Summary of James Carroll's Jerusalem, Jerusalem

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The ancestors began to cooperate and hunt down animals, which they would then eat. They developed patience and control over their desires, and began to share food with others. They developed skills of collaboration and communication.

#2 The first hunters were not so primitive that they were indifferent to the emotional consequences of killing other living things. They understood themselves as observers of death, perpetrators of death, and eventual victims of it.

#3 There is evidence that the deaths of band members and tribal relatives were not treated indifferently. When one of the group stopped breathing, companions put stones on his or her body so that hyenas would not scavenge it.

#4 Humans are constantly trying to make sense of their experiences and fill in the gaps in their knowledge. This is what defines us as humans, and it is what makes us constantly anxious. We are never at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with one another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Aug 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822563476

IRB Media

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Insights on James Carroll's Jerusalem Jerusalem

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The ancestors began to cooperate and hunt down animals, which they would then eat. They developed patience and control over their desires, and began to share food with others. They developed skills of collaboration and communication.

#2

The first hunters were not so primitive that they were indifferent to the emotional consequences of killing other living things. They understood themselves as observers of death, perpetrators of death, and eventual victims of it.

#3

There is evidence that the deaths of band members and tribal relatives were not treated indifferently. When one of the group stopped breathing, companions put stones on his or her body so that hyenas would not scavenge it.

#4

Humans are constantly trying to make sense of their experiences and fill in the gaps in their knowledge. This is what defines us as humans, and it is what makes us constantly anxious. We are never at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with one another.

#5

The cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet are some of the oldest examples of art in the world, and they show realistic portraits of large animals that were hunted. The paintings were probably spiritual, concerned with a reality as certain as it was unseen.

#6

The cave paintings were a form of forward-looking imagination, and they were used to brace the hunters who were about to experience the trials of the hunt. They were also used to reassure those who had already experienced the trials of the hunt.

#7

The Fertile Crescent is the area where the combination of land and seed-bearing plant life gave humans the impetus to come together. It was here that humans first noticed that when some wild grains fell to the ground, they sprouted in the soil.

#8

The inbuilt forgetfulness of itinerant life became the social memory of written language. The rough habit of subsistence became the easy assumption of an abundance of food, which led to the new interchange of trading. Symbols, such as beads, came into being as forms of currency.

#9

The hunt was replaced by a sedentary lifestyle, featuring the security of hoarded necessities and expanded social networks. Human population began to grow, and new forms of knowing emerged.

#10

The rock that is the center of Jerusalem is the origin of the city’s holiness as a place of sacrifice. The rock ties Jerusalem to the deep past of religious sacrifice, which was the foundation stone of the city.

#11

Religion is how people make sense of and restrict violence, which is a fundamental human trait. Religion began in the troubling aura of violence that was present in the act of sacrifice, which was a way of drawing meaning out of an otherwise contemptible act.

#12

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