This is a very good, very fair piece. I was a little put off by Bret Weinstein having inspired you to write it because I think he--well, never mind.
Anyway I think you explain these things beautifully and in this particular essay I agree with you completely. By the age of 15 I found it impossible to keep going to shul to hear all that pleading for the smiting of our enemies. I got no patience for anyone who tries to make God small. In my view He ain't sectarian and He sure ain't a real estate broker.
No, just attempting to have a thoughtful conversation….. My mistake, I thought that you might be interested in others actually wanting to understand your perspective.
He's not an idiot, just overly prone to conspiratorial thinking (which, I grant you, sometimes does make him come off as a bit idiotic, especially when it's a topic he isn't that familiar with).
I get real swoony for good explainers, like Darryl and a scant handful of other Substackers. These types is so rare I'm willing to open my tight little fist to pay for the pleasure of reading 'em.
All the rest of those guys I have zero interest in. Zero.
When you mention American Jews seeming to be Christian without Christ, is this potentially just Christian (teachings of Jesus) influencing a largely secular group of people? Judaism post-Jesus seems to have taken a route contrary to him and his teachings which I think you correctly insinuated are a continuation of the historic Jewish religion, some call it Yahwehism. This is to say, Jesus fulfills and continues the religion of Abraham and Moses. What is now Judaism was formalized at that crucial split when Jesus (and his direction for Yahwehism) was rejected by the Pharisee class and Jewish people of Jerusalem. When Jesus said “For had Ye believed Moses, Ye would have believed me” he is drawing that line between the religion of Moses (no oral Torah) and this new faith claiming Moses had been given secret esoteric teachings from Sanai to be handed down in secret. He states further “Thus you make the word of God of none effect by your tradition that you have handed down”. This tradition that Jesus is speaking about is the Oral Torah (Mishnah), the center of current Judaism, along with the Talmud which helps to frame and interpret it.
While I agree, that Isaiah and the Old Testament contain what is needed to understand the coming of Jesus, it also contains what is needed to observe the difference between the religion of Moses (including its continuation in Jesus) and the religion of the Pharisees who called for his death. It is Isaiah that Jesus quotes when rebuking the “tradition of elders” or precursors to Judaism. Jesus said “well hath Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, this people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.”
The Old Testament helps to setup Jesus and his purpose but it’s only Jesus, his teachings, and his disciples which birthed this new operating system. The Old Testament sans Jesus does not produce anything other than the insular, xenophobic people that preceded him. Classical Judaism (also lacking Jesus) produced the same.
Side note, really looking forward to your next full episode on Germany!
I've been reading through the Bible again. I'm to Hosea. I've been finding myself feeling further from God. Primarily because I am "gentile" and the whole Old testament is designed to define a line separating us from God (or really including the Jews with God).
My thinking has been "Am I crazy for letting these people who don't want me included contextualizing and defining God?"
But you had this brilliant point, and it has reinvigorated me to get to the New Testament: "when Paul tells the church in Rome that salvation being offered to the Gentiles “has made Israel jealous.” Jealousy and envy are often used interchangeably in day-to-day speech, but they are not the same. Envy means you want what someone else has, but jealousy means that you are afraid someone will take what you have. The Jews felt cheated by the invitation to salvation extended to people they thought of as enemies and oppressors"
I personally think it is useful to have the NT fresh in mind when reading the OT, as that lens is essential to develop an understanding of the big picture.
Very good read, really enjoyed. I came up in a Christian household that attended church but by 14 I was done with it and it was 1970' so I make no excuses. I tried again in the mid 1980's for about 4 years in various churches but I was just done. Not to mention these churches at that time seemed vastly more focused in the OT than in the NT which also left me puzzled. I wanted to be a better individual while they seemed more focused on a collective. Then I came to see The Bible as a product of history and human invention and I use invention with intent. That "creation story" really fascinated me. I came more to the idea of Spinoza's God and even the idea that Jesus himself might be more a creation after the fact than real figure in history. Even the Gospels contradict themselves on the purpose of its subject so as actual history it is problematic in my view. But all that said, so much of the teachings of this man from Galilee, especially when it applies person to person can not be easily ignored of its value nor what it has meant to Western Civilization as we know it. Even the Golden Rule itself fits almost precisely into the rule of reciprocity that enable human evolution to make huge gains. Without reciprocity, human existence would have flown apart at the seams long ago, our numbers VASTLY reduced if we even existed at all. It's probably stopped us from flinging nuclear weapons at one another and putting life back to a point not seen since 20k plus years ago during glacial maximum of the last ice age. We can learn a valuable lesson from Judaism in its more extreme insular forms. While being insular may seem to solve the problem in the moment in perpetuating the people group, nature tells us that over time doing so will ultimately lead to the end of the biologic entity. Nature abhores monoculture and seeks to conquer it the moment it gets a leg up.
