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 | Bah, Hanukkah! Posted by Ted Keer on 12/04, 12:15am | |
Maccabees, the Judean Taliban Hitchens dissects this second-rate "holiday" which celebrates the resurgent forces of Maccabean fundamentalism against the secularist "Epicurean" trends among Jews in the Hellenistic age. The evil tradition spawned by the Maccabees carried on among the secret dagger wielding (sicarii) zealots of Jesus' day. Judas was one such sicariot, Barrabas perhaps another. Fifteen centuries later Spinoza would be an outcast among outcasts derided as apikoros by his fellow exiles from Catholic bigotry. Had there been no Maccabean revolt, imagine what other forms of militaristic messianism we might have been spared. Would there today be Greco-Roman colonies among the stars, rather than m^slim ghettos in Rome and Athens? Hellenistic rockets launching from the Levant to the heavens rather than phallic minarets jutting into the sky of what was once the most advanced part of the Roman Empire? Ted Keer | ||
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