Religion, Culture, and Identity

One aspect of Friedman’s who wrote the bible that I found really interesting was in Chapter 8, he makes analyses of the religious and cultural aspects of the lives of the people of Judah during an incredibly unpleasant 50 year time span. Judah is destroyed and the people are forced into exile, captured by the Babylonians. Friedman describes how many groups of people with polytheistic religions were more easily assimilated into their conqueror’s culture. The reason for this was that they had many analogous gods, for example Ishtar and Aphrodite, goddesses of fertility, or a god of the wind, etc. However, the people of Judah had a very different, monotheistic form of religion, and there were no gods in the Babylonian pantheon that were Yahweh’s equivalent. This major religious difference was a huge factor in how the people of Judah maintained their identities, as religion, being a significant part of peoples’ everyday lives proved a noteworthy barrier to falling into Babylonian culture. In a place like the United States, I feel like this is not the case, because here there are so many different kinds of people that all get along and have very similar culture, yet worship very different gods. It is true that these people will still have their own cultural identities that are different, but perhaps since we are a country full of immigrants it is easier for us all to mesh together into one cohesive culture despite being filled with differences. This is not a perfect comparison by any means, but in the United States many are still able to find a sense of unity even with extremely disparate religions, and all foster a cultural identity of being American.