A_Nony_Mouse wrote:DCHindley wrote:You [DCH] need to learn to separate the facts which I use from the theory I have developed to explain more of the facts than any other theory I can find. By facts of course I mean evidence not argumentation or what someone says about a fact. I am only interested in the fact itself.
So, I need to be able to separate "facts" from your fiction? I didn't even know you had a theory, mainly because I don't read your weird ass posts.
(JOE Ant 13:255, 257-258) 255 ... After this [Hyrcanus I] took Samega, and the neighbouring places; and, besides these, Shechem and Gerizim, and the nation of the Cutheans, ... 257 Hyrcanus took also Dora and Marissa, cities of Idumea, and subdued all the Idumeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would submit to circumcision, and make use of the laws of the Jews; 258 and they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted to the right of circumcision, and of the rest of the Jewish ways of living; at which time, therefore, this befell them, that they were hereafter considered to be Jews.
(JOS Ant 13:257-258) 255 ... καὶ Σαμόγαν καὶ τὰ πλησίον εὐθὺς αἱρεῖ Σίκιμά τε πρὸς τούτοις καὶ Γαριζεὶν τό τε Κουθαίων γένος ... 257 Ὑρκανὸς δὲ καὶ τῆς Ἰδουμαίας αἱρεῖ πόλεις Ἄδωρα καὶ Μάρισαν καὶ ἅπαντας τοὺς Ἰδουμαίους ὑπὸ χεῖρα ποιησάμενος ἐπέτρεψεν αὐτοῖς μένειν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ εἰ περιτέμνοιντο τὰ αἰδοῖα καὶ τοῖς Ἰουδαίων νόμοις χρήσασθαι θέλοιεν 258 οἱ δὲ πόθῳ τῆς πατρίου γῆς καὶ τὴν περιτομὴν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην τοῦ βίου δίαιταν ὑπέμειναν τὴν αὐτὴν Ἰουδαίοις ποιήσασθαι κἀκείνοις αὐτοῖς χρόνος ὑπῆρχεν ὥστε εἶναι τὸ λοιπὸν Ἰουδαίους
Emil Schürer,
A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (First Division, Vol 1, 1890, pp. 279-280) Without troubling himself about [weak Syrian king] Demetrius II, he [Aristobulus I] began to seize upon considerable districts in the neighbourhood of Judea, to the east, to the north, and to the south. First of all he marched into the land east of the Jordan, and conquered Medaba after a six months' siege. Then he turned to the north, took Shechem and Mount Gerizim, subdued the Samaritans, and destroyed their temple. Finally, he went south, took the Idumean cities Adora and Marissa, and compelled the Idumeans to submit to circumcision, and to receive the Jewish law.
(JOE Ant 13:318-319) 318 [Aristobulus I] made war against Iturea, and added a great part of it to Judea, and compelled the inhabitants, if they would continue in that country, to be circumcised, and to live according to the Jewish laws. 319 ... Strabo bears witness, in the name of Timagenes; who says thus:--"This man [Aristobulus] was a person of candour, and very serviceable to the Jews; for he [successfully] added a country to them, and obtained a part of the nation of the Itureans for them, and bound them to them by the bond of their circumcision."
(JOS Ant 13:318-319) 318 δ᾽ ἐπισπένδω τοὐμὸν αἷμα τοῖς μιαιφονηθεῖσιν ταῦτ᾽ εἰπὼν ἐπαποθνήσκει τοῖς λόγοις βασιλεύσας ἐνιαυτόν χρηματίσας μὲν Φιλέλλην πολλὰ δ᾽ εὐεργετήσας τὴν πατρίδα πολεμήσας Ἰτουραίους καὶ πολλὴν αὐτῶν τῆς χώρας τῇ Ἰουδαίᾳ προσκτησάμενος ἀναγκάσας τε τοὺς ἐνοικοῦντας εἰ βούλονται μένειν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ περιτέμνεσθαι καὶ κατὰ τοὺς Ἰουδαίων νόμους ζῆν 319 ... καὶ Στράβων ἐκ τοῦ Τιμαγένους ὀνόματος λέγων οὕτως ἐπιεικής τε ἐγένετο οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ καὶ πολλὰ τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις χρήσιμος χώραν τε γὰρ αὐτοῖς προσεκτήσατο καὶ τὸ μέρος τοῦ τῶν Ἰτουραίων ἔθνους ᾠκειώσατο δεσμῷ συνάψας τῇ τῶν αἰδοίων περιτομῇ
Emil Schürer,
A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (First Division, Vol 1, 1890, pp. 293-294)[Aristobulus I] undertook a military expedition against the Itureans, conquered a large portion of their land, united that to Judea, and compelled the inhabitants to allow themselves to be circumcised and to live according to the Jewish law. The Itureans had their residence in Lebanon. As Josephus does not say that Aristobulus subdued "the Itureans," but only that he conquered a large portion of their country and judaized it and as Galilee had not hitherto belonged to the territory of the Jewish high priest, the conquests even of John Hyrcanus extending northwards only as far as Samaria and Scythopolis and as, yet again, the population of Galilee had been up to that time more Gentile than Jewish,—the conjecture has good grounds that the portion conquered by Aristobulus was mainly Galilee, and that the actual judaizing of Galilee was first carried out by him. In any case, he extended the Jewish power farther northward, as Hyrcanus had toward the south.
IMHO, Schürer has read a lot of his own opinions into the accounts of Josephus. However, the first quotation from Josephus says Hyrcanus I took Shechem (the Greek city) and Gerizim (the holy mountain of the Samaritans) before subjugating Idumea. Since he had not totally taken all Idumean territory, just two strongholds, but offered peace terms on condition that they accept Jewish law and circumcision, and they accepted this more or less willingly as they never reneged on the deal, it sounds as though they already were practicing their own form of circumcision and may have even practiced many tenets of the Law of the Jews. When his son Aristobulus I, probably completing plans laid out by Hyrcanus before his death, seized control of a large tract of land formerly controlled by the Iturean kingdom (with the capital in Chalcis), he offered them the same deal. That the Romans had appointed Herodian princes as the king of Chalcis (the former capital of the Iturean kingdom) suggests that they were significantly Judaized long after the one year reign of Aristobulus, so again, a more or less formal annexation of people with similar traditions and practices to Judeans.
If you research both Idumea and Iturea, you will find that both were regions marginalized by the Nabateans (Idumea) or Syria (Iturea). The inhabitants of both regions were commonly considered "Arabs" by the Greeks due to their semi-nomadic populations, although the Nabatean "Arabs" didn't think much of their Idumean subjects, and the Damascenes reached out to Nabatea for leadership rather than accept Iturean rulers when the Syrian kingdom collapsed into civil war in 85 BCE. Strabo's source, preserved only in Josephus, seems to attribute entirely to a sweet talking Aristobulus what occurred under Hyrcanus and only completed by Aristobulus.
Your favored simplistic theory turns these assimilations of peoples with similar traditions into "forced" conversions.
DCH