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| 3.92
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| Jan 01, 2012
| Mar 16, 2012
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it was amazing
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Jesus and His World by Craig A. Evans This insightful book by a well-credentialed scholar draws on recent and current archaeological finds to push back Jesus and His World by Craig A. Evans This insightful book by a well-credentialed scholar draws on recent and current archaeological finds to push back on some of the more novel and media-sensationalized hypotheses about the veracity of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life. In countering these arguments, Evans introduces the archaeologists and their finds that have greatly helped educate scholars over the last 30 years about the life of the first century C.E. before the destruction of Jerusalem in 80 AD. The book is technical in nature, but helpful to the layperson (myself). The book is a good look at “biblical archaeology, defined by Hendel as “the rigorous correlation of textual data from the Bible and material evidence from archaeology” (p. 9). Only five percent of biblical sites have been excavated, and those only partially. Scholars have to examine literary accounts for verisimilitude - comparing their description to what we know archaeologically to the way things really were, and their similarity to other accounts of the time. These help us critically examine claims such as Jesus being a Cynic, or illiterate, or various assertions about burial customs and symbols in Israel at the time. Evans explains some of what we know about the towns of Galilee, including Sepphoris, which was a larger town just kilometers away from Nazareth that is curiously not named in the Gospel accounts (unless you consider “a city on a hill” to be a reference to it, or his criticism of the trumpeting of hypocrites drawn from what the crowd would have witnessed in the town’s theater). The Gospel accounts suggest Jesus visited largely villages in Gallilee and avoided the larger towns. Much can be learned from Sepphoris’ city dump about its distinct Jewishness compared to more Greek-oriented towns not far away. Evans cites many literary texts from the period, whether it’s the scrolls from Qumran or Roman sources, some of which are known only in fragments from later Roman sources. It is fascinating that many of Jesus’ biblical references to the Old Testament come from the Aramaic interpretation, which complications are known as the Targum. “Thanks to the discoveries at Qumran and elsewhere near the Dead Sea, we now know that Targums – the plural form can also be ‘Targumim’ – were written as early as the first century bce. It is hard to see how Jesus could have absorbed so much material that is consistent with the emerging targumic tradition if he did not frequent the synagogue” (p. 71). Evans provides overwhelming evidence of widespread literacy, even among the poor, slaves, etc. in the Roman world. He also shows how well texts even before the first century BCE have been found preserved thousands of years later, largely due to the material on which they were written. This is important for determining how close we may be to the original Gospel accounts from what we have: “The fourth-century Codex Vaticanus was re-inked in the tenth century, which shows that it was still being read and studied some 600 years after it had been produced. If the first-century originals, or ‘autographs’ of the Gospels continued in use for 150 years or more, they would still have been in circulation when the oldest copies of the Gospels that we possess today were copied. Papyrus 45 from the Chester Beatty collection dates to about 220 ce. It preserves large portions of all four New Testament Gospels” (p. 91-92). The book includes a long look on the burial practice of first century Jerusalem, and how it was somewhat altered by the massive expansion of construction works Herod and others. Due to the lack of space, the deceased bones were collected one year after the death, placed into an ossuary that was then placed in the family tomb. This included criminals who were not permitted to be buried in the family tomb. These ossuaries have preserved bones that also give evidence of diseases that were present and, in a unique case, evidence of the method of crucifixion. Certain tombs and ossuaries of prominent figures, such as Caiphas the high priest, may also be identified and give more light on the timelines we know of when certain priests and prefects held office. These chapters helped me realize how complicated the political situation was at the time and how explosive certain teachings of Jesus were. Evans also helps the reader see how different first century accounts are to our more modern ways of writing literature. A modern book would probably begin by describing Jesus’ appearance, his manner of walking, the clothes he wears, more names of friends, etc. The ancient world does none of that. “As we ponder these questions, we realize that we know little about Jesus apart from his provocative teaching and even more provocative deeds” (p. 171). There is a great bibliography at the end. I find no reason not to give the book five stars. The book is a short and insightful read. ...more |
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Apr 17, 2024
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Apr 30, 2024
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May 17, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 0306818078
| 9780306818073
| 0306818078
| 4.03
| 154
| Jan 01, 2008
| Apr 28, 2009
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really liked it
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I picked up this book after reading an advance copy of Ben Witherington III's A Day in the Fall of Jerusalem (3 stars), a historical fiction narrative
I picked up this book after reading an advance copy of Ben Witherington III's A Day in the Fall of Jerusalem (3 stars), a historical fiction narrative of days in 70AD complete with factual tidbits in sidebars. I also recently read William H. Marty's The World of Jesus (4 stars) that looks at the timelines, political intrigue, and family trees of first century Palestine as well. If you don't want to read Josephus in the original, then Seward's work will suffice. He retells Josephus' works in an engaging fashion and adds some commentary as well as context. He supplies commentary to the reliability or possible motives behind certain passages. There is also a little bit of what is known from recent archaelogy or anthropology, and the latest of what historians believe about Josephus' life. It is not for an academic audience, it is entertaining. Some bits that I gleaned: Josephus was a follower of John the Baptist and probably like his father, who was likely of the party of the Pharisees, most likely in the lineage of priests. He also hung out with stoics. Josephus famously testifies to Christ (the Testimonium Flavianum) and that particular passage's authentication is debatable but Seward comes down on the side of it being plausibly authentic and moves past it fairly quickly. We underestimate today how threatening and subversive monotheism was to Roma and its culture. This is the primary reason why Jews and later Christians were persecuted, either locally or widely. People familiar with the New Testament also underestimate the sheer brutality of living in that age, the frequency of wars, rebellions, and political intrigue that could lead to mass-slaughter. We can gloss over that today. Josephus, for example, wrote of the cruel Gessius Florus, who was procurator over Judea from 64-66. Florus would antagonize the Jews, desecrating their synagogues and removing money from the Temple treasury for the Emperor. The Jewish protest led to a Roman crackdown and many deaths. Josephus records that Samaritans, erstwhile rivals, joined in Florus' soldier's activities and the spark of rebellion quickly spread into a fire. While King Agrippa, who considered himself a Hebrew, tried to make peace the growing series of reprisals between Greeks and Jews became basically a civil war, even places like Galilee. This culminated in an outright pogrom in Caesarea. (Witherington's narrative ignores any part of this civil war runup in his text, which looks at areas in Galilee just after 70 AD, it's like nothing ever happened and there is no tension and no mention is made of Josephus having actually been a one-time governor of Galilee.) Josephus may not have been actually acquainted with Nero, but apparently knew his wife, Poppea. Poppea was allegedly instrumental in getting Gessius Florus his position, but Josephus writes of her as a God-fearer who had sympathy for the Jews. Agrippa frowned on Nero and Seward writes of what is known or surmised about Nero's behavior. Josephus was a capable commander of men but was a terrible governor of Galilee in peacetime. At the outbreak of the Jewish War, Josephus fought the Roman army in Galilee and led his men to a cave, allowing some to commit suicide before he himself went over to the Romans to help Vespasian. Josephus became useful as a translator, negotiator, and recorder. But historians differ as to whether Josephus actually got the lands and patronage that he writes about. He prophecied that Vespasian would become Emperor, and this apparently gained him the favor he needed and he enjoyed a good relationship with Titus Vespasianus, the next Emperor. The true enemy in Josephus' works become the Zealots, telling his fellow Jews that the Zealots had betrayed the peace-loving Romans who had at least allowed them to maintain their Temple and worship. Therefore, "you are not just fighting Romans, but God." According to Josephus, the Zealots set off a class warfare that was brutal. He claims they were butchering or starving people inside Jerusalem's wall and them throwing them over. Josephus maintained a spy network of some sort within Jerusalem and encouraged surredner. However, Roman legionnaires were also ripping open Jewish captives after one captive was found to have swallowed some gold to smuggle it out of the city. This gruesome act discouraged surrender and just made matters worse. In Josephus work, both Jews and the Romans were at fault for destroying the Temple. Titus, commanding the Roman seige of Jerusalem, reportedly absolves himself of guilt after hearing of atrocities and cannibalism inside Jerusalem. (Titus also had an affair with Bernice, daughter of Herod Agrippa, and he later dismisses her after he becomes Emperor.) Joseph accredits all of the actions and destruction to the hand of God and as punishment on the Jewish people. Masada would fall years later, and Josephus records Eliazar and the Masada suicide pact. After the destruction of the Temple, the Torah would be the center of Jewish worship and culture. Josephus wrote "Our Law will live forever." The author also provides a brief summary of the later Bar-Kokhba War and the fate of Palestine as well as Josephus. Titus eventually became Emperor for only two years and his nephew, the insane Domition, succeeded him. Josephus had to defend his work and reputation at points in his life. Jews and Christians were increasingly heavily persecuted as the Emperor went mad. One weakness of Seward's work is that he does not examine all the manuscript evidence of Josephus' work. My understanding from other sources is that there are some differences in the manuscript fragments and issues in translation. Josephus claimed Titus and Vespasian as sources and offers a letter from Herod Agrippa II testifying to the good quality of his book. I give this book four stars out of five. You're likely better off to read, or listen to, the entirety of Josephus' works since they're freely available. But this is an in-depth summary and easy to enjoy. If you are more interested in understanding the context of the time in Palestine in which the New Testament was written, then check it out. ...more |
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Jun 07, 2017
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Jun 11, 2017
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Jul 13, 2017
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| 0764210831
| 9780764210839
| 0764210831
| 3.95
| 240
| Jun 01, 2013
| Jun 01, 2013
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liked it
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This book is a good overview of the history of Israel from the Old Testament to the time of the first century AD told in very layman's terms, focusing
This book is a good overview of the history of Israel from the Old Testament to the time of the first century AD told in very layman's terms, focusing on the "intertestamental period" and Jewish politics in the time of Jesus. I'm a Sunday school teacher who needed a better grasp of the context of the first century AD. I once heard John MacArthur, a hyper proponent of sola scriptura, say in a sermon "You can't understand the scene between Jesus, Herod, and Pilate without understanding first century Jewish-Roman politics." So, this is a good book to start learning. Marty teaches undergraduates and this is at that level, highly readable, I recommend it to Bible study leaders. I highlighted a whole lot in my Kindle app and then was able to put those highlights onto Evernote where I can keep them as a reference forever. I bought this Kindle book when it was a 99 cent deal. I would not, however, pay $8.99 for it. The information comes almost entirely from the Bible, Book of Maccabees, and the works of Josephus. It's mainly for Protestants who suspect it's sinful to even pick up the Book of Maccabees, much less apply it to their knowledge about the times of Jesus. (You should at least read 1 Maccabees before this book.) Dr. Marty does not point out any potential shortcomings of those sources; his goal is a simple narrative. There are dozens of names, multiple family trees, and various figures in Roman politics to keep track of, so Kindle x-ray is essential. Disappointingly, the author provides no timelines, charts, or other helps; I recommending finding a good study Bible that has these things for reference (NIV Study Bible edited by DA Carson has some helpful supplements and Rose eCharts has several charts and such available as well). He also begins each chapter with a few paragraphs of ficticious dramatization of an event that he will later explain; these seem a bit out of place. He jumps forward and back chronologically at times to deal with issues like the temple, starting from what we know from the Bible and going back and explaining the context-- Jesus spoke about the temple, so who built the temple in Jesus' day, why did it take so long, why was it built, etc? It could have contained more information about the Decapolis, the area around Nazareth, various cites around Galilee, and more. Each chapter has discussion questions, which are helpful both to quiz yourself on the material covered as well as think more deeply about it. Some are sure to evoke discussion. (I like this trend among Christian books today that include discussion questions, assuming either group reading or maybe just the need to retain the knowledge.) I give it 3 stars out of 5. It's short, and it will give any student or teacher a decent overview and whet your appetite to read more in-depth research into the history. I would also recommend reading Josephus' works as well as Paul Johnson's History of the Jews, various books on the Maccabean revolt, and Greek and Roman history such as Freeman's Egypt, Greece, and Rome. ...more |
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Mar 17, 2017
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Apr 03, 2017
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Apr 16, 2017
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| 0812967054
| 9780812967050
| 0812967054
| 3.84
| 14,236
| Feb 1869
| Feb 11, 2003
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it was amazing
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Free to read on Adelaide.edu I was eager to check out this book because I have read several books by American travelers of Europe and the Middle East i Free to read on Adelaide.edu I was eager to check out this book because I have read several books by American travelers of Europe and the Middle East in the 1800s and saw Twain's description of Istanbul referenced in Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul (one of my favorite cities). The difference between Twain's account and that of others in the same period is that Twain is the greatest wordsmith in American history. I did not know that this was one of the best-selling books of the 19th century. Twain's trip was in 1867 and the reader is quickly struck with how fragile Americans are as travelers today. You can tour the "Holy Land" in a week and be back on your couch in days. Modern inconveniences are doing without McDonald's or maybe a lukewarm shower. In 1867, such a journey would take the better part of a year and you very might well die. There is no medicine, few baths, you will ride in a rickety ship for weeks on end in close quarters with people you might not like, you will ride various animals for long journies across wastelands, and you will be subject to robbery and trickerey. Phoning home hasn't been invented yet. The journey is a pleasure cruise in a retired Union vessel with some of the well-to-do of America. Twain apparently sent some of his observations back to the US as newspaper articles and compiled all his notes into this 1869 work. Twain notes how many travelers eagerly keep journals the first few days, but every day on the ocean is roughly the same and they lose motivation to continue. Twain tolerates the eccentricities of his companions, some of the men seem prone to pretend knowledge on subjects they literally know nothing about. This sometimes leads to humor. Time zones are a complete mystery to one passenger who is certain that his watch has stopped working properly. Currency exchange rates also cause confusion, passengers go from thinking they're being extorted in dollars when actually being quoted a cheap price in a European currency. They overcome all. The cruise lands in Tangiers, Morocco in its first major disembarkment. When noting the legend of Hercules' relation to Tangier, Twain remarks: "Antiquarians concede that such a personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times and agree that he was an enterprising and energetic man, but decline to believe him a good, bona-fide god, because that would be unconstitutional." (If you love those one-liners that would play just as well in the 21st century, they are hidden like nuggets in this book.) In Morocco, as in other places, the travelers call on the American Consular General. This apparently is a "god-send" for the Consul because "Tangier is full of interest for one day, but after that it is a weary prison. The Consul General has been here five years, and has got enough of it to do him for a century, and is going home shortly. His family seize upon their letters and papers when the mail arrives, read them over and over again for two days or three, talk them over and over again for two or three more till they wear them out, and after that for days together they eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the same old road, and see the same old tiresome things that even decades of centuries have scarcely changed, and say never a single word! They have literally nothing whatever to talk about." Note the polite picture he sketches:https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/twai... From Morocco, they north to France. There is little about Europe's treasures that impress Twain, he glosses over the tours that become monotonous and focuses on the misadventures of his companions. In Paris, they find that no barbers give shaves, or at least none that they can cajole to shave them. They get shaved by some wig-makers or people of some other trade in tortuous fashion. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/twai... Twain writes rather disdainfully about the endless collection of relics, fake relics, that are displayed in museums and on tours across Europe. They've seen all the various shards of the cross and other imaginable relics that the Catholic Church sold as indulgences and continues to make money in Twain's time, while he remarks the faithful peasants are kept quite poor. Twain remarks that Jesus ranks pretty low in the Roman Church hierarchy, much more attention seems given to Mary, Peter, and more. The band continues traveling to Milan and on to Rome. As Twain wanders the streets of Europe, he notes the different rhythm than in the US, and again writes something for the 21st century: "Afterward we walked up and down one of the most popular streets for some time, enjoying other people’s comfort and wishing we could export some of it to our restless, driving, vitality-consuming marts at home. Just in this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe — comfort. In America, we hurry — which is well; but when the day’s work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man’s prime in Europe. When an acre of ground has produced long and well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a season; we take no man clear across the continent in the same coach he started in — the coach is stabled somewhere on the plains and its heated machinery allowed to cool for a few days; when a razor has seen long service and refuses to hold an edge, the barber lays it away for a few weeks, and the edge comes back of its own accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate objects, but none upon ourselves. What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges!" https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/twai... There are other tales of hygiene hijinx, such as bathhouses with no soap. One can only imagine what this travel would be like for a woman. Twain finds Venice to be full of melancholy and decay, not quite the tourist destination it is today. He is definitely not impressed with the Medici mausoleums and other Italian displays, and everyone grows quite tired of Michaelangelo by the time they reach the Vatican in Rome. There is a humorous scene where the Americans troll their guide in Rome who is eager to show them something written by Colombus and a statue/bust of Columbus: "“Ah — Ferguson — what — what did you say was the name of the party who wrote this?” “Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo!” Another deliberate examination. “Ah — did he write it himself; or — or how?” “He write it himself! — Christopher Colombo! He’s own hand-writing, write by himself!” Then the doctor laid the document down and said: “Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could write better than that.” ... The doctor put up his eye-glass — procured for such occasions: “Ah — what did you say this gentleman’s name was?” “Christopher Colombo! — ze great Christopher Colombo!” “Christopher Colombo — the great Christopher Colombo. Well, what did he do?” “Discover America! — discover America, Oh, ze devil!” “Discover America. No — that statement will hardly wash. We are just from America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher Colombo — pleasant name — is — is he dead?” “Oh, corpo di Baccho! — three hundred year!” ... “Ah — which is the bust and which is the pedestal?” “Santa Maria! — zis ze bust! — zis ze pedestal!” “Ah, I see, I see — happy combination — very happy combination, indeed. Is — is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?” The crew ascends Mount Vesuvius, inspects the ruins at Pompeii, and devise a clever escape from their quarantines in Athens. (Americans definitely don't can't comprehend the ubiquity of 1800s quarantines today.) Then, it's onto Istanbul and Asia. Twain does not have many deep observations about Istanbul. Twain notes the cultural diversity of the city and that Armenians are known Christian liars. The crew crosses the Black Sea and visits Sevastopol too close to the end of the Crimean War for that not to be somewhat somber. The Americans then travel back through Turkey down to Smyrna (Izmir). Twain remarks about this point of his interaction with Russian ladies, their long names and endless charms. So, Russian ladies impress him as much as anything else in Europe or the Holy Land and I'd say that's about right. Smyrna is just a short train ride to the ruins of Ephesus, and Twain seems actually impressed with it as well. He notes the long list of international historical figures who have come through Ephesus from Alexander the Great to the Apostle Paul to many others. He retells the Legend of the Seven Sleepers, it seems like one he wish he'd written himself. From Smyrna, the group treks south toward Damascus. They have to telegraph ahead to US Consulates in Damascus and Beirut to arrange transport, make sure there are enough horses, etc. It's a 13 hour horse trek to Damascus, and Twain suffers from a bout of cholera while there. Through the Levant, the crew is always hounded by beggars asking for "bakhshish." The poverty and the culture of begging foreigners for money seem quite embedded. Palestine is much smaller than Twain imagined. He makes a good point that there have been many books published by American Christians describing their trips to the Holy Land, but each describes Palestine according to its denomination's desires. None seem to remark that the events of Jesus' life take place in an area the size of an American county. The Holy Land trek inspires Twain to write an awful lot of biblical commentary, retelling the Bible stories with his own insights and dry wit. If you like it, it goes on for quite a while. Eventually, the American travelers exit the future Israel out of the port at Joppa. There is a stopover in Egypt and the pyramids that Twain didn't seem keen to write about. "We suffered torture no pen can describe from the hungry appeals for bucksheesh that gleamed from Arab eyes and poured incessantly from Arab lips. Why try to call up the traditions of vanished Egyptian grandeur;...?" He ends the description of that rather quickly, and the crew then voyages home and through another quarantine. Twain wrote a newspaper immediately upon return that apparently sparked controversy among his crew mates. "The pleasure cruise was a funeral excursion without a corpse." But Twain has since grown fonder of the memories of the voyage in the year since he traveled. He survived to tell the tale, at least. I give this book 5 stars out of 5. What book doesn't have flaws, but this is basically an American classic written by the classic American English wordsmith. ...more |
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Jan 10, 2017
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Jan 15, 2017
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Feb 09, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0691140898
| 9780691140896
| 0691140898
| 3.74
| 10,469
| Mar 23, 2014
| Mar 23, 2014
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liked it
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This book presents Cline's research on the collapse of several societies around the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age and explores mysteries such as
This book presents Cline's research on the collapse of several societies around the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age and explores mysteries such as "Who were the Sea People?" It helps connect the dots between several peoples at the time and an attempt to recreate (with much uncertainty) what might have brought about the simultaneous collapse of these cultures. It is not that this is a bad book, but the author has unfortunately chosen to sell it by linking the promo to the modern world and picking an arbitrary date in which "civilization collapsed." I was intrigued because Tyler Cowen seemed to like its promo: "The economy of Greece is in shambles. Internal rebellions have engulfed Libya, Syria, and Egypt, with outsiders and foreign warriors fanning the flames. Turkey fears it will become involved, as does Israel. Jordan is crowded with refugees. Iran is bellicose and threatening, while Iraq is in turmoil." This is silly as those nations as we know them today did not exist in 1177 BC and such words could be written about many time periods in history. Cline doubles down, however, by trying to draw parallels between the ancient and modern world. For example, what oil is to the modern economy tin was to the ancients. Those types of stretches are not necessary. I was pleased to see that Cline collaborated some with Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, whose book David and Solomon I reviewed shortly before picking up 1177 BC. But like those authors, you are just as well to skip the book and read the articles the author has posted online (for Finkelstein look at Academia.edu). This article Cline wrote in September does a decent job if you want the gist.http://asorblog.org/2016/09/07/ask-ne...Another help to me was having lived in Ankara, Turkey and visited the museum of Hittite culture there and seen the relics of Hattusa and elsewhere. Jared Diamond's Collapse is also probably a must-read, as is Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail. If this part of the world doesn't interest you, you will be unlikely to enjoy it. I study the Bible and recently spent a long time looking at Genesis to the exile, reading several books and commentaries comparing various hypotheses on the origins and possible dates of a Jewish migration from Egypt. Cline is pretty fair to all viewpoints, noting that biblical historians favor the 1400s as the time of the Exodus, whereas archaeologists favor the 1200s, and there is room for debate on either side. In some cases, Cline's work on the Sea Peoples rebuts some of what Finkelstein wrote rather confidently in his work. (Finkelstein claimed the description of Goliath's armor in 1 Samuel could only be that of a Greek hoplite of later post-exile Hebrew invention. But Cline writes that sketches found in Egypt of the Sea People from the 13th-12th centuries vary in their description and some sketches may contain either Sea People or ancient Greek warriors clad similarly to the biblical Goliath.) The book is a good reminder that archaeological theories change constantly with evidence, trends, and who gets funding or publicity. Hypotheses that solidify into theories in one century may be discarded the next, so take everything you read with a lump of salt. Cline recounts what is known or suspected of three Sea Peoples invasions of Egypt and Palestine. Egypt was basically in decline from the 1500s until Shishak led a brief revival in the 900s. Egypt bore witness to struggles in Palestine among various peoples, some of whom Egypt had authority over during various periods. An example was the ~1480 BC battle of Megiddo in which Thutmose III fought to pacify a Canaanite people. (Gen. Edmund Allenby was conscious of this history when he fought the Battle of Megiddo in WWI.) There were also major battles between Egypt and the Sea Peoples but the various origins, tribes and distinctions named by the Egyptians are lost to us today--we can only hypothesize. Another mystery of this period is who razed several cities in the Mediterranean just before the migration of the Sea Peoples? Mycenaean cities were destroyed and their civilization was sent into decline. Was it the Sea Peoples? Earthquakes? From Canaan, Cline shifts to the discovery and known history of the Hittite civilization in Anatolia. The Bible sometimes uses "Hittite" to describe the later descendants of these people in Canaan, the remnants of the empire. In 1595, the Hittite army sacked Babylon and apparently remarkably returned home, not expanding the empire. In 1430, there was an Anatolian uprising against the Hittites that may have some legendary connection to Homer's Trojan War. The Amarna letters showing Akkadian-written correspondence between Egypt and Canaanites give some insights into the Hittite world as well; some correspondence was between Pharoah and a Hittite king. Egypt allegedly supported the uprisings in Anatolia and perhaps supported other powers against the Hittites as well. Archaeologists have determined by looking at the range and type of artifacts originating in civilizations found in foreign cities that Hitties and Mycenaean on the island of Crete apparently did not trade with one another for centuries, they were in a deliberate state of war. The Hittites and Egyptians did fight in the 1200s, resulting in a treaty under Ramses II. The Egyptian-Hittite rivalry roughly prefigured the later Egyptian-Assyrian and Egyptian-Babylonian rivalries. THe rise of the Assyrians coincided with the decline of the Egyptian and Hittite empires, and the Assyrians began to assert their own will in places formerly under those kingdoms' influence. So, from Anatolia to Canaan there was massive destruction around 1177BC. Cline believes there was a confluence of factors, a "perfect storm" that led to the collapse of these societies. There was widespread famine around 1250 BC that put stress on populations and led to migration. There were earthquakes in these regions that may be the cause of some of the devastation. Cline argues that the Bronze Age was a time of the first global economy and that their economies were too dependent on bronze. If you've read Jared Diamond's Collapse, you may remember a domino effect-- when societies are dependent on one another and specialize heavily and trade, they suffer greatly when something happens to one society, which then leads to the collapse of the other. Perhaps the Mycenaean decline hastened the Hittite decline which led to the collapse of Ugarit, Lachish, and other cities separated by considerable distance. Ugarit is one example of a city lost in that period around 1177 that had previously been at the intersection of Hittite and Egyptian influence; records indicate that it was overrun by Sea Peoples. Lachish, in Palestine, was destroyed around 1150 BC. Archaeologists and biblical historians have long suggested this was done by Hebrews in occupying the land, but the fact that it happened around the time the Sea Peoples were causing destruction elsewhere raises questions. Hattusa, the Hittite capitol, was destroyed by unknown culprits but presumably the Sea Peoples and perhaps with help from locals. Along with the question of "Who destroyed Lachish?" is the question "Who were the Philistines?" and "When did Israelites arrive in Canaan?" It is thought that the Philistines are the later descendants of the Sea Peoples, but they could be the (migrants or descendants) from SW Anatolia as well. Archaeologists and anthropologists look for clues in commonalities in language, religion, structure, etc. Much remains mystery. But the archaeology does suggest that during this period Palestinian cities began to be overtaken by a technologically-inferior people, which fits the Biblical account of Joshua. The Philistines are recorded as having the ability to make iron tools, weapons, and chariots while the Israelites are not. Egypt's New Kingdom dynasty also ends, after a long decline, around the same period. War and an apparent decades-long drought (possibly due to volcanic activity somewhere, according to some scientists) contributed to this decline. While the book really oversells its premise that we can learn much about today's complex society by learning from the apparent simultaneous collapse of many ancient societies, it is still a decent overview of what is known or believed about that period and what is still being learned by archaeology and ever-changing timelines and hypotheses. The author stresses that it is all still a mystery. It makes one sad to think of all the treasures and undiscovered information lost in Syria and Iraq due to ISIS looting and the battles there now. Perhaps even our 20th century history is just as good a lesson at how quickly nations can go from largely peaceful cooperation and trade to being overrun and borders redrawn. In all, I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. ...more |
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| Sep 16, 2014
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really liked it
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I suppose the title is a play on 13 Day in October about the Cuban Missile Crisis; there is nothing that dramatic in this book. The strength of the bo
I suppose the title is a play on 13 Day in October about the Cuban Missile Crisis; there is nothing that dramatic in this book. The strength of the book is that the author delves into biographical details of every character at Camp David in those days, even giving a history on how Camp David itself was saved from Carter's budget axe after inauguration. All of the main characters have written autobiographies and several other books, so it's nice to have a more miniaturized form by an author who has presumably read them himself and uses them to help understand each party's motives and emotions in the peace conference. I listened to the Washington Post's Presidential podcast episode after this book and found much of the same information covered. September, 1978 was sort of the peak of the Carter Administration, or the beginning of the end. The Peace Treaty, when signed in March the following year, marked the beginning of the end of the presidencies of President Sadat and Carter and PM Menachem Begin's government in Israel. With a religious commitment to peace, Carter had been inexperienced with Arab policy until his time as a governor eyeing a run for President. He visited Israel in 1973 and noted the strong Jewish voting bloc and lobby, which tended to vote Democratic. Egypt's Anwar Sadat was religious as well. Sadat was the grandson of a slave whereas one of Carter's constituencies in Georgia were the descendents of slaves. Wright discusses how Carter walked the racial tightrope as a politician, winning over African Americans in private meetings and later implementing policies that he would not have advocated publicly for fear of losing the white vote. His campaign played the "race card" as needed, a blemish in hindsight but pragmatism at the time. But he had been criticized as a "nigger lover" all of his life and was deeply aware of black/white differences from an early age. Wright gives a history of Carter as governor of Georgia, and the difficulty of running as progressive conservative. Carter is an odd president in many ways and apparently a micromanager who often had the most facts in the room and could be rather difficult to work for. Sadat was an interesting character who came to power after the death of Abdel Nasser in 1970 and had worked quickly to show himself to be a bold leader. Sadat grew up admiring and studying Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Adolph Hitler, who he saw as reformers, and particularly liked Hitler's suspicion of Jews. His military's bold 1973 crossing of the Suez had created great Israeli insecurity, even if it ended up being a tactical defeat for Egypt. Former General and later Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan worked secretly with Sadat's representatives when Sadat made rumblings about peace. Sadat made the unthinkable move of going to Israel, including the temple mount in Jerusalem on Eid al-Adha; one of his bodyguards died of a heart attack. Sadat gave an unprecedented speech at the Knesset in which he demanded Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories of 1967 as a condition for peace, a non-starter in the Knesset. Begin and Sadat both were combating economic stagnation and inflation at home when they arrived at Camp David for the accords. Menachem Begin defended the Israeli occupation after the Six Day War and worked to dispel the "myth" that there were Palestinians in the land before Israel, reaching back to ancient roots that Jimmy Carter would have been plenty biblically familiar with. Begin spent time with Carter in Washington, but Carter held out hope of negotiating some kind of deal. If you believe that you are God's chosen people, then you had the right to strengthen the rights of others. Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat's PLO did their best to distract and disrupt any negotiations via terrorist attacks. Wright writes that Begin had similarly pioneered terrorist tactics against the British Mandate in Palestine in order to get the UK to relent and allow more Jews to migrate from Europe to save them from the holocaust. Ironically, Osama bin Laden later read Begin's book to learn how to make a movement from terrorist to statesman. The author chronicles each day's events with the tangents into histories and personalities of all the participants. Future UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was in Egypt's delegation. Rosalyn Carter gets her own mini biography. Wright delves deep into the frustrations, the shouting matches, the lists of points to resolve, and the sticking points that almost derailed the negotiations. The participants tried to choreograph and sometimes walk on eggshells to keep things going. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski loses to Menachem Begin at chess on purpose at one point in a psychological tactic. Sometimes there is too much information, but to understand the ramifications of the peace accords you need a lot of historical context. Begin hearkened back to the Old Testament and saw the founding of Israel as a "new Exodus." They revisit all the wars and battles fought, with particular focus on independence and atrocities in 1940 and the consequences of 1973. Wright rejects any historical timeline of Genesis-Exodus that would put the book of Joshua in any actual reality, writing that Jericho and Ai had already been destroyed. Wright writes this as incontrovertible fact, when the reality is anthropologists and archaeologists still debate who the Sea People were, when and whether an Exodus occurred, and what explains the collapse of civilizations around the time of the 12th century (see Eric Cline's book 1174 BC for just one example). Begin also understands American history, citing Gettysburg and other events. In a roundabout way, Nixon and Kissinger's policy of "detente" made the Camp David Accords possible, writes Wright. The settlements were particularly the sticking point. Carter wanted an official Israeli commitment to the suspension of settlements on the West Bank and elsewhere. Moshe Dayan started to undermine the negotiations over disagreements with Begin about the Palestinian settlements and would later resign his position after the actual treaty was signed. General Ariel Sharon, a war hawk signed off on settlement evacuation. Carter thought he had agreement on the suspension of Israel's building of settlements but Begin never produced the letter. On Day 13, there was a failure over the state of Jerusalem, which the US still does not officially recognize as the capital of Israel. (These are the days before personal computers, every jot or tittle in wording has to have new drafts typed up, giving a new appreciation for the President's staff.) Carter personally draws up redrafts and cajoles and does all he can, shuttling back and forth. Just when things look like they won't happen, they do. They agree upon "A Framework for Peace in the Middle East" and "A Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel." Among the key points of agreement to present to the world would be that there would be a five-year transition plan to sovereignty and autonomy for the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza. (The stipulations of this agreement were rejected by the UN). Israel agreed to withdraw from the Sinai and Egypt would require permission to place troops there in the future, like a neutral zone of free passage. Egypt would officially recognize Israel, and the US would give them both money. Further, the peace treaty would have to be approved by Egypt's parliament and the Jewish Knesset to be binding--nothing they would shake hands on here would truly matter. After smiles and handshakes, things go south when Begin and Sadat return home. Begin seemingly begins to undermine the deal and Carter has to travel to the Middle East himself to iron it out, his Presidency in the balance. He succeeds, the treaty is officially signed, and peace is had, but at great price. Egypt is suspended from the Arab League as most conservatives, and the PLO, reject the deal and the UN refuses to acknowledge or enforce key aspects of the agreement. In 1981, Sadat leads a viscous crackdown and mass arrests of many parties on intelligence of a coup plot by radicals. In October, he is assassinated in a celebration of the 1973 war by radical conservative members of the army. Menachem Begin's Likud party faces a setback in Parliament and Begin eventually withdraws from public life and is a recluse that barely agrees to speak to President Carter on the phone years later. Gaza and the West Bank would not have the five years to autonomy they would hope for, but Egypt and Israel would have a decent relationship of trade and peace. Both have made billions in aid money and hardware from the United States. Carter cemented his legacy as a peacemaker, but would lose the 1980 election partly over his inability to do anything about the Iranian hostage crisis. (A memoir I read recently by the Ambassador to Turkey in 1980-1981 suggested Carter's various quirks toward foreign policy (particularly budget cuts) were not very popular. I've not read any books suggesting that the US military was sorry to see Carter leave, either. But he seems to be a man of consistent principle.) --------------------------------------------------------- Other books I have reviewed on Israel's founding and modern history: A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson (4 stars) My Promised Land by Ari Shavit (4 stars) Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson (5 stars) I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish (4 stars) Six Days of War by Michael Oren (4 stars) 13 Days in September by Lawrence Wright (4 stars) Jerusalem 1913 by Amy Dockser Marcus (2.5 stars) ...more |
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Jun 2016
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Dec 02, 2016
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Hardcover
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| 0670038369
| 9780670038367
| 0670038369
| 3.54
| 487
| Jan 01, 2007
| Apr 19, 2007
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it was ok
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Along with this book, in the last couple years I have reviewed this book along with others on Israel's origins and history (see list as the bottom). T
Along with this book, in the last couple years I have reviewed this book along with others on Israel's origins and history (see list as the bottom). This book fails to live up to its promise on the book's cover of being "the first popular account of this key era" of Zionist migration during the late Ottoman empire. A survey of books written in the late 19th and early 20th century on Gutenberg.org uncovers some looking specifically at the Ottoman empire's weakening and the potential for Zionism (from a Dispensationalist Christian viewpoint or from a British viewpoint as to their own interests). The US minister (before there was an Ambassador) to Turkey, Samuel S. Cox, wrote a memoir in 1887 that also speaks of the growing population of Jews in Palestine, particularly Jerusalem, and what it may mean for an eventual Jewish state. There were plenty of times in the early 1800s when the Ottomans fought battles or sent armies to put own uprisings in the greater Levant. The Crimean War was, in part, a question of how nationalities in Palestine were being treated. So, there is no shortage of sources from which to make this "discovery" of zionism before 1920. Ari Shavit's My Promised Land goes back to 1897 and the landing in Jaffa of his ancestors, Zionists from Europe following others who had come before. He examines their influences pretty well. Scott Anderson's excellent Lawrence in Arabia the work of Aaron Aarohnson, who migrated to Palestine in the 1880s and worked for the cause of Zionism through WWI. While Shavit's and Anderson's works were written after Marcus', they draw on earlier works about the era prior to 1913. Marcus' book was the basis for a one-hour PBS documentary and I would recommend that over the book, which is short enough that it could really just have been a long-form article in The New Yorker or someplace. The author views a film shot by Noah Sokolovsky as a sort of documentary in 1913 and recently discovered and restored; that gives some of the oldest footage of Jerusalem and Palestine known to exist. (You can watch it on YouTube now.) This leads the author to investigate the origins of the film, to be presented to the 11th Vienna Zionist Congress. If there have already been several Congresses convened and now someone is making a propoganda video urging further settlement, there must have already been a growing movement. This is the supposed "discovery" of the book. The first Vienna congress was founded by Theodr Herzl in 1898, building on the work of previous zionists. By 1913, there were many Jews living along side a much larger Arab population, but with plenty of other ethnicities such as Armenians, Greeks, Druze, and various other sects. In 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Jerusalem to inaugurate a Luthern church. The Kaiser supposedly privately voiced his support for a Jewish protectorate but later changed his mind. As the population grew, so did a sense of a growing importance about the area. It was integrated and largely peaceful under Ottoman rule. In 1908, the Young Turks succeeded in re-establishing democratic reforms in the Empire, which meant Palestine would have official represenation in Istanbul. There was a growing sense in the early 20th century of national determinism, a flame later fanned by Western influences like President Woodrow Wilson. With more freedoms came further demands for greater media as newspapers began to spring up. (While 1908 and previous reforms had given freedoms to the hinterlands, many decrees from Istanbul were dead letters outside of Istanbul, something the author might downplay in this book.) By 1913, Hebrew was beginning to be important for a unified Jewish identity. One sore point was when a British radio station began translating into Hebrew the word "Israel" to describe the territory. Marcus details the lives and interactions of a few specific characters in the book including a Russian-born Jew who founded the Rehovot colony in 1890 and a Muslim leader who is increasingly concerned about Jewish activities. While Jewish nationals and Arab nationals may have been united in their desire for independence from Ottoman control, there were also many who did not seek that, or perhaps sought only that the other party would not gain the upper hand. By 1914, there were something like 80,000 Jews living in 30 different colonies in Palestine, pioneering and making money off the land. If private property rights to the land would be held, then you were not far from having a state. As one side has property, it protects that side and hence Jews begin arming themselves. The Ottomans were generally not strong enough to balance all the influences and local corruption allowed skirting of the law. By 1916 and British invasion of the continent, the Arab Revolt began and the Jewish Question would demand an answer. I give this book 2.5 stars out of five. I don't believe Marcus "rewrites" anything as is said in the book's promo. Plenty of things were written at the time. It is short, and somewhat interesting. I recommend following it with Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia as he takes a similar approach to detailing the lives of a few characters as they cross in Palestine during WWI. ------------------------------------- Other books I have reviewed on Israel's founding and modern history: A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson (4 stars) My Promised Land by Ari Shavit (4 stars) Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson (5 stars) I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish (4 stars) Six Days of War by Michael Oren (4 stars) 13 Days in September by Lawrence Wright (4 stars) Jerusalem 1913 by Amy Dockser Marcus (2.5 stars) ...more |
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Aug 16, 2016
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Dec 01, 2016
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| 9781937498542
| 1937498549
| 3.90
| 20
| Sep 10, 2014
| Sep 11, 2014
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it was ok
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(I reviewed this book with others examining the Middle East and this review should be read in the context of the other books. A list of many of the bo
(I reviewed this book with others examining the Middle East and this review should be read in the context of the other books. A list of many of the books is at the bottom of this post.) The description on the book from the cover by a former US Ambassador to Moldova tells you what kind of perspective you will get in this book: "After a successful career in domestic business, Don Liebich turned his talents to foreign affairs, serving as an unpaid international consultant and developing deep expertise, especially in the problems of the Middle East. He has shared his knowledge and policy perspectives through publications, blogs, oral presentations, and the leadership of study tours." Maybe I will be Don Liebich one day, traveling the globe and attending conferences, talking to business people and, occasionally, an important person; publishing on my blog and in minor publications while being unknown to the Very Important People who actually make and carry out policy. He's been on Twitter for years and has fewer than 90 followers; his blog looks like it gets about that much traffic. Like Liebich, I have spent time living/working/traveling abroad and keep up with the news in these countries. I've used several languages to do so, I don't see an indication of that from him. He writes from his perch in Idaho, having written a blog about his observations on ten trips to the Middle East from 2006-2014 doing "economic development, citizen diplomacy and human rights projects," which includes things like building Habitat houses in Jordan. Apparently, there really is something called the "Boise Committee on Foreign Relations." He's a chemical engineer and that shapes his mentality, as he writes on his blog: "If thinking that 'every problem has a solution' is a crime, then I plead guilty. The attitude that we are capable of solving our problems is one of the things that makes America great." What the world truly *loves* about America is that we're ready to condescend to "solve their problems." Hence, on his website he feels he can assign letter grades to Obama's foreign policy, country by country. What Liebich's book lacks is a deeper understanding of the history of foreign policy and an understanding of political science-- governments are set up to operate differently in each country. Affecting policy at a local level by pulling whatever levers are available in Washington is difficult, frustrating, and held hostage by budget and random factors. There's a whole history of religion and ethnicity that matters; a businessman you meet in Beirut will have a widely different perspective than a villager in Northern Iraq, and the matter is entirely different if you actually live there 365 days a year. This book is a bit dated now that we know more about Obama's views on foreign policy from Jeffrey Goldberg's interviews published in 2016, particularly Obama's desire to pivot to Asia and get out of the Middle East. This book does not really acknowledge that pivot so much, but does seem to generally approve of the more non-interventionist policies as outlined in those interviews. Nonetheless, Liebich's 2016 letter grades found Obama quite lacking. Liebich began his third career (Navy, Sysco Systems and business consulting, Middle East observer) in 2006 when he was on a trip during the height of the Iraq insurgency and felt that he wasn't getting a complete picture of the Middle East from the media. So, he started blogging his observations. He'd been involved in international consulting, he watched Russia crumbling in 1994. He's traveled the former USSR. He's an ally of Andrew Bacevich, a pretty strong critic of neocon interventionism. (Liebich is really just Bacevich lite. You'd get the same thing from a Bacevich book, just a lot more of it). Liebich begins his history with 1914, which is a big red flag. Liebich claims that the Armenian genocide, the Balfour Declaration, and rolling back of imperialist policy under the Wilson administration somehow moved us into the Middle East. He ignores that Wilson contradicted himself on his policies of self-determinism (I recommend the chapters of Gaddis' biography of George F. Kennan related to this). There's a lot of other bits of his timeline that are left out. The author is not a huge fan of Israel. He gives a decided non-Israeli summary of 1967 and the Six Day War. He's seen the damage done to Israel's neighbors by war. He's a realist, though, and favors strategies such as conditional aid for peace; maintaining the status quo of aid-for-nothing has made matters worse. He disagreed with Obama's Afghan troop surge since it simply delayed the inevitable. (Who should we blame for that "inevitable" )? He critiques the intervention in Libya pretty harshly. He argues that intervention in Syria would make it worse. He doubts reports that Assad used any chemical weapons. I'd recommend a host of books and articles on Syria from people who have lived there over Liebich's thoughts on it (see list below). Hebollah vowed to hit Israel if the US intervenes, he writes, so we need to be aware of collateral damage. I'll note that in 2016, Liebich has given Obama an F on Syria, even though Obama also didn't seem to take reports of Assad's chemical attacks that seriously and did not intervene such that Hezbollah felt the need to hit Israel yet. I agree with those that point out that Syria and Iraq must be dealt with simultaenously. While Liebich concedes that Obama inherited a "a mess," he seems to not appreciate the full timeline of ISIS' development from 2006 onward. The US has a dilemma in in Egypt. Supporting free elections brings to power the Muslim Brotherhood, which showed itself not to be as committed to democracy and human rights as one would hope. Saudi Arabia has too much influence on Washington policymakers. Nuclear weapons don't concern the West so much but economic power certainly does. The author doubts that Obama would be able to finish a negotiated settlement with Iran, we see how that turned out. We now have over 600 bases on foreign soil, that's a problem. The one area where Liebich seems to give Obama credit for success is Sudan. I'll just leave that one right there. "While it is clear that Obama inherited a mess in the Middle East from the Bush administration and has succeeded in reducing America’s direct involvement in conflicts, the situation in the region is, in many ways, more unstable and chaotic than it was in 2009" (on his blog in July 2016). I doubt this book will be assigned reading in any foreign policy departments anytime soon. The world isn't looking for someone to solve each problem case-by-case like this is a case management exercise or chemical spill to clean up, especially when they are all so intertwined. But keep writing, Don. The new Trump Administration seems keen to listen to non-establishment, non-academics such as yourself. 2.5 stars. -------------------------------------- Books I have reviewed in 2016 related to US policy and the history of the Middle East that you may enjoy if you enjoyed Liebich's work: A History of Islam, The Middle East, and Arab nations: A Very Short Introduction to the Koran - Michael Cook (4.5) A Very Short Introduction to Islam - Malise Ruthven (3 stars) In the The Shadow of the Sword - Tom Holland (4 stars) In God's Path - The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire - Robert G. Hoyland (4 stars) Great World Religions: Islam (The Great Courses)- John Esposito (1.5 stars) Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes - Tamim Ansary (4.5 stars) Brief History of the Middle East - Peter Mansfield (3.5 stars) History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani (4.5 stars) The United States and the Middle East 1914-2001 (Great Courses) by Salim Yuqub (3.5 stars) Islam Unveiled - Robert Spencer (1.5 stars) Lawrence in Arabia - Scott Anderson (5 stars) Al Qaeda and ISIS-related books reviewed: The Siege of Mecca - Yaroslav Trofimov (5 stars) The Bin Ladens - Steve Coll (4 stars) Growing Up Bin Laden - Najwa and Omar Bin Laden (4.5 stars) Guantanamo Diary - Mohamedou Ould Slahi (4.5 stars) The Black Banners - Ali Soufan (5 stars) Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS - Joby Warrick (4.5 stars) Jihad Academy: The Rise of the Islamic State - Nicholas Henin (4.5 stars) ISIS: The State of Terror - Jessica Stern and JM Berger (4 stars) ISIS Exposed - Erick Stakelbeck (2.5 stars) The Rise of ISIS - Jay Sekulow and David French (1 star) The Jihadis Return - Patrick Cockburn (review forthcoming) Books by American non-academics related to foreign policy and travels in Middle East and Central Asia: Between Two Worlds - Roxana Saberi (2.5 stars) Children of Jihad - Jared Cohen (4 stars) The Taliban Shuffle - Kim Barker (4 stars) A Rope and a Prayer - David Rohde and Kristin Mulvihill (3.5 stars) Left of Boom - Douglas Laux (3.5 stars) Fault Lines: A Layman's Guide - Don Liebich (2.5 stars) ...more |
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not set
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May 2016
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Nov 25, 2016
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Paperback
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| 0743243633
| 9780743243636
| 0743243633
| 4.22
| 232
| 2006
| Apr 03, 2007
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liked it
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The maps in this book (Kindle edition) are inadequate. I recommend investing in a better map to keep handy on your table or better yet on your wall. I The maps in this book (Kindle edition) are inadequate. I recommend investing in a better map to keep handy on your table or better yet on your wall. If you want a brief summary of this book's contents, read Israel Finkelstein's "A Low Chronology Update: Archaeology, History and Bible", in T. E. Levy – T. Higham (eds.), The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating: Archaeology, Text and Science (London: Equinox, 2005) 31-42, available for free download at academia.edu. I recommend that with a word of caution to the reader: Finkelstein addresses valid criticisms (naming them as valid) to his hypothesis in this article, including a criticism by Eilat Mazar, which the authors do not do in the book. There is constantly new archaeology being uncovered in the Levant that both support and undermine various hypotheses, and new hypotheses are always being generated. As the authors admit, there are many competing claims, even among archeologists working on the same digs. The authors don't assign probabilities. Again, a weakness of the book is that the authors do not lay out counterarguments to their preferred hypotheses in this book. There have since been recent discoveries that may alter the hypothesis (from 2006) a bit, or make it less probable, see below. The basic hypothesis of the authors is this: There was never a united monarchy under David and Solomon, the idea was developed two centuries later to legitimize Judah's rule over Israeli refugees after the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians. 1-2 Samuel represents a blending of Northern Kingdom and Judahite history, in which Judah comes out on top and Judah's rule is legitimized because of Saul's sinful follies; David is shown as merciful to Saul's lineage as well as married to it in order to quell any resentment. David was an actual 10th century highland chieftan/bandit, and the evidence for his actual existence include the fact that the Scripture uses Hebrew language and geography that can only be dated to the 10th century, and would have been unknown if scribes were making it up in the 6th century or later. The Tel Dan stelle confirms his historic existence and importance remaining centuries later. But there are "clues" in the text that the final redaction of 1-2 Samuel reflects 8th and 7th century realities. Goliath, for example, resembles a Greek hoplite and looks nothing as Philistine warriors are depicted in Egyptian sketches. Likewise, the character of David in 2 Samuel seems patterned after Hezekiah. Solomon is patterned either after the wise Assyrian and Persian kings and reflect an economy that could only have existed in the 8th and 7th centuries when Judah grew rich as an Assyrian vassal state, or Solomon is patterned after Manasseh who led an economic revival after Sennacherib had beseiged and appropriated some of Judah. There is no archaeological evidence for a growing Jerusalem or Judah in the 10th-9th centuries. Structures previously believed to be Solomon's stables and other large works comporting with 1 Kings have since been widely dated later. Villages in Judah become much more populated, according to carbon dating and other methods, in the 8th century after refugees move from the Northern Kingdom. You need a "low chronology," move the traditional dates of Judahite expansion up at least a century, to explain the differences. The authors contend that most of the archaeological work in Israel in the 19th and 20th centuries use the Bible as their starting point, which leads to circular logic about dates for the sights found. By ignoring the biblical chronology and finding corresponding events in Egyptian and Assyrian history, along with carbon dating and what is physically available from digs, you can date the growth of Judah's kingdom a couple centuries later. Their views roughly line up with biblical commentator Kyle McCarter, Jr. who sees 1-2 Samuel as mainly a political history. But their own exegesis is lacking a bit; another weakness of the book is that, interestingly, the authors do not mention the origins or the nature of the Deuteronomistic History recorded in Scripture. 1-2 Samuel is a notoriously difficult book to translate because the Masoretic text is missing several elements included in the Septuagint, which came much later, and not all of the Dead Sea Scrolls containing portions of the books have been released or studied yet. (I found this out by reading some excellent commentaries dealing with textual difficulties of certain chapters and Hebrew words. 1 Samuel 13:1, for example, is notoriously incomplete and untranslatable). Why this is important: Historical David is just as important to Christology as Historical Adam. The covenant God makes with David in 2 Samuel 7 is a "revelation for mankind" about the "distant future," fulfilled in Jesus--the branch from the root of Jesse--who is called "Son of David" (Matthew 1:1, 9:27, etc.). It is a continuation of the Adamic-Noahic-Abrahamic-Mosaic covenant which all point to a coming Messiah who will reign forever. Jesus also becomes the fulfillment of Solomon's temple, he is the "tabernacle" (John 1:14, John 2:19), and Christians (the Church) today are the same fulfillment as the Holy Spirit fills us just as it did the tabernacle of Exodus and Solomon's temple of 1 Kings (1 Cor. 3:16, 6:19-20, 2 Cor. 6:16, 1 Peter 2, etc.). Recent discoveries that might affect the authors' (2006) work: 1. Literacy in Israel may have been more widespread earlier than previously thought, from new analysis (2016) by Tel Aviv University on the Arad ostraca. (http:// timesofisrael /new-look...). While the authors maintain that "there is no sign of extensive literacy or writing in Judah until the end of the eighth century BCE" (p. 88), "we can now say that the tale could not possibly have been put in writing until more than two hundred years after the death of David" (p. 36)- this does not appear to be necessarily true in light of recent evidence. I believe these recent discoveries undermine their hypothesis that Judah re-wrote the 10th century history of Judah and Israel during the 7th century as it would simply be harder to get away with with a population that was somewhat literate-- it's more plausible in light of new evidence that there surely would have been both oral AND written memories by which Israelites would know that David had never been a ruler over a united Northern and Southern Kingdom if that were indeed the case. In other words, even with a Low Chronology, you can move literacy up a century or so. 2. Another reviewer cites evidence by Barry Strauss of 13th and 12th century BC Egyptian paintings of Greek warriors possible akin to Goliath. The authors claim that Goliath's armor could only be described as that of a Greek hoplite not present in 10th century Jewish thinking. Apparently, Egyptian paintings of the "Sea People" Philistines do not look as Goliath is described. Hence, one could conclude that perhaps such warriors did exist, or that Goliath's description could have been a preserved description of an exotic Heroic Age Greek warrior. 3. Dr. Eilat Mazar discovered structures from 2005-2010 that she dates to the 10th century that would indicate both widespread literacy and the ability to do large-scale construction in Jerusalem at a time the authors say would have been impossible. Her discoveries of a large wall structure and pottery in 2010 came after this book was published. (http:// jpost /Israel/Jlem-city...) Part of her work uncovered the largest jars yet recovered in Jerusalem, whereas when this book was written there were scarce any shards from the 10th century known to be found, according to the authors. In the book, Finkelstein contests the Large Stone Structure that Mazar found in 2005. But Mazar continues to get university funding and be considered credible; in 2015, Mazar's team uncovered a seal impression of King Hezekiah in an ancient refuse dump.https:// sciencedaily /releases... So, while the authors debate Mazar's claims, she at least appears to be uncovering interesting things and is still unapologetic about the dates she gives matching a biblical timeline. Finkelstein's "Low Chronology Update" article addresses Mazar, but also does not disparage her work as commenters on Amazon do and also includes hers in his list of "valid" criticisms. However, the authors are rather conservative in their view on when it was written. As cited above, they do NOT say the entire Saul-David-Solomon story was made up whole-cloth after the exile by scribes who fooled an illiterate population. They deny more critical claims that the Deuteronomistic History was written entirely after the Babylonian exile because of the geography and the Hebrew used: "First of all, the evidence of literacy and extensive scribal activity in Jerusalem in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods was hardly greater—in fact much smaller—than that relating to the eighth (century)...To assume, as the minimalists do, that in the fifth or fourth or even second century BCE, the scribes of a small, out-of-the-way temple town in the Judean mountains compiled an extraordinarily long and detailed composition about the history, personalities, and events of an imaginary Iron Age “Israel” without using ancient sources was itself taking an enormous leap of faith "(p. 254). The geographical background of the stories of David in 1 Samuel matches the 10th century, not the 8th or later (p. 41). "This combination of peoples and areas on both sides of the Jordan River does not correspond to any later territorial unit in the history of Israel. Indeed the biblical description of Saul’s territorial legacy does not apply the geographic terms used for these regions in late monarchic times" (p. 70) The Tel Dan stele of David discovered in 1996 fatally damaged the whole-cloth "minimalist" hypotheses. The borders of Judah-Israel do indeed match the historical/archaeologic record in the mid ninth century, contrary to the claims of the minimalist school (p. 112). Onto David: David's life during his flight from Saul seems to match that of the 10th century "Apiru" people mentioned in the Egyptian "Amarna letters," which describe isolated herders and highlander bandit-kings who operated apart from Egyptian control. ( "This term, sometimes transliterated as Habiru, was once thought to be related to the term 'Hebrews,' but the Egyptian texts make it clear that it does not refer to a specific ethnic group so much as a problematic socioeconomic class," p.48). 1 Samuel 30:26-31 records that David shared his captured Philistine booty with local highland elders, and describes his marriage relationship with their daughters as well. So, the authors rate this aspect of David's life as "plausible." Northern Kingdom expansion: "From only about twenty-five recorded sites in the area between Jerusalem and the Jezreel Valley in the preceding Late Bronze Age, the number skyrockets to more than 230 in the late Iron I period. Their estimated population was just over forty thousand, compared to less than five thousand in the entire hill country of Judah. A similarly dramatic settlement expansion took place across the Jordan, in the northern part of the Transjordanian plateau. There, too, the number of settled sites vastly expanded, from about thirty in the Late Bronze Age to about 220 in the Early Iron Age" (p. 70-71). The authors don't mention it, but it roughly matches the census numbers given in the battles of the Book of Judges; Judah's military offering was petty compared to the rest of Israel. Shehonq I / Shishak- pharoah of 22nd Dynasty who ruled in the 10th century. The Bible puts Shishak's battle against Israel around 926 BCE during Rehoboam's reign, but Egypt's list of conquered cities only records the Northern Kingdom sites and nothing in Jerusalem and Judah. If Judah had risen to prominence under Solomon, why aren't its cities even mentioned in the Egyptian history? "The archaeological evidence suggests that (Sishak's invasion) actually happened: the places just to the north of Jerusalem that appear on the Karnak list (and that the biblical tradition describes as the core of Saul’s activity) were the scene of a significant wave of abandonment in the tenth century BCE. The conclusion seems clear: Sheshonq and his forces marched into the hill country and attacked the early north Israelite entity. He also conquered the most important lowland cities like Megiddo and regained control of the southern trade routes" (p. 83). "new analyses of the archaeological data from Jerusalem have shown that the settlement of the tenth century BCE was no more than a small, poor highland village, with no evidence for monumental construction of any kind" (p. 82). "Over a century of excavations in the City of David (within the confines of Jerusalem) have produced surprisingly meager remains from the late sixteenth to mid–eighth centuries BCE" (p. 95). "As far as we know from the silence of historical sources and archaeological evidence, Judah—with only limited resources and set off from the major trade routes—remained a remote and primitive highland kingdom throughout the ninth and early eighth centuries BCE. It evaded even indirect Assyrian control," (p. 124). But the Amalekites and Philistines, not the Egyptians, are the chief biblical enemy during Saul and David's day. How does one explain this? "The coastal Sea Peoples, including Philistines, had long served as Egyptian mercenary forces, and their role as Egyptian allies in this campaign and its aftermath seems quite plausible. It is possible that the Bible’s reference to the Philistines attacking the hill country and establishing garrisons at Geba (1 Samuel 13:3) and Bethlehem (2 Samuel 23:14), and to the great Philistine-Israelite battle at Beth-shean, may, in fact, preserve a memory of the Egypto-Philistine alliance" (p. 86). Here's the key: "David and Judah may have benefited from the fall of the northern polity and expanded to control some of the highland territories that Saul once led" (p. 86). "The wave of destruction that had previously been dated to around 1000 BCE and attributed to the expansion of the united monarchy in the days of King David actually came later, by almost a century. Such a transformation can indeed be traced in the archaeological record, but as we will suggest, it occurred first in the northern highlands rather than Judah—and only with the passage of several generations after the presumed reigns of both David and Solomon" (p. 98-99). The authors' hypothesis is that the united monarchy occured under the Omride dynasty of the North, after historical David and Solomon; its capital was Samaria. The history was later revised after the fall of the Northern Kingdom (721 BC), as Judah's King Hezekiah benefited by being a vassle state to Assyria. "The 'Court History' of David thus offers a whole series of historical retrojections in which the founder of the dynasty of Judah in the tenth century is credited with the victories and the acquisitions of territory that were in fact accomplished by the ninth-century Omrides" (p. 113). The intrigue and even positions of "scribes" and "recorders" recorded in 2 Samuel were too sophisticated to have existed until a generation or two after Solomon, in the 9th century. Hence, it is retelling Omride history. The Philistine's attributes as described in 2 Samuel resemble more the time of Josiah, centuries later, than the 10th century (p. 184). The list of cities that David distributes booty to in 1 Samuel 30 "were especially prominent in the time of Josiah" (p. 188). After the sack of Samaria, Judah's King Ahaz swore allegiance to Assyria (2 Kings 16:5-9). Sargon II finished the job of plundering Assyria and deporting many inhabitants. The authors record that Judah swelled at this time, likely taking on Israeli refugees. Ahaz was succeeded by Hezekiah, and Sargon II by Sennacherib during this period. The authors note that the history of Israel and Judah had to be altered at this time to explain and justify Judah's continual rule over the populous Northern tribes. Hezekiah took on the building projects ascribed to David and Solomon. "Jerusalem grew from a modest hill country town of about ten to fifteen acres to a large, fortified city of almost 150 acres. Jerusalem’s population skyrocketed from around one thousand inhabitants to approximately twelve thousand" (p. 128). "The archaeological picture of Judah in the closing decades of the eighth century is of a populous, prosperous, and literate kingdom. Jerusalem had become a heavily fortified city with a large population and a special class of royal officials, scribes, and administrators, who could conscript workmen for public projects and private memorials...the biblical account of David’s rise and Solomon’s succession could not have been written earlier than the late eighth century BCE" (p. 132). Archaeology confirms an abandoning of many of the settlements in the Northern Kingdom during this time. The evidence suggests that the area around Bethel, near Judah, was where the migration was heaviest. The Northern refugees brought their Saul stories with them. "Perhaps as much as half of the Judahite population in the late eighth to early seventh century BCE was of north Israelite origin" (p. 136). "The finds at Arad, Beer-sheba, and Lachish seem to point to a similar picture: all three present evidence for the existence of sanctuaries in the eighth century BCE, but in all three, the sanctuaries fell into disuse before the end of the eighth century. It is noteworthy that none of the many seventh-and early-sixth-century BCE sites excavated in Judah produced evidence for the existence of a sanctuary" (p. 138). 2 Kings 18:4-5 (not 1 Kings, typo in the book) suggest to the authors that Hezekiah was taking his reforms to consolidate power in Jerusalem, making it the locus of legitimate worship. "In short, the cult 'reform' in the days of Hezekiah, rather then representing puritan religious fervor, was actually a domestic political endeavor. It was an important step in the remaking of Judah in a time of a demographic upheaval" (p. 139). The re-writing of history to make it sound like they had once been united under David-- who God had chosen to supplant Saul-- took place around this time. "the earliest version of the biblical story of Saul, David, and the accession of Solomon—and possibly also his construction of the Temple—was created not solely or even primarily for religious purposes, but for a now-forgotten political necessity—of establishing Temple and Dynasty as the twin foundation stones for the new idea" (p. 143). One "clue" given as support of the authors' hypothesis is in the confusing seige of Assyria against Jerusalem in 701 BC. The Bible records that Hezekiah both payed a tribute to relieve the seige, but then the Bible states that Jerusalem was miraculously delivered; these texts are difficult to reconcile, some scholars assume two different seiges. But the Assyrian prism that records the battle (701 BC), in propoganda form, recalls the seige, but not loss, simply saying that Sennacherib returns to Ninevah and receives tribute. (It is plausible that mass disease or something ravaged his camp as the Bible suggests as the prism does not record a successful conquering of Jerusalem as other cities). But Assyrian records also record that Hezekiah had lost some of the most fertile lands in the Shephelah, further crippling Judah (p. 146). Assyrian records do record the death of Sennacherib at the hands of his sons (681 BC), as the prophets had forecast. 3 stars out of 5... see my blog for full review. ...more |
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| 0143034332
| 3.83
| 1,347
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| Oct 26, 2004
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One critic has suggested the book "be re-named as A Western History of the Middle East" but I would suggest perhaps "A Political History of the Middle
One critic has suggested the book "be re-named as A Western History of the Middle East" but I would suggest perhaps "A Political History of the Middle East." It is definitely the view from 10,000 feet, focusing mostly on political maneuvering and power struggles. This makes sense given that Mansfield wrote for papers like The Economist and the Financial Times in the mid-20th century; the majority of the book is devoted to the 20th century. Mansfield largely sets aside theology, almost ignoring any role it may play in dividing relations between Iran and the Saudis, for example. Why are Shia largely repressed and marginalized in Saudi Arabia while Sunnis and Kurds face difficulties in Iran? He devotes a few paragraphs on major Shia-Sunni differences, but only after he reaches the end of the 19th century. What are Alawites, Druze, Coptics? What is the interplay of Lebanese Christians alongside Palestinian Arab refugees and Shia militia? This level of detail is not really found. Given his financial journalistic background you would think he would have included more details on demographics, economic growth, and other such aspects of the Middle East but these are also largely left out. Tamim Ansary's Destiny Disrupted is a world history through the eyes of Islam, which is a decent book to read in contrast to this work, and is much more detailed in terms of religion and culture. Other books that I read prior to this include Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples, The Cambridge History of Turkey vol. 1 and 2, Paul Johnson's History of the Jews, Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia, Kissinger's World Order, Kinzer's Reset (on relations between Turkey, Iran, and the US), and Salim Yuqub's Great Courses lecture series on The United States and the Middle East from 1914-2001. Yaroslav Trofimov's The Seige of Mecca is also an important work on events in 1979 that have much to do with 2016. All of these provide details that Mansfield book does not, but I find Mansfield largely hits the high points and gives a good overview of life until 1991. One major weakness of this book is that Mansfield dismisses the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (1960s) and events such as the attack on The Grand Mosque in 1979 by a multiethnic group of Wahabbists as simply dead-enders showing they have nothing large to offer the larger populace and being henceforth rejected and never of any real significance. He writes in the closing chapter that Saddam Hussein proved "Arab nationalism and Islam cannot be mutually exclusive," citing Saddam's ability to muster Arab support for his "jihad" against Iran. His view from 1991 was that oil prices would again rise and the Middle East would again "be important" as its dictators again had oil riches and complaints. As a result, the reader might imagine that the US would end up returning to Iraq to face off against Saddam one day, and that Saudi Arabia and Iran would fight proxy wars someplace like Yemen, but you would not imagine that Saudi-inspired terrorists were already plotting attacks against the US even as this book went to publication or that by 2016 there would be an international war in several countries battling violent Islamists that showed a remarkable ability to recruit internationally by the tens of thousands. (It is similar to the mistake US policymakers and diplomats made in not properly seeing the undercurrents before the Iranian Revolution and being surprised as it unfolded. Even that episode is treated rather politically, Mansfield doesn't bother explaining that Iranians were outraged that the Shah went to America for treatment--an act they saw as an intentional harboring of the puppet.) That is the danger of pulling religion/theology and the underlying values and culture out of a book that aims to be a sweeping history. The author begins with a rapid run from about 0 BCE to the founding of the Ottoman caliphate. On one hand, it is nice that he does not look at the region in previous times but focuses on the period when the Arabs developed. There is little information available from around the time of Muhammed and rather than speculate, he just speeds forward. On the other hand, many events around the time of Mohammed are important and provide context both to the formation and spread of Islam as well as modern-day struggles (see Tom Holland's The Shadow of the Sword). Mansfield then gives a decent overview of Ottoman life and policy, highlighting various aspects of the long decline. In 1497, the Portugese bypass the Cape of Good Hope and the New World takes away the monopoly the Ottomans had on trade and the Western economy. Rather than innovate in the face of competition, the structures of the empire impeded progress and as it declined economically the idea of the Caliphate was revived in order to push its influence over Islam in its territories. There was an ongoing struggle between the Sultan and Mohammed Ali of Egypt which the British and French were able to exploit, as well as the rise of Mohammed Ali's son, Ibrahim Pasha, who invaded and occupied Syria in 1831. In the midst of this came various Western missionaries who built schools, hospitals, and brought Western ideas (I recommend American missionary Roger Goodell's work on his stay in Beirut during this period) as well as mass-printed books. (It was not until the late 1800s that the Ottomans allowed the Koran to be printed and the printing press was not used widely in the Ottoman Empire.) The 1838 Anglo-Turko treaty and an increasing amount of Russian meddling in the "Holy Land" eventually led to the Crimean War. During this period, young Turks were finally allowed to travel abroad and study in Western schools; they returned with bold ideas for reform and democracy. The Young Turks pushed constitutional reform on Abdul Hamid II in 1876 only to later see counter-reforms and a strengthening of the autocracy two years later. According to Mansfield, Armenian revolutionary movements aiming for independence grew during the late 1800s. The slaughter of many in Eastern Anatolia was reciprocated by an Armenian terrorist attack in Istanbul, followed by a further pogrom of Armenians from that city. In Egypt there were likewise nationalist movements aiming at self-determination. There was an open Britain-France-Nationalist-Ottoman struggle for Egypt which eventually led to British occupation because the Suez was too important to fall into enemy hands. Mansfield also mentions the ongoing struggle between Sudan and Egypt, a point of contention between Egypt and Britain. In the 1890s, the Ottoman Empire could not stand long against the Young Turks in Istanbul or the growing Arab nationalism in its territories. Places like Lebanon, inhabited by both Western Christian missionaries, Druze, and others with more ideas of democratic capitalism, the Sultan's stifling grip on either ideas or commerce began to chafe. Hamid brought Hussein and the Hashemites to Istanbul as part of the court in an effort to keep his friends close but his enemies closer. After he pivoted toward Germany for aid and the construction of railroads, the Young Turks managed to overthrow Abdul Hamid in 1908, only to see the further slaughter of Armenians in a conservative counter-coup. Nonetheless, the Young Turks restored the constitution and its reforms, particularly for women's rights and education. After Mansfield briefly describes the major differences between Sunni and Shia Islam, he explores the history of the Safavid Dynasty of Persia and the development of unique Persian/Iranian nationalism. One of the founders of the Pan-Islamist movement of the late 1800s was Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani was invited to Iran by Shah Nasser ad-Din where his popular preaching calling for reforms, resistance to Western influence and a return to Islamic principles, caused the Shah to eventually deport him in 1891. As elsewhere across the Middle East there was a growing movement against Western colonialism, and al-Afghani's disciples would eventually oppose British exploitation of Iran's oil resources. Once the time line goes to World War I, the British outrage many in the Middle East with the Balfour Declaration and the eventual resettlement of Jews into Palestine under a British Mandate. There is a good explanation of how the mandate worked along with the chronicling of the Arab rejection of various offers for a divided state and the fraught immigration of Jews into an increasingly dangerous Palestine. The rivalry for power and independence in the Levant is well-documented in Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia and other works. The Hashemites versus the French, Ibn Saud, and others. Early on in the 1900s there was not a notion of an Arab nation-state or states in the Middle East, but there was clearly a strong pan-Arab, pan-Islamic tide through which various tribal powers appealed to a common base against Western influences. Ibn Saud forges his still-so-consequential alliance with ibn Al-Wahhab and Reza Shah taks the throne in Iran and both Saudi Arabia and Iran enjoy selling oil to Western markets and rivalry with one another. In Egypt there is the education of Abdul Nasser and an increase in nationalism. Kemal Atatürk remakes Turkey into a secular democracy while the author really misses Reza Shah's envy of the secular aspect of Atatürk's country as he pays a visit (see Kinzer's work for this subject). WWII simply delays the inevitible as eventually Nasser and Sadat succeed in overthrowing their British yoke in 1952. The British and Americans made sure not to allow Iran slip out of their influence by overthrowing Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1953. Iraq's nationalist generals cooperated with Germany to move toward independence, but Allied victory in WWII maintained it in the British camp until a 1958 coup installed a monarch who dissolved the Baghdad Pact. Eventually Egypt tries a pan-Arab union with Syria, but Mansfield writes that the bourgeois opposed Nasser's strong socialism and the alliance collapses into Nasser-Baathist rivalry, a Syrian-Iraqi union at Nasser's expense. Meanwhile, Faizal creates a conservative Islamic front in Saudi Arabia against Nasser. The French and British basically withdraw from the Middle East and Northern Africa. Eventually, America stops viewing anyone who is not in the pro-America camp as a communist; Kennedy embraces Nasser and Johnson continues the support. The incredible defeat of allied Arab forces against Israel in 1967 have wide repercussions, along with ending Nasser's rule and creating more political squabbling among the Arab states. Anwar Sadat tries to get the US to take Egypt more seriously and starts the Yom Kippur war, leading to greater Israeli insecurity and a more hawkish attitude toward the Arabs, particularly in the form of making ties with US politicians. In the 1960s-1970s, everything seems to center around oil. The Saudis have five-year plans for infrastructure and use oil funds to eventually mount a joint effort to build Dubai. OPEC becomes the household word in the West. Jimmy Carter's foreign policy is humiliated by the overthrow of the Shah, which eventually leads to US engagement in the Iran-Iraq war as the Saudis increasingly have to balance the domestic pressures of a growing Salafist movement opposed to the House of Saud with proxy struggles with Iran. Mansfield essentially dismisses the conservative Islamist seige of Mecca in 1979 as the last gasp of the conservative religious movement on the road to greater secularization. Mansfield cruises through the 1980s, ultimately building up to the 1991 Gulf War, the results of which were not complete by the time the book was published. Saddam had both gathered Arab sympathies in his war with Iran and tried to boost his credibility as a force to be reckoned with by "retaking" Kuwait, perhaps this is similar in Mansfield's eyes as Sadat's attempt to get Western attention via the Yom Kippur War. He speculates on what would happen if the USSR breaks up-- the Middle East and central Asia would likely grow closer due to its pan-Islamic ties, and Turkey would also be involved due to the pan-Turkic relationship. But Turkey looks to be moving more westward than eastward in 1991. "The Middle East will not be ignored," concludes the author as he forecasts a return of oil prices closer to pre-1980s levels and a return to power of the monarchs and dictators that rule the region in a great rivalry. In all, I give it 3.5 stars out of 5. There is no ancient history, little treatment of the ethnic histories and religious undertones that clearly mean so much today, no understanding of the demands of jihadi fighters returning from Afghanistan, and no imagination that the pan-Islamism we would see just two decades later was one united in a violent struggle not just among Sunnis and Shias but also between Sunni powers. ...more |
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| 9781577996484
| 1577996488
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it was amazing
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Heirs of Promise focuses on the church as the fulfillment of prophecies made to God's covenant people--Israel. Unlike other books dealing with covenan
Heirs of Promise focuses on the church as the fulfillment of prophecies made to God's covenant people--Israel. Unlike other books dealing with covenant theology, Sears focuses mainly on the Apostle Paul's arguments in Romans. If you have purchased the Kindle version, you are in for a treat as all Scripture passages referenced are reprinted for easy one-touch look-up and return. All References are likewise linked, but this is the first book of biblical study that I had found the biblical passages so easily accessible, even when cited multiple times. The book would get five stars just for that-- this is how electronic book reading should be. (Note, all of the reprinted material means that over half of the book content are References.) Disclaimer: I received an advance copy for review from the publisher with the understanding that I would publish a review. The review and ratings are my own opinion and are no way influenced by the publisher. Sears begins every section with an introduction to the argument he will lay out, develops the argument, then neatly summarizes in conclusion. That makes it read a bit more like a thesis, but also helps the reader not miss the main points; it makes for easy highlighting and there are no tangents or rabbit trails. I made numerous highlights, and I have tried to string together key points that stuck out to me below. To gain greater insight into covenant theology, I read Michael Horton's acclaimed An Introducing Covenant Theology afterward. Sears' book is zoomed in specifically on Paul, whereas most works on the subject argue for the system as a whole and do not exegete specific texts, and that is what differentiates Heirs of Promise. If you want broader background on the Noahic/Abrahamic/Davidic covenant, the Sinaitic covenant, the historical suzerainty covenants that Sinai is so similar to, and how covenant theology has developed since the Reformation, then read a work like Horton's first. The basic argument of the book is that Paul sees the church as the "new Israel," meaning not that the Church has replaced Israel, but rather that it inherits Israel's promises. Loc. 200: "By calling the Church the new Israel I do not mean the replacement of Israel, but rather the continuation of Israel reconstituted in Christ. Understood this way, Christ is presented as God’s true Son/Israel, through whom all of God’s purposes for Israel and creation are realized. Consequently, through faith in Christ, the Church, consisting of both Jews and Gentiles, becomes God’s new covenant people and heirs of all of his saving promises." (Horton phrases this as the church being "Israel's fruition," which I think is a better description, Horton and Sears both note others have used similar phrases.) Sears relies heavily on commentaries by Beale, Moo, and Schreiner; if there is a weakness it may be in not consulting more historical works on the topic, and Romans, particularly from the early Reformers and the Puritans. The author begins with a critique of some of the disparate views of dispensationalists, illustrating that there is diversity among dispensationalist thought as well as among covenantalists, though covenantalists come across to me as more unified. Sears is using a biblical-theological approach (Loc. 187): "biblical theology is exegetically driven, sensitive to the historical, literary, and theological features of the diverse corpora of Scripture, while at the same time conscious of the interrelationship between these documents as a unified whole. Second, biblical theology is concerned with redemptive history, following the development of theological themes and motifs along the biblical timeline. This redemptive historical timeline finds its culmination in the Messiah. Finally, as the first two features are employed, the Bible is understood on its own terms, allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture." Covenant theology is, to my mind, inseparable from biblical theology, the overarching story of the Bible is a continuous one as God's purpose for Creation is being fulfilled in Christ and His chosen people. The covenant motif runs from creation to the Church. Christ is the "true Israel" who fulfilled both the Sinaitic Law and all the promises of the Old Testament. Only those who believe in Christ are children of Abraham and heirs to his promise (Galatians 3:7-8) and are the "new Israel," the Church. Sears appears to be addressing mostly dispensationalists who believe Messianic Jews are somehow first-class citizens in the Kingdom, or those of the more universalist persuasion that national Israel today is blessed and protected even though its people reject Jesus as the Messiah. He endeavors to show that believing Christians and Jews are on "equal footing." Key to this is proving that "Paul’s gospel is a fulfillment of the promised deliverance from exile and a new creation spoken by the prophets," (loc. 217). The Old Testament promises made throughout the Old Testament to a restored Israel are fulfilled in the Church, not the nation of Israel today, because of the Church's relationship to Christ, the true Israel. While Sears sees the Sinaitic covenant as temporary, he notes the fulfillment of various aspects of Exodus 20 by the Church. Israel was called to be a "nation of priests" through whom God would bless and judge other nations, just as God promised that Abraham's offspring would bless every family on earth (Genesis 12). "Paul sees the new exodus, the new covenant, and the Abrahamic covenant as fulfilled in the Church. If such is the case, it is difficult not to see the Church as the new Israel in Christ" (loc. 662). What about national Israel, and what about the land--Palestine-- promised to Abraham and inhabited by ethnic Jews today? Some of Paul's writing is eschatological, but covenentalists and dispensationalist differ on their interpretation, particularly in Romans 11. Romans 11 tells us that one day ethnic Israel will be grafted back onto the tree of Israel that gentiles have been grafted onto by a gracious God through Jesus (Rom. 11:24). There are ethnic Messianic Jews who now are part of the tree, and Paul forsees a further ingathering of Jews into the "new Israel" of the Church. However, "dispensationalists still want more from Romans 11 than merely salvation for national Israel. Some advocate that Romans 11 teaches not only a future salvation for the nation of Israel, but also a future restoration" (loc. 1687). "Paul’s allusion to Jeremiah 31:33–34 does not necessitate a national restoration for Israel. Paul is simply saying that Israel will not be left out of the new covenant. Further, we must not forget that the new covenant includes the Gentiles as well; otherwise, we undermine Paul’s emphasis on the Gentiles being grafted into the one people of God (11:17–24)" (loc. 1699). "Paul likely sees the land promise to be expanded from Palestine to “the world'" (loc. 1704). Prophecies like Ezekiel 36:33-36 should not be applied to the re-establishment of national Israel in 1945, as many American evangelicals seem wont to do, but rather should be seen as being fulfilled by the Church. Loc. 847-849: "(T)he new creation was promised to Israel (Isa 65:17; 66:22), but Paul sees this promise belonging to the Church, the new Israel...Paul has argued this reality—namely that 'Christians… [are] to be the actual beginning fulfillment of the prophesied spiritual resurrection of Israel that was to transpire in the latter days at the time of their restoration from exile' (citing G.K. Beale).” Location 1341, 1439: "Although Paul will later argue that there is still a future salvation for the nation of Israel, because God foreknew them (Romans 11:2), this salvation will not be experienced outside of the new covenant community of the Church...this Israel is not national Israel, for unbelieving Jews are excluded. Rather, this is 'the spiritual Israel within Israel that, according to Romans 9, has always been in existence and, according to 11:16, grows from the seed of God’s promises to the patriarchs' (Moo). This olive tree, which consists of both believing Jews and Gentiles, is the Church, a continuation of spiritual Israel expressed under the new covenant. Consequently, it is appropriate then to identify this new covenant people as the new Israel." So, Sears writes that there is a future salvation for the nation of Israel which does not contradict Paul's conception of the Church as the new Israel. Loc. 1525: "we may find it more helpful to consider the Church to be the new Israel while at the same time holding to a future for ethnic Israel." Loc. 1624: "Paul says the plērōma of Israel (11:12b) will not occur until the plērōma ( “fullness” ) of the Gentiles has been consummated (11:25b). Once all the elect from among the Gentiles believe, it is at this time “all Israel will be saved” (11:26a). Consequently, the “all” (pas) of 11:26a must correspond with the “full inclusion” (plērōma) of 11:12b. Otherwise, Paul’s argument would be anticlimactic "(loc. 1611, citing Cranfield). Sears sums up his argument thus (loc. 1752): "Although one could object that Paul never explicitly calls the Church the 'new Israel,' we shouldn’t reject this theological designation. To identify the Church as the new Israel is merely to grant it a term that encompasses the truth that the Church is God’s new covenant people and heirs of all his saving promises. The Church is not the replacement of Israel, but the continuation of Israel reconstituted in Christ." This book is an excellent addition to any study of covenant theology or of Romans. I give it five stars out of five. Buy the Kindle version and enjoy the experience. ...more |
Notes are private!
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it was amazing
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This is one of the best biblical commentaries that I have read, with plenty of notes on each Hebrew word in the text placed prior to an expositional s
This is one of the best biblical commentaries that I have read, with plenty of notes on each Hebrew word in the text placed prior to an expositional study of each pericope, making it accessible to Hebrew scholar or lay Sunday school teacher (me) alike. It is modern, contains the author's own thoughts and humor, and and is highly readable. Hamilton demonstrates clearly the use of Exodus language in the New Testament (see example below) which makes it easier for the reader to see how the themes presented fit into biblical theology (the arc of Scripture as a whole). I read this while reading Carol Meyers' commentary on Exodus; Hamilton's contains much more information about the text, translation, and other scholars' works than does Meyers'. I highly recommend this work. Hamilton divides the book into seven parts, with a few paragraphs introducing each part. Each pericope within in each part is outlined. He begins with a Translation, then Grammatical and Lexical Notes on each verse. This includes descriptions of the Hebrew words and a brief study on where else they are found and translated in the Hebrew Bible, how others have translated them, and the Hamilton's own open-ended questions. Then there is an expositional commentary. Some of the commentary gets a bit shorter toward the end of the book. Examples from the book: "Fourteen times God remembers the covenant he has made with somebody, as here: Gen. 9:15, 16; Exod. 2:24; 6:5; Lev. 26:42 [3x], 45; Pss. 105:8; 106:45; 111:5; Jer. 14:21; Ezek. 16:60... "God’s remembering always implies his movement toward the object of his memory.... The essence of God’s remembering lies in his acting toward someone because of a previous commitment.” The narrator tells us that this place is “Horeb,” which is another name for Sinai, maybe in the sense that “The Big Apple” is another name for New York City, or “The Windy City” is another name for Chicago. Nobody in Genesis is called holy or even challenged to be holy. Noah is “righteous” (ṣaddîq) and “blameless” (tāmîm, Gen. 6:9), but not “holy” (qādōš). The Lord calls Abraham to be blameless (tāmîm, Gen. 17:1), but he never calls him to be holy. Holy places and holy people appear in the Bible only in conjunction with the covenant and covenantal law that God gives to his chosen people, Israel. Moses after fleeing Pharoah and being told by God to return (p. 150-151): "men seeking your soul” anticipates Matt. 2:20, “For those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead”: tethnēkasin gar pantes hoi zētountes sou tēn psychēn (Exod. 4:19) tethnēkasin gar hoi zētountes tēn psychēn tou paidiou (Matt. 2:20). Most interesting here is the preservation of the plural participle hoi zētountes in the Matthew reference even though Herod is the only one trying to kill the infant Christ. The retention helps to maintain the parallel with Exod. 4:19. Third, in Exod. 4:20 Moses takes his wife and child(ren) and returns to Egypt. In Matt. 2:21 Joseph takes his wife and child and leaves Egypt. The death of Pharaoh opens the door for Moses to leave Midian and return to Egypt, just as the death of Herod opens the door for Jesus to leave Egypt and return to Palestine. On the Sinaitic Covenant compared to surrounding nations' legal codes (p. 610-611): Two items set the Covenant Code apart from all other Near Eastern legal corpora. First, in none of these cuneiform law codes does any deity ever speak...A second item sets the Covenant Code apart: unlike any of these cuneiform codes, the Covenant Code is set within a historical-narrative context, without which it would be shorn of much of its significance. ...more |
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w/essay on leadership by Arthur Schleshinger I picked this little book up at Goodwill for 50 cents. I read Maccabees for the first time a couple years w/essay on leadership by Arthur Schleshinger I picked this little book up at Goodwill for 50 cents. I read Maccabees for the first time a couple years ago and like to remember Judah Maccabee every Hanukkah. Most evangelicals have never read Maccabees and don't understand its important connection to the context of the Gospel accounts of Jesus life, especially his attending the Feast of Dedication in John 10. Not knowing the history of Palestine just prior to Jesus is a bit like learning about America today without learning about 1776-- it certainly helps in understanding why things are set up the way they are. Many evangelicals reject Maccabees since they were not part of the Jewish canon without understanding that their exclusion had much to do with the later politics of the Hashmoneans. Most evangelicals believe in the authority of Scripture but don't realize that Maccabees describes what most believe to be the fulfillment of several prophecies in the temple, when an abomination inhabits the temple and desecrates it-- what Antiochus IV precisely did. Fortier, like many critical scholars, claims Daniel was not written until around 165 BC, the time of the Maccabees, because the prophecies contained therein were too accurate a description of Antiochus IV to have been written centuries beforehand. Hannukah is one of the few celebrations around the events that remains, and Fortier points out that it mostly revolves around the purported miracle (which he claims was added centuries later) rather than the military aspect and Zionism. The story now has importance as the more religious conservative governments of modern Israel "would point to the boundaries of Simon's Judea...to justify in part the establishment of Jewish settlements in the West Bank." Braveheart was a popular movie and many don't realize it was based more on Maccabees than anything that happened in Scotland. This book was published in 1988 as part of a much larger series on "world leaders" ranging from Kublai Khan to Mother Theresa to Kim Il Sung to Pierre Trudeau. I give the book three stars overall. It's a quick introduction to the history of the area from the Seleucid Empire's control from 321 BC to the Roman conquest of 63 BC. It has plenty of pictures of artifacts and renderings of characters. What it lacks are maps, that would have been helpful. The book gives some historical background to Maccabees, retells the stories, offers some criticism of 2 Maccabees (which retells 1 Maccabees with more mythological flare of angels and more), and recounts the consequences of the Maccabee revolt and later Hashamonean rule. Judah Maccabee's family stood up to Antiochus' persecutions and blasphemies. Others joined them, eager to purify the country of Hellenism and regain independence. The irony is that after independence was finally won (after Judah's death) in 142 BC, the dynasty began to rule like the Greeks and the nation split between the Hashamoneans and Hasidic Jews who called for religious purification from Hellenistic ways. The memory of Judah Maccabee helped fuel several revolts resulting in the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and forced removal in 130 AD. One can understand why certain people looked to Jesus to be a militant Messiah (any connection to the Gospels is not mentioned in the book). This book helped me understand the events much better. The one thing that is really unclear to me is how the Seleucid troops could hold out in the Acra for so long, 20 years, cut off from Damascus after Judah and his band retook Jerusalem and the Temple (according to Wikipedia, it's only in 2015 that authorities are reasonably certain of its location.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acra_%2...). There is a basic bibliography included. If you know nothing, then this is a good enough place to start. ...more |
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really liked it
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I read this book after reading Ari Shavit's My Promised Land and Abuelaish's I Shall Not Hate, as well as Paul Johnson's A History of the Jews. 1967 s
I read this book after reading Ari Shavit's My Promised Land and Abuelaish's I Shall Not Hate, as well as Paul Johnson's A History of the Jews. 1967 seems to be such a pivotal moment both in Israeli and Arab psyche and had wider implications in the perspective of the Cold War. I agree with those who call "lazy" the pundits who claim the rise of Islamic fundamentalism finds its roots in the disappointment of 1967. As usual, reality is more complicated than that. One resource website I found while writing this review issixdaywar.org,a good place to go for the quick Israeli-leaning narrative; Oren's work simply adds the military and political details and personalities. It's one of the highest-rated books I've read on any topic, especially one as widely covered as the Six Day War. I'm 36, and it's not uncommon to hear people younger than me (and maybe some older) think gloom and doom about the world today, particularly the situation in the Middle East. "What has the world come to?" "Surely this is the end times." Nuclear Iran, ISIL in Iraq and Syria, Syrian civil war, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Saudi and Iranian proxy war in Yemen, etc. But let's examine 1967: The world divided between communism and markets, both armed with nuclear weapons and just a few years away from various almost blowing up the world. America in the midst of a liberal social revolution while being increasingly mired in its own proxy war called Vietnam. Every nation surrounding Israel refusing to recognize any right to existence, armed and eager to invade. Much more of the world in poverty and under despotism than today. The first half of the book is the long spring build-up to the 1967 war, which is dominated by actions by Abdul Nasser's Egypt. We forget (or are ignorant) today that Haffez Al Assad and Nasser forged an alliance unifying Egypt and Syria into one nation. Egypt had been fighting battles in Yemen. The Arab League was bent mostly on the destruction of Israel and if they had dreams of a pan-Arab region it was always at risk from internal squabbles. Nasser held contempt for Jordan after Jordanian troops refused to help his battalion, leading to a glorious defeat and his elevation as a national hero. Nasser held Jordan's King Hussein in disdain, and Jordan seriously feared (as Nasser threatened) Egyptian troops pushing through Israel straight into Amman. Hussein had already survived multiple coup attempts he saw Nasser's hand behind. Oren does a good job helping the reader feel the building tension. The Israelis were genuinely concerned about being wiped off the map by the overwhelming 500,000-strong Arab force, and Prime Minister / Defense Minister Levi Eshkol walked a fine line between hawks calling for pre-emptive strikes and a desire for Western support by not being the belligerent. The Jewish diaspora held protest rallies at universities and raised funds and other support for the besieged country, increasingly cut off from trade after the Egyptians blockaded the Straits of Tiran. Meanwhile, the Soviets helped the Syrians design a battle plan (shades of 2014-2015) and were eagerly shadowing any US ships in the region; tensions were high. Lyndon Johnson advised the Israelis to be patient and not be the ones to strike first-- at least not until they absolutely had to. This would give the US some clout in the UN, Israel had to be recognized as the non-belligerent, something Soviet propaganda would contradict. Johnson, while now known as a complex figure and often racist in conversation, had many Jewish advisors in his White House. "They consider the war to be like the Alamo and I don't aspire to be like Santa Anna." The US proposed the "Regatta Plan" to sail a convoy of international ships through the Straits of Tiran (at the Gulf of Aqaba) which would demonstrate if Egyptian belligerence if prevented, but could also risk a much wider war if a NATO ship was fired upon. Johnson was not prepared to come to Israel's aid in anything other than diplomacy, hoping a wider war could be avoided or, at the least, that the Arabs would fire first and the UN could intervene quickly. Egypt poured troops into the Sinai while Syria did likewise on the Golan Heights, both expelling UN observers or preventing their access to locations where they could observe the buildup. Iraq and Jordan began mobilizing their own forces sensing the impending attack. Chief of Staff (and future Prime Minister) Yitzhak Rabin had to take a temporary leave of absence after exhaustion from stress. As Israel finally activated reservists, they were condemned by the USSR as war-mongerers. On May 30, the Jordanians signed a defense pact that gave the Egyptian army command of Jordanian forces while reopening PLO offices, the PLO would also play a part in the battle. Moshe Dayan was named Israeli Defense Minister and folk hero Menachem Begin was also brought into the Cabinet. Arab propaganda across all nations prepared their people for a glorious retaking of Palestine. On June 4, the Israeli cabinet voted to launch a pre-emptive strike to end any Arab hopes of victory and force a quick UN resolution. The greatest emphasis in Israeli strategy was given to the Egyptian front in the hopes of crippling their military and convincing the Jordanians to the fight was futile. Air superiority is the key to any modern war. The most telling statistic in the book was that Israel had trained to develop an eight minute turnaround between a jet's landing and its refueling, rearming, and being back in the sky. Compare that to the reported eight hour turnaround for the Egyptian Air Force and it's not hard to do the math. Israel also had scouted any gaps in the Egyptian radar system. On the morning of June 5, after dawn patrols and when Egyptian leaders were stuck in traffic, Israel flew almost its entire air force over the Mediterranean then back behind Egyptian lines from the west to strike Egyptian air bases. Jordan had cabled Egypt warning of the approaching planes but a remarkable miscommunication about the channel or updating the Jordanian codes to be used between the forces Egypt to entirely miss the warning. The Israelis were able to fly 144 sorties in 100 minutes in a strategy where waves of jets would be able to attack in a non-stop rotation. Israeli tanks and paratroopers poured into Sinai simultaneously, a costly but successful campaign. Some Israeli mistakes led to casualties, but the Israeli forces were able to push through to the Suez Canal where Israeli commanders had forbidden anyone to cross. Egypt lied via its state-run media about dramatic Israeli defeat and Egyptian forces pressing on to Jerusalem, which sowed greater confusion both among Egyptian army and the other Arab states. The author writes of pledges from around the world of volunteers to the Egyptian cause that came pouring in after June 5. The Egyptians ordered Jordanian forces to begin attacking while claiming they had destroyed 75% of the Israeli air force in the opening hours, when the opposite was true! Given the information by the Egyptians, including a claim that Egypt was launching its ground invasion of Israel, the Jordanians rebuffed Israeli attempts to push a cease-fire with its sometimes amiable neighbor Jordan, Israel was promising no attacks on Jordan if Jordan would do likewise. Israel initially held off counterattacking the Jordanian forces who were inflicting casualties on the Israeli side. Suddenly, Jordan's army, weak compared to Egypt's, began fighting the most fiercely and took up positions formerly held by UN peacekeepers. Meanwhile, the Iraqi air force seemed lax and uneager to join the fray and moved slowly before mobilizing-- remarkable given the long buildup and knowledge that the war was imminent. Israel had remarkable luck or skill in destroying Jordan's small air force while it was on the ground refueling. The late-mobilizing Syrians and Iraqis also quickly lost any air superiority to Israeli jets. But Jordanian and Syrian artillery poised a threat, particularly to the airbases and civilian settlements. Jewish portions of Jerusalem that were surrounded by Arabs were also threatened. Having advantage in the air, the Israelis had success counterattacking near Jerusalem with a small, outnumbered infantry force on the ground while their air force punished any incoming reinforcements. The Israeli cabinet was ecstatic to learn that by the morning of June 6, recapturing the Temple Mount with the rest of Jerusalem was now a distinct possibility before a UN ceasefire could be imposed. Oren retells the story of the ecstasy of Israeli troops able to again pray at their holiest site. After heavy fighting against other Jordanian forces, Jordan was out of the fight on June 7 and a UN-brokered truce was signed. By now, the Arab media spread false rumors of British and US planes and involvement, with Egypt blaming their embarrassment on intervention by Western imperialist forces backing the zionists. Despite no actual US involvement, 34 Americans on the USS Liberty died when Israeli forces mistook it for an Egyptian destroyer on June 8 (for which Israel later paid reparations to victims). With their Arab allies losing badly, the US feared Soviet involvement in order to avoid the humiliation of their supported allies' defeat. Syrian troops were well-trained and with a Syrian advantage as most of Israel's army and air force was focused on the Sinai. But as Egypt retreated and Jordan dropped out, forces were quickly shifted to the Syrian front. Israel gained air superiority over Syrian on June 6, and after Syria violated a cease-fire on June 8, Israel mobilized its forces for the attack. After a fierce tank battle, Israel captured more territory, including Masada, while the Syrians tried to get the USSR more directly involved. A decision to announce the impending fall of Damascus in the media in order to ensure Soviet protection (again, think Russia moving to protect Assad in 2015) had the reverse effect of Syrian retreat and surrender, giving the Golan Heights to Israeli forces. Fighting officially ended on June 10. Some of the best fighting, interestingly, seemed to have been done by PLO operatives in already-occupied territories. One of the bizarre effects of the war was to cause Abdul Nasser to withdraw from all contact for three days after June 5 when he learned his army had been humiliated. After he appeared on national television to announce the truth of the defeat, blaming US and British armed intervention and Israel for attacking "from the West," he resigned. People took to the streets in a panic, calling for Nasser to return (which of course he did). As documented well by Ari Shavit, in the aftermath of the war Jews were rapidly expelled from all over the Arab territories. Confidence in Arab regimes was perhaps tainted, but not shattered. In 1973 everyone would again make a go at it before suffering similar humiliation and no liberation of occupied territories. Meanwhile, Israel would be left with a long legacy of occupation and abuse of Palestinians. Interestingly, the author does not mention much about the nuclear question. As Shavit points out, the Israelis had long since completed a nuclear reactor with the aid of France, and likely had nuclear arms by 1967. If Tel Aviv had been in danger of falling, might Israel have started a nuclear war? An aftermath not mentioned is the increasing religiosity around the Israeli victory, which Shavit writes came soon after the insecurity 1973 Yom Kippur war. Zionism began in the late 1800s as a secular movement and most remained that way through the 1950s. But the capture of Jerusalem and a determination through archaeology and religious history to show historic claims to land began to justify continued occupation of the Arab territories, despite international condemnation. The UN passed Resolution 242 in 1968, which basically left Jewish ownership of now-occupied Jerusalem in question, but it increasingly became central to Jewish nation-state identity. It was vague enough to be interpreted a dozen different ways as in a "yet to be determined." In the West, many evangelicals see Israel's victories in 1948 and 1967 as miraculous fulfilment of biblical prophecy. The Six Day War seems to be straight out of the Hebrew Bible-- impossible victory with few casualties despite overwhelming odds. While there is widespread theological disagreement about Israel's claim to the land, given their rejection of the Messiah, many influential evangelical politicians (Michelle Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, etc.) point to 1967 as divine intervention that America would be wise not to ignore. As I read this book, I was reminded that there were always many fortunate coincidences that a much more organized military is able to take advantage of in all of Israel's wars (from what I've read regarding the Maccabean revolution, 1948, the Yom Kippur War, etc.). 500,000 troops, 5,000 tanks, 1,000 fighter planes from seven different countries, plus the pledge of support from the USSR was able to bring nothing but humiliating defense and further loss of Arab territory. The Israelis lost hundreds while the Arabs officially lost thousands. Relevant or not, I'm still exploring covenentalist theology versus dispensationalist in an attempt to understand events in my own mind. I would like to read King Hussein's personal memoir of the war which he published later. I give this book 4 stars out of 5. Highly readable, great with details. However, it makes me wonder what the author missed. ...more |
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| Jan 11, 2011
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really liked it
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I read this book immediately after Ari Shavit's My Promised Land. While Shavit's work tells the history of 20th century Zionism with a guilty conscien
I read this book immediately after Ari Shavit's My Promised Land. While Shavit's work tells the history of 20th century Zionism with a guilty conscience, he largely ignores Palestinian politics, including the election of Hamas to power in 2006. While Shavit brings to light massacres that occurred in 1948, the Palestinian struggle is mostly evident in the background. I highly recommend reading both books successively. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish is a contemporary of Shavit, so much of the writing covers the same periods. Abuelaish shows us what it's like to grow up in a Gaza refugee camp-- far from the colonialist ideas of the Zionists, they are without electricity, radio, television. Abuelaish had never seen the bright lights of the city until taken on a smuggling trip to Cairo as a boy. He was a driven entrepreneur and an even more motivated student, devoting his life to obstetrics when he saw he could save lives and improve the lives of others through simple means. As a boy he spent time with an Israeli family and it was in a hospital that he witnessed men and women working together for the first time. He deals with Arab superstitions about women and infertility, that the "unfruitful tree should be cut." His research endears him to Israelis and he is able to bridge major divides. Being a Palestinian doctor who delivers Israeli babies sometimes makes him enemies on both sides. Abuelaish was able to travel abroad and get a sense of the world most Palestinians do not. Just before the 1991 Gulf War he finished a residency in Saudi Arabia where he witnessed Palestinians being laid off and discriminated against. Being a voice for peace and reconciliation, he attended a dialog after 9/11, using the platform of health care as a way to bridge the gap. He earned a health policy management degree from Harvard in 2003. He eventually worked in Afghanistan for the WHO. After attempting to run for a Palestinian parliamentary position with the PLA, against Hamas, he eventually ran independently after the threats and intimidation from the PLA became a burden; he lost the race and suffered humiliation of going into debt and having others steal money from his campaign. This makes him quite a bit different than the Palestinians we in the US might see on the news queing up at an Israeli border checkpoint, where they work to weed out smugglers, angry partisan, illegal migrant workers, etc. But Abuelaish documents the cruelty of the checkpoints. A Fulbright scholar denied an exit visa to study abroad, critical medicine and food kept from reaching the occupied territories, loved ones unable to reach others in need on the other side, opportunities and dignity lost. He remembers a day as a boy when Ariel Sharon bulldozed homes in the Gaza refugee to make the streets wide enough to be easily navigable by tanks. Any expression of outrage or anger is constantly met with arrest, or worse. The frustration with the Israeli checkpoints reaches a head when he was leaving for a job interview in Kenya and Europe in 2008; suddenly, all Palestinians were banned from traveling and, despite assurances from authorities, Abuelaish is caught up in Israeli red tape. While he is away, his wife is diagnosed with cancer and fades quickly. While re-entering Gaza from Jordan, the distance of a few miles again becomes hours waiting at checkpoints while Israeli computer glitches hold him for screening and his wife lays dying. This is just maddeningly frustrating for a reader, mental torture for the good doctor. When she dies in an Israeli hospital, he needs paperwork to bring his wife's coffin back to be buried-- more red tape and more frustration. Just four months later, in 2008, Israeli troops invade Gaza. His family is holed up in their apartment watching Israeli bombs and tanks obliterate their neighborhood. His daughters jury-rig a cellphone charger which provides them a lifeline both to friends abroad and eventually the larger Palestinian diaspora calling for information. Most importantly, he provides nightly updates to an Israeli news broadcast. The connection saves their lives once when an Israeli commander mistakenly had a tank outside their door about to blow it apart. Toward the end of the siege, the Israelis mistakenly target his house and his three daughters and niece are obliterated, just after speaking on the evening news. Israeli news carried the aftermath live on air, and his tragedy brought the war home to many Israeli households and government ministers for the first time. He later started the Daughters for Life foundation to provide scholarships for women to study abroad. His family had already resolved to move to Canada during the siege, and his daughters were never allowed to fulfill their dreams. The Israelis later admitted the bombing was a mistake before then making a host of insulting excuses. Ultimately there were no apologies or compensation. But Abuelaish explains why he does not seek revenge-- it could not bring his daughters back and would simply make the situation work. Instead, he works for peace. He compares himself both to the biblical Job and to Martin Luther King, Jr. He is deeply religious. He has a dream of peaceful coexistence in Palestine and using health care and education to bridge the divide. He admits that he chooses to see the world through rose-colored glasses. He bemoans the increasing culture of death on both sides, the disregard for or indifference to life he sees among young people today. He chooses to remain an optimist, to make the world a better place where he can. The book is the remarkable autobiography of a remarkable Palestinian. The human tragedy is really missing from many other books over the same period. It really paints the picture of life under occupation well. The downside is that he seems to avoid some of the talk of the PLA-Hamas rivaly and some of the terrorist acts actually committed against Israel that draw the army into places like Gaza to end missile strikes, tunneling, and more. The book closes with thoughts on his daughters and Dr. Abuelaish's own advice for life and wisdom. That could have been left out and been made a better book. 4 stars out of 5. ...more |
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| 4.22
| 10,384
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| Nov 19, 2013
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really liked it
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This book is the expression of Israeli pride in the tone of a guilty conscience. It helps to know the author's biography, what little he shares, to get This book is the expression of Israeli pride in the tone of a guilty conscience. It helps to know the author's biography, what little he shares, to get his point of view. Shavit grew up in the 1960s as the great grandchild of some of the first immigrant settlers at the turn of the 20th century, so he feels a connection to the original Zionist aspirations. He later became an IDF paratrooper before moving on to philosophy, progressive politics, and journalism as a reporter for the newspaper Haaretz. It also helps to have read something like Paul Johnson's A History of the Jews to get a more complete picture. Immediately following this book, I read (Palestinian) Izzeldin Abdulaish's I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity which gives a different perspective over much of the same time period. From Abdulaish you can see things that Shavit omits. I recommend reading both in tandem. Oren's Six Days of War added further context for me. This book zooms in on the 20th century and adds details, commentary, and emotion that Johnson could never have honestly done. The work opens with childhood memories of the 1967 war and its aftermath. Occupying Arab territories was seen as noble colonialism -- bringing water and electricity to backward areas and then leaving when there was peace. Only when he was on house-to-house raids with the IDF did he get a very different view and learn a different truth. The author relives the memories of his ancestors and other figures he interviews as he tells their story, effectively making their stories his own, or all Israelis'. Shavit relives the 1897 landing in Jaffa of one of his great grandfathers along with other British Zionists. His grandfather was both religious and a follower of Theodr Herzl who helped found the movement by arguing that the only escape from constant persecution was a Jewish state. Zionism was also seen by Herzl as necessary to preserve Jews from eminent assimilation as progressive Western countries opened doors for Jews to have more rights. Shavit's other great grandfather was Dr. Yofik, who I imagine he was probably acquainted with agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn, whose Zionist story is chronicled in Scott Anderson's excellent Lawrence in Arabia. There were maybe 500,000 Arabs and other peoples already living in Palestine at that time, but without property rights of land ownership, and largely in poverty. Shavit wonders if these people were even seen by the colonials, or if they were seen as just another Imperial British colonization project. Early Zionists didn't talk about conquering, they talked of rebuilding, farming, and being free. The irony is that as the Arab towns trading alongside the Jewish ones became more prosperous they were also later seen as more of a threat to the Zionist project. The movement was largely secular as any religious sentiment was seen as jeopardizing the mission. The Jews had a homeland, they were returning home, and that was that. Long since forgotten to the Western mind, the Kishinev/Chişinau pogroms from 1903-1905, fueled by Russian antisemimism, were influential in convincing many Jews there was no future in Europe; Jews fled either to America or to Palestine. Skip ahead to 1921 and you experience the building of the Meuhad/Ein Herod kibbutz by a group of young Jewish Socialists, determined to carve out a perfectly progressive commune in a valley with the spring of Gideon. This kibbutz would help spawn the wider movement as more Jews moved to Palestine to duplicate the project. The kibbutzim would eventually need to form armed forces to defend themselves against increasing Arab attacks and be the tip of the spear for the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948. The kibbutz features an orange grove and experiments with Western technology. As more educated move from the West, all communities benefit from medicine and technology. By 1936 they have almost 10,000 inhabitants and are exporting over two million crates of citrus, numbers which would grow rapidly. But as Arab attacks grow more persistent and organized, the kibbutz has to build a standing army to defend its slice of this now-contested land. There are finally organized reprisals and revenge killings, a foretaste of things to come. By 1938 there are ideas of "transfers" of Arabs to "non-Jewish" territories. Throughout the 1930s there are Arab revolts against the British mandate and riots against the Jewish minority that is rapidly increasing despite British attempts to curb migration. The formative moment in Jewish Israeli history comes when when Rommel's tanks move toward Africa in 1941 and Jewish settlers fear Hitler's clear annihilation strategy in Europe moving toward Palestine. Shavit recounts Commander Gutman's making would-be soldiers climb the clifs at Masada, the scene of massacre and mass suicide to end the Roman-Jewish War long ago. That act inspired the nation. "Within a few months the ethos of Masada becomes the formative ethos of the entire nation. Masada is now at the heart of the Zionist narrative, defining its now Palestine-born population." Here, they will make their stand. Shavit tells the tragic story of the Ben Shemen Youth Village founded by Siegfried Lehmann in 1927 in the Lydda Valley and home to 600 students by 1946, largely orphans imported from Germany. Imagine being a German or Polish child who witnessed your whole family die in a death camp, and now you're going to be raised by strangers in a land far away; Shavit retells their stories of finding community quite vividly. Lehmann and his youth befriended local Arabs and worked together in community. After UN members toured the area in 1947, the UN offered partitioned land for both Jews and Arabs, a two-state solution, but the Arabs rejected this proposal. Egypt began bombing the night the UN declared Israel a state in 1948. The Arab Legion laid seige to this village and killed eleven youths, who were evacuated while the village became a military outpost in the valley. As Israeli forces captured territory, it eventually closed in on the town of Lydda, where many civilians were killed. During one panic, Israeli forces killed 250 Palestinians, opening fire on houses and a mosque in what Shavit calls a "massacre." 35,000 Arabs were then deported from the town. "For decades, Jews succeeded in hiding from themselves the contradiction between their national movement and Lydda. For forty-five years, Zionism pretended to be the Atid factory and the olive groves and the Ben Shemen youth village living in peace with Lydda. Then, in three days in the cataclysmic summer of 1948, Lydda was no more." In his post-mortem, Shavit interviews the Israeli brigade commander. War was inevitable since thriving Arab population centers in the area were an unacceptable obstacle to re-inhabiting Palestine. Arab attacks allowed Israelis to overreach in response. The erstwhile persecuted refugees now created long caravans of Arab refugees. The legendary commander Gutman sees the irony. "For one long moment, he who was their Nebuchadnezzar wished to be their Jeremiah." It's not said by Shavit, but certainly PTSD plays some sort of role in the psyche of the Israelis carrying out atrocities. Having witnessed atrocities in the Nazi death camps and having felt the loss of their parents and loved ones their entire lives, certainly retribution against others who would exterminate them. Some may have felt the Arab attacks were not fair, they were offered a state in 1947, after all. I'm sure some argue that the Israelis were quite merciful, they let the majority of the population leave in peace and even gave them time to pack their bags. While many evangelical Christians in America interpret events in 1948 by to promises made by God to Israel millenia ago, never once in the book of Joshua or other aspects of Israelite history of brutal conquest in this land or religious memory invoked, other than the "gospel of Masada." Shavit rationalizes Lydda like this: "Those events were a crucial phase of the Zionist revolution, and they laid the foundation for the Jewish state. Lydda is an integral and essential part of the story. And, when I try to be honest about it, I see that the choice is stark: either reject Zionism because of Lydda or accept Zionism along with Lydda...I’ll stand by the damned, because I know that if not for them the State of Israel would not have been born. If not for them, I would not have been born. They did the filthy work that enables my people, my nation, my daughter, my sons, and me to live. But, looking straight ahead at Lydda, I wonder if peace is possible." Refugees from Europe poured in after WWII, especially after antisemitic pogroms in Poland. Reparations were few and far between, companies that profited off of Jewish slave labor did not offer much in return. (See Johnson's History of the Jews for more details on holocaust and post-holocaust activity.) After 1948, they began to pour in from Arab territories where they'd lived peacefully since the Babylonian and later Roman exiles and rather well since the British mandate. He interviews those who lived in places like Baghdad, where a thriving Jewish community was forced to leave. The author writes of the struggle to assimilate. Jewish immigrants arrived destitute, speaking various languages, unable to find work, and they were wards of the generous welfare state and caused economic collapse. But foreign aid and the influx of human capital eventually helped Israel roar back in the 1950s. Millions of immigrants founded 20 new cities and "could pretend Palestine wasn't there." 