Why are Jews condemned in Christian eyes?

Originally posted by sonhouse
As it turns out, despite my abysmal perspicacity I have learned to read most of the alphabet so if you give me the name of the book or books you want me to read I will attempt to do so, although you may have to help me with some of the words which will undoubtedly be beyond my limited frontal cortex to understand.

Professor Ilan Pappe’s book – The Idea of Israel - takes this line of enquiry somewhat further, questioning the progression of Zionism; looking at its evolution and the institutions that have supported it, and indeed, how this central principle of modern Jewry has increasingly come under scrutiny, not just from the usual, external, protagonists, but also increasingly, from within Israel itself. And whether crucially, these institutions have helped to shape set of norms by which the state is able to shape realities.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-idea-of-israel-by-ilan-pappe-book-review-9142271.html

In 2009, Shlomo Sand published The Invention of the Jewish People, in which he claimed that Jews have little in common with each other. They had no common "ethnic" lineage owing to the high level of conversion in antiquity. They had no common language, since Hebrew was used only for prayer and was not even spoken at the time of Jesus. Yiddish was, at most, the language of Ashkenazi Jews. So what is left to unite them? Religion? But religion does not make a people – think of Muslims and Catholics. And most Jews are not religious. Zionism? But that is a political position: one can be a Scot and not a Scottish nationalist. Besides, the majority of Jews, including many Zionists, have not the slightest intention of going "back" to the Holy Land, much preferring, and who can blame them, to stay put in north London, or Brooklyn or wherever. In other words, "Jewish People" is a political construct, an invention.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/18/invention-land-israel-shlomo-sand

Demystifying what the French call le roman national seems to be today one of the major tasks of historians (once they used to write it). This can be an uphill struggle, yet it is to the credit of the Israeli book-reading public that Sand's previous book, The Invention of the Jewish People became a bestseller. Truth-telling may be painful but necessary.

Originally posted by finnegan
[b]Professor Ilan Pappe’s book – The Idea of Israel - takes this line of enquiry somewhat further, questioning the progression of Zionism; looking at its evolution and the institutions that have supported it, and indeed, how this central principle of modern Jewry has increasingly come under scrutiny, not just from the usual, external, protagonists, but ...[text shortened]... Invention of the Jewish People became a bestseller. Truth-telling may be painful but necessary.[/b]

Obviously God must have been influencing this zionist movement to gather the remnant of His chosen people back in the land of Israel as spoken of in the Holy Bible. It does not seem reasonable to say this is all just a coincidence.

HalleluYah !!! Praise the LORD! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Originally posted by RJHinds
Obviously God must have been influencing this zionist movement to gather the remnant of His chosen people back in the land of Israel as spoken of in the Holy Bible. It does not seem reasonable to say this is all just a coincidence.

HalleluYah !!! Praise the LORD! Holy! Holy! Holy!

GOD? Are you being deliberately obtuse? As far as I know, the modern state of Israel came about because the UN designated that tiny strip of land for Jews. God had nothing to do with it.

Originally posted by sonhouse
GOD? Are you being deliberately obtuse? As far as I know, the modern state of Israel came about because the UN designated that tiny strip of land for Jews. God had nothing to do with it.

Didn't you know that to the mind of the natural man, God works in mysterious ways? 😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
Didn't you know that to the mind of the natural man, God works in mysterious ways? 😏

So your god set up the German Riech, allowing Hitler to come into power so he would murder 6 million Jews and therefore cause the UN to grant that land to Israel.

Sure, that makes sense.

It really is amusing to see you step deeper and deeper in your own shyte.

Originally posted by sonhouse
So your god set up the German Riech, allowing Hitler to come into power so he would murder 6 million Jews and therefore cause the UN to grant that land to Israel.

Sure, that makes sense.

It really is amusing to see you step deeper and deeper in your own shyte.

Well, since you know I can not think for myself ....

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

(1 Corinthians 2:14 KJV)

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

(1 Corinthians 1:18 KJV)

HalleluYah !!! Praise the LORD! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Originally posted by RJHinds
Well, since you know I can not think for myself ....

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

(1 Corinthians 2:14 KJV)

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are ...[text shortened]... r of God.

(1 Corinthians 1:18 KJV)

HalleluYah !!! Praise the LORD! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Now you are going right into nonsense. Typical.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Now you are going right into nonsense. Typical.

Nonsense equals "foolishnesss" to you with the natural mind.

