Potentially Interesting Development

[Angrboda]

What you have is a people who, like many other groups, considered themselves the most favored of all people, and yet were constantly one of the most shit on. It has developed many things: an attitude of exclusion, a martyr complex, an undeserved feel of "deserving", and all of the other psychoses that come from being part of the orthodox of any repressive religion.

It's my opinion that this is the core of the reason the Jewish religion developed in the way it did. In line with social cohesion theory, the Jewish religion was a way to make the Jewish people feel that being them was a good thing, instead of having them recognizing that they were just another breed of Semitic schmuck, living the life of a Canaanite peasant. The myths prevented them from realizing their lack of any real distinctiveness, that they were just shit, and in time, assimilating into the greater Canaanite culture. There may even have been a lot more, and those we know today are only those that developed these self-serving myths and traditions to keep them together as a people, and apart from the other peoples of Canaan. (And then, we could easily get into all the questions surrounding the Babylonian captivity, diaspora Jews and the rest, but I digress.)

[Minimalist]

It's a question that can easily trigger a 500 response thread, Apo...especially when the xtians wade in to try to salvage their bullshit from the remnants.