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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | One of the things I have learned during the ISIS onslaught is the existence of a great many minority religious sects that have somehow managed to survive for hundreds, thousands of years in the face of orthodox Muslim governments and their predecessors (not something that would have been permitted in the the Christian west, I think). |
Like Jews in the Christian West?
However, let's assume your analysis is correct and ask ourselves why such minorities would survive within Islam and not survive within Christendom. There is one obvious reason for the disparity that immediately presents itself.
Under Islamic law, religious minorities must pay a special tax. This tax, while often characterized as oppressive, does afford an incentive to the Islamic government to preserve these minorities in sustainable numbers.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Good point about the Jews. And about the tax. Did any Christian governments tax Jews (as opposed to periodically robbing them)?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The Mullah Omar myth is a true "Dark Age" type mystery....we don't know when he was born, (not a clue), although he is supposed to live his whole life close to Kandahar and ...whoops we all missed his death..
We might have just a single picture of Mullah Omar or we might not... He was supposedly of abnormal height and had one eye. The eye was lost heroically.
Basically he was a rallying point. Everyone has a tale of him, so he must have existed, but we can't substantiate it. For years, the Taliban were able to pass off statements in the revered name of "Mullah Omar" yet.......we never really knew him.....
We know he existed as history tells us he did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Omar
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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In the section about Taxation of the Jews during the Roman Empire it states;
The Fiscus Judaicus (Latin: "Jewish tax") or "Temple Tax"..
...The tax was imposed after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE in place of the levy (or Tithe) payable by Jews towards the upkeep of the Temple. The amount levied was two denarii, equivalent to the one-half of a shekel that observant Jews had previously paid for the upkeep of the Temple of Jerusalem. The tax was to go instead to the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter |
Weird. So after they stopped paying levy to one temple they immediately started paying the exact same amount to another. This one a temple to Jupiter - Ju-pater; father of the Jews.
Then looking at the Wikipedia page for the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter that tells us that this temple was also periodically destroyed.
| The second building burnt down during the course of fighting on the hill on December 19, 69 CE |
So the Jewish Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE and the second Temple to Jupiter burnt down in 69 CE, and the Jews paid the exact same tithe to both.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Strewth!
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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| Boreades wrote: | | Is this Temple of Capitoline Jupiter the same as Hadrian's Temple? |
It's certainly a similar story. Hadrian's Temple was built on the ruins of the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The other destroyed and rebuilt in Rome.
I didn't realise it was such a contentious issue though. Not sure I want a knock on my door from Mossad anytime soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Denial
Luckily there's some evidence for the sacking of the Jerusalem Temple though ..only problem is it's in Rome, on the Arch of Titus.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Interesting that the Temple Denial page mentions Josephus. Presumably this is Titus Flavius Josephus.
He initially fought against the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War as head of Jewish forces in Galilee, until surrendering in 67 CE to Roman forces led by Vespasian after the six-week siege of Jotapata. Josephus claimed the Jewish Messianic prophecies that initiated the First Roman-Jewish War made reference to Vespasian becoming Emperor of Rome. In response Vespasian decided to keep Josephus as a slave and interpreter. After Vespasian became Emperor in 69 CE, he granted Josephus his freedom, at which time Josephus assumed the emperor's family name of Flavius.
Flavius Josephus fully defected to the Roman side and was granted Roman citizenship. He became an advisor and friend of Vespasian's son Titus, serving as his translator when Titus led the Siege of Jerusalem, which resulted—when the Jewish revolt did not surrender—in the city's destruction and the looting and destruction of Herod's Temple (Second Temple). |
The Wiki account of the Second Temple barely mentions Hadrian's Temple.
| The spoils of the Second Temple were taken to Rome and sculpture of the spoils appear on the Arch of Titus. According to an inscription on the Colosseum, Emperor Vespasian built the Collosseum with war spoils in 79 CE-possibly from the spoils of the Second Temple. |
| Although Jews continued to inhabit the destroyed city, Emperor Hadrian established a new city called Aelia Capitolina. At the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, many of the Jewish communities were massacred and Jews were banned from living inside Jerusalem. A pagan Roman temple was set up on the former site of Herod's Temple. |
But note the involvement of Vespasian. Who like Hadrian did a tour of duty in Britain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple#Herod.27s_Temple
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| N R Scott wrote: | | So the Jewish Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE and the second Temple to Jupiter burnt down in 69 CE, and the Jews paid the exact same tithe to both. |
BRILLIANT BRILLIANT BRILLIANT BRILLIANT!!!
