Apocalyptic Movements in Contemporary Politics

Christian and Jewish Zionism

C. Aldrovandi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780230280410
• eBook ISBN: 9781137316844
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores Israeli Religious Zionism and US Christian Zionism by focusing on the Messianic and Millenarian drives at the basis of their political mobilization towards a 'Jewish colonization' of the occupied territories.

1

Meaning at the End

So as to represent the phenomenal experience of time, two different and seemingly contradictory concepts are often employed. Time may be experienced as a mere repetition of identical occurrences as moon cycles, seasons or ‘red days’ in a calendar. The second and more worrisome understanding of time points at the irreversibility of its passage.¹ In Greek mythology, one of primordial deities symbolizing the idea of time’s irreversibility was the tyrannical Kronos, a titan known to the Romans as Saturn. In 1815, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya portrayed Kronos in the guise of a sharp-toothed ogre devouring his own children.² That image brings out the essence of what it means, and will always mean, to be human: defenceless exposure to realities of chance, change, decay and death. Throughout the world, religious mythopoeia are concerned with finding a solution to entropic time. The necessity to ‘climb beyond’ the limits of an ephemeral and transient life accounts for the tight link between man’s experience of time and that of the sacred.³

Ancient civilizations in the Near East and Orient understood time as being ‘self-enclosed’ in a circle. Everything happening within the ‘cosmos’ was thought to unfold, and return perpetually on itself, by means of an infinite repetition of identical stages of creation, deterioration, destruction and re-creation:

Generation and decay develop in a circle or according to an indefinite succession of cycles, in the course of which the same reality is made, unmade and remade, in conformity with an immutable law. Nothing is created, nothing is lost. No event is unique, nothing is enacted but once. Every event which has been enacted, is enacted, and will be enacted again. Cosmic time is repetition and eternal return.⁴

The classic idea of time was meant to reflect the unchanging perfection of the universe: neither direction nor goal, but a rhythm shaped on astral movements and natural cycles. Without the existence of a significant relation of before and after, nothing ‘absolutely new’ could arise from the historical horizon. In the eternal succession of cycles, one event was hardly distinguishable from the other. According to Karl Löwith, a temporal understanding devoid of significant points of reference also accounts for the Greek inability to develop an authentic ‘philosophy of history’ – a term referring to a ‘systematic interpretation of history in accordance with a principle by which events are unified and directed to an ultimate meaning’. A future without direction implied a simple rerun of the past: neither progress nor decline, but a recurring gain and loss. Human action and fate appeared to be regulated by the alternation between hubris and nemesis, a retributive law that time and again restored the equilibrium of forces. The rationality of the cosmos left no room for any hope in a divine providence. The human condition was not perceived as perfectible, but instead crushed by a tragic fate: ‘all nations, cities, and authorities must, like men, meet their end’.⁵ In an awareness of the mutability of fortune, the best course was to resign oneself with virile assent. Even Olympus’ gods submitted to the inexorable laws of the universe.

Within that scheme, argues Mircea Eliade, humankind could nevertheless find relief from the ‘burden of chronicity’. This was possible through the very patterns of recurrence, constancy and immutability. The passage of time – and all the unremitting suffering carried with it – could be momentarily abolished by the repetition of the ‘cosmogony’: the act of creation of the whole universe charged with generative power and meaning. By ritually re-enacting the favourable circumstances of the beginning in which the forces of order triumphed over those of chaos, man was offered a chance of revitalization. That kind of renewal allowed man to be projected illo tempore: the paradigmatic and atemporal moment in which all reality was created. To become contemporary with the work of God implied being granted a fresh start with all forces intact. Life’s finitude and tragedies became sufferable as they were inserted into an overarching, consoling system in which birth follows death, just as death follows birth. Human fate resonated with a cosmic pattern in which every end was never definitive, but always connected with a brand new beginning.⁶ Classic civilizations were able to neutralize the reality of the second aspect of time (irreversibility) by equating it with the first (repetition). Through eternal recurrences, one was periodically empowered by that sense of ‘unlimited possibility’ associated with the mood of being on the threshold of a ‘just-born’ world.

The eschaton

Consciousness of history has its origin in Israel with the Exodus from Egypt. The Exodus is conceived of as a historical occurrence that constitutes an irreversible ‘before’ and ‘after’, because in this event a new spiritual truth is experienced that is superior to the truth of cosmological myth and that at the same time gives new meaning to the existence of the people of Israel: Yahweh, who led Israel from Egypt, is revealed as the God beyond the cosmos and the intra-cosmic world of the gods; thus, the Exodus from Egypt becomes, in the self-understanding of the people of Israel, the exodus from cosmological civilization, and Israel becomes a people that has a history in the presence of the transcendent God.⁷

It is commonly accepted that the first and substantial rupture in the cyclical understanding of time occurred within the Hebrew religious tradition. The prophets Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel introduced a notion of temporality hitherto unknown to the surrounding Near Eastern civilisations – a view in which time no longer revolves in an infinite sequence of circles, but flows linearly towards a future single ending.⁸ Much of the persuasive force of eschatology or the ‘Doctrine of the Last Things’, resides in its holistic approach, combining and providing an explanation to matters of ultimate significance: the nature of time, the destiny of humanity and the cosmos, the source of spiritual authority, human suffering and evil.⁹

Eschatology imposes a teleological structure on our experience of time suggesting that all that happens is designed for or directed towards a final end, which gives reason to what existed before. Within that scheme, the whole meaning of history becomes intelligible only from the standpoint of its conclusion. It is not by a fortuitous coincidence that, from the prophetic tradition onwards, the terms ‘end’, ‘goal’, ‘purpose’ and ‘meaning’ can be used interchangeably in the Western lexicon:

History is meaningful only by indicating some transcendent purpose beyond actual facts. But, since history is a movement in time, the purpose is also a goal. … To venture a statement about the meaning of historical events is possible only when their telos becomes apparent. When a historical movement has unfolded its consequences, we can reflect on its first appearance, in order to determine the meaning of the whole. … If we reflect on the whole course of history, imagining its beginning and anticipating its end, we think of its meaning in terms of its ultimate purpose. The claim that history has an ultimate meaning implies a final purpose or goal transcending the actual events.¹⁰

To regard meaning in terms of a future goal transcending present events represents a real break with the rationales of the Eternal Return. To the Greeks, historical occurrences had import and sense, but these were not interpreted in view of an expected fulfilment finalizing the whole course of time. An approach in which past and present are a meaningful preparation for the future was lived intensively by the Hebrew prophets as a hope for final redemption. In the prophetic books of the Torah, every instant appeared to be precious in so much as it was ordained by God’s purposeful plan, beginning with the first breath of creation and ending with deliverance in the Promised Land. History might have seemed a mix of drift and disaster, but it was unfolding under divine guidance. The prophets taught their followers ‘to look forward with confidence to a time when, under God, they would be lord of a fertile, prosperous world, and when their enemies would be finally subdued, never to rise again’.¹¹ Past and present evil was to be endured in the light of the Kingdom of God: a futuristic order in which man would be fully integrated and free from oppression. By the eschatological valorization of time, Israelites learnt how to live and suffer in terms of tomorrow, fascinated by what does not yet exist.

The abolition of history

The cyclical understanding of time enabled the members of the traditional civilizations to regenerate themselves by a re-enactment of the ‘beginning’. To actualize again the instant in which the cosmos was created implied the recovery of a pure existence, imbued with virgin possibilities. On the threshold of each new birth, the celebrant was projected into a mythical dimension, benefiting from a momentary yet repeatable ‘measure of eternity’. Through that renewal, the vicissitudes generated by the passage of time were transcended, but not definitively. It is worth noting that the Myth of Eternal Return was ‘ahistorical’ in character, without meaningful ‘points of reference’ in time, one lived in the distinctive ‘continual present’ of rituals.

With eschatology, human regeneration is no longer accomplished by endless re-enactments of the cosmogony. The cycle in which beginnings follow endings is broken, unravelled into a limited temporal duration. Periodic rebirths are replaced by a single, definitive renewal that will occur at the end of that duration. Suffering in time is tolerated in light of a redemptive plan that would extirpate it once and for all. The archaic world appears to be indifferent to historical time, whereas the Hebrew civilization is interwoven with it. Events are ‘situations in respect to Yahweh, and, as such, they acquire a religious value that nothing had previously been able to confer on them’.¹² Yet, the emphasis on the value of history appears to be only cursory, since all events are subordinated to an ultimate fulfilment, outside its course. What happens in time is part of a transition ushering in a final age in which ‘time shall be no more’. The kind of regeneration pursued by eschatology ‘irrupts suddenly and puts an end to everything, slashing the fabric of time like a sword’.¹³ In light of this conclusive anti-historicism, Hebrew resistance to death, decay and suffering turns out to be far more determined than that of the archaic mind. The terror of Kronos can be endured only because it is known that, one day or another, it will cease forever.

