Posted by farid from customer-148-233-71-28.uninet.net.mx (148.233.71.28) on Monday, August 18, 2003 at 1:13PM :
Cousins
I've never been able to figure out what hatred of Jews was really based on. Christ was a Jew...so was his god...so were his parents, siblings, neighbors, teachers, customers, friends, disciples. How can anyone love Jesus and hate the people he came from? Even Judas, that much maligned fellow, was a Jew who performed one of the most thankless yet necessary tasks...if any Christian was ever going to heaven. And how easily the Romans sidestepped responsibility for killing Jesus...even moving the corporate office to Rome. The only people there who weren't Jews were the the ones who actually killed Jesus...and went on to everlasting fame, wealth and glory by figuring out how to use his legacy...so-called.
There was a debate among the early Church Fathers, no one ever listened to the Church Mothers, as to what sould be done with Jews...now mind you Christians are Jews too, they just had to make a point of drawing a line between the Jews who believed the Messiah hadn't come yet and those who thought he had and that Jesus was the Messiah. Hardly a difference worth all this bloodshed, but we're talking about religion which, by definition, has to be inhuman...non-human, if you prefer.
The Fathers who won the debate decided that rather than kill them all for their stubborn refusal and collective guilt, it would be the better policy, it wasn't a question of decent or fair treatment, certainly not "Christian" treatment...to allow them to live but, on the margins of society...never accepted, never secure or welcome...always degraded and abused...kept handy for periodic object lessons in what can be expected by those who refuse to accept the Prince of Peace...for there really could be no Christians without Jews...no "NEW" Testicle...unless you kept the Old.
Will Durant, in his and Ariel Durant's 657 volume set on everything you ever wanted to know about anything, does a good job of explaining how, after years of degradation with the constant threat of mass-conversions or wholesale death, of children taken to be raised as Christians, of confiscations, forced loans, of stolen wealth and enforced poverty, living always in the poorest most disease ridden parts of Christian corners, the Ghetto Jews were forced to adopt those character traits Christians then turned around and hated them for...claiming that the survival skills they'd forced the Jews to learn in order to endure such base treatment...were "natural" to the people and their "degraded" religion. Nice bit of Christian charity and reasoning...talk to any guy today storing his semen in a Semenary.
But why do Assyrian Christians, themselves the objects of abuse and discrimination...have these prejudices when we hail from the MidEast where, among the dominant Muslims, the Jews were allowed freedoms and rights they never had for more than a week in Europe? I think the answer lies somewhere back there in ancient history.
I seriously doubt the Jews of the Exodus arrived in Canaan with anything more than their cocks in their hands...not having left Egypt with that much more. The idea that they had a general or an army of any kind and that Joshua attacked anything stronger than a couple of tents is just plain silly...but we're in Religi-O-Land...where all the rides are silly...that's how you know God runs the place. There's increasing evidence that these recent arrivals simply settled on the land no one else wanted than that they ever attacked anyone. Jericho might have collapsed by itself for all we know...and therein lies what might be the source of all this resentment against Jews, at least in the MidEast...because they took credit for it...and not only that, but said the walls fell over because of Joshua's trumpet call. The idea that Jewish slaves arriving exhausted from wandering the desert for 40 years...after several decades as impoverished slaves before that...attacked a settled and fortified city and defeated the inhabitants...is silly, so why not turn sillines into "holiness"...why not credit the musical skills of their general, coupled with the kind offices of the same god who couldn't get them three hundred miles through the desert without making a mess of it and create a miracle? One version is just plain nuts, the other is "miraculous" and miracles trump reality every time.
The Jews took up residence in the interior of Canaan, in the most desolate spots where no one else wanted to live. If they could have done it then, they would have settled near where Beirut is today (which they're eventually going to get)...I mean if you have a miraculous horn player, why not go blow somewhere else...somewhere worthwhile? I think it's this penchant for making caviar out of goat turds and then swearing on your children's grave that you actually prefer the taste is what made people dislike the Jews. Pity, cause it's a great survival skill if you're surrounded by caviar eating people...can't afford to buy any...aren't strong enough to steal it...but resent being made to feel inferior and inadequate...which one glance in any direction in Israel would show you is the case...because you had to settle where even the sheep didn't even want to be...which is why Jewish shephards always carried sticks.
Having the sort of god who admits to being jealous...who acts like a petty tyrant and spoiled brat...who can't guide his people anywhere but to slavery, human sacrifice and endless wanderings...plunking them down finally on what only they could call a "Promised Land"...sort of forces them to come up with some pretty good explanations...and they did. They said that they had no shoes because their god prefered his chosen people to go barefoot. For the same reason they had no culture, no art, no architecture, no engineering, no science, no soap, toilet paper, pencils, food, buildings, water or any of the sinful things those pagan gods were showering on their damned followers. They learned to take one big fucking lemon and eventually drown us all in lemonade...and I give them credit for it. If you HAVE to have that sort of a Holy Land and that sort of a god...you might as well make the most out of it...what more could you possibly lose?
The rest of us expected them to admit defeat...and get the hell out...out of either the land or a religion that told them they were most god's favorite when he had people shit on them the most. Instead they came up with their Messiah idea...a sort of general MayDay call to the Universe to send somebody, ANYBODY to take them someplace else...cause it took forty years to get there and they weren't sure about travelling on that plan again. The Messiah was never supposed to take them all up to a heaven, they had no such notion. Instead he was going to lead them in a fight against their "oppressors"...which just meant those who did to them what they longed to do to others but couldn't. And of course the land would flow with milk and honey. Now only someone occupying the armpit of Canaan would dream of milk and honey...and stop there. The Assyrians were baking 300 different kinds of bread when these Jews were glad to be eating bugs.
A Messiah would be miracle enough, but turn Galilee and Nazareth and Bet Slop into a paradise? There's humor in the bible after all. More than likely the Messiah would have taken them all to Nineveh...as great a paradise on earth as the Jews could have dreamed of. In fact, if they'd been able to build themselves a Nineveh...we and they would have been spared much. Instead they finally tore it down...and got the rest of you Christian Assyrian chumps to help pay for it. MatzleFuck.
-- farid
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