Excerpts from The Source

The Source is a book I began reading over a year ago, and is one that I continue to read in seasons. It's an incredible book - historical fiction written by James Michener - on the history of the Hebrew people - "the birth and full flowering of Judiasm" - beginning in 9831 BC and culminating in 1964 [around the time when the book was written]. "Here is the entire history of the Jews: the first religions, the transition to monotheism, the life of the early Hebrews and how they were persecuted, the impact of Christianity, the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, all the way to the founding of present-day Israel and the Middle East Conflict." I have found this book to be wonderfully insighful and deeply impacting on my understanding of the Christian faith. Here are a few excerpts that have made me think lately. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. They are from a converstation taking place between a Jew and a Christian in "present day" [1964].

"If I had to characterize Judaism in simple terms for someone who new nothing about it, what words would I use? And almost without his willing it to be so, the symbolism of the olive tree returned and he replied: ancient, gnarled, unresilient, a powerful religion which takes man back to his fundamental nature and experience...in two thousand six hundred years Judaism has only been able to accept two changes, the Talmud and the Kabbala, whereas Christianity, with materful resiliency, had spun off a dozen staggering modifications whenever the spirit of the times demanded...There lay the difference between the two religions; there lay the explaination of why Christianity had conquered the world while Judaism remained the intransigent, primordial religion of the few."

"You say that you were lucky that in the critical years between 100 and 800 CE Christianity went forward, and we were unlucky that during the same years Judaism went backward...the real question is, 'foward to what, backward to what?'...Judaism went back to the basic religious precepts by which men can live together in a society, whereas Christianity rushed forward to a magnificent personal religion which never in ten thousand years will teach men how to live together. You Christians will have beauty, passionate intercourse with God, magnificent buildings, frenzied worship and exaltation of the spirit. But you will never have that close organization of society, family life and the little community tha is possible under Judaism."

"'Judaism can be understood, it seems to me, only if it is seen as a fundamental philisophy directed to the greatest of all problems: how can men live together in an organized society?'
'I would have thought,' [the Christian] suggested, 'that the real religious problem is always, 'How can a man know God?'
'There's the fundamental difference between us,' [the Jewish man] said. 'There's the difference between the Old Testament and the New. The Christian discovers the spirit of God, and the reality is so blinding that you go right out, build a cathedral and kill a million people. The Jew avoids this intimacy and lives year after year in his ghetto, in a grubby little synagogue, working out the principles whereby men can live together.'"

This conversation is a flash into the future, during a chapter that follows the one on the Spanish Inquisition, where Jews are forced into ghettos and told that if they aren't willing to become Christians, they will be persecuted [to give you some understanding of that last comment].

But I'm interested in your thoughts on these excerpts simply because they were very intriguing to me. Ready...go.