ACTIVIDAD 1: DESARROLLAR LOS INDICADORES RELACIONADOS

This might be the right place to mention writing and literacy. Earlier I stated that Judas Maccabee based his warfare on Deuteronomy. This principle may be generalized. In the time of the Maccabees pious Jews based their entire lifestyles on the Scriptures.⁴⁰The Torah, with its 613 commandments and prohibitions—including a growing system of inter-pretations and applications—served as a script for leading one’s life, running one’s business, performing the rituals, ruling the community—

in short regulating every aspect of individual and collective existence.

This was a new phenomenon in the history of writing as well as that of religion and civilization generally. Never before had writing served such comprehensive functions. One may call this new form of writing and lit-eracy “canon.”⁴¹In chapter 5 I distinguished between an informative and a performative use of writing. An example of the informative mode is the warning on a cigarette box stating: “Smoking may be hazardous to your health.” A performative illustration might be the sign: “No Smok-ing.” Whereas the warning provides the potential user with relevant knowledge, the sign expresses a prohibition. If I ignore the warning, I

am running a personal risk. If I ignore the sign, I am committing an of-fense and may be punished. The new form of religion that made its first literary appearance in the Hebrew Bible used the performative mode of writing in order to influence the entire individual and collective life of human beings. No pagan religion had ever made similar claims. Reli-gion had previously regulated commerce between human beings and divine or numinous powers, but not the entire realm of human action, experience, and thought. This totalizing claim on human life was the hallmark of the new religion that, for brevity’s sake, is called monothe-ism and is realized by means of performative or canonized writing.⁴²

As I demonstrated in chapter 5, the Torah does not inform us con-cerning how to administer justice; rather, it administers justice itself. Its performative claim does not stop at jurisdiction but extends to all as-pects of life. It is this intensified form of writing, with its scriptural qual-ity, that I call “canon.” It is expressed in Deuteronomy in terms of two formulas. The first reads:

You shall not add to the word that I charge you, and you shall not subtract from it. (4:2)

The second occurs two chapters later:

And these words that I charge you today shall be upon your heart.

You shall rehearse them to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you go on the way and when you lie down and when you rise (6:6–7).

In the first formula the script is closed; nothing may be added or sub-tracted. In the second the script must be reincarnated, internalized, and constantly taught and discussed by everyone. A life according to the script is required, a “life in quotations” (zitathaftes Leben, to use Thomas Mann’s expression).⁴³For every situation, every decision in life, you have to find and follow the appropriate verse. Life is fulfillment of Scripture.

To be sure, in this extreme form the principle applies only to Judaism.

Yet it is important to bear in mind that every religion of the new type—

not only the monotheistic varieties but also Buddhism—is based on a canon. All of them share in common the performative mode of writing, the claim to regulate the entire individual and collective life according to a canon of sacred texts codifying the will of God. This principle of a Scripture-based way of life—what Max Weber has referred to as “me-thodische Lebensführung” (a methodical conducting of one’s life)—

seems to me a third characteristic of “monotheistic man.”

At the time of the Maccabees, the emerging canon was already ex-erting its life-forming and transforming influence. People had begun to

“live in quotations,” as in the story of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, or the martial law of Deuteronomy 20. Some were even “dying in quotations.”

The Maccabean wars not only provide the first instances of religious warfare, or zeal, but also the purest form of passive zealotism, namely, martyrdom.⁴⁴The readiness to die for the law is the expression of the same kind of zeal as the readiness to kill for it. The Hebrew term for martyrdom is qiddush ha-shem (hallowing the name), which corresponds to the very first request in the Christian Lord’s Prayer: “Hallowed be thy name.” The ideal form of dying for God or for the Law is to die with a scriptural quotation on one’s lips.⁴⁵

Martyrdom evolved as an extreme form of a lifestyle based on the law of living (and dying) “in quotations,” and it did so simultaneously with the formation of a belief in the immortality of the soul and of rewards and punishments in the hereafter. This belief was contested among the Sadducees and the Pharisees, with the Pharisees’ view per-sisting in Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism as well as in Islam. The martyr acts as a citizen of the “coming world” (olam ha-bah in Jewish ter-minology or the “kingdom of God” in Christian terter-minology). The Jewish term refers to Apocalypticism, a religious orientation that arose within Judaism at the time of the Maccabean wars. The days of this world, in which injustice and oppression prevail, are numbered. The signs point to a fall and a new beginning. The dawn of the world to come appears precisely during the worst period of suffering. Such lan-guage may express the new apocalyptic atmosphere that in those days inspired not only Jews but also many circles and movements in the an-cient world, from China and Persia to Egypt, Rome, and beyond. Apoc-alypticism and oppression go hand in hand. ApocApoc-alypticism is a form of religious and intellectual resistance, and martyrdom requires violent op-pression and persecution in order to exist. Martyrdom is a religious re-sponse to violence. It is true that martyrs are murdered not for religious but for political reasons; they are treated as rebels, not as heretics. In their own minds, however, they die for a religious principle. This idea is only possible within the framework of the new religion, with its motto

“no other gods,” because it is a matter of refusing to worship idols and to eat sacrificial meat, that is, to commit actions deemed incompatible with the Law, with true religion and the life based on it. This category of religious incompatibility and the distinction between true and false on which it is based is the hallmark of the new form of religion called

monotheism. This distinction generates a cultural semantics that, in its turn, generates such new forms of human action as religiously moti-vated killing and martyrdom, its passive counterpart.