The Strange Humility Displayed on the Coins of Agrippa II

[spin]

Unfortunately it appears necessary to repeat that the citations from Wars and Antiquities are contained in the reference.

As I said, you have the responsibility to check the data and, on verification of their significance, you have what you are sorely lacking, ie citable evidence for your assertions.

One can reasonably conclude from the destruction of their temple the Mad Dog was not all that happy with their religion at the time.

As long as you keep using stupid terminology in your posts, people will tend to ignore you.

So far as I aware the archaeology of the Gezerim temple has not revealed which god or gods were worshiped there.

The archaeology deals with verifying the event of destruction at Gerizim at the time of John Hyrcanus, which could indirectly support a more general claim by giving definite opportunity.

But you are generally missing out on understanding what you need to do to get your notions out of your head enough for them to have meaning for others and lessen their appearance of being the rabid rantings of a racist. Generally nobody cares about the opinions of unknown individuals. You have to up your game or else you remain uncommunicative.

[DCHindley]

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

[A_Nony_Mouse]

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.

Then this post of yours, however long, is not a response to anything I have posted.

[spin]

I think it's time to cut the cord.

[beowulf]

Were the Idumeans forcibly converted? This short video presents the Jewish view.

Rabbi Berel Wein, 5000 years of Jewish history, one video clip at a time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsPZGdQG ... 7766E8EC2E

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Were the Idumeans forcibly converted? This short video presents the Jewish view.

Rabbi Berel Wein, 5000 years of Jewish history, one video clip at a time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsPZGdQG ... 7766E8EC2E

Are weekend shule lessons for children by video clip appropriate to this discussion? The only source of his information on this subject is Josephus. He adds things and changes things not found in Josephus. Herod, herodian not hasmonean, "brought in" the Romans under Pompey. Rabbis who are not found in history until after the 1st c. AD. There is more.

This is telling a story to convey the religiously correct view of history not history. It is quite common among those who do not have disciplined thinking. Might as well ask a priest for a history of the Inquisition.

The elephant in the room being ridden by an 800 lb gorilla is how Idumaea, all Israelites since shortly after Joshua and up to the close of the OT, came to be otherwise. Along with the Idumaeans the Galileans and Samaritans ceasing to be Israelites of the OT.

Also interesting to me is the silence between this forced conversion and Herod the Idumaean later converting to Judaism to appease his father in law a high priest. Forced but not everyone from the important families converted? Relapsed conversion?

The problem is we have no idea what their religions were prior to conversion. There were only two external influences between those two times, Persian and Greek, neither of which even had the concept of conversion and none of their temples found in the region.

[beowulf]

Go away

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Go away

Excuse me sir but this is a discussion of ancient jewish texts. Why is it not reasonable to point out a religion teacher is spouting nonsense about such texts? What is a video by a religion teacher doing here in the first place?

[DCHindley]

Were the Idumeans forcibly converted? This short video presents the Jewish view.

Rabbi Berel Wein, 5000 years of Jewish history, one video clip at a time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsPZGdQG ... 7766E8EC2E

That would be a modern Jewish POV of a Rabbi. Josephus says that after the Idumeans accepted circumcision and observance of Jewish law, "they were hereafter considered to be Jews." I do not see Josephus questioning their commitment. In fact, they became allied with the Zealot party during the 1st century rebellion against Rome, suggesting their faith was in some ways was "zealous" or why would the Zealots invite them into the city. The plan was discovered before they arrived and the High Priests closed the city gates, fearing their fanaticism more than any impurity in their Jewish credentials. See Jewish War book 4.

This, BTW, is the setting in which the chief priest Jesus, next in rank to Ananus, gave his speech on the temple wall to try and dissuade the Idumeans from pushing the conflict beyond the point where the Jewish people could sue for peace terms with the Romans. This rebuff of their offer to help their brothers pursue the revolution pretty much pissed them off. The Zealots made a sortie and managed to open the gates, and the Zealots and Idumeans rounded up and killed all the members of the high priestly aristocracy they could find, including Ananus and Jesus, flinging their dead bodies over the city wall into the valley of Gehenna and forbade anyone to try to bury them. FWIW, the execution of Ananus and ignoble treatment of his dead body is the event that Josephus said was the cause of the eventual destruction of the city, something which Origen somehow twisted around to mean he meant James the brother of Jesus in Ant 20:200.

There were some Jews, though, such as the Hasmonean prince Antigonus, who considered Herod a "half-Jew" (ἡμιιουδαίῳ, Ant 14:403) and thus unfit to be king of the Judeans. Naturally, Antigonus felt the kingship should rightfully be his on account of him being "out of the [Judean] kind," (ἐκ τοῦ γένους).

But then there was Agrippa I. Per Schürer, "at the Feast of Tabernacles in a.d. 41, according to the old custom, he read the Book of Deuteronomy, and in the passage, "Thou mayest not set a stranger over thee that is not thy brother" (Deut. xvii. 15), he burst forth in tears, because be felt himself referred to in it. Then cried out the people to him, "Be not grieved, Agrippa! Thou art our brother! Thou art our brother!" (1890, First Div, Book II, pg 157). The source given is Mishna, Sota vii. 8. Neusner's translation has:

Agrippa the King stood up and received it [the scroll of the Law] and read it standing up [instead of sitting down to read it as was usual], and sages praised him on that account. And when he came to the verse, You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother (Dt. 17:15), his tears ran down from his eyes. They said to him, “Do not be afraid, Agrippa, you are our brother, you are our brother, you are our brother!”

So I guess a lot of the negative connotation in the term Idumean is due to polemics, not a matter of Jewish law, in which converst are to be treated as full Jews.

DCH

[DCHindley]

Then this post of yours, however long, is not a response to anything I have posted.

Ahem ... I was responding to the following post (the first from you in this thread):

Celebrating the victory over the Judeans in coinage sounds exactly like what a Herodian would do.

Go to War of the Jews by Josephus. The Judeans conquered the Idumaeans and forced them on pain of death or banishment to adopt the rituals and taboos of their Yahu cult. The Herods were Idumaeans. Their involvement with the Judean tyrants and "religion" was not voluntary.

When reading Josephus ignore every assumption you might have from the Septuagint as none of them apply to the real history recounted by Josephus. The Judeans even conquered and forced the Galileans to adopt the Yahu cult. Whatever story the NT is telling it is in a backdrop of the conquest and forced conversion and rule by the tyrant priests of Yahu. Obviously Jesus would have hated them. Jesus was a Galilean.

What the heck do you think folks have been asking you to flesh out for about 3 pages?

DCH