On Matthew 5:9

Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  If you are unfamiliar with the nature of our study, you may become familiar by starting at the Introduction, which can be found here.

As you'll recall, we've got a few irons in the fire right now.  First of all, our reading of the Gospel has brought us to the Beatitudes, or "great blessings," which we have been reading and digesting slowly over a couple of months.  Second, we're in the middle of an open-ended study of paganism and its interplay with Judaism in the first century BC.  Third, within the context of that study, we're in the middle of recounting the tale of Rome's conquest of Judea in 63 BC.

That's a lot.  You'll forgive me for dismissing with pleasantries and superfluous language.  Let's get back into this.

Mr. Magnus Goes to Jerusalem

or...

The Sullying of the Holy of Holies

Part II

Last week, we left Aristobulus and his loyal priests besieged inside the Temple in Jerusalem.  The priests inside have just been duped by the people of Jerusalem, who are on the side of Hyrcanus (Aristobulus' brother) and Aretas, the Arabian king in command of the forces besieging the Temple.

We also left off, in Josephus' Antiquities, with our attention turned to the north, where Pompey has just gotten done mopping up various military forces during the course of a very successful campaign in what is now Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

Pompey began to send men south, and Hyrcanus' and Aristobulus' were both informed of the Romans' advancing.  They both sent envoys to greet Pompey's scout, Scaurus.  Through Scaurus, both of the warring brothers appealed for Pompey's help.  Josephus says they both offered money in the amount of "four hundred talents" for Pompey's favor, and that Pompey decided to help Aristobulus "for he was rich, and had a great soul, and desired to obtain nothing but what was moderate."  It is worth mentioning Josephus' obvious favor of Aristobulus.

What did Aristobulus' four hundred talents afford him?  In exchange for the four hundred talents Aristobulus offered, Pompey sent messengers to Aretas, ordering him and his forces to "depart, or else he would be declared an enemy to the Romans."

Aretas was no dummy, and he knew that his men would be outclassed, outgeared, and outnumbered by Pompey's men.  He immediately began to withdraw his forces, at which juncture Aristobulus' cobbled together an army and gave chase.  Here's how Josephus tells it in Antiquities:

So Scaurus returned to Damascus again; and Aristobulus, with a great army, made war with Aretas and Hyrcanus, and fought them at a place called Papyron, and beat them in battle, and killed about six thousand of the enemy, with whom fell Phalion also, the brother of Antipater.

(It is not entirely clear, by Josephus' account, where Aristobulus got the military forces with which he pursued Hyrcanus and Aretas.)

At this time, Pompey finishes up his business in the north and finally heads to Damascus himself.  As he travels, he lets everyone in the region know that he wants to personally settle any ongoing regional disputes, starting in the spring.  His substantial army was just being mobilized again after winter.

Hearing that Pompey intended to settle regional disputes, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus both sent ambassadors to Pompey's court in Damascus.  Along with the brothers' ambassadors, there also arrived members of a non-aligned Jewish community, which appealed to Pompey against both Hyrcanus and Aristobulus.  

Let's see this ancient court in Josephus' ancient words:

...there it was that he heard the causes of the Jews, and of their governors Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, who were at difference one with another, as also of the nation against them both, which did not desire to be under kingly government, because the form of government they received from their forefathers was that of subjection to the priests of that God whom they worshiped; and [they complained], that though these two were the posterity of priests, yet did they seek to change the government of their nation to another form, in order to enslave them.

This sounds like a complicated case for Pompey to parse through.

"Aristobulus should be in charge!  He's smartest!"

"No, Hyrcanus should be in charge!  He's the oldest son, and his mother left it to him."

"No, neither of them should be in charge!  The priests, and the priests alone, should be in charge."

"But wait... don't Aristobulus and Hyrcanus both descend from priestly blood?"

"Rabble, rabble, rabble!"

I wonder how Pompey felt about all of this.  Not wanting to make a hasty decision, he scolded Aristobulus for his violent and wild ways.  He told the brothers to delay their warring, and that his judgement would not be made until he himself came down into Judea.

Aristobulus did not apparently take Pompey's words all that seriously, and turned his forces back into Judea to continue tearing up the countryside.  When Pompey got word of Aristobulus' behavior, he was angered and began marching a massive military force south toward Judea.

Aristobulus' forces holed up in a fortress on a mountain called Alexandrium, and when Pompey's army approached, he summoned Aristobulus down to discuss the controversy with his brother.  Aristobulus', seeing that he had little choice, came down from the mountain and disputed for a while with his brother about the right to be king.  Then, Pompey let Aristobulus return to his fortress.  Again, in short order, Pompey summoned Aristobulus down for a meeting, and again he went down, talked, and returned to the fortress.  Aristobulus did this, according to Josephus, two or three times, all the while keeping his forces ready for battle in case Pompey decided to rule against him.

Finally, Pompey made a kind of a decision.  He told Aristobulus to give up the fortress on Alexandrium, and to order all the governors in the region who were loyal to him to give up their fortresses as well.  Aristobulus, despite his preparations for war, decided to obey and gave up the fortresses.

If Pompey thought he was done here, though, he was mistaken.*  Aristobulus, angry that he'd had to cede his fortresses, retired to Jerusalem with his forces.  Pompey advanced to Jericho after him.  From Jericho, Pompey leaned in on Jerusalem, and Aristobulus sent word to Pompey that he was sorry for his warlike ways, and that he would give Pompey money and receive him into Jerusalem freely for Pompey's forgiveness.  Wanting to act prudently, Pompey agreed to this and sent his men to receive the money and enter Jerusalem.

The Roman general was enraged when his men returned saying that Aristobulus' men would not let them into the city, nor pay the agreed upon sum.  Pompey immediately had Aristobulus arrested and imprisoned, and prepared to lay siege to the city.

The city was well defended by a wall, but a rebellious faction inside the city allowed Pompey's men in.  Pompey's men took control of Jerusalem and the royal palace, and struggled only when it came to securing the Temple itself, which lay surrounded by a massive defensive trench.

The ancient Roman historian Cassius Dio records the situation thus, in his Roman History:

...by shutting up Aristobulus in a certain place he compelled him to come to terms, and when he would surrender neither the money nor the garrison, he threw him into chains. After this he more easily overcame the rest, but had trouble in besieging Jerusalem. Most of the city, to be sure, he took without any trouble, as he was received by the party of Hyrcanus; but the temple itself, which the other party had occupied, he captured only with difficulty.

The ancient Roman historian Strabo describes the trench surrounding the Temple thus, in his Geography:

Pompey went over and overthrew them and rased their fortifications, and in particular took Jerusalem itself by force; for it was a rocky and well-watered fortress; and though well supplied with water inside, its outside territory was wholly without water;
and it had a trench cut in rock, sixty feet in depth and two hundred and sixty feet in breadth; and, from the stone that had been hewn out, the wall of the temple was fenced with towers.

At this point, all of Aristobulus' supporters end up behind the Temple walls, just as they were when Aretas besieged the city not long before.  Hyrcanus' offers every help he can to Pompey, as Pompey moves his camp inside of Jerusalem and right outside the Temple on its north side.  The city is once again overrun with foreign soldiers.  It is a first-century Jew's worst nightmare on repeat.

The detail with which Josephus describes this is exquisite, so we'll let him keep describing it, from Antiquities:

...even on that side there were great towers, and a ditch had been dug, and a deep valley circled it, for on the parts toward the city were precipices, and the bridge on which Pompey had gotten in was broken down.  However, a bank was raised, day by day, with a great deal of labor, while the Romans cut down materials for it from the places around.  And when this bank was sufficiently raised, and the ditch filled up, though but poorly, by reason of its immense depth, he brought his mechanical engines and battering rams from Tyre, and placing them on the bank, he battered the Temple with the stones that were thrown against it.

The next thing Josephus says here is multiply attested in our sources from this time.  He next relays the means by which Pompey was able to breach the Temple walls in 63 AD - probably one of the most interesting points of this whole ordeal.

As Josephus tells us, the Temple was surrounded by a deep valley, directly behind which were multiple guard towers and a heavy wall.  In ancient times, the siege of a walled and towered area surrounded by a deep valley was perhaps one of the most difficult military procedures.  In order to breach the wall, one must get ladders or, more preferably, siege works of some kind, right up to the wall.  In order to get a ladder to the wall, multiple men would have to attempt to bridge the valley with heavy wooden equipment, and then carry more heavy wooden equipment over that bridge while soldiers shot projectiles of many varieties down on their heads at a constant clip from above.  As long as the forces behind the wall had food, water, and rocks, such a wall was likely to remain impenetrable.

Pompey the Great had made an observation of the Jews early on in all this.  He observed that the Jews were extremely religious, and that they observed as part of their religion a day of rest every seventh day.  Pompey noted that the Jews defending the Temple were certainly allowed to defend themselves if they were attacked on their Sabbath, but that they were not allowed to initiate any attack of any kind on that day.  This allotted Pompey a rare opportunity.  Pompey ordered his men to keep up the projectile attack on the Temple steadily, Sunday through Friday.  Then, on the Jewish Sabbath, Pompey's men would stop their attack of the Temple and would focus all of their efforts filling in the valley that surrounded it.  Since it was the Jewish day of rest, the Romans could work all day on their bridges and structures without a single arrow or rock falling on them.  Aristobulus' loyal men watched in horror on several successive Saturdays as Pompey's engineers and workers filled the valley in with a massive wooden structure that would support all of his siege works from Tyre.

Here's how Josephus tells it:

And had it not been our practice, from the days of our forefathers, to rest on the seventh day, this bank could never have been perfected, by reason of the opposition the Jews would have made; for though our law gives us leave then to defend ourselves against those that begin to fight with us and assault us, yet does it not permit us to meddle with our enemies while they do nothing else.

Strabo says "Pompey seized the city, it is said, after watching for the day of fasting, when the Judaeans were abstaining from all work; he filled up the trench and threw ladders across it."

Cassius Dio continues in his History:

For [the Temple] was on high ground and was fortified by a wall of its own, and if they had continued defending it on all days alike, he could not have got possession of it. As it was, they made an excavation of what are called the days of Saturn, and by doing no work at all on those days afforded the Romans an opportunity in this interval to batter down the wall. The latter, on learning of this superstitious awe of theirs, made no serious attempts the rest of the time, but on those days, when they came round in succession, assaulted most vigorously.

Pompey is memorable during this time, I think, for his thoughtful meticulousness.  He lets time work to his advantage whenever he needs to.  He seems, to me, a patient man.

So now we come to the climax.

Josephus tells us that, as the fall of the Temple became imminent, the priests inside continued their daily sacrifices as if nothing was wrong.  No matter what casualty the priests suffered, they continued their steadfast observance of their tradition.  Josephus says that, as the siege works arrived and did their damage, the largest of the Temple's defense towers was shaken and collapsed.  The collapsing tower destroyed a swath of the Temple's wall, at which point Pompey's men "poured in rapidly."  Finally, on a Sabbath day during the consulship of Gaius Antonius and Marcus Tullius Cicero, Josephus tells us that:

...the enemy fell upon [the priests], and cut the throats of those that were in the Temple; yet could not those that offered the sacrifices be compelled to run away, neither by the fear they were in of their own lives, nor by the number that were already killed, as thinking it better to suffer whatever came upon them, at their very altars, than to omit anything that their laws required of them.

The priests steadfastly continued with their prayers and Temple works as they heard the screams of the dying in the background, and the horrifying sound of Roman foot soldiers approaching them by the dozen or perhaps hundred.

Heads began to litter the Temple floor as Pompey's men exacted harsh discipline on those who opposed the power of Rome.  We can imagine the priests at their altars, perhaps still plunging knives into sacrificial animals, as Roman soldiers approach them from behind, plunging swords into their backs.

What a bloody scene.

"But now all was full of slaughter," Josephus says.

And then...

...Pompey entered the Holy of Holies.

The Holy of Holies was the inner-sanctum of the Temple.  It was the room that was said to house the God of the people Israel.  Only the High Priest was allowed into the Holy of Holies, and even he was only allowed to enter that space on one day out of the year.  The Holy of Holies was shrouded by a large veil that extended from floor to ceiling.  To this day, some Jewish people will not walk in a large portion of the city of Jerusalem, to make sure that they do not accidentally step foot in the spot that used to be this Holy of Holies.

With a veritable river of blood pooling at his feet, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus shocked the entire Jewish world by piercing the veil of the Holy of Holies with his gladius and entering that sacred place in 63 BC.

The collective Jewish heart must have cried out in agony at this moment.  Indeed, Josephus recounts some of the Jews committing suicide rather than face this ongoing Roman insult to God's people.

Josephus says:

...No small enormities were committed around the temple itself, which, in former ages, had been inaccessible and seen by none; for Pompey went into it, and not a few of those that were with him also, and saw all that which it was unlawful for any other men to see but only for the high priests.  There were in that Temple the golden table, the holy candlestick, and the pouring vessels, and a great quantity of spices; and besides these there were among the treasures two-thousand talents of sacred money; yet did Pompey touch nothing of all this, on account of his regard to religion; and in this point also he acted in a manner that was worthy of his virtue.

Amazing.  The general enters the room, as if merely to ensure that Roman eyes had seen all that could be seen, and then simply leaves the room unmolested.

Cicero, in his speech For Flaccus, also notes that “...Gnaeus Pompeius, after he had taken Jerusalem, though he was a conqueror, touched nothing which was in that temple.”  Because of the multiple attestation, we can be fairly certain that this story of Pompey's conduct inside the Temple is true.

In subsequent days, Pompey had his men clean the temple while he bestowed the High Priesthood on Hyrcanus.  He forced the Jews to give up lands that they had not long before gained from Syria, and brought Judea totally under control.  In short order, a steep fee of over ten-thousand talents was exacted from Jerusalem, and Pompey disappeared into the Palestinian sunset almost as swiftly as he had arrived, leaving Roman delegates governing the area.

Josephus lays the blame for the subjugation of Judea squarely on the two brothers:

Now the occasions of this misery which came upon Jerusalem were Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, by raising a rebellion one against the other; for now we lost our liberty, and became subject to the Romans...

The most notable moments of Pompey's life still lay ahead of him, but he had left our region and people of interest forever, and forever changed.

It is true that the Jews had been interacting with pagans of various forms for many centuries, and that Greek paganism had been known all over Palestine for at least a couple of centuries.  It was the arrival of the Romans in 63 BC, however, and the fundamental incompatibility of Jewish theology with Roman paganism, that would eventually lead to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD by a Rome fed up with a people who would not accept abject rule.

When we think about the intersection of Second Temple Judaism and the pagan world, perhaps we ought to think first of Pompey's bloody footprints tracing themselves in, around, and then out of the Holy of Holies.

Next time, we'll compare Roman pagan practice to Jewish traditions, in detail.  For now, let's get back to our Gospel.

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Matthew 5:9

9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.

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What kind of weirdo has a favorite Beatitude?

This kind. *points thumbs to self*

Jesus continues doling out mission-critical moral data in the form of his "great blessings."  Today, he blesses "peacemakers" and insists that they will be children of God.

What does Jesus mean by "peacemaker?"  

Well... the original Greek word written here is "eirinopoiós" which can be alternatively translated "loving peace," or "pacific."  

Peace is defined as "freedom from disturbance" or "a period of time without war."

So Jesus, here at the very beginning of his Sermon on the Mount, blesses those who do not cause disturbances and those who do not advocate for or participate in war - those that love peace.

Jesus offers no exception.  He doesn't say "blessed are the peacemakers, unless someone like Pompey the Great is knocking at your door, in which case the battle hardened Jewish warrior is actually blessed, not the peacemaker."

He doesn't say "blessed are the peacemakers, unless someone knocks down a couple of buildings with a couple of airplanes, in which case the American military are actually blessed, not the peacemaker."

Jesus blesses the peacemaker, and excludes the warrior and the warmonger alike from blessing.  For perhaps the first time, though certainly not the last, Jesus insists that humankind does not have the authority necessary to make war on itself. 

Jesus says this to us through the Gospel while American Christians consistently vote in support of the world's largest and most dangerous military industrial complex.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Twilight Zone.

You need to share this writing.  Thank you for reading it.

Love.

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* I'm sure he didn't.

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