Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  comfortable hiding place in all of Amsterdam. No, in all of Holland. Up to now our bedroom, with its blank walls, was very bare. Thanks to Father -- who brought my entire postcard and movie-star collection here beforehand -- and to a brush and a pot of glue, I was able to plaster the walls with pictures. It looks much more cheerful. When the van Daans arrive, we’ll be able to build cupboards and other odds and ends out of the wood piled in the attic. Margot and Mother have recovered somewhat. Yesterday Mother felt well enough to cook split-pea soup for the first time, but then she was downstairstalking and forgot all about it. The beans were scorched black, and no amount of scraping could get them out of the pan. Last night the four of us went down to the private office and listened to England on the radio. I was so scared someone might hear it that I literally begged Father to take me back upstairs. Mother understood my anxiety and went with me. Whatever we do, we’re very afraid the neighbors might hear or see us. We started off immediately the first day sewing curtains. Actually, you can hardly call them that, since they’re nothing but scraps of fabric, varying greatly in shape, quality and pattern, which Father and I stitched crookedly together with unskilled fingers. These works of art were tacked to the windows, where they’ll stay until we come out of hiding. The building on our right is a branch of the Keg Company, a firm from Zaandam, and on the left is a furniture workshop. Though the people who work there are not on the premises after hours, any sound we make might travel through the walls. We’ve forbidden Margot to cough at night, even though she has a bad cold, and are giving her large doses of codeine. I’m looking forward to the arrival of the van Daans, which is set for Tuesday. It will be much more fun and also not as quiet. You see, it’s the silence that makes me so nervous during the evenings and nights, and I’d give anything to have one of our helpers sleep here. It’s really not that bad here, since we can do our own cooking and can listen to the radio in Daddy’s office. Mr. Kleiman and Miep, and Bep Voskuijl too, have helped us so much. We’ve already canned loads of rhubarb, strawberries and cherries, so for the time being I doubt we’ll be bored. We also have a supply of reading material, and we’re going to buy lots of games. Of course, we can’t ever look out the window or go

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  On them fall terror and dread. 115 The song described Yahweh leading his people on a triumphant march through the Promised Land, not through the Sinai peninsula. It was adapted later to fit the story of the exodus, but it seems that originally the early ritual celebrating the crossing of the Jordan helped to shape the later biblical account of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. 116 It was easy to conflate the victory at the Sea of Reeds with the miracle at the Jordan. In Canaanite mythology, Baal made the cosmos habitable by fighting and killing Yam, the primal sea, which, in the Middle East, was always a symbol of the destructive forces of chaos. But Yam was also called Prince River. Sea and river were interchangeable. The Song of the Sea shows the strong influence of the cult and mythology of Baal. 117 Like Baal, Yahweh was extolled as a divine warrior. Your right hand, Yahweh, shatters the enemy. So great your splendour, you crush your foes; You unleash your fury, and it devours them like stubble. 118 Like Baal, Yahweh forcefully controlled the sea/river: a single blast from his nostrils caused the waters to “stand upright like a dyke,” 119 and after his victory, Yahweh marched to his holy mountain, where he was established as king forever, just as Baal was enthroned on Mount Sapan after his victory over Yam. But there were striking differences. When Baal marched forth, mountains, forests, and deserts were convulsed; in the Song of the Sea it was the local people who were paralyzed with terror as Yahweh passed by. The ancient mythical undertones gave transcendent meaning to Israel’s historical battles. As we shall see in the next chapter, the Israelites would later become very hostile to Baal, but at this stage they found his cult inspiring. They were not yet monotheists. Yahweh was their special god, but they ac-knowledged the existence of other deities and worshiped them. Yahweh would not become the only god until the late sixth century. In the very early days, Yahweh was simply one of the “holy ones,” or “sons of El,” who sat in the divine assembly. At the beginning of time, it was said, El had assigned a “holy one” to be the patronal god of each nation, and Yahweh had been appointed the “holy one of Israel.” Another early poem, included in the book of Deuteronomy, expressed this ancient theology: When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, He fixed their bounds according to the number of the sons of God; But Yahweh’s portion was his people, Jacob his share of inheritance. 120 The Akkadian word for holiness was ellu, “cleanliness, brilliance, luminosity.” It was related to the Hebrew elohim, which is often simply translated as “god” but originally summed up everything that the gods could mean to human beings.