Showing posts with label world history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world history. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Gen Eds 11: The First Humans

The end of my world history posts! And only after ten months.

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. This is the final post in the world history part:
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1. The last post began to delve into some sensitive waters. An Archbishop named James Ussher in 1650 suggested that God created the world in 4004BC. This date fits with a fairly literal reading of the chronologies in Genesis.

However, in my last post I gave some dates from mainstream archaeology that go back further than 4000BC. Archaeologists date the walled city of Jericho back as far as 8500BC and Çatalhöyük as far back as 7000BC. These dates would require at the very least for the genealogies of Genesis to be significantly incomplete.

2. On the one hand, the fingerprints of history in Genesis coincide extremely well with the history of Mesopotamia from the previous post. We have Abraham at the time of Hammurabi. We trace him back to Ur in Sumer. And in the area of Sumer we have the beginnings of civilization. This is the area from which the ziggurat arose, like the Tower of Babel. There is evidence of a devastating flood in this area. Even Genesis points to the Garden of Eden being in the area of the Tigris and Euphrates (Gen. 2:14).

These breadcrumbs point back to about the same time as Ussher in the right region. The birth of human history is exactly where Genesis locates it--in Mesopotamia around the fourth millennium BC.

3. According to our previous post, human "history" began with the beginning of writing in the late 3000s BC in the area of Sumer. However, the current state of archaeology wants us to push back further, back to an "agricultural revolution" around 10,000BC. The current state of paleontology, which goes back beyond that point, wants to push back even further. How are we to fit these dates with the Bible?

In the last two decades, genetics has caused us even more problems. The mapping of the human genome, according to the current state of research, suggests that a common female and common male ancestor might have lived somewhere between 120,000 and 150,000 years ago in Africa. But not at the same time. [1] The current estimate is that "The DNA in current humans could not have come from a pool of fewer than approximately 10,000 humans." [2]

These theories of course are probably not in anything like their final form. We are in a dialog between Scripture and science, between possible interpretations of the Bible and possible interpretations of science. For example, John Walton's proposition is that perhaps Adam and Eve were royal representatives for a community of early humanity at some point in our early history. [3]

According to one theory, all humanity can be traced to East Africa about 70,000 years ago. According to current theory, Homo sapiens left Africa about then. So following Walton's theory, we might speculate that Adam and Eve ruled the Homo sapiens of East Africa some time before 70,000 years ago.

This of course is speculation, a discussion that hasn't hardly even started. For many, it is a conversation that should never start.

4. My goal in the rest of this post is simply to sketch out what seems to be the current dominant timeline for humanity among experts in this area at large, to do with as you will. My dates are based on Yuval Noah Harari's book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. It is a clearly secular book.

According to the current theory, a female ape had two daughters 6 million years ago. One would become the progenitor of all chimpanzees The other would become the mother of all humanity.

In this theory, about 2.5 million years ago, the genus Homo originated. This is not Homo sapiens or human beings as we are. These were animals in our genus, just as a lion and a tiger are in the same genus Panthera. According to the theory, this new genus Homo emerged from a genus of apes called Australopithecus.

Again, the current theory sees Homo sapiens emerging as a new species in Africa about 150,000 years ago. There were other "humans" around in the world at that time: Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo denisova. According to DNA, about 1-4 percent of Middle Eastern and European DNA is Neanderthal, and about six percent of Aboriginal Australian is Denisovan DNA.

So these "humans" would have intermingled a little, perhaps until as recently as 50,000 years ago. Neanderthals may have lasted until 30,000 years ago.

The success of these broader humans was the use of fire, going back as far as 300,000BC according to the current theory. Because humans could cook their food, they could eat all the needed food for a day in an hour, as opposed to the five hours of chewing raw food that chimpanzees need to do a day.

They were not particularly spectacular in comparison to other predators out there. In fact, some speculate that tools may have developed so that humans could break into bone to eat after the more skilled predators were done eating off all the meat from a kill.

There are no longer any other humans other than Homo sapiens. We apparently eliminated the others, according to the "Replacement" theory.

5. Some then suggest that the real point of origin for humanity as we know it took place about 70,000 years ago in East Africa. Yuval Harari calls this moment the "Cognitive Revolution." According to the current theory, some Homo sapiens had left Africa about 100,000BC for the Middle East, but they had not managed to compete against the Neanderthals, who actually had bigger brains.

But something changes in between 70,000 and 30,000BC, on this theory. Harari calls this chapter, "The Tree of Knowledge." Unlike Neanderthals, so the conjecture goes, Sapiens trade over long distances. Sapiens can coordinate with larger groups than small bands. Most importantly, Sapiens can imagine--they can construct realities like founding stories and legal fictions. They can not only talk about what is. They can talk about what could be.

6. In this theory, these Sapiens were all hunter-gatherers. They did not live in any one fixed location. They traveled to find food where they could. They ate on the spot what they could.

The next revolution, according to Harari, is the "Agricultural Revolution." This is when Sapiens transitioned from being a mostly hunter-gatherer species to becoming a farming species. In one place he mentions 12,000BC, but in another he suggests 9500-8500BC.

"Wheat and goats were domesticated by approximately 9000BC; peas and lentils around 8000BC; olive trees by 5000BC; horses by 4000BC; and gravevines in 3500BC" (77). "By 3500 BC the main wave of domestication was over" (77-78). "By the first century AD the vast majority of people throughout most of the world were agriculturalists" (78).

The rest is history. Agriculture tied down people to locations. Locations prepared the way for cities. Cities expanded the number of people in one place. Once the number moves into the hundreds, we need writing. We need bureaucracy. We need administration. We need collective imagination. We need to control violence. We need to organize warfare.

Here endeth world history.

Next Week: Chapters 1-8 of Sapiens

[1] E.g., Sequencing Y Chromosomes Resolves Discrepancy in Time to Common Ancestor of Males versus Females

[2] Both Tremper Longman III (vi) and Scot McKnight pass this idea along (xi) in Adam and Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science. These are faith-filled biblical scholars who believe in the inspiration of Scripture but also feel the need to take science seriously in the name of truth. See also the faith-filled scientist, Francis Collins, The Language of God.

[3] The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate.
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Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Gen Eds 10d: Ancient Mesopotamia

Ziggurat at Ur
This is the fourth and final post in the Classical Civilizations" unit of my World History series. The first three were India, China, and Egypt.

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:
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1. It is hard to believe, but we have finally hit the dawn of human history. The oldest walled village of which we know is Jericho, around 8500BC by most reckonings. [1] Perhaps there were only a few hundred inhabitants but it represented a movement that began to take place in the region--the formation of cities.

In this scenario, we humans had not really started farming until around 12,000BC, making the shift from being hunters to being farmers. When you farm, you are stuck to one place. People collect in one place. In 7000BC, the largest city may have been in Turkey, Çatalhöyük in Anatolia. It may have numbered between 5000 and 10,000.

But the first empire was in "Mesopotamia," "between the rivers" of the Tigris and Euphrates, modern day Iraq. Egypt united its lower and upper regions into a united kingdom around 3100BC, as we have seen. But the first empire was at Akkad around 2250BC, the empire of Sargon the Great. This area saw dominant kingdoms and empires for some 4000 years from the time of the Sumerians in lower Mesopotamia to the fall of the Babylonians to the Persians in 539.

2. We might say that humanity crossed the line from the pre-historic to the historic during the Uruk period (4100-2900BC) in Mesopotamia. These are the Sumerians, who called themselves, "black headed people." This area, Sumer, is the biblical area known as "Shinar" in Genesis 11:1.

The city of Uruk, perhaps founded somewhere around 4500BC, seems to be the place where writing really began to develop. At first this writing was a partial script--it was not created to write poetry but to keep count of cattle and taxes. [2] Writing develops to facilitate trading.

cuneiform
The form of writing is cuneiform. Cuneiform largely consisted of lines with triangles at the top. The Sumerians would also develop the 24 hour day and the idea of 360 degrees for a circle.

In Uruk, the cylinder seal was also used as far as we know for the first time, giving authority a reach beyond the presence of the king, a guarantee that you were reading something that was truly from the king. Kings ruled cities at this point, and cities conquered other cities. Empire does not as yet exist, only kings ruling individual cities and networks of cities with some kings more powerful than others (cf. Gen. 14:1-2).

The ziggurat also develops at Uruk. This will become the pyramid in Egypt. The Mayans, Incas and Aztecs also had their versions, making us wonder if there was contact of some sort across these continents. The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is perhaps a ziggurat of sorts. In the earliest days, kings were probably priests. Only later would the royal authority be sometimes detached from the religious authority.

Gilgamesh was a legendary king of Uruk, and we know him best from the Mesopotamian flood story, The Gilgamesh Epic. Gilgamesh was thus the Uruk version of Noah. The epic itself was not written down until sometime between 2100 and 1400BC, but this still qualifies it as the oldest human epic.

3. Uruk was not however the first city of the area. Eridu was perhaps founded in 5400BC and the Sumerians considered it the oldest city in the world. It was a city thought by the Sumerians to have predated the flood. This period before Uruk and writing is called the Ubaid period (6500-3800BC). This is the period right before the Bronze Age, often called the Calcolithic or Copper Age.

We have long associated this region with the Garden of Eden, and Genesis mentions the Tigris and Euphrates as two of four rivers in the area of the Garden (Gen. 2:14).

The city of Ur, from which Abraham originated (cf. Gen. 11:31; Josh. 24:2), was another Sumerian city dating from around 3800BC. The oldest wheels were discovered at Ur, on a four wheeled wagon. The kinds of tools that developed in the late 3000s in the Copper and Bronze Age were almost needed to make wheels.

The last period of Sumerian history ended in 1750BC with the third dynasty of Ur. Most famous in this period is Ur-Nammu, who created a law that foreshadowed the more famous law of Hammurabi.

4. Prior to the end of Sumerian history, the Akkadian empire began with Sargon the Great in the year 2334. This is the world's first real empire because it included multiple peoples over a vaster area of land than ever before. The Akkadians, unlike the Sumerians, were a Semitic people. Sargon ruled from Akkad.

The Akkadian language is often considered significant for Old Testament scholars. It is the oldest known Semitic language and thus is in the same family as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, not to mention Babylonian and Assyrian.

5. The city of Babylon was founded centuries before its most famous king from this period, Hammurabi (1792-50BC). His famous law Code of Hammurabi set down case law whose impact we can see in the Law of Moses. The "law of retribution," for example (the lex talonis) is found there, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" (ca. 1776BC).

The Amraphel of Genesis 14:1 has letters strikingly similar to Hammurabi, given that Semitic languages are centered in the consonants rather than the vowels. It is thus no surprise that Abraham is generally dated to about this period of history.

Hammurabi and Abraham were during the Middle Bronze Period (2119-1700). It was probably in this period (ca. 1900) that the city of Ashur was founded, which would be the center of the old Assyrian kingdom. Other cities in that area included Nimrud and Nineveh.

Also during this time was the thriving of the city of Ugarit, in northern Palestine (ca. 1900). Ugaritic is also a Semitic language of great significance in Old Testament studies. Ugaritic literature gives us significant insights into the cultural and literary context of the Old Testament (e.g., what Leviathan might be in Job 41:4).

6. In the middle of the second millennium BC, the Hittites and then the Kassites would rule this area. The Hittites conquered the region in 1595BC. They are mentioned in Genesis (e.g., 23). In the Late Bronze Age (1700-1100BC), the Kassites would come south and conquer the area.

The Kassites have left us the Amarna letters from the 1300s BC, which were sent to Egypt and refer to the Hittites and others. Around 1100BC, the Enuma Elish we have was written down, although it undoubtedly is much earlier. Found in the library at Nineveh, it gives us the Babylonian creation story.

The juncture between the Bronze and the Iron Age, which is happening in the late 1000s BC, is the juncture where Israel is struggling with the Philistines. Israel is a bronze culture; the Philistines use iron. The Trojan War is a bronze war, and thus also dates to this general time.

Next Post in Series: History 11: The First Humans

[1] A book I have found fascinating in writing this post is Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 2015). The question of fitting the dates normally assumed by archaeologists and a very literal reading of Genesis is a controversial one. However, ancient chronologies were not necessarily exhaustive and we can assume that God's purposes in the genealogies of Genesis were much broader than to give us an exhaustive account of the names. The purpose of such lists at the time was to assure us of the ancientness of the lineage and its origins in God's creation of humanity.

[2] Harari, Sapiens, 122-24.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017

Gen Eds 10c: Ancient Egypt

This is the third post in the Classical Civilizations" unit of my World History series. The first two were India and China.

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:
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1. For some 3000 years, Egypt was the dominant civilization around the Mediterranean Sea. From about 3400BC until Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332BC, Egypt was unsurpassed in the Mediterranean part of the world.

The first real dynasty of Egypt took place around 3100BC under king Menes, who set up his capital in the area that would later come to be known as Memphis. However, even before him there was a northern and southern kingdom. [1] The movie The Scorpion King, although completely unhistorical, no doubt took its inspiration from a king named Scorpion who in 3200 unsuccessfully tried to conquer the northern kingdom from the south.

The oldest known hieroglyphics come from the time of Menes, and it was during this time that some of the most enduring aspects of Egyptian culture were being formed. For example, the king of Egypt (the Pharaoh) was thought to be like a god and associated with the god Horus. The yearly flooding of the Nile provided natural irrigation.

2. The five hundred years of the Old Kingdom (2686-2181BC) was the time during which the pyramids were build. These were funerary monuments for the kings of the third dynasty. The first pyramid was the "step pyramid" of Djoser, built about 2630. It was the first major stone building in the world. The Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the seven wonders of the world was build by Khufu or Cheops in Greek in the 2500s. Two more pyramids were also built.

The third and fourth dynasties were the golden age. From the fifth to the sixth dynasty, the rise of a priestly class drained the resources that before belonged to the king, and the building of pyramids became a significant economic burden.

3. The "First Intermediate Period" saw the disintegration of a united kingdom for a period of about a hundred years (2181-55BC). There were several kings one after the other until Mentuhotep, a king ruling from Thebes in the south, reunited Egypt. Thus began the eleventh dynasty and the Middle Kingdom.

4. The Middle Kingdom dates from 2055-1786BC and runs from the eleventh to the twelfth dynasty. Pyramids returned. The practice of co-regents so that a successor was in place began. The last ruler of the twelfth dynasty was the first female ruler of Egypt. This is about the time of Abraham.

5. A "Second Intermediate Period" (1786-1567BC) erupted after the end of the twelfth dynasty. Around 1650, the Hyksos invaded and ruled from the northern part of Egypt (Lower Egypt). There is no real agreement on who the Hyksos were. Some think they were Semitic. Others think they were Indo-European.

If you try to align this part of Egyptian history with Genesis, then it would seem that the Pharaoh before whom Joseph appeared as a Hyksos king. Meanwhile, the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt in 1570, and the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph may have been a New Kingdom king.

6.  The New Kingdom (1567-1085BC) began when Ahmose I reunified Egypt under an 18th dynasty. At one point the Egyptian empire stretched from Nubia in the south to the Euphrates River in the east. There were a number of powerful queen rulers during this period, including Queen Hatshepsut (1503-1482BC).

One of the most intriguing episodes during this period is the rule of Akhenaton (1379-62BC), otherwise known as Amenhotep IV. (His wife Nefertiti is also well known) He disbanded the priests of Amon-Re and instituted the worship of only one God, Aton, another sun god. He built a new capital in Middle Egypt at a place called Amarna, and the Amarna letters are a collection of letters from his reign.

Tutankhamen (1361-52BC) is well known today because this child emperor's tomb was discovered intact in 1922. He was the child of Akhenaton. Not long after their deaths, their names were expunged from all records and traditional Egyptian religion was restored. The capital returned to Thebes.

7. Many locate the time of Moses with the reign of Ramses II (1304-1237BC), and you can see the letters MSES in Ramses' name. It is interesting to wonder about the interplay of Akhenaton's henotheism and the henotheism of the Israelites. [2]

Funerary Temple of Ramses III
The 19th and 20th dynasties were the Ramesside period. All the New Kingdom rulers except Akhenaton were buried in the Valley of the Kings in Thebes. The last king of the twentieth dynasty, Ramses III, had a magnificent funerary temple.

8. A "Third Intermediate Period" (1085-664BC) followed the end of Ramses III's rule. During this period, there was no strong central king, but local rulers vied for power. Shishak, who began the 22nd dynasty around 945BC, is mentioned in the Old Testament as a king who came and plundered the Jerusalem temple built by Solomon (1 Kings 14:25).

The Assyrians came through Egypt in 671 and destroyed Memphis. Egypt became part of the Persian empire in 525BC. The Greeks took it over in 332BC and it was then ruled by the Ptolemies. Finally, the Romans took over after the death of Cleopatra in 31BC.

Next Week: History 10d. Ancient Mesopotamia

[1] The southern part of Egypt was known as Upper Egypt and the northern part Lower Egypt because the Nile is the most famous river in the world that flows from south to north. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for Egypt, mizraim, is a "dual" noun, indicating two things.

[2] Henotheism is the belief that there is only one legitimate God to worship, even though other gods may also exist. Monolatry similarly refers to the worship of only one God, even though other gods may also exist.

Take-Aways:

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Thursday, March 23, 2017

Gen Eds 10b: Ancient China

This is the second post in the Classical Civilizations" unit of my World History series.

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:
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1. The first dynasties in China go back to the 2000s BC (the Xia Dynasty, 2070-1600BC), although our first written records only go back to the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046BC). One of the four ancient cradles of civilization (India, China, Egypt, Mesopotamia), Chinese civilization originated along the Yellow River, just as Indian civilization arose along the Indus River. Ironically, the movement to a "civilization" is often marked by the beginning of slavery by the Xia Dynasty.

The "Zhou" Dynasty is usually considered the period of the birthplace of Chinese culture, although the dynasty only had widespread control from 1046-771BC. In the second half of their time, they only had limited power in the east (771-221BC). This was a period with a collection of clans that warred off and on with each other.

The first half of this "Eastern Zhou" time is called the "Spring and Autumn Period" (771-476BC), during which there were four major clans: Qin in the west, Jin in the center, Chu in the south, and Qi in the east. [1] Then a split in the Jin clan led to the "Warring States Period" from 476-221BC.

There is something fascinating about the 500s BC around the world. Human cultures everywhere seem to have made some sort of a jump. Buddhism rises in India. This is the time of Isaiah 40-66, the center point of monotheism in the Old Testament. In China, this is when Confucianism (Confucius' given name was Kong Qiu) and Taoism (founded by Lao Tzu) originated.

2. The "Warring States Period" was brutal, with as many as eight different "states" vying for power (Qin, Chu, Qi, Yan, Han, Wei, Yue, and Zhao). The power that would emerge as the first real unifier of China as an empire was the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC), and the name "China" is thought to come from "Qin." They used iron swords. The Art of War was written in the Warring States period by Sun Tzu.

The Qin Dynasty was strongly autocratic, and they created a highly bureaucratic and centralized state. Their approach to governance is known as "Legalism" and every dissenter to the central authority was put to death. The diverse "One Hundred Schools of Thought" from the Spring and Autumn Period was purged, with only the schools of thought the Qin Dynasty approved of allowed to survive. All other literature was destroyed.

It was the shortest dynasty of all.

Nevertheless, it was during the Qin moment of history that Chinese writing was standardized for the first time. The Great Wall, although a wall was started earlier, received its first substantial building during the Qi Dynasty. The well-known "Terracotta Army" is a massive collection of life-size model soldiers, chariots, horses, and such in battle array, celebrating the victory of the Qin armies. It is located in the tomb of the Qin Dynasty.

3. The Qin Dynasty only lasted 15 years until it was defeated by the Han clan, which set up the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-AD9). Han was less oppressive. While the population under Qin rule was decimated, it expanded during the Han period. The Han empire was the first long-standing empire in the region.

It was during the Han Dynasty that the Silk Road began to take shape, the trading route for silk between China and the Western world. Also, a Confusion Academy was set up to train bureaucrats for the empire. Some subordinate rulers were empowered on the edges of the empire.

Remnants of the Han rule continued until AD220, mostly in the east. During this time, the Silk Road brought Buddhism into China. The Han period ended with natural disasters and decimation by war.

4. At the end of the Han Dynasty, the area of China was divided into three kingdoms (AD220-80), after which the Jin Dynasty began (AD265-420). Another dynasty called the Sui dynasty (AD581-618) built the Grand Canal, while extending the Great Wall. It is interesting that their rule was so short. It seems like the dynasties that focused on building projects were shorter than those that focused on war.

5. Ancient Chinese history is full of war between clans and factions, back and forth, back and forth. The highly disciplined and usually authoritarian bureaucracy is another feature.

Next Week: History 10c. Ancient Egypt

Take-Away:
  • Extreme authoritarianism is often short lived, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  • Trade inevitably changes a culture because of the inevitable influences from the outside, but you change them too.
[1] Cf. http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-history/spring-and-autumn-period.htm
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Wednesday, March 08, 2017

Gen Eds H10a. Ancient India

The second to last unit in this long pursuit of world history is a unit I've called, "Classical Civilizations." Here I'm including ancient India, China, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:
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1. I have read that the most ancient civilization in India was the largest of the ancient centers among China, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, with as many as 80,000 people in each of its major cities. [1] Harrapan civilization was located in what today is Pakistan. [2] We know very little of that society, located in the Indus Valley. It was finally displaced around 1500BC by a group we call the Indo-Europeans.

The Indo-Europeans are the parent group of both those who are in India today and the groups that moved into Europe. We can trace this group in part because of the affinities within languages. Modern languages like Hindi and Urdu in India are distantly related to European languages like French and English. We can thus infer that a nomadic group of people in the area of north of Turkey (southern Russia) distributed themselves throughout Europe, Turkey, Persia, and India. [3]

2. Around 1500BC, these Indo-Europeans moved into India, speaking an Indo-European language known as Sanskrit. This was the written language of the priestly class, and they produced the classic scriptures of Hinduism, the Vedas. These "Aryans" are known for their caste system, the dividing up of its people into various fixed social layers. [4]

The indigenous Indus Valley people probably continued on as the lowest caste of the new India, the untouchables. At the top of the caste system were the Brahmins, the priestly caste, with the warrior caste right under them. The majority of Indianas were the Sudras, the servants. Then right above them were landowners and merchants.

3. The period from about 1500 to 150BC is often called the Vedic period of Indian history. The early part of this period was a time when the Hindu religion dominated, a religion that started out as polytheistic (many gods) with sacrifices and all. In later development, it is often thought of as a more of a pantheistic system (everything is god). Reincarnation is often associated with Hinduism, as one comes back from death either higher or lower in the hierarchy of life, depending on how one has lived in the previous life.

It was during this period, in the 500s BC, that Siddhartha Gautama (the "Buddha") would originate what would become Buddhism. He taught four noble truths--1) that life is suffering, 2) that suffering comes from our desire for pleasure and fear of pain, 3) that suffering can be ended 4) by following the eightfold path of a) right thinking, b) right intention, c) right speech, d) right action, e) right living, f) right effort, g) right attitude, and h) right concentration.

Another variation on Hindu religion was Jainism, originated by Mahavira at about the same time. Both of these new religions emphasized that suffering stood at the essence of human existence. But that one could move beyond it.

4. The Persians took over India from the time of Darius I in around 530BC till Alexander the Great in the late 300s. After that point there was the rise of the Mauryan Empire (322-185BC). The founder of this dynasty was Chandragupta (ruled 322-298) who reclaimed northern India after Alexander departed. Then under his son almost all of northern India came under Mauryan rule.

Under Chandragupta's grandson, Ashoka the Great, the empire reached its peak (ruled 304-232). Shocked at the amount of death it took to conquer the eastern part of the area, Ashoka became a Buddhist and founded many Buddhist monasteries. Predictably, his empire declined rapidly after his death and split into several smaller kingdoms. This is the Middle Period of India's history.

5. The golden age of India then revived under the Gupta dynasty (AD 320-550), in large part due to trade with the Roman Empire. I have already mentioned this flourishing of India under my treatment of the Middle Ages.

Next Week: History 10b. Ancient China

[1] https://sites.google.com/site/1ancientcivilizationsforkids/ancient-india

[2] Pakistan was not divided from India until 1947 in the aftermath of World War II.

