Jerusalem 63 BC

Jerusalem is conquered by Pompey. Holland then introduces the idea of international law!  Who knew that in 63 BC there was anything but the rule of the law of might makes right? 

“How, after all, were two powers to agree to a treaty without invoking guards that both parties could acknowledge as valid witnesses to their covenant?”

His description of Pompey in Jerusalem is a fascinating contrast between Roman and Hebrew thought.

He then sketches history from Abram to David through the exile and the rebuilding of the temple connecting Jewish history with what he had discussed in the previous chapter. The story moves to Alexandria and the translation of Torah into the Septuagint. 

Here was the manifestation of a subtle yet momentous irony. A body of writings originally collated and adopted by scholars who took for granted the centrality of Jerusalem to the worship of their God was sleeping its editors’ purposes: the Biblia came to possess for the Jews of Alexandria a sanctity that rivalled that of the temple itself. (p. 57)

Holland then writes of the character of the Judaism into which Christ will be born.

Apollo might have favoured the Trojans, and Hera the Greeks, but no God had ever cared for a People with the jealous obsessiveness of the God of Israel. Wise, he was also willful; all powerful, he was also readily hurt; consistent, he was also alarmingly unpredictable.

I am finding it difficult to thread together a description of this book - I think I am probably too busy to do this at present. My focus is off.

I think I will leave this project incomplete. The book was a good read. It is as Dairmaid MacCulloch writes: history boldly and elegantly retold, with fascinating interconnections traced to create a narrative that cannot fail to stimulate, for it leads to a never-ending question. 

Hmm - on second reading, that is not quite a compliment, is it? Here I am unable to focus what this never-ending question is. Seems to me the questions are legion.