AN N EA 10W Lecture 16 (Wk 8)

In this lecture we taled about how the beginning of the early Islamic Jerusalem (638-1099) marked the decline of Rome and the rise of Persian (again). In 614, Jews are allowed back to the city for the 1st time since the Barhoka Revolt (not sure if I spell that correctly). In 628, Heraclius from the Byzantine retook Jerusalem and ordered a massacre of Jews. 10 years later, in 638, Caliph Umar retook Jerusalem and this is the official start of Jerusalem under Islamic rulers. Umar claimed Temple Mount for Islam and Jerusalem underwent a series of name changes (Aelia to “Bait Maqdis” to “al-Quds”). Temple Mount was renamed to Haran al-sharif (noble sanctuary). This is also the period of Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque. Before the Muslim began to pray toward Macca, they actually prayed toward Jerusalem at first. It was not until Muhammad received his revelation that Musalim began to pray toward Macca. While in Macca, people prayed toward the Kaaba (in Macca too).

The first Islamic dynasty is the Umayyad (638-750) with Abd al-Malik as the King. He built the Dome of the Rock in his attempt to redirect Pilgrimage from Macca to Jerusalem (for $). His son, Caliph Walid built the Al Aqsa Mosque (the farthest Mosque). The Umayyad period used religious tolerance to keep people from revolt and help the economy. The Dome of Rock was built by Christian and Byzantine architectures. This is because the Muslim wanted to show Christians that they are better. This is why the Dome looked like Christian church. The inscriptions on the Dome was about Muslim view toward Christianity and Jesus. They accepted the fact that Jesus is a great prophet but they reject the idea of Jesus as God or the son of God because this idea would be opposed to monotheism. Dome of the Rock, just like the Church of Holy Sepulcher, attracted different, old traditions: Muhammad’s last stop, place of final Judgment, etc. The Al-Aqsa Mosque became the “farthest Mosque” in the “Night Journey” (Qu’ran 17).

AN N EA 10W Lecture 15 (Wk 8)

In this lecture we learned about the Christianity since most Jews were banned from the city after the Bar-Kokhba revolt. Even though Rome is considered to the most important city of Western Christianity, Jerusalem still maintains its holiness. Part of the reason is because Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected in Jerusalem. Also Christianity was born out of Judaism and since the city is very important to Judaism, Jerusalem still need to maintain its holiness in order for Christianity to be legit. That is why the earliest Christian church is said to be born in Jerusalem. Moreover Jesus predicted the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem after he received the revelation.

Under Rome, the city is renamed to Aelia and became a Roman city. Back in Rome, during Constantine period (312-337), Christianity became the dominate religion but with many different beliefs. So Constantine set up the Council of Nicaea to unify this religion. This council created the Orthodoxy Christianity. Constantine unified Christianity to aid his political domination. So under Constantine, Christianity became a conquest religions.

Back to Jerusalem, Helena, Constantine’s Mom, came to the city in her attempt to “prove” Christianity. During her pilgrimage, she claimed to have a vision of the tomb of Jesus. Thus she tore down the temple of Venus to build the Church of Holy Sepulcher. This is why Helena is credited with the 1st Christian Pilgrimage. The Church of Holy Sepulcher then became a new magnet that attracted old traditions such as Tomb of Adam, the binding of Isaac, etc. But beside this Church, the Rome build another Church called the New Church that has lots of similarity w/ the Solomon’s Temple. This is an evidence of Justinia trying to apply old tradition (Solomon’s Temple) to Christianity.

AN N EA 10W Lecture 14 (Wk 7)

After Herod the Great’s death, his three sons took over the three parts of Israel. They are Archelaus (Judea and Samaria areas), Herod Antipas (Perea and Galille areas), and Herod Philip (Iturea and Trachonitis: far away from Jerusalem). In general they are all ineffective rulers and Roman eventually replaced them by Roman procurators. So Israel now is under direct Roman rule. But Roman is so insensitive to the Jewish religious practices and beliefs. As expected, revolt broke out. There were probably lots of revolt at that time, but there are only 2 big ones that we study: The Great Revolt (1st revolt) and the Bar-Kokhba revolt.

