Re: [asa] True Scotsman fallacy - was Of m....

In a message dated 7/31/2006 10:14:18 AM Eastern Standard Time,
dopderbeck@gmail.com writes:
It seems entirely appropriate to me in response to that premise to separate
the conduct of some Christians from the teachings and ideals of the Bible.
Yes, some people calling themselves "Christians" ripped some Bible passages out
of context and distorted them to support evils like Apartheid.
Just a brief comment on the bible and apartheid:

"The core texts of the Bible were written and essential elements of Judaism
were deliberately developed to reverse the forced diversification of Israel by
the Assyrian empire, to remove the foreigners imported by the Assyrians and
recover the niches and the land lost to the people of the northern kingdom of
Israel.
The historian Mario Liverani writes:
 
“The paradigm adopted in the book of Joshua is ‘holy war,’ clearly belonging
to a Deuteronomistic matrix, but with deep roots in Syro-Palestinian ideology
from the period of Assyrian pressure.”15
 
Additionally, “the idea of the conquest [of Canaan] as a total replacement
(by extermination) of the preceding population by another cannot have been
imagined before the beginning of imperial deportations.”16
 
The response of the survivors of the northern kingdom of Israel and the
southern kingdom of Judah to forced population transfer and its multicultural
context is a religious text promoting a strong kinship system and a vibrant shared
monoculture. Throughout the Bible, Israelite society is motivated to
religiously reject the foreigners and the “multiculturalism” imposed upon the northern
kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians."

Mario Liverani, Israel’s History and the History of Israel, page 286
Ibid., page 287
 
This is the view of Israeli archeology and ANE history.
 
 
If Christians have used the bible to support apartheid, it is not because
they took anything out of context. Judaism is a tribal religion. It promotes
racial purity. It really is an "old covenant," and Christianity really has
superceded it.
You can interpret Jewish universalism in two ways: As a universal brotherhood
which has become Christianity, or as God ruling the world from the Jewish
temple at Jerusalem. One is universal morality evolved from Judaism's ethics,
the other is universal conquest evolved from Judaism's nationalism.
 
rich faussette
 
 

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Received on Mon Jul 31 12:28:05 2006