James Carroll’s new book about
Jerusalem is as profound as his previous books. Indeed, in many ways, it is an
amalgam of the major themes that he tackled in two of his previous nonfiction
masterpieces,
Constantine’s Sword, which outlined in no uncertain terms the
history of Christian anti-Judaism and anti- Semitism, and
House of War, which
focused on the theme of war and violence in American history.
Carroll is
not your typical academic historian. On the contrary, he writes history
with a distinctly personal point of view, about which he is upfront and clear
from the beginning. In his introduction, he states succinctly: “I write as a
Catholic, aiming to tell a full interfaith story, hoping that Jews, Protestants,
Orthodox Christians and Muslims, as well as Israelis and Palestinians, will find
themselves honestly represented here.”
Carroll explains that since 1997
he has been a participant in the annual Theological Conference at the Shalom
Hartman Institute (initially sponsored by the late Lutheran scholar Krister
Stendahl and founded by Rabbi David Hartman) where he learned joint text study
with Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars for more than a dozen years. I too
have been a participant for many years in this unique conference, where among
other intellectual treats, I have had the privilege and pleasure of getting to
know Carroll. This is why I invited him – and he accepted – to give a preview of
his book at a public lecture cosponsored by the Interreligious Coordinating
Council in Israel and the Shalom Hartman Institute in mid-February at the end of
the Theology Conference. This year, I was also be fortunate to study with him
all week in our tripartite
hevruta group of Jewish, Christian and Muslim
scholars.
At this lecture, Carroll not only gave a sweeping preview of
the main themes of his book, but he passionately explained to us that he is
obsessed with the problematics of religious violence. The idea of “holy war” –
and war in general – troubles him very much. It consumed him when he wrote
Constantine’s Sword and House of War, and it is very much on his mind throughout
this book, especially as we live in an age in which a nuclear war could put an
end to much of humankind.
The uniqueness of this book is the idea that so
many “holy wars” are linked to religious ideas about Jerusalem. According to
Carroll, “Over the past two millennia, the ruling establishment of Jerusalem has
been overturned 11 times, almost always with brute violence and always in the
name of religion.”
Jerusalem is the place where religion and violence is
central. This is why Carroll has returned there again and again, and this is
what has drawn him to write this deeply troubling history. Yet, in several
places, the author tries to give the reader some hope. Accordingly, in
his view, Jerusalem is the place where religious people reckon with violence and
try to resist it. In his reading of the Bible, it is clear to him it is an act
of resistance to violence.
Abraham, according to Carroll, is “a figure of
God’s preference for nonviolence, since his story (the non-sacrifice of his son
Isaac) is offered, in effect, as a correction to the story of Noah that precedes
it in Genesis...
Abraham represents the repentant God’s adjustment, the
achievement of peace and justice not through destruction but through the coming
of a vast new people that defines itself by peace and
justice.”
Similarly, Carroll argues that Christianity, especially the
Church after Constantine, forgot the nonviolence of Jesus in the Gospels. In the
Christian memory, the Romans are somehow remembered as benign, and the Jews get
the blame for killing Jesus. The Roman war against the Jews, which was horrible
and long, gets forgotten in the Christian telling of the story.
This is
much more a book about the idea of Jerusalem – the “heavenly Jerusalem” and its
role in promoting sacred violence – than it is about the earthly Jerusalem. This
is both its strength and its weakness.
For those looking for another book
about the actual city of Jerusalem, this is not it.
But if you want to
get a better understanding about how apocalyptical ideas, with Jerusalem at the
center, have influenced sacred violence throughout history, you will find this
book both sweeping in scope and illuminating in its message.
Despite the
tortured history of sacred violence, always somehow connected to Jerusalem,
Carroll wants to see Jerusalem as a source of hope. I too want to see it as
source of hope, which is why I appreciated his point at the end of his lecture
when he said that “we live in a time which requires positively chosen
recollection... and we need to choose a vision which will empower
us.”
Similarly, at the end of the book, he offers us a concluding chapter
on “good religion” in which he stresses the role that Jerusalem can play as a
center of religious transcendence: “...for Jerusalem is a place where, since the
dawn of history, good religion has sought to push out bad.”
After
finishing the last chapter, I was still waiting for more on how Jerusalem could
be a source of hope, and not just a place for competing apocalyptic visions,
especially when I am told that “Jerusalem today is defined by the hopeless,
mutually selfdestructive war between Palestinians and Israelis.” I guess I was
looking for more of Isaiah, who envisioned Jerusalem as a city of justice and
inspiration, and less of Jeremiah, who witnessed and lamented its
destruction.
Carroll does see Jerusalem as “the capital today of
encounters in which absolutisms are shown to be mutually
interdependent.” I would add that it is already a center of
interreligious dialogue, but much more needs to be done if Jerusalem is to
become a city of peace, a whole and harmonious city for all its
inhabitants.
The writer, an educator and rabbi, serves as the director of
the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel.