The last post looked at ‘Prosperity Gospel’ and what the BBC thought about its message…..the Guardian reviewed the programme and within that review one astonishing statement stood out a mile and revealed a lot about a certain mindset:
‘The whole of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, can be read as a record of people coming to terms with failure. In part this was done by the invention of a heroic past, in the empire of Solomon’s time, something that may have been one of the truly great mistakes of history.’
Here Wikipedia explains just what the Guardian may be referring to:
‘King Solomon is one of the central Biblical figures in Jewish heritage that have lasting religious, national and political aspects. As the constructor of the First Temple in Jerusalem and last ruler of the united Kingdom of Israel before its division into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah, Solomon is associated with the peak “golden age” of the independent Kingdom of Israel as well as a source of judicial and religious wisdom.’
So the Guardian suggests ‘Somebody’ invented a ‘heroic past’……‘one of the truly great mistakes of history‘.
Who would that ‘somebody’ be?
The ‘Jews’ of course……the Jews invented their past…invented their existence as a ‘nation’ and invented their right to exist as such a nation.
The Guardian calls that ‘one of the truly great mistakes in history.’
Isn’t that verging on the old excuse for rabid anti-Semitism that the ‘Jews killed Christ’?
The Guardian here is blaming the Jews for much of what is wrong with the world today …..a modern version of course being….sort out Israel and Palestine and peace and harmony will break out all over the world.….Israel is ‘illegitimate’ and the cause of most of the world’s problems.
The Guardian itself admitted that it had allowed anti-Semitism to rear its ugly head within its pages….things don’t seem to have changed.
You could apply this just as easily to Islam.
Tom Bell tried that for C4 (please note “Why not read that whole interview with Mark Thompson?” /Tyler) it didn’t work out to well for either
Somewhat off topic. The Guardian isn’t the BBC. Trying to find anti-semitism in every mention of Jews is as dreary as people complaining about being arrested ‘coz I’m black’.
“The Guardian isn’t the BBC.”
Are you sure about that?
It’s an anti-Israel sentiment, not automatically anti-Jewish, although this kind of thing certainly lends fuel to that fire. Saying that the Hebrew Bible is a record of a people coming to terms with failure is not the worst way of looking at it, really. It’s a bit silly to call the entire history of the Jews a “failure”, seeing as how the Jews ended up running their own show again for a few hundred years before they pissed off the Romans one time too many. But there’s a lot in there about failures and prophets warning against failure, so I sort of get what he was trying to say. I think.
Having said that, the declaration that celebrating the “heroic past” of Solomon’s time is a “mistake” is actually a statement that the concept of Israel itself is a mistake. It’s not about Solomon’s wisdom or his politics. Longing for that return to Jerusalem (and, presumably, to some sort of powerful empire), is what led to the Zionist movement and, ultimately, to the one country which most people at the Guardian and BBC view as a mistake.
But this is the Guardian, so I’m not going to care very much about this or how the writer refers to a “swamp” of prosperity Gospel stuff in the US. He’d fit right in at the BBC’s US bureau.
er…like it or not, the empires of Solomon and King David are not thought to be historical by Biblical revisionists. There’s no historical controls or external validation for the far fetched accounts in the OT. To put it bluntly, it’s all bullshit. So the BBC, annoying as it is, is not Jew-bashing.
God bless us, one and all!
Aside from the archaeological evidence of the House of David, and King of Israel, you mean.
Isn’t that verging on the old excuse for rabid anti-Semitism that the ‘Jews killed Christ’?
No.
As with any early history, the exact definitions of what did and did not happen are vague. There is arguably enough archaeological and document-based evidence, in the Torah, Qu’ran and records from neighboring civilizations to display that Solomon and his Jewish kingdom were in existence thousands of years ago. Categorizing religious tenets as a way to improve outlook after a history of “failure” is however, a biased controversial statement that ignores the purpose of religion. No matter the belief system, all religions serve as a way of interpreting events beyond our control, and thus, from Christianity, to Islam, to Hinduism to Judaism, you can make that statement about any religion because it acts as a way of comforting groups in response to misfortune. But if you’re looking for a decent, slightly biased summary of Jerusalem’s history and the history of the Jewish people, check out this YouTube video from the JCPA: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheJerusalemCenter