-Caveat Lector- ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 13:12:36 -0800 (PST) From: Party of Citizens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [LIFE-GAZETTE] CI,JI,FI (next draft)
I am writing this manuscript because I am fed up with both CI (Christian Identity) and JI (Jewish Identity) propagandists making FI (False Identity) claims and thereby bastardizing science, faith and religion. What is taking place is "BEARING FALSE WITNESS" in the grossest fashion. If there are any honest people out there, they are welcome to critique this work. It isn't infallible but it is honest and any specific errors will be corrected; any improvements will be added. Keep in mind that identity just means identity. If you take out a passport in a foreign country, you are claiming a certain identity. The parameters of your identity include race, nationality, gender and so on. When Jews step off an airplane in Jerusalem, they claim citizenship in the land of the Ancient Israelites by virtue of asserting that they have the closest identity to those people. It is as if the Israelites had issued passports 3,000 years ago and those passports were passed on from generation to generation allowing people today to use them. But CI people also claim to be the closest modern counterparts to the Ancient Israelites. Then there are the less conspicuous Zionist claims of millions of those in the religious congregations of Protestants, Mormons, Rastafarians and so on. In major cities like Vancouver you can find Protestant Zionist churches in the religious directory. To help those wish to REASON their way through the many details (some quite technical) the following general framework for analysis is offered. Mind you, the fanatical dogmatists will never listen to reason so this is not for them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Both Christian Identity (CI) and Jewish Identity (JI) are contenders for being identified with the people of Ancient Israel. In other words, each group asserts that it constitutes the closest desendants to Jacob (Israel) and his children. Each asserts that the other is presenting fake credentials or Fake Identity (FI if you will). The various arguments sort into three categories as below: biological, cultural and spiritual. Overall they constitute an argument from the "Laws of Inheritance" to determine which people today can claim to inherit the ancestral rights of Jacob and Israel. If there are any major categories for analysis beyond these three, please bring this to my attention. (1) BIOLOGICAL: Succintly, nobody has the proof that either CI or JI is any more closely related to Jacob than his brother, Esau. Josephus, the famous Jewish historian from Roman times tells us that the Romans forced a merger of what was left of the Israelite nation with what was left of the Edomite nation (Esau's nation). Josephus is most explicit that this was a religious merger too. "From then on, they too were Jews" he writes. In the Tyndale Bible Dictionary, we read under "Edomites" that "John Hyrcanus complelled them to be circumcised and incorporated into the Jewish people. The Herods were of general Edomite stock". It is possible, though speculative, that the Israelites selected their mates for lighter skin colour as CI tells us. We do have the Biblical record that Esau's marriage to Hittite women displeased his parents but how much of that is a religious and how much a racial matter we can't tell. Nevertheless, both Israelites and Edomites were, based on the lineage of their "founding fathers", descendents of Shem and therefore "Shemites" or "Semites". Widespread marriage to outsiders could have caused both populations to genetically drift far beyond initial Shemite gene pools. And who could tell if the Israelites or Edomites were more likely to have gene pools which matched initial Shemite gene pools more closely? Adding to the difficulty we have the Ashkenazi-Khazar conversion which is standard material in the Jewish Encyclopedias. Ashkenaz is the name of a descendent of Japheth, not even a Shemite. Most Jews today are deemed to be of Ashkenazi-Khazar descent. Encyclopedia Britannica (1992) says "Today Ashkenazim constitute more than 80 percent of the Jews in the world...." The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia gives an even higher figure. The Tyndale Bible Dictionary tells us Ashkenaz is the "Eponymous ancestor of the successive inhabitants of an area between the Black and Caspian Seas" and is also "a descendant of Noah through Japheth and Gomer". That region between the Black and Caspian Seas was Khazaria in ancient times and later was called "The Pale". Refer to Professor M. Gilbert's "Jewish History Atlas" for maps of Khazaria and The Pale over the centuries. The CI dogmatists seize on this to say Jews are racially Edomite-Shemites or Ashkenaz-Japhethites. But they are poor geneticists and they ignore the matter that this is also a question of a GENE POOL FOR A POPULATION, not exclusively an individual pedigree. Also, from a gene matching perspective, what would we say if we had Jacob's DNA profile and the DNA profiles of every human on earth today? Would the 5,000,000 with the closest genetic matchings to Jacob be allowed "right of return" to Israel to displace the 5,000,000 Jews who now live there? Or would we match the gene pool of the 5,000,000 modern people with the Ancient Israelite gene pool after one or two or x generations? There is no getting away from the centrality of the laws of genetics to develop an argument in law for the "right of return" which is an ancestral claim. There is no doubt that the Ancient Israelite gene pool drifted. Explicitly or implicitly Ancient Israel (like all of the other ancient cultures) must have had a policy on inbreeding-outbreeding. In my 1976 text "Individual Differences" with Al Buss (New York Jewish BTW) you can read about the significant inbreeding depression found for the progeny of first cousin marriages in Japanese and Israeli populations (p. 215). Too much outbreeding and you lose the genotype-phenotype distinctiveness of your population. Too much inbreeding and you are likely to lose the entire group due to inbreeding depression. Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich writes in his book, "A Concise History of Israel" (1957, p. 80) that "Mixed marriage was not forbidden down to the time of the kings...The list of Ezra x. 18ff. mentions 109 cases of mixed marriage; but from Neh. xiii. 23ff. we know that they were annulled only in special cases." Certainly it was not forbidden. To a degree it had to be encouraged. Who is to say what degree of mixed marriage, IF ANY, would cause the population to lose Israelite identity? Inbreeding coefficients are calculated for populations by quantitative geneticists. There is no fast rule as to what the inbreeding coefficient must be before a group can be called a "race". Moreover, even if we do say that modern Jews constitute a race, that does not mean the modern race is matched to those called Jews in the Bible. They could well be matched to another ancient population as discussed above under Edomites and Ashkenazis. Inbreeding also figures in the retention of deleterious genes by certain populations. Once such genes are located in a population (eg by mutation or migration of the deleterious genes into the population) the more people continue to marry within that population, the more likely it is to continue from generation to generation and to show up in increasing numbers. Conditions like Hemophilia in European Royals and Tay-Sachs in Jews are examples. Again there is no merit in drawing incorrect conclusions about such genes proving any racial identity. They prove no such thing. The Cohen Y chromosome constancy is a special case of biological-genetic argument. But it fails to help us solve this problem of inheritance rights as some have claimed. The most that Y chromosome constancy could prove is a common male ancestor from the distant past. That male ancestor could come from one of many populations. Even if additional evidence should link the ancestor to a region like the Middle East, how does that help us? Many nations, cultures, tribes etc. lived in that region. Adding "name game" pseudo-evidence also fails to help. Some have suggested that the phonetic similarity of Cohen or Cohn as modern names to the Cohanim priesthood from the time of Moses is supportive evidence for JI claims. But it is not since there are similar sounding names in other populations as well, including the Khazar-Ashkenazi population and the Edomite population. Phonetically similar family names of historical importance from ancient times include Khan and Korah. The CI dogma that the Israelites were White is fatuous. How likely is it that the White Romans found their racial kin in the Middle East, engaged in a religious struggle with non-Whites, and failed to make any record of this whatsoever? SOME may well have been White but that doesn't lend support to the CI position. Consider also that there are no continuous biological pedigrees for today which take us back anywhere close to Jacob's day. Not for CI. Not for JI. There are no DNA matchings from the people of today to Israelites 3 millenia ago. There are no family picture albums and the few paintings, coin images and sculptings still leave us in doubt. And that is where the matter lies on biological-genetic criteria. In the greatest of doubt for all concerned. But this is certain: biological criteria alone do not give anyone a deed to the lands of Israel as far as laying claim to the Kingdom of Ancient Israel is concerned. Thus we turn to (2) Cultural and (3) Spiritual, criteria, to determine "Right of Return" based on identity. True identity, not FI, "fake identity". That's about as brief as I can make (1) while getting the main points in. Dogmatists from either side will shout that THEY are the latter-day Israelites by biological-genetic-geneological criteria. The reply of those who value truth and reasoning is: SHOW US THE PROOF. I have yet to see it and I have reasons to think it is not forthcoming. Three thousand years of history have blurred the record of matching to an ancient race so much that it seems unlikely it will ever be found. Some would say that the Almighty in His wisdom has given all races an equal opportunity to prove that they are His chosen people. (2) CULTURAL: Do cultural-social arguments favour one side or the other? Are there customs and habits and features of language which support the CI or the JI position and tell us which group is closer to the Ancient Israelites of 3,000+ years ago? These arguments are illusory. They can give the impression of credibility while lacking the substance and that can be seen by just a small amount of reasoning. For example, is speaking of the Hebrew language proof of ancestry? Not a bit. Hundreds of schools, perhaps thousands, in Christian and Islamic nations teach Hebrew. Speaking Hebrew doesn't make one a Hebrew any more than speaking Latin makes one a Roman of Imperial Rome. Beside that, "Eber" the original Hebrew lived many centuries before Jacob (Israel) and a number of Hebrew dialects arose. Ehrlich tells us "From geographical links it is probable that northern Mesopotamia was the seat of the Hebrews; the names of Abraham's ancestors