Tuesday, December 17, 2019

On the Maccabees and Bar Kochba



 Image result for bar kokhba"

 
by
 
Damien F. Mackey
 
 
“… your conclusion: “Judas the Galilean” who “appeared in the days of the census”, according to Gamaliel, may just be that required link between the Maccabees and the census of Luke 2." seems "minimalistic" after many findings here and there.
What are historical implications of your findings?
 
A Reader
 

This particular correspondent has written in full, commencing with reference to my article:
 
Maccabees need to be greatly lowered on the time scale
 
https://www.academia.edu/36414256/Maccabees_need_to_be_greatly_lowered_on_the_time_scale
 
 
Hi Damien,

I read your article on Maccabees, which does record several interesting literary parallels.

But your conclusion: “Judas the Galilean” who “appeared in the days of the census”, according to Gamaliel, may just be that required link between the Maccabees and the census of Luke 2." seems "minimalistic" after many findings here and there. What are historical implications of your findings?

That Maccabees did not exist as well as Bar-Kochba? That the only historical character was Judah Ha-Galili mentioned in Acts? That all Books of Maccabees are of the 1st century CE?

But Josephus, born in 37 CE and who claimed descent from Maccabees, lived not far from this time - why did he contribute to the confusion?

And why Bar-Kochba (or bar-Koziba as per Talmud) is mentioned at all? Why Sephoris is Modiin? You must prove you know Hebrew when you talk about Jewish history by finding a common etymology of two different words.

Talmud is not just "Jewish legends" as you wrote. It is important collection of historical facts. In my article about Encounter, I show that Talmud is more trustworthy than e.g., Josephus who was prong to "edit" his sources when needed.

The Second Temple of Herod was of marble. The one built by Zerubavel - of wood. Which "unworthy notion" do I create here?

….

PS As for Elijah I have an opinion that he was not an "angel" but was simply murdered by Elisha.

PSS I may agree that Haman is a purely mythological figure and many could be his prototype.
….
 
 
 
 
Damien Mackey replies:
 
….
You are like various people I have encountered over the years who read one or more of my articles and then criticise me for things that I have never actually written or thought. "... a thing which I never ... spoke of, nor did it ever enter my mind," (Jer. 19:5).

Maccabees DID exist, as well as Bar Kochba. (The dating/era just needs to be corrected) - see e.g. my article:

"A New Timetable for the Nativity of Jesus Christ"
https://www.academia.edu/36672214/A_New_Timetable_for_the_Nativity_of_Jesus_Christ
 
Gamaliel's Judas WAS Judas Maccabeus, but Gamaliel gives an appalling description of the great man as if he were a mere flash in the pan. Nor any mention by G. of Judas's mighty brothers after him, Jonathan and Simon (who, incidentally, is marvellously described in Sirach 50:1-21).

Sepphoris as Modein ("declarers") is a highly tentative connection (no name likeness claimed here). Logically, however, if Judas the Galilean were Judas Maccabeus whose ancestral home was Modein, then Modein might well be Sepphoris, the base for Judas the Galilean.

After all, archaeologists cannot find the elaborate Maccabean tomb (I Maccabees 13:27-3) at the presumed 'Modein' near Tel Aviv.

Re Zerubbabel's Temple of Yahweh: "'The glory of this present House will be greater than the glory of the former House',” said the Lord" (Haggai 2:9).

You have turned it into a log cabin.

"Haman ... a purely mythological figure"?
I prefer the legends of the Jews that accord him historical reality, as a Jew. He was a long-lived King of Judah.

Damien.

Friday, December 13, 2019

An academic exchange regarding Hadrian and the Bar Kochba Revolt


 Image result for simon bar kokhba"

 
by
 
Damien F. Mackey
 
 
“But if the Temple is indeed depicted on the Bar Kochba coins (e.g., as a national symbol) then there is a way to check your hypothesis - "our" Bar Kochba could depict only magnificent Herod's Temple, while "your" Bar Kochba - only the previous one, a puny hut”.