[3] In Turkey, they were the Hittites of Genesis 23.

[4] Most societies implicitly have these sorts of layers, although upward mobility has been more possible in the modern Western world than in any period in history. More than anything else, public education has made this possible.
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Thursday, March 02, 2017

Gen Eds H9b: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians

The second post in the ninth unit of world history, a unit I've called, "Waves of Conquest."

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:
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Persians
1. So Darius and Xerxes, kings of Persia, tried to invade Greece in the early 400s BC. Thankfully they failed. Prior to Alexander the Great, Persia was the predominant power of the world. From 539BC to 331BC, Persia was the largest empire up to that point in history. Then in 331BC, Alexander defeated the Persians, for a fleeting moment creating an even larger empire.

The year 539 was when Cyrus, king of Persia, (ca. 600-530), conquered the empire before his, namely, the Babylonians. Students of the Bible may know the name Cyrus, as he is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. Isaiah 45:1 praises him, even calls him God's anointed. The reason is the fact that he allowed, even seemed to encourage the Jews of Babylon to return to Jerusalem after their decades-long captivity.

Cyrus' policy was to allow the various regions under his rule (satraps) to pursue their own cultural ways. Perhaps he thought that empowering the leadership of Israel would secure the loyalty of one small corner of his far flung empire. According to Ezra and Chronicles, he even supported the rebuilding of the temple. [1] So in 538, Sheshbazzar was appointed governor and returned to Jerusalem with about fifty thousand people, according to Ezra 2:64-67.

It took over twenty years for the temple to be built. By that time Zerubbabel was the governor and Joshua was the priest. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah both date from this time and both were on the sidelines as cheerleaders for its rebuilding, despite the objections of neighbors who had gained power in the time after the city's destruction. Nevertheless, in 516BC, the temple was rebuilt and open for business. Thus began the "Second Temple Period" of Jewish history, a period that would last until the Romans destroyed the temple again in AD70.

2. The empire that Cyrus established is called the "Achaemenid" empire. After Cyrus, his son Cambyses ruled briefly, but he was followed by Darius I (522-486BC), who is also mentioned in the Bible. [2] It was Darius I who made it as far as Greece in the attempt to quell rebellion against him along the western coast of Turkey (the Ionian coast). But he was defeated by the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon.

By one estimate, Darius controlled 44% of the world's population, in that sense the largest empire of world history. [3] He established Aramaic as the lingua franca or business language of his realm. It was during his reign that the Jerusalem temple was finally rebuilt.

3. After Darius I came Xerxes I (486-65BC), who is likely the husband of Esther in the Bible. It was Xerxes who fought against the Greeks at Salamis and Plataea, definitively losing to the Greeks at both. Xerxes was assassinated by one of the commanders in his bodyguard, but his son Artaxerxes was able to regain control.

4. Artaxerxes I (465-24) succeeded his father to the throne. He was the king who commissioned Ezra to return to Judea and set in order the laws of Israel (Ezra 7:13-28). In the past, some have suggested that it was actually Ezra who organized the materials of the Pentateuch into their current form as the law commissioned by the king. Nehemiah would go to Jerusalem later in the reign of Artaxerxes (ca. 445) and would rebuild the wall surrounding Jerusalem, finally making it a fully functioning city again.

Seven more Persian rulers came and went in the time between Artaxerxes I and the conquest of Alexander the Great.

Babylonians
5. Before the Persians rolled over the Ancient Near East, the Babylonians had ruled the roost. Cyrus the Persian defeated the Babylonians in 539BC. Meanwhile, the Babylonians defeated the empire before them, the Assyrians, in 612BC. So their rule of the world, at least this time around, was really less than a hundred years.

We might call the Babylonian empire of this time the "neo-Babylonian empire," for Babylon had been a kingdom once before around the time of Abraham. Babylon was situated in what is now Iraq, about 50 miles south of Baghdad. The Assyrian capital was Nineveh, about 300 miles north of Babylon, where Mosul is today.

The Assyrians, the empire before the neo-Babylonian, had destroyed Babylon in 689BC. Then they had rebuilt it. [4] But it would not be long until the Babylonians had the final say.

6. Jews and Christians of course remember the Babylonians as the ones who destroyed Jerusalem in 586BC. Later, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem again, Jews and Christians would use "Babylon" as a code name for Rome (e.g., Rev. 18; 1 Pet 5:13). The best known of the kings from this brief window in history was Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562), mentioned in the book of Daniel.

The battle in which he defeated the Egyptians, the battle of Carchemish, is mentioned in Jeremiah 46:2 (605BC). In 597 he conquered Jerusalem, but he did not destroy it until 10 years later when king Jehoiakim rebelled. The prophet Jeremiah had of course counseled the king to submit to Babylonian authority. He is called the weeping prophet and is the putative voice of Lamentations.

Nebuchadnezzar took the most prominent individuals of Jerusalem captive back to Babylon, along with many others. Psalm 137 is a lament psalm written from captivity there.

Assyrians
7. The defeat of the Assyrians in the late 600s BC was so welcomed by those in Judah that the prophet Nahum prophesied in celebration of Assyria's defeat. Israel had been made up of two kingdoms for several hundred years, a kingdom in the north (Israel) and a smaller kingdom in the south (Judah). In 722BC, the Assyrian king Shalmanezer V (727-22BC) destroyed Samaria and the northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 17).

We refer to the northern tribes from this point on in history as the "ten lost tribes of Israel." Only Judah and Benjamin remained in the south. Those who survived in the north were either assimilated into the Assyrian empire or generally lost their Israelite identity. Assyria was known to "mix and match" people from the territories it conquered. It was not until around 100BC that Galilee was re-conquered by Jerusalem and resettled with Jews. [5] Meanwhile, Samaria retained its own Pentateuch and form of Israelite religion.

Two kings after Shalmanezer V, Sennacherib (705-681BC) would attempt to take Jerusalem in the south as well. The Old Testament records how King Hezekiah held out against Sennacherib's siege (1 Kings 18-19; Isaiah 36-37), with the prophet Isaiah delivering him God's word. Hezekiah, however, had dug a tunnel to water, which you can still visit today. This allowed him to hold out, and all that Sennacherib could write in his annals was that he had "shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage."

