3 important things happened in Spain in 1492

1. January. Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada – the last Muslim stronghold in Christendom. Resident Muslims deported or converted.

2. March. Edict of Expulsion for the Jews of Spain. Again deportation or conversion their options.

3. August. Christopher Columbus found America.

Europe would become masters of the globe. Some would experience enlightened opportunity. Others would experience coercion and ethnic cleansing. A modern centralizing state like Spain couldn't tolerate medieval autonomy. Ethic cleansing ushered in modern times. Thus ending 600 years of tolerance between Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Western scientific rationalism was becoming spectacularly efficient, discovering the potential of “logos”, and the search for all things new. Yet science had not yet dismissed “mythos”. The myths of Christianity yet gave meaning to all things.

The Catholic Counter-Reformation brought this modern centralizing to the church. More education to the priests. Doctrine and catechisms rationalized for the laity. Slogan was “Ad fontes” or “Back to the fundamentals”. St. John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic, helped eliminate excessive superstitious practice. Ignatius Loyola established the Jesuit order. Jesuits focused on discipline, method, organization and action. They had a 30 day crash course on mysticism.

Isabella and Ferdinand inherited a kingdom with growing antisemitism. Many Jews converted and became known as “conversos” or “marranos” or pigs – a name of derision defiantly worn with pride. The success of many conversos as Christians led to continued assault, and social instability. The Spanish Inquisition of 1483 was formed to sort this out. It was not as supposed, a reactionary movement, but a modernizing one, having the purpose of national unity. It killed 13,000 conversos in the first 12 years and confiscated their property.

The Edict of Expulsion was the last act. 80,000 to Portugal. 70,000 converted. Regarded by Jews as the greatest catastrophe since the destruction of the temple in 70 CE.The Jews of western Europe had been expelled for 100 years and now from Spain also. Many of these settled in Poland. 50,000 welcomed in Muslim territory becoming known as “Sephardic” Jews.

The pattern then, that will be seen repeatedly in the study, is the “when modern Western civilization took root in a foreign environment, it transformed the culture so drastically that many people felt alienated and disoriented. ... they could make no sense of their lives. ... they would have to evolve new forms of faith”

Some of the Sephardics settled in Galilee where Isaac Luria founded a new form of Kabbalah named after him which has become a powerful mythos then and since as it well explains with a new version of creation what the world is really like. He illuminated their dark world with this new revealed truth.

Kabbalists call God “Ein Sof” or “Without End”. Ein Sof began creation with a voluntary exile “Zimzum” in order to make room for the world. This creation was explosive and chaotic. Ein Sof failed in the attempt to bring light to creation with the result that “sparks of divine light fell into the abyss that was not God”. The world was evil, in that it was what Ein Sof wasn't (having withdrawn). Adam was to make things right but he failed too. This is a description of the world as the Sephardic Jews had experienced it – a world gone awry. And on an ongoing basis. The “Shekhinah” - the feminine spirit of wisdom - wanders the world yearning for return to Ein Sof. The sparks trapped in the world are the only part of God that man can know.

Armstrong uses this example of Luria's tale of creation to explain mythos. “... if the Kabbalists of Safed had been asked if they believed that this had really occurred, they would have found the question inappropriate. The primordial event described in myth is not simply an incident that happened once in the remote past; it is also an occurrence that happens all the time. We have no concept or word for such an event, because our rational society thinks of time in a strictly chronological way... Before the modern period, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all relished highly allegorical, symbolic, and esoteric interpretations of their sacred texts. Since God's Word was infinite, it was capable of yielding a multitude of meanings... In traditional religion, myth is inseparable from cult...” Liturgy gives context and meaning to faith. The story alone has no such power. This myth answered the problem of despair.

By 1650 Lurianic Kabbalah had become a mass movement, and it continues to have importance today. Rites developed so people could identify with this story of exile and come to grips with their lives. It is of note in this that Luria insisted they not wallow in their sorrow, but work through sorrow to a joyful experience. Like mystics in all traditions, Kabbalists explored religious ecstasy.

People deprived of spiritual activity will lose their faith. This happened to many of the conversos, and it is true of many modern people who no longer take part in service or prayer or meditation. Then the myths of their tradition cease to have meaning.

Many conversos contributed much to their new church. Teresa of Avila was one such. The first woman to become a doctor of the church. A mystic. A modernizer. Very positive. Tomas de Torquemada the first Grand Inquisitor was a zealous converso. Others couldn't identify with the religion that had so long persecuted them. Atheism, skepticism and indifference were the result. Some experienced the void. Armstrong quotes a most poignant lament from a novel by an Alvaro de Montalban:

“O world, world, when I was young I thought there was some order governing you and your deeds. ... (but now) you seem to be a labyrinth of errors, a frightful desert, a den of wild beasts, a game in which men move in circles ... a stony field, a meadow full of serpents, a flowering but barren orchard, a spring of cares, a river of tears, a sea of suffering, a vain hope.”

It is among the exiled Jews in Portugal one finds the most outright atheism. This was partly possible because King Joao II gave them immunity from inquisition for a generation and they had time to organize an underground. These exiles had lost the old ways and were not a part of the new. This is a theme that will repeat through the book.

Marrano migration into Amsterdam flourished. Here they were allowed full citizenship and were successful. But having lost their Jewish roots, when they desired to practice Jewish faith again, interesting new problems arose. They were in great conflict with the Rabbis and the Jewish folks already there – especially on matters like dietary rules. And of course the Torah was really just another example of making sense of exile – albeit a much older one based on a different and older mythos – and this had worked for most Jews for a very long time. The Marranos had newly developed a rational faith in accordance with the times. It became for some an irreconcilable clash. These might be thought of as the first secular Jews. “Baruch Spinoza might have been the first person in Europe to live successfully beyond the reach of established religion.” His God was a principle and his religion was philosophy. Few understood. Again this theme will repeat itself.

In Europe outside of Holland, Jews were not given equal citizenship and were ghettoized. But in the Ottoman empire they were accorded “protected minority” status.

In 1648-67 100,000 Jews were horribly killed and 300 Jewish communities razed in Poland/Ukraine. This terrible news affected a Turkish Jew named Shabbetai Zevi who heard a voice telling him he was the Messiah. He developed a strange behaviour called “holy sins” - breaking Torah law, and was eventually made to leave town. He wandered for 15 years, he became a rabbi. He traveled to Gaza to meet Rabbi Nathan who as it turned out knew of his coming because of a dream. Both were Lurianic Kabbalists.

Word spread like wildfire – the Messiah had come and would defeat the Ottomans. It was one of the first Great Awakenings . This was however rather a dangerous happening. It was myth turned into logos. Jews felt better but circumstances hadn't changed any. Shabbetai went off to see the Sultan who gave him the choice of death or conversion to Islam. So he converted. Surprisingly this didn't stop the movement. (Armstrong points out the similarity to the Jesus movement continuing surprisingly after the death of their Messiah as a criminal).

Nathan developed a theology of ultimate “holy sin”. While inside a Jew, the Messiah was outside a Muslim. This was popular with the Marranos of Amsterdam because of the parallel to their own experience with Christianity. They became known as Shabbateans.

Shabbetai himself developed a different understanding. He considered all faiths valid and saw himself a bridge. Some consider from this came the pioneers of Jewish Enlightenment and Reform. Also came a Turkish sect “Donmeh” or “Converts” that like Shabbetai considered themselves both Jewish and Islamic. (about 115,000 in early 1800s).

A Turkish Shabbetian named Jacob Frank in the mid 1700s converted to Islam and then Catholicism. He and his followers were destroyers of law. All religions were harmful.

“Jews had anticipated many of the postures of the modern period. Their painful brush with the aggressively modernizing society of Europe had led them into secularism, skepticism, atheism, rationalism, nihilism, pluralism, and the privatization of faith.”