Bible And Sword: England And Palestine From The Bronze Age To Balfour (1984) - Plot & Excerpts
In the West we like to think that we are somewhat better than the other peoples of the world. At least one of the reasons we give for this, to us at least, self-evident superiority is our Judeo-Christian heritage. This heritage is what we refer to when we need to explain our sense of justice (and it is also often quoted as the actual source of our legal system as well as our systems of government – despite how diverse these are) while also being seen as the sole (soul?) source of our morality. I’ve always found this to be a very strange thing – not least because it is so evidently not the case. One might just as well say that Socrates is father of modern Biology because in one of the dialogues Plato mentions birds. When it comes to religion we are much more interested in seeds than we are in other endeavours, even when those ‘seeds’ weren’t actually the seeds that grew into the plants proliferating around us. But then, why let details get in the way of what has proven a remarkably reassuring story?The questionable glories of the Judeo-Christian contribution to morality are, ironically enough, no where more disturbingly contradictory than in the behaviour of both Jews and Christians in what some like to refer to as the ‘holy land’. Think I’ve gone too far? Well, you really do need to look up how the Jews treated the locals when they first turned up in the holy land. That Moses guy even complained when his brethren only killed all the males and all the females that were not virgins; when clearly the ‘moral’ thing to do was to kill everything: male, female, child, adult and even their animals and then to also burn their homes. Unfortunately, this has been a bit of a repeated theme in the holy land – right down to the present – by both Jews and Christians. The tragedy that is Gaza today would not be possible without the massive US aid Israel receives - more than any other. Morality is a difficult concept in such circumstances and is probably better spoken about in very general terms, rather than dwelling in specifics.This book is much more partisan than I have found other of Tuchman’s books. We are told at least three times from various sources during this book that the local Arabs had turned the garden that was Israel into the wasteland that was Palestine before the Jews returned. This is repeatedly presented as fact and never explained. The motivations of those stating such are never explored – the lives of the local Arabs are passed over as being temporary squatters on someone else’s land. No one is expected to pay any attention to their claims nor their lives. In fact, that is the thing that is so surprising about this book – it glories in the return of the wandering Jew, finally able to complete the prayer, ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ – while completely ignoring any claim hundreds of generations of Palestinian Arabs may have to the same stretch of land.This is a terribly strange book. It presents itself as a history of the holy land between the Bronze Age and the Treaty of Balfour – but actually, it is a history with an exclusively Western focus. Don’t expect to learn anything from this book about the Arabs who lived on this land during the 1900 odd years while the Jews were absent. I’m really not the right person to review this book. As someone born in Ireland and now living in Australia – I find the whole question of Nationality and Patriotism deeply troubling and (beware of understatement) quite problematic. In fact, whenever YOU use the P word I can only hear the N word. Patriotism, Nationalism – they are all much of a muchness to me while also being among the most frightening of human emotions.Now, that being said, there is little question that the Jews have been treated unspeakably badly by Christians for a very, very long time. I’ve never quite understood why Christians have chosen to get quite so upset with Jews. This book reminds us that Jesus was a Jew, as were all of his original followers. In fact, it wasn’t really until Paul converted to the Cult of Christ (bringing with him all the passion of an ex-smoker) that the Jews started getting into trouble with the Christians. Again, I’ve never totally understood this, as even if the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus (although, I had always thought crucifixions a Roman, rather than Jewish death), given Jesus had to die to become Christ and thus redeem us of our sins, Jews would seem to have had more to be thanked for than punished over. But then again, such are the contortions of religion which I shall never understand.One thing this book does make clear is how endlessly ‘pragmatic’ (that is, brutally amoral) people have been over the years in promising the Jews their ancient homeland. Neapolitan had no problem promising Palestine to the Jews, as did numerous British Prime Ministers, but not so much because they felt the Jews had been treated badly, as because they felt the Jews would act in ways favourable to their ambitions in empire building. I’ve never really liked the idea that because we have been bad to the Jews for a very long time that should mean we should ship them off somewhere a long, long way out of our reach – as if Jews are a bit like chocolate to someone on a diet, you can’t really expect us to not mistreat them if they are right here among us, so the best solution all round is to hide them out of sight from temptation. As an Irishman I also struggle with the idea that centuries of mistreatment of my people by the English automatically entitles me to special treatment. I’m not very keen on the idea of blood rights – as those who claim them tend to need to enforce them over the blood of others.As I’ve said, this book is a very partisan one and it has elicited a partisan response from me. My dream, and like all dreams it is based on impossibilities, is that one day there will be no nationalities and consequently no need for racism – if I thought there was anything I could bring that day closer, I would do it with pride. But people so love to be part of groups, people so desire to belong (particularly if those groups can be at the expense of other groups), I have little faith in my dream.
First, an enormous amount of history was covered this book. It effectively starts with the rumor of Joseph of Aramethia's supposed evangelism in England in the 1st century and how this legend helps to bind England to Palestine. It continues all the way up to the Balfour Declaration, which was former prime minister's Lord Arthur Balfour's letter to Baron Walter Rothschild, who was a leader of the British Jewish community. This book was originally written in 1953 and therefore misses out on much of the Arab-Israeli wars.I found the content to be voluminous and certainly appreciated an in-depth view of what has transpired between Britain and Palestine over such a large period of time. However, I would have liked to have heard more about what was happening in Palestine between the original Hebrew exit and the Crusades and then again, between the end of the final crusade and the British mandate.Unfortunately, this book largely misses the exodus, the fall of the Roman empire in Palestine, the Byzantine empire, Mohommad's conquest of Jerusalem, the Ummayads, the rise of the Mamluks and the Ottomans.The other aspect that was somewhat troubling started in the introduction where Ms. Tuchman explains how after researching this topic she comes down unequivocably on the side of the Jews in this conflict. This is not a great way to start a supposed unbiased view on a topic so filled with controversy, even in the 1950s. This view was apparent throughout as she constantly referred to the Jews as the rightful owners of biblical Canaan, which stretched from the Sinai Penninsula through the Euphrates River. She also looked at all Arabs throughout the Levant and Iraq as 1 homogenous people and comparing the inheritance of the Jews to the inheritance of all of the Arabs.I would definately recommend this book as a comprehensive view of the relationship between Britain and the Jews to establish the the nation of Israel, with these caveats in mind.
What do You think about Bible And Sword: England And Palestine From The Bronze Age To Balfour (1984)?
This is Barbara Tuchman's first significant published work, released in 1956. For once my unfortunate combination of slow reading speed and propensity to be distracted from my reading by the pursuit of other avocations (e.g. I'm currently trying to use a computer program to teach myself to play the piano), has worked to my advantage as - at he time I started reading Bible and Sword back in April - conflict between Israel and it's Palestinian (and other Arab) antagonists was on the back burner of media attention as Secretary of State Kerry struggled without success to restart some kind of peace process for his boss, Pres. Obama. However. as I was nearing the end of this fine read, the Israel/Gaza conflict was a white hot topic across the media spectrum as hundreds of Hamas missiles slammed into Israeli territory daily and a ground invasion of Gaza (that finally came to pass) was imminent. Even for someone already fairly well versed in the historical antecedents of the current conflict (see my reviews of "A Peace To End All Peace" by David Fromkin, "Righteous Victims" by Benny Morris, and "Jerusalem A Love Story" by Simon Sebag Montefiore), Tuchman's focused take on the single nation, England, that can arguably be said to have raised the very notion of Zionism well before the Jewish people themselves had reached a point where they could conceive of actually doing anything to get themselves back to the only true homeland they had ever had (rather than just sit and absorb endless abuse while waiting for G-d to fulfill his promise to send the Messiah to bring them home), laid the intellectual and political foundation for it, encouraged in significant ways the growth of the Zionist vision by encouraging it's early Jewish advocates, injected an open declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and gave it the status of an official treaty obligation by making it part of the League of Nations Mandate, but then, succumbed to the demands of "real politíque" to cynically renege on the promises and obligations set forth in the Balfour Declaration by denying further Jewish Immigration into Palestine thus prompting Winston Churchill to say: "This is the breach, this is the violation of the pledge, this is the abandonment of the Balfour Declaration, this is the end of the vision, of the hope, of the dream", ultimately leading to the final shame of an English warship firing on the S.S. Exodus, a private vessel filled with Jewish refugees from the horrors of the Holocaust. All this Tuchman brings to light with what would come to be known as her characteristic command of the primary sources, and a writing style that makes real history as readable and arresting as a novel as she imparts, not just a parade of what events occurred, but the all important motivations - the why - as best as it can be understood from the actual thoughts and deeds of the principals. This would be a perfect time to read this fine book.
—Marc A.
This is one of the best reads in a while. Barbara Tuchman (and much of the 19th and early 20th century British Government were more "Zionistic" than many even in Israel today.According to Tuchman, due to British evangelical aspersions and political machinations, were caught in their own trap and HAD to accept Mandatory Palestine as a home for the Jews and even according to the Mandatory treaty (as drafted by the British Government and accepted by the League of Nations), with no mention of the Arabs at all.
—Ben Pashkoff
Very interesting book. If you read her later books, you can tell this is her first attempt, but its still very good. I thought it was interesting how Christianity's importance ebbed and flowed- in in the 1600s, out in the 1700s, in in the 1800s, back out toward the end of the century. Barbara Tuchman wrote this from a Jewish perspective, and writes about 30 times that the Christians were crazy for ever thinking Jews would convert to Christianity (thereby fulfilling New Testament prophecy), but they were instrumental in getting the Jewish people their homeland (which fulfilled part of the prophecy) against all odds.
—Briapedia
