Academic Journals for my Western Religions class

Week 1

General Insights:

As might be a commonly filled gap, I was entirely unaware of Lilith as Adam's first wife in the Garden of Eden. In an allegorical context, this seems to parallel the lecture material of the late Terence McKenna who would (and most likely did) find much kaleidoscopic significance in this version of Genesis. The clout surrounding this version seems mutual throughout the three Abrahamic religions, and the story in itself seems more valuable to Western mysticism than to its Orthodox counterparts. By far, this changes my knowledge and interpretation of Judaeo-Christianity as a whole.

Question: “What do you expect to learn in this course? What do you bring to the course, and what gaps of knowledge and insight do you wish to fill?”

Answer: Religion, in all of its facets, has always fascinated me. As an intellectual, I have run the developmental course of the passive Baptist turned evangelical atheist, swearing off religion and all those who ignorantly believed in the literal interpretations. Over time, this position softened into an acceptance of ambiguity, and the recognition of the symbolic value and allegorical importance of religion as a whole. I wish to learn the detailed ins-and-outs of Judaeo-Christianity as it continues to affect our collective psyche as both a race and a culture. Most recently, the monotheistic authority of the Church was usurped by the desired objectivism of science. When Nietzsche said 'God is dead,' he did not mean that a literal God was dead, but that our attempt at objective truth was dead and dying. I believe that we now live in a time that seems to be positively dealing with what was once a psychological trauma manifesting itself in philosophical nihilism and scientific reductionism. It's like the allegory of the finger pointing at the moon: both religious scripture and scientific literature are fingers. Historically, much of the race has been stuck staring at the finger, when the finger is wanting you to look away and at the moon.

Week 2

General Insights:

The story of Exodus and the rise of the ancient Israelites sheds light on the mechanisms that lead to the creation of a religion. As I stated above, the allegorical value of each religion is incomprehensible in scope, but does not exempt said religions from creating and developing cultish orthodoxies that eventually grow to fuel functionless dogma. This is due less to the importance of the stories, and much more to the use of these stories as tools of power, appealing to the lowest common denominator in order to establish and perpetuate a social control. The three Abrahamic religions are especially in need of constant scrutiny, as their symbols are often historically invoked in demagogic rhetoric as a means to a Machiavellian end.

Question: “What is the significance of the command to not make ‘images’ of God? Note the discussion on the‘tabernacle’ on p. 78.”

Answer: This strange commandment—made most viscerally in Judaism and Islam—has become a dogmatic crutch upon which many assume there is still a strange sort of anthropomorphic God (or Allah) with a humanocentric agenda, yet do not realize that a command forbidding anyone to create images of God is nothing more than the 'finger pointing at the moon,' with said finger shaking at the moon in a desperate attempt to make humanity look—as individuals—at nothing but the moon. It is an allegorical dictate that is, in essence, describing that God or Allah are symbolically representative of the Great Unknown; the massive scope of the reality we live in that cannot be described, discovered, or illustratively depicted (only reveled in). As far as my interpretation goes—aside from the dogmatic twist this demand has taken with the childish evolution of orthodox religion—it is meant to humble the hubris of the human intellect and arrogant assumption by describing that what is represented cannot ever be understood by anyone, ever. It is tantamount to what the late and great Alan Watts once said: “something we don't know is doing who knows what; that is what our knowledge amounts to.” This is not to say we should cease with our curiosities or attempts to better ourselves through philosophy, science, or spirituality; it is only to say that there is no truth in deciding a particular religion or school of thought is in any way objective. In some abstract way, the early Jews (in regards to the 'tabernacle' and the mysterious concept of 'Shekhinah,' a transliteration of a Hebrew noun which denotes the presence and indwelling of Divinity) understood the undeniable mysticism of their God, as well as the elasticity and essential 'invisibility' of truth as a whole. This, by and large, is how dogma evolves; as a result of trying to consolidate a certain amount of static consistency through the guarantee of ritualism, unaware that said consolidation is as impossible as freezing a cloud.

Week 3

General Insights:

The history of Judaism is much longer and much more complicated than I ever ventured to imagine. One of my main motivations for taking a class on Western Religions was due to my perception that I generally understood the basics of Christianity, and had ventured upon my own initiative to learn as much as I could about Islam as soon as I saw polarizing agendas and orthodox prejudices begin to grow in the minds around me. This Islamaphobia was obviously rooted in the attacks of September 11^th, 2001... but have been reignited with the military successes and sheer brutality (physically, ideologically, and otherwise) of groups such as the Islamic State. So, although I know I have many gaps I'd like to fill in my knowledge of Christianity and Islam, my knowledge of Judaism has always been one of complete ignorance. This is mainly due to the convoluted nature of their Holy Books (such as the Torah, the TaNaKh, the Talmud, the Mishnah, the Midrash etc) which I am still having trouble deciphering, but which I feel I'll be one step closer to grasping by the end of this semester. I learned, long ago, not to equate Judaism with Zionism, but did not entirely understand what separated the two as a result of my confusion over whether the Jews were primarily an 'ethnicity' or a 'religion.' With the help of this class, I've come to the tentative conclusion that the Jews—by and large—are a bit of both, but primarily neither.

Question: “What challenges did Hellenism bring to Judaism, and how did Judaism respond? Note the groups and the changes in Jewish ideas.”

Hellenism had a profound effect on Judaism as a whole. Not only did the Jews begin to adopt Hellenistic mannerisms, they also began a cross-cultural synthesis between Jewish and Hellenistic thought. This is illustrated in the writings of Philo, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in the ancient Jewish diaspora of Alexandria. It is also touched on to a lesser extent in the writings of Maimonides, who was born in Cordoba at the beginning of Moorish Iberian rule (and thus also absorbed much in the way of Islamic thought and mannerisms). By the third century BCE, knowledge of the Hebrew language had declined so dramatically that the Bible was translated into Greek (called the Septuagint).

Judaism responded in fractalized ways to Hellenization depending on the group or subgroup. Some acquiesced and began to adapt, whilst others continued to believe Hellenization and the Greek rule of the Jewish homeland was an abomination that must eventually be ended. After a century of Greek hegemony, a change in dynasty from the Ptolemies (descendants of one of Alexander's generals) to the Seleucid's (the rulers of Syria) finally predicated this end. The Seleucid's bastardized the sacred Jewish Temple by transforming it into a shrine to Zeus. This ignited the Maccabean revolt, which was successful in expelling the Greeks from Palestine and reestablishing a Jewish state. This victory is still celebrated today through the tradition of Hanukkah.

Week 4

General Insights:

It is common knowledge that the Jews have a long and illustrated history of marginalization and persecution—more than a few cases of which lead to either expulsion (from post-Moorish Spain and, at one time, even England) or genocide (in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia). What seems to be historically taken for granted is the grand scale upon which those of Jewish belief or ethnic connection were forcibly removed from Spain in the 15^th century, both as preamble to and because of the Spanish Inquisition. The expulsion was so rapid and chaotic, in fact, that in 1492 when Christopher Columbus was setting off to find an alternative passage to India (and accidentally came upon North America—or the Caribbean, to be exact), he had to launch his voyage from a quiet southern port because most of the major Spanish ports were so clogged with forced Jewish immigrants.

Most of these immigrants found refuge in states under the religious authority of Islam—such as the Ottoman Empire—and began to develop new twists on their ethnic and religious identities, as well as work to the benefit of their new respective homelands.

Personally, it still perplexes me as to why Jews were always specifically targeted as scapegoats. I've heard many different theories on the matter, the most unlikely of which are such theocratic assumptions as “God is punishing the Jewish people,” or that the Jews are at the center of a worldwide conspiracy tocontrol the financial system and such... but others, that do make socioreligious and economic sense, include the observation that the Jewish people (especially in Medieval Christiandom) were marginalized to such great degrees that they were either forced or decided to reside in walled ghettos surrounded by bigotry and paranoid superstition. This marginalization led to the development of a very self-sufficient and introverted culture that struggled with all of its might to resist the political and religious forces demanding its extinction. This magnified the external perception of peculiarity in the eyes of non-Jews, and made them a 'sore thumb' in many societies looking for scapegoats to ease any sense of personal or collective responsibility. This is, quite plainly, what happened in Nazi Germany.

Question: “Is mysticism a comfortable fit for Judaism, or is something like the Kabala, way out in ‘left field’?”

Mysticism, by my standard interpretation, is a good spin to have on any religion. Orthodox literalism is bogged down in useless rhetoric, committing itself to enforcing abstract laws of the spirit as opposed to embracing the fact that spirituality is an individual experience beyond the realm of verbal expression.

In and of itself, Kabala is an incredibly interesting take on the Jewish religion, but in its scope of articulation, it has developed its own specific dogmas and orthodox superstitions (such as the numerological aspect which stinks of a certain form of pseudoscience).

By contrast to orthodox Judaism, I would have to assert that Kabala and other such mystic traditions are radical exceptions to what appears to be very strict rules (hence why the rabbinic movement holds such contention against it) but expresses a more realistic version of and expectation towards religious “truth.” It's brazen cosmological assertion that it holds the key to a form of enlightenment, however, brings it closer to the same orthodoxy it seemed keen to allegorically reinterpret.