{"id":71110,"date":"2020-03-01T15:35:27","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T13:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=71110"},"modified":"2023-10-19T16:38:24","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T13:38:24","slug":"hananiahs-demagoguery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/hananiahs-demagoguery\/","title":{"rendered":"Hananiah\u2019s Demagoguery\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Maimonides specifically cited Hananiah in his <\/span>Letter to Yemen<\/span><\/em> as emblematic of a false prophet whose credentials are impugned by the content of his message rather than other external factors such as miracles or pedigree. Listening closely to the precise articulation of their prophecies then should determine authenticity in the duel between Jeremiah and Hananiah. One such substantive component of Hananiah\u2019s prophecy that exposed Hananiah\u2019s charade was the issue of the Temple vessels looted by the Babylonians. Hananiah boldly predicted that God would<\/span> \u201crestore to this place all the vessels of the House of the Lord which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took\u201d (28:3). Hananiah\u2019s choice of the vessels, of stuff, as the supreme symbol of victory rested on an implicit endorsement of a decadent ideology King Josiah long before tried to rout. Josiah\u2019s reform shifted the focus of national existence from the furnishings of the Temple, the material symbols of its glory, to a text, to the Torah.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a public reading of the \u201ctext of the covenant\u201d (2 Kings 23:2), that had been exhumed after being buried beneath centuries of hoarding stuff, Josiah emptied the Temple of \u201call the vessels made for Ba\u2019al and Asherah and the host of heaven\u201d (23:4). Obsession with the material symbols of holiness led naturally to a syncretistic obsession with the deification of the material aspects of nature. Hananiah crafted this choice of the return of the Temple vessels as the crowning achievement of his predicted victory over Babylon to appeal to just these popular sensual predilections. But this seduction of a surfeit of vessels in the Temple also appealed to the ruling class, playing to aspirations which traced their way back to the very origins of the Davidic dynasty. David constructed his own castle, or paean to his own glory, before contemplating as an afterthought a center dedicated to God, \u201cHere I am dwelling in a house of cedar while the Ark of the Lord sits in a tent\u201d (2 Sam 7:2). Once built the Temple was populated by a glut of vessels dedicated to a pantheon of gods. These were the residue of self-empowering alliances Solomon forged by numerous foreign marriages in direct violation of the Deuteronomic law of the king (Deut. 17).<\/span><\/p>\n

By focusing on the return of Temple vessels as the goal of any insurrection against Babylonia, Hananiah engaged in classic demagoguery that would naturally appeal to the material and political ambitions of the king and the people. It was a populist strategy aimed at restoring that nationalistic and monarchic glory so inimical to the overarching aims of the Torah, once again gathering dust underneath them. The Babylonian king enhanced his political stature by pillaging the Temple and so the Israelite polis would restore its glory by repatriating those symbols of its national prestige.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hananiah\u2019s message exploited the allure of political power raising those dangers posed by kingship in the ancient Near East that conflated God with the king.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":71111,"id":71111,"title":"jer28-menorahs","filename":"jer28-menorahs.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/jer28-menorahs.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/hananiahs-demagoguery\/jer28-menorahs\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"jer28-menorahs","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":71110,"date":"2020-03-01 13:35:07","modified":"2020-03-01 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