A Crash Course in Comparative Religion

[First posted December 7, 2014.

 

Warning:  This is a very loonnnnnggggg article but worth the time, effort, and patience.  It is from  our MUST READ/MUST OWN resource : Reuven Firestone’s  Who are the REAL Chosen People?  — a most fascinating read you can’t put down once you get started.

 

As we normally do with our recommended books, we feature only the ‘bookends’ —Introduction and Conclusion, sometimes excerpted chapters. Well, for this one we have gone so much farther than the ‘come-on’ appetizers, so to speak, because it is such a rich source of a topic most people are ignorant about.  The general thinking about “chosen people” is that this applies to Israel and Israel alone; well, that is not so, according to Reuven Firestone.

 

 Please read these posts:

• Must Read: Who are the REAL Chosen People? – by Reuven Firestone
• Must Read: Reuven Firestone – 2 – The Language of Chosenness
• Must Read: Reuven Firestone – 3 – In the beginning …
• Must Read: Reuven Firestone – 4 – Chosenness in the Ancient Near East

And so we continue this series, this time featuring one of the most interesting chapters (actually ALL of them are!) on how new religions develop, how established religions typically react, and so on. This is in effect an introduction to Comparative Religion; figure out where your church/fellowship/religion/sect belongs in the scheme of established/institutional world religions.

 

We Sinaites have gone through the same experience of new, fledgling, considered ‘cultic’ God-movements, so this chapter warns us what will happen to us unless Sinai 6000 develops fully and produce numbers in terms of membership (a rabbi already warned us about this same predictable destiny). We are hardly concerned about disappearing as a ‘witness for YHWH’ for the time we have been privileged to declare Him in this website since we barely get a foot in the door in the circles we circulate.

 

Timely reminder:  We are not a religion, we are a way of life aligned with our God YHWH’s prescribed life for believers in Him.  The ‘way’ we have chosen to live is as antiquated as the forever-relevant Torah, so whether or not Sinai 6000 survives beyond our core community, it is not and never has been about us, it’s about YHWH’s Way and many others will continue the work of making His Name and His Way known.   Actually as we keep reiterating, there is no more reason not to know YHWH and His Guidelines for Living [TORAH] in this day and age of Information Technology; ignorance is as valid a choice as openness to more knowledge and continuing education on any subject. To quote an educator/founder of a university who happens to be my father,

“Education is a birthright.”

“EDUCATION is a SHIELD against the INTOLERANCE of the mind.” 

 

 The intent of our MUST OWN series is for our readers to add the recommended book to your library, it is worth the purchase! Reformatting, highlights, and illustrations added.—Admin1]

 

Best Practice Models and Religious Success

 

New Religious Movements

 

New religious movements did not appear only in the Roman period. They appear in every generation, and we are witnesses to the emergence of many new religious movements in our own day. We usually call these movements sects or cults.

 

In the academic study of religion, new religious movements became a field of interest beginning in the seventies (insiders refer to them as NRMs), and it is estimated that thousands have been born since the end of World War II.

 

Some of those that are better known include —–

• International Society for Krishna Consciousness (or Hare Krishna, founded 1966),
• the Family (or Children of God, founded 1968), Aum Shinrikyo (founded 1986),
• Falun Gong (founded 1992),
• Church of Scientology (founded 1954),
• the Unification Church (or “Moonies,” founded 1954),
• the Way International (founded 1942)
• and Wicca (founded 1951).

Many well-known and well-respected religious of today were founded as new religious movements during the century before World War II, such as the—

• Pentecostal movement,
• the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons),
• Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bahai Faith,
• and Christian Science. 

 

One of the questions that scholars in the field ask is why new religious movements come into existence. A definitive answer is hard to come by, since our human interest in spirituality and religion is deeply associated with the complexity of human nature and the search for meaning and a life of the spirit. Perhaps our unending spiritual drive is what was meant by the biblical notion of humanity having been created in the image of God. Certainly, our need to be true to our own inner spirit motivates many of us to think deeply about religious issues and evaluate where we fit into the religious framework that we are a part of.   Some individuals seem to be open to a fresh religious call and are willing to pursue a new course.

 

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Sometimes new religious movements emerge as factions within existing religions. These are usually called sects. They may begin as particularly active segments of the religious mainstream, or they may become inspired by a strong or charismatic leader. These groups usually remain committed to the larger institution, but occasionally they begin to see themselves as different enough from the mainstream to be considered (either by themselves or by others) as moving beyond the margins of acceptability. Under pressure from the mainstream, they may return to the fold, but that pressure may also make them feel uncomfortable enough that they seek independence. Sometimes they are pushed out. Once the faction is defined as having separated from the institution, the pressure from the mainstream often changes to hostility. If it moves far enough away from the core, it is labeled a heresy.

