Why We Remain Blacks Part 3.01

A digression on ancient apologia

Note: BAP tweeted that this article says something it doesn’t. I intentionally based the religious history in here upon normie-tier introductory religious history. What is important is the social-psychological implications of apologia.

As with Father Murray, if one belongs to an historical religion with sacred texts, to change is to legitimate, to legitimate is to construe texts, and to construe is to construct a canopy over “what’s happening.” The hermeneutic of legitimation can go in two directions: it can delve into its own indigenous religious tradition for the terms with which to legitimate the “outside” world it is acculturating towards, thus building a sacred canopy over a secular world (this, generally, was the enterprise of Reinhold Niebuhr and John Courtney Murray); or it can “rob the Egyptians,” using values drawn from the outside, secular world, such as noblesse oblige, constructing secular canopies over sacred things. – Cuddihy, John Murray. No Offense. 116.

As a preparation for discussing the historical dimension of modern group narcissism, I thought a digression on ancient and modern apologia would be helpful.

We left off in Part 2.02 of this series with the narcissistic defenses of projective identification or idealization, and devaluation. Each defense permits the narcissist to reconcile the omnipotence of his self-image with the reality of his dependence upon the external world, which can mean, for example, his dependence upon other people and other things that are better than him or which he didn’t create. He defends against these things by either conflating them with himself so that he shares in their greatness, or by radically devaluing them and denying that they are beneficial to him or good in some sense.

For example, a narcissist who depends upon a teacher or leader for his own success might recreate that person in his mind as a mirror of his own omnipotent self, such that the teacher or leader mirrors his own imagined desires and qualities. The narcissist might also devalue the teacher or leader by rationalizing that everything he has received from that person is actually of the narcissist’s own creation, or something he was already entitled to notwithstanding some imagined, wholly persecutory function performed by the all-bad teacher.

In the context of group narcissism these defenses often manifest in the form of what is known in the history of religion as apologia, and what John Murray Cuddihy calls in the epigram above the “hermeneutic of legitimation.”

In our metaphor, apologia is a group narcissistic defense against the threat of superiority posed by a non-group culture (including even oppression or exploitation by a dominant culture). The apologia performs this function in numerous ways. It apologizes for the particularism, parochialism, and other self- and outgroup-perceived inferiorities of the group relative to the external culture, reinterprets the values and features of the external culture to extend their validating and status-boosting functions to the group, devalues the external culture through criticism, and strives to secure material concessions from the dominant group.

Apologias take many different forms. Some are urgent and composed mostly with the intent of ameliorating extreme immediate injustices perpetrated by the external culture against the group, like physical oppression. Others are more passive and intellectual, composed with the intent of addressing more refined threats to the omnipotence of the group self-image. Some are composed with great hostility and are almost entirely critical of the outside culture, while others are composed with a more conciliatory and charitable tone. Sometimes all of these functions are combined into a single apologia.

Because apologia’s target audiences are non-group members or group members who find outgroup culture favorable, apologia is universalist or multicultural in scope. Just as language can only communicate about what is common among individuals, so apologia can only communicate about what is common among groups. Group narcissistic apologia therefore often performs the paradoxical function of amplifying universalism.

From the standpoint of genealogy, it is reasonable to conclude that the origins of political universalism are to be found, at least in part, in group narcissistic defenses against external cultures. Indeed, contrary to common reductive theological and ideological genealogies of progressivism and cosmopolitanism, it appears that these universalist political phenomena can emerge in connection with radically different theologies and ideologies, which are often incidental to the group narcissistic function of defending the omnipotence of an abstract group self-image against the external world.

This part 3.01 will provide further evidence supporting this conclusion by looking at ancient apologia from Judaean, Christian, and pagan sources. Part 3.02 will build upon this analysis and look closely at apologia drafted by Philo of Alexandria and Martin Luther King Jr. Together, both parts will show how group narcissism depends upon universalism, promotes cultural relativism, and ultimately develops the historical concept of group legitimacy that we will address in part 3.03 of Why We Remain Blacks.

Ancient Apologia

The parts of this section will focus upon Judaean apologia before turning to Christian apologia (which is largely an extension of Judaean apologia), and finally to pagan apologia.

Judaean Apologia

The conquest of Judaea by Greece under Alexander and the Diadochi in the 4th century B.C. was one of the most important events in the history of the Judaean religion.

Greek culture or “Hellenism” was brought to Judaeans through Alexander and the Diadochi employing Judaean mercenaries to effect their imperial conquests and maintain their imperial assets. Alexander pioneered the practice among Greeks on a small scale but Ptolemy I employed tens of thousands of Judaean mercenaries, in large part because most of his subjects were non-Greeks. Although his empire was centered in Alexandria, Ptolemy I employed the more reliable Judaeans to defend his empire, because Egyptians were lower quality fighters and prone to rebellion.

