Short History of the Jews..pt3

Just Who Were the Jews?? First invent your Jew, then invent your Christ…

Blood Sacrifice

Influenced by these Canaanite cults, but devoid of artistic or metal working skills of their own, the early Hebrews adopted a way of honouring their god of choice by genital mutilation. This sometime practice of the Egyptian priesthood became, for the ?Jews?, a tribal obligation, part of the male regenerative organ offered as a blood sacrifice to the ?jealous? god Yahweh. Other gods were worshipped but Yahweh demanded precedence.



"For generations, millions of babies were routinely circumcised without anaesthetic ? sometimes using a sharpened stone. Even today infant deaths result from this barbarous mutilation."



Thus though the Hebrews were not a race, the males at least acquired a distinctiveness from other Semitic tribesmen who did not practice circumcision. Women, regarded as mere chattels, were spared this mutilation.

In this period of proto-Judaism, polygamous males acted as ?priests? for their extended families and kinship groups and exercised absolute authority over wives and children. At some point in the tenth century BC the Hebrews were completely overwhelmed by the more advanced Philistines, moving down from the north. Armed with iron weapons and deploying chariots the Philistines scattered the primitive Hebrew nomads into the hill country and a few austere places in the Jordan River valley.

The various Hebrew clans had no single warlord but were led by tribal elders and shamans. The backward Hebrews remained under the sway of their shamanic ?judges? to a much later date than neighbouring peoples. Theirs was a harsh culture of ?scapegoat? sacrifice and collective and inherited guilt (?eye for an eye? vengeance). As marginalised pastoralists they were acutely xenophobic and demonized the city dwellers and farmers. With the ebb and flow of empires over centuries, and the endless movement of peoples, we might have expected this marginal tribe to have passed into history, along with countless other peoples, assimilated into a greater multitude.