The term "cardinal virtues" (virtutes cardinales) was first used by the 4th-century theologian Ambrose, who defined the four virtues as "temperance, justice, prudence, and fortitude". These were also named as cardinal virtues by Augustine of Hippo, and were subsequently adopted by the Catholic Church. They are described as "human virtues" in the Catholic Catechism.
Prior to Ambrose, these four qualities were identified by the Greek philosopher Plato as the necessary character traits of a good man, and were discussed by other ancient authors such as Cicero. They can also be found in the Old Testament Book of Wisdom,
which states that wisdom "teaches moderation and prudence,
righteousness and fortitude, and nothing in life is more useful than
these."
The theological virtues are those named by Paul the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 13: "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." The third virtue is also commonly referred to as "charity", as this is how the influential King James Bible translated the Greek word agape.
The traditional understanding of the difference between cardinal
and theological virtues is that the latter are not fully accessible to
humans in their natural state without assistance from God. Thomas Aquinas
believed that while the cardinal virtues could be formed through
habitual practice, the theological virtues could only be practised by
divine grace.
Seven capital virtues
The seven capital virtues or seven lively virtues (also known as the contrary or remedial virtues) are those thought to stand in opposition to the seven capital vices (or deadly sins).
Prudentius,
writing in the 5th century, was the first author to allegorically
represent Christian morality as a struggle between seven sins and seven
virtues. His poem Psychomachia
depicts a battle between female personifications of virtues and vices,
with each virtue confronting and defeating a particular vice.
However, Prudentius did not base his allegory on the cardinal and
theological virtues, nor did he use the traditional list of capital
vices. The combatants in the Psychomachia are as follows:
The success of this work popularised the concept of capital virtues
among medieval authors. In AD 590, the seven capital vices were revised
by Pope Gregory I,
which led to the creation of new lists of corresponding capital
virtues. In modern times, the capital virtues are commonly identified as
the following:
Although some medieval authors attempted to contrast the capital vices with the heavenly virtues, such efforts were rare.
According to historian István P. Bejczy, "the capital vices are more
often contrasted with the remedial or contrary virtues in medieval moral
literature than with the principal virtues, while the principal virtues
are frequently accompanied by a set of mirroring vices rather than by
the seven deadly sins".
Ancestral sin, generational sin, or ancestral fault (Koinē Greek: προπατορικὴ ἁμαρτία; προπατορικὸν ἁμάρτημα; προγονικὴ ἁμαρτία), is the doctrine that teaches that individuals inherit the judgement for the sin of their ancestors. It exists primarily as a concept in Mediterranean religions (e.g. in Christian hamartiology); generational sin is referenced in the Bible in Exodus 20:5.
The most detailed discussion of the concept is found in Proclus's De decem dubitationibus circa Providentiam, a propaedeutic handbook for students at the Neoplatonic Academy
in Athens. Proclus makes clear that the concept is of hallowed
antiquity, and making sense of the apparent paradox is presented as a
defense of ancient Greek religion. The main point made is that a city or a family is to be seen as a single living being (animal unum, zoion hen) more sacred than any individual human life.
The doctrine of ancestral fault is similarly presented as a tradition of immemorial antiquity in ancient Greek religion by Celsus in his True Doctrine, a polemic against Christianity. Celsus is quoted as attributing to "a priest of Apollo or of Zeus" the saying that "the mills of the gods grind slowly, even to children's children, and to those who are born after them". The idea of divine justice taking the form of collective punishment is also ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible, e.g. the Ten Plagues of Egypt, the destruction of Shechem, etc., and most notably the recurring punishments inflicted on the Israelites for lapsing from Yahwism.
Teaching by religion
In Christianity
The Bible speaks of generational sin in Exodus 20:5,
which states that "the iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the
sons and daughters—unto the third and fourth generation."
This concept implies that "unresolved issues get handed down from
generation to generation", but that "Jesus is the bondage breaker ...
[and] He is able to break the cycle of this curse, but only if we want
Him to."
The formalized Christian doctrine of original sin
is a direct extension of the concept of ancestral sin (imagined as
inflicted on a number of succeeding generations), arguing that the sin
of Adam and Eve is inflicted on all their descendants indefinitely, i.e. on the entire human race.
It was first developed in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, in his struggle against Gnosticism.
Irenaeus contrasted their doctrine with the view that the Fall was a
step in the wrong direction by Adam, with whom, Irenaeus believed, his
descendants had some solidarity or identity.
Ezekiel 18:19-23 states "the son shall not bear the iniquity of
the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the
righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of
the wicked shall be upon him."
Eastern Orthodoxy
Ancestral sin is the object of a Christian doctrine taught by the Orthodox Church as well as other Eastern Christians. Some identify it as "inclination towards sin, a heritage from the sin of our progenitors". But most distinguish it from this tendency that remains even in baptized persons, since ancestral sin "is removed through baptism".
