[Peace-discuss] Shlomo Sand: The Invention of the Jewish People

[C. G. Estabrook]

  You've established your Higher Seriousness with your reference to  how 
"historians Urred from the start".  But I think Ur being Chaldeeish...


On 8/9/10 2:53 PM, David Green wrote:
> The gist of the matter, according to Sand, seems to be this: the Jews were not 
> expelled from Judea by the Romans after the fall of the 2nd Temple (70 A.D.); 
> but they did continue to expand their numbers by proselytizing and conversion 
> around the Greek world (in spite of its painfulness for men); but Christians 
> turned out to be better at both P & C (perhaps abetted by being able to C 
> without being C'd; but there's no evidence offered for that); and that Judaism 
> subsequently becoming non-proselytizing and relatively exclusionary was in 
> effect the result of its losing out to the Jesus-freaks in the area of 
> salesmanship (which again challenges an established Jewish stereotype). But 
> again, as Sutcliffe stresses, the historical speculation, although 
> well-founded and well-explained in the book, is less important than the manner 
> in which the history of Judaism was "invented" in the 19th century by Reform 
> German Jews--including all the way back to Abraham--historians Urred from the 
> start in order to construct a nationalist narrative.
> DG
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
> *To:* David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
> *Cc:* Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>; Peace Discuss 
> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> *Sent:* Mon, August 9, 2010 2:18:55 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Shlomo Sand: The Invention of the Jewish People
>
> OK, I'm going to have to read it.  I'm teaching a History of Christianity 
> course in the Religious Studies Department this fall, and in fact there's been 
> some interesting academic work in the last decade on the inter-mixture of 
> Judaism and Christianity ca. 200-500CE.  I hope I have students au courant 
> enough to ask about Sand & the the early relationship between Judaism and 
> Christianity. --CGE
>
> On 8/9/10 1:00 PM, David Green wrote:
>> Hi Mort,
>> I'm more than half-way through it, and it's fascinating, although often tough 
>> going. It's also very well-written, well-translated, or both. I think it gets 
>> at historical truths, but more interestingly (as Adam points out) at 
>> historiographical truths from 19th century Germany, through the origins of 
>> Zionism, to the present. What's done is done, and Israel "exists." But it 
>> wouldn't hurt if people understood the implications of the likelihood that 
>> the Palestinians are descendants of the Judaeans of antiquity, and that Jews 
>> like you and me are almost certainly not. It also says a lot about the early 
>> relationship between Judaism and Christianity that is not well known.
>> DG
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
>> *To:* David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
>> *Sent:* Mon, August 9, 2010 12:30:47 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Shlomo Sand: The Invention of the Jewish People
>>
>> David,
>>
>> Thanks for sending this along. Have you read Sand's book? Opinions?  There 
>> are many on the Amazon web site for this book. Of course, how to distinguish 
>> the politics from the "truth" is a problem seen there.
>>
>> Mort
>>
>> On Aug 9, 2010, at 8:37 AM, David Green wrote:
>>
>>> A brief review of this book by Adam Sutcliffe, formerly on the faculty here:
>>> http://www.palestine-studies.org/journals.aspx?id=10668&jid=1&href=fulltext 
>>> <http://www.palestine-studies.org/journals.aspx?id=10668&jid=1&href=fulltext>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20100809/a763fac3/attachment-0001.html>