“The word God is for me nothing other than the expression and the product of human weaknesses, and the Bible a collection of venerable legends but nevertheless quite primitive. No interpretation, however subtle, will change anything (for me).” (Albert Einstein) See analysis on the expression "God of Spinoza" (which A. Einstein uses elsewhere) in (2b)
>>> ANALYZE
Speaking of sacred texts, Yuval N. Harari argues that “These are just stories invented by our ancestors to legitimize social norms and political structures.”
This is arguably why this creates an inextricable situation, because “As soon as personal identities and entire social systems are built on a narrative, it becomes unthinkable to doubt it, not because of the evidence that would support it, but because its collapse would trigger a personal and social cataclysm! In history, the roof is sometimes more important than the foundations.” (1)
But one can reasonably reconstruct the events which accompanied the useful invention, in ancient times, of the concept of the Chosen People, among other concepts.
First of all, in ancient times, we note that the image of the god Yahweh projected by the Bible (AT) is positioned in reaction to a series of military defeats which must be explained/ justified to the population (an over-powerful god who punishes his own People by the hand of the enemy).
Then, the strategy of North-South unification in Palestine is based on an invented common mythical past (invention of the Hebrew 'people') (invention of fictitious exploits in Egypt) (fictitious discovery of the Book of Moses) (Fabulous genealogy and invented glorious past) (fictitious military conquest) etc ...
Indeed, the historical and societal situation was then very complicated. And this helped the emergence of the feeling of the necessary creation of popular cohesion in a territory. In those ancient times, the Politician and the Religious could only move forward together ... as everywhere in the Middle East: (french) https://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/religions/article/le-monotheisme-et-la-bible-les-223242
> A melting pot of divinities.
This territory in the Land of Canaan was then made up of a great ethno-cultural variety (with a corresponding variety of deities).
The Bible confirms it to us: “You have as many gods as you have cities, O Judah!” (Jeremiah 11:13) See also (Ezekiel 16: 3) (Ezra 10: 2) etc. For Samaria, the Bible then considers the Samaritans as people “of other nations” : therefore foreigners. (2 Kings 17: 33-40)
These disparate populations are the result of history: both in Samaria (the Assyrians had exiled the population and replaced it by Arab tribes) and in Judah (the Assyrian pacification had allowed the emergence of a commercial axis of South Arabia/ Hijaz to Gaza, with an indigenous population in Idumea which has become predominantly Edomite/ Arab). See more here: (french) https://www.agoravox.fr/culture-loisirs/etonnant/article/la-bible-masque-les-traits-arabes-227344
> The choice of the Great Unifying God
The introduction of Yahweh into Canaan was effected by fusion-absorption/ substitution. What was not then an extraordinary modality for the divinities.
The main deities in Canaan were traditionally Baal and Asherah (besides old El). The god Yahweh is not from Canaan. (6) He is an 'imported' god, coming from the South (Edom/ Midian/ Hijaz). The gods following the people, it was urgent to create unifying myths of the territory, which take into account the new diversity of the populations in place, both in Samaria and in Judah. The theologian Thomas Römer even considers that “Perhaps Judah himself was originally one of those Arab tribes settled in the South and linked to the Midianites, Kenites and Edomites.” (''The invention of God'' Seuil 2017)
At that time, in the Levant, Baal had been the god of agriculture for millennia. His consort was Asherah. In his habit of “god of the Storm”, Yahweh retains his volcanic origin. Thus, in Ugarit, Baal “rides the clouds”, while Yahweh rides on “a chariot of fire and horses of fire” (2 Kings 2: 11). See also (2 Kings 6:17).
The religious and the politicians “dubbed” Yahweh, who was/were also already mentioned here and there (Yahweh of Shomron/ Samaria; Yahweh of Teman; Yahu in the land of Shasou; ...) next to the traditional Canaanite pantheon.
