Good Morning Friends,

I would like to initiate an inquiry into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the perspective of reconciling humanism and religion. It is not the purpose of this inquiry to take a political position. I have my point of view but think I can add little or nothing to the debate in those terms. Also, there are plenty of other blogs and venues for discussing the question on historical and political terms.

It seems to me that a central question that is not discussed nearly enough, if at all, is this: did God bestow the land of Palestine to the Jewish people? And if "he" did, did God mean for them to take it violently? I'm not just talking about the covert operations of Jewish people throughout the diaspora in the 1940s. I'm also talking about the history that is taken for granted referenced by the Bible. It seems that the Jews, having emerged from slavery, violently conquered the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua, I believe.

We would also like to know what it means to possess a land. Does it mean that you must bar other people from possessing it or enjoying it. Consider this, many of us who came "of age" in the eighties remember from our early, early school years learning a little folk song. The lyrics went like this: "This land is your land. This land is my land. From California to New York Island..." etc., etc. The idea expressed is that, in theory, all Americans have the right of joint right of enjoyment of the whole of the country, no matter where they live in this vast nation. The right of joint enjoyment.

I am not a biblical scholar but it seems to me that there are very few passages in the Bible which purport to have God actually talking to someone directly. He had a chat or two with Moses. I don't believe we see any other dialogues between any other figures of Bible and God, except Abraham. The other accounts of God's orders seem to be third person accounts through funneled through the prophets and other written sources referred to in the Bible.

This question is not only of interest for Jewish people but for Christians as well. Christianity has always been at pains to reconcile the Old Testament and the New Testament. To oversimplify, the Old Testament depicts a warlike, bloodthirsty, vengeful God, Yahweh, in the tradition of the Near East of the time. In the New Testament this God, as expressed to us through the chroniclers of the life and times of Jesus, seems to have taken a one hundred eighty degree turn.

Let me back up a bit. We can't talk about prophets without talking about mysticism.

Time to shove off to work, unfortunately. I'll pick this up later.

wingedcentaur