Gathering all its children back again
May. 22nd, 2018 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
That thing I said about how I may not have anything to say about settler ideology vs. indigenous ideology in relation to the bible ... on further consideration, that is not at all the case. But for the moment, something else: today I started 2 Chronicles (which is one of those bible books that inevitably makes me think of Donald Trump (which is one of those things where I wonder whether Donald Trump is being stupid like a fox (cuz while it's to his advantage to speak the evangelicals' language, it's also maybe to his advantage to not speak it too well), although when you see the video he seems to get that there's an odd reaction but not get why)--and I don't know whether it's because of Donald Trump that I always read these things as e.g. "Two Corinthians"), the first chapter of which ends with what reads a lot like Solomon becoming the bible's first arms trader: he buys chariots from Egypt and sells them to other kingdoms. I figured that's got to be a thing people talk about, because selling chariots to other kingdoms sounds like arming your potential enemies, which is the kind of thing you'd expect would come back to bite the Israelites (and toward the end of Kings, as the Israelites are being carted off to Babylon, I became very conscious of the fact that these books are written very largely to explain the rise and fall of the Israelite kingdoms), so I went a-"google"ing and discovered that I had missed the part where in Deuteronomy it says not to multiply horses or buy horses from Egypt, and then just before Solomon is buying and selling chariots from Egypt he is also multiplying horses. Deuteronomy is warning not to become dependent on your potential enemies, and especially on Egypt--and Solomon also actually apparently forms an alliance with Egypt by marrying the pharaoh's daughter. From an internal perspective, Solomon is doing exactly what the Israelites were warned not to do, and they are going to pay for it. From an external perspective, you can easily suppose that the warning was written retrospectively. The funny thing is that Solomon is the wise guy, and in 2 Chronicles, his unwise horse trading is recounted right after God asks Solomon what one thing Solomon wants and Solomon says he wants wisdom. God approves of Solomon's wanting wisdom rather than riches or longevity and says that because he wants wisdom, it has been granted to him, and riches will be as well. (The Queen of Sheba story makes an amusingly direct and simple link between Solomon's wisdom and his wealth: she comes to see if he's as wise as they say; he is; so she gives him lots of stuff. The end.) Notice that God says that wisdom has been, and riches will be, granted to Solomon--I wonder if God is making the Socratic point that it is the wise who want wisdom. And then the funniest thing may be that God's granting riches to Solomon may be the undoing of Solomon's wisdom. I don't know whether this will be repeated in Chronicles, but it is striking in Kings that the description of the lavish temple he has built is followed by a description of the seemingly even more lavish palace he has built for himself.
One thing having to do with settler ideology that struck me yesterday: it seems like it can't be an accident that the Babylonians take the Israelites (I keep not knowing what word to use--Hebrews, Israelites, Jews?) back to where Abraham came from--so, not to the place to which they are indigenous, but the place to which they can trace their "origins". While Adam is the father of humanity, Abraham is the father of the Hebrew people (though this is complicated slightly by the fact that only one of Abraham's grandsons is the father of all Hebrews and only Hebrews--and why is it anyway that the guy identified as the original patriarch, the guy with whom God makes the original covenant, is Abraham and not Jacob?). So, the Hebrew people can trace their ultimate origin to Ur, in the sense that there were no Hebrews before Abraham and he was from Ur. (In the same way, the original place of Americans as such is America, and the original place of Scots as such, whether abroad or in Scotland, is Scotland. (And the original place of Canadians as such is ... complicated, even if there is such as thing as Canadians as such, which probably there isn't.) ETA: well, this isn't really right at all. The original place of the Hebrews as such, the place where they came into being as a people (as opposed to the place where they came into being as human beings, the place to which they are indigenous, i.e., Eden), is, as the constitution of Israel says, Israel--whatever that means.) But! then today I discover that the common identification of Ur with a place that was, at the time, on the Persian Gulf in what is now southern Iraq is not common to all traditions; some people have traditionally located Ur in what is now southern Turkey. So I really don't know whether, or to what extent if at all, the writers of Kings and Chronicles would have thought of the Babylonian captivity as being a return of the Hebrews to where their original patriarch came from.
