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Thursday, March 4, 2021

Putting One Over the Assyrian-Greeks and Romans: Survival From Roman Deaths and How It Changed the World

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

I had a little dreidel  I make it out of clay, and when it's dry and ready, then dreidel I shall play... A dreidel is a 4-sided spinning top, and each side has the 1st letter of the Hebrew words that form the sentence:  A Great Miracle Happened "Here."  To play, everybody puts an ante into the pot before each spin.  One person spins the dreidel and looks at the letter that is face-up.  Letters used are:  gimmel (take all the pot;  hey (take half the pot;  nun (take none;  shin (put 2 in).                                               

  The perfect place to study Torah, but were sure to have dreidels with them for a cover-up.  

Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel...sang Jewish student of the Torah as they sat in fields studying...They were sure to have their dreidels with them and some coins as they were playing a gambling game.  They gambled only when Greek and then Roman soldiers came upon them, hiding the fact that they were studying Torah.  Such a subject was not allowed during this Roman occupation of Judah, and the penalty for it would have been death upon the upteen thousand crosses that lined the country.                                        

This occurred in 165 BCE at the time of Judah Maccabee when the immense Assyrian-Greek Empire was in power and had occupied Judah.  This empire was attempting to replace Judaism with the worship of idols. After Judah Maccabee and his small army drove the Assyrian-Greek army out of the Temple, which was the holiest site in Jerusalem, they performed a rededication ceremony to reclaim their sacred space.                             

 Judah was the eldest son of Mattathias the Hasmonean and succeeded his father as leader of the revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes in 167/6 BCE.  He inflicted successive defeats on Syrian armies by his exploitation of ambush, rapid movement and night-attack.  he has become the prototype of heroism among the Jews and was regarded by others as one of the military celebrities of antiquity.  This historic even led to the Jewish holiday of Hannukah.  

                                                       



                  Antiochus IV Epiphanes Coin

Seleucid coin depicting Antiochus IV Epiphanes, silver, circa 175-164 BC.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes was a Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire and was the first Seleucid king to use divine epithets on coins. This coin is stamped with King Antiochus God Manifest, Bearer of Victory.

The obverse or front side is stamped with an image of Antiochus IV with a royal diadem. The reverse side shows Apollo sitting on the omphalos or the navel of the world at Delphi. He holds an anchor, the symbol of the Seleucid empire, as well as a bow and arrow.

 Antiochus III conquered Eretz Yisrael in about 200 BCE and granted privileges to the Temple.  In the time of Seleucus IV (Hellenistic royal dynasty founded by Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's (king of Macadonia-Greece's  generals). , relations between Jews and Seleucids deteriorated and the Seleucids resorted to all possible financial extortions to meet its depressed monetary situation.  The religious and cultural policy of Antiochus IV (Epiphanes)   led to the Hasmonean revolt with the result of the Jews freeing themselves from the Seleucids.  Antiochus VII Sidetes invaded the country in the time of Simon the Hasmonean in 138 BCE and again with greater success in 134 BCE.  On Antiochus' death in 129 BCE, the Jews revolted, and the Seleucid rule in Eretz Yisrael ended in 128 BCE.                                   


Not much later, in about 63 BCE, the Romans invaded Judah.  replacing the Seleucids   As the great power in the region, they granted the Hasmonean king, Hyrcanus II, limited authority under the Roman governor of Damascus. The Jews were hostile to the new regime, and the following years witnessed frequent insurrections. A last attempt to restore the former glory of the Hasmonean dynasty was made by Mattathias Antigonus, whose defeat and death brought Hasmonean rule to an end (40 BCE), and the Land became a province of the Roman Empire.      

Because of the Roman method of punishment of the people by putting them on crosses for any little misbehavior, like practicing their religion, the Jews had to continue to hide their religion, and that meant continuing to hide their studies of the Torah.  Caves were found in the land where they could feel more secure.  Their lives and religious experiences were rocked by this constant infiltration
of enemies trying to put an end to their religion, and Essenes developed, men who questioned their religion who lived together like monks of today. 
                                                 
 Barbara Thiering, Phd, born November 15, 1930--died November 16, 2015. Australia.  She's an authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes who wrote them.  

