11 to the Romans, it was an inconsequential speck
ON THE IMPERIAL MAP, A CITY THE WORDY STATESMAN CICERO DISMISSSED AS "A HOLE IN THE CORNER!" BUT TO THE JEWS THIS WAS THE NAVEL OF THE WORLD, THE AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE! There was no city more unique, more holy, more venerable in all the world than YERUSHALAYIM?
The purple vineyards whose vines twisted & crawled across the level plains, the well-tilled fields & viridescent orchards bursting with almond & fig and olive trees, the green beds of papyrus floating lazily along the Jordan River - the Jews not only knew ànd deeply loved every feature of this consecrated land, they laid claim to all of it!
Everything from the farmsteads of Galilee to the low-lying hills of Samaria and the far outskirts of Idumea, where the bible says the accursed cities of Sodom & Gomorrah once stood, was given 'by G d' to the Jews, though in fact the Jews ruled none of it, not even Jerusalem, where the true god was worshipped.
This city that the Lord had clothed in splendor & glory & placed, as the prophet Ezekiel (Yechezkel) declared, "in the center of all nations" - eternal seat of God's kingdom on earth - was, at the dawn of the first century CE, just a minor province, and a vexing one at that, at the far corner of the mighty Roman Empire! It is not that Jerusalem was unaccustomed to invasion & occupation!
Despite its exalted status in the hearts of the Jews, the truth is that Jerusalem was little more than a trifle to be passed among a suc-cession of kings and emperors who took turns plundering and despoiling this small sacred city on their way to far grander ambitions & greater expectations? In 586 BCE the Babylonians - masters of Mesopotamia - rampaged through Judea, razing both Jerusalem and its Temple to the ground!
These Babylonians were conquered by the persians, who allowed the Jews to return to their beloved city and re-build their Temple, nòt because they considered Jerusalem an irrelevant backwater of little interest or concern to an empire that stret-ched the length of Central Asia (though prophet Isaiah (Yeshayahu) would thank this Persian King CYRUS by anointing him messiah). The Persian Empire, & Jerusalem with it, fell to the armies of Alexander the Great, whose descendents imbued the city & its inhabitants with Greek culture ànd ideas!!
Upon Alex's untimely death in 323 BCE, Jerusalem was passed as spoils to the Ptolemaic dynasty & ruled from distant Aegypt, though only briefly! In 198 BCE, the city was wrested from Ptolemaic control by the Seleucid king Antiochus the Great, whose son Antiochus Epiphaned fancied himself god incarnate & strove to put an end once & for all to that 'worship of the Jewish deity' in Jerusalem.
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it? Strange people those violent hairy Kalashnikov barbarians!!!
The purple vineyards whose vines twisted & crawled across the level plains, the well-tilled fields & viridescent orchards bursting with almond & fig and olive trees, the green beds of papyrus floating lazily along the Jordan River - the Jews not only knew ànd deeply loved every feature of this consecrated land, they laid claim to all of it!
Everything from the farmsteads of Galilee to the low-lying hills of Samaria and the far outskirts of Idumea, where the bible says the accursed cities of Sodom & Gomorrah once stood, was given 'by G d' to the Jews, though in fact the Jews ruled none of it, not even Jerusalem, where the true god was worshipped.
This city that the Lord had clothed in splendor & glory & placed, as the prophet Ezekiel (Yechezkel) declared, "in the center of all nations" - eternal seat of God's kingdom on earth - was, at the dawn of the first century CE, just a minor province, and a vexing one at that, at the far corner of the mighty Roman Empire! It is not that Jerusalem was unaccustomed to invasion & occupation!
Despite its exalted status in the hearts of the Jews, the truth is that Jerusalem was little more than a trifle to be passed among a suc-cession of kings and emperors who took turns plundering and despoiling this small sacred city on their way to far grander ambitions & greater expectations? In 586 BCE the Babylonians - masters of Mesopotamia - rampaged through Judea, razing both Jerusalem and its Temple to the ground!
These Babylonians were conquered by the persians, who allowed the Jews to return to their beloved city and re-build their Temple, nòt because they considered Jerusalem an irrelevant backwater of little interest or concern to an empire that stret-ched the length of Central Asia (though prophet Isaiah (Yeshayahu) would thank this Persian King CYRUS by anointing him messiah). The Persian Empire, & Jerusalem with it, fell to the armies of Alexander the Great, whose descendents imbued the city & its inhabitants with Greek culture ànd ideas!!
Upon Alex's untimely death in 323 BCE, Jerusalem was passed as spoils to the Ptolemaic dynasty & ruled from distant Aegypt, though only briefly! In 198 BCE, the city was wrested from Ptolemaic control by the Seleucid king Antiochus the Great, whose son Antiochus Epiphaned fancied himself god incarnate & strove to put an end once & for all to that 'worship of the Jewish deity' in Jerusalem.
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it? Strange people those violent hairy Kalashnikov barbarians!!!
16 nov 2015 - bewerkt op 18 nov 2015
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