This brought Judaeans into contact with Hellenism in two ways. First, by distributing Judaeans around his empire, Ptolemy brought Judaeans into contact with alien cultures, including of course the dominant culture of their Greek overlords. The second way was through the adoption of the Greek language and culture by Judaeans throughout the known world, as Greek language education was mandated among mercenaries and knowledge of Greek was a prerequisite for citizenship.

We’ll have much to say about Hellenism in subsequent chapters, but for now what’s important to understand is that Hellenism, unlike the cultures of Judaea and other subject peoples, boasted a high culture of literacy and education.

In the 3rd century B.C., the holy texts of the Judaeans were translated into Greek and compiled into what would develop into the Septuagint, numerous copies of which were published throughout the Hellenistic empires of the Greeks and Romans. This had a profound effect upon the Judaean religion. Whereas before Hellenism Judaean holy texts were only consulted by a select few literate priests and scribes who instructed everyday Judaeans in the law, translation made the texts instrumental in the worship of Adonai for all Judaeans.

The Septuagint further wedded the Greek high culture of literacy, including its pagan and secular philosophy, to Judaean culture and catalyzed in turn the formation of synagogues. Judaeans would purchase a copy of the Septuagint and then procure a home, which they would transform into a place of study and worship centered upon the texts, especially the rich historical narratives of the Old Testament that were unknown to ordinary Judaeans prior to Hellenism. This innovation was also associated with the rise, imitating Hellenistic education, of Judaean elementary and secondary schools in the third century B.C., and therewith the emergence of a Judaean literary tradition.

The importance of Hellenism to the Judaean religion and Judaean culture, coupled with the prestige conferred by being a Hellenic citizen, understandably posed a threat to the grandiosity of Judaean group narcissism. An imperial culture that had demoted Judaeans to second-class status simultaneously enriched, transformed, and strengthened the Judaean religion. Thus we see the emergence of Judaean apologia in the third and second centuries B.C.

Unsurprisingly, some of the most famous apologia focused upon the Septuagint itself. Acknowledging that Hellenism had been instrumental in expanding and transforming the Judaean religion, a Judaean known today as pseudo-Aristeas, posing as a “fellow gentile”, published a letter to his brother that included an apocryphal story about why and how Judaean texts had been translated in the first place. According to peudo-Aristeas, Ptolemy II was indirectly inspired by Adonai to have the holy Judaean texts translated into Greek. Ptolemy II would emancipate his Judaean slaves and allow representatives of each of the 12 tribes to participate in the translation.

Pseudo-Aristeas went further in his letter, going so far as to identify the God of the Hellenes with the Judaean Adonai:

As I have been at pains to discover, the God who gave them [Judaeans] their law is the God who maintains your kingdom. They worship the same God - the Lord and Creator of the Universe, as all other men, as we ourselves, O king, though we call him by different names, such as Zeus or Dis. This name was very appropriately bestowed upon him by our first ancestors, in order to signify that He, through whom all things are endowed with life and come into being, is necessarily the Ruler and Lord of the Universe.

Thus we see pseudo-Aristeas re-interpreting reality, first, to attribute the Greek gift of the Septuagint to the God of Judaea, second to attribute its translation to each of the 12 tribes, and third, to reduce the Greek God Zeus to Adonai himself, thereby sustaining the omnipotence of the Judaean group self-image by devaluing and identifying with the achievements of Hellenism (his pseudoepigraphic pose being of course a further devaluation of the external Hellenic culture).

However, pseudo-Aristeas’ apologia is also respectful to the extent that it tolerates and does not reject the Septuagint or the Hellenistic king of the gods. For this reason, his apologia, while constructed to validate the grandiosity of the Judaean group self-image for a Greek audience, is also cosmopolitan or universalist.