Saint Gregory Palamas taught that, as a result of ancestral sin (called "original sin" in the West), man's image was tarnished, disfigured, as a consequence of Adam's disobedience.
The Greek theologian John Karmiris
writes that "the sin of the first man, together with all of its
consequences and penalties, is transferred by means of natural heredity
to the entire human race. Since every human being is a descendant of the
first man, 'no one of us is free from the spot of sin, even if he
should manage to live a completely sinless day'. ... Original Sin not
only constitutes 'an accident' of the soul; but its results, together
with its penalties, are transplanted by natural heredity to the
generations to come. And thus, from the one historical event of the
first sin of the first-born man, came the present situation of sin being
imparted, together with all of the consequences thereof, to all natural
descendants of Adam."
Roman Catholicism
With regard to breaking generational curses, clergy of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal have developed prayers for healing.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Greek translation of which uses "προπατορική αμαρτία" (literally, 'ancestral sin') where the Latin text has "peccatum originale",
states: "Original sin is called 'sin' only in an analogical sense: it
is a sin 'contracted' and not 'committed'—a state and not an act.
Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the
character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants."
Eastern Orthodox teaching likewise says: "It can be said that while we
have not inherited the guilt of Adam's personal sin, because his sin is
also of a generic nature, and because the entire human race is possessed
of an essential, ontological unity, we participate in it by virtue of
our participation in the human race. 'The imparting of Original Sin by
means of natural heredity should be understood in terms of the unity of
the entire human nature, and of the homoousiotitos
of all men, who, connected by nature, constitute one mystic whole.
Inasmuch as human nature is indeed unique and unbreakable, the imparting
of sin from the first-born to the entire human race descended from him
is rendered explicable: "Explicitly, as from the root, the sickness
proceeded to the rest of the tree, Adam being the root who had suffered
corruption" (Saint Cyril of Alexandria).'"
Judaism
The Hebrew Bible provides two passages of scripture regarding generational curses:
The Lord, the Lord, compassionate
and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness and truth
... Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the
children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and
fourth generation.
The Talmud
rejects the idea that people can be justly punished for another
person's sins and Judaism in general upholds the idea of individual
responsibility. One interpretation is that, even though there is no
moral guilt for descendants, they may be negatively impacted as a
consequence of their forebear's actions.
The thin bamboo rod in the hand of the Brahmana is mightier than the thunderbolt of Indra.
The thunder scorches all existing objects upon which it falls. The
Brahmana's rod (which symbolizes the Brahmana's might in the form of his
curse) blasts even unborn generations. The might of the rod is derived
from Mahadeva.
Although Shinto has its own view of sin, ancestral sin is not one
opted for. Instead, Shinto pushes for all humans being inherently pure,
with any accumulated sin, or kegare, being what is accumulated in one's current life. These are to be removed purification rituals, such as harae.
Greek mythology
In Greek mythology, the Erinyes exacted family curses. Certain dynasties have had tragic occurrences happen upon them.
The House of Cadmus, who established and ruled over the city of Thebes, was one such house. After slaying the dragon and establishing Thebes upon the earth that the dragon terrorized, Ares cursed Cadmus and his descendants because of the dragon's sacredness to Ares. Similarly, after Hephaestus discovered his wife, Aphrodite,
having a sexual affair with Ares, he became enraged and vowed to avenge
himself for Aphrodite's infidelity by cursing the lineage of any
children that resulted from the affair. Aphrodite later bore a daughter,
Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, from Ares' seed.
Cadmus, annoyed at his accursed life and ill fate, remarked that
if the gods were so enamoured of the life of a serpent, he might as well
wish that life for himself. Immediately Cadmus began to grow scales and
change into a serpent. Harmonia, after realizing the fate of her
husband, begged the gods to let her share her husband's fate. Of the House of Cadmus, many had particularly tragic lives and deaths. For example, King Minos of Crete's wife fall madly in love with the Cretan Bull and bore the Minotaur. Minos would later be murdered by his daughters whilst bathing. Semele, the mother of Dionysus by Zeus, was turned into dust because she glanced upon Zeus's true godly form. King Laius of Thebes was killed by his son, Oedipus.
Oedipus later (unknowingly) marries the queen, his own mother, and
becomes king. After finding out he gouges his eyes and exiles himself
from Thebes.
Another dynasty that was cursed and was subject to tragic occurrences was the House of Atreus (also known as the Atreides). The curse begins with Tantalus,
a son of Zeus who enjoyed cordial relations with the gods. To test the
omniscience of the gods, Tantalus decided to slay his son Pelops and feed him to the gods as a test of their omniscience. All of the gods, save Demeter, who was too concerned with the abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades, knew not to eat from Pelops's cooked corpse. After Demeter had eaten Pelops's shoulder, the gods banished Tantalus into Tartarus
where he would spend eternity standing in a pool of water beneath a
fruit-bearing tree with low branches. Whenever he would reach for a
fruit, the branches would lift upward so as to remove his intended meal
from his grasp. Whenever he would bend over to drink from the pool, the
water would recedes into the earth before he could drink. The gods
brought Pelops back to life, replacing the bone in his shoulder with a
bit of ivory with the help of Hephaestus, thus marking the family
forever afterwards.
