what`s between the grave of God and the Iron Throne

Inspiration for the things I`d like to share in reaction to this week`s reading , came first from the excerpts of Melville`s journey diaries to the Holy Land that were published translated in "Ha`aretz" for Independence Day, and second from "Game of Thrones".

What captured my attention was the somewhat astonished complaint towards maintenance issues at the doorstep of the church in Jerusalem, expressed in words I now re-translate and rephrase: here is the place where one of the most well known incarnations of God is buried, and you would never guess that from the look of all the garbage and dirt at the door.

 Melville is assuming an amount of Christian pluralism, by not demanding recognition of the full meaning, the amount of holiness this place is supposed to hold; instead it looks like he is simply criticizing from the point of view of just anyone who belongs to the western culture and steps on this place. He doesn`t blame Muslims for not holding same religious belief, as he himself probably does not hold them anymore.

 The place where God is buried is an equivalent to the Iron Throne, by the fact  that the  Arabs of Jerusalem, in Melville`s view,  are like the Dothrakis in this manner: not a so much a religious otherness, but definitely a cultural one. Outsiders to civilization, naively surrounding the center of the world in some respect, but still would not know a thing about that, ignorantly deteriorating it to the savage degree of themselves. Melville is trying to hold both sides, civilized and barbaric as he sees them, at the same time, like Ishmael, through this image of Muslim Arab as measure of otherness.