05/21/2023 – -Level XIV – Of Death and Life – 165 -/Artifacts: 2204 – 2202 B.C.E… – Chapter Three / Group Fellowship and Discussion
“Of Death and Life” – Level XIV – app. 2200 B.C.E – Chapter Three:
What intricate character development up to this point, no? I suspect even more going
forward, even as we have actual historical figures thrown into the story.
I have two key points in this chapter that I would like to share with y’all, so you can give me
Your thoughts:
Pg 132 , the 2nd paragraph which seemed to me not the perspective of the people of Makor on a religion built around
Human sacrifice, but to Michener, the author himself. Let me type out the whole paragraph for us:
“Furthermore, the cult of human sacrifice was of itself not abominable, nor did it lead to the brutalization of society: lives were lost which could have been otherwise utilized, but the matter ended in death and excessive numbers were not killed, Nor did the rites in which they died contaminate the mind. In fact, there was something grave and stately in the picture of a father willing to sacrifice his firstborn son as his ultimate gift for the salvation of a community; and in later years, not far from Makor, on of the world’s great religions would be founded upon the spiritual idealization of such a sacrifice as the central, culminating act of faith. At Makor it was not a death that corrupted, but life. “
Michener was raised by a Quaker mother but to my knowledge called himself a secular humanist, or a non-believer. Is he really equating this deplorable pagan practice with the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ? Or in other words, To us Christians: If we accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, we should readily accept this Makor human sacrifice as well? Jesus was God; the precious infants were not.
The short four page or so flash back to the present day Tell scene, is a very high level discussion of the Jewish people, with a high degree of admiration, an admiration that I share. In the end, as Paul noted, we believing Gentiles are grafted into the Messianic Jews, one body in Christ.
Ok, this is the more important of the two key points in my mind. I pick up the admiration theme, I would say a give thanks to God for his loving care. I pick it up a couple paragraphs into page #144:
“The manner in which Cullinance sat on his bed caused his left hand to represent the armies of the west and his right the east. Bringing them together with a bang over Israel, he recalled the struggles Eliav had summarized: Egypt vs. Babylonia; Greece crashing against Persia; Rome vanquishing the east; Crusader fighting infidel; and finally Jew battling Arab. ‘All right,’ he conceded, ‘this is where violence met violence. ‘What am I supposed to conclude?’
‘I don’t know, Eliav confessed. Then tentatively he added, ‘But I do know that if you visualize Israel merely as a stopping place along a Fertile Crescent where placid farmers rested on their way to Egypt, you miss the the whole point. It wasn’t like that at all. It was a meeting place of dynamisms. And because we Jews were at the focus of the forces we became the most dynamic of all.
We had to in order to stay alive. We were spun in a terrible vortex, but because we were Jews we loved it. On the faces of our kids. At the kibbutz, don’t you sense a radiance? ‘We stand were the fires are hottest. We’re at the focus of forces.’ John, don’t you sometimes see it on their faces?”
…
And stick with me, one more paragraph as Schwartz answers the question: “Are you scared.”:
“The touch Israeli snorted. ‘Since I’m living in Israel no week passes without at least one story in the newspaper how Egypt is going to wipe us out with rockets made by their German scientists. Or Syria massacre us. Or some Arab army push us into the sea.’ He thrust his jaw at Cullinane and said dispassionately, ‘If I scared easy I wouldn’t be here. I feel a lot more relaxed right now than I ever did in Germany.”
Is it the early signs of the impregnable remnant – the body in Christ nearing end times? And with that, Michener masterfully takes us back to our scene in Makor 2200 B.C.E. Timna captured my fancy. Initially, Joktan too in his brief appearance at the end, before he fell into the same lustful sin trap of Urbaal., “Tell me ain’t so Joe!”
Thoughts? Reflections?
Soli Deo Gloria!