> On Aug 24, 2024, at 2:09 PM, abraham Weizfeld PhD via groups.io
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The sad tale rehashed by Shlomo Sand of the Koestler work of fiction
I'd love to hear your critique of Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish
People and describing both what it is and what it is not: It is not an attempt
to explain the origins of the Ashkanazim as Arthur Koestler, a journalist, did
in his book, The Thirteen Tribe, which Sand cites as one of a large number of
proselytizing Jewish peoples during the first millennium CE. I am no expert,
but I believe the absence of a sizable Turkic haplogroup together with a lack
of linguistic evidence that undermine Koestler's speculative history.
Sand is not a journalist but an historian, and his claims of a proselytizing
Judiasm come with historical and genetic evidence of a time when Judaism
challenged Christianity in religious converts. This was true in the Roman
Empire during first centuries of the first millennium CE. Proselytizing Judaism
is central to the book.
The first part of Sand's book, however, is not about proselytizing Jews but
about the concept of nationalism as a modern, western invention with no
applicability to ancient kingdoms. It's nonsense to believe in a nationalistic
claim that stretches back to antiquity, according to Sands.
Another important finding in Sand's work, IMHO, is establishing The Exile as an
historical fiction: "After being forcibly exiled from their land," according
to Israel's Declaration of Independence, "the people remained faithful to it
throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return
to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom." Sand marshals
evidence to show that the vast majority of Jews were never forced into either
exile, just as researchers from a hundred-years go established that there had
been no period of Egyptian enslavement (see
https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient-ebook/dp/B000FBJG86/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1V43QUIERBIF5&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yehBTFsrm-Ev7yC0x31qQ_lTnt4xNO9epgsFwKczZLiWynzhynPtbjREYLaNkKkAxZE1QgH5ApmYFNrdjRtMbr0BLn8ffQGGG-JkAFdMqJPhvLKtgoARvBYwWRPq6FX_Q3dIEhn3WYGSKlChVDzKqd8E2LkBDZMkzLn98aBQMFrp8yoMNiWpm860ODT5dH1jQYAgZM8eB0vMJWj2MwB1d9UjN1H_A7Dst08TucK1yTU.6--1l8S1xSBg3SMGFvPlmd5z5mtSbWBJbqIMzPamF4I&dib_tag=se&keywords=unearthing+the+bible&qid=1724638214&sprefix=unearthing+the+bible%2Caps%2C168&sr=8-3).
Today, we know the Bible to be a work of historical fiction.
After disproving the notion of a population exile, Sand discusses the case of
the Muslim farmers of Palestine:
"What happened to the population of Judea if it did not undergo exile? I have
been accused of claiming that the Palestinians of today are its direct
descendants. This is certainly not an idea that I came up with; in my book I
cited the declarations of prominent Zionist leaders, including David
Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and Israel Belkind, who all believed that the
“fellahs” they encountered in the early days of colonization were descended
from the ancient Jewish people, and that the two populations had to be
reunited. They knew perfectly well that there was no exile in the first century
CE, and they logically concluded that the great mass of the Jews had converted
to Islam with the arrival of Arab forces in the early seventh century. David
Ben-Gurion later went on to express a totally different position, when he
helped to draft the Declaration of Independence of the state of Israel, without
ever explaining this reversal.
Sand, Shlomo. The Invention of the Jewish People (p. 318). Verso Books."
So the ruling oppressors knew that they founded a nation on a self-serving lie,
which shouldn't strike a US American as foreign in any way since we've always
been a place where all men are created equal and are endowed with inalienable
rights. One might say, "that's politics." But is it Marxist politics? To me,
it's not scientific socialism to insist that facts conform to beliefs but the
other way around.
Mark
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