
No human endeavor exists in a vacuum, and terrorism is no different. The Sicarii were the product of hundreds of years of social history, which helps explain where they were coming from and, as we’re about to see, what they hoped to accomplish.
PS—Please please PLEASE don’t tell my mom about this page. Although its substance is perfectly in line with what my Jesuit and Salesian teachers taught me (I’m looking at you, Father Cerrato), and the backing research is overwhelmingly by Jewish scholars, something tells me the old Mater Familias will not appreciate my tone. Eyebrows might be raised, if you catch my meaning. So do us a favor and keep it between us, okay?
PPS—Christ on a cracker, did I just say “old”? I’d like a plain wooden coffin, please. Biodegradable and all that.
The Illustrated Guide to Terrorism
Chapter 1: What Is Terrorism?
Page 13: A brief history of Judea
NARRATOR
The Sicarii didn’t want mere political reform. They wanted their whole SOCIETY to change.
Assassin stabbing a man in the chest, three other assassins’ talking heads, and two more Sicarii explaining themselves.
VARIOUS
There’s been too much westernization, too fast. Our culture is vanishing before our eyes!
The priesthood keeps rewriting Judaism to keep up with the times. Our very religion is vanishing before our eyes.
That cannot be what God wants. It has to stop! It has to go back!
Our sacred task is to restore our world back to how God wants it.
We’re merely the hands of God, carrying out His will.
We’re the good guys!
We long for that golden age, when we ruled ourselves, when Judah and Israel were united under David and Solomon…
When we were truly God’s chosen people, when this was truly God’s kingdom…
Grand throne room of King David or Solomon, with musicians and a girl throwing flower petals
When the world was right!
NARRATOR
It was a nice dream, but that “golden age” was a THOUSAND YEARS in the past. Worse, it was ONLY a dream — more FICTION than fact.
Map of trade routes from the Nile delta to the Tigris and Euphrates, passing through Canaan in the middle.
For thousands of years, even before the first kingdoms in Egypt and Mesopotamia, trade routes had crossed the hilly herdlands of Canaan.
VOICES
Don’t mind us! Just passing through.
Yum! Good olives.
Egyptian king leading a stone age army.
NARRATOR
By 3100 B.C., Egypt had a fortified military presence in Canaan. As empires rose and fell over the next thousand years, the region would remain under foreign control.
PHARAOH
Gotta ensure stability! Trade’s too important!
Shepherd tending flock grazing rocky scrubland.
NARRATOR
Canaan prospered, and cities grew. But when Egypt collapsed in 2200 B.C., the people returned to nomadic life, and the cities became ghost towns.
SHEPHERD
Sheep are stability.
DISTANT FIGURE
Hey! Who’s minding the olives?
[SUGGESTED EDIT: Center that dialog inside its speech bubble]
Map of Cannanite influence from the Nile delta across Sinai to land surrounding the Dead Sea.
NARRATOR
Around 2000 B.C., Canaanite culture made a comeback. Kings ruled towns along the coast (and fought among themselves). Bronze tools & weapons proliferated. Artists painted, sculptors sculpted. For 500 years, Canaan flourished — even ruling the Nile Delta for a while!
VOICE
Now this is what I call a golden age!
NARRATOR
As Cannanite society grew more complex, household deities gave way to a shared pantheon of over 200 gods, under a chief god “El” and his wife “Athirat” (or “Ashirah”).
Their religion still lacked a cosmology — they didn’t have stories about how the universe was created.
Man on sand dune opening arms to the Moon and stars, another reacting.
MAN 1
Created? All this?
MAN 2
What an absurd notion.
Statue with caption: (“Ba’al” – god of warriors and fertile rainstorms.)
NARRATOR
Egypt re-conquered Canaan around 1500, and ruled it for another 300 years. But when the Iron Age dawned in 1200 B.C., its new technologies ironically led to a massive CIVILIZATION COLLAPSE across the entire region. In the resulting power vacuum, Canaan fell into utter chaos.
Tiny village in sandy foothills.
Nomads in the hills around Jerusalem started forming villages with their own new culture, bonding through shared sacrifices that distinguished “us” from “them.”
VOICES
Now that we have to look out for our own, how will we know when someone is “one of us”?
Well, how about we don’t eat pork… and no decorated pottery…
But we raise sheep and goats. Doesn’t sound like we’d be sacrificing much.
Okay, Mister Observant, we’ll circumcize the males. Starting with you.
[SUGGESTED EDIT: It’s spelled “circumcise”]
Windswept top of Mount Sinai.
NARRATOR
Down in Arabia, in the mountains by the Gulf of Aqaba, the nomadic Shasu people worshiped their own pantheon, including a local wind god they called “Yahweh.”
SHASU 1
From the root “hwy”, or “he blows.”
SHASU 2
Good name.
NARRATOR
Apparently, Yahweh liked to hang out on mountaintops.
Assyrian aristocrats.
Back in Canaan, the villages around Jerusalem would come to be governed by the Assyrian Empire, as a client province called “Yahudu” (“Judah”).
ASSYRIAN 1
A damn valuable province, at that!
ASSYRIAN 2
Have you tasted their olive oil? C’est magnifique!
Map of provinces of Isra-El and Judah, with prominent towns.
NARRATOR
The people of the neighboring province to the north must have been very religious, as their province was named “Isra-El” (“Ruled by El”).
Temple of Yahweh, with square altar of stacked stones for slaughtering sacrificial animals, a little privacy wall behind, and the god’s “house” with a chamber containing two small standing stones.
During the fabled golden age of Saul, David, and Solomon, 1050 to 930 B.C., there is no evidence of a united kingdom of Judah and Israel. Nor is there evidence that either had much power or influence.
But there IS evidence that Yahweh had joined their pantheon of gods.
Temples of Yahweh (open-air, of course) appeared in the hills near Arad, Beersheba, Jerusalem, Dan, and Samaria. They seem to have been places of DIVINATION — legal disputes being decided by something like a coin toss.
Shaman tossing what looks like a black-and-white cookie. Two petitioners watching.
PETITIONER 1
What does the god say?
PETITIONER 2
Which is it, urim or tummim? Guilty or innocent?
NARRATOR
As Yahweh gained such authority, he grew in importance in the pantheon. By 750 B.C., El’s wife Asherah was being depicted as YAHWEH’S wife.
Politics gave him even more prominence. Israel was getting too buddy-buddy with Egypt, so the Assyrian Empire sent in troops to assert power. It all ended in 722 B.C. with Israel’s destruction.
Charioteers marching a multitude off into the distance.
The Assyrians seized the elites living in the capital Samaria — AND all the idols of their gods in the temple (a very big deal) — and marched them all away to exile in lovely Mesopotamia. Guess which god didn’t have an idol to take away?
CHARIOTEER 1
As every conqueror knows, you have to get rid of everyone who held power.
Because those are the people who’ll rise up against you — to get their power back!
That’s just common sense.
CHARIOTEER 2
And the civic gods that were the source of that authority? You can’t leave them intact.
That’s just common sense.
NARRATOR
As refugees flooded south, Judah made it clear that the Israelites needed to change their ways. The first writings of what would become the Bible appeared. And the first version of the Book of Amos made sure that everyone knew that Israel’s fate had been Israel’s FAULT. (Specifically, the fault of its corrupt ruling class.)
Scribe looking up from his work to talk to the reader.
SCRIBE
That’s what happens when you forget your duty to ensure justice!
That’s what happens when you fatten your friends and oppress the poor!
Hey Judah, don’t make it bad. I hope you’re also paying attention!
NARRATOR
For forty years, starting in 649 B.C., Judah’s king Josiah worked hard to turn his province into a nation-state in its own right: centralizing power, institutionalizing government, and enacting sweeping reforms. So all this would be accepted as legitimate, Josiah also instituted a formal state religion, centered on Yahweh in Jerusalem, with god-given religious laws, and an inspiring national founding myth, complete with a distant golden age. And so the first editions of the “Deuteronomic History” — the biblical books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings — were composed and promulgated.
Josiah reading from a scroll to an impressed crowd.
JOSIAH
My people!
You’ll never guess what we just happened to accidentally discover while fixing up the old temple…
It’s a book of Yahweh’s laws!
The ancients must have written it!
CROWD
Whoa…
Inset of Josiah looking at the scroll
JOSIAH
Obviously we need to obey his laws. Let’s see what they say…
Well would you look at that?
[SUGGESTED EDIT: Narrate that Yahweh’s laws were remarkably similar to the rules Josiah was trying to impose.]
Three stick figures
NARRATOR
Don’t get the idea that Judah’s state religion was monotheistic, yet.
FIGURES
Well, duh!
Yahweh’s not the only god.
Whoever heard of only one god?
He’s just the only god we’re allowed to worship.
NARRATOR
Josiah’s cunning worked for forty years, but it would be his downfall. In 609 B.C., with the whole empire embroiled in a civil war, he ambushed his OWN ALLIES the Egyptians… got himself shot full of arrows… and long story short, by 605 B.C. Judah was reduced once again to a mere vassal state of the new Babylonian Empire.
Charioteer marching off some youngsters
To ensure the tribute got paid, some of Judah’s younger nobles were marched away as hostages.
CHARIOTEER
That’s common sense, innit?
NARRATOR
A few years later in 597 B.C., Judah refused to pay the tribute, and… long story short, Jerusalem fell, the temple was plundered, and the king and all the elites (including Ezekiel) were marched off to Babylon.
Charioteer marching another multitude off into the distance.
CHARIOTEER
Something something “common sense…”
NARRATOR
The next king exercised better judgment and- No, no he didn’t. Ignoring EVERYONE’S advice, in 587 B.C. he joined forces with Egypt in revolt against Babylon. Long story short…
Child sitting among rubble of what was once Jerusalem, something burning in the distance.
…Nebuchadnezzar II marched in, broke the Egyptian army, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, burned the entire city to rubble, razed the temple, and (you guessed it) marched away the last of Jerusalem’s ruling class.
STICK FIGURES
You’d think we would have learned a lesson by now.
Maybe we can rewrite some of our sacred texts to teach that lesson?
Maybe edit Amos so he’s saying our destruction and exile were our punishment?
For breaking Yahweh’s laws!
NARRATOR
The exile didn’t last all that that long. Babylon fell to the Persian Empire in 539 B.C., and the emperor Cyrus said everyone was free to go home.
Most didn’t want to
[SUGGESTED EDIT: Lose the duplicate “that”]
Judean people living luxuriously in Babylon
WOMAN
What, leave all this, and go back to Judah?
Are you nuts?
Man with Babylonian haircut and robes accosting some farmers with a mud hut.
NARRATOR
But many did trickle back over the next several decades.
NEWCOMER
You there! Get off my ancestral land!
FARMER
Your land? Who the hell are you?
NARRATOR
By the 400s B.C., the Jews were in dire need of a national identity. The old social order of family and tribes and gods had been broken and reshuffled too much. A NEW religion was called for, to unify them.
Drawing of the great temple
They built a massive temple in Jerusalem to Yahweh, who was not the ONLY god, the creator of the universe, with infinite supernatural powers.
Forget a national origin myth. A COSMIC origin story was now called for. The biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers were composed — with a new revision of Deuteronomy added as a conclusion.
This narrative did the job very well. So well, in fact — so strong a part of people’s identity — that people have killed and died for it ever since.
Man bringing sacrificial lamb to a temple priest decked out in his official finery.
This new Judah-ism didn’t yet have rabbis and synagogues. It was still a temple-based religion, with an elite priesthood overseeing rituals and a constant stream of blood sacrifice.
MAN (with worried-looking sheep)
Oh give me that old-time religion!
PRIEST
That’s good enough for me!
NARRATOR
Religion back then wasn’t so much what you believed, but what you DID. Judaism was their culture, their law, their state. Soon, Judah was ruled by its priests. Those who longed for kings again told stories of a “Messiah” — a king who would rule a unified Jewish kingdom as Yahweh’s personal representative, in a NEW golden age.
STICK FIGURES
Isn’t this our golden age?
You’re fooling yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship!
Yeah! I mean, sure, the Persians let us live in peace, free to live by our own laws and practice our own flourishing religion…
SICARIUS TALKING HEAD
“A new golden age” you say?
Inspiring.
NARRATOR
Golden or not, one age ended and another began in 332 B.C., when Alexander the Great conquered the whole region, including Jerusalem.
Classical Greek temple
VOICE
Let the modernization hellenization begin!
NARRATOR
Greek replaced Aramaic as the, er, lingua franca.
By the second century B.C., Jerusalem was a Greek-style “polis” amd a center of Hellenic culture.
[SUGGESTED EDIT: Spell “and” correctly]
As with Persia, the Hellenic model of empire was “balance”.
Greek aristrocrat
GREEK
It’s simple: We provide safety and security.
While you practice your own local religion, live your own culture, and administer your own laws.
NARRATOR
In Judea, life still revolved around the Temple in Jerusalem, now the ONLY temple where sacrifices to Yahweh were permitted. The ruling urban priesthood had no problem adapting to changing times, and so Judaism evolved to reflect modern cosmopolitan sensibilities.
The countryside, however, held on to more fundamentalist views. Rural protesting believers gathered in local meeting houses — the first synagogues.
Angry villagers
FARMER
I ain’t answering to no high priest.
PREACHER (with scroll)
We can read the scriptures ourselves. And we can say our own prayers, thank you!
SICARIUS TALKING HEAD
Inspiring!
NARRATOR
Deep divisions grew between, on the one hand, a modernizing Hellenic priestly elite in the big city and on the coast, and on the other hand reforming fundamentalist “back to the good old days” idealistic purists in the towns and villages.
By 168 B.C., the country had erupted into CIVIL WAR
Cavalry horseman facing off against an infantry pikeman.
HORSEMAN
Get with the times, you ignorant hicks!
PIKEMAN
NO!
Give us that old-time religion!
SICARIUS TALKING HEAD
Very inspiring…
NARRATOR
Emperor Antiochus IV intervened to restore peace.
Antiochus going over a map of the region with a member of his staff.
ANTIOCHUS IV
They’re destabilizing the whole region? I already have enough problems without this shit.
Antiochus rolling his eyes
ANTIOCHUS IV
They’re fighting over religion? Seriously? Who does that?
They need to get civilized, and sacrifice together in a common national ritual.
Not rocket science, people.
Solution: Whatever their religion, everyone in Judea must also sacrifice to ZEUS.
NARRATOR
But instead of a solution, he got a REVOLUTION.
Under Judas Maccabeus, the traditionalists turned their fight against progressives into a rebellion against the empire itself.
Rebels pulling down the giant statue of Zeus
REBELS
Zeus wants a sacrifice?
WE’LL make him a sacrifice!
ONLOOKER
No! Use your common sense! This can only end badly!
Menorah
NARRATOR
And for once…
Judah WON!
(and invented hanukkah!)
SICARIUS TALKING HEAD
INSPIRING!
NARRATOR
The victorious Maccabees took over as rulers, founding the Hasmonean dynasty. Judea instantly blossomed into a century of peace civil war.
Angry petitioners at the Hasmonean court
PETITIONERS
Look we’re grateful to you guys for resisting the Greeks, but you can’t rule us.
Unless you’re descended from David and Solomon, your authority won’t be LEGITIMATE!
KING
Who the hell are these “Pharisees” (“separatists”)?
COUNSELOR
Scribes and sages, sire. It’s always scribes and sages.
I always say, a little education is a dangerous thing.
NARRATOR
For a hundred years, one civil war bled into the next. Along the way, some scholars came up with a novel idea:
Excited men
EXCITED MAN 1
MARTYRDOM!
EXCITED MAN 2
If you die trying to do God’s will, he’ll reward you!
SUSPICIOUS GUY
After I’m… dead?
How?
CONFIDENT GUY
Let me tell you about another new idea: the afterlife!
SICARII TALKING HEADS
INSPIRING!!