Canadian Reader’s comment
 
 
Canadian reader:
 
…. Is your paper [not referenced by this reader] academic? Much of what you write is known. See e.g., this paper which can be also found on Academia:
Cheers ....
 
Damien Mackey:
But then you're quite wrong in writing that: "Much of what you write is known".
Who else today, but I, writes about Epiphanes as Hadrian (supposed to be some 300 years apart)?
Or who else argues that there was no Second Jewish Revolt after the First one?
….
 
Canadian reader:
 
Damien, I am missing something.
 
….
>The so-called Second Jewish Revolt is actually, rather, the revolt of the Maccabees (e.g. Simon) during the reign of Epiphanes.
 
Do you mean there was no Bar-Kochba revolt?
….
 
Maccabees 4 is of late origin. What's the point arguing from that? It could have been written after 135.
 
The usual nomenclature is the First revolt of 66-70 and Second of 132-135. Are you saying one of them was never happen?
….

Damien Mackey:
 
Absolutely … I am saying that the 'Second' Revolt did not - no, could not - have happened as there was nothing left to destroy after 70 AD, with the city and Temple burned to the ground and the people either killed or taken into captivity.

How could the Jews have launched a massive war of resistance not so very long after that!
Hadrian, who Jewish legend has in place of Antiochus Epiphanes (because Hadrian WAS Antiochus IV), was not a contemporary of a later revolt, but of an earlier one, the Maccabean revolt.


That is why the coins of Simon Bar Kochba (presumably Simon Maccabee) have the Temple of Yahweh represented on one side. What would have been the point of that if the Temple was no longer standing?
….
 
Canadian reader:
 
Well, do you read Hebrew, Damien? Just for a record.
 
Jewish history does not claim Bar- Kochba operated from Jerusalem but rather from the small fortified cities like Beitar conducting a partisan war.

But if the Temple is indeed depicted on the Bar Kochba coins (e.g., as a national symbol) then there is a way to check your hypothesis - "our" Bar Kochba could depict only magnificent Herod's Temple, while "your" Bar Kochba - only the previous one, a puny hut. ….
 
Damien Mackey:
 
Yes … I have studied Hebrew at University level and won a Jewish prize for it.

If Bar Kochba was Simon Maccabee, as I am maintaining, then Jewish history (Maccabees 1 and 2) has he and his brothers), perhaps based in Modein, operating all over the land.

I know of only two Temples of Yahweh: (i) that of Solomon, and (ii) that of the era of the Persians (Cyrus and Darius). See e.g. my article:
 
“‘… there shall not be left one stone upon another’. How to explain Jerusalem today?”
 
My best wishes,
Damien.
 
 


Isabella of Castile saintly or satanic? Part Two: A “second Joan of Arc”


Image result for queen isabella"


 
by
 
Damien F. Mackey
 
 
“Joan [of Arc]'s life was being reconceived, reengineered,
as an acceptable role a woman could play in warfare”.
 
Kirstin Downey
 
 
Around and around it goes. Joan of Arc was widely regarded as having been a “second Judith”. See e.g. my article:
 
Judith of Bethulia and Joan of Arc
 
 
in which I wrote, for instance:
 
Donald Spoto in Joan. The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint (Harper, 2007) has a chapter five on Joan of Arc that he entitles “The New Deborah”. And Joan has also been described as a “second Judith”. Both Deborah and Judith were celebrated Old Testament women who had provided military assistance to Israel. ….
 
And the enigmatic Queen Isabella of Castile, variously described as being “a cruel villain” (Lisa J. Yarde) and a candidate for beatification:
 
Isabella the Catholic: Spain’s Joan of Arc”
 
She pounced upon her advantage with all the energy of an awakening genius. Tireless, seemingly ubiquitous, she was almost constantly on horseback, going from one end of the kingdom to the other, making speeches, holding conferences, sitting up all night dictating letters to her secretaries, holding court all morning to sentence a few thieves and murderers to be hanged, riding a hundred miles or two, over cold mountain passes to plead with some lukewarm nobleman for five hundred soldiers. She knew and understood the word NECESSITY. She did not yet know the meaning of the word IMPOSSIBLE. All things were possible to God, and God was on her side. If she suffered from certain physical miseries, that was only to be expected; the work had to be done, it was necessary. Wherever she went the common people cheered her….
….
Moved to tears by her exhortations, the people believed her words, because it was obvious that she herself believed them with the irresistible sincerity of a child. Thanks to her skill…the end of June saw a considerable mobilization of hidalgos and the proletariat at several points. Isabel herself took command of several thousand men at Toledo, rode among them in armor, like Jeanne d’Arc; gave commands, organized, exhorted. ….
 
Or was Queen Isabella, perhaps, more of ‘an armchair warrior’ who read about Joan of Arc?
 
Isabella, a self-taught Latin speaker who made sure her four daughters and one son were properly educated by Italian humanists, kept the story of Joan of Arc on her bookshelf. She was no frontline warrior herself – as a traditionalist, she saw that as man’s work – but she enjoyed the challenges of warfare and became her own army’s quartermaster-general and armourer, plotting campaigns alongside Ferdinand. She built up a contingent of artillery so powerful that it turned the art of medieval warfare on its head. Thick castle walls, previously a guarantee of safety, crumbled before her cannon. ….
 
Kirstin Downey has also, in her book Isabella: The Warrior Queen – that I am currently reading – recognised Queen Isabella as being somewhat in the mould of (or moulded by teachers to be) Joan of Arc: “The goal of those circulating these stories may have been to influence Isabella and bring her to see herself as a second Joan of Arc”.
Firstly, in a review of her book we read:
 
Her realization that Isabella’s “meteoric rise to power” occurred at a moment in history when women seldom wielded monarchical authority provided an additional inspiration for this work, whereas her apparent admiration for the queen’s equestrian skills and reported presence on various battlefields seemingly contributed to Downey’s decision to label Isabella a “warrior queen,” Spain’s equivalent of France’s legendary Joan of Arc.
 

 
‘Isabella: The Warrior Queen’ by Kirstin Downey (Nan A. Talese)
 
Otherwise, Downey’s Isabella is pious, a loyal and forgiving wife, and a devoted and loving mother. But the author takes issue — and this is the central theme of the book — with the tendency of historians, “blinded by their own sexisim,” to portray Isabella merely as Ferdinand’s sidekick. Instead Downey represents Ferdinand as a corrupt, feckless ruler more interested in attending to his libido than to the business of state, and Isabella as the living embodiment of the medieval tradition of the “ideal prince.”
 
Kirstin Downey herself has written about Isabella (pp. 40-42):
 
Fascinating news came from France when Isabella was about five. Europe was engaged in an intense reevaluation of the role of Joan of Arc, the French teenager who had organized her countrymen around a religious banner to eject a foreign invader.
…. Joan's experience and sacrifice was a story that many men and women of a spiritual bent found mesmerizing in these last days of the medieval era. People everywhere debated what role God had played in helping Joan achieve her signal victories.
….
Some of the people who were educating Isabella had been much taken with Joan and her military successes. Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, one of the clerics associated with the Castilian court, had been living in France during Joan's meteoric career and was a fervent admirer of hers. Gonzalo Chacón, head of their household staff and the husband of Isabella's governess, shared his recollections of how Isabella's father had welcomed Joan's envoys with great respect. He carried about with him a letter purportedly from Joan herself and displayed it like a holy relic. He is believed to have been the author who wrote about a character like Joan in an anonymous chronicle, saying that God alone had inspired her. …. Some versions of that chronicle, the book known as La Poncella de Francia, were explicitly dedicated to Princess Isabella. In this version of the tale, the young woman called La Poncella did not die but rode off happily into the sunset. ….
 