 

Sometimes a new religious movement does not emerge from within an established religious systems, but from outside of it. When this occurs, it is institutionally independent and, in our day, is called a cult.   Sect, heresy, and cult are all negative terms, and they indicate how the mainstream feels about them. The new movements may indeed be outrageous, but whether they are or not, mainstream reaction to them is quite consistent.

• The new movements are always opposed.
• They are threatening.
• They challenge the assumptions and comfort that we derive from our own religion,
• and they may stimulate or activate our occasional uncertainty about what we believe in.
• They also challenge many of the basic assumptions that we take for granted in our religions.
• They may also confuse our children, who are naïve and vulnerable.
• And, most threatening, they may be tempting enough to our children to take them away from us!

 

The Opposition

 

 Establishment religion always opposes new religions. Sometimes establishment opposition to new religious movements is expressed by ignoring their existence with the hope that they will collapse on their own and disappears. And, in fact, most new religious movements do die out within a generation. But not all new religions fail, and mainstream opposition to them can become quite aggressive.

 

Opposition to new religious movements in the Middle Ages led to violence, inquisitions, and massacres but violence usually happens only after all other means of weakening the new movements has failed. The most common attack is by means of delegitimizing the group through public condemnation, censure, and rejection. New movements are typically identified as cults, as existing outside the realm of real spirituality. Their leaders are accused of cynically creating their own private religion in order to exploit their followers (which some have indeed done). Some are labeled as satanic or evil. All newly emerging religious movements are tagged as not being true religion.

 

Whether labeled as sect, heresy, or cult, if the religious movement succeeds in attracting a large enough following it becomes increasingly difficult to marginalize it. With enough followers, the new movement can withstand the pressures of the establishment to destroy it. If the movement can endure for long enough and gain a critical mass of followers, it “graduates” from being merely a movement and begins to attain the status and influence of an accepted religion.

 

One of the questions that students of new religious movement ask is, why do some succeed while most simply die out and disappear? In many cases, the reason for failure is quite clear. Sometimes the leader is so personally unstable that he or she is abandoned by his or her followers. In other cases, the group is so poor that it cannot sustain itself, so it falls apart and people go their own way. Sometimes bickering and poor leadership cause the movement collapse through rancor and ill will among the members. Given the many strikes against the success of new religious movements, the more difficult question to answer is, why do some succeed? 

 

One answer is that is a successful new religion has found the true meaning of life or more closely reflects the true will of God than others, including the religious establishments. This is a common answer among adherents of the new religions themselves, but one that, needless to say, cannot be proven. Students of religious studies look at other ways to analyze the movements’ success.

Image from www.beinwonder.com

New Language in Thinking about Religion 

 

Whatever the occasions of their origin, religions as we know them today are all organized and run by people. They function as institutions and, as such, they tend to behave and operate similarly to other human institutions and organizations. Some of the most insightful studies of the question of religious success use the language and theory of the market and business organization. When examined as institutions (as opposed to divinely ordained sacred communities), religions tend to look and act in a way that is reminiscent of corporations or commercial enterprises.

 

It is not my intent to cheapen the important spiritual and moral-ethical role of religion by comparing it morally to the cutthroat and often ethically lax operations of business. What follows is not a moral comparison, but rather a structural or functional comparison.

 

Religions are understood as deriving from the Infinite with the goal of realizing the will of God. Whether or not religions reflect God’s true will, however,

• they are organized by people.
• Their message is delivered by people.
• They are represented by people,
• and they reach out to people.

Social scientists have remarked how they tend to function structurally, therefore, in ways that are not so different from the ways that other human organizations function. A model that some scholars of religion have suggested to offer helpful insight into the behavior or religious institutions, therefore, is that of business organization. 

 

 

For example,

• religions compete with one another for followers.
• They often promote their particular approach to God and prayer in ways that look much like some forms of advertising.
• Every religion offers certain benefits.
• All claim to help their followers live better and happier lives,
• and all promise personal compensation of one sort or another for belonging.
• Common rewards include a sense of warm community, fellowship, atonement or forgiveness of sin, spiritual fulfillment, and even everlasting life or salvation.
• Although the nature of religious rewards is quite different from promises of happiness or pleasure associated with purchasing a particular brand of muffin or make of dishwasher, structurally speaking, the promise of reward for consumption is identical.

 

In the business world, when rival companies offer different brands of the same product, such as cars or stereos, they compete with one another by trying to convince the potential consumer that their model will provide better quality and more advantages than that of their competition. We observe a similar kind of competition among varieties of religion. The most successful religions by most standards are those that have the largest number of adherents. Why would so many people belong if the religion were not meaningful and fulfilling? Large or growing religious movements and churches often throw around their membership numbers as a way of demonstrating that they are successful.

 

Those who join religious communities or participate in worship or other religious activities function as religious consumers. Every community’s religious followers represent a “market share” of these consumers. When a religion controls a large market share of the religious consumer market, it becomes powerful and has a corresponding influence on society as a whole. Because a generally accepted marker of success is in the numbers, those with the greater numbers are considered most successful.

 

In successful religion, as in successful business, the best models tend to be emulated. In modern business this is a conscious and carefully calculated process. In religion, it is likely to be less calculated, but, as in business, a successful religion needs to control a certain share of the consumer market to avoid going “bankrupt.” No religion can survive without the aid of a minimal amount of supporters’ energy, commitment, personal abilities, and material resources.

 

To extend this business model, new religious movements can be likened to new consumer products that become available to consumers. They tend to function like a new company with its own, unique product or brand on the “religious market.” In order to succeed in gaining the necessary market share of support to survive, new religious movements must demonstrate to the pool of potential consumers that they are authentic and that they have something to offer that will meet consumer’s religious needs. To use more religious language, new religious movements must convince an adequate number of potential believers that they are authoritative and that they truly represent the divine will. This is public legitimatizing. It is similar to a business program of branding that establishes a sense of confidence and trust among consumers.

 

One way that new religions demonstrate their religious legitimacy is by representing themselves in ways that are easily recognized as authentic by potential joiners. Successful new religions do this intuitively by adopting familiar religious symbols. To take one simple and common example, new Christian religious movements always use some form of the cross as a sign that they are an authentic form of Christianity. Most other symbols of authentic religion, such as prophecy, revelation, covenant, and scripture, are not as physical, but they are no less important foundations upon which successful religion is based. We will observe below how the notion of covenant appears in the earliest literary layers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as a symbol of authenticity. Leaders of new religions are usually considered by their followers to be prophets who speak in the name of God.

 

Successful new religious movements manage to incorporate authenticating symbols of established religions in their own representational systems. We must keep in mind that image, symbols, belief concepts, and rituals form the building blocks of religion. They are not necessarily exclusive to any one system. It is the unique form or style of these and their particular combinations that make for the many different expressions of religion. 

 

One classic example of the use and reuse of previous religious symbols can be found in the emergence of ancient Israelite monotheism. For example, many Israelite customs, traditions, rituals, and conventions can be found among contemporary and more ancient neighboring religions in the ancient Near East. We have learned from the science of archaeology that the altars in ancient Israel looked like Canaanite altars. The layout of the Tabernacle and Temple look very similar to the layout of other holy structures found in ancient sites in the region. The Bible attests that there were non-Israelite priests and non-Israelite prophets (Exod. 3:1; Numbers 22). Even religious poems with uncanny linguistic and literary parallels to biblical psalms have been discovered in the libraries of ancient civilizations unearthed in archaeological digs. But the language of those poems reveres other gods.

 

What made Israelite psalms unique was the extraordinary way that they used well-known idioms and expressions in their praise and worship of the One Great God. Different religions share many of the same generic symbols and institutions. It is the unique way in which these symbols and institutions are conveyed and interpreted that provides the special nature of each religion.

 

Keep in mind that Israelite religion was considered ancient when it was encountered by the early Greeks in the fourth century BCE. It became the only religious survivor form the ancient Near East. The earliest Greek writers on the Jews, such as Theophrastus, Megasthenes, and Clearchus of Soli, all of whom lived in the fourth to third centuries BCE, gave Israel their highest compliment, for they considered Israel to be a nation of philosophers. As a most ancient expression of God’s communication to humanity, it was natural for Israel’s religion to be emulated, whether consciously or not, by new religious movements in formation under the Romans and after. Those that were most successful managed to integrate some of the most powerful symbols, images, and motifs from the religion of biblical Israel. As we have learned above, one of the most central motifs of ancient Israel was chosenness.

 

The religion of Israel is the mother of monotheisms. It was natural, therefore, that it became the definitive model for articulating the relationship with the One Great God.

One classic marker of that relationship is God’s revelation and its record in scripture. God’s revelation of scripture is exceedingly rare, and it is always local. It may be intended for a universal audience, but it is always given to a discrete community, and it marks that community as special, unique—and limited. The extraordinary rarity of scriptural revelation and the limited nature of its reception within a distinct human community are characterized and symbolized in monotheism by the notion of chosenness.

