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Semitism
The Whence and Whither
“How dear are your counsels”

Kenneth Cragg
Kenneth Cragg was first in Jerusalem in 1939, and subsequently became deeply involved in areas of faith between Semitic religions under the stress of current politics. He later pursued doctoral studies in Oxford where he first graduated and became ‘Prizeman’in Theology and Moral Philosophy, and where he is now an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College. He was a Bishop in the Anglican Jurisdiction in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Middle East, and played ecclesiastical roles in Africa and India. A Certain Sympathy of Scriptures is a companion book to his Readings in the Qur’an (1988; 1999), and more broadly to his Faiths in Their Pronouns: Websites of Identity (2002). Other works by Bishop Cragg, and published by Sussex Academic Press, include: With God in Human Trust –Christian Faith and Contemporary Humanism; The Weight in the Word –Prophethood, Biblical and Quranic; and The Education of Christian Faith.

“A masterful study that demonstrates Cragg’s profound knowledge and scholarship of the historical, theological and scriptural sources of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as the current conflict in the Middle East. Bold and original, it provides an empathetic reassessment of the Jewish fear of anti-Semitism grounded in the context of European history that culminated in the horrors of the Holocaust and the displacement and suffering of the Palestinian people. Cragg demonstrates his impeccable analytical skills to uncover the manipulation of the fear of anti-Semitism to justify Israeli policies. Profound, enlightening, a must read for anyone concerned with the issue of anti-Semitism and the Middle East conflict.” Yvonne Y. Haddad, Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding, Georgetown University

This book is an incisive attempt by a leading exponent on Christian–Muslim relations to unravel and understand the perspectives and complexities of semitic past and present in theological, political and cultural terms. The work tackles sensitive issues of ethnicity, prejudice, persecution and state-making. Cyclone and anti-cyclone are comprehensible contrasts. Semitism and anti-Semitism are of a different order. Semitism is hardly current at all; the latter is all too grimly and darkly familiar. Both terms seem only to have come into use in the 19th century, but the reality of their meanings is harsh centuries long.

Semitism is a human story of distinctive intimacy with a God, believed to belong with birth, sealed in history and homed in given territory. “How dear are Your counsels to me, O God,” the psalmist cried – how precious, yet how costly this privilege between us. These three denominators of tribe, territory and remembered time belong to all human identities, understood as one creation in a single cosmos in the Bible and the Qur’an.

Anti-Semitism is a tragic misprision of this long conviction of the Judaic mind, bringing endless suffering to the one, shame and guilt to the other. Its effect has been to make “those counsels dearer” still, whether in Zionist will to recover and rule territory or in a secular diaspora struggling to know itself. Semitism has overtaken itself with the barbarity of a dividing Wall – a scar across a land allegedly “beloved above all”, by both God and People. Its presence resembles Solomon’s judgment on a disputed child.

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