Some of the people around Isabella may have been presenting Joan of Arc's life as an ideal that Isabella could emulate, as a “heaven-sentwoman who could “save the realm” from an outside invader. …. Joan's life was being reconceived, reengineered, as an acceptable role a woman could play in warfare. The goal of those circulating these stories may have been to influence Isabella and bring her to see herself as a second Joan of Arc. In any case, whether the idea was impressed upon her or she came up with it herself, it found fertile ground in Isabella's imagination, because she already had a tendency to view herself as something of martyr for a cause and she had the kind of romantic temperament that appreciated people who made great sacrifices in pursuit of a common good. Moreover, she had a deep and fervent belief in miracles and signs from God. Soon she would seek out people to work with her who viewed the world in the same way. ….
 
 
 

Monday, December 2, 2019

Constantine ‘the Great’ and Judas Maccabeus





Constantine the Great

 
by
 
Damien F. Mackey
 
 
 
 
“And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory 
over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius”.
 
Paul Stephenson
 
 
 
 
Some of the Greek (Seleucid) history, conventionally dated to the last several BC centuries, appears to have been projected (appropriated) into a fabricated Roman imperial history of the first several AD centuries.
Most notably, in this regard, is the supposed Second Jewish Revolt against emperor Hadrian’s Rome, which - on closer examination - turns out to have been the Maccabean Jewish revolt against Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, of whom Hadrian is “a mirror image”. See e.g. my series:
 
Antiochus 'Epiphanes' and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: "… a mirror image
beginning with:
 
 
For more on this, see:
 
 
 
and
and
 
Judas Maccabeus and the downfall of Gog
 
 
Now, last night (2nd December, 2019), as I was reading through a text-like book on Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor (The Overlook Press, NY, 2010), written by Paul Stephenson, I was struck by the similarities between the Dyarchy (Greek δι- "twice" and αρχια, "rule") - which later became the Tetrarchy (Greek τετραρχία) of the four emperors - on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the Diadochoi following on from Alexander the Great. Concerning the latter, we read (The Jerome Biblical Commentary, 1968, 75:103): “With Alexander’s death, the leadership of several successors (Diadochoi) was ineffectual, and finally a fourfold division of the empire took place”.
Compare the Roman Tetrarchy with the “fourfold division” of Alexander of Macedon’s empire.
Added to this was the parallel factor of the ‘Great Persecution’ against Christians (c. 300 AD, conventional dating), and, of course, the infamous persecution of the Jews by Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’.
 
And I have already pointed to similarities between one of the four Roman emperors, of the time of Constantine, Galerius, and Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’:
 
King Herod ‘the Great’, Sulla, and Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’. Part Two: Add to the mix Gaius Maximianus Galerius
 
 
But these are the sorts of similarities of which Paul Stephenson (author of the book on Constantine) is also aware (on p. 128 below he uses the phrase “the remarkable coincidences”).
 
P. 109:
 
Lactantius’ On the Deaths of the Persecutors is the best and fullest account of the period 303-13 and this is indispensable. But it is also an angry screed, with no known model in Greek or Latin literature, nor in Christian apologetic. Not only did Lactantius delight in the misfortune and demise of the persecuting emperors, he also attributed them to the intervention of the god of the Christians, defending the interest of the faithful. Such an approach rejected the very premise on which martyrs had accepted death at the hands of their persecutors: that their god did not meddle in earthly affairs to bring misfortune upon Roman emperors. This was the first step in articulating a new Christian triumphalist rhetoric, which we shall explore more fully in later chapters.
In doing so, Lactantius drew on an Old Testament model, the Second Book of Maccabees, which still forms an accepted part of the Orthodox canon. Thus, the opening refrain of each text thanks God for punishing the wicked, and the agonizing death of Galerius mirrors that of Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Maccabees 9). And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius.
 