The attributes of Baal were gradually transferred to Yahweh, and the followers of Baal were persecuted. (1 Kings 18:40) etc
This introduces a monolatry with main divinities Yahweh and Asherah. To express the idea of not following Yahweh was punishable by death. (Exodus 22:20) (Deut. 13)
The cult of Asherah was distinct: it was the religion of women. A deeply rooted religion, largely autonomous.
The male priests then 'seized the religious power' by taking the idol of Asherah/ Astarte from the temple and burning it (2 Kings 23: 6). The female attributes of the goddess were soon transferred to Yahweh: (french) http://www.interbible.org/interBible/ecritures/symboles/2017/symboles_20170519.html
And the religion of women was banned.
The patriarchy was then able to express itself without restraint. More information in this Article: (french) https://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/religions/article/la-femme-victime-du-patriarcat-de-228795
> The ''necessary'' prodigy of the exit from Egypt.
In the land of Canaan, Yahweh was a god ''without service record'' ! It was imperative to remedy this, by positioning Yahweh well above the grandiose image of the gods of the great powers of the time. This will be the myth of the exit from Egypt.
“Moses could not bring the Hebrews out of Egypt and lead them to the 'promised land' for the very reason that at the time... it was in the hands of the Egyptians. Moreover, there is no trace of a slave revolt in the empire of the pharaohs, nor of a rapid conquest of the land of Canaan by a foreign element.” (3) (Shlomo Sand)
> The centralization of the Cult of Yahweh.
The arrival in Canaan continues the mythical story. Indeed, the Bible tells the story of the arrival of a people (supposedly coming from Egypt) to take possession of the Land of Canaan.
“The idea that Yhwh is the only god to worship and Jerusalem the only legitimate sanctuary is not an old idea, but a concept that arose no earlier than the 7th century BCE.” (7) On this burning subject, in the whole Book there is not a single allusion to the temple of Jerusalem; it is never spoken of except "the place which Yahweh your God will choose from among all your tribes to place his name there" (Deut. 12: 5)
In this way, in the time of King Josiah, with the 'discovery' of the ''Book'' (2 Kings 22) in Jerusalem in the ''house of the Lord'', the matter had been dealt with !
> The Great God Yahweh has elected a People.
The time had come for the invention of the concept of “Chosen People” by Yahweh. It was a brilliant politico-religious maneuver, around the reign of King Josiah, to create a new religious (and therefore political) unity in a territory. I explain/ document the structure of the operation in this article: (french) https://www.agoravox.fr/culture-loisirs/etonnant/article/l-enigme-des-hebreux-d-ou-viennent-225205
> An imported god for a motley people.
Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein points out that King Josiah (640 to 609 BC), seeking to unify "motley tribes", invented for them a glorious common past, both political and theological. (8) Indeed, the (disparate) people were already there. And the God Yahweh is a God who has been discreetly “immigrated” to Canaan with the influx/ transfer of populations. The clergy have worked for the merger-absorption of Yahweh with Baal over a long period.
The meeting-fusion of the foreigner Yahweh and the pantheon of Baal correspond to what scholars call “an exogenous religious representation with its characteristics of exclusive worship, confronted with an endogenous polytheist West Semitic environment.” Antagonistic representations that one will nevertheless marry thanks to artifices.
Indeed, “The great biblical account of the origins of the Exodus narrates the migration of a people, but the account which reads in negative is the reverse, it is in fact the “migration” of a god: the story told is that of an allochthonous people for an indigenous god when it is precisely the opposite: an allochthonous god for an indigenous people.” (Christophe Lemardelé) (4)
The biblical narrative creates a common mythical glorious past for a disparate Indigenous population.
> From Israelite monotheism to Judaism.