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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With the myth and legends of King David and King Solomon, it's always seemed strange to me how in just one generation, we went from a lowly shepherd boy (David) throwing stones at the enemy to a son (Solomon) with huge wealth, palaces, fables mines etc.
(Still stranger things have happened in our own lifetimes, like Russians coming from nowhere and owning Premier League clubs worth millions. Or Leicester winning the league, or Iceland beating England at their own game. But I digress.)
It seems much more likely (to me) that Middle Eastern propaganda was at work. The Romans built the biggest temple, the revolting Jewish locals ousted the Romans and in spite knocked down the Roman temple(s). A couple of centuries later, it was the turn of the Jewish locals to be ousted by other invaders, who made the mistake of thinking the ruins they found were Jewish temples.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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By the way, I strongly encourage my learned colleagues to look up "The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives" by Thomas L. Thompson, Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Copenhagen.
Why?
| This book marked the culmination of a growing current of dissatisfaction in scholarly circles with the then-current consensus (or near-consensus) on the Patriarchal narratives. ... Thompson and Van Seters pointed out that, in fact, none of the archaeological evidence cited by the dominant scholars of the time (notably William F. Albright, E. A. Speiser, Cyrus Gordon, and Bright himself) actually provided irrefutable proof for the historicity of the Patriarchal narratives. "Not only has archaeology not proven a single event of the patriarchal traditions to be historical, it has not shown any of the traditions to be likely |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Historicity_of_the_Patriarchal_Narratives
This was major league revisionism, hand-grenade style.
He went on:
| His The Early History of the Israelite People From the Written and Archaeological Sources (1993) set out his argument that the biblical history was not reliable, and concludes: "The linguistic and literary reality of the biblical tradition is folkloristic in essence. The concept of a benei Israel ... is a reflection of no sociopolitical entity of the historical state of Israel of the Assyrian period...." In The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (U.S. title: The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel), he argued that the Old Testament was entirely, or almost entirely, a product of the period between the fifth and second centuries B.C. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_L._Thompson
See also "Biblical Minimalism"
Biblical minimalism, also known as the Copenhagen School because two of its most prominent figures taught at Copenhagen University, was a movement or trend in biblical scholarship that began in the 1990s with two main claims:
first, that the Bible cannot be considered reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel; and
second, that "Israel" itself is a problematic subject for historical study. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Minimalism
Some might say, Mick's account of forged Charters, but on an even grander scale.
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N R Scott
In: Middlesbrough
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On the Questions of the Day thread Wile shared the following interesting quote;
Gaius wrote:
Every people (populus) that is governed by statutes and customs (leges et mores) observes partly its own peculiar law and partly the common law of all mankind. That law which a people established for itself is peculiar to it and is called ius civile (civil law) as being the special law of that civitas (state), while the law that natural reason establishes among all mankind is followed by all peoples alike, and is called ius gentium (law of nations, or law of the world) as being the law observed by all mankind. |
I'd speculate that this difference between;
| ius civile (civil law) as being the special law of that civitas (state) |
and
| ius gentium (law of nations, or law of the world) ...the law that natural reason establishes among all mankind is followed by all peoples alike |
is the real and original distinction between Jews & Gentiles.
The Jews were people that lived in urban states and had written laws and statutes - hence the similarity between the words jus and Jews. It may also explain the similarity between words such as Jew and jury (also duty, judge, judicial, etc).
In actual history Jewish people are almost always found in towns and cities - sometimes walled cities. It would also go some way to explaining why Jewish people are so prevalent in the legal professions, and likewise why Jews are stereotypically seen as not the outdoors type.
The Gentiles were the people living naturally without the written law, the Gentium. The Uncivilised.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This has certain parallels with both Romans and Greeks and should be explored.
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