Anybody who gets to know me fairly well quickly becomes acquainted with the fact that in spite of the voluminous reading and writing that I engage in: I do read quite a lot of novels as well as non-fiction material as a way of calming my mind before I try to get some sleep. Occasionally in my recreational reading of novels I find something in a novelist's work that I didn't really expect to be there.
Just such an instance occurred when I first read two of David Eddings' numerous series of novels: 'The Elenium' and 'The Tamuli'. Now I've read most of what Eddings has written as I like both his use of humour to bring out the many facets of his characters as well as his unusual habit - not surpassed until the arrival of George R. R. Martin's 'Song of Ice and Fire' series - of switching characters around from 'good' to 'evil'.
Now central to the plot of 'The Elenium' are four nations: the Elenes, Styrics, Rendors and Zemochs. Now in creating these nations it is clear that Eddings has read a few books in and around medieval history - and particularly the crusades in the Middle East - on which he has based his nations.
The Elenes are obviously based on medieval Europeans as these are hardly warriors from a literally feudal society (1) who are frequently described - as a sort of running joke across both 'The Elenium' and 'The Tamuli' - as being obsessed with violence but also keen on breaking things down logically. The former is obviously a nod to the fact that medieval Europe was a place in which extreme violence was the norm and where the clash of arms and armies were simply a part of everyday life, while the latter is a nod to medieval scholasticism and the emphasis on the idea of constant logical debate in order to elicit the truth that dominated European intellectual life of the era.
Further Elene society is dominated by an all-powerful Church that is led by one unnamed God (we are later told that the 'name of God' is a secret known only to the patriarchs of the Church) (2) that has recently stopped torturing dissidents through a Holy Inquisition. Although this doesn't stop the 100,000 [split into 4 orders of 25,000 knights each] Knights of the Church Militant (upon whom all the stories are predicated) slaughtering their way across the Eosian continent - that is their home - whenever they feel like it and actively engaging in total war against the Rendors [the Muslims].
The Knights also have almost carte blanche authority to do what they like as long as they have been formally instructed by a Patriarch (some of whom are their friends and some of whom are their foes) to do so and in several instances this also involves knights from all four orders (Pandion, Arcian, Cynric and Genidian) massacring Church soldiers (i.e. like the Inquisitorial and Papal troops of European history).
This is all well and good until we turn to the Elene Church's relationship with the Styrics who are a pagan people, who live among the Elene kingdoms and worship over a thousand gods (a perfunctory nod to Hinduism but one in name only), but as we shall we see the Styrics are obviously based on the jews.
We are early on told several things about the Styrics in that the - as we are repeatedly told - 'ignorant' and 'superstitious' Elene peasantry and the members of the lesser clergy (i.e. the parish priests and wandering clerics) believe that a necessary part of Styric religion is that they sacrifice Elene children to their gods who especially enjoy the taste of Elene blood plus part of the Styric ritual itself is to consume the flesh of the roasted Elene child.
This makes the identification of who is the inspiration behind the Styrics rather easy as there is only one group of people in history who as a religious and ethnic minority (both of which points are important to stress) have been charged both with ritually sacrificing the children of the religious and ethnic majority in special religious rites and further of consuming the blood and flesh of a cooked child.
That people are the jews.
Now what we should note here is that Eddings likely didn't read too academic an account of European and/or jewish history in order to derive this characterisation or deliberately added in the cannibalistic element. As he does not realise that the charge of jewish ritual murder (or as the jews call it the 'blood libel') is a separate and much earlier charge (going back to the ancient Greeks) (3) and that jewish cannibalism only enters the charge of jewish ritual murder very late and then only in relation to the consuming of the blood of the murdered child or individual.
The charge of jews committing cannibalism is however of significantly later vintage only really taking shape in the 16th to 17th centuries with the rise of the witch hunts in Europe and the association with jews with the practices of witchcraft and devil worship. Although it should be said that Cassius Dio does mention jews committing cannibalism in one of their periodic attempted revolts against the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians. (4)
Further we are told that the Elene Church has actively attempted to prevent attacks on the Styrics and has sought to refute the libels against them, which directly parallels the common belief about Papacy's bulls on the subject of jewish ritual murder which are incorrectly believed to reject and condemn the accusation of ritual murder en toto (in fact they don't they allow it to have happened but assert it is rare phenomenon and that most historic cases were not ritual murders as they were not validated by the Church hierarchy).
Instead, the Elene Church seeks to convert the Styrics to the worship of the one unnamed god (much like historic Christian policy surrounding the jews which enjoins conversion not killing), but has been manifestly unsuccessful in doing so as the Styrics refuse to budge. Much as the jews famously in numerous public disputations before different types of audiences and in different places frequently refused to budge in their faith in Judaism, which brought down the wroth of men as disparate as Torquemada and Luther on them.
This plainly means that the Styrics of Eddings' 'The Elenium' and 'The Tamuli' are modelled heavily on the jews and that the Elenes are modelled heavily on medieval Europeans. Further compounding this is the fact that the four orders of Church Knights have - on special permission from the Elene Church hierarchy - been allowed a Styric tutor each, because the Styrics are master magicians.
This is a further point of identification for the Styrics being modelled on the jews as the jews were viewed in medieval and early modern Europe as being sorcerers par extraordinaire and frequently drew on that reputation in order to either make a living or gain extra money by selling spells, ointments, potions and so forth to gentiles from all social ranks and backgrounds.
Now it is made very clear in both 'The Elenium' and 'The Tamuli' that the Styric teachers all but rule the Knightly Orders they are attached to as they have become devoted to them and late on in the last book of 'The Tamuli' series it is revealed that the Church Knights may no longer be worshippers of the Elene god, but rather have gone over into the worship of the gods of their Styric tutors (i.e. the warriors of Christendom are told what to do by the jews and worship the god of the jews).
This could be interpreted as an anti-jewish position given the focus on the power of the Styric advisers and the implied corruption of the Church Knights away from the unnamed Elene god and into the worship of the individual gods of their Styric mentors.
However, the fact is that the Styrics are largely portrayed as the - in group terms - heroes of 'The Elenium' (more so) and 'The Tamuli' (less so) and as such it places the Styrics - and accordingly also their model the jews - on a pedestal to be admired by all.
Indeed, we can see this most pointed in the nature of the Zemochs who are universally reviled racial Elene/Styric half-castes who held to also be skilled in sorcery but are also fundamentally evil and unstable creatures who style themselves like Styrics (i.e. like the personification of the view of jews as devil worshipping sorcerers par extraordinaire in early modern Europe), but yet are not like them.
Suggesting to us that what is implied here is that evil comes through the mixing of jewish blood (i.e. the conventional view of Rabbinic Judaism in relation to gentiles being biologically more subject to the 'evil urge' than jews as they are lesser beings) with gentile blood creating an unstable mix of the two that due to the presence of the Elene (European) element destabilizes the purity of the Styric (jewish) element thus creating an evil race with the powers and abilities of the Styrics (jews) but with the violent and crueller tendencies of the Elenes (Europeans).
Indeed, we see another expression of the positive model for the Styrics when we note that the Rendors (a major foe of the Elene Church) are basically unlettered and half-baked (quite literally) desert dwelling nomads who follow what is called Eshandism. This is named after a Rendorish shepherd called Eshand who (like the Prophet Mohammed) found the creator of the universe calling to him while he was in his desert solitude. His creature predictably called to tell him that the future belonged to him. Indeed, Eshand's tomb is a key corner stone of Eshandism (like Mecca's monuments are to Islam) which suggests the identification of the Rendors with the Muslim Arabs.
Further we are told during 'The Elenium' that the Rendors don't in fact worship a real god and that the artefacts they revere - for example a ram's jaw bone supposed to be that of the favoured 'horned ram of Eshand' - are according to the major Styric character of both series Sephrenia (5) nonsense and have no spiritual relation or power at all. This indicates that the Styrics (jews) are the correct ones and that the Rendors have got it all wrong: further at various times Sephrenia condones the genocide of others (including but not exclusively Rendors [i.e., the Muslims as prime enemies of the jews]) to further the cause of good (i.e. the jewish cause).
Thus, is it any wonder why Eddings' publisher adds the disclaimer that 'any semblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental'?
Hardly: I think it is fairly obvious that the different civilizations could and should be read as the reader as the identifications I have given them and that they suggest a strong pro-jewish slant in both 'The Elenium' and 'The Tamuli'.
References
(1) Class is so important in this society that one of Elene characters introduced in the Tamuli Alean cannot marry her lover, because she is of a different class and states that is due to it 'not being done'. David Eddings, 1993, 'The Shining Ones', 1st Edition, Harper Collins: New York, pp. 345-346
(2) This is plainly a double play on the tetragrammaton from Judaism (i.e. the logic is that Judaism is the predecessor of Christianity and thus the 'name of God' [YHWH]) and the Patriarchs (i.e. the leadership of most non-Western forms of Christianity) of early and historical/current Eastern Christianity.
(3) This has been discussed in detail in the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/reconstructing-the-first-jewish-ritual
(4) Cassius Dio 68:32.1-3
(5) Also indicated a jewish origin given that Sefer (often spelt as Sepher in English) means 'writing' in Hebrew and is often used to mean 'Book', which plays on the fact that Sephrenia pointed refuses to read any books in the first novel series 'The Elenium' (an obvious novelist's pun).