One more thing: in 2 Samuel, God tells the prophet Nathan to tell David not to build the temple David is planning to build, because God didn't tell David to do it, and he will get David's son to do it. 1 Chronicles 17 repeats this story. But then in 1 Chronicles 22, David tells Solomon that God had told him (and note, had told him personally, not relayed to him through Nathan): "You have shed much blood and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood on the earth before me. Behold, a son will be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days." This is, that I can think of, the second time in the bible (after God after the flood) that anyone on the side of the angels has any second thoughts about all the killing. David tells Solomon this in the midst of extensive preparations David makes for the building of the temple--he seems to be largely taking the project out from under Solomon. which reminds me of another thing: in both 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, God is mad at David for ordering a census; 1 Chronicles actually says it was Satan who moved David to order the census (whereas 2 Samuel says that the anger of God burned against Israel and incited David to order the census, which ... makes no apparent sense), which I'm pretty sure is the first time Satan appears by name in the bible. 1 Chronicles omits the story of David having Bathsheba's husband killed so he could take her for himself; the NASB gives that story in 2 Samuel the heading "Bathsheba, David's Great Sin". So the sinfulness of David has been significantly re-framed between Samuel and Chronicles.
Yesterday's first: first swallowtail butterfly of the year, which this year happened to be a black swallowtail, feeding on dandelions.
Currently at Havelock: 16.4. High today: 17.6.
One thing having to do with settler ideology that struck me yesterday: it seems like it can't be an accident that the Babylonians take the Israelites (I keep not knowing what word to use--Hebrews, Israelites, Jews?) back to where Abraham came from--so, not to the place to which they are indigenous, but the place to which they can trace their "origins". While Adam is the father of humanity, Abraham is the father of the Hebrew people (though this is complicated slightly by the fact that only one of Abraham's grandsons is the father of all Hebrews and only Hebrews--and why is it anyway that the guy identified as the original patriarch, the guy with whom God makes the original covenant, is Abraham and not Jacob?). So, the Hebrew people can trace their ultimate origin to Ur, in the sense that there were no Hebrews before Abraham and he was from Ur. (In the same way, the original place of Americans as such is America, and the original place of Scots as such, whether abroad or in Scotland, is Scotland. (And the original place of Canadians as such is ... complicated, even if there is such as thing as Canadians as such, which probably there isn't.) ETA: well, this isn't really right at all. The original place of the Hebrews as such, the place where they came into being as a people (as opposed to the place where they came into being as human beings, the place to which they are indigenous, i.e., Eden), is, as the constitution of Israel says, Israel--whatever that means.) But! then today I discover that the common identification of Ur with a place that was, at the time, on the Persian Gulf in what is now southern Iraq is not common to all traditions; some people have traditionally located Ur in what is now southern Turkey. So I really don't know whether, or to what extent if at all, the writers of Kings and Chronicles would have thought of the Babylonian captivity as being a return of the Hebrews to where their original patriarch came from.
One more thing: in 2 Samuel, God tells the prophet Nathan to tell David not to build the temple David is planning to build, because God didn't tell David to do it, and he will get David's son to do it. 1 Chronicles 17 repeats this story. But then in 1 Chronicles 22, David tells Solomon that God had told him (and note, had told him personally, not relayed to him through Nathan): "You have shed much blood and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood on the earth before me. Behold, a son will be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days." This is, that I can think of, the second time in the bible (after God after the flood) that anyone on the side of the angels has any second thoughts about all the killing. David tells Solomon this in the midst of extensive preparations David makes for the building of the temple--he seems to be largely taking the project out from under Solomon. which reminds me of another thing: in both 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, God is mad at David for ordering a census; 1 Chronicles actually says it was Satan who moved David to order the census (whereas 2 Samuel says that the anger of God burned against Israel and incited David to order the census, which ... makes no apparent sense), which I'm pretty sure is the first time Satan appears by name in the bible. 1 Chronicles omits the story of David having Bathsheba's husband killed so he could take her for himself; the NASB gives that story in 2 Samuel the heading "Bathsheba, David's Great Sin". So the sinfulness of David has been significantly re-framed between Samuel and Chronicles.
Yesterday's first: first swallowtail butterfly of the year, which this year happened to be a black swallowtail, feeding on dandelions.
Currently at Havelock: 16.4. High today: 17.6.