 

Chosenness was a natural and appealing motif to be absorbed by new religious movements because it epitomizes the unique and exclusive relationship between God and humanity.  In a world of competing religions, being the one community truly chosen by God conveys a clear message to potential joiners who seek a meaningful religious community and a path to the Divine. 

 

Chosenness was emblematic of Israelite religion because of its origin among ancient Near Eastern polytheisms. When the religion of Israel became the first and thus most famous expression of monotheism, it was natural for chosenness to become emblematic of new forms of monotheism as well, those trying to compete in the religious market. So when we examine the successful monotheistic religious movements that emerged out of the crucible of the ancient Near East, we cannot help but notice that they all incorporate this one foundational aspect of ancient Israelite religion. A number of other common motifs are also found them. But chosenness, associated with scriptural revelation and authenticated by it, is at the core and incorporated by them all.

 

The Counterattack 

 

Students of new religious movements have articulated something that we already know intuitively from our own experience: that both the leaders and the rank-and–file of establishment religions do not care for new religions—to say the least.

• Religious leaders and functionaries preach against them.
• They dispute with them.
• They claim that new religions make metaphysical promises that cannot be fulfilled.
• They often shame leaders of new religions and argue that they manipulate innocent people to believe in them only in order to benefit themselves.
• The bottom lime of their argument is that new religious movements are not authoritative representations of the divine will.
• They are not authentic, not “true religion.”

These very positions were articulated by representatives of establishment religions in reference to the Jesus movement as it emerged in Late Antiquity. They were also articulated in reference to emerging Islam. Christianity and Islam are the two most successful religions in human history, based on their share of religious consumers, and they have long since behaved like established religions. But they were once new religious movements themselves, and they suffered, as all new religious movements do, from the attacks of the establishment. 

 

The New Testament repeatedly complains about the attitudes of the establishment that seemed so intent on destroying the new Jesus movement. Jews or Pharisees are often identified as trying to discredit Jesus and harassing his followers (Matt. 22:15-30; Mark 7:1-5, 12:13-25; Acts 5:17, 6:8-15, 8:3, 9:1-2; Gal. 4:29, 5:11; 2 Cor. 11:21-24). Romans were also opposed to the new movement and its supporters and acted forcibly against them (Acts 16:19-24; 2 Cor. 11:26). Many parts of the New Testament complain about the general persecution that Jesus and his supporters suffered (Romans 8:35; 1 Cor. 4:11-13; 2 Thess. 1:5; Heb. 10:32; 1 Pet. 4:16).

 

 

The Qur’an likewise complains about the attitudes of the establishment religions of its own day to the newly emerging movement of Islam. The major threat to Islam came from Arab polytheists, who are depicted repeatedly as trying to destroy the young movement (2:217, 3:195, 9:107, 16:110, 22:40, 41:26). Jews and Christians are sometimes lumped together as “People of the Book” in the Qur’an, and they are portrayed as consistently opposing and disparaging the Muslim movement as well (2:74-75, 2:100-101, 2:109, 3:69-72, 4:153, 5:57-59, 4:146-147).

 

 

Most new religious movements are not able to sustain themselves in the face of attacks by establishment opposition, but some are able to fight back. As the weaker party in the relationship, they are not in a position to fight physically, and often they are not even able defend themselves against physical attack. But the successful movements fight back nevertheless, and they do so through argument. They counter the accusations of the opposition and often engage in a literary counterattack. The purpose of the rhetorical thrust and parry seems not to disable the opponent so much as to provide encouragement to the beleaguered followers who suffer abuse from the establishment. Counterattack provides moral support for those who need it most. 

 

 

Scripture and Polemic

 

You can observe this kind of argument and literary counterattack within the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Passionate, urgent, and aggressive argument is called polemic, and polemic is deeply embedded in monotheist scripture. In fact, because the three scriptures represent the earliest record we have for the period during which the three great monotheistic religions emerged, they contain within them valuable information about the tensions, resentment, and conflict that surround their origins. 

 

 

Scriptures are collections of literary materials that teach about God and tell the epic tales of the religion and its founders. They also faithfully reflect the mood and attitude of the early community of believers in the earliest stages of their emergence into history.

 

 

Given the hostile environments in which new religions inevitably arise, it is not surprising to observe that scriptures articulate anger and even rage directed against the establishments that were trying to bring about the demise of the religion that they represent. Scriptures inevitably attack what is articulated as the “hypocrisy” of those representing establishment religions that attack them (Ps. 115:1-11; Matt. 23:13-33; Qur’an 2:40-44). Some of these scriptural counterattacks are quite severe.

