From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Sat Oct 25 2003 - 12:58:27 EDT
RFaussette@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 10/24/03 10:08:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> gmurphy@raex.com writes:
>
> > The point you have not addressed is the counterexamples I cited in the
> > earlier
> > post & the obvious reason you haven't addressed them is because they show
> > that what
> > I've said is right & you're wrong.
> >
> > Shalom,
> > George
> >
>
> Please point out where I am wrong and you are right in the exchange we had
> below. It is not enough to state that you are right.
In my original post to the list on this topic on 24 October, the post to which
you responded, I said:
"While biological kinship has been an important aspect of Judaism, its
significance should not be overstated. While they are presented in a way that makes
them look exceptional in Joshua, the stories of Rahab & the Gibeonites in that book show
that parts of the Canaanite population were assimilated into the people of Israel, and
Ruth makes the point that David was of partially Moabite descent. A number of other
examples of intermarriage could be cited. It's only after the return from exile, when
the Jewish community around Jerusalem is a small group threatened with being submerged
by surrounding peoples, that prohibition of intermarriage & some kind of idea of ethnic
purity becomes important in Ezra & Nehemiah.
& even after that the Pharisees engaged in major missionary efforts among the
Gentiles in the Roman Empire - cf. Mt.23:15. The fundamental idea is adherence to the
covenant, not biological descent."
Please note what I said. Biological kinship is important for Judaism but
its significance "should not be overstated." You do nothing to disprove this by citing
evidence that it is important.
The biblical examples I gave above for intermarriage with non-Israelites, with
no explicit or implied criticism, are what you failed to respond to. Here I will take
the opportunity to give a more detailed listing.
Gen.38. The matriarch of the tribe of Judah is Tamar, whose ancestry is
unspecified. But from the context it is likely that she was a Canaanite. (What else
would she have been. & note also that Judah's wife Shua is explicitly said to have been
a Canaanite, so he clearly had no scruples about this.) Of course the liason between
Judah and Tamar was irregular, to say the least, but that doesn't affect the point here.
There is no suggestion that her sons are defectively Israelite.
Gen.41:50-52. Joseph's wife, the mother of Ephraim and Manasseh, was Egyptian.
Again there is no suggestion that there was anything problematic about this. Or to put
it more bluntly, nobody _cared_. There's no suggestion that when Jacob came to Egypt
he said to Joseph, "I'm sure glad to see you, but I really wish you'd waited to marry a
nice Hebrew girl."
Thus at least 2 - and perhaps all three - of what would become the strongest of
the tribes of Israel originated in non-Hebrew wombs.
I already mentioned Rahab and the Gibeonites - an undercurrent in the story of
the "conquest" which indicates that assimilation did take place. According to Mt.1:5,
the Canaanite Rahab was the mother of Boaz, who in turn married the Moabite woman Ruth.
& this is part of the ancestry of the Jewish King David.
At this point we should note that some biblical scholars think it likely that
Ruth in its present form was written precisely as a protest against the kind of policies
against intermarriage begun under Nehemiah. (Yes, "begun" - as these & the following
examples show.) The repeated designations of Ruth as /hamo'abhiyah/ are certainly not
accidental.
The wife of David who bore Solomon was of course "Uriah the Hittite." Either
she was an Israelite woman who had married a Hittite or she was a Hittite herself. In
either case there was intermarriage.
Solomon, of course, had foreign wives. That was a problem - but why? Because
they got him to erect altars to their deities and worship them. Ahab's marriage with
Jezebel could also be mentioned. Of course that was also a problem, but again because
she was an avid worshipper of Ba'al, not because she wasn't an Israelite. In fact this
is primarily why Deuteronomy, in retrospect, sees intermarriage as a problem - because
it was likely to lead to religious syncretism.
That will suffice for intermarriage. Again, I am not suggesting that there was
no emphasis at all on endogamy, or that most Israelites before the exile didn't marry
other Israelites. But it seems clear that in this period the fact that intermarriage
might take place wasn't a huge problem. Endogamy was simply not the articulus stantis
et cadentis ecclessiae.
Then there is the fact, as I noted above, that proselytes can be accepted as
members of the Jewish community even though they do not have Jewish ancestry.
You claimed that I was simply asserting that I was right with no proof. My
citation of my earlier post will show that that is wrong, and I have expanded upon it
here, giving further evidence for my point that before the exile (& even to some
extent afterward - see the previous paragraph) "ethnic purity" did not have the
overriding importance that you claim for it.
If you wish to respond to this, I suggest that you first read what I've actually
said, which you clearly didn't do before. If you simply replay one of your old tapes
about Abraham, Darwin, Kevin MacDonald &c this will be my last post on the matter.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Oct 25 2003 - 12:59:57 EDT