They need Christ more than ever; instead, they seem to have Simon bar Kokhba come again

Friends, and
To all those defending Israel:

Every time I write one of my essays here, the world is exponentially worse than it was when I wrote the last epistle. I despair of it. God is gonna have to fix it.

• The American government is a disaster; it is totally NOT representing the American people.
• The Catholic Church is a disaster, if you count the official Church as the full Catholic Church, that is. If you think Bergoglio is pope or his regime in remotely CATHOLIC, then I despair for you.
• But I certainly despair of the Israeli-Arab conflict. It's a hopeless mess, and has been that way since the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. For Israel, it would take a King Solomon come again to try to bring either justice or peace to this fiasco, or most importantly of all, they need Jesus. (I'll probably be labeled an "antisemite" for saying that. Imagine my response.)
  

If anyone ever needed Jesus...

If anyone anywhere ever "needed Jesus", it is the Jews and Arabs. But instead of Jesus, the Israelis got Simon bar Kokhba come again.

1. Ok, so who was Simon bar Kokhba? A warrior, the last of the Zealot types Our Lord Christ knew a century earlier. Zealots were those Jews who wanted to fight the Romans with war (or terror, however you want to put it), like the Irish Republican Army wanted to fight the British. They had their big moment in 66 A.D. when the First Jewish War began. Zealots held Jerusalem for four years before the Romans destroyed it – and most of them, along with a million or so other Jews – in 70 A.D.
2. Barabbas was one of these insurrectionists 40 years earlier in Jesus' time. St. Mark, St. Peter's secretary and the composer of St. Mark's gospel, describes Barabbas (in 15:7) as “The man named Barabbas [who] had been imprisoned with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the insurrection.” That would definitely be a Zealot.
3. Simon bar Kokhba himself was the last and maybe the greatest – in terms of power and cruelty, if not military skill – of all Zealots. He fought the Romans (when they tried to ban circumcision and force Jewish assimilation) and "the greatest rabbi of the time", Akiva ben Yosef, apparently claimed for him Davidic descent and might have given him the name bar Kokhba, which means son of the star, a messianic reference. 

Whatever about all that, when the Romans finally defeated bar Kokhba in 135 A.D., they killed 800,000 of his followers, and probably more than a million Jews died, all told. So, the Jewish people collectively chose Barabbas instead of Jesus, and 40 years later the Zealot leaders of 66 A.D., and in 132 A.D., Simon bar Kokhba. All these Zealots did was lead the Jews to catastrophe. Now they have Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The Jewish perspective

From the Jewish perspective, it ought to be a simple calculus. "We want our own nation, and we want it to be a Jewish nation, not a country where 'Jews also live'". After the bar Kokhba revolt, Jews remained scattered for two millennia, basically, and while often persecuted, they also took advantage of what opportunities they could, as well. That in itself caused them to be hated. It was like a curse: they're dispossessed and despoiled, a stateless nation who thereby incur contempt and loathing; yet when they become wealthy bankers and powerful influencers, they're hated all the more. A no-win situation.

Maybe they should not have chosen Barabbas. Or the Zealots of 66 A.D. Or Simon son of the Star, heir of David. Or just maybe Pontius Pilate got the last laugh when he maneuvered them into shouting "Crucify the Peacenik and give us the terrorist!" 

Zionism

Eventually, toward the end of the 19th century, European Jews began the Zionist Movement. The Jews supporting this romantic colonization theory (not all that many did, actually) left Europe and entered the Ottoman lower Syrian desert by hook and crook and began removing – none too gently one can surmise – many of the native inhabitants. (Jews in Europe often bought the land from Turkish absentee landlords living in Istanbul, and then European settlers showed up who told the locals to clear off.)  

1. Again, they wanted their own state – a JEWISH one – and European Jews who embraced Zionism planted European Jews in the southern Levant. 
2. Did the Zionist promoters have a plan about the Arabs? I don't know. Did they suspect the locals would rebel? I don't know.
3. The whole Zionist idea was so quixotic that most everyone probably thought it would fail, I would guess.
   
