Is Marcionism anti-Semitism?

 

Laurent Guyenot
April 17th, 2024

Thanks to the vigilance of the E&R editorial staff, I learned of this exchange between Bernard Henri Levi and Haziza Frédéric which took place a few days ago on Radio J:
 

     – BHL: …this old right-wing anti-Semitism of the Marcionite tradition, that is to say the vengeful Jews, the god of revenge and death, and so on...

     – Haziza: That's Soral!

What BHL calls the “Marcionite tradition” is the radical criticism of the God of Israel, or what I call anti-Yahwism. There is no direct historical link between modern anti-Yahwism, born in the 19th century, and Marcionism of the 2nd century, about which little is known. But Marcion is the tutelary figure of anti-Yahwism because he saw the god of Israel as an evil god, the mortal enemy and not the father of Christ.

We can therefore guess that behind BHL's remark lies the plan to outlaw anti-Yahwism by defining it as a disguised form of anti-Semitism.

For rhetorical purposes, BHL classifies Marcionism as “right-wing anti-Semitism.” Is this correct ? No. The German intellectual who introduced Yahweh into the debate on the “Jewish question”, and who can therefore be considered the pioneer of modern anti-Yahwism, is Bruno Bauer, of whom I have already spoken in a recent article ( section entitled “Bauer, Marx and the Nietzschean moment”). Bauer was an influential figure among the "Young Hegelians", also called "Left Hegelians". Well versed in the historical criticism of the Bible that appeared during his time in Germany, he published in 1842, at the age of 33, two essays on “the Jewish question”, arguing that it boils down to the biblical question. Because Bauer discovers the essence of Jewishness in the jealous, angry and genocidal god that Jews have always worshiped.

It was in response to Bauer that Karl Marx, his young collaborator at the Rheinische Zeitung, wrote two brief essays titled On The Jewish Question. The very explicit aim of these essays was to dissolve the Jewish question into the economic question, by reducing Jewishness to the bourgeois spirit, i.e. the love of money. These are Marx's first notable articles, and although they somewhat embarrass Marxists, they can legitimately be considered the underground foundations of Marx's entire later ideological enterprise. And we can therefore say that Marxism served to nip in the bud the intellectual movement which, without it, would perhaps have been called Bauerism.

That BHL attacks Marcionism, and that Haziza immediately sticks this label on Alain Soral, really says a lot. It tells us that anti-Yahwism hits the mark, hits the nail on the head. Anti-Yahwism attacks the God of Israel, that is to say the essence of Israel. It is, therefore, the only ultimate and definitive criticism of Israel.

Its disadvantage is that it irritates Catholics. But given that criticism of Israel is, in my eyes, the priority cause and that anti-Yahwism seems to me to be a much more effective means for this than Christianity (with its thesis of the “chosen but fallen people”), I will continue to do anti-Yahwism as best I can, at least until the day when anti-Yahwism is condemned by law. The risk of being (as an avowed anti-Yahwist) treated as an anti-Semite, does not worry me too much. In 2018, I was suspended from my position as an English teacher in National Education following a report from my rectorate, the conclusion of which was as follows:

     “It appears from the study of Laurent Guyénot's work [that] his output is strongly marked ideologically. Laurent Guyénot is and claims to be an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, a Soralian and therefore a denialist and that he constitutes, in fact, a serious danger to the integrity of the students entrusted to him since he disseminates his propaganda material in his classes.”

I am immune to all this.

Anti-Yahwism is not only the sole radical criticism (which attacks the root, radix) of Israel. It is also the only benevolent criticism, because it aims to free the Jews from the influence of the sociopathic god who terrorises them.
 
Anti-Yahwism to the aid of the Jews

In a recent article, “Yahweh, the terrorist god,” I recalled that Yahweh wants to spread the terror of Israel among the goyim (Deuteronomy 2:25). But before terrorising the goyim, Yahweh terrorises the Israelites themselves:

     “And if in spite of this you do not listen to me and oppose me, I will oppose you with fury, I will punish you sevenfold for your sins. You will eat the flesh of your sons and you will eat the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your sanctuaries, I will destroy your incense altars, I will heap your corpses on the corpses of your idols and I will cast you out. […] I will draw a sword against you to make your land a desert and your cities a ruin.” (Leviticus 26:27-32)

The obedience that Yahweh demands always concerns separation from the goyim, and above all the absolute commandment of the strictest endogamy.

     “If your brother, your father's son or your mother's son, your son or your daughter, or the wife who rests on your bosom, or your closest friend, secretly tries to seduce you by saying: 'Let us go and serve 'other gods' […], you shall stone him to death, because he has sought to lead you astray from Yahweh your god […]. All Israel, upon hearing this, will be seized with fear and will cease from practicing this evil among you.”  (Deuteronomy 13:7-12)

Yahweh's reign of terror rests on the sacrifice of assimilationist Jews. In the Book of Numbers, Phinehas, grandson of Aaron, scandalised by the sight of an Israelite married to a Midianite woman, “seized a spear, followed the Israelite into the alcove, and there he pierced them both , the Israelite and the woman, right in the belly” (rabbinic tradition specifies that the spear passed through them both during mating). Yahweh congratulates Phinehas for having “the same jealousy as I” and, as a reward, gives him “for himself and for his descendants after him, […] the priesthood forever” (Numbers 25:11-13). Let us meditate on this fact that, according to the Bible, the priesthood is given to the line of Aaron (the Kohenim) as a reward for the double murder, by impalement, of an assimilationist Israelite and his non-Jewish wife.

What these episodes emphasise is that the authority of Yahweh and his representative elites (they are one and the same thing) is based on the violence and terror exercised against the Israelites themselves. Jews who socialise with their non-Jewish neighbors, who eat with them and even marry with them, are, according to biblical ideology, traitors to Yahweh and to their race, who bring down on their community the wrath of Yahweh and deserve to be eliminated without mercy. Their extermination pleases Yahweh and regenerates the people.

Levitical Tyranny

Who is this elite who speaks in the name of Yahweh to keep the Israelite people in terror and obedience? These are the Levites. The Levites are the guardians of the worship of Yahweh. According to the Bible, they do not have a territory like the other tribes, but live scattered in cities, supported by tithes and exercising religious, administrative and political power over all the Israelites. In a recent book (The Exodus, HarperOne, 2017), biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman developed an interesting and convincing theory on the origin of the Levites [1].

Friedman takes up an already well-known and widely accepted theory, according to which the Levites do not initially designate a tribe, and that their eponymous ancestor (Levi) is a secondary invention. Friedman then points out that, of all the Israelite protagonists in biblical history, only the Levites have Egyptian names (Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Phinehas, etc.). Furthermore, among the oldest sources of the Bible, only the texts produced by the Levites mention the Exodus, and show a certain knowledge of Egypt. From these and many other clues, Friedman concludes that the Levites constitute a group from Egypt. The lack of archaeological trace of the Exodus is explained by this hypothesis that only the Levites experienced the exodus from Egypt to Canaan via Midian, while the Israelite tribes are indigenous to Palestine (which archaeologists tend to also believe).

It was the Levites who introduced the cult of Yahweh among the Israelites, who knew the supreme god, called simply El, or “God” (sometimes Elohim, or “the gods”). The fusion between El (God) and Yahweh (the god of Israel), with immeasurable consequences, is scripted in the priestly story (source E) of the revelation of Sinai, when the Creator, who until then had only been designated El or Elohim, reveals his true name to Moses.

The Levites are the masters of religious power. But in certain episodes mentioned above, they appear as Moses' bodyguard and police, quick to massacre his enemies. They constitute the dominant caste who control both priestly power and military power (soft and hard power).

The sources indicate, according to Friedman, that it was the Levites who introduced into Israel the obligation of circumcision of infants on the eighth day. I presented, in an article entitled "The Bleeder of the Foreskins", the demonstration that this rite came to replace a previous practice of the sacrifice of the first born on the eighth day, the trace of which remains in Exodus 22:28-29, Ezekiel 20:25-26 and Jeremiah 7:30-31. These sacrifices were made in the name of Yahweh and in his sanctuary (Leviticus 20:2-5), the god Molek or Melek spoken of in certain passages being originally only an attribute of Yahweh, which means " king” and is applied more than fifty times to Yahweh.

Circumcision on the eighth day is a traumatic rite that imprints in every Jewish boy the subconscious terror of Yahweh-Melek. Seen in this light, the metaphor of “circumcision of the heart” (Leviticus 26:41; Deuteronomy 10:16; 30:6) takes on a particular meaning. It is by circumcision that Yahweh, the god of terror, holds the Jews.

In conclusion to all this, we understand that anti-Yahwism is not, cannot be, anti-Semitism; on the contrary, it is a radical philosemitism.

 

Notes

[1] Friedman has been an influential author since his book Who wrote the Bible?, published in 1987.  I happen to have had this book translated for Exergue, a label I created, then sold in 2002 to Guy Trédaniel, who has since published almost anything under this label.

Source: https://www.egaliteetreconciliation.fr/Le-Marcionisme-est-il-un-antisemitisme-75468.html