From Israzine Nov., 2014: "Zionism, An Indigenous Struggle: Aboriginal Americans and the Jewish State"
The ability to see resemblances between ancient Judaism and savage religions was a result, at least in part, of the overlapping stereotypes of savages and contemporary Jews in the European imagination. Sifting through the writings on Judaism and heathenism during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one finds striking similarities between the European conceptions of the Jew and the savage. As a Christian anti-type, both were pictured as less than fully human, falling somewhere in the great chain of being between human and ape. The savage and the Jew presented similar problems to Christians. In what ways could these peoples be rescued from their idolatrous practices and converted to the true faith? Not surprisingly, European writers relied on the same vocabulary and images to describe the religious practices of their Jewish contemporaries and the savages discovered in the New World. Jews trafficked with the Devil; they practiced ritual murder, especially the murder of innocent children .. Europeans leveled similar accusations at savages. Missionary and travel literature routinely described savage religious practices as devil worship and frequently reported the practice of cannibalism and child sacrifice … Judaism and savage religions both lacked any redeeming moral qualities.
For these reasons, Europeans used similar language to describe Jewish and savage religious practices. This shared vocabulary is evident, for example, if one compares the seventeenth-century voyage literature on the savage with a similar sort of travel literature on Jews and Judaism. This "travel" literature on Jews and Judaism emerged in England during the early seventeenth century, when virtually no Jews were living in that country. Jews had been expelled from England in 1290, and only a relatively small number of Jews had entered England before the seventeenth century. English travelers who went abroad to other European countries brought back stories of their exotic visits to Jewish synagogues. Even after the Jews were readmitted to England in the mid-seventeenth century, numerous English writers report their visits to the local but still exotic synagogues. These reports are similar in tone and attitude to European accounts of savage religion. Compare, for example, Lescarbot's description of Brazilian religion in 1609 with some English accounts of Judaism from the same century:
As for the Brazilians, I find by the account of Jean de Léry, that not only are they like our savages, without any form of religion or knowledge of God, but that they are so blinded and hardened in their cannibalism that they seem to be in no wise capable of the Christian doctrine. Also they are visibly tormented and beaten by the devil. . . . When one tells the Brazilians that they must believe in God, they fully agree, but by and by they forget their lesson and return to their own vomit, which is a strange brutishness, not to be willing at the least to redeem themselves from the devil's vexation by religion. (1914 [1611], 100-101)
In 1659, Samuel Pepys visited a synagogue during Simhat Torah, a lighthearted Jewish holiday. He has the following to say about that occasion:
"But, Lord! To see the disorder, laughing sporting and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more: and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this."
In 1662, John Greenhalgh also had occasion to visit a synagogue and remarks that "the Jews with their taleisim [i.e., prayer shawls] over their heads presented to the observer a strange, uncouth, foreign and… barbarous sight" (Glassman 1975, 96, 139-40).
The fact that Jews and savages were similarly stereotyped in the European imagination helped nourish the theory that the American Indians were originally of Jewish stock. Diego Duran, for example, concludes that the Indians must be descended from the Jews because of the similarities in their "way of life, ceremonies, rites, and superstitions, omens and hypocrisies." Duran also writes that "that which most forces me to believe that these Indians are of Hebrew lineage is the strange pertinacity they have in not casting away their idolatries and superstitions, living by them as did their ancestors, as David said in the 105th Psalm." In a similar argument for their common ancestry, Garcia notes that both peoples were timid, liars, and prone to ceremony and idolatry.