Great points re the impact of Jesus on human development. I look at God's message to humanity as context-dependent, based on both the technology of the time and the social technologies. Essentially, He's told us what we needed to know, when we needed to know it.
This is IT. Thanks for breaking it down so succinctly — and for bringing in that wonderful PNG correlary. I feel like there’s tons of room to expand on this, it relates to SO much of what we’re currently facing. I know you don’t think of yourself as a preacher, and this is no sermon, but it IS revealing.
Exactly. I remember listening to the Due Dissidence guys absolutely trash him after his Tucker interview, and Keaton straight up volunteered that neither of them had actually listened to any of Darryl's work...only thing they were familiar with was his tweet about the "gay last supper," which of course went clean over their heads. What's worse, they're always wringing their hands over Zionism and the absolute disaster in that region, yet don't even realize that this guy they hate so much did probably the best, most empathetic, heartwrenching run-downs of the very mess that they consider (rightfully IMHO) to be THE existential issue of our time.
Good stuff. As usual, I think you're on to something. Just recently I said to my son at one of our "no small talk" lunchtime discussions "anyone who hears the parable of the prodigal son and identifies with anyone other than the prodigal son is REALLY missing the point" If you see yourself in the father of the story (my dad actually once said to me "I guess you'll always be my prodigal son") let alone the older son, you may be headed for a stumbling block. And since you brought up the jealousy issue, could there be more to “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah" than we thought?
Good point. Jonah being outraged that the Lord would have mercy on even the men of Ninevah when they repented being given as a sign to the Israelites being outraged that the Messiah wished for all men to be saved, whether Jew or Gentile
I'm not sure I'll be able to work this back to the question of "liberalism vs Christian ethic" (though perhaps we've tabled the question) – very enjoyable piece, but can the "system update" be properly understood without Plato? Limiting ourselves to the fulfillment of the law through Christ – the ethic found in the NT – might bury, or at least understate, the shift in the Western conception of God that emerges out of Christianity. I spent five weeks this summer bouncing around Greece with a copy of the complete works of Plato, and one of the ideas I had percolating on this journey was a view of the Nietzschean charge (platonism for the masses) as partially accurate: Socrates argues radically for monotheism, but in almost the same breath is decrying the cultural significance of Achilles. In this, I found a desire to strip man of his humanity. Not out of hatred for humanity exactly, but to push us more directly on the path to virtue. (As an aside, another insight I gained from being able to read the material with the Parthenon in my line of sight was to appreciate how tenuous civilization must have felt to them, how stark but proximate the line was between civilized and savage, so if Plato did feel that there was some primitive baggage we needed to shed in order to get along I can sympathize). In any case, I interpreted this as a rejection of the tragic mode. I didn't make up my mind on how to view it – an attempt to make a specific argument about orienting ourselves toward virtue, a genuine belief that the part of the human that responds to/needs/finds redemption in tragedy could and should be shed, or merely an educational exercise. But it pointed me to an answer as to why religious monotheism, if correctly understood as originating in Platonism, should need the story of Christ as its vehicle – the Nietzschean charge is an overstatement, Christianity is not Platonism for the masses; rather, Platonism strove too far from human nature, and was completed, grounded, and made emotionally/spiritually accessible through Christ as a tragic figure. Perhaps there's an internal contradiction to this line of thinking as I believe Nietzsche would've argued against tragedy as something redemptive. I'm interested in what you think though – when I was a freshman in Catholic HS we learned the term "henotheist" to describe the figures in the OT world, basically polytheism but you believe you have a special relationship with one God. It certainly feels very different and far more primitive than the ontological notes of the verse you cite from John. And yet, I think this picture is complicated by the iconic line in the desert, delivered to Moses: I AM [motherfucker], I AM. That's how I like to picture it, the audacity. I am being. I am form. Take off your sandals, you are on holy ground. Very messy thoughts, but it is comment not an essay.
Dude...! You've outdone yourself. I'm saving this one to reread/reference later. At the risk of embarrassing sycophancy... I've never read such a brilliant Bible-based interpretation of how and why Jesus -- the 2nd Person of God, THE one-and-only Christian GOD, a 3-1 Holy Trinity Whom reason alone can not comprehend -- could have only sprung from "the root of Jesse" and fulfilled Jewish law -- in The flesh. Jews didn't like it way back when & too many Christians & Jews resist Christ's exceedingly difficult project/message. Why? Because it's still scandalous & SO bloody difficult. Cheers to you and yours.
I agree - I’ve reread this essay many times and find it absolutely fascinating and enlightening. I think that it sheds light on the underlying causes of many social ills today.
Jews are a phenomenon; they exist quite emphatically, over thousands of years, never quite assimilating, relatively small number with outsized influence. Yet, for all this Jewish cohesion they seem to have no religion.
Does "the true religion" of Israeli Jewry have a name?
I suspect the answer would have to be qualified: "Which Israeli Jews?" Since the Palestinian Jews (the ones living in Israel) are not a monolithic lot.
The current government led by Netanyahu would presumably be characterized as embodying the ancient operating system.
This is a very good, very fair piece. I was a little put off by Bret Weinstein having inspired you to write it because I think he--well, never mind.
Anyway I think you explain these things beautifully and in this particular essay I agree with you completely. By the age of 15 I found it impossible to keep going to shul to hear all that pleading for the smiting of our enemies. I got no patience for anyone who tries to make God small. In my view He ain't sectarian and He sure ain't a real estate broker.
No, just attempting to have a thoughtful conversation….. My mistake, I thought that you might be interested in others actually wanting to understand your perspective.
I implore you to, ‘Give Bret W. a chance’. He is really quite a remarkable thinker. 👍🏼
I think he's an idiot.
If you don’t mind me asking, can you please explain your rational? I am genuinely interested in your perspective. Thank you, Ek
Kid, you like who you like and I like who I like.
Certainly you have at least one or two observations to share?!
If not, your preference appears to be based solely on whim?!!!!
Is this the day of the week when I have to justify myself to strangers?
He's not an idiot, just overly prone to conspiratorial thinking (which, I grant you, sometimes does make him come off as a bit idiotic, especially when it's a topic he isn't that familiar with).
I get real swoony for good explainers, like Darryl and a scant handful of other Substackers. These types is so rare I'm willing to open my tight little fist to pay for the pleasure of reading 'em.
All the rest of those guys I have zero interest in. Zero.
He's right more than he's wrong, and was early and very correct about COVID.
One of your best essays
Wonderful piece, Darryl! Always worth the read.
When you mention American Jews seeming to be Christian without Christ, is this potentially just Christian (teachings of Jesus) influencing a largely secular group of people? Judaism post-Jesus seems to have taken a route contrary to him and his teachings which I think you correctly insinuated are a continuation of the historic Jewish religion, some call it Yahwehism. This is to say, Jesus fulfills and continues the religion of Abraham and Moses. What is now Judaism was formalized at that crucial split when Jesus (and his direction for Yahwehism) was rejected by the Pharisee class and Jewish people of Jerusalem. When Jesus said “For had Ye believed Moses, Ye would have believed me” he is drawing that line between the religion of Moses (no oral Torah) and this new faith claiming Moses had been given secret esoteric teachings from Sanai to be handed down in secret. He states further “Thus you make the word of God of none effect by your tradition that you have handed down”. This tradition that Jesus is speaking about is the Oral Torah (Mishnah), the center of current Judaism, along with the Talmud which helps to frame and interpret it.
While I agree, that Isaiah and the Old Testament contain what is needed to understand the coming of Jesus, it also contains what is needed to observe the difference between the religion of Moses (including its continuation in Jesus) and the religion of the Pharisees who called for his death. It is Isaiah that Jesus quotes when rebuking the “tradition of elders” or precursors to Judaism. Jesus said “well hath Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, this people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.”
