Peace in the Face of War

most unexpectedly, Dr Sacks tells us, seem to be at the heart of not a few of
the innuendos currently driving contemporary religious conflict.
Muslims maintain, for example, that of the three Abrahamic faiths, Islam, the
most recent, surpasses and supersedes the parental religions of Judaism and
Christianity since it is ‘the last revelation of God’s word’. Abraham’s line of
inheritance, they say, runs through Ishmael, Abraham’s first born, and not
Isaac. Jews, they insist, have misrepresented the covenantal lineage from
the start. Dr Sacks handles this and similar presuppositions judiciously.
He recognises Judaism, Christianity and Islam engaged in a kind of ‘sibling
rivalry’ and ‘mimetic desire 1 ’ for the same thing: Abraham’s promise 2 .
At the heart of all three faiths is the idea that within humanity there is one
privileged position – favoured son, chosen people, guardian of the truth,
gatekeeper of salvation – for which more than one candidate competes.
The result is conflict of the most existential kind, for what is at stake is the
most precious gift of all: God’s paternal love. One group’s victory means
another’s defeat, and since this is a humiliation, a dethronement, it leads to
revenge. So the strife is perpetuated. 3
Where did these concepts come from: favoured son, chosen people, etc.
Dr Sacks lays the origin of these categories at the feet of the Hebrew Bible.
Genesis is a book almost entirely about sibling rivalry. Fratricide, ‘the most
primal form of violence’, begins with Cain murdering his brother Abel,
and this not for territorial, socio–economic or moral reasons but over the
business of sacrificial offerings. Sibling rivalry continues with somewhat less
violence through the narratives of election: Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not
Esau. Sibling rivalry comes into play in the falling–out between Joseph and his
brothers; and finally when Jacob blesses Joseph’s sons, making the younger,
Ephraim, more blessed, more great, than Manasseh, the older. These choices,
seemingly trifling and culture bound, have had immense consequences
later in the history of mid–eastern religions, indeed throughout the world.
Pauline Christianity announces a new dispensation through faith; the law
is null and void. Dr Sacks sums up Paul’s Genesis exegesis this way: ‘Sarah
represents Christianity while Hagar is Judaism. Christians are Isaac, Jews are
Ishmael. Christians belong, while Jews are to be driven away.’ 4 Then Islam
comes along and upends Christianity. Jesus is not the Son of God, but only a
prophet like Abraham and Moses, preparing the way for the final revelation
whose expression is Islam itself. 5
1
The wish to have what someone else has; to be what someone else is – the root cause of all
violence, p135
2
Sacks, op.cit. 98
3
ibid, 99
4
Ibid, 95
5
Ibid, 98
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