It is not surprising that European "travelers" described the religion of the Jews and savages in similar terms. After all, both savage religion and Judaism served as objects of contrast for European self-understandings, a technique that Hayden White (1978, 151) has called ostensive self-definition by negation. When "the need for positive self-definition asserts itself but no compelling criterion of self-identification appears, it is always possible to say something like: 'I may not know the precise content of my own felt humanity, but I am most certainly not like that.' " In European thought, Judaism and savage religion were often the "that’s" in the landscape to -which one pointed:
The secondary literature on European views of both savages and Jews emphasizes how each served as foils for European views of Christianity:
The Indian whom the sixteenth century voyagers came to know was, more than anything else, a creature whose way of life showed Englishmen what they might he were they not civilized and Christian, did they not fully partake of the divine idea of order… The Indian became important for the English mind, not for what he was in and of himself, but rather for what he showed civilized men they were not and must not be (Pearce, 1967; 4-5)
The stories containing references to Jews, which in many instances were carried over from earlier centuries, could be used to point out the superiority of Christianity over Judaism and to strengthen the faith of Christians who questioned the teachings of the church. The Jews, shrouded in legend, were an excellent foil, and the clerics used them often in their sermons. Thus, if they did not exist in the flesh, their imaginary spirits were resurrected to enhance the power of the church in the eyes of the faithful (Glassman 1975; 29)
Given the overlapping stereotypes of the Jew and the savage and the similar use to which such stereotypes were put, it is not surprising that numerous writers recognized commonalities between Judaism and savage religions. But there were other factors as well that enabled this inchoate anthropology of Judaism to emerge. One of the most important of these was the Bible itself.
The Principle of Monogenesis
According to the biblical account of creation, all humanity derived from Adam, the original human entity whom God had created. All peoples, including even the savages in the Americas, were direct descendants of Adam and Adamic culture. The majority of Europeans who wrote on savage religions, including those discussed above, upheld this biblical premise of monogenesis. Consequently, European writers expected to find similarities between the religion of the savages and the religion of the ancients. Since savages were descendants of the original stock of humankind, savage religion contains traces of the original culture and religion. Indeed, it was only by finding such similarities that these writers believed they could identify the point in time when the separation and dispersion of various peoples had occurred. Such parallels and similarities, therefore, did not pose theological problems for these writers. On the contrary, they confirmed the veracity of the biblical story that all peoples derived from one original stock of humankind.
Writers did disagree on the precise moment in history when the savages of the New World had lost contact with the original human society. Those who believed the separation had occurred after the Jewish revelation treated savage practices and beliefs as corrupted but nonetheless recognizable derivatives of Mosaic Law. Other writers believed the American savages had lost contact with original humanity before the Jewish revelation and consequently the parallels in practice and belief could not be explained as a result of an earlier historical connection. To explain the similarities, these writers repeated the argument used by the early church fathers to explain the commonalities between Christianity and the pagan religions of antiquity. The similarities were the work of the Devil who was actively worshiped by the savages. In competing with God for the allegiance of humankind, the Devil had aped the practices of the divinely revealed religion. The savages' vile and abominable practices and beliefs were bastardizations of the true religion of Jews and Christians. Lescarbot, for example, offers this explanation for why the savages of New France, like the ancient Hebrews, performed certain religious practices following the birth of a child:
"They can render no reason for this [i.e., forcing the infant to swallow grease or oil], but that it is a custom of long continuance: whereupon I conjecture that the devil, who bath always borrowed ceremonies from the Church, as well in the ancient as in the new law, wished that his people, as I call them that believe not in God, and are out of the communion of saints, should be anointed like to God's people, which unction he hath made to be inward, because the spiritual unction of the Christian is so" (1914 [1614 3:80).
It is now evident why a space in European discourse momentarily opened for an inquiry into the commonalities between ancient Judaism and savage religions. Such parallels did not yet pose a danger to the privileged status of revealed religion. The stock explanations available were sufficient to account for the similarities between ancient Judaism and heathenism without undermining the assumption that the Jewish religion had been revealed. These similarities were either the survivals of revealed religion that had been nearly obliterated by the human tendency to superstition, error, and sin, or the work of the Devil who seduced humanity away from God by inventing perverted versions of divine religion.