😏

To return to the OP—

Many Christians see Jews as ultimately condemned because of lack of belief in the Galilean proto-rabbi Yehusa (Jesus, Iyesu, etc.) as the messiah—without any personal animus, bigotry or discrimination toward Jews at all.

On that theological issue, as well as other matters—such as scriptural exegesis, the differing views of “messiah”, doctrinal requirements of belief (including scripture: very few Jews take the scriptures literally, for example), etc.—Christians and Jews (with some exception) seem to generally just talk past one another. Since few Jews ever post on this forum (I am going to assume for good reason), I am not going to put myself in the position of “apologist for Judaism”—or some such.

I just wanted to note that the kind of theological (soteriological) “condemnation” that many Christians believe in does not necessarily translate into anti-Jew bigotry of any kind.

I have less experience with Islam (outside my own studies)—but there it seems to be a more complex matter. Certainly there have been, and are, many Muslims who hold no particular anti-Jewish animus. Jews, like Christians, have historically been held to dhimmi status in Muslim lands—but this is a protected status that has often been a far better fate than they faced in Christian lands. (These are, of course, gross historical generalizations.) The main “theological” difference between Islam and Judaism is that Islam is a religion of submission (what “islam” means), while Judaism is a religion of (non-submissive) covenant. A book I might recommend is Reza Shah-Kazemi’s The Other In the Light of the One: the Universality of the Qur’an and Interfaith Dialogue. (Shah-Kazemi is an Ishmaili and a Sufi, so he might be outside the mainstream—but his analysis, here and in other works, is tightly and cogently wrought.) But the above bears repeating here as well: religious beliefs by Muslims that differ from those held by Jews do not necessarily translate into any personal animus, bigotry or discrimination toward Jews at all.

For those who are really interested in learning about the religious and philosophical differences in sufficient detail, there is nothing for it but to read books—a lot of books. None of these religions is univocal. Generalizations are generally fraught.

Shalom.

Originally posted by finnegan
[b]Professor Ilan Pappe’s book – The Idea of Israel - takes this line of enquiry somewhat further, questioning the progression of Zionism; looking at its evolution and the institutions that have supported it, and indeed, how this central principle of modern Jewry has increasingly come under scrutiny, not just from the usual, external, protagonists, but ...[text shortened]... Invention of the Jewish People became a bestseller. Truth-telling may be painful but necessary.[/b]

…in which he claimed that…

Yes. I think you might want to re-read his chapter on the genetic studies: it is abysmally argued, and I doubt that someone with your critical reading skills would not see the logical flaws, as well as the thinly-masked anti-scientism, that fatally mar his case (as he attempts to make it). Is his Khazar hypothesis possible? Yes. Is it plausible—in the face of biological research as well as linguistic research? It doesn’t seem so (and there has been more research since that which he cites in the book). Are there outliers in the research that might support his claims? Yes. Does the bulk of the evidence? It doesn’t seem so. (But perhaps that kind of thing seldom makes bestsellers?)

In any event, the ethnic relationship of various groups of Jews—Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi—to one another (taking account of conversions, inter-marriage, etc.) is an empirical question, not a dogmatic one.

Although I haven’t finished it (set it aside for other projects), his The Invention of the Land of Israel seems a better bet for your general case. In it, Sand lays out a kind of “general theory” of the ideas of nation-state and homeland—arguing, in effect (and from memory) that the latter concept develops as a kind of “mythology” (even if fact-based) to support the drive for (or ex-post apologetics for) the former. I can’t speak to how historians or other scholars view this “general theory” as he presents it, but it seems plausible to this lay-reader. The remainder of the book seems to be his attempt to show how Israel, as a special case, fits the “general theory”. However, even if his particular arguments were shown to be flawed, vis-à-vis the special case”, one would still expect the “homeland rhetoric” for Israel to fit the general theory in some way—so long as the general theory holds. Of course, it would also hold for any other nation-state, though the specifics of each case would vary—as would the relation between myth and fact, and how they might be blended.

In sum, People seems to me to fatally flawed. Israel, by contrast, does not, even if particular arguments turn out to be (e.g., I suspect his textual analysis of the Hebrew Scriptures is strained, and “on the fringe” )—I will revisit it when my project-winds change direction; I found it intriguing. (Again, as a lay-reader.)

