28 September 2019

An Abrahamic House!

Splendid news! With, it is hinted, Vatican approval, an Abrahamic House is to be created in Abu Dabi, containing a Synagogue, a Church, and a Mosque.

There is perhaps, from the pedantic point of view, something slightly lopsided about this project. Since Sacrifice came early in the 'Abrahamic' tradition, you might have thought that a Hebrew Temple would need to feature largely. After all, Judaism did not become a 'synagogue' religion until after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70. So what about Abrahamic sacrifices? Where will they be offered?

However, I do not wish to dwell upon this problem. I thought I would simply remind readers that this lovely idea ... technically known as Syncretism ... goes back a long way. S Bede records that Reduald, King of East Anglia, having been nagged a bit by his gloriously Ecumenical wife, created a very open-minded religious complex (fanum). In it, there was an altare ad sacrificium Christi. But it also contained an arula for the victimae, the sacrificial animals of the daemoniorum.  'Daemoniorum' undobtedly refers to the divinities of Anglo-Saxon paganism.

Arula is a jolly word. It is the diminutive of ara, an altar. But in Latin, diminutives indicate either smallness; or affection; or contempt. Given S Bede's depressingly blinkered religious outlook, I have no doubt that he meant it as a contemptuous reference to the sacrificial stones of heathendom.

I wonder if King Reduald provided a single Presbytery for the Christian and the pagan clergy both to inhabit. There could have been a rota just inside the door, indicating for each day who was to say the Mass at the Christ Altar and who was to slaughter the animals at the arula of Frigga.

Or did they concelebrate?

8 comments:

Jack said...

« But what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. » Gal 4:30

fitzhamilton said...

House of Abraham? They should call it what it actually is: a mosque with an "ecumenical" spin.

When I was in Istanbul last, I visited the Grand Mosque of Sulyman. They had these placards set up in the enterance and about the interior, and were handing out pamphlets explaining how Islam includes all other historic monotheisms, that Hebrew and Christian "prophets" (to include Christ, or Isa) are included in the Islamic tradition. They actually had a large chart displayed, with the lineage prophets in a sort of family tree culminating in Muhammad, the seal of the prophets.

I'd knew that they claimed this, but it was interesting seeing the claim so baldly made to all the tourists. It all had a very odd "new agey" vibe to me, like you get from the Bahai, and it felt sort of sinister. It just reinforces the point that Islam is syncretist in this sense, so long as all other monoteists are subordinated to themselves.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Father. One hopes there will be a resource room dedicated to explaining how it was that The Archangel Gabriel told holy Mary that she would bear the son of God (Luke 1:35) but then - about six centuries later- Gabriel supposedly visited Mahomet and told him that Jesus is not the son of God and that Allah curses Him (Sura 9:30)

O well, one can be sure that everything is jake because we are forever being told the Muslims worship the same God as we do.

OreamnosAmericanus said...

“Abrahamic” is just “Judeo-Christian” 2.0.

In both cases, a Public Relations term was concocted and dressed up as theology. The point? To grant insider status to and to make “one of us” and “just like you” two antagonistic outsider groups who have never been “one of us” and are definitely “not like you.” In both cases, the newly minted “one of us” set about undoing everything that has made us us.

“Judeo-Christian” has allowed Jews to claim Western civilization as just as much theirs as ours. As a very former Jewish friend told me, revealing the arrogance inside this supposedly friendly lingo, “The Jews civilized Europe.” The other side of that narrative, though, is their “Holocaust”, proudly granting them lacrimose Eternal Victim status no matter how wealthy and powerful they are. Their current status in the real world would make Solomon’s jaw drop with envy.

“Abrahamic” allows Christendom’s 1400-year old implacable enemy, the armed theocracy of imperialist Mohammedanism, to move in next door and claim to be “just as English as you are, mate.” 9/11 and 7/7 and all the blood rest, well, that's just Islamophobia.

Bogus lies both of them: “Abrahamic” and “Judeo-Christian.” And European Christians, worn out and infiltrated by two centuries of 1789 propaganda and two suicidal intra-European wars, gave up the ghost. Pope Francis is no accident, Father. No accident.

Unknown said...

At least two sites claim to have the tomb of Saint George, Patron of England, Portugal, Armenia, etc... One is in Lydda (Diospolis) and the other in Mosul (destroyed recently by Daesh). In both cases the shrines cater for both Christian and Moslem pilgrims.

gemoftheocean said...

Where is the potted plants the pantheists can confess their "environmental sins" to? Bergoglio is not very thorough. Are there no funeral pyres for the Hindu widow to climb on?

Mark said...

Thank you so much for visiting us in deepest Kent today! Your homily was very well received and we pray earnestly that the good Lord will grant you in excess of 11 further years! In the meantime we look forward to the canonisation of Blessed JHN. Ad multos annos Father.

Banshee said...

Islam does a fair number of sacrifices of goats, camels, etc., but they usually do them outdoors somewhere. Our local mosque bought a picnic ground (historically pretty common around here for minority ethnic groups of religions) so that they can do sacrifices in privacy but outside (not historically common here).I

But yes, the whole concept of a House of Abraham is silly. All the ancient shrines that make provision for pilgrims of various religions end up periodically becoming property of just one, or having elaborate security provisions.