It is worth mentioning that both Judaism and Christianity maintain, within their doctrinal culture, the cyclical view of pagan civilizations, by combining the eschatological conception of time with that which governs their liturgical calendar, rites and ceremonies. Many examples may be quoted here to support the idea that, within the two faiths, to ‘commemorate’ implies to repeat and re-actualize a primordial archetype and, as a result of that, to regenerate time. In Judaism, the Sabbath rest ritually re-enacts the ‘the primordial gesture of the Lord, for it was on the seventh day of Creation that God rested from all his work which he had made’. Further, the observance of the Passover remembers and transposes in the present the experience of the Egyptian bondage and that of the deliverance by the hand of Yahweh. Similarly, the Christian liturgical year is organized upon ‘a periodic repetition of the Nativity, Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus, with all that this mystical drama implies for a Christian’.¹⁴ Indeed, history may be abolished and renewed countless times before its irrevocable End is reached.

The everlasting Covenant

The meaning of Jewish eschatology becomes fully intelligible only when interpreted within the normative framework of the Covenant (berit in Hebrew). The first prophets were members of the ‘Yahweh alone’ tradition: a religious movement marked by a stern denunciation of Near Eastern polytheistic practices and by the insistence that Israelites should exclusively worship Yahweh, the patron divinity of Israel. From the time of the Prophets onwards, Yahweh came to represent a ‘Lord of History’: an interventionist God acting in the historical plane with an intensity and purpose that were unknown to previous religions. This appears to be the case when the Hebrew divinity battles against Israel’s foes, the polytheistic tribes of the Land of Canaan. The Yahweh alone movement was the cultural milieu out of which the first monotheism developed, an idea that cannot be dissociated from that ‘deal’ binding God to His chosen people. The scholarly and theological literature surrounding the idea of ‘Covenant’ is so wide and complex that it might easily overshadow its contractual nature. The caveats of the deal, argues Donald H. Akenson, shift over time, but its kernel does not:

If Israel will be His people, Yahweh will be their God. This, though easily stated, is as profound a commitment as any set of human beings can make. This is the opposite of the Faustian deal, but it has one element in common with it. Whereas the Covenant is a collective, not an individual bargain, and it is with the Almighty rather than with the Devil, it is identical in this regard: once you sign on it, you belong to him. The contract is Israel’s enlistment in the divine army; it binds the entire nation and does so generation after generation from time unto eternity.¹⁵

In its early formulation, the Covenant contained a set of basic promises, with no apparent condition attached. God would increase the number of Israelites and make them into a great nation, bless those who bless His Children, and extend such divine rights to Abraham’s descendants. For our purposes here, it is crucial to note that the primary derivative of the bargain was that ‘gift of grace’ represented by the everlasting possession of the Land of Israel – in Hebrew, ‘Eretz Yisrael’. As will be shown, that exclusive territorial right is still perceived by many Orthodox Jews as being heavenly endowed:

God alone is Lord and possessor of all lands; He alone distributes land to peoples. This article of faith is epitomized by the highly authoritative commentary of Rashi to Genesis 1:1, in which he states: ‘should the nations of the world question the validity of Israel’s title to the Holy Land by saying: you are robbers in that you have overrun the territories of the seven Canaanite nations that have occupied the Land previously, Israel can resort: the whole world is the Lord’s. He created it and gave it to whomsoever He saw fit’. The absolute perpetuity of the Covenant eliminates the possibility that God can relocate the Land permanently to any other people.¹⁶

The Land of Promise, however, as every other sacred trust granted by the Covenant, is not to be considered an end in itself, but rathe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Political Religions and Theo-politics
• 1 Meaning at the End
• 2 Millenarianism, Messianism and Absolute Politics
• 3 Jewish Religious Zionism
• 4 US Christian Zionism
• 5 Cultural Apocalypse
• Conclusion: Two Parallel Lines
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index