___________________________________________________

EDIT: By the way, what “makes a people a people” seems to me to be a question that cannot be answered by any singular definitional notion. In a sense, people decide what makes them “a people”. Ethnic heritage, geographical heritage, myth and religion can all be part of that—as well as others. Why would you want to deny that Jews are/can be “a people”? If, in fact you do want to deny that? I might well be misreading you. If you want to argue (on some philosophical or ideological grounds) that there is no such thing as “a people”, any people—that any statement of the “____________ people” (Jewish, Navajo, Palestinian, Irish, whatever) is wrong-headed and false—then I suspect that you have a hard row to hoe.

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]…in which he claimed that…

Yes. I think you might want to re-read his chapter on the genetic studies: it is abysmally argued, and I doubt that someone with your critical reading skills would not see the logical flaws, as well as the thinly-masked anti-scientism, that fatally mar his case (as he attempts to make it). Is his Khazar hypothesis poss ...[text shortened]... nian, Irish, whatever) is wrong-headed and false—then I suspect that you have a hard row to hoe.[/b]

I missed this post but notice now it is addressed to me. I am not going to pull out my books to check what I say in response.

I think an influential guide for me to ideas about nationalism was the philosopher Isiah Berlin. He traced the emergence of nationalism to people like Vico in Italy and Johann Gottfried von Herder (25 August 1744 – 18 December 1803) in Germany, and gave the impression that the need for a nationalist ideal arose as a defence against the alleged superiority not only of the Greeks historically but also their self proclaimed heirs, the French, who of course conquered both Italy and Germany, hugely damaging self esteem among the conquered people.

Herder gave Germans new pride in their origins, modifying that dominance of regard allotted to Greek art (Greek revival) extolled among others by Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He remarked that he would have wished to be born in the Middle Ages and mused whether "the times of the Swabian emperors" did not "deserve to be set forth in their true light in accordance with the German mode of thought?". Herder equated the German with the Gothic and favoured Dürer and everything Gothic. As with the sphere of art, equally he proclaimed a national message within the sphere of language. He topped the line of German authors emanating from Martin Opitz, who had written his Aristarchus, sive de contemptu linguae Teutonicae in Latin in 1617, urging Germans to glory in their hitherto despised language. Herder's extensive collections of folk-poetry began a great craze in Germany for that neglected topic.
Along with Wilhelm von Humboldt, Herder was one of the first to argue that language determines thought, a theme that two centuries later would be central to the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Herder's focus upon language and cultural traditions as the ties that create a "nation"[3] extended to include folklore, dance, music and art, and inspired Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in their collection of German folk tales.
Herder attached exceptional importance to the concept of nationality and of patriotism – "he that has lost his patriotic spirit has lost himself and the whole worlds about himself", whilst teaching that "in a certain sense every human perfection is national". Herder carried folk theory to an extreme by maintaining that "there is only one class in the state, the Volk, (not the rabble), and the king belongs to this class as well as the peasant". Explanation that the Volk was not the rabble was a novel conception in this era, and with Herder can be seen the emergence of "the people" as the basis for the emergence of a classless but hierarchical national body.
The nation, however, was individual and separate, distinguished, to Herder, by climate, education, foreign intercourse, tradition and heredity. Providence he praised for having "wonderfully separated nationalities not only by woods and mountains, seas and deserts, rivers and climates, but more particularly by languages, inclinations and characters". Herder praised the tribal outlook writing that "the savage who loves himself, his wife and child with quiet joy and glows with limited activity of his tribe as for his own life is in my opinion a more real being than that cultivated shadow who is enraptured with the shadow of the whole species", isolated since "each nationality contains its centre of happiness within itself, as a bullet the centre of gravity". With no need for comparison since "every nation bears in itself the standard of its perfection, totally independent of all comparison with that of others" for "do not nationalities differ in everything, in poetry, in appearance, in tastes, in usages, customs and languages? Must not religion which partakes of these also differ among the nationalities?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gottfried_Herder

What arises from these sources in the Nineteenth Century (including in Britain) was not the discovery of the true national identity of different nationalities, but its invention through romantic myth making. And what Sand is documenting is the way in which this self invention shaped the emerging zionist movement among European Jews.

I am more impressed by cultural arguments than biological ones, which leave me cold. The common ancestry of all humanity and the level of intermarriage between social groups makes it nonsensical to treat any groups of people as biologically distinct in any non-trivial way. Even the definition of a Jew relies only on the maternal line and only for a very few generations. In Israel's right of return, it encompasses people who have newly converted.