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The violence of this imperial assault profoundly affected Rabbinic Judaism. Instead of allowing Jews to bring their more aggressive traditions to the fore, they deliberately marginalized them, determined to prevent any more catastrophic military adventures.97 In their new academies in Babylonia and Galilee, they therefore evolved a method of exegesis that excised any adulation of chauvinism or belligerence. They were not particularly peaceable men—they fought their scholarly battles fiercely—but they were pragmatists.98 They had learned that Jewish tradition could survive only if Jews learned to rely on spiritual rather than physical strength.99 They could not afford any more heroic messiahs.100 They recalled Rabbi Yohanan’s advice: “If there is a seedling in your hand and you are informed ‘King Messiah has arrived,’ first plant your seedling and then go forth to greet him.”101 Other rabbis went further: “Let him come, but let me not see him!”102 Rome was a fact of life, and Jews must come to terms with it.103 The rabbis scoured their biblical and oral traditions to show that God had decreed Rome’s imperial power.104 They praised Roman technology and instructed Jews to make a blessing whenever they saw a gentile king.105 They devised new rules forbidding Jews to bear arms on the Sabbath or to bring weapons into the House of Studies, because violence was incompatible with Torah scholarship.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  an appreciation of mythology. Well then, I guess I’m the first! Mr. van Daan has a cold. Or rather, he has a scratchy throat, but he’s making an enormous to-do over it. He gargles with camomile tea, coats the roof of his mouth with a tincture of myrrh and rubs Mentholatum over his chest, nose, gums and tongue. And to top it off, he’s in a foul mood! Rauter, some German bigwig, recently gave a speech. “All Jews must be out of the German-occupied territories before July 1. The province of Utrecht will be cleansed of Jews [as if they were cockroaches] between April 1 and May 1, and the provinces of North and South Holland between May 1 and June 1.” These poor people are being shipped off to filthiy slaughterhouses like a herd of sick and neglected cattle. But I’ll say no more on the subject. My own thoughts give me nightmares! One good piece of news is that the Labor Exchange was set on fire in an act of sabotage. A few days later the County Clerk’s Office also went up in flames. Men posing as German police bound and gagged the guards and managed to destroy some important documents. Yours, Anne THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 1943 Dearest Kitty, I’m not really in the mood for pranks (see the date). On the contrary, today I can safely quote the saying” Misfortunes never come singly.” First, Mr. Kleiman, our merry sunshine, had another bout of gastrointestinal hemorrhaging yesterday and will have to stay in bed for at least three weeks. I should tell you that his stomach has been bothering him quite a bit, and there’s no cure. Second, Bep has the flu. Third, Mr. Voskuijl has to go to the hospital next week. He probably has an ulcer and will have to undergo surgery. Fourth, the managers of Pomosin Industries came from Frankfurt to discuss the new Opekta deliveries. Father had gone yer the important points with Mr. Kleiman, and there wasn’t enough time to give Mr. Kugler a thor ough briefing.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  It was only logical to assume that originally there had been one god. 16 But Zoroaster was not interested in theological speculation for its own sake. He was wholly preoccupied by the violence that had destroyed the peaceful world of the steppes, and was desperately seeking for a way to bring it to an end. The Gathas, the seventeen inspired hymns attributed to Zoroaster, are pervaded by a distraught vulnerability, impotence, and fear. “I know why I am powerless, Mazda,” cried the prophet, “I possess few cattle and few men.” His community was terrorized by raiders “yoked with evil acts to destroy life.” Cruel warriors, fighting under the orders of the evil Indra, had swept down on the peace-loving, law-abiding communities. They had vandalized and looted one settlement after another, killed the villagers, and carried off their bulls and cows. 17 The raiders believed that they were heroes, fighting alongside Indra, but the Gathas show us how their victims saw the heroic age. Even the cow complained to Lord Mazda: “For whom did you shape me? Who fashioned me? Fury and raiding, cruelty and might hold me captive.” When Lord Mazda replied that Zoroaster, the only one of the Aryans who listened to his teachings, would be her protector, the cow was not impressed. What use was Zoroaster? She wanted a more effective helper. The Gathas cried aloud for justice. Where were the Holy Immortals, the guardians of asha? When would Lord Mazda bring relief? 18 The suffering and helplessness of his people had shocked Zoroaster into a torn, conflicted vision. The world seemed polarized, split into two irreconcilable camps. Because Indra and the cattle raiders had nothing in common with Lord Mazda, they must have given their allegiance to a different ahura. If there was a single divine source for everything that was benign and good, Zoroaster concluded that there must also be a wicked deity who had inspired the cruelty of the raiders. This Hostile Spirit (Angra Mainyu), he believed, was equal in power to Lord Mazda, but was his opposite. In the beginning, there had been “two primal Spirits, twins destined to be in conflict” with each other. Each had made a choice. The Hostile Spirit had thrown in his lot with druj, the lie, and was the epitome of evil. He was the eternal enemy of asha, of everything that was right and true. But Lord Mazda had opted for goodness and had created the Holy Immortals and human beings as his allies. Now every single man, woman, and child had to make the same choice between asha and druj.