Fields of Blood – Karen Armstrong – Session 03

Chapter Notes:

Chapter 4 – The Hebrew Dilemma

· “From the very beginning, the Hebrew Bible strikes a different note from most of the texts we have considered so far. “

o “From the start, the Hebrew Bible condemns the violence at the heart of the agrarian state.”

o “Immediately after the murder, when Yahweh asks Cain, “Where is your brother, Abel?” he replies, “Am I my brother’s guardian?” Urban civilization denied that relationship with and responsibility for all other human beings that is embedded in human nature.”

o The bible is partly a people’s history, but like other societies, partly myth and legend.

o “This story began in about 1750 BCE, when Yahweh commanded Abraham, Israel’s ancestor, to turn his back on the agrarian society and culture of Mesopotamia and settle in Canaan, where he, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob would live as simple herdsmen.”

o “The archaeological record, however, does not confirm this story. There is no evidence of the mass destruction described in the book of Joshua and no indication of a powerful foreign invasion.”

· A new Hebrew origins theory is emerging in Archeology (other than the Exodus from Egypt).

o (cross reference PBS NOVA documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qalTJzk4kO0 111m 39s Buried Secrets of the Bible – PBS NOVA Documentary on the origins of the Hebrews.)

o “A network of simple villages stretched from lower Galilee in the north to Beersheba in the south. Many scholars believe that their inhabitants were the first Israelites.”

o “We have no record of what happened to wipe out the region’s empires and destroy the local economies. But by 1130 BCE, it was all over: one city-state after another collapsed.

o “There is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest that these cities were destroyed by a single conqueror.”

o “At a time of such political chaos, the Israelite peasants had a rare opportunity to make an exodus from these failing cities and establish an independent society, without fear of aristocratic retaliation. It seems that the highland villages already housed some eighty thousand people”.

o If these settlers were indeed the first Israelites, some must have been native to Canaan, though they may have been joined by migrants from the south who brought Yahweh, a god of the Sinai region, with them. Others—notably the tribe of Joseph—may even have come from Egypt. But those Canaanites who had lived under Egyptian rule in the coastal city-states of Palestine would also have felt that in a very real sense they had “come out of Egypt.”

o “The Bible acknowledges that Israel was made up of diverse peoples bound together in a covenant agreement, and its epic story suggests that the early Israelites had made a principled decision to turn their backs on the oppressive agrarian state. Their houses in the highland villages were modest and uniform, and there were no palaces or public buildings: this seems to have been an egalitarian society that may have reverted to tribal organization to create a social alternative to the conventionally stratified state.”

o “When they defected from the Canaanite city-states, Israelites had developed an ideology that directly countered the systemic violence of agrarian society.”

o “This was the Hebrew dilemma: Yahweh insisted that his people abandon the agrarian state, but time and again they found that they could not live without it. “

o “As a boy, Joseph—Jacob’s favorite son—had dreams of agrarian tyranny’”

· Modern reading of ancient society a factor.

o “Readers of the Pentateuch are often confused by the patriarchs’ ethics. None of them are particularly admirable characters: “

o “If we read them as political philosophy, things become clearer.”

o “what kind of leader is needed to create a viable egalitarian society in such a ruthless world.”

o “The book of Exodus depicts Egyptian imperialism as an extreme example of systemic oppression. “

o “Peaceful tactics were of no avail against the martial might of the state”.

o “he had brought into being a new nation that would provide an alternative to the aggression of imperial rule. “

o “earliest sources, dating from the eighth century BCE, do not mention the Ten Commandments being given to Moses on this occasion. Instead, they depict Moses and the elders of Israel experiencing a theophany on the summit of Sinai during which they “gazed upon God” and shared a sacred meal. “

· The Joshua Story – the violent conquering of Canaan.

o “Yet not only is there no archaeological evidence for this wholesale destruction, but the biblical text itself admits that for centuries Israelites coexisted with Canaanites and intermarried with them, and that large swaths of the country remained in Canaanite hands. “

o “But the Israelites were not monotheists at this date and would not begin to be so until the sixth century BCE. “

o “In the earliest strand of the conquest narratives, Joshua’s violence was associated with an ancient Canaanite custom called the “ban” (herem). Before a battle, a military leader would strike a deal with his god: if this deity undertook to give him the city, the commander promised to “devote” (HRM) all valuable loot to his temple and offer the conquered people to him in a human sacrifice. Joshua had made such a pact with Yahweh before attacking Jericho, and Yahweh responded by delivering the town to Israel in a spectacular miracle, causing its famous walls to collapse when the priests blew their rams’ horns.”

o “Ninth-century inscriptions discovered in Jordan and southern Arabia record conquests that follow this pattern to the letter. “

o “No nations in the Middle East seem to have cultivated the fiction of a conquest that made the land tabula rasa ["blank slate" ] for them. The narrative of the “ban,” therefore, was a literary trope that could not be read literally. Secular as well as religious conquerors would later develop similar fictions claiming that the territory they occupied was “unused” and “empty” until they took possession of it.”

· “Israelites were reluctant at first to establish a regular state”

o “If they were attacked by their neighbors, a leader or “judge” would rise up and mobilize the entire population against an attack.”

o “These tales are not held up for our edification; rather, they explore a political and religious quandary. Can our natural proclivity for violence be controlled in a community without a degree of coercion? It appears that the Israelites had won their freedom but lost their souls, and monarchy seemed the only way to restore order. “

o ““Give us a king to rule over us like the other nations.” Samuel responded with a remarkable critique of agrarian oppression, which listed the regular exploitation of every premodern civilization: these will be the rights of the king who is to reign over you. “

§ “He will take your sons and assign them to his chariotry and cavalry, and they will run in front of his chariot. “

§ “He will use them as leaders of a thousand and leaders of fifty; he will make them plough his ploughland and harvest his harvest and make his weapons of war and the gear for his chariots. “

§ “He will also take your daughters as perfumers, cooks and bakers. “

§ “He will take the best of your fields, of your vineyards and olive groves, and give them to his officials.… “

§ “He will take the best of your manservants and maidservants, of your cattle and your donkeys, and make them work for him. “

§ “He will tithe your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. “

§ “When that day comes, you will cry out on account of the king you have chosen for yourselves, but on that day Yahweh will not answer you.”

§ “Despite their dreams of freedom and equity, Israelites had discovered, time and again, that they could not survive without a strong state. … [and] understood that saints were not likely to be good rulers.”

· Bits from founding and Biblical stories.

o “David adopted the existing Jebusite administration, employed Jebusites in his bureaucracy, and took over the Jebusite standing army—a pragmatism that may have been more typical in Israel than Joshua’s alleged zealotry. “

o “But Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, was a Jebusite, and his name could also have derived from Shalem, the ancient deity of Jerusalem. “

o “There was clearly no sectarian intolerance in Israelite Jerusalem. “

o “At the temple’s entrance were two Canaanite standing stones (matzevoth) and a massive bronze basin, representing Yam, the sea monster fought by Baal, supported by twelve brazen oxen, common symbols of divinity and fertility.” [Comment – this is the model for a Mormon Baptismal Font].

o “There is no reference to his [David’s] short-lived empire in other sources,

o “Some biblical redactors tried to argue that Solomon’s empire failed because he had built shrines for the pagan gods of his foreign wives. But it is clear that the real problem was its structural violence, which offended deep-rooted Israelite principles. After Solomon’s death a delegation begged his son Rehoboam not to replicate his father’s “harsh tyranny.” When Rehoboam contemptuously refused, a mob attacked the manager of the corvée, and ten of the twelve tribes broke away from the empire to form the independent Kingdom of Israel.”

o “We know very little about its [Samaria’s] ideology, because the biblical editors favored the smaller and more isolated Kingdom of Judah. “

o “Like Baal, Yahweh was celebrated as a warrior god “

o “Israel and Judah were thus drawn inexorably into the local network of trade, diplomacy, and warfare.

o The prophets of Israel kept the old egalitarian ideals of Israel alive.