We have thus arrived at the first steps of Israelite monotheism, which still ignored the Hereafter. The concept of life after death was then already fundamental for the Egyptians for millennia, and also for a millennium among the Zoroastrians. “Only its political and intellectual elites were to settle in Babylon. From this decisive encounter with the Persian cults was born Jewish monotheism.” (3)
The afterlife was not more widely integrated until around the first century AD, after the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans. Here are two Articles giving more details on this: (french)
(The Afterlife) https://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/religions/article/l-au-dela-et-la-cosmologie-de-nos-218440
(The Menorah) https://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/religions/article/l-arbre-de-vie-son-extra-ordinaire-214692
> The mythical return of the exiled people.
From before the beginning of our era, Judaism was a proselytizing religion, which spread "in all directions". “Contrary to popular belief, the diaspora was not born from the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but from successive conversions in North Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East. This is what shakes one of the foundations of Zionist thought, the one who would like the Jews to be the descendants of the kingdom of David and not - God forbid! - the heirs of Berber warriors or Khazar horsemen.” (3) (Shlomo Sand)
The Romans therefore exiled the Israelites out of Jerusalem (i.e. 'exiles' in Palestine). The true and distant exile had been that of the people of Samaria (along with the elites) by the Assyrians. Later, the Babylonians exiled only the elites (not the people).
The peasants of Palestine are therefore the descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Judea and Samaria.
> In the end, I tend to think like the personalities mentioned:
No: there is no people superior to the others, who would have been elected by some god. The following article sheds light on different meanings of the concept of ''People of God'': (french) https://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/religions/article/le-peuple-de-dieu-223483
Yes: reading the Bible does seem to clearly and explicitly mention a people chosen with a promised exceptional destiny.
Yes: a part of the followers of several religions of the Book think today of being part of this chosen people. More information in this Article: (french) https://www.agoravox.fr/culture-loisirs/etonnant/article/le-sionisme-une-histoire-d-enfer-227731
No: there was no exile of the Jews by the Romans outside of Palestine: they were expelled from Jerusalem.
Yes: the Jewish diaspora comes from the proselyte Judaism of the origins (started as early as before JC) which was active "in all directions".
Yes: many verses of the Bible are theological constructions supporting a unifying politico-religious project dating back to around the VIII-VII centuries. before our era, and completed a few centuries later.
Yuval N. Harari is right: “When a thousand people believe a made up story for a month, it is fake news. When a billion people believe in it for a millennium, it is a religion (…).” And “(...) it seems that we are indeed living in a terrifying post-truth era, when (...) stories and entire nations may well be wrong.” (1)
Fortunately, Western Judeo-Christian societies have learned since Caesar to separate the Religious and the Political.
If not, imagine the unlikely situations that these societies could have generated ...
J P Ciron
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Ultimately, would Zionist ideology be the contemporary political heir to King Josiah? So will this myth of the Chosen People “bear fruit”? It depends for whom. See the article "Zionism: Good for Israel, Bad for the Jews." (french)
https://www.agoravox.fr/tribune-libre/article/le-sionisme-bon-pour-israel-219643
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Articles supplementing / illustrating these ancient times: (french)
« La BIBLE, l’Histoire, l’Archéologie, et l’incontournable Royaume d’Ougarit »
https://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/religions/article/la-bible-l-histoire-l-archeologie-212657
« Pourquoi le DIEU des monothéismes se montre-t-il si différent dans l’Égypte d’Akhenaton et dans la Bible (A.T.) ? »
https://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/religions/article/pourquoi-le-dieu-des-monotheismes-226502
:: :: :: :: :: :: : NOTES :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
….. (*) - In recent years, I have taken the time to try to clarify questions that I had left ''in suspense'' for a long time, on different themes. Some questions touched on themes from the world of the gods.
When I thought I had found a satisfactory answer to a question, I wrote an Article, with the related documentation and references.
Over time, I noticed that some Articles introduced (or supplemented) others. And little by little, like pieces of a puzzle, they came together and integrated to form a much larger landscape which, in turn, reinforced the meaning to each piece of the puzzle.