The Old Testament helps to setup Jesus and his purpose but it’s only Jesus, his teachings, and his disciples which birthed this new operating system. The Old Testament sans Jesus does not produce anything other than the insular, xenophobic people that preceded him. Classical Judaism (also lacking Jesus) produced the same.
Side note, really looking forward to your next full episode on Germany!
I've been reading through the Bible again. I'm to Hosea. I've been finding myself feeling further from God. Primarily because I am "gentile" and the whole Old testament is designed to define a line separating us from God (or really including the Jews with God).
My thinking has been "Am I crazy for letting these people who don't want me included contextualizing and defining God?"
But you had this brilliant point, and it has reinvigorated me to get to the New Testament: "when Paul tells the church in Rome that salvation being offered to the Gentiles “has made Israel jealous.” Jealousy and envy are often used interchangeably in day-to-day speech, but they are not the same. Envy means you want what someone else has, but jealousy means that you are afraid someone will take what you have. The Jews felt cheated by the invitation to salvation extended to people they thought of as enemies and oppressors"
Thanks DC!
I personally think it is useful to have the NT fresh in mind when reading the OT, as that lens is essential to develop an understanding of the big picture.
Very good read, really enjoyed. I came up in a Christian household that attended church but by 14 I was done with it and it was 1970' so I make no excuses. I tried again in the mid 1980's for about 4 years in various churches but I was just done. Not to mention these churches at that time seemed vastly more focused in the OT than in the NT which also left me puzzled. I wanted to be a better individual while they seemed more focused on a collective. Then I came to see The Bible as a product of history and human invention and I use invention with intent. That "creation story" really fascinated me. I came more to the idea of Spinoza's God and even the idea that Jesus himself might be more a creation after the fact than real figure in history. Even the Gospels contradict themselves on the purpose of its subject so as actual history it is problematic in my view. But all that said, so much of the teachings of this man from Galilee, especially when it applies person to person can not be easily ignored of its value nor what it has meant to Western Civilization as we know it. Even the Golden Rule itself fits almost precisely into the rule of reciprocity that enable human evolution to make huge gains. Without reciprocity, human existence would have flown apart at the seams long ago, our numbers VASTLY reduced if we even existed at all. It's probably stopped us from flinging nuclear weapons at one another and putting life back to a point not seen since 20k plus years ago during glacial maximum of the last ice age. We can learn a valuable lesson from Judaism in its more extreme insular forms. While being insular may seem to solve the problem in the moment in perpetuating the people group, nature tells us that over time doing so will ultimately lead to the end of the biologic entity. Nature abhores monoculture and seeks to conquer it the moment it gets a leg up.
Great points re the impact of Jesus on human development. I look at God's message to humanity as context-dependent, based on both the technology of the time and the social technologies. Essentially, He's told us what we needed to know, when we needed to know it.
This is IT. Thanks for breaking it down so succinctly — and for bringing in that wonderful PNG correlary. I feel like there’s tons of room to expand on this, it relates to SO much of what we’re currently facing. I know you don’t think of yourself as a preacher, and this is no sermon, but it IS revealing.
Anyone who says you’re a nazi has never heard a thing you say or write. Well done, brother.
Exactly. I remember listening to the Due Dissidence guys absolutely trash him after his Tucker interview, and Keaton straight up volunteered that neither of them had actually listened to any of Darryl's work...only thing they were familiar with was his tweet about the "gay last supper," which of course went clean over their heads. What's worse, they're always wringing their hands over Zionism and the absolute disaster in that region, yet don't even realize that this guy they hate so much did probably the best, most empathetic, heartwrenching run-downs of the very mess that they consider (rightfully IMHO) to be THE existential issue of our time.
This was a real treat. Thanks from someone on her own path towards Christianity and a better understanding of these world events.
Thanks for writing this
Good stuff. As usual, I think you're on to something. Just recently I said to my son at one of our "no small talk" lunchtime discussions "anyone who hears the parable of the prodigal son and identifies with anyone other than the prodigal son is REALLY missing the point" If you see yourself in the father of the story (my dad actually once said to me "I guess you'll always be my prodigal son") let alone the older son, you may be headed for a stumbling block. And since you brought up the jealousy issue, could there be more to “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah" than we thought?
