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Authors: Daniele Bolelli

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BOOK: 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion
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The humiliation of having to give in to the bossy demands of those pesky Americans was so intense that it radically changed Japanese history. Determined to never again suffer such humiliation, Japan jump-started a period of very fast modernization, transforming their society by copying everything that made Western countries successful in order to be able to compete with them on equal footing. This bad mix of wounded pride and desire for revenge dramatically affected Shintoism. The Japanese government made a conscious effort to transform Shintoism, molding it into a state religion supporting an aggressive brand of hyper-nationalism. This was a rather difficult job, since there seemed to be nothing in Shintoism that could be used for the task. But eventually somebody took a second look at the myths telling of a divine origin for the Japanese people in general, and the Imperial family in specific, and decided to zero in on them. By overlooking just about every other aspect of Shintoism and focusing only on this, it didn't take long to create an ideology depicting the emperor as a descendent of the gods, and the Japanese as a sort of “chosen” people.
The traditional friendly mixing of Shintoism with Buddhism and Confucianism was legally banned, since it didn't fit a nationalistic agenda to have one's state religion mixed with foreign traditions. Alternative interpretations of Shintoism were similarly squashed. And so the mellow Shintoism of old gave way to a pissed-off new version anxious to kick foreign ass for the sake of restoring the national self-esteem.
 
The results were nothing but horrific. From the devastation of the Rape of Nanking to the fanaticism of kamikaze pilots, Japanese nationalism took the shape of a hyperactive militarism that unleashed hell everywhere it landed. The end of World War II mercifully euthanized the state-sponsored religion when, as part of the peace agreement, Emperor Hirohito was forced to admit not being a living god. This allowed Shintoism to return to its former relaxed self. But the whole experience was a kick in the groin to any enthusiasm the Japanese may have felt for religion as a whole—a trend that continues to this day.
07 THANK YOU GOD FOR KILLING MY ENEMIES’ CHILDREN
 
Often, the stories at the origin of many religious holidays sound like sweet fairy tales.
 
Think of Christmas, for example, with the shooting star, the three wise men bringing gifts, and baby Jesus being born in the midst of all the happy barn animals. It has a “God meets Old-MacDonald-Had-a-Farm” feel to it.
 
The story at the roots of the Jewish holiday of Passover, on the other hand, doesn't sound quite like a fairy tale—unless perhaps one created by Stephen King. What exactly is celebrated during Passover? Our tale begins in Egypt over 3,000 years ago—or at least so we are told, since there is less historical evidence for the authenticity of this story than for the existence of the Yeti and the Loch Ness monster. No source for its truthfulness exists other than the Torah. For all we know, it could be all exactly true or it could just as well be entirely made up. But in any case, here's what the Torah has to say about the origins of Passover. Over three millennia ago, times were not rosy for Jewish peoples (some things never change …). Being enslaved in ancient Egypt was not the epitome of fun, so Jews were desperately looking for a way out. The one and only God came to the rescue by empowering Moses to threaten the Pharaoh with a series of horrific plagues unless he freed his people. Nine consecutive plagues failed to sway the Pharaoh. So, for the tenth plague, God decided to pull out the big guns. He told good monotheistic Jews to mark their doorposts with the blood of sacrificial lambs. This was to make sure that the angel of death—who apparently could be a bit distracted sometimes—would not make mistakes. The blood on the door was the signal
to the angel of death that he was not welcome to come in for a visit: the blood told him to “pass over” those homes and go carry out his murderous homework elsewhere. God's orders, in fact, were pretty specific: all the firstborn children of the Egyptians were to be wiped out in a single night. And just in case that weren't enough, all the firstborn calves were also to be killed (if you are wondering about that, sorry but the Torah doesn't tell us exactly what evil sin Egyptian cows had committed to deserve such punishment).
 
Since this story was apparently not perverted enough, here's the icing on the cake. It was God all along who had hardened the heart of the Pharaoh to make sure he wouldn't release Jewish people before He had a chance to unleash all ten plagues. “
Why
?”
—you may ask—
“
What kind of weird game was God playing
?”
 
This whole drama was a publicity stunt set up by the one and only God, “… in order to show you My power and in order that My fame may resound throughout the world.” In other words, the killing of thousands of Egyptian kids was but a way for God to flex His muscles and gain some fame: bloodshed and terror tactics as a strategy to get attention.
 