During the Great Revolt (66-70 CE), people made their own revolt coins as a image of authority and to raise the revolt spirit. However this revolt was not successful (of course since we have a 2nd revolt) and eventually led to the destruction of the temple in 73CE (the 9th of Ab again) by Titus. In the same year, the remaining revolt people suicide in Masada; thus ending the revolt. By the way, we know all of this from Josephus. But his account may contain biases since he works for the Roman in some sense. The destruction of temple brings a new cognitive dissonance to the Jewish people at that time. Also this destruction, like the first one in 586BCE, changes Judaism forever. Now because they don’t have a temple to make blood sacrifice, Judaism turned from being a sacrificial religion to a religion of the text: studying the Torah! Moreover, since they don’t have the temple to pray at, they are now allowed to pray everywhere!

The second revolt (132-135CE) is also a failure. After the revolt, Hadrian rebuilt the temple and convert it to a temple for the Rome. He then banished the Jews from Jerusalem except the 9th of Ab. During the revolt, Bar-Kokhba minted coins too, but there are lots of misspelling because Hebrew was almost dead at that time.

AN N EA 10W Lecture 13 (Wk 7)

The Hasmonean period was marked by the Maccabean Revolt led by Judas Maccabaeus.  The Jews, then,  regained their control of Jerusalem from Seleucids by 165 BCE. This is the last time the Jewish will rule Jerusalem, lasting only about a century.

However, once Hasmonean rulers tried to make themselves both King s and High Priest (and these Kings didn’t qualify and do a good job as Priests), conflicts broke out.Queen Salome Alexandra was the first and last Hasmonean “King”. After her death, her two sons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus, took over and infighting happened. Finally, the Roman with Pompey came in, helped Hyrcanus, and eventually took over Jerusalem in 63CE.

Herod took over Jerusalem from his father Idumean Antipater. He ruled over Jerusalem after his father’s death (from 37 to 4 BCE) . Even though people from Jerusalem hated him (since he worked for the Roman, those who destroyed the temple), Herod was still able prevent and put down lots of revolt due to his sensitiveness to the religious spirits of Jerusalem.  Also he was able to create enough jobs for everyone due to his massive building projects (mostly to honor himself).

Then we went on to talk about how the Hasmonean period is the period that Jesus is said to appear. Unfortunately,  there is no "real" archeological evidence regarding the existence of Jesus. There are lots of fake or misleading evidences such as the Boat and bone from someone named Jehohanan who got crucified.

AN N EA 10W Lecture 12 (Wk 6)

In this lecture we talked about how Jerusalem is the most important city to Jews (Judaism), the second important to Christian, since Jesus died there, and lastly it is the third important to Muslim. However, the city remains crucial to these three different religions.

We go on to talk about the primary source for the Hellenistic period comes from Josephus , the most important historian in this period. Although he was Jewish, he was forced to write favorably for the Romans making his account very subjective and biased. Sadly, he is the only one writing down the history of that time.

Alexander the Great, on the other hand,  is the Big Man in the start of this period because he almost conquered every conquerable land in his lifetime. He made his conquest of Palestine in 332 BCE  by defeating Darius at the Battle of Issus. However when he died his Kingdom was so large that it split up into four but we are only interested in two of these kingdowms: Ptolesmies and Selucid. It is during these two periods that Jerusalem underwent a complete Hellenization. Everything now turned in to Greek: language, culture, art, etc. We have lots of evidences of this Hellenization. But due to this brutally Hellenization that the “Maccabean Revolt” began and we now move to the Hasmonean Dynasty.

AN N EA 10W Lecture 11 (Wk 6)

In today's lecture we talked about Jerusalem under Persian's reign. Basically the Persian Period was from 539-333 BCE with biblical sources from: Book of Chronicles, Minor Prophets (Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi), Books of Ezra (Aramaic 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26) & Nehemiah, and Second Isaiah (ch 40-66). There are no non-biblical texts dealing directly with Jerusalem for this entire period. Everything else goes silent in regards to the  Persian Period. We then started talking a great deal regarding the Prophet Ezekiel’s vision. In Ezekiel 1, it talks about how Ezekiel had a vision of God as a mobile entity. Therefore a mobile throne of God where God is still around and mobile again. Instead of poles to carry the throne around, there are wheels, meaning that God is not tied to a particular place. This shows the changes people had about their views of God, after the exile.  And in Ezekiel 2 it talks about Ezekiel’s temple vision.

