While the Jews were part of the global hierarchy of the
ancient age, they are also a part of the hierarchy of
transhistoricality. This implies the necessity of a
historical-ideological-geographical break from the ancient age
culture of the Hebrews – whereby the Diaspora is identified as
embodying the transhistorical globalization of Jewish identity.
The responsibility of leadership of such a breakthrough was
to be of an Israelite : Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ job, during
the Roman Empire, was to lead an anti-exodus,
radiating to an Empire-transcending Diaspora, in the Middle East
and Europe.
His message was to have been about how the greater Jewish
future lay in a relative existence among the native cultures of
the Middle East, Europe and the world, and the ability to make
advanced, modernist, rationalist and universal contributions
therefrom. This would have inaugurated transhistoricality for
the rest of the world as well. Indeed the eventual adoption of
the Gregorian calendar as the world’s calendar signifies the
magnitude of that expected message anyway. And so does the
adoption of the term ‘Millennial’ for the historically
culminatory people supposed to emerge now.
The message that Rabbi Jesus delivered instead, however, was
an Israelite-centric one, of deferred divine deliverance. This
was deemed useless by most Israelites, especially in the light
of the tradition of Moses, who combined divine inspiration with
temporal action, and led his people on their way to take their
place in the ancient world. Jesus also antagonized the corrupt
religious elite by his opinions and actions, without offering a
material and immediate historical alternative – this provoked
them to ensure his removal from the scene, by presenting him as
a threat to Roman rule.
After Jesus’ death, the apostle Paul argued that Jesus’
perceived purpose doesn’t have to start with the Jews and
eventually encompass the Gentiles, but can in fact start with
the Gentiles, and eventually ‘rehabilitate’ the Jews.
For the West, with the passing of the historical and
civilizational primacy of the Greeks and the Macedonians in the
ancient age, there was a need for ideological, spiritual
regeneration toward transhistorical sustenance. This was
supposed to have come from the transhistorical
ideologicalization of the Diaspora by Jesus, and its expansion
and influence among the native cultures of Europe.
That is not the way it happened, however. This meant a
failure of not just Jesus and the Jews, but of the European
Gentiles as well, being after all of the same pre-modern
male-rooted race. But the failure of Jesus’ perceived purpose
was sought to be pinned on the unique ignorance and error of the
Jews, and thereby exempting the Gentiles from the reality of it,
because of their adoption of Jesus as their Saviour.
The spread of Christianity worldwide has been an outcome of
the European Christians’ need to justify their creed by making
their situation and its solution universal. Most of the converts
of the other races and cultures were conquered or colonized
peoples. Theirs was to re-find their place in the world by
participating in the power and culture of the European Christian
civilization and history.
The bifurcation of the faiths into Christianity and Judaism
put the followers of the two faiths at odds with each other. It
was the European Diaspora who bore the brunt of native Christian
prejudice and persecution. The Holocaust was its catastrophic
culmination. This in turn critically boosted Zionism – which is
an ideology of absolute atavism. And which came to be embodied
in the establishment of the state of Israel on Palestine, at the
cost of the Arab Palestinians.
Presently, attainment of a two state solution between the
Palestinians and Israelis would in some measure redeem the
tragedy of Palestine.
[* Israelite : The term Israelite here covers both the
Hebrews and the inhabitants of present day Israel, as well as
fellow Zionists elsewhere.]