Judaean apologia extended to the incorporation of Hellenistic literary and dramatic traditions as well. These apologia reassured Judaeans that their traditions could be dressed up in the flashy garb of Hellenism and retain their luster, and more importantly, advertised the equality or superiority of the Judaean tradition to Hellenes. The historian Robert Drews explains how Judaeans enthusiastically published their own Hamiltons and We Wuz Kangz epics:

Addressing themselves to the culturally dominant Hellenes, the Judaean authors tried to put their own religious and historical tradition in the best possible light. Late in the third century BC a Judaean named Demetrios wrote a History of the Kings in Judaea. In the next century Eupolemos wrote another prose work with the same title and Philo the Elder (note the Greek names of these authors) wrote the history of the Judaeans in the form of an epic poem, in dactylic hexameters. Another author, Ezekiel (or Ezekelios as he Hellenized himself), wrote a tragedy in the tradition of Sophokles and Euripides, but instead of elaborating a Greek myth Ezekelios chose for his subject the Hebrew myth of the Exodus (his tragedy was titled Exagogē). – Judaism, Christianity and Islam, to the Beginnings of Modern Civilization, Chapter 8

Another focus of Judaean apologists was Greek philosophy. The precision and scope of Greek philosophy threatened Judaean identity, for although Judaean texts contained beautiful poetry, moral wisdom, and moderate iconoclastic atheism, their topical breadth and skepticism paled in comparison to Greek philosophy, which was beloved by high-status Hellenic elites. Accordingly, we see Judaean authors like Aristobulos of Alexandria claiming that the Greeks derived the essence of their philosophy from Judaean scripture. This tradition of philosophical apologia culminated in the writings of the great Philo of Alexandria, to whom a section of the next article is dedicated.

This sort of conciliatory, tolerant, and universalist apologia was not the only the form the Judaean group self-image took in reaction to the threat of Hellenism, however. Elsewhere, the Judaean group self-image recoiled into a more critical and hostile form. At the same time pseudo-Aristeas wrote his apologia identifying Adonai with Zeus, Judas of Maccabee had initiated a rebellion against the Seleucids in part because the Greek emperor Antiochus IV had equated Adonai with Zeus.

The Maccabean revolt began among the more rural, least literate, least Hellenized Judaeans in reaction to the syncretism fomented by the imperial domination of the Greeks. In our metaphorical schema, the Maccabeans and other hasidim or “pious ones” were the less assimilated primitive group narcissists of Judaean antiquity. As we’ll see in the final section of Part 3, their reactions were more hostile to cosmopolitanism and cultural relativism than the Judaean apologists discussed above, but not universally so.

Elements of the more parochial Maccabean group narcissism would eventually prevail among Judaeans in the guise of Phariseeism and, later, rabbinical Judaism, effectively ending the ancient tradition of Judaean apologia with Philo. Ancient Judaism would settle uneasily on the one hand into an insular, semi-protected class status under pagan and Christian Rome, while simultaneously spinning off a new self-image in the form of Christianity itself. Both self-images nonetheless derived in part from the fanatical messianism that animated the pious Judaean reaction against Hellenistic imperialism.

Christian Apologia

Because Christianity emerged from the syncretic milieu of Hellenistic Judaism, its apologia often borrowed from the work of Judaean apologists. It is likely because of the similarities between apologetic Judaism and Christianity that we even know the former’s history. This is supported by the fact that Philo of Alexandria was unknown to rabbinical Judaism until the 16th century, when early-modern Christians who had preserved his writings made them more widely available. Philo’s own Judaism is also somewhat different from the Judaism of modern rabbinical Jews, but that’s for another article.

Christian apologia was both hostile and conciliatory in relation to both the dominant pagan culture of antiquity and Judaism. Because the tradition is more well-known, and because I’m lazy, I’ll only focus on one author: a spiritually choleric second-century Assyrian Christian theologian named Tatian. Tatian is a useful example of the especially harsh critique that can be found in apologia.

In his youth, Tatian had attempted to assimilate into the elite culture of Roman Hellenism but enjoyed limited success in his Greek education and evidently failed the ordeal of Roman-Hellenistic civility. Later he converted to Christianity and wrote an apologia that was aggressively critical and redolent of the resentment that seems to animate so many modern group-narcissistic quarrels today:

BE not, O Greeks, so very hostilely disposed towards the Barbarians, nor look with ill will on their opinions. For which of your institutions has not been derived from the Barbarians? The most eminent of the Telmessians invented the art of divining by dreams; the Carians, that of prognosticating by the stars; the Phrygians and the most ancient Isaurians, augury by the flight of birds; the Cyprians, the art of inspecting victims. To the Babylonians you owe astronomy; to the Persians, magic; to the Egyptians, geometry; to the Phoenicians, instruction by alphabetic writing. Cease, then, to miscall these imitations inventions of your own. Orpheus, again, taught you poetry and song; from him, too, you learned the mysteries. The Tuscans taught you the plastic art; from the annals of the Egyptians you learned to write history; you acquired the art of playing the flute from Marsyas and Olympus,--these two rustic Phrygians constructed the harmony of the shepherd's pipe. The Tyrrhenians invented the trumpet; the Cyclopes, the smith's art; and a woman who was formerly a queen of the Persians, as Hellanicus tells us, the method of joining together epistolary tablets:, her name was Atossa. Wherefore lay aside this conceit, and be not ever boasting of your elegance of diction; for, while you applaud yourselves, your own people will of course side with you. But it becomes a man of sense to wait for the testimony of others, and it becomes men to be of one accord also in the pronunciation of their language. But, as matters stand, to you alone it has happened not to speak alike even in common intercourse; for the way of speaking among the Dorians is not the same as that of the inhabitants of Attica, nor do the AEolians speak like the Ionians. - Address to the Greeks

Tatian goes so far as to suggest that Greeks are, like Ta-Nehisi Coates’s people who believe they are white, merely people who believe themselves to be Greek by virtue of some arbitrary history of theft:

And, since such a discrepancy exists where it ought not to be, I am at a loss whom to call a Greek. And, what is strangest of all, you hold in honour expressions not of native growth, and by the intermixture of barbaric words have made your language a medley. On this account we have renounced your wisdom, though I was once a great proficient in it; for, as the comic poet says,- These are gleaners' grapes and small talk,- Twittering places of swallows, corrupters of art. - Address to the Greeks

Here we see that, according to Tatian, everything of which Hellenes boast was stolen from the barbarians they look down upon. And further, their supposedly superior Greek language is in fact variegated by region and suffused with barbarian words, such that nothing of Hellenism can be said to be superior, or if it is undeniably superior, it is because they stole it from barbarians like Tatian the Assyrian. Tatian thereby aggressively devalues and projectively identifies with the gifts of Hellenism.

Pagan Apologia

At the beginning of the Hellenistic period, Judaeans had been demoted in class below Hellenes but sat above Egyptians and other non-Greek pagans. Only Hellenes could be citizens of course. Roman conquests added another layer to this hierarchy, demoting Hellenes, but eventually classifying Judaism as a religio licita or legally recognized religion with special rights. Christians and other fanatical Judaean sects were originally persecuted to a great degree and struggled mightily to earn their rights, with Christians eventually conquering the Roman empire itself through proselytizing and forced conversion.

Excerpts of pagan apologia show up in negative form in Christian and Judaean apologia and there are various forms that are interesting from a group-narcissistic perspective, mostly because paganism in the abstract was the dominant culture for a significant part of early Christianity. Late in the Roman period, however, it took the form of what we might describe today as LARPing by elite Romans.

Pagan theological revanchist emperors like Hadrian and Julian the Apostate were already to a certain extent romantics and aesthetic consumers of the ancient cultures they promoted. Hadrian’s paganism was partially a defensive reaction to the spread of Hellenistic Judaism and decline of pagan belief, while Julian’s was a defensive reaction against the rise of one of Hellenistic Judaism’s offshoots, Christianity.

By the time of Julian in the early 4th century A.D., the pagan self-image had started to transform into an assaulted group narcissistic identity, as can be seen in Julian’s strategic qualified overtures to the Judaeans who had by that time become more legitimate than pagans in Christian Rome. Toward the end of the 4th century, the Roman pagan statesman Symmarchus issued what seems to be the final formal assertion of the pagan self-image.

Symmarchus’ plea to the senate to restore Octavian’s altar and other public rights for certain pagan institutions, such as tax breaks for the vestal virgins, is so cosmopolitan, charitable, and tolerant that it would fit nicely into our civil religious canon today. And yet it was thoroughly pagan, ancient, and not at all Christian.

Like the Judaean apologists, Symmarchus universalizes pagan particularities and experiences while simultaneously invoking cultural relativism to persuade his Christian interlocutors of the truth of the pagan self-image and preserve its ancient rights. The effect of this part of his plea is to amplify the universalist elements of paganism, Roman history, and Christianity.

Symmarchus invokes past practice and precedent from an age that was undoubtedly legitimate, even to Christian Romans. For example, he references the reign of Constantine, pointing to how the Christian emperor tolerated and even patronized the pagan shrines of his era. “Although [Constantine] followed another religion,” Symmarchus argues, “he maintained its own for the empire, for everyone has his own customs, everyone his own rites.”

Symmarchus then invokes the philosopher’s god, which he calls “the divine Mind”, to assert that pagans and Christians believe in the same God. Simultaneously, he uses this argument to justify a sort of cultural relativism:

The divine Mind has distributed different guardians and different cults to different cities. As souls are separately given to infants as they are born, so to peoples the genius of their destiny.

Indeed, the Christians, in persecuting paganism, are actually ignoring the truth of their own God, whose religion is a unitarian one:

We ask, then, for peace for the gods of our fathers and of our country. It is just that all worship should be considered as one. We look on the same stars, the sky is common, the same world surrounds us. What difference does it make by what pains each seeks the truth? We cannot attain to so great a secret by one road; but this discussion is rather for persons at ease, we offer now prayers, not conflict.