 

 

Based on what we now know of the difficulties encountered by new religious movements, it is not be surprising to find anti-Jewish rhetoric in the New Testament or anti-Jewish and anti-Christian rhetoric in the Qur’an. The Hebrew Bible also contains plenty of angry rhetoric directed against the Canaanite religious establishment of its own day. The New Testament is rightly condemned today for its sometimes nasty portrayals of Jews, and the Qur’an is properly criticized for its sometimes nasty portrayals of Jews and Christians. Negative and malicious portrayals of others always need to be condemned, even (or especially) when they occur in sacred text. We tend to pay more attention to the negative portrayals of Jews and Christians in the New Testament and the Qur’an because Jews and Christians exist today to complain about them. There are no Canaanites today to complain about their nasty image in the Hebrew Bible! All of this scriptural antagonism reflects the difficult experience of those early believers among the few emerging religions that survived.

 

 

As we work through the scenario of the birth of new religion, we need to keep one thing in mind. Persecuted new religious movements that succeed and are able to claim a healthy market share of supporters, along with the power that comes with it, eventually become establishment religions. When that happens, they, in turn, denigrate and attempt to delegitimate new religious movements that threaten them.

 

 

Mimesis, Intertextuality, and Authenticity

 

 

The terms mimesis comes from the Greek and is an elegant English word used in the art world to describe how art can imitate life or nature (the word mime comes from the same root, as does the word mimic).

 

In literature, mimesis is a term that describes the rhetorical use of something that has already been said. Religions are highly mimetic because they naturally use language and symbols and notions that have already been established by earlier religions, but they use them or understand them in distinctive ways that distinguish their own unique identity.

 

Intertextuality is a word that relates to the relationship between texts. There is an intertextual relationship, for example, between the biblical Flood story and the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the gods cause a flood that destroys all humankind except for one man (whose name is not Noah, but Utnapishtum). Scriptures are highly intertextual because literary motifs and symbols and even names appear across and between them.

 

Religions are both highly mimetic and intertextual. They share many of the same symbols and themes, and that sharing occurs most often textually. We have noted above, for example, how the symbolic power of the cross is found as a legitimating motif in new Christian movements. The sharing of symbols and themes occurs freely across religious boundaries as well, and the most basic and powerful textual source of religious mimesis is scripture. We have already observed that common themes such as prophecy and revelation are foundations upon which new religions become based, and how the notion of covenant appears in the earliest literary layers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as a symbol of authenticity. These themes demonstrate to potential followers that the scripture, and therefore the religious movement, are genuine and legitimate.

But authenticating symbols and themes are successful exactly for the reason that they are deeply associated with the known, establishment religions.

 

If a new religious movement incorporates too much of the establishment within it, it loses its standing as an alternative to the status quo. On the other hand, being too far out proves its own illegitimacy. Success means maintaining a balance between likeness and uniqueness. 

 

For the new religion, this balance between likeness and uniqueness causes a certain level of anxiety. It is risky to take on the very aspects of an “other” that desires to cause your demise! At a certain conscious or unconscious level, the new religion is working to replace establishment religions. This is one of the reasons for the clear polemics in scripture associated with chosenness. Polemics are arguments and disputes that are used to support one side’s own position while discrediting the position of the opposition. Scriptures contain a great deal of polemics because they are making a case for the truth and validity of the new religion that they represent. This is all happening under the pressure that is leveled against it by the establishment religions that are trying to discredit it.

 

Text and Subtext

 

Literary scholars teach that every text has its subtext(s).  A subtext is an unnamed issue or passage from something written or spoken that the text is responding to. A subtext may even be a work of art or artistic style to which an artist is responding. Often the reference is indirect, such as when a comedian makes a joke out of a statement made by a political figure without referring directly to the politician or what he or she said. The politician’s statement (or even the manner in which he or she makes it) is the unspoken subtext to which the comedian is responding.

 

In the case of scriptural polemic, a subtext may be the arguments or the aggression of the religious competition to which the scripture is responding. We do not have a lot of written material that is contemporary with the Hebrew Bible, so we cannot always be confident about specific subtexts to which it may be responding, But if you read through the biblical chosenness texts, you will note how powerful the image of chosenness is, and how it is used to separate Israelite believers from the opposition nonbelievers who seem to have been all around them:

 

• “And you shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and I have set you apart from other peoples to be Mine” (Lev.20:26);
• “Now then, if you will obey Me conscientiously and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples” (Exod.18:5-6);
• “I will maintain My covenant between Me and you, and your offspring to come, as an everlasting covenant throughout the ages” (Gen. 17:7).

