The Bible offered to the world a blueprint for blaming yourself

Many leading national poets, immersed in the Bible, consciously echo Biblical texts in their attacks on their own people: for rotten leadership, national defeat and humiliation, excessive materialism, internecine conflict, moral hypocrisy, appeasement and accommodation with the enemy, parasitism and exploitation of the poor, assimilationism, neglect of national culture, adoption of foreign customs, speaking foreign languages, immersion in foreign cultures and especially by converting to a foreign religion.

In addition, they attack the upper classes for their indifference to the lower orders and reprimand the aristocracy and priesthood for moral corruption and for neglecting the interests of the nation. Traitors are condemned.

Writers of defeated nations, and those under the heel of empires, could feel an especial kinship with ancient Israel and Judah, both defeated and exiled by Mesopotamian empires. Shevchenko, for example, recalls the prophet Amos in denouncing parasitic exploiters of fellow Ukrainians, and he repeats Nehemiah’s angry reproof of Judean exiles who forgot the Hebrew language in his scorn for Ukrainians ignorant of Ukrainian. In Hungary, Ferenc Kölcsey accuses fellow Magyars for their defeat and subjugation by Mongols and Turks; and in pre-State India, Muhammed Iqbal, for whom the mountains of India are “grand as Sinai”, blames Indians for submitting to British rule, becoming “the willing slave of Europe”.

To clergymen-poets in the 19th and early-20th centuries, Biblical parallels came naturally. In Albania, for example, the Franciscan priest, Gjergi Fishta, in his epic poem, The Highland Lute, echoed the prophets in pronouncing fellow Albanians guilty of materialism and internecine violence.

Perhaps closest to prophetic fury is Petar II Petrovic-Njegoš’ The Mountain Wreath, deploring fellow Serbs for converting to Islam. Njegoš, who was both head of state and Prince-Bishop of Montenegro, claimed his countrymen had brought upon themselves divine wrath and punishment through suffering Islamic dominance.

The language of the prophets encourages frank outspokenness in moral judgment. In 1920s Malta, the Roman Catholic priest, Dun Karm Psaila, described his increasingly secular country as a “moral dunghill”.

And so on. Modern national literature often stresses guilt at communal shortcomings allegedly weakening the nation as a whole.

How is the Bible different?

Most national self-criticism, like that in the Hebrew Bible, is aimed at internal reform. It stays among the people to whom it is addressed. Acceptance of guilt and responsibility for change are viewed as internal matters.

The Hebrew Bible was different in the way it was used. Incorporated in Greek translation into the Christian Bible against the wishes of the loyal Jewish majority and its rabbinic leadership, for whom the Hebrew text alone was sacred, it was translated into every major language. Its influence grew far beyond the world of ancient Judaism in totally unpredictable ways. Peoples who accepted the Bible in translation tended to see it as their literature.

As one of the most widely-known books in the world, the Bible broadcast Jewish guilt internationally, with extra charges based on antisemitic fantasies.

For the Hebrew Bible blames the defeat and exile of the kingdoms of Israel (721 BCE) and Judah (586 BCE), and the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, on their moral failings, not on the superior power of the Mesopotamian empires.

The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy have curses of the nation so dark and shocking as to put the fear of God into king and ploughman alike. These curses — graphic portrayals of the terror and suffering of war, defeat and exile, which actually came about, and which many nations have experienced — echo powerfully in the diatribes of the prophets.

To this day, these reminders of national guilt and punishment are read in the synagogue service in an undertone, and quickly.

Rabbinic Judaism echoed the prophets in blaming the destruction of the Jewish state and the Second Temple by the Romans (70 CE) on fratricidal strife, immorality, idolatry and love of Mammon.

Yet the rabbinic world was appalled when Christianity began to misappropriate Biblical criticisms in its anti-Jewish dogma and polemics against Judaism, using biblical critiques of the Jewish people as a permanent stain, anticipating their later guilt as deicides and justifying theological demonisation.

The rabbis evidently recognised the long-term threat of a rival religion using Jewish scripture to undermine Judaism. They saw that their defeated people needed not angry condemnation but comfort, hope and love and did not want them to think badly of themselves and their ancient faith.

They responded by emphasising God’s love for Israel and the eternal viability of Judaism.

They opposed Jewish self-hate and self-flagellation and used midrash, homiletic expositions of Biblical texts, to denounce otherwise-eminent figures — Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, and especially the written prophets, including Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel — for even the slightest criticism of the people of Israel. Responding to prophetic chastisements, the Midrash comments on the Song of Songs: “The Congregation of Israel said to the prophets: Do not look for blackness [moral flaws] in me”.

The rabbis recoiled from the prophetic role of “telling Israel his sin”. They attacked biblical prophets: Samuel and Elijah, for alleged arrogance, slander or lack of respect and compassion for Israel; Isaiah, for comparing God’s beloved people to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and describing them as “impure of lips” (Isaiah 6: 5); Hosea, for comparing Israel to an adulterous harlot, humiliated together with the children of her adultery; Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for exposing Jerusalem’s “abominations”: “Before you look at Jerusalem’s scandals, face your mother’s own disgrace”.

In one rabbinic interpretation, Moses stands accused of slandering God’s chosen people by doubting them: “they will not believe in me” (Exodus 4: 1). Moses should have loved Israel, not insulted them by calling them “rebels” (Numbers 20: 10). His punishment: leprosy and death before he reached the Promised Land.

Some rabbis went to the opposite extreme, idealising their people as favoured above all peoples, even above the angels.

They sought to make self-respect an aim of Jewish education. If those who hated Jews could not be cured of their prejudice, if justice and fairness could not be established on Earth, Jews could at least try to teach their own children pride in Jewish values.

For God, in the rabbinic view, did not approve of Christian (and later, Islamic) misappropriation of Hebrew Scripture as a flail against the Jewish people, encouraging antisemitic hatred and legislation, persecution and violence. In defence of their people, the rabbis found fault even with Moses. Overcoming centuries of hesitation, they brought into the Biblical canon the archetypal song of love - the Song of Songs — as an allegory of God’s unceasing love for his people.

David Aberbach, author of ‘National Poetry, Empires and War’, is professor of Hebrew and Comparative Studies at McGill University, Montreal.

This article is adapted from a talk that he gave at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies