The Story of Stories:
Marty, Martin E
Chosenness & the imperial dream THE STOBY OF STORIES THE CHOSEN PEOPLE AND ITS GOD Dan Jacobson Harper and Row, $11.95, 211 pp. Martin E. Marly WERE people still capable of shock,Dan...
...Notice, too, that Jacobson, a London writer of South African birth, is an outsider: he does not claim to be a scholar and he is not a believer...
...They can either interpret their chosen-ness as an imperial dream dangerous to Israel's or they have to face up to the problems Israel's Yahweh has left in the Jewish plot...
...Jacobson, a novelist, knows the power of story and pays due respect to the Jewish story...
...If they carry it another, they will simply acquire the Jewish "story" with its murderous plot...
...They stop obeying the Law and they lose the Land...
...He is a Jew, but the effect of his book is to suggest that the people of Israel, victims of genocide, were shaped by the command from God to commit genocide...
...The God of Israel is a projection, a fiction, a fantasy, a point of focus for a people's earliest fears and hopes...
...If this is the basic story, the plot of Jewish peoplehood and the ambiguous heart of the Christian beginnings, we must either work hard to ignore it after we know about it, or face up to its point...
...Then: Merely...
...They live by what is "merely a dream imperialism, the imperialism of impotent fantasy...
...But few modern writers have done more to point consistently to God's capacity for justice, the divine moral sense and control...
...Thus, Jacobson...
...Especially of those dreams which deny the veracity of everyone else's...
...Exodus 34:13-16 and many passages in later books, especially Judges, do...
...I have indicated some of my reservations and counterarguments...
...it was the untruth of the prophetic interpretation of the history of Israel which ensured its survival...
...He sees Jews acting with cosmic chutzpah, not necessarily in bad faith but developing a bad faith...
...We has not...
...He misses much - including the God of "steadfast love...
...Jacobson has no feel for the sense of the sacred, of divine disclosure, of the creative sloppi-ness of Yahweh who can forget and repent and change...
...Dismiss him...
...They must have had a moral impulse and they did have great pride: "They invented [Yahweh], one can say, so that they might be chosen...
...There are many things to be learned from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures...
...Perhaps the most important of them all is never to despise the power of dreams...
...Yet his book can inspire no pride, no smugness, from Christians...
...Yet, unfortunately for the peace of those who will permit their peace to be disturbed, he convinces us "that both believer and nonbeliever can agree about many things of prime importance in the text they have shared...
...Oh, the fine moral sense - that is there from page one until now...
...26:19...
...Martin E. Marly WERE people still capable of shock,Dan Jacobson's new book should shock them...
...The prophets will not rescue either people...
...Why pay attention to this outsider's account...
...Haven't you noticed this?'' Harper and Row seemed to be asking...
...To make too much of these objections at this moment, however, would be to dodge too soon the points about story and morals and the danger of dreams which Jacobson presses...
...Could it be that we ignore arguments like Jacobson's because we have been dulled by so many bizarre and phony Holy Blood, Holy Grails or Chariots of the Gods to take the serious seriously...
...Let mercy come tomorrow, with the morning dew.th the morning dew...
...No, the yoke's on Yahweh, who becomes bound to their imperial dreams...
...Begin and his followers still believe the plot...
...Romans 9-11 will not let them do so...
...What was to be done" to the people already in Israel...
...Should Christians feel that their New Covenant gets them off the hook, Jacobson effectively shows that if they carry it one way they must commit violence against Jews...
...The story-tellers are doggedly consistent...
...Chosenness curiously did not mean that they were bound...
...But it is made clear to them that they cannot have the latter without the former...
...Exodus 23:27-31...
...It will be harder from henceforth for Christians who think all will be well if they simply repeal the Jewish story that gave them birth...
...The texts are there, ready to disclose either what he finds there or happier alternatives...
...The connection is there...
...They were to be driven out with "hatred and fear . . . exterminatory zeal...
...The chosen Israelites are chosen "to receive both his Law and the Land...
...Jacobson spends only a few lines on today's Israel...
...Chapter Two develops the genocide-command theme, because Genesis 12:6-7, 15:18-21...
...They wanted to be exalted above other nations . . . (Deut...
...They are core texts, not marginal to the theme...
...The prophets will not let them do so...
...To the degree that Jacobson has a point, to that degree he will be disruptive of serenity at interfaith Jewish-Christian conversations...
...Few books of this type can do more than pose issues for people of faith...
...Here are "bloodthirsty fantasies'' redeemed in part only because the authors take pride in seeing Yahweh treat Israel as they were to treat Canaan - when the Law is broken and the people are vile...
...The book appeared months ago, to almost no stir...
...In Psalm 93:1 and 1 Samuel 2:3-4 ' 'it is clear that God is praised . . . not just as a God of upheaval but because he is the God of upheaval...
...The publisher, having anticipated bitter and noisy controversy, sent a second round of Jacobson books to editors and reviewers...
Vol. 110 • January 1983 • No. 2