These first anthropologists of Judaism had no way of anticipating the use to which reason would put their comparisons. They had no way of knowing that they had helped prepare the ground for an all-out attack on the privileged status of Judaism and Christianity. Yet, in pointing to the commonalities between ancient Judaism and contemporary heathenism, these writers had unknowingly fashioned what would shortly prove to be one of the greatest weapons in the rationalist attack on revealed religion (Frantz 1967; Gay 1968, 15). Such commonalities generated a suspicion about the validity of the distinction between revealed religion and superstition. The deists, atheists, and materialists of the eighteenth century pointed to these parallels to prove that the distinction between Judaism and contemporary paganism was untenable.
It was this attack that subsequently made an anthropological discourse on Judaism impossible. Once it became clear that commonalities between the religion of ancient Jews and contemporary savages posed a problem for the unique and privileged status of Christianity, various strategies were devised to neutralize this powerful weapon of the Enlightenment. New schemes were developed to put such a chasm between ancient Judaism and savage religions that subsequent writers would no longer find it meaningful or relevant to draw attention to those similarities that had so intrigued earlier writers. In this way, the space that had momentarily cleared for a serious comparison of ancient Judaism and savage religions disappeared for another two centuries. It is to this attack and recovery that our attention now turns.
Judaism and Paganism in the Light of Reason
As reason emerged as a respected source of knowledge late in the seventeenth century and continued so throughout the eighteenth, nothing remained unchanged in the landscape of European discourse. Facts that previously posed no problem to revealed religion now undermined it. Arguments marshaled in support of revelation now threatened its claim to divine origin. One such reversal involved the use of the observed similarities between ancient Judaism and contemporary and ancient paganism. Both the biblical story of creation and the overlapping religious stereotypes of Jews and savages had created an expectation that such commonalities would exist. But as reason vied with revelation for recognition as the ultimate source of all knowledge, these similarities became a potent weapon in the rationalist critique of revelation.
In the vocabulary of the Enlightenment, revelation referred to the religion of both the Old and New Testaments. For orthodox Christian thinkers, the revelation of the Old Testament verified the truth of the Christian revelation. The New Testament incessantly quoted from the Old to show how various incidents in the life of Christ were foreshadowed in the writings of the Hebrew prophets. The fact that Christ fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament provided the proof of his messiahship. The validity of the Christian revelation, therefore, required an affirmation that the Jewish testament was of divine origin. As the orthodox Christian of Thomas Morgan's Moral Philosopher (1738, 15) puts it, "What I mean by Christianity, strictly speaking, or reveal'd as distinguish'd from natural Religion, is the revealed Truths or Doctrines of Revelation as contained in the Books of the Old and New Testaments."
It is not surprising that in attacking the idea of revelation and traditional forms of Christianity, rationalists felt obliged to ridicule the religion of the Jews. In launching this attack, deists in England, France, and Germany revived the strategies of ancient pagan philosophers who had attacked Christianity by heaping scorn on Jews and Judaism. Anthony Collins (1976 [1724], 26, 31) is representative of this impulse when he notes that if the proofs for Christianity drawn from the Old Testament
…are valid proofs then is Christianity strongly and invincibly established on its true foundations… because a proof drawn from an inspir'd book, is perfectly conclusive… On the other side, if the proofs for Christianity from the Old Testament be not valid; if the arguments founded on those books he not conclusive; and the prophesies cited from thence be not fulfilled; then has Christianity no just foundation!
One powerful strategy in the emerging rationalist critique involved pointing out the commonalities between revelation as embodied in the Old and New Testaments and contemporary heathenism. These commonalities generated a series of embarrassing questions for the idea of revelation. If one believed in a Devil, as some defenders of revelation did, how could one be sure that only the rites and beliefs of paganism were the work of the Devil? Perhaps those of Judaism and Christianity had a similar origin. Why should one believe the miracles and prophecies of the Old and New Testaments but reject those claimed on behalf of contemporary savage religions? On what grounds could one confidently affirm the revelation to Moses yet deny revelations claimed by other peoples? Was there any fundamental difference between heathen sacrifices and the rites of sacrifice that God had commanded the Israelites to perform? Why should human sacrifices of savages be treated as abominations when God had sacrificed a son?
Questions such as these helped subvert the longstanding dichotomy between revelation, on the one hand, and paganism, heathenism, or superstition, on the other? From the perspective of critical deists, these dichotomies were problematic because revelation did not have an exclusive claim to truth and because savages did not have a monopoly on superstition. Savages had sometimes discovered the fundamental truths of reason. Revelation, for its part, contained countless practices and beliefs that were antithetical to reason. For rationalists these facts confirmed their basic contention that reason makes revelation redundant and unnecessary. Everything that one needs to know can be derived by the exercise of reason alone. Otherwise principles of reason should not have been known to savages who had never been exposed to revelation.
Revelation Has No Monopoly on Truth, Heathenism Is Not the Only Superstition
Rationalists argued that the essential principles of religion could be known through the exercise of reason alone. By exercising that faculty, one could learn that God exists, that one has a duty to worship God, that virtue and piety are the best methods of worship, and that one should repent of one's sins.9 Since these principles were accessible to all persons through the use of reason, revelation itself was unnecessary. There was no need for God to publish "externally" what could readily be known from the internal light of reason.
The first prong of the deist attack involved the attempt to show that what revelation defined as its own essence was already known or at least accessible to savages. Without any revelation at all, humans in all times and all places could discover those basic articles of religion if only they relied upon reason. This Religion of Nature was, as Tindal puts it, "as old as creation." The basic articles of the Jewish and Christian revelation simply represented a re-publication of principles already known to Adam.
But the similarities between revelation and superstition were formal as well as substantive. Heathens legitimated their religions with precisely the same kinds of "external" proofs used to validate Judaism and Christianity. Miracles, prophecies, revelations, and ancient traditions from the ancestors were invoked by peoples the world over to defend their respective religions.
These similarities, rationalists argued, forced defenders of revelation to adopt a double standard. Their own external proofs were trustworthy; those of other religions were false.
Revelation thus failed to see that what it named as superstition in other religions was also contained in itself. As Voltaire (1962 [1764], 476) succinctly puts it, "It is therefore plain that what is fundamental to one sect's religion passes for superstition with another sect." From the rationalist perspective, the similarity between the claims of revelation and heathenism left defenders of revelation with but two options: if they continued to ridicule pagan claims to truth, they would have to criticize the identical kinds of claims made on behalf of revelation. Alternatively, if they continued to verify revelation in traditional ways, they would have to recognize the validity of those claims made by others. Either option signified revelation's demise. The first option would destroy revelation's foundation; the second would necessitate accepting the truth of religions in fundamental disagreement with it.
To Enlightenment thinkers, in the light of reason the doctrine of election also seemed absurd. According to this doctrine, God had made the divine will known to specific groups of people, first the Jews and subsequently the Gentiles. But numerous other peoples in the world had not been aware of these revelations. It followed that only the elect would know what to do in order to achieve future happiness. The idea of election thus presupposed an absurd notion of God.
Some deists considered the observance of the Sabbath to rest on an equally ridiculous conception of God. "What strange notions must the bulk of mankind have of the Supreme Being, when he is said to have rested and been refreshed" (Tindal 1730, 227). The doctrines of transubstantiation and the trinity are other examples of absurdities rationalists found at the very heart of revelation.
In addition to such problematic doctrines, revealed religion contained numerous practices that were as contrary to reason as any found among the heathens. The ancient Jews, for example, practiced circumcision and animal sacrifice, customs as barbaric as the rites of mutilation and sacrifices found in other religions.
Some of reason's most strident supporters went so far as to claim that human sacrifice, a practice so common among savages, was also condoned in the religion of the ancient Hebrews. The fact that Abraham responded to God's command to sacrifice Isaac (Gen. 22) and that Jephthah sacrificed his daughter in fulfillment of a vow (Judg. 11:29-40) indicates that the notion of human sacrifice was compatible with the religion of the ancient Jews (Morgan 1738, 131-33; Tindal 1730, 83; Voltaire 1962 [1764, 325). The idea of human sacrifice was also central to the Christian doctrine that God had sacrificed his own son.
While certain practices of revelation were considered particularly absurd, the deists considered all rites problematic. Any of the practices that had been instituted by revelation and that were not derived by reason (which included all of them) were simply superstitions.
The various rites and ceremonies contained in revelation were not different in essence from those savage practices reported by travelers. All rites and ceremonies owed their origin to the avarice of priests who introduced such practices under the guise of revelation and thereby made themselves indispensable. " 'Tis then no wonder the number of Gods multiply'd, since the more Gods, the more Sacrifices, and the Priests had better fare" (Tindal 1730, 8i; see also Herbert quoted in Gay 1968, 35).
As is now obvious, rationalists sought to replace the old dichotomy between revelation and superstition with an alternative opposition, Natural Religion versus superstition.
It is very well known, that there is, and always have been, two sorts or species of Religion in the world. The first is the Religion of Nature, which consisting in the eternal, immutable Rules and principles of moral Truth, Righteousness or Reason, has been always the same, and must for ever be alike apprehended, by the Understandings of all Mankind, as soon as it comes to be fairly proposed and considered. But beside this, there is another sort or Species of Religion, which has been commonly call'd positive, instituted, or revealed Religion, as distinguish'd from the former. And to avoid circumlocution, I shall call this the political Religion, or the Religion of Hierarchy. (Morgan 1738, 94)
This new way of slicing the pie completely subverted the old. In this new scheme, ancient Judaism, Christianity, and paganism met one another and mutually recognized their common nature and origin. Each had a share in Natural Religion and superstition:
What reason has a Papist, for instance, to laugh at an Indian, who thinks it contributes to his future happiness to dye with a cow's tail in his hands, while he lays as great a stress on rubbing a dying Man with oil? Has not the Indian as much right to moralize this action of his, and shew its significancy, as the Papist any of his mystick rites, or Hocus Pocus tricks? which have as little foundation in the nature or reason of things. (Tindal 1730, 112)
According to reason there were simply no grounds for a radical distinction between Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and the religion of the heathens or savages, on the other.
In sum, rationalists capitalized on an opportunity made possible by revelation itself Revelation predisposed travelers and missionaries to see resemblances between ancient Judaism and savage religions. Revelation taught that all peoples were descendants of one original human ancestor. That portrayal of human history led explorers and voyagers to the conclusion that religions in the New World had degenerated from religions of antiquity. Moreover, revelation had already generated a stereotype of ancient Judaism that was equally applicable to new heathen practices. In the sixteenth century, adherents to revelation did not yet anticipate the damaging implications of assimilating the religion of the Jews to that of the savages. But not long afterwards others did. The deists and other proponents of reason realized that such correspondences presented a serious problem for many of revelation's claims. In their judgment, the similarities between the revealed religions and ancient and modern varieties of paganism indicated that revelation was but another superstition, a fabrication of priests whose intent was self-aggrandizement.
Howard I. Schwartz, PhD, (Howard Eilberg-Schwartz) is an author, business executive, consultant, and social critic. His provocative writing is inspired by the unusual journey he has made in his life from seminary to Silicon Valley. Trained originally as a rabbi, he went on to receive a PhD from Brown University, and spent the early part of his career as a professor of religious studies, before moving to the for-profit sector, where he has worked for more than ten years as an executive in the high tech software industry, for both startups and a public company. His award winning The Savage in Judaism (Indiana University) has been recognized as a trend setting work in biblical studies. www.HowardISchwartz.com
