VERSION|0.5.1|NAME|Steve|DATE|1368524378|CONTENT|Sacks unwittingly highlights a problem here, by being part of it. Collective memory, especially of something bad like slavery or exile, is a very useful political tool. It seems almost certain that the Exodus story was invented for exactly that purpose; to bind a group of people together with a shared “history” of difficult times and  the threat from outsiders. But if contemporary leaders are in control of what is and isn’t history, they can manipulate large groups of people to almost any end.

One of the jobs of History as an academic subject is to break this link. So for example, we are less likely now to blindly glorify The British Empire as our parents might have done, but neither do we blindly accept that it is to blame for every modern political problem in its former territory. Robert Mugabe, in this latter way, is an example of a leader who provides his supporters with an image of history that contains some truth but is largely a political expedience. In the same way that Enlightenment science wrestled control of the nature of the world away from politicians (religious ones), proper history does the same with the nature of the past. In its aims and methods, it shares a huge amount with science.

So which side of this is Sacks on? I wonder if he does with Jewish history what he does with science, i.e. deny it until it becomes obvious, then claim to have accepted it all along? Does he accept that the Jews are from Canaan, as is the overwhelming consensus? Does he know that the Exodus never happened, and that it was written as a myth during the real Babylonian Exile? Does he agree that however the Ten Commandments came to the Jews, it wasn’t in the way stated? Or does he actually, really, properly believe that it is all true?|IP-ADDRESS|10.0.119.138, 217.36.222.79, 10.37.45.202|MODERATIONFLAG|