This story describes the finding of a Homo Sapiens jawbone from before other fossils out of Africa. Makes sense locationally. Makes sense in a lot of ways but a single specimen can be ‘anecdotal’ in certain ways, even if the physical identification is correct. I mean you can attribute a lot of meaning but some of that attribution may be off.
One of the most interesting things about Israel is its location: it isn’t Africa or the Middle East, neither Europe nor Asia. This in-between-ness I think has influenced the way Monotheistic belief arose: the label of a ‘name’, the attribution of all meanings and names to the concept of unknowability and unnameable, comes from somewhere in Between places where meanings are more fixed. If indeed we’re correct in thinking the ancient Egyptians more directly personified God, as in Akhenaton believing himself to be Aten rather than a vessel in which Aten appears, then they held the conception of vastness to their chests, as opposed to the conception of nameable Gods being representable in some avatar or idol form. But of course Akhenaton was an aberration anyway in the line of nameable Gods being … What I think is more appealing as a location explanation is that different cultures seeing the names and powers of Gods appears more clearly when you’re in Between cultures, and that rather obviously can lead to the idea that maybe the fact that all these different cultures use different names and ideas for Gods, including different names for the same ones, means they’re all describing something that they can’t adequately name. That’s monotheism: we can’t adequately name God. So sayeth Jomi!
It even makes sense that Jerusalem and the Evan Stone – not the porn star but the rock – become the ‘center’ because it’s not the center but the point in Between. That makes it the origin.
As an aside, it makes no sense to call this the ‘furthest mosque’ or al-aqsa because that literalizes a spiritual location in a non-Islamic way. By that I mean the point of belief is so you understand the furthest mosque of al-aqsa is where the believer resides because Muhammed is meant to come to you. All religious versions of apparition come to you. Like Jesus to Saul of Tarsus. Like the Burning Bush to Moses. Literalizing Jerusalem makes sense to the conception of monotheism but not the conception of prophecy. Another problem is that making Jerusalem al-aqsa shifts the center from Mecca and the point of Muhammed is that this is the specific book of these believers, connected to this history and place. But this really gets to the deep idea that submission requires struggle within, not against others, and that you displace your internal struggle to accept by casting al-aqsa as a place. That converts struggle into something externally oriented. I have more to say about this but not now.
jomi: playing with perception 