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Preparations began in Athens. The mystai fasted for two days; they stood in the sea and sacrificed a piglet in honor of Persephone; and then in a huge throng they set off on foot for Eleusis. By this time they were weakened by their fast and apprehensive, because they had no idea what was going to happen to them. The epoptai, who had been initiated the previous year, made the journey with them; their behavior was threatening and aggressive. The crowds called rhythmically and hypnotically upon Dionysus, god of transformation, driving themselves into a frenzy of excitement, so that when the mystai finally arrived in Eleusis, they were exhausted, frightened, and elated. By this time, the sun was setting; torches were lit, and in the unearthly, flickering light, the mystai were herded to and fro through the streets, until they lost their bearings and were thoroughly disoriented. Then they plunged into the pitch-darkness of the initiation hall. After this the picture becomes very confused. Animals were sacrificed; there was a terrifying, “unspeakable” event, which may have involved the sacrifice of a child who was reprieved only at the eleventh hour. There was a “revelation”; something was lifted out of a sacred basket. But finally the reunion of Kore and Demeter was reenacted and the mystery concluded with rhapsodic scenes and sacred tableaux that filled the initiates with joy and relief. At Eleusis, they had achieved an ekstasis, “stepping outside” their normal, workaday selves, and experienced new insight. No secret doctrine was imparted. As Aristotle would explain later, the mystai did not go to Eleusis to learn anything, but to have an experience, which, they felt, transformed them.72 “I came out of the mystery hall,” one of the mystai recalled, “feeling a stranger to myself.”73 The Greek historian Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE) thought that dying might be like the Eleusinian experience: Wandering astray in the beginning, tiresome walking in circles, some frightening paths in darkness that lead nowhere; then, immediately before the end, all the terrible things—panic and shivering, sweat and amazement. And then some wonderful light comes to meet you, pure regions and meadows are there to greet you, with sounds and dances and solemn, sacred words and holy views.74 The final rapture, orchestrated by the intense psychodrama, gave people intimations of the beatific bliss enjoyed by the gods.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  A reconciliation was now impossible. Henry replied to the papal ban by the election of an anti-pope. A council of about thirty German and Italian bishops met at Brixen in the Tyrol, June 26, 1080, and deposed Gregory on the frivolous charges of ambition, avarice, simony, sorcery, and the Berengarian heresy. Cardinal Hugo Candidus and twenty-seven bishops (of Brixen, Bamberg, Coire, Freisingen, Lausanne, etc.) signed the document. At the same time they elected the excommunicated Archbishop Wibert of Ravenna pope, under the name of Clement III. He was a man of talent, dignity, and unblemished character, but fell into the hands of simonists and the enemies of reform. Henry acknowledged him by the usual genuflexion, and promised to visit Rome in the following spring, that he might receive from him the imperial crown. Wibert returned to Ravenna with the papal insignia and great pomp. This was the beginning of a double civil war between rival popes and rival kings, with all its horrors. Gregory counted on the Saxons in Germany, Countess Matilda in Northern Italy, and the Normans in Southern Italy. Henry was defeated Oct. 15, 1080, on the banks of the Elster, near Naumburg; but Rudolf was mortally wounded by Godfrey of Bouillon, the hero of Jerusalem,81 and lost his right hand by another enemy. He died the same evening, exclaiming, as the story goes: "This is the hand with which I swore fidelity to my lord, King Henry." But, according to another report, he said, when he heard of the victory of his troops: "Now I suffer willingly what the Lord has decreed for me." His body with the severed hand was deposited in the cathedral at Merseburg.82 Rudolf’s death turned his victory into a defeat. It was regarded in that age as a judgment of God against him and the anti-pope. His friends could not agree upon a successor till the following summer, when they elected Count Hermann of Luxemburg, who proved incompetent. In the spring of 1081 Henry crossed the Alps with a small army to depose Gregory, whose absolution he had sought a few years before as a penitent at Canossa. He was welcomed in Lombardy, defeated the troops of Matilda, and appeared at the gates of Rome before Pentecost, May 21. Gregory, surrounded by danger, stood firm as a rock and refused every compromise. At his last Lenten synod (end of February, 1081) he had renewed his anathemas, and suspended those bishops who disobeyed the summons. Nothing else is known of this synod but sentences of punishment. In his letter of March 15, 1081, to Hermann, bishop of Metz, he justified his conduct towards Henry, and on April 8 he warned the Venetians against any communication with him and his adherents. "I am not afraid," he said, "of the threats of the wicked, and would rather sacrifice my life than consent to evil."

