Byzantine Jerusalem

We really didn't get into Byzantine Jerusalem till the very end. I think a better name for this class would be the Beginning of christian Jerusalem. It all starts with Constatine. There were Christians before Constatine, but Constatine was the people who really catalized the growth of Christianity, in mym opinion. In 313 he allowed Christianity to be a legal religion. In 324, Constatine held the Council of Nicaea to reconcile all the different sects of Christianity. As is today, there is a lot to argue about with Christianity. How much human is Jesus? How much God? What is the role of Judaism now? And all the different positions and levels of belief existed. If Constatine was going to use christianity to unite his empire, then he needed christianity to be united. So he helf this concil, and it is from this that the Trinity emerged- a theological concept to reconcile Jesus being fully man, and fully God. You could say that the Western view of Christ won out at this council over the Eastern view. the 7th cannon was also adapted which said that Aelia (Jerusalem) should have an honored position. This council was in many ways a move away from the teachings of Jesus. It also combines Church and State, a messy affair which is still attempted by many countries.

We also talked about Helena, who is the mother of Constatine. She was given the title of Augusta by Constatine, which means she mhad an important role in the governemtn. She went to Jerusalem to inquire about Jesus, and his life in Jerusalem. Mark Twain mocks the way she went about looknig for the cross, and the site were Jesus was crucified. but it was Helena who ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the new axis mundi for Christians. I think by establishing a different 'most holy spot' christians helped break with Jews even more. For instance, Christians for the most part stay away from the Temple Mount and stay closer to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. By not seeing Christians in Jew's holy spots, literally seeing, going to the Wall, and not seeing Christians, it reinforces a separation between Jews and Christians.

Jerusalem in Revolt

There were two big Jewish revolts against the Romans. the first was the Great revolt which lasted from 66-70 or 73 CE depending on how you look at it. during the Roman period there were sects of Judaism, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Esseenes, and the early Christians. The Sadducees were buddies with the Romans and believed that the Temple was essential to daily life and all that. Basically there were pro-Temple and pro-Roman. The Pharisees would evolve into the rabbis. They did not stress the importance of the Temple. they were also very disatisfied with the Roman rule but knew that any revolt they would lead would get squashed and the Jews would be worse offin the long fun. There were also religious zealots who stabbed people and were named after their knives, but I forgot their names. They believed in all out revolt. Then the Esseenes were sort of on the periphery. They were out of Jerusalem and were purifying themselves in the desert trying to make the messiah come and rescue everyone.

Basically the Pharisees were right. The revolt happened and the Jews were much worse off. The Temple was destroyed. But it gets worse.....

Before I get to that though, let me mention Josephus. Josephus was a Jewish general who was captured by the Romans. He convinced Titus that he was a prophet by telling him that one day he would be Emperor of Rome. Josephus had a lucky guess and was saved by the Romans. He was comissioned to write records on the Jewish wars and the revolts which have become one of the foundational texts about Jews, Judaism, and Jerusalem from this time period. Thanks Josephus. You really helped out us history folks!

OK, back to the timeline. 70-Temple destroyed. 73-Masada falls, the last stand against the Romans. A very interesting story. Fast forward to about 132, and we are in the Bar Kochba revolt. Bar Kochba was a genreal who peple thought was the messi9ah because he A) he had a bomb-ass name (Bar Kochba means son of a star, and he had Akiba who people thought was a prophet which is prophesized somewhere. It goes something like messiah son of David, and prophet Elijah in English), B) he was leading a revolt against the Romans, and C) people were desparate. But that got squashed too, and the results were much worse. I rememeber reading that loss of life ws much worse in the second revolt and in addition to that, Jews were banned from Jerusalem, and the land was renamed Philistina just to rub it in the Jews face that they lost. Philistina is like Philistine, David's ancient enemies. The modern word Palestine comes fromt this. So ya, bad stuff.

There's more...rise of the synogauge, Pontias Pilot, Herod stuff, coins stuff. But I must write the second post for today. Sorry for any typos.

Roman/Herodian/Jesus' Jerusalem

Today we talked about the origin of Roman Rule, Herod, and a little bit about Jesus.

Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II were fighting and then Pompey came in and was like, "Yo, I'm the Roman. Y'all are fighting. Now I'm in charge." So he besieged the city and annexed it for the Roman Empire. He also put in ethnarchs, or leaders of a certain ethnicity, which was Hyrcanus II because that is who Pompey intervened on the side of. He also installed an Idumean Antipater. The Idumeans were people who lived south of Judah and were forcibly converted to Judaism after the Hasmonean revolution. (I know it's not called a revolution but I'll call it that anyways.) So he installed one dude as the head of Jerusalem and then his sons, including Herod, for different cities around the area. In 43BCE, the antipater is murdered and Herod exacts revenge. In 37 he took control of Jerusalem starting his reign as Herod the Great.

So Herod did a lot of stuff. But I like the question of whether Herod was a good king or not? Its definitely a complicated question, because he did many great things but did them ultimately for himself and his glory and not for the people. He also was a paranoid freak. Professor Cargill said he had his wife killed but he failed to say that Herod also had her embalmed in honey, and then he had sex with her. Gross, I know. But that ultimately doesn't affect whether he was a good king of not. I would say that he was a good King because he is the one that we remember and talk about. We don't ever talked about any of the Hasmonean rulers except the first and the last.

I have to go write my paper for this class. I apologize for sleeping in class today. I had a quiz at 8 AM. The sleep conquered me.

Peace.

Hellenistic and Hasmonean Periods

We really flew by a couple hundred years of history in Jerusalem. These are some of my favorite periods, the second temple period in general is probably my favorite part of Jewish history. There is a great story about Alexander, that if we have more time, I think Professor Cargill would have said. It goes like this...When Alexander came to the gates of Jerusalem and was about to conquer the city, the high priest came out and said, "Hey Alexander, you can't enter this city. This is the city of the Lord and the Temple." Obviously Alexander could have squashed the city but choose to spare the city and never entered it. It was still a backwater compared to other places in Syria and Babylon and Persia. But because of the sympathy that Alexander showed, Alexander is the only name not in the Bible that a Jew can be called up to the Torah by. I think its pretty cool.

To the material. It goes like this. Alexander conquered in 332. He dies in 323. He divides his Kingdom into a couple parts. The Ptolmies, who ruled from Egypt were given Jerusalem. They rule until 201, when the Selucids defeat them. The Ptolmies were much nicer rulers than the Selucids. Then the Selucids rule until 164, which is when the Hasmonean/Maccabean revolt happens and the Jews kick out the Greeks and establish self rule in Israel for the last time till 1948. That is big. David ben Gurion once said that Jewish history stopped after the fall of the Hasmoneans and restarted when he founded the new state about 2000 years later. Pretty bold statement.

Also, it is so ridiculous that 70 rabbis could agree on the entire meaning on the Bible. I mean come on, its hard enough to find two rabbis that agree exactly on the meaning of one verse so the idea that 70 would give the same translation of the bible is actually comical if you think about it. Maybe you have to hang out with rabbis enough to really understand that. But it makes for a pretty impressive story, 70 rabbis producing the same translation. Haha, I like it.

I am about to get kicked out of the library. Jewish history is great. I love Jerusalem. We need more time to work on the paper!!! How bout an extension till the Tuesday of the next week? OK, awesome.

Joey

Persian Jerusalem

The Persian period of Jerusalem marks the beginning of the second temple period. After Judah was conquered Babylon, the Persians came through and conquered the Babylonians. King Cyrus issued an edict telling all the conquered people to return to their homelands. He even gave the Jews some money to reubild the Temple. But there were different groups of Jews who wanted different things. Some in Babylon wanted to stay in Babylon because they had been there for about 50 years, and had been accustomed to living there. Some wanted to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. And then there were also the Jews who stayed in Jerusalem who were like, hey what are you guys doing? We don't need a Temple and we were doing just fine without you.

There are no non-biblical accounts of Jerusalem in this time period. So in class today, we really focused on the Bible, particuarly Ezekial, Haggai, and Isaiah. Ezekial is the big dramatic, post apocolyptic messenger. A lot of what he describes and prophesizes from Bablyon we can't really see and make a rendering of. But he recreates the idea of a mobile God that can exist without a Temple. The recreation of this idea creates another problem. If God can exist without a Temple or shrine, why do we really need the Temple? It's part of the idea of cognitive dissonance. Conflicting ideas of God, mobility, the Temple, and exile.

Short post today. Got a lot to do!

Joey

End of Josiah till 586 BCE

Where to start???

We finished covering the Lachish letters, went over some more archaeological evidence of when the Bible could have been written/compiled, learned about Nebuchadnezzar, the death of of Josiah, the exile of the Jews, the destruction of the Temple, and discussed how people dealt with/reconciled the broken promise to David/destruction/all that. A lot of stuff.

Quick Note: I'm starting to realize how much emotion was involved with my learning of Jewish history when I learned this stuff in Israel. For instance, the teachers clearly wanted to illicit a feeling of sadness when discussing 586 BCE. Here, we approached it much more unemotionally, which I think is more appropriate given the context. That being said, I naturally feel some amount of sadness when I learn about the destruction of the Temple. The Babylonian exile is one of the most important events in Jewish history (probably around 4th, just running through it in my head).

So now to the material...The evidence of the Babylonian exile is crazy!! The fact that there are less archaeological sites, less luxury items, arrow heads, burn layers, its totally crazy and makes me love history. Based on what we went over in class, the Babylonian exile seems pretty undeniable. In 597 BCE, the Babylonians exiled the King from JErusalem and put in the puppet king, Zedekiah. But he soon rebelled and in 586, Nebuchadnezzar came back and was pissed off and totally sacked the entire city. He exiled everyone to Babylon and left only a few very poor laborers to basically tend the land. He destroyed the Temple, everything. The archaeological evidence that I was so excited about shows that before the destruction of the Temple, there were lots of luxury items and cities. But there are very few archaeological sites dated to after 586, and very few luxury items found after the destruction.

The question of what do the Jews do after the destruction of the Temple is a very good question. But I also think it is interesting if we are going to follow the Jews into Babylon because Jerusalem is now gone, or if somehow we are going to stay focused on the absence of Jerusalem. Luckily for the class there is only a few generation between the destruction and the decree of Cyrus that lets all conquered people return to their homeland. I won't spill the beans anymore.

But the reconciliation or cognitive dissonance is very interesting. Broken promises? No more land? And after learning more and seeing more of the psalms, I am totally convinced that they were written at different times by different authors. How else could they praise and exalt Jerusalem in one poem and then talk about weeping at the rivers of Babylon?

I kind of don't like learning about when the Bible could have been written because I do like to think that it was assembled at once and I feel that if we prove that it was assembled over time, then it loses some of its authority. But the pursuit of truth is what it is all about, even if I don't like it.

I think Professor Cargill emphasized that the destruction of the Temple is a major turning point in the history of Jerusalem and in the history of the Jewish people. Like I said before, when I learned this 2 years ago, it was much more emotional but Professor Cargill is smart to have the midterm at this point because 586, to me, is a major turning point. (And from my emotional side, the destruction of the Temple really really sucks. The broken promises to David and about the land are annoying, but the sacking of a city and the exile is what really sucks.)

I'm done for this post. It was kind of scattered. I really enjoy the class and like that we're getting more into history with hard evidence.

Hope you enjoyed it,

Joey