Before Sennacherib was assassinated by his sons, he would destroy Babylon in 689BC, while conducting a major renovation of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire.

These years of the Assyrian empire, from 911-612BC, are usually called the time of the neo-Assyrian empire. It would continuously expand under kings like Ashurnasirpal II (883-59BC) and Shalmanezer II (859-24BC). Under Tiglath-Pilesar III (745-27BC), the world would get its first standing army, and Aramaic would become the business language (lingua franca) in most of the world.

Take-Aways
  • No kingdom lasts forever. They come and go.
  • Sometimes God delivers his people. Sometimes he doesn't.
Next Week: History 10a: Ancient Egypt

[1] See Ezra 1:1 and 2 Chronicles 36:22-23.

[2] In Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah. It is unclear who "Darius the Mede" refers to in the book of Daniel.

[3] "Five Empires That Were Close to World Domination."

[4] Esarhaddon (681-69BC), son of Sennacherib rebuilt it.

[5] The Hasmonean king, descendant of the Maccabees, Alexander Jannaeus.
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Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Gen Eds H9a: Greeks and the Hellenistic Age

The ninth unit of world history in this series is "Waves of Conquest." We start off with the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Greeks that were before him.

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:
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Alexander the Great
1. In the year 323BC, Alexander the Great died. He was almost 33 years old and in his short life had conquered the world all the way from Macedonia (above Greece) to the Indus River (in present day India). The world had never been connected in this configuration before, from Greece to India.

To be sure, the east had tried to stretch to Greece during the Persian wars of the early 400s BC. The Persian king Xerxes (husband of Esther in the Bible, ruled 519-466BC) tried to conquer Greece. But he failed, as we will mention below.

With the death of Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic Age began, the age of the Greek. Greek became the lingua franca, the "business language" of the world. This would continue throughout the Roman period. It is no surprise that when the apostle Paul writes Rome, he writes in Greek, not Latin. In fact, the Roman poet Horace (65-27BC) once wrote, "Captured Greece took captive her ferocious conqueror." [1] Rome may have taken over Greece militarily, but Greek language and ideas filled in the gaps of Roman culture.

When he was young, Alexander's father, king Philip of Macedon, hired the great philosopher Aristotle (385-23BC) to tutor his son. Under Aristotle's influence, Alexander took "scientists" of a sort on his military conquests to investigate the kinds of life they would encounter.

 The Seleucids and the Ptolemies
2. After the premature death of Alexander, his kingdom was divided among his generals. Ptolemy I took Egypt (ruled 323-282BC). The native Egyptian leadership was displaced, meaning that the upper class of Egypt from this time on were Greek-speakers. Egypt was largely in control of Palestine also until the year 201BC.

The Jews were generally on good terms with these Greek Egyptians throughout this period. There had been a Jewish settlement in Egypt, even a Jewish temple at Elephantine there from the time of the Babylonian captivity in the 500s. [2] It was likely at Alexandria in Egypt that the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, were first translated into Greek. [3] This took place around the year 250BC.

3. A second general of Alexander, Seleucid I then took the eastern part of Alexander's conquests, from Babylon and Persia in the East eventually to Anatolia in the west (ruled from 305-281BC). He founded the city of Antioch in Syria that played such a key role in the earliest church (e.g., Acts 13:1).

The Seleucids tried to take Palestine more than once from the Egyptians but did not succeed until 301BC. [4] Jerusalem was thus largely under Greek-speaking Syrian influence until the Romans took control in 63BC. In the early 200s BC, Jerusalem was highly "hellenized" or Greek-ified. It was in danger of blurring into the broader culture of the day.

It was during this time that the Maccabean crisis took place. Daniel 11 describes many of the events of the early 100s BC in allusive terms. The book known as 1 Maccabees is the best historical source of information for these events. In 167BC, the Syrians demanded that the Jews stop observing the ethnic particulars of the Law, such as circumcision. The temple was defiled with pagan sacrifices.

A three year struggle of guerrilla warfare ensued, with a family that came to be known as the Maccabees the principal actors (macabee means "hammer"). Although they did not completely throw off Syrian rule, they did secure greater independence for Israel, with their family ruling as client kings under the Syrians down until the Romans took over in 63BC.

The temple was rededicated in 164BC, with Hanukkah (or the Feast of Dedication, see John 10:22) instituted to remember this restoration. This event is essential background for understanding the climate of Israel at the time of the New Testament. When Paul speaks of zeal for the law (e.g., Rom. 10:2), an image of the Maccabees should come to mind. If it were not for this crisis, we can wonder whether any Jews would have been paying any attention to their Scriptures at all at the time of Christ.

 The Peloponnesian Wars
4. In Greece, the century leading up to the conquests of Alexander was one in which power shifted several times. The 300s BC began with Sparta in control. But it shifted to Thebes and eventually to Macedon under Alexander the Great's father, Philip of Macedon.

The late 400s BC had seen several decades of war between Athens and Sparta. Athens had been in control of most of Greece in the 400s, but it had been overly zealous in its thirst for control. This led to an intermittent war between Athens and Sparta from 431-404BC, from which the Spartans emerged victorious. [5] This briefly ended the democracy for which Athens is so well known. It also ended the Golden Age of Greece.

5. Nevertheless, it was during the 300s that Greek philosophy was at its high point. Socrates was commanded to commit suicide by drinking hemlock in 399BC. In the decades that followed, Plato would set up his Academy in Athens (in 387BC). After his death, Aristotle would set up his own school, the Lyceum, there (in 335BC).

After these two, the greatest philosophers of Greek history, the 200s would see several more philosophical schools founded. Zeno founded the Stoics around 300. They were known for the "stoa" where they met. Epicurus started his movement in a garden at about the same time.

 The Persian Wars
6. Athens had come to dominate Greece in the early 400s because it had led "the Delian league" to defend Greece against the invasions of the Persians. [6] Sparta was also a key power in the defeat of the Persians.

In 490, the Persian king Darius (cf. Haggai 2; Zechariah 1; Ezra 6; Daniel 6) invaded Greece and confronted the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon. [7] Although they were vastly outnumbered, the Athenians were victorious.