4. Events in Europe under the Nazis and the horrors of the Holocaust sort of eventually proved the Zionist argument, however, or so the non-Muslim world thought. The Catholic Vatican II Church has certainly bent over backwards to apologize to Jews for the Holocaust, that's for sure. But the problem was, the Jews had planted their colony among Muslims (originally the area had numerous Christian Arabs). 
5. And the Muslims had an insane, religiously founded hatred of Jews. That was the kicker. (Why Muslimsfrom their beginning hate Jews more than Christians is the subject for another essay. Suffice it to say "Muslim Judgement Day" is the day they get to kill all the world's remaining Jews.)
   
6. But as the Nazi tide rose, the Jews kept coming and "making the desert bloom", even as the British occupiers of the region after World War I opposed them. 
7. Eventually, when the British "mandate" expired, the Jews declared the State of Israel after WWII. At first and for many decades, it was a Socialist Eastern European-style "state", mirroring the ideas of it settlers, many of whom were from Eastern Europe. Ideological, yes; romantic, maybe, but not the booming economy it has since become.
   

The Return of the Crusader States?

Though the Muslims often enough bring them up, I'm always amazed that Westerners – especially Jews – never mention the Crusader States. That's probably because Israelis don't want to be considered associated with "Crusaders" under any circumstances, and because of the sad fate of those states.

Going on almost 1000 years ago, Western Europeans invaded the Levant in their Crusades. They wanted to free the Holy Land from Turkish Muslims who had recently set up shop. Their success was so-so, but they did capture territory (killing Jews and Muslims in the process, which both Jews and Muslims insist we remember: there's no "forgive and forget" with either) and so they set up a series of Crusader Sates – one was the "Kingdom of Jerusalem". These began to create a Little Europe in the desert heart of Islam. They implanted European law, counties, sheriffs, the whole shebang. The Muslim powers of all stripes could not tolerate that, so they kept attacking the Europeans and over 100 years or so, destroyed them. Every single one of the would-be colonists that weren't killed or didn't flee, were enslaved. Always remember Islam was founded on slavery and was and is essentially, quintessentially a slaver system. 

• Medieval Europe was essentially different than Ancient Europe in that
• A, the Medievals had Christianity and 
• B, they didn't have slavery (except in rare instances, like pre-Norman Gaelic Ireland). On the other hand...
  
• Islam has ALWAYS had slavery and it always will. Why? That's because while Christianity didn't condemn slavery in its beginnings, it became repugnant to own fellow Christians as slaves: we're all parts of the Body of Christ, after all; whereas... 
• Islam's raison d'être was to bestow on the original Arabs – a violent minority in the vast seas of people they conquered – the divine right to steal everything everyone else had: including the people themselves.
• N.B. This violence works for Muslims. It always has. It does now throughout the world (except in China: see Uyghurs, Chinese treatment of and Islam's ignoring of). One example: Muslim immigrants into England have enslaved hundreds of girls, especially; it is a national tragedy and horrific scandal, though you don't hear the mainstream media howling about it because everyone fears Muslim VIOLENCE. Anyway, slavery: that's why Islam was founded, really, to be honest.

Judaism and Islam for Outsiders

While Judaism has always maintained its separateness from surrounding cultures, basing that on its religious identity and beliefs, its special covenant relationship with God, Islam sort of mirrors that in a darker mode. Islam has always been a consensus-driven, self-isolated monocultural civilization living off the theft of entire nations, a herrenvolk taxing Christians and Jews to death, and so of course after the initial seventh-century conquest, Islam turned the Fertile Crescent region of the Near East into desert. (The conquerors were allowed to graze their herds of goats and camels wherever they wanted, you see?) 

In effect, the Muslim powers had destroyed the previous "Europeanized" Levant after their initial Muslim conquest in the 700s. That area was once the HEARTLAND of Christianity, and a rich region on every level: cultural, agricultural, linguistic. The Muslims invaded, conquered, dispersed and enslaved. And monoculturalized. Example: Alexandria on the Egyptian coast was always the second largest city of the ancient Greco-Roman world, vying with Rome or Antioch or later Constantinople. Yet within a generation of the Muslim Conquest, it was a fishing village. That's history.

