Ancient Man and His First Civilizations

Canaan-6

Modern Palestine-Israel-Lebanon

As sometimes happens, in order to maintain a logical flow in another section, we may have to move far ahead in time. Having done just that, let's now move back in time.

When last we left Canaan, Josiah was king and he had successfully re-taken territory from the Assyrians, who were rapidly declining in power, and then their hated capital "Nineveh", was destroyed by the Medes.

But Josiah's successful rebellion ended, when he fell in battle against pharaoh Necho (Nekau II - 26 dyn.), of Egypt. Who was intent on re-establishing Egyptian dominance in Canaan after Assyria's decline. At the same time, the Chaldean kings of Babylonia were rapidly gaining strength. King Nabopolassar of Babylon and King Cyaxares of Media divided the old Assyrian empire between themselves. After Nabopolassar's death, his son Nebuchadrezzar II, later gained control of Syria and Canaan in swift campaigns.

The Egyptians however, continued to intrigue in Canaan, whose native states were repeatedly induced to join anti-Babylonian coalitions. All of which collapsed of themselves, or were crushed by the Chaldean armies. Jerusalem was twice besieged in 597 and again in 589 B.C. Finally in about 587/586 B.C, it was stormed and destroyed. The prophet Jeremiah, who had foreseen this tragic end, and who had repeatedly warned his people against their suicidal policy, died in Egypt. Judah was devastated and almost depopulated, with most of it's people sent off to Mesopotamia.
 
This all changed with the victory and ascension of the Persian King Cyrus II (Cyrus the Great). After Cyrus had taken Babylon, he ordered that all the captives there be freed, and returned to their homelands, this was to be financed by Cyrus! He ordered the Hebrews restored to Jerusalem, and bade them to rebuild their temple. This period of peace lasted for almost three hundred years, but then the Persian Empire was destroyed by the armies of Alexander of Macedon.

After Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia, Judah first came under the rule of the Ptolemy's (Greek kings of Egypt), and later under that of the Seleucids, (Greek kings of Mesopotamia). Opposition to the Seleucid attempts to suppress the Hebrew ancestral faith, led to the rise of a family of Hebrew leaders known as the Maccabees. They gradually drove the Seleucids from the country, and set up a revived kingdom of Judaea. Family disputes however, led to Roman intervention in 63 B.C.

Now under Roman control, Herod the Great was made king of Judaea in 37 B.C, and later of all Canaan (20-4 B.C.). After Herod's death, the country was ruled alternately by Herod's direct descendants and by Roman procurators. As the result of a Hebrew revolt that broke out in 66 A.D, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by Romans in 70 A.D.

The Zealots - who were a Hebrew sect which opposed the pagan rule of Rome, and the polytheism that it professed, were an aggressive political party. Their concern for the national and religious life of the Hebrew people, led them to despise even Hebrews, who sought peace and conciliation with the Roman authorities. Some extremists among the Zealots, turned to terrorism and assassination, they became known as Sicarii (“dagger men”). They frequented public places with hidden daggers, ready to strike down persons friendly to Rome. In the first revolt against Rome (66–70 A.D.) the Zealots played a leading role, and at the mountaintop fortress of Masada, they committed suicide, rather than surrender the fortress (73 A.D.).

One of the enduring mysteries of ancient Canaan is; what happened to the ancient writings of the Hebrews. The Hebrew’s were a very literate people, who wrote on many subjects. Yet today all that exists is the works of Josephus Flavius: who was a Hebrew traitor named Joseph, who upon going over to the Romans, was made a General and given the title Josephus Flavius. He subsequently commanded Roman troops in putting down the Hebrew rebellion.

Josephus, in his delusion, attempted to establish the greatness and antiquity of his people in his written works, even after he had aided in their destruction. His, and the works of a few other authors, written around the time of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. is all that survives today.

Certainly history is replete with instances of Khazar/Jewish texts, some claimed to be ancient? Being burned in Europe, But what about the genuine ancient texts of the Hebrews? How could it be, that the self-written history of an entire nation, with thousands of years of ups and downs: and a people with arguably the most convoluted and eventful path to nationhood, be lost to all mankind?

Stranger still; is the absence of the original Septuagint. This is a work that was commissioned by the second Greek king of Egypt Ptolemy II, in 323 B.C. Ptolemy arranged for six translators from each of the twelve tribes of Israel to come to Egypt and translate the Hebrew Scriptures into a volume for his library in Alexandria.

This book is known as the “Septuagint” derived from the Latin word for "seventy". It is the first Bible, and the prototype for all other Bibles including the Masoretic text, which was begun around 600 A.D. and completed in 1000 A.D. (the Bible of the Khazars or Jews). All that remains of the Septuagint today is copies of copies, which have been reinterpreted and reworked so often, that its relationship to the original cannot be judged.

Roman desire to destroy anything and everything that might offer the Hebrew’s moral support is well known. Their destruction of Hebrew buildings and institutions is well documented. However, there is universal silence as to who destroyed all the Hebrew writings.
Roman culpability for at least some of it, was established with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which the Hebrew’s successfully hid for 2000 years, in order to prevent them from being destroyed by the Romans, (the Romans also burned the writings of the Etruscans in Italy).

The Dead Sea Scrolls

The first of the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries occurred in 1947 in Qumran, a village situated about twenty miles east of Jerusalem on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. A young Bedouin shepherd, following a goat that had gone astray, tossed a rock into one of the caves along the sea cliffs and heard a cracking sound: the rock had hit a ceramic pot containing leather and papyrus scrolls that were later determined to be nearly twenty centuries old. Ten years and many searches later, eleven caves around the Dead Sea were found to contain tens of thousands of scroll fragments dating from app. 300 B.C. to 68 A.D. and representing an estimated eight hundred separate works.

The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise a vast collection of Hebrew documents written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and encompassing many subjects and literary styles. They include manuscripts or fragments of every book in the Hebrew Bible except the Book of Esther, all of them created nearly one thousand years earlier than any previously known biblical manuscripts. The scrolls also contain the earliest existing biblical commentary on the Book of Habakkuk, and many other writings, among them religious works pertaining to Hebrew sects of the time.

But were the Romans the only ones? It seems strange that the writings of the people whose religious beliefs are at the core of the great religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, could be made non-existent, without a clue as to how it happened, when it happened, or who did it. That the Romans would then turn around, and build their great religion of Catholicism upon the religious beliefs of the Hebrews, a people that they utterly destroyed, is truly bizarre.

Then there is the curiosity as to why the Vatican and the leadership in Israel will not allow the World to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, except for a few minor and unimportant pieces which have been loaned out. As the only surviving authentic Hebrew writings, they are invaluable for learning the true nature and beliefs of the ancient Hebrews, as well as ascertaining the fidelity of modern religious teachings. Click Here for the History of the Bible <<Click>>