correspond to names of cities near Haran: Peleg, Srug, Nahor, Terah." (p.4). The point is that an argument of identity made from Hebrew language usage is very circumspect indeed. Which Hebrew language should it be? Can anyone show us where the Almighty stipulated that His chosen people could only speak one dialect of Hebrew? Even if that was the dialect used by Jacob what is the likelihood that it held constant for the next thousand years of Israelite history? If we go back 1,000 years the English language is so different that a modern Englishman cannot understand it. Next, what about the well known dietary laws like prohibitions against eating pork or shell fish? If I were to adopt the diet of the Ancient Aztecs would that make me an Aztec? If I dine with relish on grasshoppers but reject ants on my plate does that make me an Ancient Israelite? The JI counterpart to the fatuous CI "White Israelite Race" dogma is found here. If JI really believes this Jewish Cultural Identity dogma, then what is there to prevent anybody on earth from adopting the attendant customs and habits, stepping off a plane in Tel Aviv and claiming instant Jewish citizenship which is what Jews can now do? Those customs or habits are well known. Adding the stamp of approval of all of the rabbis in the world isn't going to add anything to the performance of either a perfect actor and counterfeiter claiming cultural identity or another perfect actor who is is a genuine "latter-day Israelite". However, if 'acting like a perfect Israelite' is the standard, there must be degrees of perfection. How many points for the performance are assigned to dress, dietary habits, language etc? And then we come back to the counterpart to genetic drift. Accepting that the founding clan of Israel in ancient times consisted of sensible people, they would have recognized that their gene pool would change over time and that the change would be beneficial. Likewise for "cultural drift". How much cultural drift would they have accepted as beneficial and how much would they have called a "loss of cultural identity"? Can anyone today answer this question? Not likely. Consider too the many modern innovations from airplanes to xylophones. There are no ancient laws and customs to match. If there is any matching to be made it must be based on the spirit of the ancient laws and not the letter of those laws. If the spirit of the law is to accept progress when it betters the lot of a people, why not accept progress in dietary or nutritional science, linguistics etc. as well? If JI says CI is too lax in adhering to the ancient customs, CI might reply that they could set up a special training camp at Hayden Lake, Idaho and soon they will have mastered whatever dialect of Hebrew is required, eschewed lobster and abalone and pork and what then? Will JI accept that they are True Israelites? Did Ancient Israelites have pointy heads and did they run around in bed sheets? Would Jacob have held it against them if they did? Thus we can go on and on with these examples. Ancient customs and laws had their purposes. But there was both the spirit and the letter of the law. Concretely, there were known health dangers at the time associated with certain foods. As science dealt with these problems why should the taboos remain? IDENTITY is just identity. What would the Ancient Israelites have said about the customs to which their descendents should adhere? Like most people they would probably have said they wanted them to be living in a better world, to have healthy and happy lives. Given that spirit of the law, would they expect them to rigidly dress, talk, eat, transport and house themselves as they did or adapt to the changing times? Professor Terry Blodgett has found that some Germanic languages of today contain 1/3 Hebrew-derived words. Would the Ancient Hebrews have accepted that as an adaption to the modern era or would they have insisted on rigidly staying with the ancient language? If the latter, why not stay with all of the ancient customs? And then, to what avail is scientific progress? Does it make the Amish more Christian if they continue using horses for transportation as did the Christians of ancient times? (At least it reduces the likelihood of drive-by shootings). Are people more Israelite if they live just like the Ancient Israelites or would the Ancient Israelites laugh at this and say such people just don't "get it" when it comes to the spirit in which the ancient Israelite laws were given? Frederic W. Farrar, former Dean of Canterbury tells us about the ongoing clash of Hagadists and Halachists. He writes in his book, "The Life and Works of St. Paul" (1879) that "The two classes of students despised each other." The conflict was based on the fact that "...the Hagadists were grasping the spirit, while the Halachists were blindly groping amid the crumbled fragments of the letter." (p.34). What it comes down to is this. If an argument is made for identity from cultural indicators and those who are most matched in this way, why not for other ancient peoples as well? Could anthropologists or archaelogists studying ancient Egyptians or Babylonians or Incas suddenly say, "We are now the closest descendents to those ancient people because we now know and practice their customs"? If CONTINUOUS, generation-by-generation lineage were established from Jacob to people today, and those modern people were to adhere to some of the ancient customs that would be a different matter. Just as the royal families of Europe have that kind of continuous claim to their thrones, modern Israelites could claim to be the bona fide inheritors of Israelite title. Title to