Good point. Jonah being outraged that the Lord would have mercy on even the men of Ninevah when they repented being given as a sign to the Israelites being outraged that the Messiah wished for all men to be saved, whether Jew or Gentile
IKR?!
It turns out to be even more interesting than I thought:
Sennacherib: Was the king of Assyria from 705 to 681 BC, a time of conflict with the kingdom of Judah.
Jonah: The prophet Jonah lived earlier, during the reign of King Jeroboam II of Israel (786–746 BC).
Wow! Thanks for the amazing history lesson.
Another thing for which to give thanks.....an excellent, thought provoking contribution from Darryl. Kudos young man.
I'm not sure I'll be able to work this back to the question of "liberalism vs Christian ethic" (though perhaps we've tabled the question) – very enjoyable piece, but can the "system update" be properly understood without Plato? Limiting ourselves to the fulfillment of the law through Christ – the ethic found in the NT – might bury, or at least understate, the shift in the Western conception of God that emerges out of Christianity. I spent five weeks this summer bouncing around Greece with a copy of the complete works of Plato, and one of the ideas I had percolating on this journey was a view of the Nietzschean charge (platonism for the masses) as partially accurate: Socrates argues radically for monotheism, but in almost the same breath is decrying the cultural significance of Achilles. In this, I found a desire to strip man of his humanity. Not out of hatred for humanity exactly, but to push us more directly on the path to virtue. (As an aside, another insight I gained from being able to read the material with the Parthenon in my line of sight was to appreciate how tenuous civilization must have felt to them, how stark but proximate the line was between civilized and savage, so if Plato did feel that there was some primitive baggage we needed to shed in order to get along I can sympathize). In any case, I interpreted this as a rejection of the tragic mode. I didn't make up my mind on how to view it – an attempt to make a specific argument about orienting ourselves toward virtue, a genuine belief that the part of the human that responds to/needs/finds redemption in tragedy could and should be shed, or merely an educational exercise. But it pointed me to an answer as to why religious monotheism, if correctly understood as originating in Platonism, should need the story of Christ as its vehicle – the Nietzschean charge is an overstatement, Christianity is not Platonism for the masses; rather, Platonism strove too far from human nature, and was completed, grounded, and made emotionally/spiritually accessible through Christ as a tragic figure. Perhaps there's an internal contradiction to this line of thinking as I believe Nietzsche would've argued against tragedy as something redemptive. I'm interested in what you think though – when I was a freshman in Catholic HS we learned the term "henotheist" to describe the figures in the OT world, basically polytheism but you believe you have a special relationship with one God. It certainly feels very different and far more primitive than the ontological notes of the verse you cite from John. And yet, I think this picture is complicated by the iconic line in the desert, delivered to Moses: I AM [motherfucker], I AM. That's how I like to picture it, the audacity. I am being. I am form. Take off your sandals, you are on holy ground. Very messy thoughts, but it is comment not an essay.
All I got out of the end was Moses meeting Allied Mastercomputer.
Dude...! You've outdone yourself. I'm saving this one to reread/reference later. At the risk of embarrassing sycophancy... I've never read such a brilliant Bible-based interpretation of how and why Jesus -- the 2nd Person of God, THE one-and-only Christian GOD, a 3-1 Holy Trinity Whom reason alone can not comprehend -- could have only sprung from "the root of Jesse" and fulfilled Jewish law -- in The flesh. Jews didn't like it way back when & too many Christians & Jews resist Christ's exceedingly difficult project/message. Why? Because it's still scandalous & SO bloody difficult. Cheers to you and yours.
I agree - I’ve reread this essay many times and find it absolutely fascinating and enlightening. I think that it sheds light on the underlying causes of many social ills today.
Jews are a phenomenon; they exist quite emphatically, over thousands of years, never quite assimilating, relatively small number with outsized influence. Yet, for all this Jewish cohesion they seem to have no religion.
Maybe cohesion is the religion.
Or maybe they actually worship themselves
Does "the true religion" of Israeli Jewry have a name?
I suspect the answer would have to be qualified: "Which Israeli Jews?" Since the Palestinian Jews (the ones living in Israel) are not a monolithic lot.
The current government led by Netanyahu would presumably be characterized as embodying the ancient operating system.