NARRATOR
During the Passover festival in 63 B.C., the Pharisees (with Arab allies) besieged King Aristobulus and his “Sadducee” supporters in the temple.
The Roman general Pompey had just taken Syria, and both sides sent to him for help. Pompey went to Jerusalem to see for himself what was going on.
Pompey riding ahead of a Roman army
POMPEY
They’re destabilizing the whole region.
Time to lay a little pax romana on their ass.
NARRATOR
Aristobulus double-crossed Pompey, who promptly had him arrested. The Pharisees opened the gates of the city to the Roman army, and Pompey began a brief siege of the temple.
Once the walls were broken, Roman troops attacked the defenders while Pharisees ran inside to slaughter the priests. Inside the “holy of holies” where any other temple kept a figure of its got, Pompey saw…
Pompey inside the curtain of the holy of holies.
POMPEY
Nothing?
Temple burning, Pompey riding away
POMPEY
Anyway, we’re done here.
Have the temple re-purified, and we’ll head back.
NARRATOR
Pompey left Judea under the administration of the ethnarch Hyrcanus, but the place was REALLY governed by Hyrcanus’ general Antipater
[SUGGESTED EDIT: Put a period at the end of that sentence]
Antipater and his son HEROD deftly maneuvered through the Roman civil wars, always managing to be on the side of the victor.
In 40 B.C., Hyrcanus was deposed, and Herod travelled to Rome to get him reinstated. Instead, the Senate appointed Herod himself as “King of the Jews.”
After three years of bloody warfare, Herod captured Jerusalem, sent the usurper off to be executed, and began more than three decades of rule as King of Judea.
Worker erecting a gigantic Roman Eagle emblem above the doorway to the inner courtyard of the Temple.
Lest anyone forget who was REALLY in charge, Herod installed a Roman eagle above the temple entrance.
OVERSEER
A little to the right…
Two disgusted traditionalist Jews.
NARRATOR
Traditionalist Jews HATED Herod. And not just because of his heavy “tax-and-spend” approach to government.
MAN
Christ, he’s not descended from David, either!
WOMAN
He’s not even Jewish. His family is from those Arabian mountains where they worship wind gods!
NARRATOR
Jude was a ruin after generations of turmoil, and Herod embarked on a stupendous public-works campaign. New homes, markets, roads, theaters, and palaces were constructed. He rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem. He build the magnificent port city Caesarea with the latest advances in architecture and engineering.
At home, Herod modernized government with a functional bureaucracy, built a thriving economy, and protected his people with a smart foreign policy.
Didn’t help.
Buildings of the city of Jerusalem
VOICES
We hate this son of a bitch!
He’s a Roman ruler, not a Jewish one.
I hear even his wife and kids hate him.
NARRATOR
Suffering excruciating pain on his deathbed, Herod had his two eldest sons executed, and revised his will to name his son ARCHELAUS as heir.
When Herod died in 4 B.C., revolutionaries stormed the temple. Archelaus tried to make nice, but ended up sending in the troops.
Arab tribal couple looking down on the temple from a distance. There’s a lot of bloodshed happening inside the temple walls.
ARAB MAN
What’s with these guys always killing each other in their temple?
ARAB WOMAN
Tch! Human sacrifice is so barbaric!
NARRATOR
The entire land was suddenly filled with revolutionary prophets and would-be messiahs…
STICK FIGURES
It’s the end times!
The kingdom of God is at hand!
No more kings!
Follow me! God is calling us to bring about the age of peace!
NARRATOR
Whom the Romans put down MERCILESSLY.
Horrified Sicarius pulling away from splorting blood with sound effects CRUNCH, BLEED, gurgle…
SICARIUS
Not inspiring…
NOT inspiring!
Why does this story sound so familiar, and a bit more contemporary?
Are you implying that what people used to do is somehow similar to what people still do? Because if that’s true, then knowing history might help us come up with insights about the present. And we all know that’s crazy talk.
I’ll be honest, the latter half of this one definitely rubbed me the wrong way, and I it wasn’t until a few hours later that the realization dawned. The disturbing undertones were because of the eerie similarity your comic has to various apologisms of colonialism and imperialism I’ve seen over the years. And more personally to myself, the similarity it has to apologisms of Soviet occupation of the Baltics. “Progress” and great infrastructure projects within the confines of an overbearing cultural hegemony do not and should not outweigh a people’s desire self-determination.
I can see lots of reasons why this page would rub people the wrong way, but I have to admit I hadn’t thought of this one. I did want to show the evolution of the Judean identity as a distinct culture, with internal clashes over what that culture ought to be, and how much self-determination they wanted. But I wasn’t trying to say one side was more right than the other. There were Judeans who thought Hellenization and Romanization were awesome, and there were Judeans who thought is was awful. (And there were plenty who couldn’t have cared less, either way.)
I thought the Soviet apologia for their annexation was that the Baltics had been part of imperial Russia, so they were merely reuniting a common people. I don’t think any of the empires here thought that way about Judah. It was a useful client state along an important trade route, so the empires wanted to control it, but none of them thought of its people as “us”. As for colonialism/imperialism, I doubt any of the empires did what they did under the guise of altruism or delivering civilization to less-developed peoples. They did it to protect their own interests. Usually benignly, but brutally when need be. Herod’s governance is an excellent example of infrastructure and progress NOT outweighing the popular sense of how legitimate his authority was.
But now that you mention it, I can see where you’re coming from.
While not directly related to the comic page itself, the justification that the Baltics were once part of the Russian Empire is, from a legal perspective, a very flimsy reasoning. When the Soviet Union (then Soviet Russia) signed peace treaties with the three Baltic States, all three of the peace treaties explicity each had an article where the Soviet Union “renounced in perpetuity all rights to the territory” of each of the three nations. The reasoning that “it was part of the Russian Empire” is as flimsy as the interwar Soviet Union trying to press a territorial claims on Alaska. Difference being that the US is far too large and strong to go into war over such flimsy excuses.
But, when that particular excuse is debunked is where you’ll see most Soviet apologists switching tactics to the “But look at all the roads and railways and factories the Union built in the Baltics (for the benefit of the Red Army)” justification that rang familiar to me from your own arguments in favor of the Romans.
I have a whole rant on why that apology doesn’t really work either (the core point being, the infrastructure projects cement the overlords position despite any coincidental benefits to the local population, and make return to independence more difficult in the long term), but that’s even less relevant to the comic at hand, and goes more into matters of economics and demographics than into matters of law.
Anyway, to go back to your comic, I think after reading your response, I can put into words another part that made knee-jerk at the whole of the pro-Rome argumentation. It’s good on you that you tried to avoid making it seem like one side is more right that the other. This might just be in the eye of the beholder, but I’m definitely reading an undertone of “the Judeans might have been wrong to desire self-determination at all” in places. Which is just so utterly reprehensibly imperialist-chauvinist of a viewpoint in my mind that it can’t possibly be right. I can argue that the Judeans were wrong to pursue self-determination in the various (disorganized) methods they did, or at the time they did. I might even argue that Rome wasn’t in the wrong to resort to violence in their effort to maintain order, given the events and the norms of the time period.
But I can’t and won’t argue that a pursuit of self-determination can be wrong in itself. A fundamental desire for self-determination is just and right by definition, even if the people of the time did not put their goals and philosophies into those modern terms. There might be a schism where those who desire self-determination and those who don’t split into two separate societies, but that doesn’t make either side wrong either. There’s room for compromise there. But to claim that any group of people can be wrong to desire self-determination at all, well. I’ve put into words an idea so reprehensible that I’d rather take up arms and die fighting against it, than see it come into dominance in my own society.
Which, I suppose, ties very well into the entire debate of why people turn to terrorism and how they justify it to themselves.
Thank you, I clearly only had a surface-level understanding of the Baltic annexation!
As for being “pro-Rome” I’m going to have to take the blame for miscommunicating, because I wasn’t trying to be pro-anybody. Pompey had his reasons for invading Jerusalem, but I wasn’t trying to paint him as a good guy or a bad guy. That bit about Herod I think actually makes your point: that no matter how much a government does, if the people don’t see that government as legitimate then its accomplishments will never outweigh the injustice.