 

Note how exclusive the language is, and how harsh:

• “I will bless those who bless you curse him that curses you” (Gen. 12:3),
• “[The Lord your God] instantly requites with destruction those [Israelites] who reject Him” (Deut. 7:10-11).

 

This language is belligerent and polemical. It is challenging and threatens opponents or potential opponents, in this case unnamed. It supplies one side of an argument. We don’t hear the other side, but it is clear that it is directed against an unidentified “other” who is not depicted as loyal to the one great and zealous God. Sometimes that “other” seems to represent those within the community who are unfaithful. More often, it represents the adherents of other religions. The immortal nature of other religions and the corrupt communities that practice them is a regular subtext to the polemics of the Hebrew Bible. This can reasonably be presumed from the negative references, and some of those negative references are indeed specific:

“For all those abhorrent [religiously defined] things were done by the people who were in the land before you, and the land became defiled. So let not the land vomit you out… as it vomited out the nation that came before you” (Lev. 18:27-28). 

 

 

We must keep in mind that the term for “nation” in this as in many such verses, goy, refers to a religious nation, since religion and nation were so closely associated in the ancient Near East. No ancient Near Eastern canon of scripture that predates the Hebrew Bible has yet been uncovered, though religious poetry, such as poems to neighboring gods, have been discovered in archeological digs. The general subtext in the case of the Hebrew Bible polemic is the religious practices and opposition of Israel’s neighbors. There is no direct subtext to the claim of exclusive chosenness in the Hebrew Bible. We do have scriptural subtexts for chosenness polemics in the New Testament, however, and these are found in the Hebrew Bible. We also have subtexts for Qur’anic chosenness polemics. They occur in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

The New Testament claims a new chosenness applied to those who have chosen to follow Jesus. The subtext is the chosen status of Israel, which is replaced in the New Testament with chosen status of those, whether Jew or Gentile, who believe in the messiahship of Jesus. In a kind of irony, it is the Hebrew biblical claim to the elite chosen status of Israel that serves to authenticate the new claim for divine election among Christians. Of course, an argument must make that case, and we find it appearing in various forms in the New Testament. The following example is from 1 Peter.

So for you who have faith it has great worth; but for those who have no faith “the stone which the builders rejected has become the corner-stone,” and also “a stone to trip over, a rock to stumble against.” They trip because they refused to believe the word; this is the fate appointed for them. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a dedicated nation, a people claimed by God for His own, to proclaim the glorious deeds of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people at all; but now you are God’s people. Once you were outside His mercy; but now you are outside no longer. (2:7-10)

 

 

A literary subtext for this passage is Psalm 118:22-23:

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our sight”.

 

The Psalm text is a consolation to Israel, which is represented as the rejected stone that has (or more likely, will soon) become the cornerstone. But the New Testament refers to the rejected stone in two ways.

• First, it represents the followers of Jesus who were rejected by most Jews but will soon become the cornerstone of God’s new dispensation.
• And second, it represents the new dispensation that the Jews trip over and stumble against because they cannot accept it.

 

 

The metaphor serves as moral support for a new religious community, rejected by establishment religionists, that actually takes on the very status that the establishment claimed for itself.

 

 

A second subtext for this passage is the notion articulated by a number of biblical verses that the covenant between God and Israel is conditional on Israel keeping the covenant, as in Exodus 19:5-6:

“Now then, if you will obey Me conscientiously and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine, but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy notion.”

 

 

This notion is taken to mean in the Peter text that keeping the divine covenant means accepting and believing the new revelation and new covenant that God has made through Jesus. The Gentile believers were outside the covenant of biblical Israel, but by accepting Jesus they are outside no longer. According to this passage (along with others that provide additional support) both Jews and Gentiles may be a part of the new covenant, but that new covenant is based on faith—in the saving power of Jesus—rather than law (Eph. 2:8), and it proves the annulment of the old covenant.

 

 

In fact, the ministry which has fallen to Jesus is as far superior to theirs as are the covenant he mediates and the promises upon which it is legally secured. Had the first covenant been faultless, there would have been no need to look for a second in its place. But God, finding fault with them, says, “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will conclude a new covenant … ” [Jeremiah 31:30]. By speaking of a new covenant, he has pronounced the first one old; and anything that is growing old and aging will shortly disappear. (Heb. 8:6-13)

 

 

This is a classic example of a new religion taking on authenticating motifs of an established religion, in this case, the symbolic institution of covenant. The very motif that was claimed to authenticate the established religion is used to reject it and legitimize the new in its place.

