Then maybe you should just look up at the sources I gave beaglelady…there are historical sources…there is al
Hey @LM77 If Romans preserved local customs why did they appoint the Jewish high priest?
At least they allowed a High Priest to exist. It is interesting how I have read there was lots of competition to curry Rome’s favor and be the one appointed. Not a good look.
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A good question. The answers is pretty straight forward - power. Firstly, it shows who is in (political) power over Israel that they are no longer allowed to choose their own high priest. Second, it helps maintain power by ensuring that the High Priest who is appointed will be pro-Rome.
Absolutely. The very fact that the Israelite religious system was allowed to continue more or less ‘as was’ proves the point. That’s not to say that Romans didn’t tweak things to suit themselves, but by and large Roman rule was a super structure imposed over the top of existing political and religious systems.
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Nb: taking a break from the forum over Christmas, so please don’t read anything into the silence @beaglelady if I don’t reply. It’s not that I’m ignoring you, just that I’m not here :-). Hope you have a Merry Christmas.
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Is it proving any point about the census and people returning to their ancestral homelands? All I saw on this front was a non sequitur. Rome wanted taxes and no insurrection. They adopted a let them be attitude in some places but some appointed the high priest they wanted. Jews were fiercely monotheistic. Some issues weren’t worth the cost of war and they let it be ruled by Jewish people who answered to them (Herod the great and his Sons) but there were certainly conflicts and people that were just jerks. Caligula ordered a statue of himself built in the Jewish temple. Had he not died the Roman-Jewish war might have happened a bit earlier. Jews were mostly allowed to maintain their way of life and worship. What does this have to do with the census besides bad apologetics?
Vinnie
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My question was in regard to maintaining local customs. By appointing the high priest, the Romans were interfering with local customs in a big way. Think of how you would feel if the government forced you to hire only pastors it approved of, or even worse, female pastors.
For Rome, Palestine was important not in itself but because it lay between Syria and Egypt, two of Rome’s most valuable possessions. Rome had legions in both countries but not in Palestine. Roman imperial policy required that Palestine be loyal and peaceful so that it did not undermine Rome’s larger interests. That end was achieved for a long time by permitting Herod to remain king of Judaea (37–4 BCE) and allowing him a free hand in governing his kingdom, as long as the requirements of stability and loyalty were met.
above from britannica.com
(This does somewhat assist the earlier assertions made elsewhere that local customs were granted if that kept people happy and helped Rome to accomplish larger purposes)
And britannica also states that Jerusalem was ruled by Caiaphas and the council – in Jesus’ day. A site called newworldencyclopedia.org
said Caiaphas was appointed by Rome…this would go along with your idea that “some appointed the high priest they wanted.” Thus they “were no more than a religious functionary of the Romans…” per jewishvirtuallibrary.com
And since the high priesthood had been appointed, he also lost some esteem in the eyes of the more religious among the people.–this per chabad.org
The Roman-appointed prefect which came later – “relied on local leaders” such as Caiaphas to maintain order and see also that tributes were paid
So we’re supposed to believe that Rome ruled with a light touch?
The Nazis would appoint Jews in the ghettos to run some of the affairs there and even to pick which victims to send to the concentration camps. Sounds like a partnership.
Work in the Sonderkommando was physically exhausting and psychologically destructive. These prisoners were forbidden from warning the incoming victims of their fate and were forced to participate in the process of killing. The prisoners’ days were numbered. Members of the Sonderkommando were routinely shot. Of all the prisoners in the camp, they knew the most about the Nazi “Final Solution” and could not be permitted to survive to testify. They were usually kept completely apart from the rest of the prisoners, either in the gas chamber complex itself or in separate barracks.
–above from encyclopedia.ushmm.org
I don’t know how well this equivalence of yours would hold up, Beaglelady. A single Roman-appointed High Priest like Caiaphas had a nice life, nice home (by the standards of the time), and business connections that benefitted him. That is financially as well, and, no doubt, his family members. Lots of side businesses were needed to keep the temple in Jerusalem functioning… That is why the incident of Jesus clearing the Temple was the final straw for the High Priest and other top leaders. He was now challenging the corruption and financial skulduggery of their system.
But after their term(s) as High Priest ended, they were hardly sent to the gas chambers or put in front of a firing squad… Caiaphas lived to what was then a ripe old age ( about age 60) and his ashes put in a nice ossuary, which has been found.
Even this arrangement of the High Priest’s was hardly a partnership, but it did help maintain some semblance of normal life for the local populations while Rome went about its own business.
By contrast, the thousands of Jews in the Sonderkommando were victims, and did not live long themselves.
Interesting discussion, of course when things fell apart before the fall of Jerusalem in the Jewish War, it was the Zealots and Jewish factions that put the priests to the sword. Not a good time to be a priest.
Yeh, you are right, jpm…It was not a good time for much of anything, I suspect. That chabad site that I referenced – it did have a few interesting details. My tour guide in Israel also mentioned that there was a lot of corruption amongst the Temple priesthood in that time period, and the chabad site that I cited above made similar remarks…but their fate – in the late first century – came about as the end result of political turmoil amongst their co-religionists, and not due to the machinations of the Powers That Be in the region of that era.
And how far from the original topic have we travelled here! Did Jesus erroneously teach the flood was literal? I don’t remember when anyone was discussing that !!
MERRY CHRISTMAS
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And their military power and brutality had absolutely nothing to do with it. Say, if Romans were such benevolent rulers, why did Jews rebel against them multiple times? Why did they yearn to be free? Why were they looking for a redeemer? Why were they so ungrateful?
It’s not a direct equivalence, of course. But it shows that allowing limited local leadership doesn’t necessarily make your country DisneyWorld.
Beaglelady…you have asked the same question three times before. On the third request, I referred you to the previous two…and you said “Waaaaa!” The voluminous posts were too much reading for you…Learning things takes time…it also takes interest and a lot of searching. Online arguing on the internet is not a substitute for that. Take time to read actual books…old ones…check footnotes…read out of the way books that have not been dusted off in a while…go to archaeological conferences — they now happen on Zoom too! I know. I spent a long weekend this past May attending one online — through a reputable biblical archaeology agency (not evangelical by any means!)…Go to lectures, when they resume, ask questions…
…and goodness me! read the Bible. You might also learn some things by reading the writings of Jewish scholars…there are plenty of really good ones, including modern scholars who have written about Jesus of Nazareth.
…And yes, exercise some scepticism here…In 2005 I attended a biblical archaeology conference and listened to someone who made certain assertions…he had the whole audience eating out of the palm of his hand, laughing, rocking back and forth. The guy sitting next to me shouted “WHY would anyone take the Bible literally?” and I wondered too and spent some time – over the next few years —exploring this man’s assertions (while doing other things)…could not verify it, and I do mean I looked and reconsidered his assertion for five years…and then I revisited the CD from that old conference — and realized that what the speaker had put up in front of the classroom that day was NOT the same thing that he had formally submitted to that society for inclusion in their CD. So…I realized that he had his own issues. I do recall that he was a former MK/PK and described himself as an ex something or other…
so you don’t take the word of just one person…You likely want historians of Jewish customes (pre-Second Temple as well as Second Temple Judaism)…and guess what, Beaglelady?
You think that I have voluminous posts??!! WAIT till you read these other guys!
And by the way —SOME of those contemporary Jewish scholars I mentioned? they actually believe some of the things mentioned in the Gospels really could have happened…BASED on their own experience living in that region or “things I heard in the synagogue” at some time in their lives.
BUT it does mean you have to be willing to read voluminous things at times…Not just go online and argue (aka whine) endlessly.
OK—MERRY CHRISTMAS.
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No need to get nasty. I didn’t get an answer and that’s why I repeated my question.
You are conflating yourself with scholars. Such chutzpah. Your posts are actually rather vacuous.
In response to the OP - Jesus came to earth to live as a man not as God. He came to be not only our savior, but our example of how to image God. He willing laid aside His divine power and lived as one of us. The miracles he did were not Him tapping into His deity - they were Him living in perfect relationship with the Father that then allowed the Spirit to work through Him. Therefore, His knowledge was always limited to everyone else’s unless something was supernaturally revealed to Him by the Father. He didn’t use His omniscience to know more than everyone else.
His beliefs about the OT would have been shaped by His own education within the 1st c. ANE culture. He would have understood the story of the flood from a theological, cultural, and literary context, and not from some omniscient, divine knowledge outside what any other 1st c Jew what have had. Which means that Him knowing in a divine way whether the flood were local or global from a scientific POV wouldn’t have been in the picture and He probably wouldn’t have cared…
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That is interesting, JohnnyMac. I actually agree with you overall, although I would wonder, just generally, about the issue of His limitations. There is reality to that. (He did not know when His Second Coming will occur.) And then there was Jesus’ statement to one inquirer. He told this man that when the young man was sitting uder a fig tree, Jesus had seen him sitting there. And it was impressive enough, evidently. The individual knew that Jesus was not physically present while he was sitting under this tree…and there was the woman at the well who was astonished that Jesus knew so much about her —that was her later assertion to her neighbors – yet she had never laid eyes on Him before she ventured to the well that day.
Agreed…Jesus had some limitations – though not so great that He could not explain to Nicodemus something Nicodemus (a great and important individual in Temple circles of that era) that there was something missing or lacking in his theology. He (Nicodemus not Jesus) needed to be born again. or that He was not able to cast out demons, etc…
OK … all for now – and a great set of remarks. MERRY CHRISTMAS
Earlier you made reference to Bailey who made the claim it was normal for pregnant women to make 90 mile trips while about to give birth. I asked if you had a more precise reference. I am wondering if you missed that comment. I have his work and I am trying to find where he talks about this.
Or did you see that in another source? Either way I would like to track it down.
Thanks!
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You said it all much more concisely than I did. Well put.
Do you think it would have bothered Jesus if the flood wasn’t local OR global? Meaning that it didn’t happen at all?
Vinnie
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