material assets like land is of course another matter, in contrast to title as a nominal claim. Various assets of the modern royalty have been lost over the centuries and there is no dispute in law about those losses. For example, none of the royal families claim to rule by "Divine right" today. If they did, they could claim that they retain the over-riding power over all of the legislatures of Europe. Today the closest we have to any people exercising "Divine right" is in the Middle East where Palestinians were displaced by the millions by JI people claiming the Almighty had given them the Deed to this land. More rational minds might ask to see that Deed and to see the specific borders set by the Almighty (not by very human wars of conquest). Modern JI family trees (pedigrees) do not go back any further than the middle ages as far as I can tell from checking the geneology reference works and few families can even claim that much of a geneological record. But there is a curious kind of continuous lineage which DOES apply today. That is the generation-by-generation SPIRITUAL lineage which is claimed by the Christian churches (whether Protestant, Roman, Orthodox or other) and is known all the way back to Peter and Jesus. Then it is curious because it switches to a generation-by-generation BIOLOGICAL lineage known from Jesus all the way back to Jacob, if the geneologies given in the Bible are correct. If this kind of spiritual-biological "geneology" is accepted, then CI in the broadest sense can claim Israelite identity. Thus the final determiner of true identity becomes our last category, spiritual. (3) SPIRITUAL: Since biological and cultural means for claiming identity leave the issue up in the air, what about spiritual? Christians and Muslims clearly believe that they are carrying forward the ancient spiritual teachings of the Patriarchs and Israelites in the best way possible. If they believed otherwise they would change their religions. Thus the identity issue widens enormously with respect to the populations effected. All Jews, Christians and Muslims (as well as some smaller splinter groups) believe they are identifying most closely with the great spiritual teachers of the ancient world. Who then is the modern "light of the world"? What criteria would be used to decide whether the way of life prescribed by this biological-cultural-spiritual group or that is more conducive to a modern "enlightenment" for the human race? The answer I gave to this was presented to the Jerusalem Post in a letter a couple of years ago when Prime Minister Chretien was visiting in that region. They said they were interested in publishing it though I don't know if they did as I read JP only occasionally. Most of humankind live in and around villages and cities. Why not see who can design these habitats to best benefit the human race? They can be very explicit about how the designs incorporate the principles and practices of their faith. To give an example, what about the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill"? Here in Vancouver proper with 500,000 people living in 36 square miles, >30 people are killed every year in vehicular accidents. Would city planners mindful of that commandment not design a new city when called upon to do so, which would attempt to eliminate all such fatalities? There is even a precedent for such an undertaking, at least at the village level. In the 1970's the UN asked the architect Peter Land to lead a team of 13 eminent architects from 13 countries to design a model village for the world. Peter Land did so and stayed on to lead the construction as well. The resulting village was "PREVI" in Peru. One of the architectural team, Charles Correa, was chief architect for a city built anew called New Bombay or Navi Mumbai, in India. The initial population of 250,000 is over 1,000,000 today. Today the world population increase approaches billion per decade and almost all of that increase will accrue to villages and cities and nearby surroundings. "Faith without works is dead" so the manifestation of faith in constructive and benign and life enhancing projects of this kind would be the best expression of identity with those who made their contribution as a light in the darkness of this world over 3,000 years ago. St. Paul continued to identify himself as a Jew (from Tarsus) and an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin. However, it was neither his biology nor his cultural identity which he emphasized. In Romans 2:28-29 we read "For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God". What kind of charity or compassion do we see in the design of the modern lifestyle? And that was the point of my letter to Jerusalem Post. It is inconceivable that a Buddhist would not want to see the complete societal expression of the Buddhist lifestyle manifested; or a Muslim the Muslim lifestyle; or a Marxist the Marxist lifestyle. And while the mere outward simulation of such a lifestyle has its limitations as discussed above, "faith without works is dead" is a maxim which applies in its own way to everyone from Atheist to Zoroastrian. To CI, JI or any other genre of believer, I would say, "Show us your faith in your works...your Culture X. And let us decide which is best according to the principles you espouse." What kind of city with surroundings would one expect of a "faith-based public works" project with the objective of designing and constructing a "culture of life"? Would a George Bush "culture of life" be the same as a Vatican "culture of life"? Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------ Yahoo! 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