This time I’m focusing actual as opposed to fictional
history, and the history of religion among Northwest Semites, and the true
events behind the Old and New Testaments. In all four cases, this is an overview without too much intricate detail except for a few cases.
NORTHWEST SEMITES, HISTORY
In the late Early Bronze Age (3300-2100 BCE) and all of the Middle
Bronze Age (2100–1550 BCE), Northwestern Semites were one of the dominant
powers in the Mashriq, which includes Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Egypt.
Northwestern Semites included the Amorites, the Arameans,
and the Canaanites. The last group, the
Old Canaanites, later became the Phoenicians, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Ammonites,
the Samaritans, the Yehudians, and the Punics or Carthaginians. In fact, the autonym of the Phoenicians was a
form of the name Canaanite. The Hebrew
language of the Israelites (the Samaritans or Bit Humria and Yehudians or Bit
Dawid) was virtually identical to Canaanite.
Early and Middle Bronze Ages
For most of the Early Bronze Age (3300-1800 BCE), the bulk
of the northern Levant (what is now Syria) was dominated by the Kingdom of
Ebla, with the eastern portion of the region mostly under the sway of the Kingdom
of of Mari. The independent city-states
of Canaan were first mentioned in 2350 BCE.
In the last two centuries of the Early Bronze Age and the
first century of the Middle Bronze Age (1800-1550 BCE), the Amorites founded a
number of kingdoms that became major powers.
The third kingdom of of Ebla (c. 2000 BCE) was Amorite, as were the
kingdom of Amurru (c. 2000 BCE), the kingdom of Qatna (c. 2000 BCE), the
kingdom of Babylon (1894 BCE), the kingdom of Yamhad (1810 BCE), and the kingdom
of Kharu, dominated by Ugarit (c. 1800 BCE).
During this same period, the Egyptian name for coastal
Levant was Retenu, and they divided it into five entities: Pekanan (Philistia or Gaza Strip), Kananu
(Idumea-Judea-Samaria), Djahy (Galilee), Amurru, and Kharu. The city of Gaza dominated Pekanan; the
cities of Jerusalem, Shechem, and Jericho dominated Kananu; and the cities of
Hazor and Megiddo dominated Djahy. From
south to north these city-states lay on the Mediterranean coast: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Jaffa, Dor, Akko, Tyre,
Sidon, Beirut, Byblos, Arados, Arvad, and Ugarit.
The Canaanites, meanwhile, began migrating into Lower Egypt,
especially craftsmen, artisans, and soldiers, starting around 1800 BCE, and
established an independent state in the eastern Nile Delta. From 1725 to 1650 BCE, the Canaanite
Fourteenth Dynasty ruled all Lower Egypt; some historians push the start date
back to 1805 BCE. The Canaanite-led
Hyksos confederation of diverse peoples ruled Lower Egypt from 1650 to 1550 BCE
as the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Dynasties.
Ebla fell to the Indo-European Hittites of Anatolia in 1600
BCE. Babylonia fell to the Hurrian-speaking
Kassites in 1595 BCE.
Late Bronze Age
The expulsion of the Hyksos rulers from Lower Egypt by a
resurgent Upper Egypt marks the beginning of the Late Bronze Age (1550-1130
BCE), in which the Levant, at least the western parts, was dominated by rivalry
between outside powers Egypt in the south and Mitanni then the Hittites in the
north. Within the region, the major
powers were Hazor and Qadesh, but neither escaped domination by one or more of
the outside powers. Hazor was the
greatest city of Late Bronze Age Canaan, ranking with the cities of Mycenaean
Greece.
The Late Bronze Age was also the period of large nomadic
groups like the Habiru, the Shasu, and the Suteans.
The city-states and states in or on the outskirts of the
Levant at this time included Urusalim, Shachmu, Ugarit, Qatna, Amurru, Gubal
(Byblos), Beruta, Sidon, Tyre, Enisasi in Amqu (Beqaa), Lachish, Qadesh,
Ruhiza, Damascus, Kumidi (West Beqaa), Acre, Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Gaza, Asqalon,
Taanach, Achshaph, Qiltu, Arasni, Pella, Ruhizzi, Yursa, Tubu, Naziba, Kanatha,
Yenoam, and many others.
The prominence of the city-states in Kananu receded greatly,
while the region of Pekanan was entirely under direct Egyptian rule. Egypt ruled all Palestine during this period,
and frequently extended its dominion far to the north, even into southern
Anatolia. Egypt’s first administrative
center for its colony in ‘Retenu’ was at Gaza, later shifting to Scythopolis in
Galilee in the middle 15th century BCE.
The kingdom of Yamhad fell to the Hittites in 1525 BCE. The kingdom of Qatna (ruled from Qadesh since
mid-15th century BCE) fell to Hurrian-speaking Mitanni in 1340 BCE.
Mitanni in turn fell to the Hittites in 1275 BCE.
Canaanites
established the kingdom of Moab in 1250 BCE.
In 1208 BCE, Pharoah
Merneptah erected a stele proclaiming his victory over Tenehu (Libya), Canaan,
Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoam, Isiriar, and Hurru.
There is no credible doubt that “Hurru” in the inscription refers to the
region of the Hurrians in southeast Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia, and most
authorities, though not all, agree that the people before that, written in
syllables ‘I.si.ri.ar’, is that later called Israel. Strictly linguistically speaking, it could
also be interpreted as Assyria; however, the inscription contains a
determinative signifying Isiriar as a non-sedentary group of people, which the
Assyrians were most definitely not.
Amurru fell to the Sea Peoples in 1200 BCE. Kharu fell to the
Sea Peoples in 1190 BCE. Canaanites
established the kingdom of Edom in 1180 BCE.
The Sea Peoples who became the Philistines conquered and settled Gath, Ekron, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Gaza in
1175 BCE. The native population rose up
and destroyed the Egyptian administrative center at Scythopolis in 1150. In 1130 BCE, the Philistines captured and
destroyed the last stronghold loyal to Egypt, the city of Megiddo.
Archaeological
surveys of the highlands of central Palestine and of northern Transjordan show
a significant increase in population beginning c. 1200-1150 BCE, with three
hundred new settlements in the following century or century-and-a-half. This increase coincided with severe depopulation
of natives in southern Palestine that was almost certainly due to the presence
of the Philistines in the five cities. The
new kingdom of Moab accounts for the second of these areas. The highland settlements are hamlets at
first, then villages, then small rural towns, and are noteworthy for their lack
of pig bones.
The only political
entities of the Levant which did not fall to outside powers were the
city-states in what came to be called Phoenicia: Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, Arwad, Byblos, Simyra,
and other coastal sites. From 1200-722
BCE, these rich city-states of Phoenicia, powered by significant improvements
in sailing technology, dominated the entire Mediterranean and founded colonies in
the Maghreb that grew into the Punic Empire.
Early Iron Age (1130-722
BCE)
During this time,
the region of Retenu earlier known as Kananu was entirely deserted, save for
small nomadic bands and tiny hamlets.
Other than the Philistine-ruled city-states. Canaanites outside of Phoenicia remained in
Moab, Edom, and in the central highlands, joined in 1000 BCE by those who
established Ammon. During this time, the
Canaanites in the highlands gave up eating pork for some unknown reason.
In 1050 BCE, the Middle Assyrian Empire collapsed, and the
Arameans suddenly had to freedom to establish their own kingdoms in the
Levant. These included Aram-Damascus,
Hamath, Bit-Adini, Bit-Bahiani, Bit-Hadipe, Aram-Bit-Rehob, Aram-Zobah, Bit-Zamani,
Bit-Halupe, Aram-Ma’arak, Aram-Sovak, Geshur, Yaudi (Samal), Bit-Agusi, Bit-Gabbari,
and Aram-Naharaim, as well as the tribal polities of Gambulu, Litau, and
Puqudu.
Around 883 BCE, Omri king of Israel (grammatically indicated
to be a people rather than a geographic entity) first appears in the historical
record. He and the other elite were most
likely Arameans. In about 878 BCE, he
established the city from which the Aramaic name of his (now physical) kingdom
is derived, Samerina, and for which its people are called Samaritans. The kingdom was usually called Bit Humria by
outsiders.
Omri also rebuilds Gezer,
Hazor, and Megiddo. Some time later a
splinter or subordinate kingdom in the south is founded that is first called
Bit Dawid and later also Teman. We know
that his son Ahab the Israelite succeeded him in 846.
After the
destruction of Gath by Hazael of Damascus in 830 BCE, the land of southern
Palestine became open for resettlement, which occurs, probably by the Bit
Dawid. Shortly after this the area
becomes known as Teman.
The independence of
Bit Humria ended in 740 BCE when Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III
conquered it along with several other kingdoms in the Levant and turns it into
a client state paying heavy tribute. He
erected a province called Samerina with its seat at Megiddo. In 722, Sargon II defeated a rebellion by
Samerina, destroying Samaria and exiling its elite, then making it a province
of Assyria under the satrapy of Eber-Nari.
Middle Iron Age (722-586 BCE)
Many refugees from Samerina/Bit Humria began pouring into
the south, into Bit Dawid, now also called Yehud.
In 664 BCE, Psamtik I became Pharoah of Egypt, establishing
the Twenty-sixth (or Saite) Dynasty. He
threw off the suzerainty of his Assyrian overlords in 655 BCE, and within five
years had pushed the Nubians out of Upper Egypt.
To protect his southern border, Psamtik established a
military colony at the island of Yeb (Elephantine) and another across the river
at Syren (Aswan). In addition, he
established other military colonies of these same people at the northeast
border towns of Migdol and Tahpanhes-Daphnae, in Pathros, in Noph, and in the
capital at Memphis.
The well-preserved Elephantine papyri refer to these
mercenaries and their families at Yeb, Syren, and ther other colonies as
Arameans, after their language (“A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went
down into Egypt...”). However, it is
clear from later events that these people were Israelites, from Samerina, Yehud,
or both. The clincher is that while the
temple at Yeb was polytheistic, its dominant deity was Yahuweh, tutelary god of
the Israelites.
A group of Arameans called the Chaldeans conquered Babylonia
in 623 BCE and began to extend its empire, taking Yehud and the ‘city of Yehud’
in 597 BCE and reducing it to the status of a client kingdom. When Yehud rebelled in 586 BCE,
Nebuchadnazzar II took the ‘city of Yehud’ (Yehud probably being the city’s
actual name), destroyed it and its temple, exiled the city’s population, and
made Yehud a sub-province of Samerina, also under the satrapy of Eber-Nari. The ‘city of Yehud’ in question was almost
certainly that at Tel Motza, though the citadel at Tel Arad (and its shrine)
were destroyed about the same time.
The former city of Jerusalem was uninhabited from the time
of the Late Bronze Age Collapse until after the return of the exiles from
Babylon in the late 6th century BCE. The
Temple of Solomon is as fictional as its namesake.
Late Iron Age (586-63 BCE)
In 550 BCE, the kingdom of Moab was destroyed by the
Qedarites, an northern Arabian group later absorbed into the Nabateans.
The Chaldean, or Neo-Babylonian, Empire falls to the
Achaemenid Empire of Iran under Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE, its territories (southern
Mesopotamia, or Babylonia, and the Levant) becoming the 5th satrapy of the
empire with the name Babylon-Ebar Nari.
Yehud remains a sub-province of Samerina.
In 525 BCE, Achaemenid Iran under Cambyses II conquered
Egypt and made it the 6th satrapy of the empire.
Around 500 BCE, the Samaritans built a temple to Yahuweh
atop Mount Gerizim outside the remains of the Late Bronze Age city of Shechem,
which they proceeded to rebuild. Like
its one-and-future rival Jerusalem, it had not been inhabited since the Late
Bronze Age Collapse.
The empire of Iran under Xerses I separated Mesopotamia from
the Levant as the 9th satrapy in 482 BCE, leaving just Ebar-Nari as the 5th
satrapy.
The temple to Yahuweh in Jerusalem was probably built around
450 BCE. Rabbinic literature suggests
the date was a century later (by claiming the temple destroyed in 70 CE had stood
for 420 years), but this suggestion is almost certainly a century late.
Greek historian Herodotus publishes The Histories in 440 BCE. In
it he refers to the southern Levant as “Palaistine”.
In 411 BCE, devotees of the Egyptian god Khnum destroyed the
adjacent temple to Yahuweh, perhaps its worship had become restricted to
monotheism or at least monolatry. Four
years later, residents of Yeb wrote to Bagayavahu, governor of Yehud, and to Dalaiah
and Shelemiah, sons of Sinballidh, governor of Samerina, asking for financial
help with rebuilding their temple.
The Egyptians reasserted their independence in 404 BCE and
maintained it until 342 BCE in the 28th, 29th, and 30th Dynasties. Sometime during this period, the Israelite miltary
colonies closely allied to the Iranian state, particularly those at Yeb and
Syren, were eradicated and their people expelled.
The Phoenician city-state of Sidon rose against Iranian rule
in 343 BCE, with significant support from the people of Yehud. Following its suppression, Artraxerses Ochus
burned the city to the ground and exiled the surviving Yehudians to the satrapy
of Hyrcania, approximately the modern Gilan, Mazandaran, and North Khorasan
provinces (i.e., the former Media).
Egypt fell to Iranian armies under general Bagaos the following year
(342 BCE).
Alexander I of Macedonia conquered the Achaemenid Empire
334-323 BCE, with Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt taken by 332 BCE. Yehudians were his close allies in Phoenicia
and Egypt, and as a reward he gave them two of the five sections of the new
city of Alexandria. In 331 BCE, the
Samaritans rose in revolt, resulting in the occupation of Samareia by a
garrison of Macedonian troops.
The Ptolemaic Empire was founded in 323 BCE and the Wars of
the Diodochi broke out the next year.
Initially, Samareia and Iudeia fell to the Antigonid Empire, but by 301
BCE, they were in the hands of the Ptolemies.
Onias I ben Jaddua became high priest at Jerusalem about 320
BCE, founding the Oniad dynasty (a neologism).
In 242 BCE, Pharoah appointed Joseph ben Tobiah as tax
collector for both Samareia and Iudeia, making him founder of the Tobiad
dynasty, which became rivals to that of the Oniads.
Upon the break out of the Fourth Syrian War in 219 BCE
between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, Theodotus of Aetolia, governor of
Samareia, threw in his lot with the Seleucids and thereby passed to their
jurisdiction. Iudeia followed suit in
198 BCE.
In 191 BCE, the Great Sanhedrin separated the office of
Nasi, its chairman (literally, ‘prince’), from that of Kohen Gadol (‘high
priest’).
When Kohen Gadol Simon II died in 185 BCE, civil war broke
out in Iudeia between his sons Onias III, who was pro-Ptolemy and
anti-Hellenistic, and Jason, who was pro-Seleucid and pro-Hellenistic like his
counterparts in Samareia. Onias won the
high priesthood, but Jason remained defiant and unbowed.
In 175 BCE, the Tobiads switched sides to support Jason,
removing Onias III. Roughly three years
later, Jason too fell from power, but what exactly happened is not clear due to
the unreliability of the authors of I
Maccabees and II Maccabees. Both works were composed as Hasmonean
propaganda, the first by the same writer responsible for the later
interpolations into the book of Daniel.
Antiochus IV of Seleucia invaded Egypt in 170 BCE, capturing
everything but Alexandria. He left
Ptolemies in charge as puppets. Two
years later, he invaded again, this time to seize the city, and he also
launched an attack against Cyprus. The
Roman Republic intervened, expelling him from Egypt entirely as well as from
Cyprus. On his return to his capital at
Antioch, he allegedly sacked the treasury of the temple at Jerusalem.
In the midst of the above, Onias IV, son of Onias III, fled
to Egypt seeking refuge from his family’s infighting. He was granted land in the Nile Delta for he
and fellow refugees to settle which became known as the Land of Onias. Around 154 BCE, he had built a
fully-functioning temple of Yahuweh at Leontopolis.
In 168 BCE, the Nabataeans, who had by this time absorbed
the Qedarites, establish a kingdom later known as Arabia Petraea, with its
capital at Petra. The Idumeians of Edom
migrate south and west to the Negev region.
When the last of the Oniads died in 159 BCE, a civil war
broke out that saw the first of the Hasmoneans to hold the office of Gadol
Kohen. The kingdom of Ammon is also destroyed,
annexed to Iudeia as Galaaditis (Gilead).
In 116 BCE, the Seleucid Empire is in its death throes so
the ambitious Gadol Kohen at the time, John Hyrcanus, no longer content with
the title Ethnarch, adopts the one of Basileus.
His epithet indicates that his origin was in the satrapy of
Hyrcania. Hycanus conquers Idumeia in
110 BCE and forces its inhabitants to convert.
He conquers Samareia in 108 BCE, destroys its temple atop Mount Gerizim,
and annexes it to Iudeia.
The Himyarite
Kingdom in Yemen, which eventually dominated the Arabian peninsula, lasted from
110 BCE to 525 CE. Its elite and many of
its commoners converted to Judaism in 380 CE.
Newly-crowned Basileus Aristobolus invaded the kingdom of Iturea
in 104 BCE, keeping its southern portion later known as Galil ha-Goyim or
Galileia, which at first serves as a place to ship political undesirables.
In 90 BCE, Basileus
Alexander Janneus conquered from the Nabateans the region later known as Perea
and forced it inhabitants to convert. In
81 BCE, he formally annexed Galileia and began to populate it with transplanted
Yehudeans after forcing the Ituraean natives to convert.
The Hasmonean (or
Third Judean) Civil War that began in 67 BCE ended in 63 BCE through the
intervention of the Roman Republic by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus as part of
his conquest of Greater Syria.
The Roman Era
In 57 BCE, Aulus
Gabinius, proconsul of Syria, rebuilt the city of Samaraea, separated the
region, and attached it directly to Syraea.
He also divided the former Hasmonean kingdom into five administrative
districts.
The Revolt of Hezekiah ben Garon, who declared himself King
of the Jews, took place in 47 BCE.
Herod I the Great was recognized by Rome as King of the Jews
in 37 BCE, ruling over all the former Hasmonean territories, save Samaraea. In 30 BCE, however, Octavius added the
territory to his realm, and Herod renamed the city Sebastos.
In 13 BCE, the city of Caesarea Maritima was finished and Herod
moved his seat there from Jerusalem, making it capital of the kingdom.
Herod rebuilt the Samaritan temple on top of Mt.
Gerizim. At about the same time, he
commenced a major overhaul of the temple on Mount Moriah next to Jerusalem.
In 4 BCE, the revolt of Judas Sepphoraeus and Matthias bar Margalus took place in Jerusalem. In the same year, there was a revolt at
Pesach against Archelaus. There was
another revolt at Shavuot against Sabinus, Augustus’ treasurer in Syraea.
Upon Herod’s death that year, Herod Archelaus inherited Iudaea, Samaraea, and Idumaea as ethnarch, Herod Antipas
inherited Galilaea, Peraea, and Decapolis as tetrach, Philippos inherited
Ituraea (the Arabs unconquered by Aristobolus), Trachonitis, Batanaea,
Gaulanitis, and Panaeas as tetrarch, and Salome I inherited Paralia (Philistia)
as toparch.
In the aftermath of
Herod’s death, Idumaea, Iudaea, Peraea, and Galilaea rose in revolt. A messianic pretender (and former slave of
Herod) named Simon led the revolt in Peraea, another pretender named Anthronges
that in Iudaea, and Judas ben Hezekiah (Judas the Galilean) that in Galilaea,
while Herod’s cousin Achiab led the rebels in Idumaea. Caius, a general for Publius Quinctilius
Varus, legatus of Syria, destroyed the capital of Galilaea, Sepphoris, and sold
most of its population into slavery.
Varus himself marched straight to Jerusalem only to find the rebels had
fled. In the aftermath, over 2000 rebels
were crucified, though Ben Hezekiah remained free.
In 1 BCE, Herod
Antipas rebuilt Sepphoris, renaming it Autocratoris.
In 6 CE, Rome
removed Archelaus and united his three territories as the single Iudaea, a
sub-province of Syraea with a Roman procurator, later a praefectus. Naturally, the proconsularis of Syraea,
Legatus Publius Suplicius Quirinius, ordered a census of those living within
its bounds.
From 15 to 116 CE, the
former province of Assyria called Adiabene, centered on Arbela (Arbil), existed
as an independent kingdom that was officially Jewish in religion.
Herod Antipas built
yet another seat for Galilaea at Tiberias in 20 CE.
In 30 CE, there was
widespread rioting in Jerusalem during Sukkot over the praefectus, Pontius
Pilatus, taking money from the temple treasury to help pay for an aqueduct into
the city. A disturbance at the temple
near the same time led to the crucifixion of Jesus the Nazorean as a convicted
terrorist.
The Revolt of the
Samaritan Prophet took place at Mount Gerizim in 36 CE.
From 36 through 37
CE, there was war between Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilaea, and Aretas IV,
king of the Nabataeans, which did not go well for the former. According to Josephus, the people of Galilaea
blamed the defeat on Antipas’ recent execution of John the Baptist.
There was a pogrom
against the Jews of Alexandria in 38 CE.
In 40 CE, rioting
broke out between the Greeks and the Jews in Alexandria.
The Theudas Revolt
took place in Iudaea under procurator Cuspius Fadus in 45 CE.
The Jacob and Simon Uprising
against the procurator Tiberius Julius Alexander, a Jew from Alexandria, took
place 46-48 CE. The two were sons of
Judas the Galilean.
In 49 CE, rumors of the
desecration of the temple in Jerusalem by troops of Ventidius Cumanus,
procurator of Iudaea (Gentiles from Caesarea and Sebastos), lead to riots which
cause the trampling deaths of thousands in the city for Pesach and Matzot. Rioting in the Jewish sector of Rome instigated
by followers of “Chrestus”, perhaps in response to the incident above, led to
the Jews being expelled from the city by emperor Claudius.
The invasion of
Samaraea by Galileans led by Alexander and Eleazar ben Dinaeus seeking revenge
for Galilean pilgrims to Jerusalem allegedly slain in the region sparked a
civil war between Galileans and Samaritans in 52 CE.
The Uprising of the
Egyptian Prophet took place at the Mount of Olives in 58 CE.
In 59 CE, an
uprising of the Sikarii under an unnamed messianic pretender took place and was
put down by the new procurator, Porcius Festus.
A holy man named Jesus ben Ananias appears in Jerusalem at
Sukkot in 62 CE predicting the destruction of the city. The procurator, Lucceius Albinus, has him
flogged, but eventually lets him go.
Procurator Gessius Florus invaded the Upper City of
Jerusalem in 65 CE, seizing many of the leading men whom he had scourged anc
crucified, leading to riots in which three thousand people were killed.
The Great Jewish
Revolt took place 66-73 CE. Before the
revolt trouble had been simmering for some time due to anti-taxation protests by the Judaean in
general and attacks on Roman citizens by the Zealots (1st century Taliban) and
the Sicarii (1st century Al Qaida). It kicked off when Procurator
Florus robbed the temple treasury of nineteen talents, with the Pharisees and
Sadducees acting in concert. Even the provincial
capital at Caesarea Martima fell. Soon
the revolt spread to Samaraea, Galilaea, and some adjacent regions.
For the first two
years, the more moderate, established leaders remained in control. They dispatched military governors to the
outlying districts of Galilee and Golan, Jericho, Jaffa and Lydda, and
Edom. At least one of these governors,
Yosef ben Mattathias, later known as Titus Flavius Iosephus, found himself
opposed by the local Zealot commander, in his case John of Giscala, who later played
a large role in Jerusalem.
In two years, the
Romans had crushed the revolts in Galilee and Samaria, and the Zealots, with
the Idumeans, had overthrown the provisional government in Jerusalem, where the
Galilean Zealots vied with the Judean Zealots for supremacy and, just to keep
things interesting, the Temple Guard and remaining supporters of the
provisional government as well as a peasant army led by messianic pretender
Simon ben Giora. Volunteers came in from
the Diaspora and from the Jewish kingdom of Adiabene. The Sikarii had been expelled from the city
and held outlying fortresses, including Masada.
The Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE became a disaster for the
defenders largely because of the infighting of its leaders.
In the course of the
war, Sebastos and the Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim were destroyed along with
several cities in Galilaea, fortresses in Iudaea, and the entire city of
Jerusalem, including its temple. All
that remained of Jerusalem were its western wall and three towers of the former
palace of Herod. The temple mount was
completely dismantled. Survivors of the
Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE who were not crucified were exiled to the Maghreb
region in North Africa. Even the temple
of Onias in Leontopolis was torn down after the war’s conclusion for fear it
could become a center of resistance.
In 73 CE, a revolt in
Cyrenaica by Jonathan the
Weaver, messianic pretender and survivor of Masada, was easily put down by
Catallus, governor of the Pentapolis.
The Qitos War or Rebellion
of the Diaspora took place 115-117, simultaneous with Trajan’s campaigns
against the Arsacids of Iran, which included subjugation of the Jewish kingdom
of Adiabene and its absorption into the Roman province of Assyria. The two separate but connected wars involved
the Jews of Adiabene, Alexandria, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Edessa, Nisibia, and Lydda
in Palestine.
The wars in the west
began with an uprising by the Jews of Alexandria in the aftermath of the
conquest of Adiabene. The praefectus of
Egypt used his remaining legion to put it down, but the violence spread to
other parts of Egypt.
At the same time, a
messianic pretender named Lukuas rose up in Cyrenaica, driving out the Gentiles
and killing a quarter million of them, burning temples and official
buildings. Later he forged east to
Alexandria and burned every temple and most civic buildings relating to Rome,
plus the entire Jewish sector.
In Cyprus, the
Jewish half of the population rose under Artemion and attacked the Gentile
half, racking up a bodycount equal or surpassing that in Cyrenaica.
In Palestina, the
revolt was led by Pappus and Julianus, originally from Alexandria, who made
their headquarters at Lydda, but the rebels got little outside support.
Especially in
Cyrenaica and Cyprus, the effect of the rebellious armies on the local
populations was like that of ISIS in the 21st century on the populations of
northern Iraq and Syria.
Quintus Marcius Turbo
went to Egypt and defeated the army of Lukuas, who escaped to Palestina
to die at Lydda at the hands of the army of Lusius Quietus, which had
previously defeated the Jews of Edessa and Nisibia in Mesopotamia, fighting on
behalf of their Iranian overlords. The
Jewish quarter of Alexandria was completely destroyed by the rebels. The Jewish population of Cyprus was
eradicated, that in Egypt drastically reduced, and the entire province of
Cyrenaica became a desolation.
In 122, Publius
Aelius Trajanus Hadrianus Augustus established Colonia Aelia Capitolina
where Jerusalem used to be, largely for veterans of Legio X Fretensis,
permanently stationed in Iudaea at Caesarea Martima, with a frontier camp for a
cohort at the former Jerusalem.
The Bar Kokhba War took place 132-135, led by messianic
pretender Simon bar Kokhba with Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph as spiritual leader. According to Roman historian Dio Cassius, at
the end of the war, the rebels casualties numbered 580,000. After the war, Hadrian finished rebuilding
the city and merged the smaller provinces and subprovinces of the region into
one as the province of Syraea-Palaestina and renamed the seat Casesarea
Palaestina.
The refugees from
the Bar Kokhba War became the Jews of Arabia, forming thirteen tribes in the
Hejaz region and four in the emirates of the south.
The Palmyrene Empire existed in Aegyptus, Syraea-Palestina, and
southeast and south central Anatolia from 260 to 273.
From 325 to 1627, the
Jewish kingdom of Semien flourished in East Africa until conquered by and added
to the Christian empire of Ethiopia.
The revolt of the Jews in Galilaea against Caesar Flavius Claudius Constantius Gallus led by
Isaac of Diocaesarea and messianic pretender Patricius Natrona took place
351-352.
The conversion of
the Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen to Judaism occurred in 380.
In 484, the Samaritan Justa Uprising took place, leading to
the destruction of their temple on Mount Gerizim and a Christian establishment
in its place.
In 495, Samaritans occupied
the top of Mount Gerizim, massacring the chapter and garrison of the Church of
St. Mary which stood where their temple once did.
The Ben
Sabar Revolt in Samaraea in 529 led to the outlawing of Samaritanism.
Between 556 and 572, Jews and Samaritans joined together in
rebellion against Rome.
In 610, there
were revolts by the Jews of Antioch, Tyre, and Acre against Rome.
The Jews of Syria-Palestina rose up against Rome as allies
of the Sassinids in 614, with the Jews of Tyre, Damascus, Cyprus, and Edessa
following suit. After the fall of Aelia
Capitolina that year, the region became a commonwealth under the protection of
Iran until 629.
The multi-ethnic
Khazar Khaganate dominated the Pontic steppe and the Caucasus Mountains from
630 to 969. Officially Jewish, it was an ally of the Imperium Romanum/Basilea
Rhomain against the Sassanids, the Umayyads, and the Abbasids, and had close
relation with the Jewish communities of Iran, Mesopotamia, and the
Levant. During the High Middle Ages, it was second only to Al-Andalus as
a center of Jewish culture and a haven of religious toleration.
In 637, Muslim Arab armies of the Umayyad Caliphate conquered
the eastern provinces of the Basilea Rhomaion and erected the province of Bilad
al-Sham, made up of five districts: Jund
Dimashq (Damascus), Jund Filastin (southern Palestina), Jund al-Urdun (northern Palestina), Jund Hims (Homs), and, Jund Qinnasrin (Aleppo).
The new rulers call Aelia by the name Iliya for a couple of centuries
before replacing that name with Al Quds.
NORTHWEST SEMITES, RELIGION
The various groups of Northwest Semites—Amorites, Arameans,
Canaanites—shared a common religion and pantheon of deities, even cultural
heroes.
Collectively the gods and goddesses were called the Elohim.
El was the father of all the gods and their chief. El is often referred to with an epithet, such
as El Shaddai (translated El the Almighty; literally ‘El the Destroyer’), El
Berith (El of the Covenant), El Roi (El the Omnisicent, literally ‘El Who Sees’),
El Olam (El the Eternal), El Tzevaot (El of the Hosts), El Elyon (El the Most
High), Toru El (El the Bull), El Qaniyunu (El the Creator), El Gibbon (El the
Warrior), El Elehe Yisrael (El of the gods of Israel).
The consort of El was Athirat (Asherah), who is frequently
named with the epithet Qadesh, or the ‘Holy One’. In the 9th century BCE, she was frequently
paired with Yahuweh.
El had seventy sons, the Bene El. To each of these was allotted one of the
seventy nations of humans on Earth. As
its tutelary god, Israel was given to Yah (later Yahu, then Yahuweh), Edom was
given to Qaws, Moab to Chemosh, Ammon to Milcom, Tyre to Melqart, Sidon to
Eshmun, Byblos to El, Shechem to Resheph, Jerusalem to Shalim, Philistia to
Dagon, Carthage to Hammon, the Nabateans to Dushara, etc. There is even a reference to this in Deuteronomy: “When the Most High gave to the nations their
inheritance, when he separated the children of men, he set the bounds of the
peoples according to the number of the children of Israel. For Yahuweh’s portion is his people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”
(32:8-9).
A triad of gods comparable to the Greek triad of
Zeus-Poseidon-Hades stood at the apex of the Bene El: Hadad, a sky god of storm; Yam, god of the
sea; and Mot, god of death and the underworld.
Although Baal could be a title for any of the gods, if used
alone it almost always meant Hadad (its literal definition is “master”). In fact, Baal in later centuries was the only
way in which the lay people were permitted to refer to Hadad, his priests
keeping his name to themselves, exactly like the Jewish (and presumably
Samaritan) priests of Yahuweh did at the beginning of the third century CE.
As for goddesses, the two most prominent after Asherah were
Anath, portrayed in Egypt as the consort of of Yahuweh but more often called Anat
the Maiden or Anat the Merciful, and Ashtart, the Levantine form of Ishtar,
frequently called the Queen of Heaven, portrayed as the consort of Haddad,
especially in the northern Levant form Atargatis.
Shachar and Shalim were the twin gods of dawn and dusk,
respectively; Jerusalem is named for the latter.
Attar was the god of the morning star; it was to he that the
epithet Heylel (‘Light Bearer’; Lucifer in Latin, Phosphoros in Greek) in Isaiah 14:12 alludes. That passage uses the allusion to Attar’s
rise and fall as a metaphor for Nebuchadnazzar II.
There was a group of divine midwives who were only known
collectively as the Kotharat.
Shapash was goddess of the sun, while Yarikh was god of the
moon.
Eshmun was the god of healing, later identified with the
Hellenistic deity Asclepius. Resheph was
protector against plague and war. Horon
was god of the underworld. Marqod was
lord of the dance.
Dagon was imported early on from Mesopotamia and became
integrated into the Levantine pantheon as the father of Hadad. The god came first to Ugarit via the city of
Ebla, where he served the same role as Hadad did among the West Semitic peoples.
Tammuz (Dumuzi in Sumer) was a later import whom the Phoenicians
called Adoni (Lord). To the Greeks he
became Adonis, and in that guise he returned to the Levant during the era of
the Mystery Cults.
The preeminent human cultural hero of the stories that have
survived is Danel, a generous king famous for his wisdom, whose popular stories
gave flesh to the also mythical Solomon and whose name in somewhat corrupted
form became Daniel, the exile in Babylon.
Another deity imported into the Levant, at least by the
city-state of Ebla (an East Semitic polity albeit in western Syria), was Ia, a
Levantine form of the Akkadian-Babylonian god Ea, who in turn was borrowed from
the Sumerian original, Enki. Many
tablets of religious writings from the city replace El with Ia atop their
pantheon.
Interestingly, the Egyptian pantheon included a lunar deity
whose name was Yah.
Hadad versus Yam
The central story of Levantine mythology is the rivalry
between Hadad and Yam, whose name in some sources is Yaw.
When El decides to step down as king of the gods, he makes
Hadad king in his place after the latter defeats Yam in combat. In a later conflict with Mot, Hadad dies, and
Yam is resurrected to become king.
During Yam’s kingship, Attar attempts to take the throne,
but fails, and falls from heaven to Earth, much the same as “Lucifer, thou son
of the morning” in Isaiah 14. The epithet Most High in verse 14, Elyon in
Hebrew, was a title of El when he was king of the gods, then of Hadad when he
ascended, and, of course, Yam during the brief time he was king. The Greek form, Hypsistos, was an epithet for
several deities on monolatrous religious systems of the last two centuries BCE
and the first three centuries CE, chiefly Zeus and Theos.
By the 9th century BCE when the Israelites were a major
power in north Palestine, their chief god was Yahuweh, and alongside him, they
worshipped a divine consort, Asherah.
Asherah’s chief epithet was Qadesh, the Holy One, by which name she had already
entered the Egyptian pantheon in the 18th century BCE. By this time, the word ‘el’ had been reduced
to functioning merely as a generic word for ‘god’.
Allegory of the Golden Calf
Many have suggested that the golden calf portrayed Aaron and
Miriam making for the Israelites at the foot of Mount Horeb/Sinai/Paran was be
an image of Hathor, Egyptian goddess of fertility, inebriation, and musics
(i.e., sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll).
Her usual icon, after all, was that of a cow. However, it is much more likely that this
pericope is an allegory warning against a return to worship of El, whose usual
icon was a bull, as supreme god rather than Yahuweh.
It is clear from extant inscriptions found at several
archaeological sites that the change from El as chief god to the tutelary god
Yahuweh occurred before the 9th century BCE.
A similar process resulted in the chief god of the Punics in Carthage
and the western Mediterranean being Baal-Hammon; his consort was Tanit (Anat).
A passage in the
book of Kings also polemicizes against the toleration of golden calves
(bulls) at Bethel and Dan by Jehu, “son of Jehosaphat’, who is more like the
son of Omri.
This switch from acknowledging El as chief god to Yahweh,
tutelary god of Israel in that role, seems to have been paralleled among the
other Canaanite peoples at about the same time.
Houses of Yahuweh
In the Canaanite language of Hebrew (Tiberian dialect),
‘Beth Yahuweh’.
Archaeologically, three pre-Babylonian Conquest temples to their
national god, each termed ‘House of Yahuweh’, have been found in
Palestine. The largest and most opulent
is that at Samaria, where Yahuweh and Asherah were worshipped
side-by-side. Omri and his son Ahab also
built temples to Hadad and several other deities, undoubtedly the major deities
of the local pantheon and many imports, such as Tammuz. It was built in 878 BCE.
The other two known places called ‘House of Yahuweh’, both
rather small, were found in the south. One
was a shrine in a citadel at Tel Arad, near the modern city of Arad on the
border of the Judean and Negev deserts, dating from about 820 BCE; the site
contained the citadel and a substantial lower city, much on the pattern of the
older Hazor and Megiddo.
The other and much more substantial was a temple at Tel
Motza, one that was quite massive for its time, on the western outskirts of
modern Jerusalem (eight miles from the Old City) from about the same date. The thirty-six granaries at the city suggest
that it too was quite massive for its day.
Its destruction dates to 586 BCE and the size of its temple precludes
another such site just a few miles away.
I submit that this is the ‘city of Yehud’ sacked by Nebuchadnazzar II.
Jerusalem was uninhabited from the time of the Late Bronze
Age collapse until the return from exile in Babylon, so there is no ‘First Temple’
to find.
There was a fourth ‘House of Yahuweh’, though not in
Palestine. It was in Egypt, at the
military colony of yeb (Elephantine), built in about the year 650 BCE. From surviving papyri, we known that Yahweh
was worshipped there along with his consort Anath-Yahu, plus Bethel, Haram,
Eshem, Nabu, and Anat-Bethel, as well as Khnum (whose temple was adjacent), his
consort Satet, and his daughter Anuket.
Horned altars identified as Israelite have been discovered
at Dan, Megiddo, Beersheba, and Ekron, indicating outdoor shrines, but no
temples in those cities. Other
ceremonial cult centers have been discovered at Lachish, Halif, Kedesh,
Ta’anakh, Shechem, Tirzah, and Ai.
Three inscriptions and images at Kuntillet Arjud, c. 800
BCE, depict Yahweh, Asherah, El, and Baal (Hadad). Two inscriptions mention “Yahweh of Samaria
and Asherah” and “Yahweh of Teman and Asherah”.
Teman, of course, need not refer to a city as its literal meaning is
“the South”, just like “Samaria” could refer to the kingdom based out of the eponymous
city.
Again, inscriptions at a tomb in Khirbet al-Qom in the Har
Yehuda west of Hebron dating to about 750 BCE mention “Yahweh and Asherah”.
Given this preponderance of evidence, there is no other
conclusion but that before the Persian period (and well into it) the Yahweh
cult among the Israelites north, south, and in Egypt was polytheist, though
almost certainly the henotheist variety.
That this is the undeniable case does not preclude the existence of
Yahwist fanatics pursuing monotheist worship of their deity.
The House of Yahuweh at Samaria (in Samerina or Bit-Humria) was
destroyed, along with the other temples, in the Assyrian conquest of 722
BCE. Both those in the South (Teman,
Bit-Dawid, or Yehud) fell to Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BCE.
That left the House of Yahuweh at Yeb as the only remaining
temple of the Israelite religion to the Israelite national god. A temple which he shared with several other
deities, including his consort. As we
know from the Elephantine papyri, that temple was destroyed by Khnum devotees
in the year 411 BCE.
Yahuweh your God is one Yahweh
Just as El had multiple forms, so did Yahuweh, even after
monolatry became the norm. The
inscriptions to “Yahuweh of Teman” and “Yahuweh of Samaria” at Kuntillet Ajrud one
example of this. In the Tanakh, 2 Samuel 15:7 mentions “Yahuweh of
Hebron” while Psalm 99:2 mentions
“Yahuweh of Zion”.
In fact, there was a different manifestations of Yahuweh at
every shrine site mentioned in the Tanakh, such as Yahuweh of Dan, Yahuweh of Bethel,
Yahuweh of Shiloh, Yahuweh of Gilgal, Yahuweh of Bethlehem, Yahuweh of Nob, Yahuweh
of Gibeon, Yahuweh of Mizpah, Yahuweh of Beersheba, Yahuweh of Megiddo, Yahuweh
of Ekron, Yahuweh of Lachish, Yahuweh of Halif, Yahuweh of Kedesh, Yahuweh of
Ta’anakh, Yahuweh of Shechem, Yahuweh of Tirzah, and Yahuweh of Ai. (Archaeological
evidence and passages in the Tanakh show this also to have been the case for
Baal and for El.)
In this light, the titular verse of the Shema Yisrael, Deuteronomy 6:4—Hear, O Israel, Yahuweh
our God is one Yahuweh—takes on a whole new meaning. Once you return the original word to its
place instead of the pretentious substitution by the rabbis (‘Adonai’), the
actual meaning of the statement is a whole lot clearer.
Many of these shrine sites, at several of which horned
altars for sacrifice have been discovered, were in the form of gate shrines,
shrines built into the structure of a city’s main gate, some quite large rather
than small as the designation “gate shrine” might suggest.
THE TANAKH
(Old Testament to Christians)
As we have it
today, the final revision of the Tanakh was made by the Karaite scholars called
the Masoretes, who lived in Iliya/Al Quds (Jerusalem) and Tiberias from the
seventh through the tenth centuries CE.
The Torah
As factual history,
the entire Torah can be tossed out. It
is all fiction. Adam, Eve, the serpent,
Cain, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth, Canaan, Lot, Abraham,
Sarah, Melchizedek, Isaac, Rebecca, Esau, Jacob, Leah, Rachel, all the twelve
sons, Abimelech, Moses, Miriam, Aaron, Joshua, Caleb, all of them are fictional
characters. Not one of them ever existed
outside of the imaginations of those who composed the stories.
Also known as the
Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses, the books of Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were at one time
believed to have been written by Moses the Lawgiver himself. Neat trick given the Moses is a fictional character
whose name likely derives from the Aramaic version, Mazas, of the Persian name
Mazda (or Ahura Mazda), referring to the One True God of Mazdayasna
(Zoroastrianism).
By the end of the
19th century, Biblical scholars who realized the Torah was composed of several
sources recognized four main sources for the material, brought together by the
fifth and final source. These five sources
were: Jahwist or J; Elohim or E;
Deuteronomist or D; Priestly or P; and Redactor or R.
The first four
books of the Torah are sometimes referred to as the Tetrateuch, because their
material comes from J, E, P, and R with no input from D. The latest trend considers the material in Genesis
to come from an entirely separate tradition, though edited by the other
sources, than those which composed Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers
(the ‘Triateuch’, if you will). As for
the Redactor, one significant change made by him (or them) was to move the account
of Moses’ death from the end of Numbers to the end of Deuteronomy
after the latter was incorporated into the larger Torah.
The Exodus
As for the Exodus,
the fictitious central event of the Triateuch for which the second book of the
Tanakh is named, I submit that the story is a fictionalized version of the
expulsion of the Iranian-supporting Jews from Egypt in the late 5th-early 4th
centuries BCE, along with remnants of
memories of the Hyksos expulsion.
Much more prestigious to be delivered out of slavery by a divine patron
than to be overthrown and driven out by one’s underlings.
From 1725 to 1650
BCE, a Canaanite dynasty ruled Lower Egypt.
Three Canaanite-dominated Hyksos dynasties ruled Lower Egypt from 1650
to 1530 BCE. After their expulsion, the
Hyksos former elite were pursued, fought, conquered, and sometimes
eradicated. From 1530 to 1150 BCE, the
southern Levant, including parts of southern Syria and southern Lebanon, was
under the dominion of Egypt. There
would, therefore, have been no escaping Egypt into Canaan, because Egypt
reached into Canaan.
After the end of
Egypt’s dominion of the southern Levant, the Philistines in the pentapolis of
Philistia blocked the way and pretty much ranged over the entire lands later
known as Idumea, Judea, and Samaria from 1175 to 830 BCE, by which time the
houses of Omri and of Dawid already exist.
Suggestions for the
time-frame of the Exodus from those who believe it represents an actual
occurrence range from the mid-1400s BCE to the 1200s BCE. The most commonly suggested date among
American evangelicals, 1445 BCE, represents the height of influence and
greatest geographical reach of Egypt into the Levant, all the way into
southeast Anatolia. Simply put, there is
no time within any of the suggested time-frames when such an event as the
Exodus could have taken place, historically speaking.
Age of the Torah
Not that of its
individual parts nor of their sources, but the whole as we have it today. As I said above, the Torah was once thought
to have been written by Moses himself, but by the end of the 19th century those
views had changed. Still, scholars
believed they were at least three thousand years old at that time. After much critical and textual examination,
however, modern scholars put the date much later, in ther Persian period, the
Hellenistic period, or even the Hasmonean period. For example, the Elephantine papyri
demonstrate no knowledge of the Torah or of the Exodus or of monotheism.
Twelve Tribes
A major motif of
the Triateuch and the Deuteronomistic history is that of the Twelve Tribes of
Israel. However, of the twelve usually
named, the only tribes existence of whose we can be sure are Benjamin,
Ephraim, Manasseh, Dan, Judah, and Gad.
Those are the only ones mentioned independently outside of lists of
tribes.
The Song of Deborah in Judges
Chapter 5, once thought to be quite ancient but now thought to be no earlier
than the Persian period in Palestine, lists just ten tribes, and not all of
them among the usual suspects. These
are: Ephraim, Benjamin, Machir, Zebulun,
Issachar, Reuben, Gilead, Dan, Asher, and Naphtali. Chapter 21 also gives Gilead as one of the
tribes of Israel. The Song and a couple
of passages in the last chapters seem to indicate that Dan was not originally
one of the tribes, but was instead incorporated. Many modern scholars now believe that the
people who became Dan originated as a group of Sea People.
Deuteronomistic History
For the past few
decades, scholars have recognized that not only is the book of Deuteronomy
from an entirely separate tradition than the other Torah sources (J, E, P), but
that the Deuteronomist himself (themselves) either composed or edited the books
immediately following, which in Rabbinate and Karaite traditions are considered
Major Prophets: Joshua, Judges,
Samuel, and Kings, as well as the fellow Major Prophet Jeremiah
and the Minor Prophets Amos and Hosea.
The series is meant
not as factual history as we think of that today but religious and often
polemic history, both to demonstrate Israel’s relationship with Yahuweh as a
convenant and to insist on the centralization of worship (and therefore of
money and power). It is this latter
theme which shows that the Deuteronomist couldn’t have been earlier than well
after the return of Yehudian exiles from captivity in the east.
Archaeology has
demonstrated quite clearly that not only were the Israelites in both Samerina
and Yehud (as well as Egypt) polytheistic, but that they even had more than one
Yahuweh.
The books of Deuteronomy
and of Joshua were composed entirely by the same author or school of
authors, while Samuel and Kings (originally both single works)
were Deuteronomistic revisions of tales told earlier. The books of Judges is an exception, with
its stories left largely intact other than interpolation of divine intervention
in the life of the major judges.
One of the Torah’s
more notorious stories is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; the original
of that tale (or at least an earlier version) is intact in the book of Judges. By chance, it is in the same section of that
work, chapter 19, as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Genesis. None of the players in the Judges
version have a single redeeming feature.
And the antagonists in this version are not Sodomites and Gomorrans but
Benjamites, Israelites of the tribe of Benjamin.
It is from Judges,
in fact, that we get a better, more accurate portrayal of the chaos and
violence in the Southern Levant in the 9th century BCE. The last five chapters, seventeen through
twenty-one, were barely touched by the Deuteronomist(s), if at all.
The central
character of the first two of these five last chapters, Micah, is a wealthy
Ephraimite, who has his own ‘house of gods’ (‘beth elohim’), either a shrine or
a temple. The shrine is complete with a
graven image and a molten image, perhaps both to Yahuweh, perhaps one to him
and one to Asherah. Micah’s ‘house of gods’
also has teraphim, idols to the gods of the particular household, guarding over
its wealth and prosperity. To preside
over this ‘house of gods’, Micah consecrated one of his own sons. Later, a young man described as a Levite of
the tribe of Judah comes along and Micah makes him priest in place (‘kohan’) of
his son.
Then the Danites
come along, plunder Micah’s beth elohim, stealing his graven and molten images,
placing the plunder in their own beth elohim in the city of Dan they erect atop
the ruins of Laish, which they have destroyed and whose inhabitants they
massacred.
The events in the
last three chapters are even less praiseworthy.
What is interesting, though, is that these five chapters give at least
three major centers for Yahuweh worship, Dan, Bethel, and Mizpah, as well as
that formerly in Ephraim belonging to Micah.
The story rules out
the convention that Levites were a tribe, given that Micah’s Levite is referred
to as a member of the tribe of Judah.
Also, the idea that priests have to be descended from Aaron or from
Zadok? Likewise out the window.
David, Solomon, Kings
For the books of Samuel
and of Kings, the main sources were the Annals of King David, the
Book of the Acts of Solomon, the Annals of the Kings of Judah, and
the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.
Rather than simply p[assing these along to posterity, the Babylonian
exiles who are the source of what we have now had these books and apparently felt
it necessary to rewrite them so that they could put put their own nationalistic
religious cult (Yahwist) spin on the story.
There can be no
doubt that someone named David founded the southern kingdom of the Israelites,
given that its earliest exonym was Bit-Dawid.
The sparse evidence of contemporary records and inscriptions leads to
the conclusion that it, and not its related cousin Bit-Humria, was the junior
breakway polity.
As a warning
against relying on the Masoretes for accuracy, in the account of the epic
single combat between David and Goliath, the Masoretes made Goliath 9’9” tall,
while the older editors of the Septuagint left him at a still enormous but
actually possible 6’9”.
David’s alleged son
and successor, Solomon, is almost certainly a complete fiction, probably based on
the old Canaanite hero Danel who was famous for his wisdom, with added material
from East Semitic and Iranian sources. The
extent of his empire (hypothesized to include not just Palestine and
Transjordan but the western Levant up to the River Euphrates or even the southern
outskirts of Anatolia) and the long reach of his trade relations (into the
southern regions of Arabia) are utter bullshit.
One bit of the
bullshit that is noteworthy is Solomon’s reported annual revenue, which was six
hundred sity-six talents. In Jewish
tradition, this number, 666, came to represent excessive wealth and one’s
service to it; it is to this that the number of the beast in the Revelation
of Saint John the Divine refers despite the fantasies of John Darby and his
ideological offspring. It’s not Nero Caesar
nor is it Ronald Wilson Reagan.
In these accounts,
Omri, founder of the kingdom of Samerina, is counted as the sixth king of
Israel. Omri is called ‘king of Israel’
in at least one inscription (the Mesha Stele), but these contain determinant
makers indicating Israel to be a tribe rather than a territory. Contemporary evidence (especially the Kurkh
Monolith) shows Ahab the Israelite as his son and successor.
At least one
source, the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, gives Ahab’s successor as Jehu
son of Omri, making him the third king of Samerina. The book of Kings as we have it records
Jehu as the tenth king of the northern realm and son of Jehoshaphat. The Tel Dan Stele calls Jehoram son of Ahab,
probably successor of Jehu, ‘king of Israel’ and indicates Ahaziah son of
Jehoram is ‘king of Bit-Dawid’. In other
words, the Omrides then ruled both kingdoms.
Enter monotheism
Or at least
monolatry. It came in with the Iranians,
and even then took a while to take hold, religious beliefs, especially those
with established interests, glacially slow to change. Coins from the early Persian period typically
pair Yahuweh with Asherah, Astarte, or Anat, most often Anat rather than
Asherah, with whom Yahuweh was earlier most often linked.
In Iran, Persia has
always been Iran. For millennia. The name derives from “Iranshahr”, Old
Persian for ‘land (or realm) of the Aryans’.
Yeah, Hitler, Nazis, Aryan Nation, white blue-eyed blonde-haired racists
from northern Europe are not Aryans at all.
The only true Aryans usually call themselves Iranians and their language
Persian (or Farsi).
Though official
policy of the Achaemenid dynasty was religious tolerance, Iranians themselves
almost universally worshipped one deity and one deity only, Ahura Mazda, who in
the beginning was not even assigned a sex.
The religion is called Mazdayasna in Farsi, but in English it is usually
called Zoroastrianism after its founder, Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek), or
Zartosht in modern Farsi.
Under influence of
these monotheists both in Palestine and in the Diaspora communities to the
east, Israelite religion changed from polytheistic to henotheistic, then to
monolatrous. Some sects even became
monotheistic, but other than in one or two places in the Tanakh, or the New
Testament*, for that matter, nowhere is it ever said that Yahuweh is the only
god in existence.
*Paul of Tarsus
himself says that there are other gods and lords (1 Corinthians 8:5).
We know from the
Elephantine papyri that in the beginning (650 BCE), the “Arameans” at the
temple in Yeb offered sacrifice to Khnum and his crew along with their
Levantine deities. It may be that some
of the friction which led to the Beth Yahuweh there being burned (411 BCE)
resulted from its congregants having adopted monolatry.
Enter dualistic monism
Ani Yahuweh u’ayin
owd. Yotzer ohr u-voreh hoshekh,
oseh shalom u-voreh et ha-rah: Ani
Yahuweh oseh et kol eileh. I am Yahuweh and there is no other. Shaper of light and creator of darkness, producer
of good and creator of evil: I, Yahuweh,
do all these things.
The above Hebrew
transliteration and English translation are from Isaiah 45:6b-7.
The idea that there
is One from whom comes all— light and dark, good and evil, order and chaos, yin
and yang, life and death, integrity and entropy, creation and destruction,
everything and nothing—came to the Israelites via Mazdayasna from Iran.
When the
Neo-Babylonian Empire of the Chaldees fell to Koroush Kabir (Cyrus the Great),
and Babylon and Eber-Nari came under Iranian rule and influence, Israelites in
both regions were exposed to the teachings of Zarathustra. The deity of Mazdayasna was called Ahura
Mazda in the Avestan of the Gathas, or Assura Mazas in the Aramaic that was the
official language of the Achaemenid empire (Ormazd today among Mazdayasnis).
In the earliest
stages of Mazdayasna, Mazda, or Mazas, was a unitary deity from whom all things
came, all things light or dark, good or evil.
Both the spenta mainyu (‘bounteous inclination’) and the angra
mainyu (‘destructive inclination’) came from Mazda/Mazas, not separate
beings unto themselves but two emanations of Ahura Mazda, both extensions of
the One True God.
NEW TESTAMENT
Dating order of the gospels
In the form in
which we have them, the gospels range in age from oldest to youngest in the
following order: Luke, Mark,
Matthew, John. Yes, the
original of Mark was almost certainly written first, but the version we
have now is later than the version we have of Luke.
That there were at
least four major revisions of the Gospel of Mark we have evidence in the
gospels as we have them.
First is the
original Gospel of Mark, which could only have been written in Palestine,
for reasons that will be explored below.
Second is the
edition of the Gospel of Mark which had the same version of the Olivet
Discourse as the Gospel of Luke, the version composed after the Great
Jewish War of 66-74 BCE.
Third is the Gospel
of Mark as we now have it, with a version of the Olivet Discourse revised
after the Bar Kokhba War (132-135). This
is the edition from which the Gospel of Matthew (which also took
material from Luke) was copied and added to.
Fourth is the
so-called Secret Gospel of Mark, an expanded version containing earlier
versions of the raising of Lazarus (in it, the ‘young man whom Jesus loved’)
and the later dinner at the house in Bethany just before the week of the
Passion, both of which were further developed by the author of the Gospel of
John.
Twelve Apostles
A frequent New
Testament motif that repeats itself throughout Christian literature is that of
the Twelve Apostles, although the gospels can’t agree with each other or with
the Acts of the Apostles on their names.
According to the gospels of Matthew and Mark, the
apostles are: Simon Peter, James son of
Zebedee, John brother of James, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas,
James son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot
According to the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the
Apostles, the apostles were: Simon
Peter, James son of Zebedee, John brother of James, Andrew, Philip,
Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas
Iscariot,and Judas son of James; Luke
gives the names Joanna wife of Chuza (Antipas’ wine steward) and Susanna along
with several unnamed women as being fellow travelers.
According to the Gospel
of John, there were twelve apostles but he only gives the following names: Andrew, Peter, Nathaniel, Philip, Thomas, Lazarus
(‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’), and Judas son of Simon Iscariot. Further, Mary Magdalene, Martha, and Mary of
Bethany have nearly the same status as the male apostles. We know Lazarus is the unnamed ‘disciple whom
Jesus loved’ because of the parallels in the “Lost Gospel of Mark”.
According to the Didascalia
Apostolorum (c. 230 CE), the apostles were John, Matthew, Peter, Philip,
Andrew, Simeon, James, Jude son of James, Nathaniel, Thomas, Bartholomew, and
Matthias. Note that the list count
Nathaniel and Bartholomew as separate persons.
According to the Apostolic
Church Order (c. 300 CE), the apostles were, John, Matthew, Peter, Andrew,
Philip, Simon, James, Nathaniel, Thomas, Cephas, Bartholomew, and Judas of
James
In addition to the
fact that the gospel of John only names six of allegedly twelve disciples,
further proof that the motif of Twelve Apostles is a fiction can be discerned
from the fact that the Doctrina duodecim Apostlorum of the early 2nd
century lists as apostles James the brother of Jesus, Simon Cephas,
John, Mark, Andrew, Luke, and Jude Thomas, followed by Thaddeus as one of the
Seventy, and Aggaeus, as a disciple of Thaddeus.
One problem with the lists in the Synoptics is that Simon
the Zealot and Judas Iscariot (the Sikar) are anarchronisms. Neither the Zealots nor the Sikari existed
until mid-1st century.
The Chosen Three
In early Christian
literature, the trio of Peter, James, and John were frequently a theme because
in three places in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
they appear singled out for special consideration. In all three gospels, they and they alone out
of “the Twelve” witness the Transfiguration and the raising of Jairus’
daughter. In Matthew and Mark,
they and they alone are called to watch with Jesus in the fictional Garden of
Gethsemane.
In these accounts, the
motif of Peter, James, and John derives from Paul’s listing of James and Cephas
and John in Galatians chapter 2, with the James in Paul’s list referred
to in the previous chapter as “the Lord’s brother. The mentions of the three special apostles in
the gospels is meant to distract from James the Just being “the Lord’s brother”
as the James in all of them is expressly noted as the brother of John and erase
him from the position of leadership he held.
Nazareth
The town of
Nazareth did not exist in the early 1st century. In fact, there is no independent mention of one
until the late 3rd century. Even in the early
5th century, Jerome wrote that Nazareth far from being a town was a mere
village.
The name Iesous
Nazaraios, or Isho Nasraya, does not mean “Jesus of Nazareth” but “Jesus the
Nazorean”. Somewhere down the line, a
translator screwed up.
The census in Luke
chapter 2
No Roman ruler ever
issued a decree for a census of “the whole world” (not too far off a term given
that at the time the empire took in 40% of the world’s population).
Publius Sulpicius Quirinius did conduct a census of the sub-province of
Iudaea which had just come under direct Roman rule. However, this did not involve hundreds and
thousands of families traveling in because their families had some tie there. In fact, it involved none of that as there
would be no point in counting nonresidents.
A resident of Galilaea, already counted under Herod Antipas, would not
have been required to travel from Capernaum (Isho’s most likely actual home) to
Bethlehem.
The census took place in 6 CE after Herod Archelaus was removed as
ethnarch and Iudaea came under direct Roman rule.
Divine sex change
For the Holy Spirit to beget Isho by the Virgin Mary, the Gentiles who
made this necessary required her to undergo a sex change. Yes, that’s right; in Judaism, the Ruach
ha-Kodesh (Holy Spirit) or Shekinah (Presence) represents the feminine aspect
of God.
Rape by power of authority
An archangel shows up in all its glory in the bedroom of a sixteen-year
old girl to tell her God is going to impregnate her without even asking her
opinion and we’re supposed to believe that Maryam’s is an act of consent? Please.
Fully human, fully divine
This is a case of Gentiles wanting to have their cake and eat it
too. If Isho was indeed Son of God by
birth through having been begotten by the Holy Spirit (after the necessary
divine sex change, of course), then he would have had only twenty-three
chromosomes. In which case, existence
would have been impossible.
Chromosomes
For Isho to have lived in this scenario, the female-turned-male Holy
Spirit would have had to create twenty-three chromosomes to match the
twenty-three donated by/taken from Maryam, a fact which undercuts the whole
“begotten not made” thing.
Adopted Son of David
Given that the artificial geneaologies in both Matthew and Luke
trace Isho’s lineage back to David ben Jesse through Joseph ben Jacob (in Matthew)
or Joseph ben Heli (in Luke) at the same time these works make claims of
a divine begetting, we can only assume they mean that Isho was a Son of David
by adoption.
Slaughter of the Holy Innocents
As murderous and
capricious as Herod the Great was, his depravity did not extend to mass murder
of toddlers, especially not in his own territories outside of war. Had he done so, he would have been brought to
Syria and sent to Rome, then removed from office.
The Baptism
All four gospels
originally began with the baptism of Isho Nasraya bar Maryam at the River
Jordan by John the Baptist. The material
about Isho’s birth and ancestry in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel
of Luke was added much later.
In addition,
various Early Church Fathers testify to the fact that in the earliest accounts
of all four canonical gospels, the words coming down from heaven were not,
“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased”, but “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”. Other authorities cite this from the Gospel
of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Nazarenes, both non-canonical
to any but the Jewish Christians for whom they were written, as well.
The second is a direct citation of Psalm 2:7, one of the chief
messianic verses of the Tanakh even for Jews of the first century. The line was altered when the idea of Isho
being divine as well as preexistent to his birth arose. Paul pushed Isho’s becoming “Son of God” even
further down the line by placing it at his resurrection.
In other words, Isho originally became Son of God by adoption, not
birth.
John the Baptist
Although the
Synoptic Gospels relate the beheading of John the Baptist during the lifetime
of Isho Nasraya, Josephus places it around the time of the war between Herod
Antipas, tetrarch of Galilaea and Peraea and Aretas IV, king of the Nabataeans,
which took place some time in 36 CE, six years after Isho’s crucifixion in 30
CE.
Isho the Galilaean
When the author of
the Gospel of John referred to the opponents of Jesus as “the Jews”, he
wasn’t being Judeaphobic, he was referring to Judeans.
Isho Nasraya bar
Maryam was not a Jew, which in first century Palestine meant an Israelite
resident in Iudaea, a ‘Judean’. Neither
Idumaeans nor Peraeans were Jews, even though they (for the most part)
practiced the Jewish religion (as a result of forced conversion). Lowest in status of the groups which did were
the Galilaeans, who descended from Judean exiles, Iturean Arab converts, and
dissidents of various kinds. To all four
ethnic groups, the Samaritans were ‘out caste’, untouchable.
That is the meaning
behind the Parable of the Workers.
Gentiles,
especially those outside of Palestine, and in particular in the Hellenistic
world, made no distinction between the four groups, and often lumped the
Samaritans in with the Jews. In fact,
Jews and Samaritans in the Diaspora oftern attended synagogue together.
Messiah
In Palestine and
Babylon, the popular expectation was not for one messiah, but four, often
collectively referred to as the Four Carpenters (or, less precisely, Craftsmen). This was based on the passage in the Tanakh
of Zechariah 1:18-21. These Four Carpenters
were Elijah, the Messiah ben Joseph (or Messiah ben Ephraim), the Messiah ben
David (or Messiah ben Judah), and the Righteous Priest (or Messiah ben Levi).
These Four Carpenters
were expected to arrive at different times throughout the year coinciding with
the major Israelite religious festivals.
Elijah was expected at Pesach-Matzot.
The Messiah ben Joseph/Ephraim was expected at Shavuot. The Messiah ben David/Judah and the Righteous
Priest/Messiah be Levi were expected together at Sukkot.
This is the
eschatological scheme which permeated the world in which Isho Nasraya grew up
and lived, worked, and attended synagogue.
Several features of
the various gospels demonstrate that a large part of their purpose was to show
that Isho Nasraya bar Maryam was the Messiah ben David.
By contrast, the
Jews (in the larger sense of those who practiced the religion) almost
universally looked for a single Messiah, with those in Alexandria especially
expecting the ‘Son of man’.
Two other schemes
for eschatological deliverence that were also widespread at the time in
Palestine were those of the Samaritans and of the Essenes. The Samaritans were (and still are as far as
I know) looking for the Taheb, or the “prophet like Moses”. The Essenes were looking for a Messiah of
Aaron and a Messiah of Israel, with the former the senior of the two, though
some Essenes expected a single Messiah of Aaron and Israel.
The gospels were
clearly written with the intent of proving that Isho Nasraya was the Messiah
ben David, though there are allusions linking him to various aspects of the
other Carpenters.
Pool of Bethesda
The five-sided pool
at which Isho is portrayed performing one of his healing miracles in the Gospel
of John was actually an Asclepion, or healing pool dedicated to the Greek
healing deity Asclepius. The problem is
that the Asclepion in Jerusalem was not built until the reign of Herod Agrippa
I as King of the Jews (41-44 CE), after Isho had been dead eleven to fourteen
years.
Chief festival, Palestine v.
Diaspora
Unquestionably the
most important of the three major feasts (Pesach-Matzot, Shavuot, Sukkot) of
the Jewish (and probably Samaritan) year in Palestine was Sukkot. Of the three, this was the only one for which
pilgrims in mass numbers really did flock to Jerusalem. Not only did the pilgrims, and some city
residents, spend the week in tents, but unlike other festivals Sukkot involved
lay attendence at and participation in festivities every day, some of which
lasted all night long. It was a huge
celebration.
Just as Jews of the
Diaspora differed in their messianic expectations, so too was the festival
which they held in highest esteem different.
To Jews of the Diaspora, especially those in the Hellenistic
Mediterranean world, the festival of Pesach was the chief of all. That is why Paul, a Roman citizen and native
of Tarsus in Cilicia of Anatolia, surrounded Isho Nasraya (or Iesous Chrestos
as he called him in his letters) in his writings with imagery of the Passover.
Palm Sunday
The ‘luvavim’
carried by the festival-goers at the time of Isho’s entry into Jerusalem with
his entourage are a feature of but one Jewish festival: Sukkot.
The ‘palms’ were actually four separate species: a palm branch, a willow branch, a
myrtle branch, and a citron fruit, called by the collective name ‘luvavim’
(literally, palms). The luvavim were
carried by the clergy (Levites especially) and the people in several ceremonies
throughout the festival.
The cries by the people of which the gospels all give
slightly different diversions come from Psalm 118, specifically 118:25-26: “Hosannha, we beg you, Yahuweh! Yahuweh, we beseech you, send us success. Blessed is he who comes in the name of
Yahuweh! We have blessed you out of
Yahweh’s house.” This couplet of verses
was used specifically for the Mussaf sacrifices, which immediately followed the
Shacharit sacrifice every day of the festival.
The luvavim were also carried during the procession from the
temple courtyard to the Pool of Siloam for the cohanim (priests) to get water
for the purification of the altar. This
procession began at dawn in the Women’s Court, at which the congregants had
been celebrating since the previous midnight.
This was something only done at Sukkot.
Hosannah, Adonai
Originally “Hosannah, Yahuweh”, this Hebrew phrase means,
“Save us, Lord”, and is used in the same way “Kyrie eleison” (literally, ‘Lord
have mercy’) was in Dionysan rites before being coopted by Christians.
The use of the phrase “Hosannah” permeated the rituals of
Sukkot in Jerusalem so thoroughly that one of its nicknames was the ‘Feast of
Hosannahs’. In fact, the seventh day of
Sukkot was, and still is, known as Hosannah Rabbah (‘Great Hosanna’).
Structure of Holy Week
In all four
gospels, the first day, traditionally known as Palm Sunday, is clearly a
sabbath, a day upon which no business would be conducted. Even though in the Synoptics, Palm Sunday is
five days before Pesach and six days before Matzot, Mark correctly treats
Palm Sunday as if it were a sabbath while Matthew and Luke do
not.
In the gospels, the
events of Holy Week and Easter Sunday take place over an eight-day span, which
lines up perfectly with Sukkot. The
first day is a sabbath, the seventh is Hosannah Rabbah, which is not a sabbath,
but Sukkot is followed immediately with the one-day festival of Shemini Atzeret
(literally the ‘eighth day of assembly’), which is a sabbath on its own.
In the first
century, before the destruction of the temple, Pesach-Matzot was also an
eight-day festival. Pesach and Matzot
were actually two separate festivals. In
the time of the temple, the Pesach sacrifice was performed at Mincha (3 pm) on
14 Nisan. The Paschal lamb was eaten
that evening, that of the sabbath which begins Matzot, but the actual Passover
sacrifice took place the day before.
With Matzot being a seven-day festival to the front of which Pesach was
attached, this makes it too an eight-day festival.
Despite this being
the case, Sukkot-Shemini Atzeret remains a better fit than Pesach-Matzot.
Traditionally, the
Holy Week of the Christian Church has Palm Sunday followed by Monday and
Tuesday on which not much special happens, then Spy Wednesday, Maundy Thursday,
Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.
Mark, the original of which is the oldest known gospel and which
therefore introduced the motifs of Sukkot into Holy Week, treats Palm Sunday as
a sabbath by not showing any money-changing taking place until the next
day. In Sukkot, the first day is indeed
a sabbath.
In the Didascalia
Apostolorum (c 230 CE), the week proceeds quite differently. Palm Sunday is still Palm Sunday and the
Cleansing of the Temple takes place on Monday.
But here Pesach takes place on Tuesday and Isho is arrested at the Mount
of Olives on Wednesday, tried before Pilatus on Thursday, and crucified on
Friday. For this to have been written
and promulgated, the traditional arrangement of Holy Week as we know could not
have been set at this time.
As a footnote, in John,
the day upon which Isho Nasraya was crucified is referred to as the Day of
Preparation, and many Christian sources assume that this means preparation for
Passover. In fact, every Friday then and
now is the Day of Preparation for the weekly Sabbath.
Why the move from Sukkot to
Pesach-Matzot
As I noted above,
Pesach was the premier feast of the Jews (and Samaritans) in the Diaspora,
unlike those of Palestine from whom Sukkot was most beloved. The story of Isho’s passion was easier to
sell to the Diaspora if framed in terminology and imagery with which they were most
familiar, and after the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, when the temple and the
city were destroyed, Pesach most likely became the dominant observance inside
Palestine too.
Give to Caesar
In both War of
the Jews and the later Antiquities of the Jews, Titus Flavius
Iosephus relates an account of a riot at a festival over Pontius Pilatus taking
money from the temple treasury to assist with the cost of building the new
aqueduct into the city.
At this time, the
temple precinct fell under the administrative authority of the Praefectus of
Iudaea, though day-to-day executive affairs were administated by the Kohen Gadol
(high priest) and other temple officials.
Under Roman law, therefore, Pilatus’ action were well within his
authority. In fact, not having done so
would have been judged remiss by his superiors.
Put in this context,
the exchange of Isho in which his opponents question him about paying taxes to
Rome and he answers, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”,
makes a whole lot more sense.
The gospels do
mention riots in the city around the time of the week of the Passion, and in Antiquities,
Iosephus follows the story of the riot with that of Isho’s crucifixion, the
proximity in the book suggesting that the two occurred at or close to the same
time.
Jesus before Pilatus
According to
Iosephus, a holy man named Jesus ben Ananias arrived in Jerusalem for Sukkot in
62 CE, loudly proclaiming the imminent destruction of the city. The priests and elders turned him over to the
procurator, Lucceius Albinus. Ben
Ananias refused to answer any questions, only crying out, “Woe to
Jerusalem!”. The procurator judged him
to be crazy but mostly harmless, so he had him flogged but then released.
Given that this independent account by Iosephus matches so
closely aspects of the trial of Isho in the gospels, especially in John, it’s
harder to make a case that these were not borrowed from the life of Jesus ben
Ananias that to make the case that they were.
Pilatus washing his hands
This was standard
at all condemnations, symbolizing that in following the law as he was bound to
do, the judge in question was innocent of the criminal’s blood.
Night court
This did not
happen, at least not under Pontius Pilatus, Roman praefectus of Iudaea. According to the account in the Didascalia
Apostolorum, Isho was tried at or soon after dawn. To do as the gospels suggest happened would
have been a gross violation of Roman law.
Jesus bar Abbas
Once again, had
this (offering two guilty criminals for one to be freed) happened it would have
been a gross violation of Roman law and dereliction of duty.
Reason for Isho’s execution
Terrorism and
political rebellion, plain and simple.
And under Roman law, however just or unjust, there is no doubt he was
guilty. The gospels themselves are all
witnesses to that plain truth, in describing Isho’s cleansing of the
temple. Since the temple lay under the
administrative authority of the Roman praefectus, an attack on it or anything
in its precincts was an attack on the authority of Rome.
The gospels refer
to the two men reportedly crucified on either side of Isho as “lestai”. The term literally means “bandits” but in the
first century CE referred to what today we call terrorists, and the fact that
Isho was crucified between them makes clear that was his charge also.
In 4 BCE, earlier
in the year when Herod the Great still lived, students of Judas Sepphoraeus and Matthias bar Margalus
cut down a Roman eagle Herod had had placed above the gate to the temple. Herod was not just King of the Jews, he was
also the Roman procurator for those territories under his rule. For the act of their students’ rebellion,
Herod found the two teachers guilty of sedition, for which they were crucified.
Down before dark
Successive Roman
administrations in Iudaea and other jurisdictions of Palestine removed executed
criminals before sundown no matter the day on which they were executed in
deference to the prohibition in the Torah against leaving an executed man in
public after dusk.
Quickness of death
Death from
crucifixion occurred for a variety of reasons, including cardiac rupture or
failure, hypovolemic shock, acidosis, arrhythmia, pulmonary embolism, sepsis,
dehydration, and animals, the last two depending on how long the torment
lasted. Asphyxiation, claimed by some to
be a result of crucifixion, was in fact not.
The reason for leg-breaking, as in the case of Isho’s fellow travelers,
in addition to the extra pain, was that it caused fat embolisms and killed
quicker. Several of these complications could
cause death within a few hours, contrary to some opinions stating that Isho
died too quickly.
In the
Alexandrian-type edition of Matthew 27:46-50 gives the following account
of the death of Isho: ‘And about three
o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is
calling for Elijah.” At once one of them
ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it
to him to drink. But the others said,
“Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And another took a spear and pierced his
side, and out came water and blood. Then
Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.’
As mentioned above,
the condemned were always taken down by sundown, so if they needed help dying
quicker in order for that to happen, it was given, and a spear in the side is
quick.
Blood and water
This is featured
only in the above-mentioned version of the Matthew account and in that
of the Gospel of John. It is yet
another allusion to Sukkot and Isho’s role as Messiah ben David, a statement
for which I’ll have to explain by detailing the Simchat Beit ha-Shoeivah and
the Nisuch ha-Mayim rituals of Sukkot.
Simchat Beit ha-Shoeivah
Hebrew for
‘Rejoicing at the Place of the Water-Drawing’, these festivities took place in
the Women’s Court at the temple, which indicates the participation of those not
normally allowed in Temple ceremonies in the Court of the Israelites, such as
women, lepers, and Nazarites.
For several hours,
everybody partied. No solemnity was allowed. Four giant menorah lit up the Court of Women,
the whole Temple Mount, and the entire city of Jerusalem. From descriptions, it sounds like Clark
Griswold’s Christmas lighting.
Accompanied by
lyres, harps, cymbals, and trumpets played by Levites, dancers danced and
whirled while holding torches in either hand.
People drank, ate, watched, sang, laughed. At various points in the night, Levites sang
the Songs of the Ascents (Psalms 120-134).
At cockcrow, two
priests keeping watch at the Nicanor Gate between the Court of Women and the
Court of Israelites would call out, “Our ancestors in this place turned their
backs on the altar of Yahuweh, and their faces to the east, worshipping the
Sun; but we turn to Yahuweh”.
Nisuch ha-Mayim
(Hebrew for
‘Pouring of the water’, this ceremony was unique to the Chol ha-Moed of Sukkot;
at no other time were burnt-offerings preceded by any libation but wine.)
After the shout
from the Nicanor Gate, priests, Levites, and people processed from the
Court of the Women atop the Temple Mount to the Pool of Siloam south of it,
which lay some six hundred meters from the base. Worshippers carried their luvavim and sang
the Lesser Hallel (Psalms 113-118; the Great Hallel is Psalm 136). After the high priest filled a pitcher with
water, about a quart of it, the whole crowd returned to the Temple.
As he entered the
gate of the Temple compound, the high priest would cry out, quoting Isaiah
12:3, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation!”. Upon arrival at the altar, he would take the
pitcher of water in one hand and a pitcher of wine in the other, then pour both
out over the altar simultaneously as a libation offering.
The Eighth Day
If these events
happened during Sukkot as I believe, then the final one that was interpreted by
Isho’s followers as his resurrection would have occurred on Shemini Atzeret, a
sabbath.
While in the
Mashriq and in Iran, the seven-day week was the rule, in the Roman calendar, a
week was eight days long; this may have been borrowed from the Etruscans, for
whom this was also the case. Thought
this remained the case for sometime in the early days of the Principate, over
time the official calendar adjusted to the practice of the majority in the
populous East.
Some Patristic
authors refer to Sunday as the Eight Day, which in a sense was accurate as well
as symbolic, since when the calendar was altered the eighth day in effect
merged with the first day.
According to the
UN-connected International Standardization Organization, Sunday is the seventh
day of the week, as is the case in most of Europe, Latin America, Asia, and
Africa.
