The power of religion is rarely discussed openly, save for gossipy comments of the wealth of the Vatican. Or the wealth of the British throne which is head of the Church of England. Or looking at pictures of Presidents and Prime Ministers with Rabbis.
Clearly there is a power there, so any insight into how they think would be useful. What follows is an excerpt of a review of just what life and death meant in the Bible times.
The reviewer inevitably compares modern materialistic man, with his/her sense of individuality and consumer ethic, to those that lived 1,000’s of years ago.
We can assume the devout today are reenacting the lifestyle of the ancients, and indeed enjoying the sense of community, lineage and territoriality that the Biblical people lived.
Being a modern man rather disenfranchised it all sounds very romantic to me. This extract suggests the ease there is in sending people off to war, when their lives are meaningless (dead). The only criticism I could offer is: if enslavement is death, why are we so involved in enslaving others. And it would appear that Muslims also value community, lineage and a sense of territory (not being exiled).
When I look at the NeoCons, and I know they think God has spoken to them. They are in fact a bunch of Oil people divorced from spiritual religion. And yes they are partnered with some Zionist forces, it makes one wonder if religion wouldn’t make a better job of it all. But then you look at Israel which is governed by Jewish law, where is the humanity? Now it is US election time, and at all times there are discussions about which candidates priest said what, reinforcing the importance of religion.
Anyway if we could judge todays politics with biblical values, it would be difficult!
The other form of biblical death is childlessness (I don’t have any, I would love to have, albeit with mixed fears in todays world, and with my situation, but that is another post) which makes me think of Edward Heath, he was a British Prime Minister some decades ago, and he was a bachelor, that could never never happen today.
And no I am not gay, and I have no reason to think this PM was.
The only sign of religion I see around me is a concern for image and ritual.
BOOK REVIEW: Life and death in the Bible
The power of God for Christians and Jews by Kevin J Madigan and Jon D Levenson . Reviewed by Spengler
Life and death to the ancient Hebrews were a moral conditions more than medical one, the authors explain. Enslavement and looming cultural extinction were felt as the grave, as was childlessness. National redemption and the covenantal promise of continuity of Abraham’s line were a restoration of life, a resurrection in the earliest stirring of Hebrew religious sensibility. The modern materialist view of life and death, the authors remind us, has little in common with the way in which ancient readers of the Bible understood existence.
One might go farther, and assert that the Biblical understanding of life and death still prevails today among most of the world’s six billion souls. The materialism of modern political science sadly misjudges the demands of the human heart. Nations are willing to fight to the death because their national life already has become a living death, in just the way the Bible saw it. In their hearts they already have gone down to Sheol, and the world holds no greater terror for them than what they live each day.
www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JE28Aa01.html
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Mondoweiss
