Marc and Pavel wrote
Marc wrote
> In theological terms, why should one NOT want to 'sneak to the
chosen people'? Gee. The knowlege that you are are one of the elect
of
God feels good.
>
> It is not easy being a Jew. As you say, they believe they are
God's chosen people. As God's chosen people, they must be a light
unto
the nations. They are under divine obligation to be ethical. God
requires them to be a light to those who would/did send them to the
ovens. The Roman Catholic term for this is 'we are all called to be
saints'.
Yes, particularly when being "Chosen" can have such negative
consequences historically. How many Jewish revolts, millennial
movements, messianic outpourings, pograms and holocausts have
resulted
from this historical fact of "being Chosen". Whilst it has
contributed to Jewish survival. What other people - Edomites,
Moabites, Philistines, Phoenicians etc, have managed to keep an
organisattional identity going since the Babylonian captivity -
over 2,570 years ago!
It reminds me of the wonderful heartfelt plea in "Fiddler on the
Roof"
- "Lord, Couldn't we have been a little less 'Chosen'?"
Mark wrote
The Khazars certainly did not meet the usual expectation of nomadic
Turkics wandering west, but were rather sedentary. Their center was
also the Volga-North Caucusus, which raises additional questions.
This
region is an ethno-linguistic goulash. Language replacement would
seem to be a factor here. Turkic may have been their chancery
language/lingua franca.
This is indeed an interesting point. This region is indeed a
linguistic goulash.... but then again, Italy before the Romans was
equally "goulash" like (8 - 9 languages), as was pre-Roman Spain (6
languages). Indeed when we look at large polyglot states in
pre-modern times (eg Ottoman or Romanoff Empires), such "goulashes"
seem to be the norm rather than the exception. The idea of a nation
being a "single language community" is a relatively recent
phenomenon,
largely the result of the rise of the modern Nation State (eg
Portugal
in 1415, France in 1798, Germany in 1870 etc). In each case however,
the belief that there is a single language has been a fiction, and a
procrustian bed for important minorities (eg. Catalan and Basque in
Spain, Breton and Alsacian in France, Welsh and Gaelic in Britain).
It makes me think that attempts to draw linguistic maps, such as I
and
Glen have tried to do may be hopelessly wrong. Languages have often
interpenetrated, and even four or five languages can be spoken in
major areas simultaneously - look at pre-modern Constantinople, or
ancient Rome!
Mark says:
> My knowledge of the Khazars is slight, as I said. The religious
connection is what makes them memorable. So far as I know, they were
genuine Jews, according to ha-lacha (rabbinical law).
Certainly from the reign of Bek Obedian (800 CE) and his son Hezekiah
(820 CE) this was so. Obadiah, was the first to make serious efforts
to further the Jewish religion. He invited Jewish sages to settle in
his dominions, rewarded them royally, founded synagogues and
schools...caused instruction to be given to himself and his people in
the Torah and the Talmud, and introduced a divine service modeled on
the ancient communities. After Obadiah came a long series of Jewish
chagans, for according to a fundamental law of the state only Jewish
rulers were permitted to ascend the throne.
There was an active correspondence between the Khazar Khagans and the
other centres of Jewish learning, particularly Babylonia and Moorish
Cordova. Indeed, correpsondence between the khagan Joseph, son of
Aaron II of Khazaria and R. Hasdai Ibn Shaprut of Cordova,
Jewish doctor and quasi foreign minister to Sultan Abd al-Rahman III
(912-961), the Caliph of Cordova, has survived to the present.
> I said:
> for the religious issue, it is to be noted they fought off the
Islamics near the Caspian; they also seem to have not been on the
best
terms with the Byzantines. Instead of Christianity or Islam, they
seem to have chosen Judaism as a way to keeping apart from either.
It
should also be stressed, I think, is that normative Rabbinical
Judiasm was not the monolithic thing it is today.
Relations with Byzantium were more cordial than with the Sassanids or
the later Muslim dynasts (Ommayyaddic and Abbusid). Byzantium was
generally further away, and the Khazars had more concerns about
intermediate peoples (Bulgars, Magyars and Varangian Rus). It may
have been a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Khazars
and
Byzantines organised joint military ventures in 624-8, and again
later
against the Bulgars. There were also dynastic alliances - In 705,
the
Khagan is Bouzeros Gliabanos (Bazir Yilbous), brother of Trukeg.
Their
sister Theodora. married Justinian II . In 732, Leo III (the
Isaurian)
c.680-741, Byzantine emperor (717-41) took the Khazar khagan's
daughter as his wife, crowning her as Empress Irene. In 732, the
byzantine prince Constantine (later Constantine V) was to marry a
Khazar princess, whose name was perhaps Chichek or Tzitzak, daughter
of Biheros (= probably Bouzeros Their offspring, Emperor Leo IV
(called the Khazar), reigned from 775-780.
This policy has allowed Khazar royal blood to survive to the present
day. A daughter of a Khazar Khagan, probably Bouzeros, was married to
an Asbagian prince, and their son Leon beneficied later of khazar's
protection. Leon's descendents married into the Georgian Baghratid
family, whose descendents are alive today in many royal houses. Even
Queen Elizabeth may have a (small) amount of Khazar "blood".
Marc said
> We seem to be agreed that 'Khazaria' was a genetically,
ethnically, linguistically, and religiously mixed confederacy,
something not too unfamiliar when discussing the situation on the
Steppe.
>
> We are at a time in history when paganism really did die. All
those gods, all those stupid stories about them. And all those
warlords spreading religion in the name of their now-monotheistic god.
>
> Food for thought. Do you know that more than half of Christendom
just about the time Genghis Khan manifested himself was Nestorian?
And
that most of the Nestorian Christians were Mongolian? Yeah. Paganism
had died.
Paganism rarely "died" as you suggest Mark. Rather it became
incorporated or subsumed under the veneer of one confessional faith
or
another. Pagan gods (eg Brigit) and pagan festivals (eg Saturnalia,
Lupercalia etc) had a strange way of appearing as Christian and
Muslim
saints or holy days. Religious purity usually was confined (prior to
the Catholic-Protestant Wars of religiion and the rise of the Counter
Reformation Inquisition) to narrow elites. Within folk traditions
all
kinds of heterodox beliefs survived, sometimes into modern times.
The
various "black madonna's" were "miraculously" rediscovered in the
12th
century, when iconoclastic beliefs within Christianity had died down,
and may, in many cases, been late Greco-Roman representations of Isis
and infant Horus, or of Cybele - the "Great Mother of the Gods". It
is no accident that Mary, the Mother of Jesus was elevated to
"Theotokos" at Ephesus, after popular aclaim - Ephesus being the home
of the 6th wonder of the ancient world, the temple to the virgin
goddess Dianna. Even later, Coatlicue, the Aztec mother Goddess
became Our Lady of Guadaloupe!
Hope this helps
John