So the modern-day Jews, seeking a Jewish nation-state "Tackled the Islamic Camel", as it were. In essence, they actually "stole something back" from the Islamic Empire and wow, THAT is NOT allowed. 

And also, in so doing, they revived the ancient rivalry between the brothers Isaac and Ishmael. Religious Jews (a minority of Jews, you know) still claim to be direct descendants of Isaac through his second son, Jacob, whom God renamed "Israel". Arabs claim Ishmael, Abraham's first born, as their ancestor. Both sides base their claim to the land on being heirs of these two sons of Abraham. Of course, the kicker to that is:

• A: Jesus Christ came along and said the "Chosen People" were chosen precisely to be the womb of the Messiah, i.e. to birth the young Jewish girl who said yes to Gabriel. So, their long existence was fulfilled in her Fiat to God.
• B: From a Jewish perspective rejecting such theology, they base their claim to the land on God's giving it to Abraham's descendants through Isaac. The kicker to that is Moses warned them they were to be careful to obey all of God's strict moral laws. They only ever did that for a few generations at a stretch, however; most of the time, they lived as they live in Israel now: it is a modern culture, meaning one with lots of sex behavior against the ancient commandments, like homosexuality, abortion, and so on. That concert that was attacked on October 7 exhibited a huge Buddha statue, for example. That doesn't justify the Hamas attack, but the God of Moses would zap them for it as He did of old. And maybe He is. Or if a modern-thinking person argues God is not concerned about their behavior against His ancient Covenants, then the God of revelation no longer exists. And if He has "evolved" or no longer exists, then what right can they claim to the land? See the conundrum they have? (A no-win situation, again.)

Israel bears the "five minutes of hate" right now...

Right now, it is Israel bearing the "five minutes of hate" of the world's propaganda. It seems the old Jewish war cry of "Antisemitism!" doesn't work as well as it did. Like "racism" in the U.S., it has probably been used once too often. 

Importantly, though, the ultimate source of this madness lies in Muslim culture and xenophobia. Oh, to be sure, the Jews are not blameless, either. They chose to enter an ancient minefield and planted a garden in the midst of it. They planted a tree in salted earth, a rose bush in a corral of hungry goats. They dared challenge the 1700-year-old Islamic Imperialism. Look what that has brought them. 

It has brought them continual or near continual state of war – certainly global political machinations and ceaseless spycraft and behind-the-scenes maneuvering – remains perpetual. It has also affected all the rest of us, all of non-Jews. 

• Terrorism has made life in the West miserable.
• It is the justification for the infamous "Deep State/Intelligence Community" of other nations' control of their people, such as the spying on every American via the vote on this awful FISA-702 law Congress just renewed. And it just never stops because of Arab and Muslim hatred of Jews, traditionally ingrained in that religion, and spreading terrorism far and wide nowadays, giving the "spies" the right to seize control. But also because of Islam's intrinsic xenophobia.

Islam

Muslims hate Christianity & Christian civilization. Not as much as they hate Jews, but still, it is enough. Read John Zmirak on the attack of that bishop in Australia, and why the bishop and his people are in Australia in the first place at The Stream. A most excellent, and depressing, article.

Right now, it is self-evident that Israel is losing the Gaza war (or front or operation or whatever one calls it) – many insist it is genocide, which the Israelis consider a "blood libel", but the claim of genoide is being made, nonetheless. If true, Israel has lost what it cannot regain. Meanwhile, the West Bank is hyper-tense and war is breaking out with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Persians and Israelis are lobbing missiles at each other.

I certainly can't speak to allegations of Israeli genocide in Gaza. Twenty-percent of the Republic of Israel's population isn't Jewish, but Arab (Muslim and Christian). So, they obviously weren't genocidal in the past, though yes, Zionism has always wanted a JEWISH state (Islam merely wants an Islamic world). Many argue right now the new Simon bar Kokhba strives for a "Greater Israel", which would include territory (like Gaza, but much more besides) as a buffer to protect the country.

A Serious Query

What do people hating Israel want? Or what do its critics want it to do? Do they want the Jews to leave? Do they want them to confess: "Yes, we stole your desert land and created an semi-apartheid state in which we made the desert bloom as it once did before you Arabs came because after two thousand years of being robbed, murdered, and treated as pariahs, and finally slaughtered in mass by the Europeans in the Holocaust, we thought we needed a JEWISH homeland. Yet we admit we simply don't have the right to live anywhere." You want them to do that? That seems to be the idea.

Well, one can counter argue: how about we give the Americas back to the Indians. North, South, and Central – just give it back and leave. All Irish Americans can return to Ireland and all Slavic-derived Americans can go back to Russia and so forth and so on. How about that?

One can also ask quite seriously: How can any set of people mentally survive such total war, decade after decade? I don't defend genocide on either side or genocide at all in general: but in such a no-win, Hell-on-earth mess, it's no wonder they've all gone – or are going – mad. And remember that in a Muslim culture, a man can have more than one wife, and thus a LOT of children. Gaza's population explosion growth is phenomenal, and the percentage of young people is astounding. Western cultural norms, especially degenerate modern ones, can't remotely keep up in terms of number of children per father. And just how can a father be a father to 10 or 15 or 20 sons from different women?

Bottom Line
Israel either survives or it doesn't. Islam will certainly survive. Until it doesn't. But Israel? It most certainly will go the way the Crusader States did unless they nuke the Muslims. Maybe even then. It is not hard to imagine "the world" once again slaughtering Jews in rage, this time for starting a nuclear war. Iran could start using nukes and it would be a different story, somehow, wouldn't it? Or maybe the world would finally turn against Islam and decide the heirs of both Isaac and Ishmael need to depart these earthly coils.

One way or the other – unless both sides convert to Christ and forgive each other, which is, of course, very unlikely outside pure miracle and probably the Second Coming – mass slaughter will once again turn the region back into desert, and Simon bar Kokhba's unquiet ghost, and Barabbas's wandering spirit, all of the old Zealots so frustrated by Rome, will drag their chains through the empty kingdoms of Pluto once more.

AnP

St. Anselm, the Incarnation, and all Creation Rejoicing

Friends,

I always send this sermon from St. Anselm around on Christmas or Easter because it is so important, and it is so very much what you don't get from the mainstream Western Church (Catholic or Protestant) but it SO needs to be read and reflected upon: Just what the Incarnation means. Some Christians focus mainly on Christ's death and resurrection, but neither would be possible without the Incarnation to begin with. Some Christians concentrate on getting to Heaven, but God incarnating Himself into the human race changes all our natures now, if we are willing to accept this grace: it's what the Greeks call Theosis – the true point of the Incarnation.

No greater act than the Incarnation exists, and Christmas is the time to remember that.

Monday Morning Prayers of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary
From a sermon by Saint Anselm, bishop (1033/4–1109)

Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth an rivers, day and night – everything that is subject to the power or use of man—rejoice that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and are endowed with inexpressible new grace. All creatures were dead, as it were, useless for human beings or for the praise of God, who made them. The world, contrary to its true destiny, was corrupted and tainted by the acts of human beings who served idols. Now all creation has been restored to life and rejoices that it is controlled and given splendor by those who believe in God.
The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God Himself, its Creator, it sees him openly working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.
Through the fullness of the grace that was given you, dead things rejoice in their freedom and those in heaven are glad to be made new. Through the Son who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before his life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.
Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation received new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator Himself has been blessed by creation.
To Mary God gave his only-begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary God made himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary. The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things and Mary gave birth to God. The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.
God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s son, nothing could be redeemed.
Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself.

They don't write 'em like that any more, St. Anselm. Thanks!

And for my friends who are into Hayao Miazaki movies, or sci-fi in general, there's this little jewel of a Christmas gift. 

A sacred Christmas and a blessed New Year to all.

An Préachán

Did Our Lord Christ habitually speak Greek?

 Amici,

Old Father Hunwicke has a number of fascinating articles about the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament created by 70 Jewish scholars in the last centuries before the Incarnation.

In one of them here, Fr. H raises an amazing argument I've never come across before (I am ALWAYS open to learning new things and reviewing criticism, etc.).

The article, for your perusal (highlights mine):

Dunno if you read, a couple of months ago, of some two-millennia-old Biblical fragments recently discovered in caves in the Judean desert. One of them (Zechariah 8:16-17) was ... except for the Tetragrammaton ... written in Greek.

Greek was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean world.  Rome was the largest Greek-speaking city in that world. Non-Greek languages survived in circumstances of bilinguality. Think Palestine ... think Wales ...

But we know that Christ spoke Aramaic. This raises an interesting question. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain long passages which are more or less verbally identical. 

IF YOUR ARE SPEED-READING THIS, YOU MIGHT AS WELL SAVE YOURSELF TIME BY GIVING IT UP NOW.

Now: if you ask three people to translate a single text into a different language, it is highly improbable that their three renderings will be verbally identical, even reproducing the same word-order. In a classroom, you will work out whose work was passed around and then plagiarised by the other "students". Time was when, at this point, the cane came out of the cupboard. Not that I ever used one. I relied on Mental Cruelty.

So, clearly, one needs an answer to the problem of the Three Synoptic Gospels. Who did the original translation of the words of the Lord from Aramaic into Greek? Mark is shorter and cruder, so he is clearly first. The other two borrowed from him. What about passages in Matthew and Luke which are not borrowed from Mark? It stands to reason that they were taken from a now-lost work which wiser men than me (or you) have called 'Q'.

Bingo! You have solved "the Synoptic Problem".

But do we know that Christ spoke Aramaic? Of course we do. Mark records him as using the Aramaic Talitha Coum(i) when raising Jairus' daughter. And Abba and Ephphatha. QED.

Um ...

But why does Mark only record a few odd Aramaic words? Modern Scientific Commentators go shifty at this point. Do these words safely record Christ as an Aramaic speaker ... or do they neatly record some rare occasions when a habitual Greek-speaker spoke Aramaic instead?

In conditions of bilinguality, the 'old' language ... Welsh or Aramaic ... may still be used round the hearth, in families, by women and children. The chaps will use the big, cosmopolitan language ... English, let us say, or Greek. But when turning to babies, young girls, the handicapped, they might well use the 'informal' local language. I have heard educated speakers of 'Establishment' English automatically using the Glottal Stop when they address children or minorities which they (perhaps unconsciously) despise.

I have a fair bit more to say on all this. But first let me dispose of the 'Priority of Mark' ...shorter, cruder, therefore clearly first of the Gospels to have been written.

A great Oxford papyrologist called Peter Parsons once gave a paper, not on any biblical subject, but on Classical Literature. Particularly the chronology of the plays of Aeschylus. Recent papyrological discoveries had revealed that the Supplices was quite late in the playwright's oeuvre. But it had always been assumed that it was among his first plays ... because of its 'primitive' structure etc, etc..

Parsons adduced other examples of the dangers of facile a priori assumptions.

One of the problems about Modern Scientific Biblical Scholarship is that those involved in it are often much too proud to take any notice of those outside their own narrow, precious, specialty. Particularly of us Classicists! More on this later.

If Christ habitually spoke Greek, then the 'Synoptic Problem' disappears into thin air. Massive numbers of 'learned' books and articles are ... Crass. No; we do not need another imaginative reconstruction of 'Q'.

And the 'new' Judean manuscript makes clear (what we well knew already) that Christ would not have been the only faithful Jew to speak Greek. Indeed, consider the varied names recorded of His disciples. PHILIPPOS is not only a Greek name; it is redolent of the Macedonian North Greek culture which became part of the common Hellenic currency of the regions which had been conquered by Alexander the Great and ruled by his 'Successors'. 'ANDREAS is Greek for ... no; I will leave to you the fun of speculating. You might enjoy including in your speculations the names of the Hellenised Chief Priests mentioned in the Books of the Maccabees.

An P again:

Absolutely fascinating.