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "Glénadal, having lost his father in infancy, was brought up by his mother, whom he adored. At sixteen, his character, till then good and docile, changed. He became gloomy and taciturn. Pressed with questions by his mother, he decided at last to make a confession. 'To you,' said he, 'I owe everything' I love you with all my soul; yet for some time past an incessant idea drives me to kill you. Prevent so terrible a misfortune from happening, in case some day the temptation should overpower me: allow me to enlist.' Notwithstanding pressing solicitations, he was firm in his resolve, went off, and was a good soldier. Still a secret impulse stimulated him without cessation to desert in order to come home and kill his mother. At the end of his term of service the idea was as strong as on the first day. He enlisted for another term. The murderous instinct persisted, but substituted another victim. He no longer thought of killing his mother —the horrible impulse pointed day and night towards his sister-in-law. In order to resist the second impulse, he condemned himself to perpetual exile. At this time one of his old neighbors arrived in the regiment. Glénadal confesses all his trouble. 'Be at rest,' said the other. 'Your crime is impossible; your sister-in-law has just died.' At these words Glénadal rises like a delivered captive. Joy fills his heart. He travels to the home of his childhood, unvisited for so many years. But as he arrives he sees his sister-in-law living. He gives a cry, and the terrible impulse seizes him again as a prey. That very evening he makes his brother tie him fast. 'Take a solid rope, bind me like a wolf in the barn, and go and tell Dr. Calmeil. . . .' From him he got admission to an insane asylum. The evening before his entrance he wrote to the director of the establishment: 'Sir, I am to become an inmate of your house. I shall behave there as if I were in the regiment. You will think me cured. At moments perhaps I shall pretend to be so. Never believe me. Never let me out on any pretext. If I beg to be released, double your watchfulness; the only use I shall make of my liberty will be to commit a crime which I abhor.'"[490]

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  immediately assumed it was the carpenter and went to warn Bep, who was eating lunch, that she couldn’t go back downstairs. Father and I stationed ourselves at the door so we could hear when the man had left. After working for about fifteen minutes, he laid his hammer and some other tools on our bookcase (or so we thought!) and banged on our door. We turned white with fear. Had he heard something after all and now wanted to check out this mysterious-looking bookcase? It seemed so, since he kept knocking, pulling, pushing and jerking on it. I was so scared I nearly fainted at the thought of this total stranger managing to discover our wonderful hiding place. Just when I thought my days were numbered, we heard Mr. Kleiman’s voice saying, “Open up, it’s me.” We opened the door at once. What had happened? The hook fastening the bookcase had gotten stuck, which is why no one had been able to warn us about the carpenter. After the man had left, Mr. Kleiman came to get Bep, but couldn’t open the bookcase. I can’t tell you how relieved I was. In my imagination, the man I thought was trying to get inside the Secret Annex had kept growing and growing until he’d become not only a giant but also the cruelest Fascist in the world. Whew. Fortunately, everything worked out all right, at least this time. We had lots of fun on Monday. Miep and Jan spent the night with us. Margot and I slept in Father and Mother’s room for the night so the Gieses could have our beds. The menu was drawn up in their honor, and the meal was delicious. The festivities were briefly interrupted when Father’s lamp caused a short circuit and we were suddenly plunged into darkness. What were we to do? We did have fuses, but the fuse box was at the rear of the dark warehouse, which made this a particularly unpleasant job at night. Still, the men ventured forth, and ten minutes later we were able to put away the candles. I was up early this morning. Jan was already dressed. Since he had to leave at eight-thirty, he was upstairs eating breakfast by eight. Miep was busy getting dressed, and I found her in her undershirt when I came in. She wears the same kind of long underwear I do when she bicycles.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  They lived in a world apart from the farmers and peasants, and still thought of themselves as warriors. They boasted loudly about their exploits, demanding acclaim and adulation, and were fiercely competitive and individualist. Their first loyalty was to themselves, their families, and their clans, rather than to the city as a whole. But they felt kinship with their fellow aristocrats throughout the Aegean, and were prepared to cooperate generously with them and offer hospitality to travelers. But toward the end of the dark age, trade revived in the Aegean. The aristocrats needed iron for their weapons and armor, and luxury goods to flaunt in their rivals’ faces. Their first trading partners were Canaanites from the northern coastal cities, whom the Greeks called Phoenicians because they had the monopoly on the only colorfast purple (phoinix) dye in antiquity. At first the Greeks had resented the Phoenicians, whose culture was far more sophisticated than their own. But by the ninth century, they had begun to work creatively together. The Phoenicians established a base in Cyprus, and Phoenician craftsmen came to work in Athens, Rhodes, and Crete. Phoenician colonists began to open up the western Mediterranean, and in 814 they established Carthage on the north African coast. They showed the Greeks the mercantile potential of the sea, and the Greeks began to make new foreign contacts in Syria. In the late ninth century, Phoenicians, Cypriots, and Greeks founded the commercial center of Al-Mina at the mouth of the river Orontes, which traded slaves and silver in return for iron, metalwork, ivories, and fabric. 4 Greece was coming back to life, but the people remained in a spiritual limbo. A few elements of the old Minoan and Mycenaean cults remained: there was, for example, a sacred olive tree on the Acropolis. 5 But the thirteenth-century crisis had shattered the old faith. The Greeks had watched their world collapse, and the trauma had changed them. The Minoan frescoes had been confident and luminous; the men, women, and animals depicted had been expectant and hopeful. There were apparitions of goddesses in flowery meadows, dancing, and joy. But by the ninth century, Greek religion was pessimistic and uncanny, its gods dangerous, cruel, and arbitrary. 6 In time, the Greeks would achieve a civilization of dazzling brilliance, but they never lost their sense of tragedy, and this would be one of their most important religious contributions to the Axial Age. Their rituals and myths would always hint at the unspeakable and the forbidden, at horrible events happening offstage, just out of sight, and usually at night. They experienced the sacred in catastrophe, when life was turned inexplicably upside down, in the breaking of taboos, and when the boundaries that kept society and individuals sane were suddenly torn asunder. We can see this dark vision in the terrifying story of the birth of the Greek gods.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Taken on a guided tour of the temple, he saw to his horror that, poised as they were on the brink of catastrophe, the people of Judah were still worshiping gods other than Yahweh. The temple had become a nightmarish place, its walls painted with writhing snakes and repellent animals. The priests performing these “filthy” rites were presented in a sordid light, almost as if they were engaged in furtive, disreputable sex: “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the throne of Israel do in the dark, each in his painted room?” 25 In another chamber, women sat weeping for Tammuz, the Anatolian vegetation god. Other Judeans worshiped the sun with their backs to the Holy of Holies, where Yahweh dwelt. But the people were also rejecting Yahweh ethically as well as ritually. Ezekiel’s divine guide told him that the guilt of Israel and Judah “is immense, boundless; the country is full of bloodshed, the city overflows with wickedness, for they say, ‘Yahweh has abandoned the country, Yahweh cannot see.’ The city is filled with the corpses of murdered men.” 26 In this world of international aggression, it is significant that Ezekiel was preoccupied with the violence that Judeans were inflicting upon one another. Reform must begin with an objective, clearsighted examination of their own failings. Instead of blaming the Babylonians for their cruelty, projecting their pain onto the enemy, Ezekiel forced his fellow exiles to look nearer home. Blood was of crucial importance in the temple cult. Most priestly discussions of blood had hitherto centered on the ritual. But Ezekiel now made blood a symbol for murder, lawlessness, and social injustice. 27 Ritual was being interpreted by the new moral imperative of the Axial Age. These social crimes were just as serious as idolatry, and Israel had only itself to blame for the impending disaster. At the end of his vision, Ezekiel watched Yahweh’s war chariot fly away over the Mount of Olives, taking the divine glory away from the holy city. There was no hope for the Judeans who had stayed behind and whose sinfulness and political chicanery would result in the destruction of Jerusalem. Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel had no time for these people. But because Yahweh had decided to dwell among the deportees in exile, there was hope for the future. Despite his distress and apparent derangement, Ezekiel had a vision of new life. He saw a field full of human bones, which represented the exiled community; they kept saying: “Our bones are dried up, our hope has gone; we are as good as dead.” But Ezekiel prophesied over the bones and “the breath entered them; they came to life again and stood up on their feet, a great and immense army.” 28 One day when they had fully repented, Yahweh would bring the exiles home.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "To have in a slight degree," he says, "such psychical states as accompany the reception of wounds, and are experienced during flight, is to be in a state of what we call fear. And to have in a slight degree such psychical states as the processes of catching, killing, and eating imply, is to have the desires to catch, kill, and eat. That the propensities to the acts are nothing else than nascent excitations of the psychical state involved in the acts, is proved by the natural language of the propensities. Fear, when strong, expresses itself in cries, in efforts to escape, in palpitations, in tremblings; and these are just the manifestations that go along with an actual suffering of the evil feared. The destructive passion is shown in a general tension of the muscular system, in gnashing of teeth and protrusion of the claws, in dilated eyes and nostrils, in growls; and these are weaker forms of the actions that accompany the killing of prey. To such objective evidences every one can add subjective evidences. Every one can testify that the psychical state called fear consists of mental representations of certain painful results; and that the one called anger consists of mental representations of the actions and impressions which would occur while inflicting some kind of pain."[439]

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The liturgy, therefore, was as crucial for a city’s security as its fortifications, and it had reminded the people, only the day before, of the city’s fragility. On the fourth day of the festival, priests and choristers filed into Marduk’s shrine for the recitation of Enuma Elish, the creation hymn that recounted Marduk’s victory over cosmic and political chaos. The first gods to emerge from the slimy primal matter (similar to Mesopotamia’s alluvial soil) were “nameless, natureless, futureless,” 95 virtually inseparable from the natural world and seen as enemies of progress. The next gods to emerge from the sludge became progressively more distinct until the divine evolution culminated in Marduk, the most splendid of the Anunnaki. In the same way, Mesopotamian culture had developed from rural communities immersed in the natural rhythms of the countryside that were now regarded as sluggish, static, and inert. But the old times could return: this hymn expressed the fear of civilization lapsing back into abysmal nothingness. The most dangerous of the primitive gods was Tiamat, whose name means “Void”; she was the salty sea, which, in the Middle East, symbolized not only primeval chaos but the social anarchy that could bring starvation, disease, and death to the entire population. She represented an ever-present threat that every civilization, no matter how powerful, had to be ready to confront. The hymn also gave sacred sanction to the structural violence of Babylonian society. Tiamat creates a horde of monsters to fight the Anunnaki, a “growling roaring rout, ready for battle,” suggestive of the danger the lower classes presented to the state. Their monstrous forms represent the perverse defiance of normal categories and the confusion of identity associated with social and cosmic disorder. Their leader is Tiamat’s spouse Kingu, a “clumsy laborer,” one of the Igigi, whose name means “Toil.” The narrative of the hymn is repeatedly punctuated with this pounding refrain: “She has made the Worm, the Dragon, the Female Monster, the Great Lion, the Mad Dog, the Mad Scorpion and the Howling Storm, the Fish-Man, the Centaur.” 