'Jerusalem Syndrome' and the Dysfunctional Family of Abraham
Clinical diagnosis meets religious history of the roots of war and claims of a right of domination.
The Family of Abraham — Jews, Muslims, and Christians — is a large, complex dysfunctional family. Each branch wars with the others; each claims for itself a divine mandate and a covenant to “inherit” the Earth.
The world is caught in their crossfire.
Those who seek peace among Christians, Muslims, and Jews must start by acknowledging these are warring factions of a single, though complex, Family.
Tolerance within and among these factions and sub-factions will require wholesale reevaluation of the underlying religious framework.
Clinical Diagnosis
In 1999, a multi-disciplinary group of Jerusalem's psychiatrists wrote an article for the British Journal of Psychiatry, titled “Jerusalem Syndrome”.
They wrote it, they said, because they:
…expect to encounter, as the millennium approaches, an ever-increasing number of tourists who, upon arriving in Jerusalem, may suffer psychotic decompensation.
Their aim was:
To describe the Jerusalem syndrome as a unique acute psychotic state.
Their analysis, they said, was:
…based on accumulated clinical experience and phenomenological data consisting of cultural and religious perspectives.
Their study identified “three main categories of the syndrome”:
“Individuals already diagnosed as having a psychosis before their visit to Israel. Their motivation in coming to Israel is directly related to their mental condition and to the influence of religious ideas, often reaching delusional levels, compelling them to come to Jerusalem and do ‘something’….”
“People with mental disorders such as personality disorders or an obsession with a fixed idea, but who do not have a clear mental illness; their strange thoughts and ideas fall short of delusional or psychotic dimensions.”
“Individuals with no previous history of mental illness, who fall victim to a psychotic episode while in Israel (and especially while in Jerusalem), recover fairly spontaneously, and then, after leaving the country, apparently enjoy normality.”
The psychiatrists described Type 3 as “the ‘pure’ or ‘unconfounded’ form of the syndrome” because it was “unconjoined to other psychopathologies….”
They said:
The first question that arises in discussing the Jerusalem syndrome — and, in particular, type III — is whether it is unique to Jerusalem, or whether other holy places induce similar syndromes. Hysterical or psychotic manifestations related to places — such as those that appear at Mecca, holy places in India, Christian holy places where the Virgin Mary is worshipped, and evangelical rallies — may well resemble our description; however, the Jerusalem syndrome documented here remains a unique phenomenon which deserves thorough appraisal.
Their conclusions included this recommendation:
A comprehensive knowledge of patients' religious background and beliefs is an essential part of the crisis intervention.
Religious Background and Beliefs
The religious background and beliefs affecting Jerusalem center on the Abrahamic origin story, in which the God of Abraham offers an explicitly colonial mandate and promise — the core of a "covenant":
"The Lord had said to Abram, 'Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. … At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, 'To your offspring I will give this land" [Genesis 12, 15 (NIV)].
“To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadie of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates — the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” [Genesis 15: 18-20 (NIV)]
This already problematic story becomes complicated by domestic discord — the banishment of Abraham's first-born Ishmael and his mother Hagar:
“Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, and she said to Abraham, ‘Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.’
“The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. But God said to him, ‘Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.’” [Genesis 21: 9-13 (NIV)]
Abraham's "offspring" are thus set against each other, and, as in many families, the squabble culminates in a fight over the inheritance — here, the “covenant “ for the Earth.
The covenant "to give the land" informs the centuries-long, multi-pronged history of mission, crusade, settlement, jihad… and genocide.
The Dysfunctional Family in the ‘New World’
The Christian colonial agenda that gave birth to the doctrine of “Christian discovery” in US law is rooted in the Abrahamic story. Columbus carried the “covenant” story in his Bible.1
It is crucial to see that God’s colonization project was not simply a “promise”; it was a command, and God’s wrath lay behind it as enforcement.
The Bible says that God was angered when His “chosen people” failed to take the “promised lands.” At one point:
“The Lord’s anger was aroused . . . because they have not followed me wholeheartedly. . . . The Lord’s anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years.”
God sent an angel to warn those who failed to oust the peoples living in the promised lands; although the colonists had subjected the Canaanites to forced labor, they had not driven them off the land:
“The angel of the Lord . . . said, ‘I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors.’ I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me.”
The Genesis story of colonial domination was embedded in an overall relationship of domination between humans and the rest of creation.
The story says that in the very beginning of the world, God commanded humans:
“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
In 1609, English minister William Symonds relied on these passages in a sermon defending the Virginia Company. He preached that English colonizers were like Abraham in Genesis 12; they were called by God to go to Virginia.
In her 2012 study of early Virginia, history professor Rebecca Anne Goetz described Symonds’ sermon as part of “a seventeenth-century media blitz . . . to craft a theological justification for the Virginia enterprise.”
Goetz said that Symonds:
“…was fond of comparing the voyaging Englishmen to Abraham and his people. God, he said, had promised to make Abraham a great nation, and he would do the same for ‘all that are of his faith and obedience.’”
Symonds, Goetz added,
“also proposed a method for converting the Indians by taking Indian children captive, converting them, and then sending the young converts back to their families.”
Georgia senator John Forsyth joined the conversation in 1830 when he spoke in the US Senate in favor of the Indian Removal Act, arguing that the genocidal “removal” of Native peoples was authorized by the doctrine of Christian discovery. His speech tracked Genesis:
“The discoverer claimed the sovereignty over the discovered country, and over everything under, upon, and above it, from the centre to the zenith. The lands, the streams, the woods, the minerals, all living things, including the human inhabitants, were all the property of, or subject to, the Government of the fortunate navigator, who by accident or design, first saw the before unknown country.”
In 1954, the US Department of Justice took up the cause in its brief on behalf of the United States in Tee-Hit-Ton v. United States, demonstrating in the most direct sense that federal anti-Indian law is a continuation and fulfillment of Biblical commands.
The DoJ cited passages from Genesis to support the US argument:
“that the discovering nations asserted complete title in themselves, even as against the heathen natives.”
The US brief persuaded the Supreme Court to rule against the Tee-Hit-Ton. Justice Stanley F. Reed said:
“After the coming of the white man,” the Native peoples remained in their lands only with “permission from the whites to occupy.”
The US position in Tee-Hit-Ton is evidence of the truth of Professor Chris Mato Nunpa’s conclusion to his 2020 study of Christianity, the Bible, and Native genocide:
“The genocide, . . . the Indigenous Holocaust in the United States, . . . was . . . the consequence of a movement of ideas, specifically, the religious ideas . . . of the genocidal commands of Yahweh, the Old Testament God; the ‘chosen people’ and ‘promised land’ ideas; the religious imperialism of Jesus Christ; and of the . . . papal bulls.”
The Biblical lineage of federal anti-Indian law is clearly stated in the briefs, the cases, the sermons, the legislation… to this day.
Strange as it seems, US law and politics are entangled and entrapped in the dysfunctional Family of Abraham.
As the Jerusalem study said:
“A comprehensive knowledge of patients' religious background and beliefs is an essential part of the crisis intervention.”
Narratives about the latest violent episode in the Abrahamic conflict have greatly obscured a straightforward recounting of this religious history.
Indeed, open discussion has in many places been outlawed.
A notable and noteworthy exception is Paul Gilk’s essay, “Divine Land Grants”, in Counterpunch (June 20, 2024), exploring Steve Newcomb’s book, Pagans in the Promised Land.
What Steve Newcomb analyzes as “claims of a right of domination,” Gilk calls “authorized righteousness”.
Gilk says:
Repenting of archetypal righteousness is the only solution—the only spiritual, cultural, political, and ecological solution—to this dreadful predicament. We have to sweep the “sacred” dust off these self-serving mythic supremist hypocrisies. To be sure, repenting of — and first being morally and ethically strong enough to even want to let go of — authorized righteousness is one of the most difficult of spiritual exercises. Letting go of righteousness is the hardest of moral acts. Many people may be unwilling to face the humiliation and anxiety inherent in that exercise. But if we are to avoid the most catastrophic of the many catastrophes already roiling the planet, such spiritual discipline is no longer optional.
The day that humanity sees the Creator and Creation beyond claims of a right of domination — ‘authorized righteousness’ — will be a welcome day.
This section is adapted from pp. 167-168 of my book, Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples (Praeger 2022).
An excellent and concise summation Peter! The question remains: How shall we deal with this archetypal Abrahamic narrative of domination which is embedded in the psyches and cultural patterns of millions of people? The inter-generational roots of that deadly and destructive narrative have had and continue to have real world consequences, which include the unending ecological devastation. Those consequences include massive suffering and misery. This has been and continues to be the outcome of powerful interest groups being able to use the claim of a right of domination cc as an organizing principle across the planet.
This cuts to an important issue. The so-called repudiation of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery by the Vatican suggests they are not responsible for it. They claim that it is not a church doctrine but rather the manipulation of Papal Bulls by the imperial powers of Europe. But the facts are clear and you and Steven Newcomb have painstakingly gone beyond those Papal Bulls in the manifestation of this Christian doctrine. There is no way to backtrack the repeated interpretations of the Bible on this. To suggest the Doctrine of Christian Discovery is merely a misinterpretation of a few Papal Bulls is more than just disingenuous. It’s a sinful lie. This Pope needed to rescind the DOCD not just take a politically correct position on it!