Pelops would later marry Princess Hippodamia after winning a chariot race against her father, King Oenomaus. Pelops won the race by sabotaging of King Oenomaus’ chariot, with the help of the king's servant, Myrtilus.
This resulted in King Oenomaus’s death. Later, the servant Myrtilus,
who was in love with Hippodamia, was killed by Pelops because Pelops had
promised Myrtilus the right to take Hippodamia's virginity in exchange
for his help in sabotaging the king's chariot. As Myrtilus died, he
cursed Pelops and his line, further adding to the curse on the House of
Atreus.
King Atreus, the son of Pelops and the namesake of the Atreidies, would later be killed by his nephew, Aegisthus. Before his death, Atreus had two sons, King Agamemnon of Mycenae and King Menelaus of Sparta. King Menelaus's wife, Helen of Sparta, would leave him for Prince Paris of Troy, thus beginning the Trojan War. However, prior to their sailing off for the war, Agamemnon had angered the goddess Artemis
by killing one of her sacred deer. As Agamemnon prepared to sail to
Troy to avenge his brother's shame, Artemis stilled the winds so that
the Greek fleet could not sail. The seerCalchas told Agamemnon that if he wanted to appease Artemis and sail to Troy, he would have to sacrifice the most precious thing in his possession. Agamemnon sent word home for his daughter Iphigenia
to come to him so that he may sacrifice her, framing it to her that she
was to be married to Achilles. Iphigenia, honored by her father's
asking her to join him in the war, complied. Agamemnon sacrificed his
daughter and went off to war.
Clytemnestra,
the wife of Agamemnon and mother to Iphigenia, was so enraged by her
husband's actions that when he returned victorious from Troy, she
trapped him in a robe with no opening for his head whilst he was bathing
and stabbed him to death as he thrashed about. Orestes,
the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, was torn between his duty toward
avenging his father's death and his sparing his mother. However. after
praying to Apollo for consultation, Apollo advised him to kill his
mother. Orestes killed his mother and wandered the land, ridden with
guilt. Because of the noble act of avenging his father's at the expense
of his own soul and reluctance to kill his mother, Orestes was forgiven
by the gods, thus ending the curse of the House of Atreus.
Witchcraft
The term witchcraft is not well-defined but, at least within factions, the belief in family curses persists. In paganism,
the common belief is that curses passed down through family may present
itself through personal misfortune, such as addiction and poverty.
Another includes karmic debt, a concept suggesting that actions in
one's own past life--especially negative ones--carry on with them
through reincarnation.
Through personal self improvement and reflection on not only one's
past, but their lineage, one may free themselves from a curse.
Skeptical views
Modern skeptics deny that curses of any nature, including family curses, even exist, even if some fervently believe in them.
Modern Western attitudes to personal individuality and to individual achievement do not always sit well with notions of inherited sin.
Psychologists and philosophers tend to portray persistent human failings as part of human nature, rather than using "original sin" metaphors.
Historical examples
Nathaniel Hawthorne felt that his family was cursed because of the actions of two of his ancestors, John Hathorne and his father William. William Hathorne was a judge who earned a reputation for cruelly persecuting Quakers, and in 1662, he ordered the public whipping of Ann Coleman. John Hathorne was one of the leading judges in the Salem witch trials.
He is not known to have repented for his actions. So great were
Nathaniel Hawthorne's feelings of guilt, he re-spelled his last name Hathorne to Hawthorne.
The House of Grimaldi is said to have been cursed for their conquest of the Rock of Monaco, although stories differ as to how they were cursed.
Family curses in fiction
As he lies dying, in Shakespeare'sRomeo and Juliet
Mercutio says, "A plague o' both your houses", blaming both the
Capulets and Montagues. As the play progresses, his words prove
prophetic.
In Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, it was thought that the Baskerville family had a legendary family curse, of a giant black hound, "... a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon."
In the 2007 South Korean psychological-supernatural suspense horror film Someone Behind You,
a young woman named Ga-In (Yoon-Jin-seo) sees families and friends
slaughtering and attacking one another and realizes that she is followed
by an inexplicable curse causing those around her to get rid of her.
Despite all of this she is constantly reminded by an eerie student never
to trust her family, her friends, or even herself. Ga-In has
hallucinations of those who would attempt to attack her, then sees a
disturbing vision of a monstrous being warning her that the bloodshed
will intensify. The film was also released in America retitled as Voices.
