I was forwarded this note in one of the lists. About how the various Semitically named american hero's. I quote:
At Cincinnati, Bill Cunningham, according to the LAT, who "introduced presidential candidate John McCain at a rally here today accused Barack Obama of sympathizing with 'world leaders who want to kill us' and invoked Obama's middle name -- three times calling him 'Barack Hussein Obama.' " John McCain repudiated Cunningham's low tactics and said that using the middle name like that three times was "inappropriate" and would never happen again at one of his rallies.
I want to say something about Barack Hussein Obama's name. It is a name to be proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It is a heroic name, as heroic and American in its own way as the name of General Omar Nelson Bradley or the name of Benjamin Franklin. And denigrating that name is a form of racial and religious bigotry of the most vile and debased sort. It is a prejudice against names deriving from Semitic languages!.....
To that, somebody responded saying that all Christian names were Semitic. And my response to that was...
You have a point there, xxxxx, but then I guess, Semitic as the author meant, was "current" Semitic. Or names as you would find currently in the middle east. Its just how different one see's "things" in the past. You mentioned Jacob and from the same root comes Yusuf.
Got me thinking, The "Europeanization" of Christianity, the expansion of the Islamic Empire, destruction of the Byzantine Empire, etc. etc. meant that it got cut off from the Middle Eastern roots. Another way of looking at it is to look at how Christ is represented in art down the ages and down the regions. The general representation is of a frail(ish), tall, delicate white man, while, according to scientists (there were several documentaries around it), he would possibly have been more of a stocky, coarser featured, powerfully built man. Perhaps that is why the documentary came as so much of a shock.
While saying that, Islam was not torn from its roots as was Judaism and Christianity... and then again, the reaction (both theologically and culturally), the reactions to that tearing was so different.....
Curious how people react to their histories, what they hide and what they emphasise!
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