P. 127
 
Lactantius took great pleasure relating [Galerius’] death as divine punishment for his persecutions, describing his repulsive symptoms and the failure of pagan doctors and prayers to heal him.
 
Here I (Damien Mackey) will take the description from:
 
“And now when Galerius was in the eighteenth year of his reign, God struck him with an incurable disease. A malignant ulcer formed itself in the secret parts and spread by degree. The physicians attempted to eradicate it… But the sore, after having been skimmed over, broke again; a vein burst, and the blood flowed in such quantity as to endanger his life… The physicians had to undertake their operations anew, and at length they cauterized the wound… He grew emaciated, pallid, and feeble, and the bleeding then stanched. The ulcer began to be insensible to the remedy as applied, and gangrene seized all the neighboring parts. It diffused itself the wider the more the corrupted flesh was cut away, and everything employed as the means of cure served but to aggravate the disease. The masters of the healing art withdrew. Then famous physicians were brought in from all quarters; but no human means had any success… and the distemper augmented. Already approaching to its deadly crisis, it had occupied the lower regions of his body, his bowels came out; and his whole seat putrefied. The luckless physicians, although without hope of overcoming the malady, ceased not to apply fermentations and administer remedies. The humors having been repelled, the distemper attacked his intestines, and worms were generated in his body. The stench was so foul as to pervade not only the palace, but even the whole city; and no wonder, for by that time the passages from waste bladder and bowels, having been devoured by the worms, became indiscriminate, and his body, with intolerable anguish, was dissolved into one mass of corruption.”
 
P. 128
 
… Already dying [Galerius] issued the following edict [ending persecution] ….
…. Lactantius cites the edict in full. The story has much in common with the account of the death of Antiochus, persecutor of the Jews in the Second Book of Maccabees. Lactantius must have been struck by the remarkable coincidences, and borrowed Antiochus' worms and stench.
….
 
The plot now thickens, with the heretical Arius also dying a horrible (Antiochus-Galerius) type of death:
 
P. 275
 
Under imperial instruction, Arius was to be marched into church and admitted into full communion, but he never made it. Tradition holds that he died on the way, a hideous death reminiscent of Galerius', which in Lactantius' account drew heavily upon the death of Antiochus, persecutor of the Jews in 2 Maccabees. ….




Part Two:
Constantine more like ‘Epiphanes’  


 


Some substantial aspects of the life of Constantine seem to have been lifted


right out of the era of king Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’ and the Maccabees.


 


As briefly noted in Part One:




Constantine’s victory over Maxentius is somewhat reminiscent of the victory over Nicanor by the superb Jewish general, Judas Maccabeus.


And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius”.
 


Other comparisons can be drawn as well.


For instance, Constantine’s army, too, was significantly outnumbered by that of his opponent.


Again, after Constantine’s victory the head of Maxentius was publicly paraded:




 His body was recovered, his head removed, then mounted on a lance and paraded triumphantly by Constantine's men”.
 


Cf. 2 Maccabees 15:30-33):
 


 


Prior to his battle with Nicanor, Judas, according to 2 Maccabees (15:15-16), received from the deceased prophet Jeremiah, in “a dream, a kind of waking vision, worthy of belief” (v. 11), a golden sword.  


 
Stretching out his right hand, Jeremiah presented a gold sword to Judas. As he gave it to him he said, ‘Accept this holy sword as a gift from God; with it you shall shatter your adversaries’.
 


Could this be the origin (in part) of the Excalibur (King Arthur) legends?


For Constantine apparently occupies a fair proportion of Arthurian legend according to:




Constantine the Great, who in AD 306 was proclaimed Roman emperor in York, forms 8% of Arthur’s story, whilst Magnus Maximus, a usurper from AD 383, completes a further 39%. Both men took troops from Britain to fight against the armies of Rome, Constantine defeating the emperor Maxentius; Maximus killing the emperor Gratian, before advancing to Italy. Both sequences are later duplicated in Arthur’s story.
 


