A Different Drummer

So I was singing "Rastaman Chant" by Marley to myself on the metro this morning - until I noticed a few funny looks in my direction after mumbling the lines "Fly away home to Zion, fly away home". I guess the guys on the metro, despite typically speaking little to no English, still understand "Zion" where they hear it.

Anyhow, it got me thinking about the song - "I heard the word of the Rastaman say.......Babylon throne gone down gone down....Babylon throne gone down" - whatever the hell that means - so my first piece of work when I got into the office was to find out what it was all about.

Long story short, after a typically glorious session of Wikipedia knowledge-hoovering, I ended up reading the in-depth, and totally fascinating Wikipedia entry on King Nimrod. Anyone with a spare 15 minutes and a curiousity for ancient, variously interpreted Talmudic / Biblical / Qur'anic figures, check it out ? fascinating stuff.

Among other things, King Nimrod represents the epitome of pagan idolatry for orthodox Jews, the builder of the Tower of Babel for Christians, and the persecutor and attempted executioner of Ibrahim (Abraham) for Muslims. Quite a busy boy, was good old King Nimrod.

I found this bit the most interesting though:

The main founders and leaders of the Zionism in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century were mostly non-religious, sometimes anti-religious. Zionist thinkers, historians and writers reinterpreted the whole of Jewish history (including, and especially, the Bible) from a secular nationalist viewpoint considerably different from and sometimes diametrically opposite to the religious Jewish tradition

Specifically, the search went on for past historical or mythical figures who could be depicted as National Heroes, such as those which inspired the European national movements of the 19th Century. Those fitting the role were often placed on pedestals even when Jewish tradition frowned upon or strongly condemned them (for example King Omri of ancient Israel, which the Bible describes as an evil idolater but which Zionists approved of as a victorious warrior king and the founder of a strong dynasty)

Nimrod went through a similar process, which in his case can be pinpointed precisely....

The whole article, along with the incredibly good entry on Zionism, is 100% recommended reading.