Biblical archaeology emerged in the late 19th century, by British and American archaeologists, with the aim of confirming the historicity of the Bible. Between the 1920s, right after World War I, when Palestine came under British rule and the 1960s, biblical archaeology became the dominant American school of Levantine archaeology, led by figures such as William F. Albright and G. Ernest Wright. The work was mostly funded by churches and headed by theologians. From the late 1960s, biblical archaeology was influenced by processual archaeology
("New Archaeology") and faced issues that made it push aside the
religious aspects of the research. This has led the American schools to
shift away from biblical studies and focus on the archaeology of the
region and its relation with the biblical text, rather than trying to
prove or disprove the biblical account.
The Hebrew Bible is the main source of information about the region of Palestine and mostly covers the Iron Age
period. Therefore, archaeology can provide insights where biblical
historiography is unable to. The comparative study of the biblical text
and archaeological discoveries help understand Ancient Near Eastern
people and cultures. Although both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are taken into account, the majority of the study centers around the former.
The term biblical archaeology is used by Israeli
archaeologists for popular media or an English speaking audience, in
reference to what is known in Hebrew as "Israeli archaeology", and to avoid using the term Palestinian archaeology.
History
The
study of biblical archaeology started at the same time as general
archaeology, the development of which relates to the discovery of highly
important ancient artifacts.
Stages
The development of biblical archaeology has been marked by different periods;
Before the British Mandate
in Palestine: The first archaeological explorations started in the 19th
century initially by Europeans. There were many renowned archaeologists
working at this time, one of the best known being Edward Robinson, who discovered a number of ancient cities. The Palestine Exploration Fund was created in 1865 with Queen Victoria as its patron. Large investigations were carried out around the Temple in Jerusalem in 1867 by Charles Warren and Charles William Wilson,
after whom Jerusalem's "Wilson’s Arch" is named. The American Palestine
Exploration Society was founded in 1870. In the same year, a young
French archaeologist, Charles Clermont-Ganneau, arrived in the Holy Land in order to study two notable inscriptions: the Mesha Stele in Jordan and inscriptions in the Temple of Jerusalem. Another personality entered the scene in 1890, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie,
who has since become known as the "father of Palestine archaeology". In
Tell-el-Hesi, Petrie laid down the basis for methodical exploration by
giving a great importance to the analysis of ceramics as archaeological
markers. In effect, the recovered objects or fragments serve to fix the
chronology with a degree of precision, as pottery was made in different
ways and with specific characteristics during each epoch throughout
history. In 1889, the Dominican Order opened the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem, which would become world-renowned in its field. Such authorities as M-J. Lagrange and L. H. Vincent stand out among the early archaeologists at the school. In 1898, the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) was founded in Berlin, a number of its excavations were subsequently funded by Emperor William II of Germany.
Many other similar organizations were founded at this time with the
objective of furthering this nascent discipline, although the
investigations of this epoch had the sole objective of proving the
veracity of the biblical stories.
During the British Mandate in Palestine (1922–1948): The
investigation and exploration of the Holy Land increased considerably
during this time and was dominated by the genius of William Foxwell Albright, C. S. Fischer, the Jesuits, the Dominicans and many others. This era of great advances and activity closed with a flourish: the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in 1947 and its subsequent excavation, which would in large part be directed by the Frenchman Roland de Vaux.
After the British Mandate: 1948 marked the start of a new social and political era for the Holy Land, with the foundation of the State of Israel
and the entrance on the scene of the Israeli archaeologists. Initially
their excavations were limited to the territory of the state, but after
the Six-Day War they extended into the occupied territories of the West Bank. An important figure in the archaeology of this period was Kathleen Kenyon, who directed the excavations of Jericho and the Ophel of Jerusalem. Crystal Bennett led the excavations at Petra and Amman’s citadel, Jabal al-Qal'a. The archaeological museums of the Franciscans and the Dominicans in Jerusalem are particularly notable.
Biblical archaeology today: Twenty-first century biblical
archaeology is often conducted by international teams sponsored by
universities and government institutions such as the Israel Antiquities
Authority. Volunteers are recruited to participate in excavations
conducted by a staff of professionals. Practitioners are making
increasing efforts to relate the results of one excavation to others
nearby in an attempt to create an ever-widening, increasingly detailed
overview of the ancient history and culture of each region. Recent rapid
advances in technology have facilitated more scientifically precise
measurements in dozens of related fields, as well as more timely and
more broadly disseminated reports.
Biblical archaeology is the subject of ongoing debate. One of the sources of greatest dispute is the period when kings ruled Israel, more generally the historicity of the Bible. It is possible to define two loose schools of thought regarding these areas: biblical minimalism and maximalism, depending on whether the Bible is considered to be a non-historical, religious
document or not. The two schools are not separate units but form a
continuum, making it difficult to define different camps and limits.