 

 

The Qur’an engages in a similar polemic by making the case that both Jews and Christians have forfeited their exclusive claims to being God’s chosen. The subtexts in this passage are more general than in the New Testament passage just cited, but the rejection of earlier claims is based on images and institutions (such as covenant) that appear frequently in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. 

 

God made a covenant with the Children of Israel, and We sent them twelve chiefs. God said: I am with you. If you engage in prayers, contribute the required charity, believe in My messengers and honor them, and support the religion, I will absolve you from your evil deeds and cause you to enter Gardens through which rivers flow, so whoever of you disbelieves after that has strayed from the right way. And because of their breaking their covenant We have cursed them and made their hearts hard. They change the words from their places and forgot part of what they were reminded [through revelation]. You will continue to discover the treacherous among them except for a few, but forgive them and pardon, for God loves the good. And those who say: “We are Christians,” We made their covenant but they forgot a part of what they were reminded [through revelation]. So We incited enmity and hatred between them until the Day of Resurrection, when God will tell them what they have done. (5:12-14)

 

 

We have considered thus far how Christianity and Islam began as new religious movements that were strongly opposed by the religious establishments of their day, but nevertheless met with success. They succeeded in gaining the necessary share of supporters to survive the natural opposition of establishment religions and other threatened establishment powers. They were so successful, in fact, they quickly thrived and grew into the two most powerful religious movements in human history. Many factors contributed to their extraordinary success, but certainly their ability to demonstrate their legitimacy early on was critical. Each made the case that it represented a new dispensation that was better than the religious options available, and each claimed the banner that had been waived by the biblical monotheism of Israel. But what of that early monotheism that was represented by biblical Israel? What ever happened to it?

 

 

The short answer is that biblical monotheism died long ago. The religion of the Bible did not long survive the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. In phenomenological terms, one could justifiably refer to both Christianity and Islam as heirs and successors to biblical religion. In fact, however, biblical religion did not produce only two heirs. It produced a third heir as well: rabbinic Judaism.

 

 

The “New Religion” of Judaism

 

At about the same time that a new revelation emerged, according to Christians, in the person of Jesus, another repository of revelation was emerging according to Jews who did not accept the messiahship and divinity of Jesus. That is the Talmud, also called the Oral Torah, to be distinguished by Jews from the Written Torah of the Hebrew Bible.

 

Contrary to some uninformed assumptions, the religion of Israel did not remain static after the emergence of Christianity. It continued to evolve with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the end of sacrifice and other rituals and structures of biblical religion.

 

Just as Christianity is not the same religion as that of biblical Israel, rabbinic Judaism—the Judaism exemplified by the Rabbis of the Talmud and that which is practiced in one form or another by virtually all Jews today—is also not the same as the religion of biblical Israel.

 

 

Different worship (the use of synagogues instead of the Temple, no more sacrifices, different liturgy), different theologies, different behavioral obligations, and different expectations of the End of Days mark only some of the many significant distinctions; and of course, although unadvertised, an additional scripture in the Oral, as opposed to Written, Torah of rabbinic Judaism. Such differences are the stuff that makes for a different religion.

 

The reason that this has not attracted more attention is that the Jews representing rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity (roughly 100-600 CE) did not intend to make an obvious break with the ancient religious system, as did those who accepted the saving power of Jesus as Messiah.

• For the new Christians, breaking away from the establishment religions was essential, despite the need to retain a level of continuity for reasons that we have considered above.
• For the Jews, it was continuity that was essential for maintaining its claim of authenticity, so the scriptural nature of the Talmud emerged gradually and only became a doctrinal expectation for most Jews in the eighth century.

 

But the Talmud functions similarly to the New Testament, as a lens through which the Hebrew Bible is read. That is to say, similar to the way in which Christians read the Old Testament through the interpretive lens of the New Testament, Jews read the Hebrew Bible through the interpretive lens of the Talmud. 

 

 

Even among Protestant Christian denominations that claim to go directly to scripture without the interference of the magisterium of the “One Holy Catholic Apostolic Chrurch,” the Old Testament cannot be read meaningfully without looking at it through the lens of the New.

 

 

So, too, in Jewish tradition, among all but a tiny group known as Kara’ites, the Hebrew Bible is read through the eyes of rabbinic literature, which for purposes of discussion here can be referred to as the Talmud. It is certainly true that the way in which it is read varies greatly among Jewish communities (just as the way in which the Bible is read varies among Christian communities), but it is the broad range of Talmudic interpretation that concretizes the  meanings of the Bible for Jews. The emergence of tradition that resulted in the development of the Talmud pushes the boundaries between revelation and interpretation even further than the New Testament does. Nevertheless, its recognition in Judaism as Oral Torah renders it scripture.