Which is exactly one of the feelings I want this page to leave us with, as we head to the next one.
Does that belief in the right to self-determination carry through to the Confederacy? The idea of Negro freedom, much less equality, was to them “an idea so reprehensible that I’d rather take up arms and die fighting against it, than see it come into dominance in my own society”, after all.
“the core point being, the infrastructure projects cement the overlords position despite any coincidental benefits to the local population, and make return to independence more difficult in the long term”
Ah. And that’s why rebels, insurrectionists and revolutionaries tend to target national infrastructure (such as bridges, tunnels, railroads, rail stations, power plants, etc.) Take away the benefits provided by the state, and (the hypothetical insurrectionist) you are potentially hurting the local population you’re trying to rally, but you’re also destroying the legitimacy of the government in their eyes – to the point that the best (and most right) way to stop these attacks are to just support you in overthrowing the government.
But, interestingly enough, the Baltic states did not pursue that route. Their independence was achieved via song and dance festivals, the Baltic Way demonstration, barricades and human shield envelopments of media buildings.
I feel like an interesting discussion would be the history of modern pacifist demonstrations and their effectiveness. Clearly Gandhi’s the main icon everyone associates with such actions, but where did such peaceful protests start? When did they become popular?
“But, interestingly enough, the Baltic states did not pursue that route. Their independence was achieved via song and dance festivals, the Baltic Way demonstration, barricades and human shield envelopments of media buildings.”
Well, not at first. In the 40’s and early-50’s they tried violent resistance.
It… didn’t end well.
And if certain people’s desire for self-determination tramples over other certain people’s desire for self-determination? What then?
By the nature of self-determination, that would imply that they both have the same self.
The nation-state dates to the 15th century at the earliest. Wikipedia|Nation-State History and Origins
There is no way that King Josiah would consider transforming Judah into a nation-state to be his objective, because that wasn’t even a concept back then.
He wouldn’t have heard of the Westphalian concept, of course, but even so I’d argue that a nation-state is what he was trying to create.
Josiah was trying to make Judah a political entity defined by territory rather than tribe, with an institutionalized sovereign government that was centralized and had sufficient power to protect the borders and assert its authority over all within those borders, and also a state with its own political and ethnic identity. Sounds pretty Westphalian to me.
Just because the concept didn’t have that name doesn’t mean it wasn’t something people did. As we’ll see in the next few pages of the Con Law comic, Europe has certainly invented important forms and theories of government, but I think it’s a stretch to give them all the credit for this one.
What do you think?
Those are all fair points. But you left out two important ingredients in the modern conception of the nation-state: 1. an integrated national economy with a state-sponsored internal transportation network free from internal customs and duties on the movement of goods. 2. a uniform national culture based around a standardized written language and educational curriculum. That second one really wasn’t possible before mass-communication and mass education. Even the states that had standardized written languages, like China, couldn’t spread them outside the educated upper-classes. So they didn’t effectively spread a common national culture to the masses.
(continued) since the concept of the nation state didn’t exist yet, and had Josiah succeeded, he would have been the absolute ruler of Judah, it would be more accurate to call the state he was trying to create an independent kingdom.
“Religion” wasn’t a concept until the 19th century. No way the Sicarri would think in terms of their “religion” vanishing. Nor would ancient Jews have thought of their beliefs and practices as that old-time religion. I know we can’t explain how they thought with 100% accuracy without actually being fluent in ancient Hebrew. But imposing concepts that didn’t exist at the time on ancient people is still misleading. It disguises how much has changed in the way we think and relate to the world between their time and our time.
“Get off my ancestral land”, hey, this sounds awfully familiar…
[Reading this and thinking: “he’s gonna get SO much flak from fundies”]
[Reaches the end: ‘please don’t tell my mom’]
I did NOT expect this 😉
But seriously, this was immensely interesting; I’ve of course heard the various parts of the story before, but you put it together so beautifully.
You really are at your best when you go off on a tangent 🙂
Why would he get flak from fundies?
Obsessing over a group you hate (but probably can’t give an adequate description of their beliefs — no, incoherent spittle about ‘hating science’ doesn’t count) to the point where you’ll use an unrelated historical account as a bludgeon against them… Is that really living your best life?
As he said, all of this stuff is in line with accepted Catholic and Jewish teaching. Glad you’re finally catching up with the rest of us.
Pax Vobiscum!
Baal wasn’t the Canaanite god of Warriors. That was his sister Anath. Source: The Ancient Canaanites: The History of the Civilizations That Lived in Canaan Before the Israelites
Typo: United kngdom of Judah and Israel (shortly after the image of the mountains introducing Yahweh as a wind god)
Blast. Thanks!
If it’s any consolation to your mom, the kings of Judah at the time had been keeping chronicles for many generations, and much of the books of kings and chronicles are an abridgment of that original, now-lost record (with heavy editorializing, possibly some additions, etc). Most of those kings are likely real historical figures, even David and Solomon, but there’s a lot of debate about whether David was even a king, per se, or more like a regional strong man, whose kingship was ascribed via a sortof retroactive presentism. Solomon at least dates to the digging of some old copper mines.
It kinda’ seems like you’re putting the transition from monolatrism to monotheism pretty late in the story though. While the books of Moses don’t explicitly say anything about other gods not being real, there are references in the chronicles and 2 kings to “gods that are not gods but the work of mens’ hands,” which suggests that the idea of monotheism had at least some traction by the time those texts were compiled, doesn’t it?
Ooh, a study about terrorism!
…
Oh. A “why religion is false” study, asserting materialist theories as fact.
Lame.
Lame it may be! But if you think this is about religion being false, you’ve kinda missed the point. The point is that nothing happens in a vacuum. There’s a long historical and cultural background that formed the mindsets and circumstances of the people in that time and place, which explain why terrorism “suddenly” appeared out of nowhere for the first time in history.
The after-life was not a new idea at this point. It had been around before even agriculture was invented. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-016-9260-0#Sec11
It was a new idea for Judaism.
People have charged the Bible for centuries as being edited and redacted throughout the ages. Problem is, there’s no evidence for it; nobody has ever found a copy of the book of Genesis, or Deuteronomy, or whatever, minus these “edits.”
When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, they were copies of the Old Testament (and some other writings) a thousand years older than any that were known to be in existence. Modernists said, “Now you’ll see how much the Bible has been changed.” Yup, we did; the only difference between these scrolls and the other copies of the Old Testament was the font.
TL;DR – Stick with teaching law.
On the contrary, there’s tons of evidence for it. It’s not that people have “charged” the Bible with being edited and rewritten. It’s that they’ve discovered this fact through careful scholarship. The Wikipedia article is a good starting point, if you want to do your own research.
And there’s plenty different between the Dead Sea Scrolls and various translations of the Old Testament. The scrolls contain more texts than just those found in the Bible, and even the parts corresponding to the Bible contain additional material and are in a different order. It can be fun finding the differences and seeing how they affect meaning. You might enjoy using the Dead Sea Scrolls: Study Edition and the Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. The scrolls were compiled by Essenes, a separatist sect who rejected the priesthood and the Second Temple as corruptions of Yahweh’s law after the Seleucids took over. While some of their versions of the Old Testament are nearly identical to the traditional Masoretic versions, others like Exodus and Samuel are drastically different.
Actually, the Dead Sea Scrolls are one of the pieces of evidence for the mutability of Biblical texts before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The traditional Jewish Masoretic texts are different from the Greek Septuagint, and both are significantly different from the Samaritan scriptures (which, by the way, offer really good context for otherwise confusing Biblical passages. Note that the Samaritans were the ones who hadn’t been carted off to Babylon, and whose religion may well have more closely resembled the old faith than that of those who returned and took over). The Dead Sea Scrolls contain examples of all three. What’s more, over half of the scrolls are texts that don’t match up with any of those traditions, and diverge widely from the scriptures we’re familiar with.
I was a historian before I was a lawyer, fwiw.