However, it is possible to define points of difference, although these
differences seem to be decreasing over time.
Summary of important archaeological sites and findings
The caves at Qumran, where one of biblical archaeology's most important findings of all time was found, in the valley of the Dead Sea
Selected discoveries
Detailed lists of objects can be found at the following pages:
Biblical archaeology has also been the target of several celebrated forgeries, which have been perpetrated for a variety of reasons. One of the most celebrated is that of the James Ossuary, when information came to light in 2002 regarding the discovery of an ossuary,
with an inscription that translated to "Jacob, son of Joseph and
brother of Jesus". In reality the artifact had been discovered twenty
years before, after which it had exchanged hands a number of times and
the inscription had been added. This was discovered because it did not
correspond to the pattern of the epoch from which it dated.
The object came by way of the antiques dealer Oded Golan, who was accused by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) of forgery, but after a 7-year trial he was acquitted on the grounds of reasonable doubt. Another item that came from the same dealer was the Jehoash Inscription, which describes repairs to the temple in Jerusalem. The authenticity of the inscription is debated.
Biblical archaeology and the Catholic Church
There
are some groups that take a more fundamentalist approach and which
organize archaeological campaigns with the intention of finding proof
that the Bible is factual and that its narratives should be understood
as historical events. This is not the official position of the Catholic
Church.
Archaeological investigations carried out with scientific methods
can offer useful data in fixing a chronology that helps to order the
biblical stories. In certain cases these investigations can find the
place where these narratives took place, while in other cases they can
confirm the veracity of the stories. However, in other matters they can
question events that have been taken as historical fact, providing
arguments that show that certain stories are not historical narratives
but belong to a different narrative genre.
In 1943, Pope Pius XII recommended that interpretations of the scripture take archaeological findings into account in order to discern the literary genres used.
[...] the interpreter must, as it
were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and
with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences,
accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of
that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use.
[...]Let those who cultivate biblical studies turn their attention with
all due diligence towards this point and let them neglect none of those
discoveries, whether in the domain of archaeology or in ancient history
or literature, which serve to make better known the mentality of the
ancient writers, as well as their manner and art of reasoning, narrating
and writing.[...]
Since this time, archaeology has been considered to provide valuable
assistance and as an indispensable tool of the biblical sciences.
Expert commentaries
[...]"the
purpose of biblical archaeology is the clarification and illumination
of the biblical text and content through archaeological investigation of
the biblical world."
Archaeologist William G. Dever contributed to the article on "Archaeology" in the Anchor Bible Dictionary.
In the article, Dever reiterated his perceptions of the negative
effects of the close relationship that has existed between
Syro-Palestinian archaeology and biblical archaeology, which had caused
the archaeologists working in the field, particularly the American
archaeologists, to resist adoption of the new methods of processual archaeology.
In addition, he considered that "underlying much scepticism in our own
field [referring to the adaptation of the concepts and methods of a "new
archaeology", one suspects the assumption (although unexpressed or even
unconscious) that ancient Palestine, especially Israel during the
biblical period, was unique, in some "superhistorical" way that was not governed by the normal principles of cultural evolution".
Dever found that Syro-Palestinian archaeology had been treated in
American institutions as a sub-discipline of bible studies, where it
was expected that American archaeologists would try to "provide valid
historical evidence of episodes from the biblical tradition". According
to Dever, "the most naïve [idea regarding Syro-Palestinian archaeology]
is that the reason and purpose of "biblical archaeology" (and, by
extrapolation, of Syro-Palestinian archaeology) is simply to elucidate
facts regarding the Bible and the Holy Land".
Dever has also written that:
Archaeology certainly doesn't prove literal readings of
the Bible...It calls them into question, and that's what bothers some
people. Most people really think that archaeology is out there to prove
the Bible. No archaeologist thinks so.
[...] From the beginnings of what we call biblical archaeology, perhaps
150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use
archaeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was
thought to work. William Albright,
the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the "archaeological
revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that
Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archaeology
raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even
the New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing
to some people.
Dever also wrote:
Archaeology as it is practiced today must be able to
challenge, as well as confirm, the Bible stories. Some things described
there really did happen, but others did not. The biblical narratives
about Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Solomon
probably reflect some historical memories of people and places, but the
'larger than life' portraits of the Bible are unrealistic and
contradicted by the archaeological evidence....
I am not reading the Bible as Scripture... I am in fact not even a
theist. My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first
that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories,' often fictional and
almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some
valid historical information...
This is what archaeologists have learned from their
excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt,
did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military
campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even
harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon,
which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small
tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that
the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early
Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the
monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.
Other scholars have argued that Asherah may have been a symbol or icon in the context of Yahwism
rather than a deity in her own right, and her association with Yahweh
does not necessarily indicate a polytheistic belief system.