He further secularizes Octavian’s pagan altar, which was used for the swearing of oaths, by conceding that while “all things are filled with God” (conceding that the altar itself cannot be uniquely imbued with magical religious power as pagans once believed) the altar nonetheless performs the secular functions of “preserv[ing] the concord of all” and “appeal[ing] to the good faith of each.”

Concerning the rights of pagan institutions, Symmarchus argues that Christian Rome is not adhering to its own values, pointing out as an example that pagan wills are denied enforcement while even slave wills are honored.

Symmarchus also attempts to prove that his religion is true by suggesting he is selflessly defending the common interests of all. He points to how sacrilege against the vestal virgins, in the form of revoking their public fund, caused a famine that hurt everyone. Symmarchus invokes the Christian imagery of money-changers to drive home his point.

This grant remained unassailed till the time of the degenerate money-changers, who turned the fund for the support of sacred chastity into hire for common porters. A general famine followed upon this, and a poor harvest disappointed the hopes of all the provinces. This was not the fault of the earth, we impute no evil influence to the stars. Mildew did not injure the crops, nor wild oats destroy the corn; the year failed through the sacrilege, for it was necessary that what was refused to religion should be denied to all.

The consequence of engaging in these defenses, which are analogous to narcissistic defenses, are: that the universalistic and cosmopolitan traits of the Roman empire, its history, and Christianity are amplified, and that the pagan group self-image itself is obscured and distorted.

In contorting itself to be consistent with Christianity, secularism, and stylized Roman history, Symmarchus’ group self-image becomes what the external other – his audience – will validate in the moment. What we see in Symmarchus’ plea is not just a humbled individual asking for special dispensations on behalf of himself and his group, but also a human mind orbiting an omnipotent but extremely abstract group self-image and offering rationalizations on its behalf to counter threats posed by a hostile external world.

Symmarchus knows he cannot prove the truth of his own self-image to Christians and seems uncertain about it in any case, given his appeals to cultural relativism. Thus like all sclerotic peoples and insecure group narcissists, he ultimately falls back upon the sentimentality and certitude inherent to historical legitimacy (the golden age) as his dominant argument. In the same way as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Leo Strauss that we discussed in parts 2.01 and 2.02 of this series, Symmarchus ultimately settles upon his inheritance of the pagan history of struggle and triumph (which he himself did not participate in) as justification for his remaining a pagan, and for Christian Romans to give pagans recognition.

For, since our reason is wholly clouded, whence does the knowledge of the gods more rightly come to us, than from the memory and evidence of prosperity? Now if a long period gives authority to religious customs, we ought to keep faith with so many centuries, and to follow our ancestors, as they happily followed theirs.

Symmarchus concludes with what would appear as a rather pathetic plea to the eyes of a more vital, living pagan.

Excellent princes, fathers of your country, respect my years to which pious rites have brought me. Let me use the ancestral ceremonies, for I do not repent of them. Let me live after my own fashion, for I am free. This worship subdued the world to my laws, these sacred rites repelled Hannibal from the walls, and the Senones from the capitol. Have I been reserved for this, that in my old age I should be blamed?

For a people uncertain of their omnipotence in the present, history can provide a source of external validation, first because if their ancestors were truly great, they can borrow from that luster through genealogy; and second, because even if they weren’t great, history is nominally universal or objective and therefore another source of objective value accepted by the outside world, which is ripe for manipulation. In either case, history becomes a universalist and cosmopolitan scripture to be plumbed or reinterpreted and represented to secure validation from non-group members in the present.

The religion of worshiping the religion of one’s ancestors not because one believes in it but because one’s ancestors believed in it, and because everyone agrees one’s ancestors were great, is therefore born of narcissistic weakness. It is a means to secure validation from the outside world and assuage feelings of inferiority and uncertainty.

We can see this dynamic at play in modern partisan politics. While an American conservative might be hampered by feelings of inadequacy and incertitude about the American dream or the dissolute nature of contemporary “heritage” Americans, they can shore up their self-image by calling upon the Founding Fathers, Framers, and Abraham Lincoln, whose authenticity and perfection are unassailable even among progressives. Similarly, while a modern progressive might feel inadequate or uncertain about the state of progress -- that perhaps things may have “gone too far” with wokeness or transgenderism – they know they can invoke Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement as a validating genealogy. Any association with a heroic golden age can provide validation.

In the next part we will take a close look at apologia by Philo of Alexander and Martin Luther King Jr.