 

In sum, then, the old religion of Israel began as a simple form of polytheism that changed and developed into the first successful form of monotheism. This is the religion of the Hebrew Bible, and it is both the “mother of monotheisms” and the progenitor of scriptural religions. There is no more biblical religion outside the text of the Hebrew Bible. Nobody practices it. The chosenness that is so central and deliberate in the Hebrew Bible is an institution and symbolic paradigm that has been absorbed in one way or another by all of its surviving monotheistic progeny.

 

How has rabbinic Judaism understood chosenness? After all, anyone who observes history might conclude that Israel has lost its chosen status.

 

Just look at the size of the Jewish population throughout the world (about 15 million) in relation to the size of the Muslim (about 1.3 billion) and Christian (about 2.1 billion) populations. In point of fact, the experience of permanent exile and inferior social and political status in relation to Christians and Muslims forced a high level of complexity and ambivalence within Jewish thinking about chosenness.

• On the one hand, because of the great stress on continuity, rabbinic Judaism buys into the chosenness of Israel expressed in the Hebrew Bible and claims it. It then applies the chosen status of biblical Israel to the continuation of Israel among the Jews of the world.
• On the other hand, the Talmud and rabbinic literature express a certain discomfort with this sense of essential superiority. One repeated sentiment is that God did not choose Israel because of its inherent superiority, but rather because there were no other takers:

Is it not written: “The Lord came from Sinai and rose from Seir unto them; He shined forth from Mount Paran” (Deut. 32:2)?

And it is also written: “God comes from Teman” (Hab. 3:3)?

What did God seek in Seir and what did God seek in Paran? Rabbi Yonahan said:

This teaches us that the Holy One offered the Torah to every nation and every tongue, but none accepted it, until God came to Israel, who accepted it.

(Talmud, Avodah Zarah 2b)

 

 

In an alternative tradition, God eventually had to force one people to accept the difficult life of Torah commandments, and that people ended up being Israel: 

Moses led the people out of the camp toward God, and they took their places at the foot of [in the Hebrew, it can also mean “underneath”] the mountain (Exod. 19:17).

Rav Avdimi bar Hama bar Hasa said:

“This teaches that the Holy One turned the mountain over above them like an [over-turned] cask and said to them: ‘If you accept the Torah, good. But if not, this shall be your grave!’” (Talmud, Shabbat 88a)

In a third, Abraham and his progeny were “chosen” by the angels, but only by the casting of lots, not because Israel was inherently better than any other nation:

Rabbi Shimon said:

The Holy One called to the seventy angels who surround the throne of glory and said to them: Come, let us descend and confuse the seventy nations and the seventy languages. From where [do we know] that the Holy One spoke [thus] to them? Because it says, “Let us go down” (Gen. 11:7). “I will go down” is not written, but “Let us go down.” They [the angels] cast lots among them, as it says, “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when [God] divided humanity” (Deut. 32:8). The lot of the Holy One fell upon Abraham and his descendants, as it says, “For the Lord’s portion is His people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance” (Deut. 32:9). (Pirqey Rabbi Eliezer 24)

 

 

Not all rabbinic expressions of chosenness are so modest, however. The Talmud emerged as an authoritative literature during and after the rise of Christianity, so it was able to offer counterarguments to Christian claims of having acquired the old Israelite status of chosenness. In the statement that follows, God is depicted as knowing the future decline of the Jews under the Romans, but nevertheless affirms that the eternal chosen status of the Jews was established even before creation:

Rabbi Eliezer HaModa’i said [narrating in the voice of God] …

“Was [Israel] not already designated by Me even before the six days of creation?” As it is said, “If these laws [of Creation] should ever be annulled by Me—declares the Lord—only then would the offspring of Israel cease to be a nation before Me forever” (Jer. 31:35). (Mekhilta de Rabbi Yishmael, Beshalach 3) 

 

We have observed from the texts cited above that after the notion of chosenness was established through ancient Israelite religion and had become a respected marker of authentic monotheism, Jews, Christians, and Muslims jockeyed for relative status by making claims to chosenness for themselves. These expressions of chosenness, however, are not alike. Each one expresses the claim through the unique nature of the religious system that it represents, and their representations have been profoundly influenced by the historical contexts in which each system emerged. We will soon examine how each religious civilization behaved toward nonbelievers in ways that were influenced by their particular notion of election, but in order to get there we need to consider how the sense of chosenness differs among them.