Professor Israel Finkelstein told The Jerusalem Post that Jewish archaeologists have found no historical or archaeological evidence to back the biblical narrative on the Exodus, the Jews' wandering in Sinai or Joshua's conquest of Canaan. On the alleged Temple of Solomon, Finkelstein said that there is no archaeological evidence to prove it really existed. Professor Yoni Mizrahi, an independent archaeologist, agreed with Israel Finkelstein.
Regarding the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said:
Really, it’s a myth,... This is my career as an
archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset,
that is not my problem.
Other scholars dispute these claims. In his 2001 book The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant? Evangelical Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser, Jr. included a chapter entitled, "Does Archaeology Help the Case for Reliability?". Kaiser states:
[T]he study of archaeology has helped illuminate the
Bible by casting light on its historical and cultural location. With
increasing clarity, the setting of the Bible appears more vividly within
the framework of general history.... by fitting biblical history,
persons, and events into general history, archaeology has demonstrated
the validity of many biblical references and data. It has continued to
cast light, whether implicitly or explicitly, on many of the Bible's
customs, cultures, and settings during various periods of history. On
the other hand, archaeology has also given rise to some real problems
with regard to its findings. Thus, its work is an ongoing one that
cannot be foreclosed too quickly or used merely as a confirming device.
Kaiser goes on to detail case after case in which the Bible, he says,
"has aided in the identification of missing persons, missing peoples,
missing customs and settings." He concludes:
This is not to say that archaeology is a cure-all for all
the challenges brought to the text—it is not! There are some monstrous
problems that remain—some created by the archaeological data itself.
But since we have seen so many specific challenges over the years yield
to such specific data in favor of the text, a presumption tends to build
that we should go with the text until definite contrary information is
available. This methodology that says that the text is innocent until
proven guilty is not only recommended as a good procedure for American
jurisprudence, but it is recommended in the area of examining the claims
of the Scripture as well.
Collins comments upon a statement by Dever:
"there is little that we can
salvage from Joshua's stories of the rapid, wholesale destruction of
Canaanite cities and the annihilation of the local population. It simply
did not happen; the archeological evidence is indisputable."
This
is the judgment of one of the more conservative historians of ancient
Israel. To be sure, there are far more conservative historians who try
to defend the historicity of the entire biblical account beginning with
Abraham, but their work rests on confessional presuppositions and is an
exercise in apologetics rather than historiography. Most biblical
scholars have come to terms with the fact that much (not all!) of the
biblical narrative is only loosely related to history and cannot be
verified.
— John J. Collins
As a young student, I heard a
series of lectures given by a famous liberal Old Testament theologian on
Old Testament introduction. And there one day learned that the fifth
book of Moses (Deuteronomy) had not been written by Moses—although
throughout it it claims to have been spoken and written by Moses
himself. Rather, I heard Deuteronomy had been composed centuries later
for quite specific purposes. Since I came from an orthodox Lutheran
family, was deeply moved by what I heard—in particular, because it
convinced me. so the same day I sought out my teacher during his hours
and, in connection With the origin of Deuteronomy, let slip the remark,
"So is the fifth book of Moses what might be called a forgery?" His
answer was, "For God's sake, it may well be, but you can't say anything
like that."
I
wanted to use that quotation in order to show that the results of
historical scholarship can be made known to the public—especially to
believers—only with difficulty. Many Christians feel threatened if they
hear that most of what was written in the Bible is (in historical terms)
untrue and that none of the four New Testament Gospels was written by
the author listed at the top of the text.
The word was employed as a term in its modern meaning as early as 1970 by Edward Said in his work "A Palestinian voice". It was also used by Alfred Sherman, the London correspondent for Haaretz at the time also in 1970, while expressing his surprise that the Palestinians' bid for independent statehood had garnered widespread support in the West.
Multiple observers in the early 1970s were under the impression that Palestinian national identity was a product of the late 1960s. Sherman was supportive of the view that it emerged after the disillusionment with the outcome of the Six-Day War,
in the aftermath of which Palestinian Arabs realized that they had to
rely on their own resources, rather than on the broader Arab world, to
secure their aspirations. However others pointed to its prior existence in the early 20th century in Mandatory Palestine, as well as the period between 1948 and 1967.
According to Sherman, Israeli Jews
were uncomfortable with Palestinian nationalism, since the aspiration
of Palestinians for statehood ("Palestinianism") mirrored exactly what
Jews had sought by Zionism.
To challenge Palestinians on this ground would mean Israelis would find
themselves querying a right they themselves had asserted and therefore
implicitly question the legitimacy of the Israeli state itself.
In 1973, John B. Wolf
made a similar diagnosis to that advanced by Sherman: the 1967 war had
compelled Palestinians to recognize the truth of their isolation from
allies, and their "Palestinianism" thereby developed two goals: to
reintegrate themselves with the land they lost, and strive to change a
politics that had excluded and "negated their presence", denying
Palestinians a say in their own future.
Edward Said's usage of the term
The word assumed some importance in the 1980s when the Palestinian academic Edward Said, author of the influential book Orientalism
which analysed bias in foreign representations of the Arab world,
adopted it. For Said, Israel and its supporters had striven to deny
Palestinians, with their long and fragmented history of dispossession,
war, exile and ethnic cleansing, "permission to narrate"
what they had undergone as a result of the establishment of the state
of Israel. Said defined the term as "a political movement that is being
built out of a reassertion of Palestine's multiracial and multireligious
history." According to Adam Shatz, US editor for the London Review of Books, Said endeavoured to elaborate a "counter-myth" to that which underwrote Zionism,
one written in counterpoint to the "dark historical fatalism and
exclusionary fear of the other" characteristic of the Zionist narrative.
"Palestinianism" for Said referred to a kind of open-ended dissident
narrative testifying to the contradictions of exile and military
occupation, one that was non-doctrinal, unobsessed with racial ontology, as a premise for the creation of a future for both Palestinians and Jews.
As construed by Ilan Pappé, Said's "Palestinianism" was a compromise between the narrow call of nationalist impulses and the universal values
he subscribed to, consisting in striving to overcome both Zionism and
Arab tyrannies by the three principles of acknowledgement,
accountability and acceptance: namely, global recognition of the Nakba
which was more important than achieving Palestinian statehood; in
obeisance to universal principles, Israel should accept its
accountability for ethnic cleansing,
as a prelude to a future return of refugees; and, thirdly, an
acceptance of the historic reality of Jewish suffering, a precondition
for integrating Israelis into the larger Arab world within which their
state was founded.
Haim Gerber, professor of Islamic history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argued in 2004 that, as one could see from the research of Rashid Khalidi
on the press in Arabic before WW1, a national Palestinian sentiment, or
"Palestinianism", was attested before the onset of fully-fledged
Zionist emigration under the British Mandate.
Two years later, Jason Franks employed it to denote the ensemble
of values, beliefs, traditions and history underwriting Palestinian
nationhood. In his analysis, it stood in diametrical opposition to Zionism, and both it and Zionism were twin ideological codes competing in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, both accounting for the terroristic, nationalist and religious elements driving the conflict.The roots of Palestinianism lay, he further argued, in the Young Turks' revolt
in 1908, which was crucial to the emergence of a Palestinian
nationalist sentiment in that period because the revolution in Turkey
freed up the press from Ottoman censorship,
and enabled local assertions of a distinct identity to emerge. It
developed thereafter "not only (as) a reaction against Zionism and
British imperialism but also against the wider Arab world."
In her 2016 monograph on Palestinian film history, Chrisoula
Lionis challenged the recency theory of Palestinian identity. In tracing
the development of national awareness, she detects a transition via
three core episodes from "Palestinianess", stirred by both the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and the 1948 nakba,
which crystallised this national consciousness of Palestinianess, to
"Palestinianism" proper, which she sees as the outcome of the Battle of Karameh in 1968.
Palestinianism as a threat to Western civilization
A year after Gerber's article, in 2005, and writing in the context of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Bat Ye'or, in her book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab which peddled a conspiracy theory,
dedicated a whole chapter to the word, entitled "Palestinianism: The
New Eurabian Cult", where she claimed that Palestinianism, which she
glossed as "Palestinolatry", was both a new vehicle for traditional
European anti-Semitism, and "a return of the Euro-Arab Nazism of the 1930-1940s." In her view, it emerged with the works of the Anglican bishop and theologian Kenneth Cragg and the Palestinian Anglican priest Naim Ateek, director of the Jerusalem-based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center.
Neither of these writers, however, had ever used the term at the time
of her writing, but Bat Ye'or deployed it to characterize what she saw
as ecclesiastical attempts to play on European consciences by depicting
Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation.
The impact of this "Palestinianism" can be discerned, she claimed
further, in the positions of major politicians in Europe, ranging from Jacques Chirac, Javier Solana, Romano Prodi to Dominique de Villepin and Mary Robinson, who came to consider the Palestinian problem a central issue for world peace. For her, Christian evocations of the plight of Palestinians betrayed an underlying tradition of Christian demonization of Jews, and had assumed the status of a "modern Eurabian cult".
More specifically, in theological terms, she interpreted this
"Christian Palestinianism" as heretical, because she claimed that it was
a variety of Marcionism.
In 2007, the idea that Palestinian national rights were a threat
to Western civilization, and in particular to its religious values, was
argued for in a book by evangelical theologian Paul Wilkinson, assistant
Minister at Hazel Grove Full Gospel Church in Stockport, Cheshire and a member of Tim LaHaye's Pre-Tribulation Rapture Research Center. A British Christian Zionist, in that year he devoted a chapter in his book For Zion's Sake, to what he called "Christian Palestinianism", as the antithesis of Christian Zionism. He pursued his assertions in more detail in 2017, in the second volume, entitled Israel Betrayed – Volume 2: The rise of Christian Palestinianism, of his study of replacement theology.
Wilkinson's critique of Christian Palestinianism holds that
Christians must acknowledge that God's "sovereign hand" established
Israel in 1948. Only pro-Zionists are true Christians, since the ingathering of Jews to Palestine is a precondition for the parousia, or return of Christ the King. Unconditional support of the Jewish state of Israel is premised on a Christian anticipation of the Messianic end time.
Wilkinson says that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,
their nation, language, culture and religion are hoaxes perpetrated by
anti-Christian liberals.
The very idea itself is merely "another tactical manoeuvre in the
Islamic war waged against Israel to effect her destruction." Other
Christians, in particular Palestinian Christians who criticize Israel,
speaking of the "perceived" suffering of Palestinians, foment Jew-hatred in favouring pro-Palestinian propaganda. Non-Zionists are anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizers. The book was excoriated by theologian Darren M. Slade. professor of humanities at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.
Modern usage
In 2010 Palestinianism was described by Israeli journalist Moshe Dann as an "ideology", that viewed Israel as a settler-colonial state, and one which had two immediate goals: Palestinian statehood in the Palestinian territories defined by the 1949 armistice lines, and the implementation of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
According to Dann, who repeated his claims in 2021, the long-term goal
of the "elimination of Israel" was explicitly called for in both the Palestinian National Covenant, (nullified in 1996 after the Oslo Accords), and the Hamas Covenant (a provision officially cancelled in 2017, but still endorsed by Hamas). This "ideology" had been, he asserted, legitimized by Israel itself by the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Dann claimed that Palestinian identity is a fiction contrived to oppose
Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and that Israel was
entitled to the Palestinian West Bank because it was full of Jewish
archaeological sites, with no evidence for any Palestinian historical heritage, there or anywhere else in Palestine.
According to Tower Magazine journalist, and former advisor to The Israel Project Ben Cohen,
Palestinianism is the core ideology informing recent antisemitism, one
that assumes the guise of a social movement which, bundling together
neo-fascists, liberals, extreme leftists, and Islamicists, is militantly
opposed to the age of Jewish self-empowerment after 1945.
In 2018, a pro-Zionist English blogger David Collier, whose
mission was described as one "show(ing) everybody how toxic our enemies
are", claimed that Palestinianism was a threat to freedom of speech and the cause of human rights, an infective agent of anti-Semitism:
"Palestinianism" is a disease that is anathema to
freedom, to debate, to openness and to human rights. ... It will infect
those who catch the disease with anti-Semitism just as it provides them
with a denial mechanism to protest their innocence.
Criticism of hostility to Palestinianism
In 2021, analyzing American bipartisan congressional attacks on Democratic Party colleagues ("the Squad") such as Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for their having criticized Israel's human rights record, the Zionist critic Peter Beinart, writing in Jewish Currents,
rose to the defense of the latter. He argues that the allegations of
the former, that such criticism was anti-Semitic, was itself evidence of
bigotry – "treating people as inferior because of their group identity"
– and takes the form of anti-Palestinianism, which is, he claims, commonplace throughout American society.
The bigotry of anti-Palestinianism, for Beinart, is "ubiquitous"
notwithstanding the fact that, unlike "anti-Israeli" or "anti-Jewish",
the word "anti-Palestinian" hardly exists. Any Google search, he found,
will unfold an endless number of links associating such politicians
with antisemitism, whereas Google yields no evidence that the
congressmen he cites – Michael Waltz, Jim Banks, Claudia Tenney, Ted Deutch, Josh Gottheimer, Kathy Manning, Elaine Luria, and Dean Phillips – who repeat these accusations in the House of Representatives, are hostile to Palestinians, despite his claim that there is strong evidence for their bias in this regard. Beinart considers that the group of Democrats accusing Israel of apartheid practices or Jewish supremacist territorial ambitions (B'Tselem) are simply reflecting an opposition to violations of international law: a view shared by NGOs like Human Rights Watch. Beinart makes an historical analogy between anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinianism.
There was no term to denote treating Jews as inferior before pressure
for treating Jews equally gained some political traction in the 19th
century. Once they had achieved legal recognition, the term
anti-Semitism came into vogue to denote those hostile to parity of
rights for Jewish citizens. A similar logic applies to the term (anti-)Palestinianism. Throughout the 20th century, American and Israeli discourse hardly tolerated a word like Palestinian.
It is still unmentionable that Palestinians also deserve equality, and
relentless allegations that those who advocate for Palestinian equality
are ipso facto anti-Semitic constitute, for Beinart, a form of bigotry.
The effectiveness of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism strikingly illustrates the way, thus construed, anti-Palestinian oppressive practices are silenced.