96 But Marduk defeats them all, casting them into prison and creating an ordered universe by splitting Tiamat’s corpse in two and separating heaven and earth. He then commands the gods to build the city of bab- ilani, “gate of the gods,” as their earthly home and creates the first man by mixing Kingu’s blood with a handful of dust to perform the labor on which civilization depends. “Sons of toil,” the masses are sentenced for life to menial labor and are held in subjection. Liberated from work, the gods sing a hymn of praise and thanksgiving.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The Catholic Mass had been a central feature of the early festivals, but by 1793 the priests had been eliminated from these national rites. This was the year that Jacques Hébert enthroned the Goddess of Reason on the high altar of Notre Dame Cathedral, transforming it into a temple of philosophy. Revolutionary politics was itself becoming an object of worship. Leaders made great use of such terms as credo, zealot, sacrament, and sermon when describing political events.72 Honoré Mirabeau wrote that “the Declaration of the Rights of Man has become a political Gospel and the French Constitution a religion for which the people is prepared to die.” The poet Marie-Joseph Chénier told the National Convention: “You will know how to found on the ruins of dethroned superstition, the single universal religion of which our lawmakers are the preachers, the magistrates the pontiffs, and in which the human family burns its incense only at the altar of the Patrie, common mother and divinity.”73 Because the revolution “seemed to be striving for the regeneration of the human race even more than for the reform of France,” Tocqueville would observe, “a new kind of religion, an incomplete religion, it is true, without God, without ritual, and without life after death, but one which nevertheless, like Islam, flooded the earth with its soldiers, apostles and martyrs.”74 It is interesting that he equated this defiantly secular religiosity with the fanatical violence that Europeans had long attributed to Islam. The “civil religion” described first by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) was based on belief in God and the afterlife, the social contract, and the prohibition of intolerance. Its festivals, Rousseau wrote, would create a sacred bond between participants: “Let the spectators become an entertainment to themselves; make them actors themselves; do it so that each sees and loves himself in the others so that all will be better united.”75 But Rousseau’s loving tolerance did not extend to anyone who refused to obey the precepts of civil religion, and a similar rigor entered the revolution.76 A month after the festival celebrating the Unity and Indivisibility of the Republic, the reign of terror began, when Maximilien de Robespierre appointed a tribunal to seek out traitors and pursued dissidents with all the zeal of a militant pope. Not only were the king and queen, members of the royal family, and the aristocracy executed, but one group of apparently loyal patriots after another went to the guillotine. The distinguished chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who had worked all his professional life to improve conditions in French prisons and hospitals, and Gilbert Romme, who had designed the revolutionary calendar, were both beheaded. When the purge ended in July 1794, some seventeen thousand men, women, and children had been guillotined, and twice as many more had either died in the disease-ridden prisons or were slaughtered by local vigilantes.77

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Fundamentalists had no place in modern society, argued the journalist H. L. Mencken: “They are everywhere where learning is too heavy a burden for human minds to carry, even the vague, pathetic learning on tap in the little red schoolhouses.” He mocked Dayton as a “one-horse Tennessee village” and its citizens the “gaping primates of the upland valleys.” 7 Yet whenever a fundamentalist movement is attacked, either with violence or in a media campaign, it almost invariably becomes more extreme. It shows malcontents that their fear is well grounded: the secular world really is out to destroy them. Before the Scopes Trial, not even Hodge had believed that Genesis was scientifically sound in every detail, but afterward “creation science” became the rallying cry of the fundamentalist movement. Before Dayton, some leading fundamentalists still engaged in social work with people on the left; afterward, they swung to the far right, retreating altogether from the mainstream and creating their own churches, colleges, broadcasting stations, and publishing houses. They grew and grew below the mainstream cultural radar. Once they became aware of their considerable public support, in the late 1970s they would reemerge from the margins with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. American fundamentalism would ever after vie to be heard as a decisive voice in American politics—with notable success. It would not resort to violence, largely because American Protestants did not suffer as greatly as did, for example, the Muslims of the Middle East. Unlike the secular rulers of Egypt or Iran, the U.S. government did not confiscate their property, torture and assassinate their clergy, or cruelly dismantle their institutions. In America secular modernity was a homegrown product, which was not imposed militarily from outside but had evolved organically over time, and when they arrived on the public scene in the late 1970s, American fundamentalists could use well- established democratic channels to make their point. Although American Protestant fundamentalism was not usually an agent of violence, it was, to a degree, a response to violence: the trauma of modern warfare and the psychological assault of the aggressive disdain of the secularist establishment. Both can distort a religious tradition in ways that reverberate far beyond the community of the faithful. Nevertheless, fundamentalism in America shares with other disaffected groups the sensibility of the colonized, in its defiant self-assertion and in a determination to recover one’s own identity and culture against a powerful Other. Muslim fundamentalism, by contrast, has often—though again, not always—segued into physical aggression. This is not because Islam is constitutionally more prone to violence than Protestant Christianity but rather because Muslims had a much harsher introduction to modernity. Before the birth of the modern state in the crucible of colonialism, Islam had continued in many Muslim lands to operate as the organizing principle of society.