Summary: God is angry with Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Nineveh gets destroyed. There is a poem about that. Everyone seems pretty happy with its destruction.
“Nineveh, are you any better than Thebes, the capital of Egypt? She too had a river to protect her like a wall – the Nile was her defense. She ruled Sudan and Egypt, there was no limit to her power. Libya was her ally. Yet the people of Thebes were carried off into exile. At every street corner their children were beaten to death. Their leading men were carried off in chains and divided among their captors.” (Nh 3.8-10)
The very fact that these verses were (apparently) written without any ironic intent is remarkable. I mean, Israel had a river (the Jordan). Israel had a kingdom. Israel had allies. The people of Israel were carried off into exile. Israelite children died. Israelite men became slaves. This all happened to Israel. And it was all used as proof that God was testing their faith.
Well, why couldn’t Osiris have been testing the faith of Egypt? Why wasn’t Baal testing the faith of Canaan back when Israel came by? And why couldn’t the Assyrian gods have been testing the faith of his people when that empire fell?
Because this isn’t their book, of course. That’s the only real reason. The truth is that empires fall. All empires everywhere eventually die out (And to the scores of ultra-right wing Americans who I’m sure read this site because it is exactly the sort of thing they would enjoy, relax. I’m sure America will last forever). And when they do, stronger nations take advantage of them and allies desert them and people leave. It’s the way of the world.
But that explanation isn’t good enough for the Bible. It can’t just happen unplanned like a teenage pregnancy. And the problem with saying that God causes all empires to rise and fall is that eventually, God’s favored empire will fall. What do you say then? Well, you make something up. You rail against sin and corruption (not to say those are bad things to rail against), and ignore historical trends, and your people find themselves shocked when their empire falls just like every one that preceded it.
If there’s been one theme to this whole blog/project/whatever (aside from “I’m not very good at updating on time”), it’s that I see most people and religions as essentially the same. As much as they might have different customs or beliefs, the experiences of religion are pretty similar: a desire to believe in something more than this life, the experience of feeling something when you get together with a like-minded group, and the profound overwhelming sense that this is right. Despite the fact that some religions promote the worship of graven images, and some want to kill you for worshipping graven images, the religious feeling itself is no different between any cultures (I have no evidence for this, by the way, other than vague recollections of things people in various faiths have said).
And it is exactly this commonality that the Bible denies. It is exactly these similarities that they Bible says applies to everyone else. This is the “No, I’m really special” line of thought. And it’s always wrong. Because everyone thinks they’re the special one. When someone else gets a speeding ticket, they had it coming for going too fast, but I had somewhere to be, and that cop just didn’t understand! And when other empires fall – any other empires anywhere – it’s because they didn’t believe in the right deity, but when my empire falls, it’s not my deity that’s the problem, it’s me! I just wasn’t a good enough believer!
But it doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to apply one set of standards to everyone else, then turn around and apply a totally different set of standards to yourself. If an empire falls, it means either that they worshipped the wrong god, or that they worshipped the right god incorrectly. But you can’t say that it could mean either of those, depending on which empire you’re talking about. And the reason is very simple: everyone thinks that a different set of standards applies to them, and you cannot allow the accident of your birthplace to determine the absolute truth about the world.
An idea is no good unless it’s clearly, universally true. An idea is no good unless Chinese people who have never heard of Christianity accept it wholeheartedly, without suffering through a (let’s say Boxer) rebellion that tears apart their country. An idea is no good unless Hindus can see it’s the plain truth, despite hearing about Ganesh and Vishnu all their lives. An idea is no good if it has to resort to bribes to get you to believe it and threats to make you stay with it. An idea is no good unless a case for it can be made to anyone in the world by anyone in the world.
And that’s exactly the problem with this book. The thoughts and ideas within it are designed to appeal to one specific group of people. The morals in the book are what the Israelites needed when they were acting up. And the theories of existence that the book says are true and indisputable are based in discredited ideas held by men who lived in Israel. It’s not universal truth. It’s a series of myths written down thousands of years ago, passed on as fact, and believed as absolute truth.
When I said before that people are the same no matter where they are in the world, that was largely true. But it’s also true that people are pretty much the same no matter when they lived. There haven’t been any evolutionary advances in humanity in the last couple thousand years to make us believe any less in comforting myths or resort any less to an irrational religion. In a way, it’s comforting to know that I am connected to people throughout history in exactly the same way I’m connected to people now, with similar needs and desires, and similar hopes and fears.
But considering how many dark chapters of history there have been, in another, more accurate way, it’s really not comforting at all.
