Four Conclusions That Jesus And Other Jews Probably Reached About Invasion, Exile, Diaspora, And Preserving Identity
Posted on December 31, 2011
This bulletin deals with the book “Jews, God and History” which was written by American historian Max. I. Dimont. The book is a sweeping and fascinating account of 4000 years of Jewish history. It begins with Judaism’s founder, Abraham, and concludes around 1960 AD.
This bulletin (and others) will summarize many of the major points that the author makes. They will start with approaching the book from an immigration perspective and from the perspective of one of the most famous Jews of all, Jesus the Christ, who lived at the mid-way point of Jewish history.
As any reader of the New Testament will probably say, the character Jesus is exceptionally well-versed in Jewish scripture. He refers to it many times and interprets it with great authority.
The following bulletin is a summary of some of the conclusions Jesus and other Jews probably would have drawn about their fellow Jews and their country.
There are obvious similarities between the Jews and their country, on the one hand, and Canadians and Canada on the other hand. We do point out some of these similarities. For now, we invite readers to see other similarities.
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Four Conclusions That Jesus And Other Jews Probably Reached About Invasion, Exile, Diaspora, And Preserving Identity
1. Throughout the history of many parts of the world, immigration has often been identical to invasion.
In the case of ancient Israel, the country’s land base was small, the country was in a geographically vulnerable position, and it was on its own in dealing with international bullies.
In the first 2000 years of Judaism’s existence, powerful empires such as, in order of their existence, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece and Rome, marched into Israel and overwhelmed its defenders. Other countries probably influenced these empires in a benevolent way but the world did not have international organizations to chastise empires for bullying.
Ironically, the idea of being overwhelmed by outsiders will sound familiar to Canadians and people in western countries today-even though the world has organizations such as the UN and smaller blocks of nations which help to promote benevolence. Most Canadians will say that immigration to Canada has turned into an invasion.
In Judaism’s past, armies and weapons were international law.Today, for Canada and other western countries, international organizations and their national branches are the new armies and weapons. Their public relations departments promote open borders and bully western countries into accepting large numbers of migrantsoften for “humanitarian” reasons.
In a much less crowded world, migration events in Judaism’s early history were similar to events today. For example, the author of the book “Jews, God and History” explains that Judaism’s founder, Abraham, born around 2000 BC, was not from the area we now know as Israel. His parents had lived in the city-state of Ur which was part of present-day Iraq. The family migrated north to Turkey where Abraham had a life-changing vision of Jehovah-equal in effect, the author says, to the life-changing vision that Saint Paul had of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus 2000 years later. Abraham eventually moved south to current Israel to live permanently. He and his descendants lived there for 400 years until famine struck the area. At that point, part of Abraham’s people chose to stay where they were. The other part chose to leave. Food aid did not exist as it does today, but the equivalent of it was offered. Egyptian rulers allowed some of Abraham’s people “temporary refugee status” in Egypt. It is probable that the Egyptians did not foresee Abraham’s descendants being there for 400 years !!!
But that happened. So, for the next 400 years, Abraham’s descendants remained separated. At first, the Jews that went to Egypt lived as free people, but later were forced into slavery. Citing Sigmund Freud in particular, the author speculates that changes occurred in the 400 year period in the religion that Abraham’s people practised. He says it is possible that monotheism may have originated in Egypt, was promoted by Moses and attributed retroactively to Abraham. Whatever the truth is, the author says, the encounter with Jehovah and monotheism had massive effects on the lives of the Jews and billions of others.
2. Empires invaded for several reasons : (A) To satisfy the egos of the rulers who wanted to extend their political boundaries and their power ; (B) To increase their wealth by demanding tribute from the countries they invaded or by seizing resources in the invaded countries.
There are obvious similarities between events in ancient Israel and today’s Canada. Many recent immigrants see that, as a result of Canada’s high immigration intake, they now outnumber Canadian-born in parts of Canada. In their view, they have taken over those areas. This has resulted in ego-inflation and arrogance. The goal now of a significant number of them is to acquire even more power. It is obvious that if they increase their numbers through continued mass immigration, that will happen as will their control over the future of Canada. These groups want the future population of Canada to look like them, to live as they lived in their countries of origin, and to extract as much as they can of the resources that Canada has available. Most Canadians would say that these are the attitudes of invaders and colonizers, not of immigrants. Most Canadians would expect Canada’s politicians to protect Canada from this nonsense. After all, a country exists to protect the majority of its citizens . Yet, for many years, all of Canada’s political parties have betrayed the majority of Canadians. All of our political parties have bowed to these people and refused to reduce immigration because they believe they will lose immigrant votes.
The attitudes of those who invaded ancient Israel were similar. Assyria and Babylon, for example, entered Abraham’s homeland to satisfy the egos of Assyrian and Babylonian rulers and to extract wealth. Cyrus the Great from the Persian Empire did the same. In fact, Cyrus actually allowed Jews that had been deported from Abraham’s homeland and who were living in Babylon to return to that homeland-not because he had sympathy for them but because he knew he could probably extract more cash from these good businessmen if they were in Abraham’s homeland rather than in other locations.
The author adds an interesting note. He says that, contrary to popular belief, most of the Jews who lived in Babylon did not spend much time weeping by the fabled “rivers of Babylon” for the proverbial “old country”. In fact, they did very well there and when the opportunity to return to Abraham’s homeland was offered to them, most chose not to go back . The obvious point to be made here is that many recent immigrants should be expressing gratitude to be in Canada, not trying to re-create the conditions which caused them to leave their countries of origin. Regarding Rome’s reason for invading Abraham’s homeland : Rome was also very much interested in extracting wealth from the Jews. Resentment against Roman taxes was particularly strong in the Israel of Jesus’ time. Most Jews reserved their greatest contempt for tax collectors. This was so because the Romans contracted out the collecting of taxes to Jews who extracted as much as they could from their countrymen, paid the Romans a set amount, and then kept the rest for themselves.
3. Invaders used a number of techniques to subdue the populations of the countries they invaded.
One method used against the Jews was mass deportation–the opposite of mass immigration. For example, enraged by the Jewish refusal to make tribute payments to Assyria, and the many battles the Jews won in their ten-year war with the Assyrians, Assyria deported almost all of the population of the Jewish northern Kingdom (called Israel) when it finally won the war around 722 BC. When Babylon took the Jewish southern kingdom in 586, it deported the most powerful and influential Jews to Babylon. When the Jews rebelled again, it deported even more Jews to Babylon, diluting their ability to resist. After Alexander the Great and his Greek army entered Abraham’s homeland in 332 BC, the Greeks imported large numbers of pagans who were culturally different and who did not sympathize with the national objectives of Jews. The Greeks’ purpose was to dilute the influence of Jews-much like the Chinese have done in Tibet with the Tibetan-born population and in western China with the Uighurs. Finally, with all the invaders, brutality was a common method of silencing resistance and dissent.
As many have said, in the state-sponsored invasion and betrayal of Canada, the technique that has been used by all of Canada’s political parties is similar to that of the Assyrians and the Greeks in ancient Israel : (1) to overwhelm Canadian-born with an inflow of outsiders under the lie that these outsiders are necessary ; (2) to “deport”, that is, abolish Canadians’ prior right to employment in order to satisfy recent immigrants’ needs for jobs. This has been accomplished under the guise of Employment Equity ; (3) In times of recessions, to “deport”, that is, abolish the right of Canadians to be protected from unnecessary competition with immigrants for jobs. Abolition of this traditional Canadian right occurred in 1990 when Immigration Minister Barbara McDougall introduced a 250,000 immigration intake in order, she said, for her Progressive Conservative party to compete with the Liberal Party for the immigrant vote.
4. Large numbers of foreigners who enter with different cultural and moral standards can weaken a country’s ability to maintain its identity, its strength to survive and its ability to function.
For example, when Alexander the Great and his Greek armies took over countries, they used intermarriage as a way of diluting resistance to their invasion. Greek soldiers were encouraged to marry women who were native to the invaded country and to have many children. The children would be influenced by their father’s pro-Greek views.
Although the Jews were not as endangered by inter-marriage as much as the people of other countries, the Greeks had other methods of “Hellenizing” the Jewish population, that is, of making the Jewish population accept Greek morals. In recreational activities, young Greek men wrestled naked. Soon, outside the Temple in Jerusalem, young Jewish males wrestled naked. The author says : “Greek influence spread to the theatre and the cabaret to the point where pleasure was pursued as a policy. The Greek Epicureans taught that the gods did not interfere in human affairs, that there was no such thing as morality and immorality. There was only pleasure. Immorality and licentiousness replaced chastity and faithfulness.”
Two strains of anti-Hellenizers (those who believed in Mosaic law and those who believed in restoring David’s line of Kings) joined in a party called Hasideans or pietists. They faced a determined Greek invader opposition. The Greek king of Israel at that time, Antiochus Epiphanes, appointed a Jewish supporter of the Greeks as High Priest. Within 12 months, that High Priest had put pagan rites and Grecian statues into the Temple in Jerusalem and had Jewish priests dressing in Greek clothing. After a false rumour of the death of Antiochus Epiphanes had spread, the Jews rose up against the Hellenizers and literally threw them from the Temple roof 100 feet down to the ground. They then threw the Greek statues down on top of them. After this, the Jews began a massacre. Unfortunately for the Jews, Antiochus Epiphanes had not died. He returned from Egypt where he had given up on the idea of fighting the Romans and took out his frustration against the Jews (Hasideans). He slaughtered 10,000 of them and restored Greek statues in the Temple. He next outlawed the Sabbath Day and forbade circumcision–two of the most serious insults he could have delivered to the Jews.
There have been many obvious similarities to these events in Canada : Sikh demands that they be allowed to wear turbans in the RCMP and bear kirpans in schools, Muslim demands to be granted the same constitutional rights as Christian groups, for their clothing to be accepted, etc. Most Canadians expect immigrants to adapt to the Canadian “Temple”, that is, to Canadian ways. they do not want to be adapting to immigrants. But the most serious are the demands by many immigrant organizations that Canada’s unnecessary high immigration intake be maintained. The latter is equal to saying that they want the adaptation to continue. Many Sikhs and Muslims will admit that their home countries are economically, culturally and environmentally inferior to Canada Yet the demands continue, are a gross insult to many Canadians, and are an open, festering wound that will eventually lead to very serious civil conflict.