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  2. The vision of Bernold.1411 This interesting little story dates from 877, the year of Charles the Bald’s death. Bernold lived in Rheims, and was known to Hincmar. He had a vision after he had been four days at the point of death, which he related to his confessor, and the confessor to Hincmar, who for obvious reasons published it. Bernold regained his health, and was therefore a living witness to the accuracy of his story. In his vision he went to "a certain place," i.e. purgatory, in which he found forty-one bishops, ragged and dirty, exposed alternately to extreme cold and scorching heat. Among them was Ebo, Hincmar’s predecessor, who immediately implored Bernold to go to their parishioners and clergy and tell them to offer alms, prayers and the sacred oblation for them. This he did, and on his return found the bishops radiant in countenance, as if just bathed and shaved, dressed in alb, stole and sandals, but without chasubles. Leaving them, Bernold went in his vision to a dark place, where he saw Charles the Bald sitting in a heap of putrefaction, gnawed by worms and worn to a mere skeleton. Charles called him by name and implored him to help him. Bernold asked how he could. Then Charles told him that he was suffering because he had not obeyed Hincmar’s counsels, but if Bernold would secure Hincmar’s help he would be delivered. This Bernold did, and on his return he found the king clad in royal robes, sound in flesh and amid beautiful surroundings. Bernold went further and encountered two other characters—Jesse, an archbishop, and a Count Othar, whom he helped by going to the earth and securing the prayers, alms and oblations of their friends. He finally came across a man who told him that in fourteen years he would leave the body and go back to the place he was then in for good, but that if he was careful to give alms and to do other good works he would have a beautiful mansion. A rustic of stern countenance expressed his lack of faith in Bernold’s ability to do this, but was silenced by the first man. Whereupon Bernold asked for the Eucharist, and when it was given to him he drank almost half a goblet of wine, and said, "I could eat some food, if I had it." He was fed, revived and recovered. Hincmar, in relating this vision, calls attention to its similarity to those told in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, in the writings of St. Boniface, and to that of Wettin, which Walahfrid Strabo related.1412 He ends by exhorting his readers to be more fervent in their prayers, and especially to pray for king Charles and the other dead.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  In 430, an outbreak of plague made the overcrowded city a living hell. Some twenty thousand people—25 percent of the population—died. In their fear and grief, as they watched the devout suffering alongside unbelievers, many Athenians lost all faith in the gods. They also lost confidence in Pericles, who was stripped of office. Although he was reappointed a few months later, he would die in the autumn of 429. Meanwhile, as the plague raged in Athens, the war had reached a stalemate. Athenians and Spartans pillaged each other’s territories, but rarely met in pitched battle, so neither side could claim decisive victory. A few months after Pericles’ death, Sophocles presented Oedipus the Tyrant at the City Dionysia. The play opened in Thebes, which had been stricken by plague because the murder of King Laius, Oedipus’s father, had not been avenged. Oedipus launched an inquiry and, of course, discovered that not only was he himself the unwitting slayer of his father but, without realizing who she was, he had married his own mother. The Sophists had claimed that man was free and independent, and could take control of his own life. But was an individual entirely responsible for his actions, as the law of Athens claimed? Even when a person carefully considered a plan, did not the full meaning and origin of his deeds elude him? Did they not remain opaque? All his life, Oedipus had tried to act rightly and had constantly taken the best advice available. Through no fault of his own, he had become a monstrous figure, the polluter of his city, hopelessly defiled by actions whose significance he had failed to grasp at the time. He was guilty and innocent, agent and victim. Oedipus had a reputation for wisdom. He had once saved Thebes by guessing the riddle of the Sphinx. It has been suggested that his name may have derived from oida: “I know.” But it turned out that he was the opposite of what he had believed himself to be. He had been lethally ignorant. The truth was insupportable, and—in a horrifying gesture that Sophocles added to the original story—when he learned what he had done, he gouged out his eyes. 31 Despite his famed vision (oidos), he had in fact been blind to the truth. His self-mutilation took Oedipus to the limits of knowledge, beyond speech and perception—almost in a parody of mystical insight. He began the play as a king revered by his subjects as divine; he ended as a contaminated criminal, who had brought the miasma of death and sickness to his city. But his journey was not over. Oedipus’s blindness brought him a wholly new emotional vulnerability.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  This was extremely dangerous. During the hajj, Arab pilgrims could not carry arms; all violence was forbidden in the Meccan sanctuary. It was even forbidden to speak a cross word or kill an insect. In going unarmed into Mecca, Muhammad was, therefore, walking into the lion’s den. Nevertheless, a thousand Muslims chose to accompany him. The Meccans sent their cavalry to kill the pilgrims, but local Bedouins guided them into the sanctuary by another route. Once they had entered the sacred territory, Muhammad made the Muslims sit down in a peaceful demonstration, knowing that he was putting the Meccans in a difficult position. If they harmed pilgrims in the holiest place of Arabia, blasphemously violating the sanctity of the Kabah, their cause would be irreparably damaged. Eventually, the Meccans sent an envoy to negotiate, and to the horror of the Muslims present, Muhammad obeyed the directives of the Qur’an and accepted conditions that seemed not only to be dishonorable but also to throw away all the advantages that the Muslims had fought and died for. Nevertheless, Muhammad signed the treaty. The Muslim pilgrims were furious, and even though mutiny was narrowly averted, they started the ride home in sullen silence. But during the homeward journey, Muhammad received a revelation from God, who called this apparent defeat a “manifest victory.” 