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!