Killing for the Written Word

I have found the Book of the Law in the Temple of Yahweh.
--Hilkiah, 622 BCE, in 2 Kings 22

The lawyer shows you the papers. They're over a hundred years old but undeniably authentic. No one had known of their existence but it doesn't matter: you're in violation of their provisions. You will have to leave your home. It is going to be razed.

According to the Hebrew Bible, that was the situation facing King Josiah in 622 BCE. During renovations of the temple of Yahweh, the high priest Hilkiah had found an old scroll of the Law (sefer torah). No one had known of its existence either, but for centuries the kings of Israel and Judah had condoned practices that were explicitly forbidden. And forbidden, it was now clear, in writing.

Josiah was a young man, only twenty-six, and as the long-lost scroll was being read to him, he could only imagine how angry Yahweh had become. When the reading was done, he tore his garments and wept.

In Josiah's time, teachings that had once been spoken were now being written down. The Israelites and Judahites were becoming, as the Qur'an said later, a "People of the Book." The teachings were becoming scripture. What difference did writing make? Karen Armstrong:

The switch from the oral transmission of religion to a written text was a shock. Here--as elsewhere in the Bible--it evoked a sense of dismay, guilt, and inadequacy. Religious truth sounded completely different when presented in this way. Everything was clear, cut-and-dried--very different from the more elusive "knowledge" imparted by oral transmission.

There was a curious aspect to the newly discovered sefer torah. The scribes said the Law it contained had always been in writing. That was the form of the Law from the very beginning.

The beginning, of course, was Moses on the mountain. In the narrative found in Deuteronomy, Moses hears the Law being spoken but doesn't leave without a written copy--etched in tablets of stone, no less. When he breaks those tablets, God inscribes a second set. They contain the abridged form of the Law, the Ten Commandments. We learn of the complete edition later, in a long speech that Moses delivers just before he dies. The detail is endless but, according to the story, Moses manages to write all of it down. This is the text, lost for centuries, that the high priest finds in Josiah's time.

Or did he find it? Many scholars believe that the text--contained in the present book of Deuteronomy--was assembled well after the death of Moses. Some suggest it was a "pious fraud," put together on the spot, even in collaboration with Josiah. To launch the reforms he desired, Josiah needed the authority of writing. You create the writing now, you say it dates from back then.

The practice was nothing new. It was customary for writers of the time to attribute their teaching to great figures of the past. Even today it is a reflection of the normal way autobiographical memory works. The effect of saying always and from the beginning is to add clarity, certainty, and authority.

However the sefer torah originated, the impact of its "discovery" was enormous. With newfound conviction, Josiah tore down shrines, burned effigies, smashed sacred pillars, demolished temples, burned human bones on altars, and slaughtered priests. Then he celebrated a magnificent Passover in Jerusalem. The Law had been re-established.

This was but one event in a long, complicated transition to writing. How typical it was I cannot say, but it does show how misplaced clarity can be used to legitimate violence. Writing, in the case of Josiah, made it easier to kill for a Law, to kill for a Story.

Note: More of the transition to writing in Judaism will be discussed this coming Tuesday, November 18, in Nova's The Bible's Buried Secrets. The program's web site is already available.

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Killing For a Story

Modern humans, perhaps more than at any other time in human history, are caught up in a web of entangled narratives. . . . We wage culture wars within and between our civilizations based on these narratives, which for the most part we do not even recognize as stories.
--William Grassie, "The Storied Nature of Self, Society, and Cosmos"

You. Yes, YOU. How did you let it happen? How does an innocent Story of Everything, a good kid, turn into a bully? What made you pick up that flag and start waving it around? Did you want everyone to die for you? Did you want them to kill for you?

You know what I'm talking about. The story of the Palestinians vs. the story of the Israelis. The story of Islamic militants vs. the stories of the West. Remember the Inquisition? Nothing but killing for a story. In the U.S. the fighting's over creation, evolution, and intelligent design. It's "only" cultural war. But there's still a lot of blood being spilled, cultural or otherwise.

I know stories matter. I know that structures for narrative are embedded deep in our human brains, as deep as structures for language, as deep as controls for breathing. But why do we have to kill in order to speak our story, as if it competed for air with someone else's? Isn't there enough air for everyone?

Maybe it's hubris. Maybe the violence starts when stories grow tall, add muscle, start to picture empires. When they become Stories, capital S. You know better than most. Does the killing begin with . . .

. . . the Christian narrative, the Militant Islamic Resurgence narrative, the American Experiment narrative, the Capitalist Prosperity narrative, the Progressive Socialism narrative, the Scientific Enlightenment narrative, the Expressive Romantic narrative, the Unity with Brahman narrative, the Liberal Progress narrative, the Ubiquitous Egoism narrative, and the Chance and Purposeless Narrative.

These are "meta-narratives," say scholars, Master Stories. Click here for more on that. Or here, for the source of the list above. Meta-narratives prefer the shadow world. As William Grassie says, they exist as "unarticulated background, the taken-for-granted truth, the way things really are." They lie so deeply in our psyches that we do not even realize they are stories.

YOU, sir (and you've mostly been a sir), are a Meta-Meta-Narrative, a Master Master Story. You cover everything--the whole cosmos, the whole earth, the whole human race. You speak of origins and destiny. You create moral imperative. You enter sacred texts and there you become the Word of God. And that's when things get dicey.

You know by now you're not alone. You know about all those other Stories, all with the name of Everything, all entangled by global communication. I understand: discovering them has been a blow to hubris. But you'll survive. So will they. There's air enough for everyone.

So here's a suggestion for you and your kind. Drop the flags, come out of the shadows, and get back to being stories. You know, just stories. Get to know each other. If you've made it to a sacred place, remember that you got there as a story, not a creed. So why not be what God created you to be? Why not act like a story? Why not speak like a story? Do you even remember how?

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