74 While the Meccans, inspired by the violence of the old religion, had “harboured a stubborn disdain in their hearts,” God had sent down the “gift of inner peace [sakinah]” upon the Muslims, so that they had been able to respond to their enemies with calm serenity. 75 They were distinguished by total surrender to God, and this separated them from the pagan Meccans and linked them with what we would call the religions of the Axial Age. The spirit of peace, said the Qur’an, was their link with the Torah and the gospel: “They are like a seed that brings forth its shoot, and then he strengthens it so that it grows stout, and in the end stands firm upon its stem, delighting the sowers.” 76 The treaty that had seemed so unpromising led to a final peace. Two years later the Meccans voluntarily opened their gates to Muhammad, who took the city without bloodshed. In every single one of the religions of the Axial Age, individuals have failed to measure up to their high ideals. In all these faiths, people have fallen prey to exclusivity, cruelty, superstition, and even atrocity. But at their core, the Axial faiths share an ideal of sympathy, respect, and universal concern.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  In about 1500, they had begun to trade with the more advanced societies south of the Caucasus in Mesopotamia and Armenia. They learned about bronze weaponry from the Armenians and also encountered new methods of transport: first they acquired wooden carts pulled by oxen, and then the war chariot. Once they had learned how to tame the wild horses of the steppes and harness them to their chariots, they experienced the joys of mobility. Life would never be the same again. The Aryans had become warriors. They could now travel long distances at high speed. With their superior weapons, they could conduct lightning raids on neighboring settlements and steal cattle and crops. This was far more thrilling and lucrative than stock breeding. Some of the younger men served as mercenaries in the armies of the southern kingdoms, and became expert in chariot warfare. When they returned to the steppes, they put their new skills to use and started to rustle their neighbors’ cattle. They killed, plundered, and pillaged, terrorizing the more conservative Aryans, who were bewildered, frightened, and entirely disoriented, feeling that their lives had been turned upside down. Violence escalated on the steppes as never before. Even the more traditional tribes, who simply wanted to be left alone, had to learn the new military techniques in order to defend themselves. A heroic age had begun. Might was right; chieftains sought gain and glory; and bards celebrated aggression, reckless courage, and military prowess. The old Aryan religion had preached reciprocity, self-sacrifice, and kindness to animals. This was no longer appealing to the cattle rustlers, whose hero was the dynamic Indra, the dragon slayer, who rode in a chariot upon the clouds of heaven. 10 Indra was now the divine model to whom the raiders aspired. “Heroes with noble horses, fain for battle, selected warriors call on me in combat,” he cried. “I, bountiful Indra, excite the conflict, I stir the dust, Lord of surpassing vigour!” 11 When they fought, killed, and robbed, the Aryan cowboys felt themselves one with Indra and the aggressive devas who had established the world order by force of arms. But the more traditional, Avestan-speaking Aryans were appalled by Indra’s naked aggression, and began to have doubts about the daevas. Were they all violent and immoral? Events on earth always reflected cosmic events in heaven, so, they reasoned, these terrifying raids must have a divine prototype. The cattle rustlers, who fought under the banner of Indra, must be his earthly counterparts. But who were the daevas attack-ing in heaven?

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The Dome as a perceived symbol of Jewish humiliation, subjugation, and obliteration fed dangerously into the Jewish history of grievance and suffering, a phenomenon that, as we have seen, can fester dangerously and inspire a violent riposte. Jews had fought back and achieved a superpower status in the Middle East that would once have seemed inconceivable. For the Gush, the peace process seemed to threaten this hard-won status, and like the monks who obliterated the iconic pagan temples after Julian’s attempt to suppress Christianity, they instinctively responded, “Never again.” Hence Jewish radicals, with or without rabbinic approval, continue to flirt with Livni’s dangerous idea, convinced that their political designs have some basis in eternal truth. The Temple Mount Faithful have drawn up plans for the Jewish temple that will one day replace the Dome, which they display in a museum provocatively close to the Haram al-Sharif with the ritual utensils and ceremonial robes that they have prepared for the cult. For many, Jewish Jerusalem rising phoenixlike from the ashes of Auschwitz has acquired a symbolic value that is nonnegotiable. The history of Jerusalem shows that a holy place always becomes more precious to a people after they have lost it or feel that their tenure is endangered. Livni’s plot therefore helped to make the Haram al-Sharif even more sacred to the Palestinians. When Islam was a great world power, Muslims had the confidence to be inclusive in their devotion to this sacred space. Calling Jerusalem al-Quds (“the Holy”), they understood that a holy place belongs to God and can never be the exclusive preserve of a state. When Umar conquered the city, he left the Christian shrines intact and invited Jews to return to the city from which they had been excluded for centuries. But now, as they feel that they are losing their city, Palestinian Muslims have become more possessive. Hence the tension between Muslims and Jews frequently erupts into violence at this holy place: in 2000 the provocative visit of the hawkish Israeli politician Ariel Sharon with his right-wing entourage sparked the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada.