l.+Joseph+Campbell's+View+on+Judaism

= By Tom Collins   =
 * = [[image:http://bp3.blogger.com/_jRgg-KW5I4E/R-upPAvGQ2I/AAAAAAAAAms/zBqtpeAGJUI/S254/joseph-campbell+-+sidebar.bmp width="201" height="174" align="left"]]An Interview With Joseph Campbell =


**Tom:** //But if you throw out the Bible as history, don't you also throw it out as a moral imperative?// One of the great texts is in Exodus, when the Jews are told to kill the lambs and put the blood on their doorsteps so the angel of death won't kill any of their children, but will kill the first children of the Egyptians. And the night before they leave, they're to invite their Egyptian friends to lend them their jewels and so on. Then the next night, they run off with the jewels, and the text says, so they fleeced the Egyptians. No, so they //despoiled// the Egyptians. You call this good ethics? The interesting thing is that throughout the Old Testament, it's the younger brother who overturns the older brother in God's favor. It happens time and time again. This is simply a function of the fact that the Jews come in as younger brothers. They come in as barbaric Bedouins from the desert, into highly sophisticated agricultural areas, and they're declaring that although the others are the elders - as Cain was, the founder of cities and all that - they are God's favorite. It's just another form of sanctified chauvinism. You understand the view of exclusive religion, don't you - "You worship God in your way, I'll worship God in his." [|Source for Joseph Campbell Photo] ||
 * Joseph:** Yes. I don't think the Bible is anybody's moral imperative, unless you want to be a traditional Jew. That's what the Bible tells you.
 * Tom:** //Doesn't it tell you how to be a good person?//
 * Joseph:** No.
 * Tom:** //Lots of people think so.//
 * Joseph:** Just read the thing. Maybe it gives you a few hints, but the Bible also tells you to kill everyone in Canaan, right down to the mice.
 * Tom:** //What was the passage you quoted to justify their exclusivity ideas?//
 * Joseph:** "There is no God in all the world but in Israel." That leaves everybody out except the Jews. This is one of the most chauvinistic views of morality.
 * Tom:** //What's the background of something like Cain and Abel?//
 * Joseph:** There's a very amusing Sumerian dialogue that appeared about 1500 years earlier than the Cain and Abel story. It's about a herder and an agriculturalist competing for the favor of the goddess. The goddess chooses to prefer the agriculturalist and his offering. Well, the Jews come into this area, and they're not agriculturalists, they're herders. And they don't have a goddess, they have a god. So they turn the whole thing upside down, and make God favor the herder against the agriculturalist.