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Steven Newcomb's avatar

Greetings Francisco,

I certainly appreciate you positive feedback on making the "invisible" visible. I've written an entire book on the ideology of the Chosen-People/Promised Land Model. You are welcome to read it, or perhaps you already have. "Truth" is a tremendously ambiguous plastic word, and not being an actual person, "truth" does not "demand" anything. Now, if by that you mean that you demand the distinctions you are making in order to match your standard of "truth," I can certainly comprehend and understand why you might be making such a demand (command). The biblical passages that provide the framework for "Zion" and a "return" to "Zion," so far as I understand, begin with a "covenant" (treaty) between the deity and Abram, who through a naming ceremony becomes "Abraham" (father of many nations). The deity calls upon Abram to leave his father's house and accompany the deity to a land the deity has his eye on. "And the Canaanite was then in the land," says the story. "Unto thy seed [offspring and descendants] will I [the deity] give this land" wherein the Canaanites and other nations were already living.

As I note in my book Pagans in the Promised Land: "We might say that the story of the Lord's promise to the chosen people is the tale of a divine land grant, analogous to a papal bull and to various royal colonial charters that were issued by various Christian European monarchs during the Age of Discovery." "We might say . . . that this story of the Lord's land grant to the chosen people frames Abraham and the Hebrews as destined to be the subjugating masters or lords [dominators] of the land of Canaan." Elsewhere I write that "He" [the "Lord") "is depicted as being divine and as having a desire to extend his rule [domination] to the new land of Canaan by means of Abram[/Abraham] and his followers." I continue: "This suggests that the Lord had gone out ahead of Abram and the others and 'discovered' the Land of Canaan before he told Abram about it and directed Abram and his people to conquer and subdue the land the Lord has 'promised' them." I see no way around these aspects of the biblical narrative for those who wish to support and back the Chosen People/Promised Land model called "Zionism." And even if someone wanted to make the case that the people who trace their lineage to this narrative structure have a "right of return" to a land "wherein thou art a stranger" as the Old Testament states, which is a contradiction, how in the world is any of that correctly applied to the western hemisphere, and other areas of the planet where that narrative has been used to justify imposing patterns of domination and genocide on the original nations and peoples?

Take care,

~sn~

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Steven Newcomb's avatar

Thanks Peter. I appreciate it.

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