Thus, the global landscape of this founding myth of the "chosen people" appeared. Landscape which breaks down into structural elements which are analized in the Articles.
The concept of myth emanates from the overall 'landscape' of the puzzle.
….. (1) - Book "21 lessons for the 21st century" by Yuval N. Harari - Albin Michel - 2018
I note that nowadays, we can no longer express our opinion without having to justify ourselves ... it is to say the power - what am I saying, the hold - of the party of the right-mindedness ... I indicate below some concepts proposed by YN Harari which are associated with his 'plea' to escape the accusation of anti-Semitism. Plea which is presented just after:
“The central value of education in Jewish culture is one of the main reasons for the extraordinary success of Jewish scholars." (...) " The fact remains that if the Jewish scholars brought from the yeshivah a strong discipline and a deep faith in the value of knowledge, they did not arrive with any baggage of concrete ideas or intuitions." (...) "The scientific revolution was not a Jewish project, and the Jews found their place in it only by leaving the yeshivah for the university.”
(note: ethno-cultural statistics in the USA seem to confirm that the Educational Value of certain american groups generates more university degrees, which, probably, leads to an over-representation of these groups in some important activities of the country. We can only rejoice that some groups contribute to raising the average level of their country.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/04/the-most-and-least-educated-u-s-religious-groups/ )
“It goes without saying that the Jewish people are a unique people, with a rich history (although this is true of all peoples). It also goes without saying that the Jewish tradition is teeming with deep insights and noble values (but is also full of questionable ideas, and racist, misogynistic and homophobic attitudes)." (...) "So that no one will suspect me of ''Jewish self-hatred'' or of anti-Semitism, I want to insist: I do not claim that Judaism is a particularly bad or obscurantist religion . I'm just saying it hasn't been particularly important in human history.”
….. (2a) - Letter from Albert Einstein (1954) to the philosopher Eric Gutkind - Article "Einstein's Letter on God'' sold for $ 2.89 million" - Le Monde, December 05, 2018 -
….. (2b) - "Philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, in an interview with the New York Times":
“To say 'I believe in the God of Spinoza', like Einstein (…) it means that you believe that the laws of nature form a whole and that they contain all the answers to the questions you ask yourself.” (…) “Many physicists use the word God. It deceives people who think they are believers, but it is actually a metaphorical way of speaking the absolute truth.”
….. (3) - Article "Deconstruction of a mythical story: How the Jewish people were invented" by Shlomo Sand / Le Monde Diplomatique - August 2008
https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2008/08/SAND/16205
….. (4) - Article “The specificity of biblical monotheism. The question of Yahwism.” By Christophe LEMARDELÉ (CNRS) - In: ASDIWAL. Geneva review of anthropology and history of religions, n ° 14, 2019. pp. 115-126; doi:
https://doi.org/10.3406/asdi.2019.1158
https://www.persee.fr/doc/asdi_1662-4653_2019_num_14_1_1158
….. 5) - Book “Moses in Washington. The biblical roots of the United States” by Lionel Ifrah - Albin Michel - 2019
….. (6) - Book "The invention of God" by Thomas Römer - Threshold 2017
YW is mentioned on an Ugarite tablet, and could be compared to Yahweh. In fact, “YW refers in allographic form to YAM, the god of the sea in the Levantine pantheon.”
See also the work “Textes ougaritiques. Myths and legends.” Vol 1 ”by André Caquot et al. - Ed. Cerf 1974
….. (7) - Article "Milieux Bibliques" by Thomas RÖMER "The god Yhwh: his origins, his cults, his transformation into a unique god, P1" - L’annuaire du Collège de France [Online], 111 | 2012, posted on November 22, 2013 -
URL : http://journals.openedition.org/annuaire-cdf/1506 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/annuaire-cdf.1506
….. (8) - Book "The Bible Unearthed: Archeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel" - Israel Finkelstein & Neil Asher Silberman - 2002
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