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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14024 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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From what I recall reading, there was a high amount of conversions from Judaism to Islam (and before that Christianity) because Rabbinical Judaism pushed literacy to fully participate in the religion. It’s difficult to be a pastoral and agricultural society and have everyone be literate. Not before the printing press. This means that the ancient Jews who were excluded from the literacy-centric benefits of rabbinical judaism were pressured to convert to alternative religious systems. So the masses of “ancient Jews” stayed in their homeland and became Christian and Muslim, whereas the upper-class rabbinical Jews (descendants of the scribal Pharisees) migrated to urban centers to utilize their literacy skills in trade and moneylending. If this is true, then there’s an interesting class dimension to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the privileged classes of ancient Judaism returned home to supplant the working classes of ancient Judaism.

Zvi Eckstein has papers on this. From Farmers to Merchants: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish Economic History writes —

The transition of the Jews away from agriculture into crafts, trade, and finance occurred in the eighth century mainly in Mesopotamia and the entire Muslim empire, and later in western Europe where the Jews migrated […] The Jewish religion made primary education mandatory for boys in the first century when the high priest Joshua ben Gamala (64 CE) issued an ordinance that "teachers had to be appointed in each district and every city and that boys of the age of six or seven should be sent." In the first century CE, the Jewish warrior and writer Josephus underlined that children's education was the principal care among the Jews […] From the second to the sixth century, Jewish leaders promoted further the learning and reading of the Torah and the recently redacted Mishna and Talmud by degrading the status of those who remained illiterate ("am ha-aretz"). The compulsory education for boys and the reading of the Torah, Mishna, and Talmud became the essence of Judaism. The monumental work of Goitein (1967-1988) from the documents of the Cairo Geniza provides extensive evidence of the full implementation of mandatory primary schooling for boys in the Jewish communities in the Mediterranean at the turn of the millennium.

The model's other important implication is that the cost of children's education for farmers makes a certain proportion of Jewish farmers convert to non-Jewish religions in each generation. The question is whether historically these conversions were significant. According to historians (Baron 1952, 210; 1971) and demographers (DellaPergola 2001), the key demographic fact in the first millennium was the sharp decrease in the world Jewry from about 4.5 million in the first century to about 1-1.5 million in the sixth century. This is the period when Jews worldwide were still farmers and, yet, education became the center of the Jewish religion. At the same time, Christianity emerged as a segment of Judaism that did not assign the same importance to literacy and education. Historical sources indicate that about one million Jews lost their lives during the revolts against the Romans in Judaea (70 and 135 CE) and in Egypt (115 CE). There is also evidence of some forced conversions to Christianity, but the description of these episodes of conversions from the fourth to the sixth century cannot account for the remaining reduction (2 million) of the Jewish population. The model's prediction of a slow process of decrease in the Jewish low-educated population due to conversions is supported by the historical evidence.

The model's prediction regarding migrations is that Jewish farmers with high preference for Judaism would migrate to centers of Jewish life if in their own country economic conditions deteriorate. The large migrations from Egypt and Palestine to Babylon in the second and third centuries provide evidence in favor of this prediction. Another prediction related to migration is that once Jews become merchants (as they did in Mesopotamia where about 70 percent of the world Jewry lived in the second half of the millennium), they would have an incentive to migrate to new urban cities where crafts, trade, and finance provide high returns to their high human capital. The fast migration of Jews during the ninth and the tenth centuries to western Europe and the high standard of living acquired by them in these locations is consistent with this prediction.

All this evidence supports Result 3 (i-iii) that uneducated Jewish farmers with very low levels of attachment to Judaism converted to Christianity (and later to Islam). Other uneducated Jewish farmers did not convert and remained within Judaism, but they became the ammei ha-aretz outcast within the Jewish communities under the influence of rabbinic Judaism from the second century on. The Jewish leaders were not concerned about conversions of the ammei ha-aretz to other religions because they wanted them out of the Jewish fold. Consistent with Result 3 (v-vi) the historical evidence indicates that conversion from Judaism into non-Jewish religions was a slow but significant process that mainly occurred when Jews were farmers, but almost stopped when they became merchants.

I was originally interested in this topic because it has cool implications for ancient Christianity. (Been meaning to write a post about Scott’s last two posts about ancient Christianity…). There’s a theory that an obscure sect of ancient Jews called the “Essenes” influenced Christianity, and this group was at odds with the Pharisees (precursors to rabbinical Judaism), Sadducees (priestly class of ancient Judaism who just sort of… disappeared), and of course Samaritans (surprisingly still around). The Essenes are linked to the Dead Sea community (Qumran etc) and their scroll cache. This is what Josephus has to say about the Essenes:

The Essenes are Jews by birth, and seem to have a greater affection for one another than the other sects have. These Essenes reject pleasures as an evil, but esteem abstinence, and the conquest over our passions, to be virtue. They do not marry, but choose out other peoples’ children, while they are pliable, and fit for learning, and judge them to be their family, and form them according to their own manners. […] These men despise riches and hold their property in common as raises our admiration. Nor is there any one to be found among them who has more than another; for it is a law among them, that those who come to them must let what they have be common to the whole order […] They do not buy or sell anything to one another; but every one of them gives what he has to him that wants it, and receives from him in return what he wants; and although they do not pay, they are fully allowed to take what they want from whomsoever they please […] They condemn the miseries of life, and are above pain…. And as for death, if it will be for their glory, they esteem it better than living always; and indeed our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials, since, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of instruments of torment, that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator, or to eat what was forbidden them, they could not be made to do either of these things … or to shed a tear; but they smiled in their very pains, and laughed to scorn those who inflicted the torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great willingness, since they expected to receive them again […] There are also those among them who foretell the future by reading the holy books, and using several sorts of purifications, and being perpetually conversant in the discourses of the prophets; and their predictions are seldom wrong.

That such an interesting group of ancient Jews, known to Josephus in the first century, is omitted by the gospel and first Christians is striking. But it would make sense if the Essene community is what influenced or even created the Christian religion; there’s no need for Christ to have a discourse with the Essenes if he is the Essenes. Note that the desert sea scrolls are known for their emphasis on the “teacher of righteousness”, and how closely the above passage by Josephus vibes with what we know about Christ’s actual blood relatives. Anyway, an Essene-origin theory of Christianity would explain why they critiqued the Pharisees and scribes, while elevating the status of the poor and ignorant. We begin to see a divorce between the lower/middle class Jews and the upper class Jews. There’s the economically universal religion and then an exclusive, literacy-focused religion. When Islam came around, they took on this “universal religion” aspect of Christianity which would result in even more conversions.

As a last point, Eckstein’s theory is kind of an argument against the authenticity of Zionism. If literate Jews willingly left the holy land to accrue wealth in foreign lands, serving foreign kings, then how much did they really value the holy land? The historical evidence does not support the story that every Jew was exiled from the ancient lands of Israel and forbidden from returning or anything like that. If you willingly sell your land and move overseas to make more money, the revealed preference is that you’re not actually attached to your old land. Ironically, the continuing Palestinian presence indicates a greater affection to their homeland. And the agrarian Palestinian lifestyle has much more in common with the ancient Jewish lifestyle: Noah, David, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were all agrarian workers and pastoralists. Agrarian metaphors are the universal language of the Old Testament.

Very interesting, thank you for the response.

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