"The emperors Vespasian 970-79), Titus (79-81), Domitian (81-96). and Trajan (98-177) all ordered the Tenth Legion to hunt out and execute any Jew who claimed to be a descendant of King David."
- Was it fear or pride that compelled this?
"Jews and Christians were experiencing their God in remarkably similar ways. They respectively saw Jerusalem and Jesus as symbols of the sacred."
- I have always wondered why Judaism and Christianity seemed to be lumped together so easily at times, i.e. "The United States was founded upon Judeo-Christian values". Is this when the concept starts to take root?
"But like Matthew, John was extremely hostile to the Jews and shows them repeatedly rejecting Christ. Both evangelists laid the ground for the antagonism to the Jewish people that would lead to some of the most shameful incidents of Christian history."
- Does the phrase "different strokes for different folks" have any archaic translation during these times? Maybe I will never understand the evangelical conviction of "spreading the good word".
"In 118, the Roman general Publius Aelius Hadrianus became emperor, one of the ablest men who ever held this office. His ambition was not to extend the empire but to consolidate it. Hadrian wanted to build a strong and united polity, a brotherhood in which all citizens, regardless of their race and nationality, could feel at home."
- This actually sounds promising and progressive.
"When Hadrian arrived in Jerusalem in 130, he decided that his gift to the people of Judea would be a new city. The generous emperor would replace the unsightly ruin and desolate army base of Jerusalem with a modern metropolis called Aelia Capitolina...Hadrian's plan filled the Jewish people with horror."
- Okay, I retract my former statement. I totally feel the other side now.
"...fit in with everybody else in the Greco-Roman world. Circumcision, ... the teaching of Torah, and public Jewish meetings were all out-lawed. This was another blow to Jewish survival. Once these edicts had been passed, even the most moderate rabbis realized that another war with Rome was unavoidable."
- I just rolled my eyes after reading this passage. I think I am up to 105,269 eye rolls in this book. Am I right or am I right?
"Bar Koseba and his men were able to keep their rebellion going for three years. Eventually Hadrian had to send one of his very best generals, Sextus Julius, to Judea...the Romans took fifty fortresses, devasted 985 villages, and killed 580,000 Jewish soldiers...But the Jews had also been able to inflict such heavy casualties on the Romans...The Jews were no longer regarded as a miserable, defeated race...[and] won the grudging respect of Rome."
- Vive la résistance!
"In 313, ... Constantine declared that Christianity was one of the official religions of the Roman empire."
- Whoaaaaaaaa, that's a bold move. Constantine joined the 'dark side'. ;-)
CHAPTER 9
"Constantine...[became] sole ruler of the Roman world. Constantine always attributed his astonishing rise from obscurity to the God of the Christians, and though he had very little understanding of its theology and delayed his baptism until he was on his deathbed."
- 1) Oh please!
- 2) Why would God reward tyranny, war, and lust for godlike power--all of which Constantine embodies--to a man who isn't even baptized or has some grip of Christian theology?!
- 3) See above to 2).
"Yet he would not promote Christianity at the expense of other faiths. Constantine was a realist and knew that he could not afford to antagonize his pagan subjects."
- Such the politician.
"When they [Christians] looked at the resurrected tomb, Christians felt a shock of recognition and, for the first time, were impelled to root themselves in a physical place..."
- Christian physical connection to Jerusalem.
"Instead of looking through the human figure of Jesus to the divinity, as Eusebius had advised, they would want to see and touch the places associated with his humanity and find that Jesus the man was a powerful symbol of God's link with the world."
- New view of Jesus.
"The city [of Jerusalem] was not guilty because of the Crucifixion: the Cross was not a shame and a disgrace but the 'glory' and the 'crown' of Jerusalem....the [cross] was the physical death of Jesus as a crucial event in its own right. The cross was the ground of salvation, the basis of our faith, the end of sin."
- All I can think about is how watered-down Sunday School described the cross.
"Jesus had preached a religion of love and forgiveness, but now that Christians had come into power they were beginning to stigmatize Jews as the enemies of society, pushing them to the margins and making them outcasts as the Christians had once been."
- The first thought that popped in my head is one of my favorite quotes by President Lincoln: "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
Bottom line: you fail early Christians, a lot.
Just as a general comment, I like that you have a lot to say and really interact with the text- I respect that.
ReplyDeleteSpecifically, in response to the quote about Matthew and John(that they "laid the ground for the antagonism to the Jewish people that would lead to some of the most shameful incidents of Christian history"), I think that Armstrong is being totally unfair to be honest. I definitely agree that there has been much antagonism and many shameful incidents in Christian history, but to attribute those to the gospels is bogus. Nearly all of the people that Jesus heals, the people in the crowds of 5000 and 4000 that he fed(where Jesus says he has "compassion on the people), and all of his closest friends were Jewish. Matthew and John both describe these events and details, and Jesus obviously loves the Jewish people on the whole (and all people).
The people that Jesus takes a hard line with are the Pharisees, who he calls hypocrites and whitewashed tombs. But these are the leaders who are misrepresenting the faith. He says to them in Matthew 23:23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others." So yeah, Jesus has some harsh words, and predicts the destruction of the temple... but I don't follow Armstrong's logic that Matthew and John hated Jews or that their gospels were the basis for the atrocities against them. (Whoa, sorry that was longer and preachy-er than expected...)