700,000 Palestinians "lost their homes and they were not yet united as a people." Shavit then chronicles construction of the top-secret nuclear reactor beginning in 1957, with French knowledge, hidden from repeated American attempts to discover whether it existed. He writes that this chapter was cleared with Israeli censors and I am surprised at the details he gives about the facility, which supposedly created the first nuclear device in 1967. A country of only 2.5 million had created the "most egalitarian socialst democracy" and a nuclear arsenal. Then came June, 1967, which began with existential fear of extermination and ended with more land but greater doubts about the government and the military's abilities. Shavit writes that this internal crisis worsened in the 1973 Yom Kippur war when the military was caught by surprise. This was when people lost faith in a purely secular Israel and began to turn to Judaism. Shavit rants against this tide as undermining Zionism altogether. The temple mount, for example is about evidence of ownership; it's about the "Kingdom of Israel," and this creates an untenable position. The international community does not accept Israel's claim to all the land it occupies and likely never will. They certainly do not want to become South Africa where everyone boycotts them. Israel has now built prisons and tortures, Shavit writes of systematic brutality akin to what was seen in Nazi Germany when soldiers just obey their orders. Shavit tells the story of modern progressive Jews, those who desire peace out of a desire for normalcy. But he admits that peace is an idea not based on the reality of Arab opposition. Arabs will always see the territory, even that granted in 1948, as occupied. He writes in amused fashion about millenials and homosexuals who now parade openly in "straight" Tel Aviv. To them, Israel can now afford to have fun and be free. He tells about the split between the The greater problem that Israel faces is demographic. There is still the problem of "oriental" Jews from elsewhere in the Middle East who come in with less education and higher poverty rates. Ashkinazi Jews of white, European backgrounds look down on others as of second-class. By 1990, 50% of the population was "oriental," and this group is more conservative Orthodox. Shavit interviews central banker (currently the US Federal Reserve Vice Chairman) Stanley Fischer who complains that as the Orthodox grow in political power they legislate more favor toward Orthodoxy. These people tend to be less entrepreneurial and avoid many fields of work, so a greater tax burden is being thrust on the more secular Ashkinazi. Redistribution is tilted toward that 50% and growing population which now lack incentives to produce. One entrepreneuring Ashkinazi that Shavit interviews is the founder of Strauss Dairy Products, and $82 billion conglomerate which now has over half the market share of ice cream. When asked "What does Israel contribute or make possible for your business?" entrepreneurs respond "People, scientists, and work ethic." Shavit, like Fischer, is worried that this is going away. But Israel faces the same problem as most of the Western world. The 1950s-1970s privatization led to growth and income, but eventually there came an increase in inequality and greater pressure on the middle class. Productivity growth is now a real concern in Israel. In Chapter 16, Shavit confronts the "existential threat of a nuclear Iran," recounting how Israel formerly bombed nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria. Writing from 2012, he wonders if the world has woken up in time (he hints that he has inside information and that Iran is indeed a threat). The author concludes that the great migration to Israel is the Zionists' triumph. But fewer Jews abroad mean less influence and less Jewish memory outside Israel. Still, 46% of territory currently occupied by Israelis is Palestinian Arab, and their population is growing faster than the Jewish one. He seems open to the idea of returning to the pre-1967 borders if it would save the Zionist project. The existential threat from Arab neighbors seems lessened now that the Arab Spring has exposed internal divisions and weakened pan-Arab nationalism. Shavit concludes that Israel offers "life on the edge, life lived lustfully" and basically expresses hope that the Orthodox Jew will eventually become less Orthodox and we'll have a new more secular Israeli identity that is secure from within and honest with itself. This seems wishful thinking, contrary to the demographic issues he has described, and critics have pointed out that Shavit is one of many who pine for the glory days of the secular 1950s with its roaring economy and can-do ambition. This work at once takes pride in those days while also expressing guilt at what those days were built upon. I give it 4 stars out of 5 as a great peek into the secular Jewish psyche but with some notable omissions and a bias for his own political views. ...more |
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| 0060915331
| 9780060915339
| 0060915331
| 4.16
| 2,495
| 1987
| Sep 14, 1988
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liked it
| The only way to get through massive volume like this quickly is to listen to it, which is what I did. You can discount all the negative reviews that s The only way to get through massive volume like this quickly is to listen to it, which is what I did. You can discount all the negative reviews that say "just read a Bible!" because biblical history is only the first 15% of this book. Most Protestants have never read Maccabees and are generally unaware of the history of Israel between Micah and Matthew, making it hard to understand the contextual backdrop of the Gospels. Johnson comes from the Catholic tradition and almost assumes the reader has already read the Bible including the Apocrypha, so I think he gives the Maccabean and Hasamonean histories short shrift. Judah Maccabee surely is a more important figure even to modern Israel than it would appear in this book. Johnson does not claim to be a scholar but a "man of letters who writes history." I think that's a false cop-out. The narrative of this book shows how the Jews have survived over the millennia. There is a remarkable ability to rally together around shared identity and the Torah. The Torah (and its formalization during Babylonian exile) gave the Jews a basis for Judaism. "Judaism created the Jews and not the other way around." The Jews gave the world "ethical monotheism," which was embraced and later copied by other religions. The Jews are ultimately survivors, the shared identity that binds them through the ages is the long list of persecutions. From a mixture of fighting for survival to adhering to the spirit of the Torah, the Jews have largely been industrious, increasing world GDP, contributing an untold number of scientists and philosophers, and being both a blessing and a curse to whatever land they inhabit. "The Jews believed they were a people of Providence, so they became a people of Providence." Being such a wide and broad history (6,000 years or so), there is not much at which this book excels. The exception is the chronicling of the persecution and pogroms of Jews from the Seleucids of 175 B.C.to the Poles immediately after WWII. The dates, numbers killed, eyewitness accounts, etc. add detail to the theme of the book, that the Jews are ultimately a sojourning people under constant suspicion and threat. The Nazi Holocaust is chronicled well, yet succinct enough that it is not an entire book in its own right. The biggest weakness of the book, I think, may be the lack of emphasis on the diverse religious and political views of Jews throughout history, and especially as they immigrated en masse to Palestine in the 20th century. I read Ari Shavit's My Promised Land immediately after this, and I think he does a much better job with 20th century history than did Johnson, though they are admittedly 25 years apart. I think Shavit would say Johnson painted the Jewish reoccupation of territory in a too favorable light and without the philosophical introspection that it warranted. Johnson also does not explain the evolving Jewish religious thought toward characters like Abraham and Isaac. I note that absence from what Bruce Feiler included in his book Abraham. There is a lack of explaining any particular rituals, holidays, or beliefs that currently unite the worldwide diaspora of Jews. Critics have written that Johnson is writing as an outsider bringing his Western Christian and politically conservative lens, but all of us bring our own biases to our work, Johnson admits his own interest in the history up front. Compare this to historical works by Jews and those of other backgrounds to get a more complete picture. Others have pointed out many factual errors, like writing that Jesus was somehow a disciple of Hillel; it is odd that for a Christian Johnson does not stop to ponder the reason given in the Bible for the conversion of so many Jews to Christianity-- the resurrection. If anything, there are places where Johnson stretches to find parallels between Jewish history and that experienced by Christians in Jerusalem in the first century. I'd be curious to read Johnson's history of Christianity, which he completed before this work. I give it four stars out of five. For a detailed summary, go to my blog. http://justintapp.blogspot /2015/1... ...more |
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| 0521807816
| 9780521807814
| 0521807816
| 3.89
| 18
| May 30, 2001
| Jul 25, 2005
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it was ok
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I used Meyers work alongside Victor P. Hamilton's own Exodus commentary in working through the book of Exodus; the latter is far superior, particularl
I used Meyers work alongside Victor P. Hamilton's own Exodus commentary in working through the book of Exodus; the latter is far superior, particularly for exegesis. Meyers book has some value, but I could not recommend it over other works. The publisher advertises that "It explains important concepts and terms as expressed in the Hebrew original," but Meyers largely does that by ignoring looking at how the Hebrew words are translated and used in other contexts in the Hebrew Bible. This book is a not a verse-by-verse commentary, but mostly an overview of how a few aspects of Exodus fit into Israel's national identity. She assumes the documentary hypothesis (most good commentaries these days have good critiques of the weaknesses of this approach) which leads to her to assign meaning to certain texts that the authors most certainly would not have. The book is devoid of any biblical theology--seeing how the work fits in the total arc of scripture--and does not connect much with other passages in the Hebrew Bible that rely on Exodus; Exodus is mostly left on an island by itself, and even its Genesis roots and parallels are largely ignored. That makes her assertations about Israeli identity questionable, in my opinion. The strength of the book are the "closer look" sections on topics like circumcision, the Sabbath, comparison of the Decalogue to the Laws of Hammurabi, and more. Meyers draws from modern anthropology and archaeology to make her points. Meyers also draws more attention to the role of female heroins in Exodus than other male authors, this is worth noting. The Torah truly elevates the status of women, and Exodus is no exception. An example (pgs. 51, 69): "Jochebed is a theorphoric personal name with a shortened form of Yahweh (see Exod 6:20), making her arguably the first person in the Hebrew Bible to bear such a name and signifying the origin of Yahweh as the name of god with her son...A name is related to identity; and the name of Israel's god indicates an open and fluid identity, not linked to any specific cosmological, natural, or functional phenomena, as was the case for other deities in the biblical world...Jochebed's name is also significant - using a shortened form of yhwh, it means 'Yahweh is glory.'" In some cases, she may stretch a bit to find feminine characteristics of God in the text. D.A. Carson might find some "exegetical fallacies." One example (p. 123): "the use of the epithet" merciful "for God as the source of divine compassion is probably related to such maternal images. The adjective" compassionate "(or" merciful ") and the noun" compassion "(or" mercy "), as well as the verb" to be compassionate, merciful, "all are related to the Hebrew word for" womb "(rehem); and they all are used in relation to God more often than to humans in the Bible." Nonetheless, there is some good commentary on law and legal customs among the Jews and other Near Eastern peoples that I found helpful. I give it two stars out of five. It gets a bit thin at the end as Meyers appears to get bored with the text. ...more |
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| 9780671724788
| 0671724789
| 3.93
| 14
| May 01, 1992
| Jan 01, 1992
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really liked it
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Read this in high school. Interesting recount of various hostage rescues, Ehud Barak's career, and more.
Read this in high school. Interesting recount of various hostage rescues, Ehud Barak's career, and more.
...more
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Jan 1995
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Apr 23, 2015
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 1565856708
| 9781565856707
| 1565856708
| unknown
| 4.18
| 246
| 2003
| Jan 01, 2003
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liked it
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This is a set of 24 lectures by The Teaching Company giving an overview of U.S. involvement in the Middle East in the 20th century. Yaqub earned a PhD
This is a set of 24 lectures by The Teaching Company giving an overview of U.S. involvement in the Middle East in the 20th century. Yaqub earned a PhD from Yale and his old biography at the Wilson Center suggests this book sums up his published arguments and research interests. As a prerequisite, I recommend Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples (goes from 600 - 1991 A.D). For more detailed information on William Yale and U.S. involvement in World War I and the Zionist movement during that period I recommend Scott Anderson's excellent Lawrence in Arabia (2014). My knowledge of American relations with the Jewish people and the Palestinian question was shaped by chapters in the second half of Freedom from Fear by David Kennedy. For a look at the U.S.-Turkey-Iranian relationship with a tangent on the Palestinian peace process, I suggest Kinzer's Reset. There are a host of books dealing with the U.S.'s relationship with Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the 1991 Gulf War. You might try Prelude to Terror by Joseph Trento for a jaded view on the CIA's involvement that Yaqub can only touch on. There are several works written in the 1800s by American missionaries and diplomats to the Middle East that are available on Gutenberg and elsewhere. Yaqub could easily add five more lectures since 9/11. Although the devil may be in the details, these lectures (and accompanying note outlines) give a good overview of Middle Eastern policy mostly divided up by the terms of U.S. presidents. The student can better understand the disintegration of the Ottoman empire, the triumphs and trials of Zionism, the rise of Arab nationalism, and the effects of each American president's policies in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Before World War II, and definitely before 1914, American involvement was largely commercial and missionary. Yaqub provides good documentation of missionary schools and hospitals and the headaches created for U.S. diplomats trying to assist citizens in times of trouble. After WWII, insuring stability, preventing communism, and safeguarding oil became the driving forces of each administration. Yaqub gives much attention to Abdel Nasser's often tenuous relationship with the U.S. from seizing the Suez Canal after U.S. rejection of aid for the Aswan Dam to the Six Day War of 1967. Nasser is the face of Arab nationalism and the mold in which many leaders seem to have followed. Yaqub does a good job tracing the history of Israel and the Zionist movement, as well as the plight of Palestinian Arabs from 1914. I appreciated that he included a lecture on the Kurds, looking at their history with modern Turkey and importance in Iraq policy. They are one of the few nationless minorities mentioned, which is unfortunate. Yaqub contrasts policies of various presidents (most of whom experienced deep and consequential failures). LBJ, for example, cozied to the Shah of Iran and to Saudi Arabia and offered little criticism of their internal human rights abuses at the same in contrast to Kennedy. Nixon was too distracted by Watergate to be trusted with any decisions during the Yom Kippur War, so Kissinger had ultimate authority. Carter was bent on peace in Palestine and defunding the military abroad but ramped up defense spending after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Reagan's Lebanon fiasco and Iran-Contra are rehashed. The 1991 Iraq war and aftermath are also revisited. The Clinton years and his effort with Arafat and Barak to make piece are somewhat critiqued. Yaqub posits that Barak's offer was less generous than Clinton and history give him credit for. Yaqub helpfully includes a lecture on Afghanistan and its history up to 9/11. The weakness of the series is that there is little mention of Yemen, not a great deal of focus on Syria outside of its wars with Israel, and nothing the economic rise of the Emirates. Libya is not technically in the Middle East but has been important in Middle East policy and counterterrorism since the 1980s; it gets one mention. Those countries are not in Yaqub's research interests so they are noticeably absent. The accompanying notes are quite helpful, but the lectures themselves could have been edited better for quality. I give it 3.5 stars out of 5. If you're looking for a primer on U.S. policy in the Middle East, this is a good place to start. ...more |
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