Now, ancient Jews were clearly not overly fond of their enemies’ children. In Psalm 137, which begins as a moving lamentation over being exiled from their homelands, we are told with gleeful satisfaction about the joys of smashing the heads of the children of Babylon. During the march to the Promised Land, we are told in multiple occasions about Jewish armies hacking to death all enemy males, including those still suckling. But the lovely tale of the angel of death having a field day with Egyptian kids is the only massacre of babies to get its very celebratory holiday.
08 DEADLY ALLITERATION: MOSES THE MASS MURDERER
 
When I ask students in my courses on the history of religions if they are familiar with the tale of Moses going up Mount Sinai, and coming down with the tablets of the Ten Commandments, everyone always nods affirmatively. This is such a key archetype in Western religions that it's difficult to ignore. Even those students who look like they spent the best part of the semester sniffing glue manage to wake up from their drug-induced stupor to let me
know that even they have an idea of what I’m talking about.
 
When I tell them that the really juicy part of this story comes
after
Moses gets the Ten Commandments, and I ask them if they know what I am referring to, the vibe in the class changes drastically. Moses getting the Ten Commandments was the whole point of the story in their mind. What else was there to know? Usually, one or two people venture a tentative answer about smashing the tablets because he is upset with his own people.
 
Ok, not a bad start—we are on to something now. At this point in Exodus, Moses is indeed mightily pissed off—so pissed off, actually, that he breaks the tablets in an act of spontaneous rage. What sets him off is the sight that awaits him as he comes down from the mountain: many among his own people have openly renounced monotheism and have returned to worshipping
other gods. More specifically, Moses arrives as the Jewish tribes are busy staging an orgiastic ritual in honor of a fertility god symbolized by the statue of a golden calf. Seeing naked bodies dancing sensually around the statue sends stern, old Moses in a self-righteous frenzy. You could think that smashing the tablets, breaking up the party, destroying the statue of the golden calf and scolding the dancers severely would be enough, but Moses has something a little more radical on his mind. The story is about to get much, much juicier …
 
“Who is on the Lord's side?” asks Moses inviting all faithful fans of monotheism to join him. Once enough followers gather by his side, Moses spells out the plan for dealing with those who have different tastes in matters of religion. “Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.”
 
I’m not making it up—I swear. Check it out for yourself in Exodus 32: Moses, one of the most beloved religious figures in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is the organizer of a religious death squad that hacks and slashes through 3,000 fellow Jews whose only crime is not being sold on monotheism. The fuzzy concept of freedom of religion was clearly nowhere to be found. Had you suggested to Moses the notion that people
should be free to practice any religion they want, the odds are that you would have quickly found your head-waving goodbye to your body courtesy of Moses's henchmen. Perhaps—we may wonder—Moses wasn't a mass murderer at heart. Perhaps, he is just having a bad day. Even a prophet of God should be allowed to overreact once in a while. But just to make sure we understand that the golden calf massacre was not an isolated episode, just a few pages later Moses orders his loyalists to massacre the entire population of a neighboring pagan tribe. When the victorious army comes back after having killed all adult males and enslaved women and kids as prisoners of war, Moses goes into a frenzy. What part of “kill them all” did you not understand? Worried about the old man's blood pressure, his soldiers promptly kill most women and all kids, sparing only virgin females (you can imagine for what purpose …).
 
What these lovely stories seem to teach us is that clearly freedom of religion is not a biblical value. What we have, instead, is the beginning in Western religions of the theology of “holy war” that would eventually spawn all the Crusades, Inquisitions and 9/11s in history.
 
But, wait. I’m a little confused. Wasn't one of the Ten Commandments about not going around killing people?
09 HOW A FAILED SIEGE SHAPED THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
 
Since a story whose lead characters are named Sennacherib and Hezekiah, and happened almost three thousand years ago is not exactly what people talk about at parties, it took a top historian such as William H. McNeill to write an essay shedding light on why we should care. This event, after all, dramatically shaped the course of history as we know it. Our world would be radically different if things between these two guys had gone another way.
 
The tale we'll play with today takes us back to a time when Jewish monotheism was still in its infancy and required frequent diaper changes. A new Jewish king named Hezekiah had recently renewed a push to impose monotheism among his less than enthusiastic subjects. Polytheism was still running strong among vast numbers of Jews back then, so the jury was still out to decide which side would come up on top. After cracking down on polytheism within his own society, Hezekiah—perhaps emboldened by the thought that the one and only God was on his side—decided to challenge Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, by refusing to deliver any longer the tributes that Jews had customarily paid.
 
Sennacherib had a funky name, but was a bad dude. His people, the Assyrians, were the undisputed masters of that part of the world. And it's safe to say that they didn't come to rule over so many nations by being polite. These guys didn't mess around. Twenty years earlier, the ten tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel had pissed them off. After the Assyrians were done with them, they were to be forever known as the “lost tribes of Israel.” The Assyrians, in fact, had promptly run them over with overwhelming military force, invaded them, captured them, and deported whomever they hadn't impaled along the way. Scattered throughout the Assyrian empire, the people from the ten tribes lost their Jewish identity and disappeared from the pages of history.
BOOK: 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion
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