The Essenes covered their tracks in what they were writing.  Barbara Thiering, PhD rocked the world in her discovery of a secret code used to fool the Romans in their writings. She was an Australian historian, theologian, and Biblical exegete specializing in the origins of the early Christian Church. In books and journal articles, she challenged Christian orthodoxy, espousing the view that new findings present alternative answers to its supernatural beliefs. Her analysis has been rejected by both New Testament scholars and scholars in Judaism.  

Born in SydneyAustralia, as Barbara Houlsby, she married the Reverend Dr. Barry Thiering in the late 1940s. Barry moved on to serve 27 years as Chaplain of Cranbrook School and head of the 150 person staff there for ten years; briefly also at St. Paul’s School (Bald Hills) and on the faculty of St. Francis Theological Seminary (QLD), before migrating to the U.S. 

She graduated in 1952 from the University of Sydney with First Class Honours in Modern Languages, was a high school teacher of languages for several years, and then, while caring for her three young children, continued study and research privately. She obtained an external B.D. degree from the University of London, a M.Th. degree from Melbourne College of Divinity, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Sydney in 1973.
                                                         

She wrote of how the Essenes covered up who they were writing about so as not to get attention from the Roman soldiers.  ""Professor Barbara Thiering's reinterpretation of the New Testament, in which the married, divorced, and remarried Jesus, father of four, becomes the "Wicked Priest" of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and this has made no impact on learned opinion. Scroll scholars and New Testament experts alike have found the basis of the new theory, Thiering's use of the so-called "pesher technique", without substance."
                                                             

She writes on page 21:  The word "pesher" is used in the Old Testament to mean "interpretation of dreams".  A specially gifted person , a Joseph or a Daniel, could discover the hidden meaning of a dream, that was not apparent to others.  The meaning had been put into the dream by G0d;  the interpreter only had to see it, drawing on his special knowledge.   In simpler terms, the pesher is like a solution to a puzzle, .  A rough analogy might be the solution to a cryptic crossword.  
                                                           
In other words, there was a hidden message under the words they found on scrolls found in the Dead Sea caves in Qumran.  You have to know the meaning under these words used; who and what they were really referring to. it made perfect sense, knowing the times and dangers involved.
                                                      

Unfortunately, when found, no one had been aware of such devious writing by the Essenes.  They were just shocked at what they were reading about, the way of life and the thoughts of the Essenes, a religious sect of Jews at the close of the 2nd Temple period.  They were much like the Pharisees in their outlook  of the Torah but had their own newly hatched beliefs and customs. 

As mentioned by Thiering, whereas traditional midrash expands on the Biblical text with fictional narratives, the pesharim, although not intended to be a history, allude to historical events. Although cryptic and bias to the perspective of the Qumranites, much can be learned about the development of the sect as well as the political and religious climate within the Second Temple period. 

The Bible Code has been discovered about the Torah.  Mankind has been trying to find a special code in the Bible since ancient days, but with the advent of the computer, one has been found by a mathematician in Israel who put the Torah into the computer and used a coded system, similar to old ones, like a skip of every 5 words or so, and out came a meaning and facts under the written meaning.  It seems as if G-d through Moses has covered much up right under its subjects with prophesy and such.  
                                                      
From the Qumran Essenes, came many remnants of their past which has been studied and studied.  Whether the Dead Sea Scrolls were speaking of Jesus or another has led to seeing the group in a new light.   

The early Christians had to hide their beliefs from the Romans which had altered from Judaism.  Early Christianity was taken over by the Roman emperors.  This led to more decisions about Jews and its discrimination laws which led to anti-Semitism. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKjbc66qp3Y on Dead Sea Scrolls 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roQ7QT-CMuU on Essenes 
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antiochus-IV-Epiphanes
The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia 
http://www.peshertechnique.infinitesoulutions.com/
Jesus and the riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls 







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