The Curse of Cain. The Violent Legacy of Monotheism

227 Pages·1998·8.94 MB·English

by  Regina M. Schwartz

THE URSE
The Violent
Legacy of
Monotheism
OF AI N
REGINA M. SCHWARTZ
The University of Chicago Press • Chicago and London
REGINA M. ScHWARTZ is a professor of English at Northwestern
University, a principal investigator at the Park Ridge Center, and
Director of the Chicago Institute of Religion, Etrucs, and Violence.
The University of Crucago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1997 by Regina M. Schwartz
All rights reserved. Published 1997
Printed in the United States of America
06 OS 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 5 4 3 2
ISBN (cloth): 0-226-74199-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schwartz, Regina M.
The curse of Cain : the violent legacy of monotheism I
Regina M. Schwartz.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-226-74199-0 (alk. paper)
l. Ethnicity-Biblical teaching. 2. Ethnology in the Bible.
3. Violence-Rdigious aspects-Christianity. 4. Mono
theism-Controversial literature. I. Title.
BS661.S35 1997
221.8'3036-dc20 96-43269
CIP
@The paper used in this publication meets the minimum require
ments of the American National Standard for lnfomtation Sci
ences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI
239.48-1984.
To my Father,
IRVING LLOYD SCHWARTZ
whose life defined heroism
and to my Mother,
RosANNE ScHELLMAN ScHwARTZ
whose goodness is beyond definition

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments XIII
INTRODUCTION
REBUILDING BABEL
Murder
Identity and Violence 4
CHAPTER ONE
INVENTING IDENTITY: Covenants 15
Imagining Israel 17
Cutting Covenants 21
The Blood of the Covenant 25
CHAPTER TWO
OWNING IDENTITY: Land 39
Possessing Land 39
Exodus and Conquest 55
vii
Contents
Polluting the Land 62
Whores in Exile 69
CHAPTER THREE
NATURAL IDENTITY: Kinship 77
Exogamy, Endogamy, and the Foreigner 83
Rape and the Other 91
Incest Is Best 97
Kinship, Race, and Property 102
God the Father and Homosexuality 106
CHAPTER FOUR
DIVIDING IDENTITIES: "Nations" 120
Nationalism in the Discipline 124
Nations in the Bible 128
Defining Israel 133
CHAPTER FIVE
INSCRIBING IDENTITY: Memory 143
Remembering the Exodus 148
The Politics of Memory 153
Forgetting 159
Joseph (He Adds) 162
Typology and Totality 167
Living Memory 173
Notes 177
Index 203
viii
Preface
One day while I was teaching the Bible to undergraduates, a first
year student articulated a problem succinctly that I had to write an
entire book to address. I was telling the class that the Exodus is the
central event of the Hebrew narrative, asserting that this myth of
liberation from slavery was deeply inspiring, especially in comparison
to so many other foundational myths of conquest and plunder. This
was, after all, not a myth that described the rich getting richer, but
the enslaved getting freed. I added some remarks about class con
sciousness and liberation theology to make the story more contem
porary, and lingered over the fact that this story has now come to
have urgent political force in Latin America and South Africa as it
had during the U.S. civil rights movement. Then, in the midst of
this celebration, the student raised his hand and asked simply, "What
about the Canaanites?" Suddenly all the uncomfortable feelings I
had been repressing about the Bible for years flooded me. Yes, what
about the Canaanites? and the Amorites, Moabites, Hittites? While
the biblical narratives charted the creation, cohesion, and calamities
befalling a people at the behest of their God, what about all the other
ix
Preface
peoples and their gods? Having long seen the Bible put to uses that
I could not excuse-hatred ofBlacks,Jews, gays, women, "pagans,"
and the poor-I now began to see some complicity, for over and
over the Bible tells the story of a people who inherit at someone
else's expense. And so, keenly aware that our deepest cultural as
sumptions are biblical and that they are not always attractive, I em
barked on this book on monotheism and collective identity.
I make some strong claims. One is that through the dissemination
of the Bible in Western culture, its narratives have become the foun
dation of a prevailing understanding of ethnic, religious, and national
identity as defined negatively, over against others. We are "us" be
cause we are not "them." Israel is not-Egypt. That is not to say that
this way of thinking about identity is simply or originally biblical. 1
Ancient peoples conquered one another long before the Israelites
wrote about it, and in philosophy, Aristotle's principle of noncontra
diction established that for A to be A it could not be B, while Plato
wrote of polemos, endless war against the foreign, the diverse, the
"enemy." But it has been the biblical narratives, for better and for
worse, that have wielded so much influence, even more than the
classics, with the result that the Bible could be deployed against
whatever "Canaanites" people wanted to loathe, conquer, or exile.
And so, while I read the Bible in this book, I also read readings of
the Bible: biblical narratives as read by biblical criticism and biblical
narratives translated into secular myths of nationalism. My focus is
on narratives in the Hebrew Bible, since this understanding of vio
lent identity fonnation is articulated most clearly there.
Collective identity is linked to monotheism, the notion of exclu
sive worship, but there could be no cruder misreading of my argu
ment than to attribute violence in identity formation to Judaism.
Conquering the Canaanites was a fantasy of an exiled people; it
could only carry force when it was adopted by groups who held the
reins of power in Christendom. 2 Furthermore, what Reform Juda
ism gave me was less the understanding of Judaism as a separated
identity than its strong stress on ethics; shedding traditional rituals
and the trappings of group identity was accompanied by a renewed
emphasis on being "a good person." While I know that distinction
X