We later went on to talk about life when the Persian's took over from the Babylonians. King Cyrus of Persia is portrayed as a "liberator" allowing the Jews to go home to Jerusalem, the re-exile of Jews back from Babylon to Jerusalem. This action heavily influenced Jerusalem since now there was 3 camps of Jews. There were the folks who want to go back to Jerusalem, the folks who want to stay, and the folks that were left in Jerusalem during the Babylonian exile. Regardless, Cyrus is viewed by the Judean Exiles as a great deliverer, as a persian messiah, even though he is of no Jewish descent. In Isaiah, it states that it was the will of God to anoint Cyrus King. But the problem with this statement is that Cyrus is not of  Davidic line. Even if  he is a foreign king of God’s chosen deliverer, he is  still a non-Davidic King. From here it can be seen the two models of anointed lines, the high priest and the messiah, disappears.

We then go on to juxtapose Judaism vs Zoroastrianism (old Persian religion). Basically part of the bible was being composed by scribes that were inundated with Persian influence, redefining Judaism. For instance the first humans descended from the first couple Mashya (man) & Mashyana (woman). Like Moses Zoroaster gave commandments on a mountain. And in Zoroastrianism there is an evil counterpart. It is Ahriman/Angra Mainyu vs Satan (Zech 3:27). God then becomes a universal God of love and of goodness like Ahura Mazda. Back then God use to be accounted for the good and the bad like in Greek myths, but now God is the good one, and Satan is the bad one. And there also is a concept of existence of other divine Gods such as angels and Satan. 

AN N EA 10W Lecture 10 (Wk 5)

MIDTERM

AN N EA 10W Lecture 9 (Wk 5)

During this lecture we talked about the impact of the second Babylonian Exile during the 586 BCE, destroying the sacred temple in Jerusalem.  Babylonian not only destroyed Jerusalem, it took away all the people who had influence and exiled them, leaving only the lower class, the unskilled labor. Some people have theorized that because Josiah aided the Babylonians, he caused his own death and ironically, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, defeats Assyria and Egypt and besieges Judah setting Zedekiah on the throne. This Babylonian Exile is discussed further in 2 Kings 24-25. In the Chronicles, the reason that Josiah dies is because he helped out the evil people.

Moving on, we talked about the destruction of Jerusalem and how it effected the people through literary evidence. The temple is destroyed in 586 BCE and recorded in the bible in 2 Kings 25: 8-12. This destruction of Jerusalem meant that the promise to David that there will always be a King in Jerusalem forever on the throne, is gone. Because of this catastrophic event, there are two conclusions to the book of kings. One is the “Josianic” Conclusion, pre-exilic, and the “Exilic” Postscript, post-exilic. This is the first example of people truing to understand the broken promise and rationalizing what exactly is going on.

This catastrophe caused very different beliefs. What do you do when everything you have been told suddenly does not fit with reality or lived experience? Everything once taught contradicts experience. God promised that he will protect you, but now Babylonians wiped everything away. How do people respond to tragedy? Everything here on out is a reflection of the tragedies. One of the ways to deal with tragedies to lament like in Lamentations 1. Another way is to make excuses to come up with an explanation. For example, God only blesses those who are righteous, therefore the people in Jerusalem at that time must have been evil. Others just abandoned the faith or ignored it altogether. But a great deal of people tried to reconcile the two contradictory ideas and redefine the promise to David. This is where name theology comes in. Whether or not you obey the law and worship god the temple is not where God lives. Instead, the temple is where God's name is worshiped, where God's name resides. People of Jerusalem are using a logical way to make sense of the destruction of temple. Because temple is destroyed therefore makes no sense for God to dwell there. Deuteronomy 12 is the exilic  edited text, the writer knew the temple had been destroyed and reconciles God's promise to David by saying that God wants to build a temple where his name shall reside. 2 Samuel 7, a pre-exilic written before the temple was destroyed, says that God asks David to build a temple, a house of cedar for him. This is then an example of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling of holding 2 completely contradictory ideas at the same time. Trying to rationalize and explain why God would do this during the exile.