In Part One I had likened somewhat the fourfold division of the empire of Alexander the Great and the tetrarchy of Constantine’s reign, including the case of the emperor Galerius with whom I had previously identified Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’:



King Herod ‘the Great’, Sulla, and Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’. Part Two: Add to the mix Gaius Maximianus Galerius
 


 


And, as I pointed out in the following article, historians can find it difficult to distinguish between the buildings of (the above-mentioned) Herod and those of Hadrian:


 
Herod and Hadrian


 
 


Of chronological ‘necessity’ they must assume that, as according to this article:


In the later Hadrianic period material from the earlier Herodian constructions was reused, resetting the distinctive "Herodian" blocks in new locations.
 


But, of further chronological ‘necessity’, historians must also assume that some of Hadrian’s architecture, for its part, was “recarved” and “recut”, to allow Constantine later to make use of it: https://followinghadrian.com/2016/08/18/the-hadrianic-tondi-on-the-arch-of-constantine/



…. The first pair of roundels on the south side depicts Antinous, Hadrian, an attendant and a friend of the court (amicus principis) departing for the hunt (left tondo) and sacrificing to Silvanus,  the Roman god of the woods and wild (right tondo).
 


Tondi Adrianei on the Arch of Constantine, Southern side – left lateral, LEFT: Departure for the hunt, RIGHT: Sacrifice to Silvanus
 
....
The first pair of roundels on the south side depicts a bear hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to the goddess of hunting Diana (right tondo).


 
….


 
On the north side, the left pair depicts a boar hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to Apollo (right tondo). The figure on the top left of the boar hunt relief is clearly identified as Antinous while Hadrian, on horseback and about to strike the boar with a spear, was recarved to resemble the young Constantine. The recarved emperor in the sacrifice scene is likely to be Licinius or Constantius Chlorus.


.... 
 


Tondi Adrianei on the Arch of Constantine, Northern side – left lateral, LEFT: Boar hunt, RIGHT: Sacrifice to Apollo
 
....
On the north side, the right pair depicts a lion hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to Hercules (right tondo). The figure of Hadrian in the hunt scene was recut to resemble the young Constantine while in the sacrifice scene the recarved emperor is either Licinius or Constantius Chlorus. The figure on the left of the hunt tondo may show Antinous as he was shortly before his death; with the [first] signs of a beard, meaning he was no longer a young man. These tondi are framed in purple-red porphyry. This framing is only extant on this side of the northern facade. ….
 


Fred S. Kleiner (A History of Roman Art, p. 326, my emphasis) will go as far as to write that “every block of the arch [of Constantine] were [sic] reused from earlier buildings”:
 


The Arch of Constantine was the largest erected in Rome since the end of the Severan dynasty nearly a century before, but recent investigations have shown that the columns and every block of the arch were reused from earlier buildings. …. Although the figures on many of the stone blocks were newly carved for this arch, much of the sculptural decoration was taken from monuments of Trajan, Hadrian …. Sculptors refashioned the second-century reliefs to honor Constantine by recutting the heads of the earlier emperors with the features of the new ruler. ….


 
The highly paganised (Sol Invictus) polytheistic worshipping, family murdering, Constantine makes for - somewhat like Charlemagne - a very strange, exemplary Christian emperor.


And Constantine’s rushed ‘conversion’ during his Persian campaign, just before his death: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/constantine-the-great-a-roman-emperor-history-essay.php “Since he was converted into Christianity later in his life, he was not baptized until a little time before his death. He died on May twenty second, A.D. 337 on the way to campaign against the Persians”, is something of a carbon copy of that of Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, upon his flight from Persia, terminally ill. Besides all this, he would become a Jew himself and visit every inhabited place to proclaim there the power of God.


The whole account of it is vividly narrated in 2 Maccabees 9:1-29.