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Notes -
This is a somewhat one-dimensional interpretation of Ancient Judaism IMO. We have plenty of examples of Jews discriminating against groups of people seen as enemies, and excluding them much like the Nazis originally wanted to exclude Jews:
Deut 23:3: “No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you."
Ezra 9: “After these things had been accomplished, the leaders approached me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the surrounding peoples whose abominations are like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites. Indeed, the Israelites have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed has been mixed with the people of the land. And the leaders and officials have taken the lead in this unfaithfulness! When I heard this report, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled out some hair from my head and beard, and sat down in horror.”
Joshua 23: “ The LORD has driven out great and powerful nations before you, and to this day no one can stand against you. One of you can put a thousand to flight, because the LORD your God fights for you, just as He promised. Therefore watch yourselves carefully, that you love the LORD your God. For if you turn away and cling to the rest of these nations that remain among you, and if you intermarry and associate with them, know for sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become for you a snare and a trap, a scourge in your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that the LORD your God has given you.
We have examples of ethnic narcissism, similar to Nazi Germany:
We have a genocidal drive against the Amaleks, whose entire seed needs to be genocided because they attacked Israel when they were weak:
The punishment for belonging to a different religion in Ancient Israel was death, something considerably worse than camps before exportation to Madagascar:
Jews often blamed their troubles and defeats on allowing foreign people and their customs, or marrying foreigners. It’s not quite correct to say that ancient Jews did not attribute victories to themselves. The God is themselves, it is their own priestly class who sacrifices to God, it is the organization of their whole peoplehood. “Israel is rewarded for her faithfulness” is functionally identical to “we deserve this land for our righteousness”, it is just cloaked in religious language so that the priestly class and hierarchies are justified. If Ancient Israel had a group of foreigners with foreign customs living amongst them, God (by which I mean priest and prophet of the Israelite community) would command them to be slain, and probably their whole family, and all their animals as well. I suppose if they converted, they would be allowed to participate socially after the eleventh generation, depending on how a Rabbi wanted to interpret Deut 23:3. But when you read “God says these people need to be driven from the land because they are evil”, it’s a little silly to interpret this other than “the Jews believe they deserve the land for not being evil” — it is just rendered in a justifiable and humble way by the priests.
The Ancient Israelite “rendering” of their superiority is significantly better and more prosocial than Nazi Germany, and much more sophisticated. But IMO it is still identity politics. It reminds me of a Spanish Conquistador “compassionately” conquering Mexico for God, because God is their God too, and God wants them to be Christians and to be guided by God’s representative on Earth, the Spanish Crown. This is just poetic identity politics.
I edited the post, specifically the section called "Conflict and Conquests", to address this.
Basically I think you are comparing the Hebrews to perfect angels based on their mythology, whereas I am comparing them to Nazis and pagans based on their laws.
As you said,
What we disagree about is that I think that difference is exactly what is important, and that it is so large as to be rightly considered categorical, regardless of anecdotal counterexamples.
This part, however, I think is self-evidently incorrect:
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