§ Cease to do evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, help the oppressed, be just to the orphan, and plead for the widow.

§ The dilemma was that this callowness was essential to the agrarian economy and had the kings of Israel and Judah fully implemented these compassionate policies, they would have been easy prey for Assyria.”

o “At the merest hint of dissent, the entire ruling class would be deported and replaced by people from other parts of his empire. “

o “King Manasseh (r. 687–642) was determined to keep on the right side of Assyria, and Judah enjoyed peace and prosperity during his long reign. Manasseh rebuilt rural shrines to Baal and brought an effigy of Asherah, the Canaanite mother goddess, into Yahweh’s temple; he also set up statues of the divine horses of the sun in the temple, which may have been emblems of Ashur. Few of Manasseh’s subjects objected since, as archaeologists have discovered, many of them had similar effigies in their own homes.”

· Reform

o “During the reign of Manasseh’s grandson Josiah (640–609), however, a group of prophets, priests, and scribes attempted a far-reaching reform. By this time, Assyria was in decline: “

o “Fear of annihilation and the experience of state violence often radicalize a religious tradition. “

o “During the construction work in the temple, the high priest, one of the leading reformers, made a momentous discovery: “I have found the book of the law [sefer torah] in the temple of Yahweh,” he announced. “

o “… until the eighth century reading and writing had little place in the religious life of Israel. “

o “The reformers believed that at this time of grave danger, they were speaking for Moses and put forward their own teachings in the speech they make Moses deliver, shortly before his death, in the book of Deuteronomy.”

o “You must lay them under ban. You must make no covenant with them nor show them any pity. You must not marry with them “

o “Because they had lost this “second law” recorded by Moses, Israelites had been ignorant of his command;”

o “It is difficult for us today to realize how strange this insistence on cultic exclusivity would have been in the seventh century BCE. Our reading of the Hebrew Bible has been influenced by two and a half thousand years of monotheistic teaching.

o “Despite the campaigns of such prophets as Elijah, who had urged the people to worship Yahweh alone, most of the population of the two kingdoms had never doubted the efficacy of such gods as Baal, Anat, or Asherah. “

o “There would be great resistance to monotheism. “

o “Josiah was completely convinced by the sefer torah and at once inaugurated a violent orgy of destruction, eradicating the cultic paraphernalia introduced by Manasseh, …”

o “This fanatical aggression was a new and tragic development, which excoriated sacred symbols that had been central to both the temple cult and the piety of individual Israelites. A tradition often develops a violent strain in a symbiotic relationship with an aggressive imperialism; fearing annihilation by an external foe, people attack an “enemy within.” The reformers now regarded the Canaanite cults that Israelites had long enjoyed as “detestable” and “loathsome”; they insisted that any Israelite who participated in them must be hunted down mercilessly. “

o “This was all so novel that in order to justify these innovations, the Deuteronomists literally had to rewrite history. They began a massive editorial revision of the texts in the royal archives that would one day become the Hebrew Bible, “

o “The climax of the Exodus story was no longer a theophany but the gift of the Ten Commandments and the sefer torah. “

o “This strident theology left an indelible trace on the Hebrew Bible; many of the writings so frequently quoted to prove the ineradicable aggression and intolerance of “monotheism” were either composed or recast by these reformers.”

o “Yet the Deuteronomist reform was never implemented. “

· Captivity & Return

o “597, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, deported eight thousand Judean aristocrats, soldiers, and skilled artisans. Ten years later he destroyed the temple, razed Jerusalem to the ground, and deported five thousand more Judeans, leaving only the lower classes in the devastated land.”

o “In 559 BCE … Cyrus was now the master of the largest empire the world had yet seen. At its fullest extent, it would control the whole of the eastern Mediterranean, from what is now Libya and Turkey in the west to Afghanistan in the east. “

§ “Why such enthusiasm for a foreign invader?”

§ “When Cyrus marched on Babylonia, these priests almost certainly helped him to write his victory speech …”

§ “Ritual and mythology, crucial as they were to kingship, did not always endorse state tyranny. Nabonidus was in effect deposed by the priestly establishment for his excessive violence and oppression.”

§ “Cyrus announced a wholly new policy, preserved in the Cyrus Cylinder, now in the British Museum. Cyrus, it claimed, had arrived in Babylonia as the harbinger of peace rather than of war; he had abolished the corvée, repatriated all the peoples who had been deported by Nebuchadnezzar, and promised to rebuild their national temples.”

§ NOTE: Isaiah has same phrases as Cyrus cylinder “Let every valley be filled in, every mountain laid low,” cried the prophet, clearly influenced by the Zoroastrian traditions of his Persian messiah, “let every cliff become a plain, and the ridges a valley.”

o “ According to the Bible, more than forty thousand of them chose to return to Judea with the liturgical utensils confiscated by Nebuchadnezzar, determined to rebuild Yahweh’s temple in the devastated city of Jerusalem. The Persians’ decision to allow the deportees to return home and rebuild their temples was enlightened and sensible:

§ But the Pax Persiana still depended on military force and taxes

§ Even the most peaceable empire required sustained military aggression and massive expropriation of resources from the populations it conquered. “

· Persian Influence

o “In the inscriptions of Darius I, who came to the Persian throne after the death of Cyrus’s son Cambyses in 522 BCE, we find a combination of three themes that would recur in the ideology of all successful empires:

§ a dualistic worldview that pits the good of empire against evildoers who oppose it;

§ a doctrine of election that sees the ruler as a divine agent;

§ and a mission to save the world.”

o Zoroastrian creation myth.

§ “… describes Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord who had appeared to Zoroaster, ordering the cosmos in four stages, creating successively earth, sky, humanity, and finally “happiness” (shiyati), which consisted of peace, security, truth, and abundant food.

§ … the final stage of creation: Darius would unite the world …

§ Once all lands had been subjugated, there would be universal peace and an era of frasha, “wonder.” “

o “… a religious tradition is never a single, unchanging essence - It is a template.”

o “The ethical vision of Zoroaster, victim of violence and theft on the Caucasian steppes, had been originally inspired by the shocking aggression of the Sanskrit raiders; now that vision had been used to sacralize organized martial violence and imperial extortion. “

o “Persian Judea became a temple state governed by a Jewish priestly aristocracy in the name of Persia. “

· Traces to the Hebrew Bible

o “The writings of these priestly aristocrats have been preserved in parts of the Pentateuch and the two books of Chronicles, which rewrote the strident history of the Deuteronomists and attempted to adapt ancient Israelite traditions to these new circumstances.

o “these scriptures reflect the exiles’ concern that everything stay in its proper place.”

o “priests insisted that to be “holy” (qaddosh) was to be “separate; other.”

o “Yet unlike the Deuteronomist scriptures, which had demonized the foreigner and yearned to eliminate him, these priestly texts, drawing on exactly the same stories and legends, had developed a remarkably inclusive vision.”

o “In the priestly Law of Freedom, therefore, nothing could be enslaved or owned, not even the land. Instead of seeking to exterminate the ger, the “resident alien,” as the Deuteronomists had insisted, the true Israelite must learn to love him: “If a stranger lives with you in your land do not molest him. You must treat him as one of your own people and love him as yourselves. For you were strangers in Egypt.”

o “… not an unrealistically utopian ideal but an ethic within everybody’s reach. “

o “… the priestly historians included moving stories of reconciliation.”

o “The most famous of these priestly writings is the creation story that opens the Hebrew Bible. The biblical redactors placed this priestly creation story before the earlier eighth-century tale of Yahweh’s creating a garden for Adam and Eve and their fall from grace. “

o “This priestly version extracted all the violence …

§ The priestly writers could not afford to be antiwar but they seem troubled by military violence.

§ “Now listen to me—release the prisoners you have taken of your brothers, for the fierce anger of Yahweh hangs over you.” “

o “These priests were probably monotheists; in Babylonia, paganism had lost its allure for the exiles. The prophet who had hailed Cyrus as the messiah also uttered the first fully monotheistic statement in the Bible: “Am I not Yahweh?” he makes the God of Israel demand repeatedly. “There is no other god beside me.” Yet the monotheism of these priests had not made them intolerant, bloodthirsty, or cruel; rather, the reverse is true.“

§ “These prophets may have been inspired by the new monotheism. It seems that a strong monarchy often generates the cult of a supreme deity,”

§ “… experiencing the strong rule of such monarchs as Nebuchadnezzar and Darius may have led to the desire to make Yahweh as powerful as they. It is a fine example of the “embeddedness” of religion and politics, “

Chapter 5 Jesus: Not of This World?

· The Pax Romana

o “Jesus of Nazareth was born in the reign of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus (r. 30 BCE—14 CE), when all the world was at peace. “

o The Pax Romana was Peace through Victory – “… the Pax Romana was enforced pitilessly. Rome’s fully professional army became the most efficient killing machine the world had ever seen.”

o “Scottish leader Calgacus “The uttermost parts of Britain are laid bare; there are no other tribes to come; nothing but sea and cliffs and more deadly Romans … To plunder, butcher and ravage—these things they falsely name empire.”

· The Maccabean Rebellion 167 BCE

o “Judas Maccabeus, had led a rebellion and managed not only to wrest Judea and Jerusalem from Seleucid control but even to establish a small empire by conquering Idumaea, Samaria, and Galilee.

o “ These events inspired a new apocalyptic spirituality without which it is impossible to understand the early Christian movement. “

o “The book of Daniel, a historical novella composed during the Maccabean wars,”

o “Once they had achieved imperial rule, alas, they became as cruel and tyrannical as the Seleucids. “

· Sectarian Judaism –

o “… all these sects set up systems of instruction that became the closest thing to an educational establishment in Jewish society. “

o The Essenes - “… on the cosmic plane, the children of light would soon defeat the sons of darkness …”

o The Pharisees – also committed to an exact and punctilious observance of the biblical law. “

o “The Romans ruled Palestine through the priestly aristocracy in Jerusalem, but they also created a puppet king, Herod …”

o “… the Pharisees sent a delegation to Rome requesting that the empire depose the regime. The following year the Roman warlord Pompey invaded Jerusalem, killing twelve thousand Jews …”

o “Indeed, so great was the esteem in which they were held that any Jew who hoped for a political career had to study civil law with the Pharisees. “

o “The Jews of Palestine were therefore ruled by two aristocracies: the Herodians and the Sadducees, the Jewish priestly nobility. Both collected taxes, so Jews bore a double tax burden. “

· “Once colonized, a people often depends heavily on their religious practices, over which they still have some control and which recall a time when they had the dignity of freedom. “

o “In the Jewish case, hostility toward their rulers tended to reach new heights during the important temple festivals, which spoke explosively to the Jews’ political subjugation: Passover, Pentecost, and the harvest festival of Weeks .”

· “This simmering discontent erupted in 4 BCE”

o “Jews conducted principled demonstrations that resorted to armed force only under extreme pressure. “

o “Archelaus panicked … the army… killed three thousand worshippers. … taxation rather than religion was the main issue. “

o “It took P. Quintilius Varus, governor of neighboring Syria, three years to restore the Pax Romana, during which he burned the Galilean city of Sepphoris to the ground, sacked the surrounding villages, and crucified two thousand rebels outside Jerusalem. “

o “But Archelaus’s rule was so cruel that Rome soon deposed him, and for the first time Judea was governed by a Roman prefect, supported by the Jewish priestly aristocracy …”

· Jewish Nonviolence

o “Typically peasants did not resort to violence. Their chief weapon was noncooperation …”

o “Most Roman governors were careful to avoid offending Jewish sensibilities, but in 26 CE Pontius Pilate ordered the troops in the Antonia fortress to raise military standards displaying the emperor’s portrait right next to the temple. At once a mob of peasants and townsfolk marched to Caesarea, and when Pilate refused to remove the standards, they simply lay motionless outside his residence for five days. When Pilate summoned them to the stadium, they found that they were surrounded by soldiers with drawn swords and fell to the ground again, crying that they would rather die than break their laws. They may have relied on divine intervention, but they also knew that Pilate would risk massive reprisals had he slaughtered them all. And they were right: the Roman governor had to admit defeat and take down the standards. “

o “These peasant communities may have voiced their opposition to Roman rule in terms of their egalitarian Jewish traditions, but they were neither crazed by their fervor nor violent or suicidal. Later popular movements failed because their leaders were less astute. “

· “Jesus was born into a society traumatized by violence. His life was framed by revolts. “

o “Galilee was governed by Herod Antipas…”

o “…artisans were often failed peasants.”

o “The crowds who thronged around Jesus in Galilee were hungry, distressed, and sick. In his parables we see a society split between the very rich and the very poor…”

o “Even though the gospels were written in an urban milieu decades after the events they describe, they still reflect the political aggression and cruelty of Roman Palestine. “

o “From the start, the gospels present Jesus as an alternative to the structural violence of imperial rule.”

o “Yet this “son of God” was born homeless and would soon become a refugee. “

· Jesus’ Mission

o “So-called spirit possession seems often linked with economic, sexual, or colonial oppression, when people feel taken over by an alien power they cannot control.”

o “The ruling class seems to have regarded Jesus’s exorcisms as politically provocative: they were the reason Antipas decided to take action against him.”

o “In Jesus’s mission, therefore, politics and religion were inextricable.”

o “Oppression, injustice, and exploitation had always been religiously charged issues in Israel. The idea that faith should not involve itself in such politics would have been as alien to Jesus as it had been to Confucius. “

· “It is not easy to assess Jesus’s attitude to violence…”

o “… he could be verbally abusive:

§ “Give back [apodote] to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

§ ““Beware of the scribes who like to walk about in long robes, to be greeted obsequiously in the market squares, to take the front seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets; these are the men who swallow the property of widows, while making a show of lengthy prayers.”

· “That Kingdom of God was at the heart of Jesus’s teaching.”

o “The poor were the only people who could be “blessed”, because anybody who benefited in any way from the systemic violence of imperial rule was implicated in their plight.”

o “Jesus and his closest companions threw in their lot with the most indigent peasants; they lived rough, itinerant lives, had nowhere to lay their heads, and depended on the support of Jesus’s more affluent disciples, such as Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary. “

o “The Greek verbs have political connotations of being “beaten down” by imperial predation. These people would have been suffering from the hard labor, poor sanitation, overcrowding, indebtedness, and anxiety commonly endured by the masses in agrarian society. Jesus’s kingdom challenged the cruelty of Roman Judea and Herodian Galilee by approximating more closely to God’s will—“on earth as it is in heaven.” “

o “Jesus’s followers must live as compassionately as God himself, giving generously to all and refraining from judgment and condemnation. “

· Paul –

o “Jesus had worked in rural Roman Palestine and had generally avoided the towns and cities. But Paul, a diaspora Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, who had not known Jesus, believed that he had been commissioned by God to bring the “good news” of the gospel to the gentile world, so he preached in the Greco-Roman cities along the major trade routes in Asia Minor, Greece, and Macedonia. This was a very different milieu: Paul’s converts could not beg for their bread but had to work for their living, “

o “… “

o “…the Greco-Roman city was essentially a religious community. Each city had its own divine patron, and civic pride, financial interest, and piety were intertwined…”

o “To belong to a city, therefore, was to worship its gods—though it was perfectly acceptable to worship other deities too. “

o “Paul’s gentile converts saw themselves as part of a new Israel. “

o “Rome was not an evil empire but the guarantor of order and stability, so Christians must pay their taxes…”

o “Early Christianity was not a private affair between the individual and God: people derived their faith in Jesus from the experience of living together in a close-knit, minority community that challenged the unequal distribution of wealth and power in stratified Roman society. “

o “Despite Paul’s best efforts, however, the early Christians would never fit easily into Greco-Roman society. They held aloof from the public celebrations and civic sacrifices that bound the city together and revered a man who had been executed by a Roman governor. “

o “The ideal of kenosis, “emptying,” would become crucial to Christian spirituality. “In your minds, you must be the same as Christ Jesus,” Paul told the Philippians. “There must be no competition among you, no conceit; but everybody is to be self-effacing. Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so that nobody thinks of his own interests first, but everybody thinks of other people’s interests instead.”88 Like the followers of Confucius and Buddha, Christians were cultivating ideals of reverence and selflessness that countered the aggressive self-assertion of the warrior aristocracy. “

o “Paul and the Synoptics had never regarded Jesus as God; the very idea would have horrified Paul who, before his conversion, had been an exceptionally punctilious Pharisee. They all used the term “Son of God” in the conventional Jewish sense: Jesus had been an ordinary human being commissioned by God with a special task. “

· Followers of John –

o “For these so-called Johannine Christians, having the correct view of Jesus seemed more important than working for the coming of the kingdom. They too had an ethic of love, but it was reserved only for loyal members of the group; they turned their backs on “the world,”

o “Their most extreme scripture was the book of Revelation, probably written while the Jews of Palestine were fighting a desperate war against the Roman Empire.”

o “Revelation was admitted to the Christian canon only with great difficulty, but it would be scanned eagerly in times of social unrest when people were yearning for a more just and equitable world. “

· The New Judaism after the destruction of Jerusalem –

o “…after Vespasian became emperor, his son Titus took over the siege of Jerusalem, forced the Zealots to capitulate, and on August 28, burned city and temple to the ground. “

o “Judaism owed its survival to a group of scholars led by Yohanan ben Zakkai, leader of the Pharisees, who transformed a faith based on temple worship into a religion of the book.”

o “In the coastal town of Yavneh, they began to compile three new scriptures: the Mishnah, completed around 200, and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, which reached their final form in the fifth and sixth centuries respectively.

o “They were not particularly peaceable men—they fought their scholarly battles fiercely—but they were pragmatists. They had learned that Jewish tradition could survive only if Jews learned to rely on spiritual rather than physical strength.”

o “Rome was a fact of life, and Jews must come to terms with it. The rabbis scoured their biblical and oral traditions to show that God had decreed Rome’s imperial power.”

o “They devised new rules forbidding Jews to bear arms on the Sabbath.”

· New attitudes to violence -

o “ They either ignored the bellicose passages of the Hebrew Bible or gave them a radically new interpretation. They called their exegetical method midrash—a word derived from darash: “to investigate; go in search of something.” The meaning of scripture was not, therefore, self-evident; it had to be ferreted out by diligent study…”

o “The rabbis felt free to argue with God, defy him, and even change the words of scripture to introduce a more compassionate reading. “

o “The true hero was no longer a warrior but a man of peace. “

o “If they remained quiet, God would not permit persecution, but if they disobeyed, they would, “like the hinds of the field,” be fair game for gentile violence. This abstruse piece of exegesis effectively put a brake on Jewish political action for over a millennium.

· “By the middle of the third century CE, the Roman Empire was in crisis. “

o “Rome was eventually saved by a military revolution, led by professional soldiers from the frontier region, which transformed the Roman army.120 Aristocrats no longer filled the top positions, the army doubled in size, and legions were broken up into smaller, more flexible detachments. A mobile cavalry force, the comitatus, supported the garrisons on the borders, and for the first time Roman citizens were taxed to finance the army. “

o “… tetrarchy (“rule of four”…”

· “The third-century crisis brought Christianity to the attention of the imperial authorities.”

o “But it was not customary for an agrarian ruling class to interfere with the religious lives of its subjects, and the empire had no standard policy of persecution.”

o “In 112, when Pliny, governor of Bithynia, asked the emperor Trajan how he should treat Christians who were brought before him, Trajan replied that there was no official procedure. Christians should not be actively hunted out, he advised, but if they came before the courts for some reason and refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, they should be executed for defying the imperial government.”

· The Growth of Early Christianity

o “Yet against all odds, by the third century Christianity had become a force to be reckoned with. We still do not really understand how this came about.”

o “… secret societies, not unlike the Church, were mushrooming throughout the empire. Like Christianity, many of these had originated in the eastern provinces, and they too required a special initiation, offered a new revelation, and demanded a conversion of life.”

o “Christianity was also beginning to appeal to merchants and artisans like Paul,”

o “The egalitarian ethic of Christianity made it popular with the lower classes and slaves.”

o “Women found the Church attractive, because the Christian scriptures instructed husbands to treat their wives considerately. “

o “Like Stoicism and Epicureanism, Christianity promised inner tranquillity, but its way of life could be followed by the poor and illiterate as well as by members of the aristocracy.”

o “One of the most cogent reasons for the Church’s success was its charitable work, which made it a strong presence in the cities.”

· Martyrdom –

o “It is important to explore the ideal of martyrdom, which has surfaced alarmingly in our own time and is now associated with violence and extremism. “

o “… there were only about ten years when the Roman authorities intensively pursued Christians.”

o “Valerian was the first emperor to target the Church specifically … Valerian had been troubled by the Church’s organizational strength rather than by its beliefs and rituals. “

o “Diocletian would find the Christians’ stubborn refusal to honor the gods increasingly intolerable.131 On February 23, 303, he demanded that the presumptuous basilica be demolished; the next day he outlawed Christian meetings and ordered the destruction of churches and the confiscation of Christian scriptures. All men, women, and children were required on pain of execution to gather in the empire’s public squares to sacrifice to the gods of Rome. “

o “It is difficult to know how many people died as a result. Christians were rarely pursued if they failed to show up for the sacrifice; many apostatized, and others found loopholes. “

o “The cult of the martyrs, however, became central to Christian piety…”

o “The Acts of the Martyrs claimed that these heroic deaths were miracles that manifested God’s presence because the martyrs seemed impervious to pain.”

o ““They suffered more than is possible for human beings to bear, and did not endure this by their own strength but by the grace of God,” explained Pope Gelasius”

o “Through these “friends of God,” Christians could claim respect and even superiority over pagan communities. “

o “Martyrdom would always be the protest of a minority, yet the violent deaths of the martyrs became a graphic demonstration of the structural violence and cruelty of the state. Martyrdom was and would always be a political as well as a religious choice.”

o “revolutionary suicide.”

· Early Church Authority

o “When Christians finally established a scriptural canon—between the fourth and sixth centuries—diverse visions were included side by side.”

o “Unfortunately, however, Christianity would develop a peculiar yearning for intellectual conformity that would not only prove to be unsustainable but that set it apart from other faith traditions. “

o “Other Christians, however, did not regard the empire as satanic; rather, they experienced a remarkable conversion to Rome. “

o “Constantine had a vision of a flaming cross in the sky embellished with the motto: “In this conquer!” “

o “That year [312 CE] he[Constantine] declared Christianity to be religio licita. “