Ten years later, Xerxes returned. In 481, a league was founded with the Spartans in control of the armies on land and the Athenians in charge of a fleet of ships by sea. Both were victorious. The Spartans (the 300) stopped the advance of Xerxes at a narrow pass at Thermopylae, while the Athenians beat the Persians in the waters around Athens in the Battle of Salamis.

The Persians were finally defeated for good in 479BC at the Battle of Plateia.

7. In the years that followed, Athens would set up the Delian League in 478 and be the dominant force in Greece during this period. They would however abuse this power leading to the Peloponnesian War and Athens' ultimate defeat by the Spartans in 404.

The dominant leader in Athens in this "Golden Age" was Pericles, who was the dominant political leader of Athens from about 461-29BC. It was he that had the Parthenon build on the Acropolis. And he fostered democracy among the males of the city to an extent that would not repeat itself until modern times. He is known for being a great orator.

It was also during this period that the great dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed in Athens at yearly festivals.

 The Trojan War
8. In the same period that Rome was shifting from kings to a republic, Athens was slowly empowering its people. It has some harsh rulers in the 600s and 500s. We get the word "draconian" from Draco, a ruler in the 600s known for his harshness. In the early 500s, Solon is known as the great lawgiver of Athens, who gave voice to the lower classes of Athenian society. They were now able to vote in the "ekkesia," the Greek assembly.

But it would not be until Cleisthenes in 510 that democracy would truly stick. It was briefly interrupted in 411 and 404, but would continue until Philip of Macedon took control of all Greece in 337BC.

9. But there are of course tales of Greece from even earlier times. The Mycenaean Age was the age of the Trojan Wars (ca. 1200BC) between Greece and Troy, which was located on the northwest tip of Anatolia (Turkey). This was Bronze Age Greece, which came to an end around 1100BC, starting a kind of "Dark Ages" in Greece history down until the time of classical Greece.

In the Mycenaean period, Greece consisted of a number of "city-states" ruled by kings. Key cities include of course Mycenae, but also Thebes, Corinth, and Athens, which was not a dominant city at this time. It is about this period that "Homer" wrote in The Iliad and The Odyssey. Of course these stories were no doubt passed on orally for generations and only written down in their current form around 700 BC. Whether the genius who finally gave them their current form was named Homer, we cannot say for certain. 

In the story of the Trojan War, the wife of Menelaus is abducted by one of the sons of the Trojan king and taken back to Troy. A war ensues for her recovery. After ten years, the Greeks pretend that they are leaving but leave a wooden horse as a gift to the goddess Athena. The Trojans take the horse into the city not knowing that there are Greeks inside. At night, the Greeks open the gate and allow the Greek army in, resulting in the destruction of the city and the victory of the Greeks. From this we get the expression, a "Trojan horse."

10. The exact causes of the collapse of Mycenaean culture is not exactly known. [8] Some refer to a "Dorian" invasion that would especially take root in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. Others refer to the conquests of the "sea peoples" that we know as the Phoenicians. They are likely the peoples we know from the Bible as the Philistines, and they would settle north Africa at Carthage. They would seem to be a Semitic people.

We know that these sea peoples used iron, and thus were technologically more advanced than the users of bronze they conquered. Some of the conflicts in the books of Samuel in the Old Testament reflect this transition.

 Take-Aways
  • Guys like to go to war. Deal with it or else get defeated by the next Cro-Magnon to come along.
  • Movements often disappear on their own by natural attrition as their initial enthusiasts die off. They are often strengthened or reinvigorated by opposition.
  • People fight harder to defend their own lands and families than to conquer some distant one.
  • If you ever gain power, don't abuse it. If you treat those who are vulnerable to your power with respect (without making yourself vulnerable), you will reign long.
  • Technological advances often accompany historical victors.
Next Week: History 9b: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians

[1] Epistles 2.1

[2] A simplistic version of Jewish history might find it odd that Jews would accept a temple somewhere other than Jerusalem. But it is not likely that the doctrine of one temple was firmly established at the time when Jerusalem was destroyed in 586BC, the time when the Diaspora or scattering of Jews was most strongly taking place. We should not think that the typical Diaspora Jew had the fully mature theology of the Old Testament as we know it. In fact, it is unlikely that the Pentateuch was in its current form at that time, let alone the other parts of the Old Testament.

[3] Called the "Septuagint" for the legend that seventy old men translated it. The earliest version of this legend is found in the pseudonymous, Letter of Aristeas. Pseudonymous means written under a fictive name.

[4] The Romans were already powerful enough in the year 175BC to keep the Seleucids from completely conquering Egypt. Egypt would quickly become Rome's main supplier of grain.

[5] The Greek historian Thucydides tells of the conflict in great detail in his Peloponnesian Wars.

[6] Herodotus, sometimes called the father of history writing, records these wars in his The Histories.

[7] The marathon gets its name from the fact that Phidippides ran the 26.2 miles from Marathon back to Athens to give news of the victory. According to the legend, he died after delivering the news.

[8] Minoan culture, on the island of Crete south of Greece, had ended around 1400, also for unknown reasons.
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Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Gen Eds H8b: The Roman Republic

Oath of the Horatii, by David
The eighth unit of world history in this series is "The Age of Rome." This is my second post in that unit.

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:
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The Founding of the Republic
1. According to legend, Rome was founded in the year we would call 753BC. In the Aeneid, Virgil has his hero, Aeneas, flee the defeated city of Troy with the destiny of coming to the area where Rome would be founded. [1] Aeneas has a vision of his descendant Romulus founding the city. He thus gave Rome a heritage as old as that of the Greeks, and made the dominance of Rome a final victory of the Trojans over Greece.

Romulus and his brother Remus, were said to survive after being abandoned as infants by suckling with a she-wolf. [2] Later they would return to those hills overlooking the Tiber River to found a city. But they disagreed on which hill to found the city on, ending with Romulus killing Remus. The founding of the city is dated from that time, when Romulus declared himself king.

According to legend, Romulus established the first three tribes of Rome, each of which was further divided into ten curia or wards each. Each tribe had a "tribune," and each curia had a "curio" as its leader. These divisions became the basis for taxation and for enlisting soldiers for battle. According to tradition Romulus also picked one hundred men to constitute the Roman senate. These "fathers" became the "patrician" class of Rome, while everyone left became the "plebs."

2. It is hard to know how much of these origin stories are historical, but they nevertheless give us a picture of how Rome understood itself at a very early stage. According to legend Rome had seven kings until Tarquin the Proud was expelled from Rome in 509 BC, the legendary beginning of the Roman Republic.

After Romulus there had been Numa Pompilius (ca. 700BC). He was said to have built the temple of Janus, whose doors were open when Rome was at war and closed when Rome was at peace. He is said to have established the office of pontifex maximus, the high priest of the Roman people, as well as the "Vestal Virgins," virgin priestesses who kept a sacred fire that was never to go out.

Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius (600s BC) fought against neighboring tribes and extended Rome's rule over the immediate area. Tarquin the Elder was an Etruscan. According to tradition he established the circus maximus, where horse races took place. He also brought Etruscan customs for patrician clothing like the toga, as well as various Roman rituals.

After the elder Tarquin's assassination, Servius Tullius ruled in the mid-500s. He is said to have incorporated three more hills into Rome, completing its number at seven. He also expanded the number of tribes by thirty. The number of tribes was set at twenty at the beginning of the Roman Republic. [3] Then Servius himself was murdered.

The murderer became the final king, Tarquin the Proud, known for being a tyrant. His son infamously raped Lucretia, a virtuous wife who ended up committing suicide. Tarquin was finally deposed by Lucius Junius Brutus. Almost five hundred years later, his descendant Brutus would participate in the murder of another dictator, Julius Caesar--invoking the family precedence. [4]

3. The Republic was run by two consuls, who were elected by the Roman Senate to rule for a year. Outside of Rome they commanded armies, which were required to disband before crossing the Rubicon River. Every five years, the elected consuls became "censors" who took a census of the Roman people and adjusted the membership of the Senate appropriately.

In its fully developed form, ambitious Roman men would follow a path known as the cursus honorem, a "course of honor," a path that could lead to the highest offices of Rome. [5] It might start with notorious service in the military, becoming a tribune who commanded in the Roman legions. Once achieving senatorial status, a person might serve as a quaestor who served administratively in some way, such as directing certain games or being a paymaster.

Next one might become an aedile and given even more responsibility, such as running a temple. [6] Then there was the role of a praetor, which next to consul was the highest position a Roman male could have under normal circumstances. This was primarily the role of judge.

4. The Roman system did not develop overnight, and there were civil wars from time to time. As we would expect, the privileged often abused their power at the expense of the plebs, which occasionally led to revolt and civil war. Around 450, ten men (Decumviri) were appointed to draft a code of laws to create official boundaries and rights for the people. These "Twelve Tables" became the basis for Roman law.

Conquering Italy
5. By about the year 400BC, Rome more or less possessed the central area of Italy. But in 390, Celtic tribes from the north sacked the city. These were the Gauls who gave the name Galatia to the region Paul would later visit in Anatolia (Turkey). These were the Gauls who would wander first into the area of present day France, whom Julius Caesar would later fight. And these were the Celts who would migrate into Great Britain, the ancestors of the Scots, Irish, and Welsh.

Interactions would continue with the Gauls for the next two hundred years.

Rome would have three Samnite wars in the 300s, which extended Rome's territory southward in Italy. At the beginning of the 200s, Rome would war with the Greek colonies in the very south of Italy. These Pyrrhic Wars were waged with the king of Epirus, on the west coast of Greece, who technically won a couple battles with the Romans. But Pyrrhus experienced such massive casualties that we now use the phrase "Pyrrhic victory" to refer to a win that is involves such substantial loss that it can hardly be called a victory.

These Greek colonies in southern Italy are the location where the famed philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras had a somewhat religious community in the late 500s BC.

The Punic Wars
6. The three Punic Wars took place between Rome and Carthage during the years 264-146BC. Carthage is on the northern coast of Africa, where Tunisia is today. Carthage was a city of Phoenician origin and a major sea power. It was the Roman conflict with the Carthaginians that led it to develop its own fleet of ships.

The first war (264-41BC) was over the island of Sicily. In what would become a pattern for Rome, one party in a conflict called on Rome for help. Then by the end of it, Rome had annexed its territory. Soon Rome controlled not only Sicily but the islands of Corsica and Sardinia as well.

The second Punic War (218-201) is the one when the famed Hannibal crossed the French Alps on elephants and soundly defeated the Romans repeatedly in northern Italy. However, he lost so many soldiers and elephants in the process that he was not able to take Rome itself. Scipio Africanus would ultimately defeat Carthage on its own ground, reducing Carthaginian territory mostly to the city itself.

Rome largely provoked the third and final Punic War (149-6). Carthage had paid its debt to Rome. It was rebuilding its military. After a visit, Cato the Elder began ending each of his speeches in the senate with "Carthage must be destroyed." Rome made some unreasonable demands, which Carthage refused. They went to war, and Rome thoroughly destroyed the city, making it uninhabitable. It dismantled and then burned all its buildings to the ground, and sowed its fields with salt.

Rome was now in complete control of the western Mediterranean.

The Macedonian Wars
7. Rome's wars with Macedonia, to the north of Greece, overlapped with the Punic Wars. During the second Punic War, the king of Macedon allied himself with Hannibal, drawing the Macedonians into the conflict. This was the first Macedonian War.

Rome intervened again (200-196BC) when Macedon ignored its demand that it stay away from some of the Greek islands off the coast of Anatolia (Turkey). With Rome's honor at stake, it pounced until Macedon was back in line, then withdrawing to Rome again. Then the Greek Seleucids tried to expand into Greece and were again repulsed by the Romans (192-88BC). [8] This was the first time that the Romans had entered Anatolia.

There was a third and fourth Macedonian war. After the third, Rome became convinced that it needed to divide up the Macedonian kingdom and have a permanent presence in Greece. The fourth ended with the destruction of Corinth by Mummius in 146BC, the same year Carthage was destroyed. [8]

Rome was now in control of Greece and the Aegean Sea.

 The Civil Wars
8. The late second and early first centuries BC were tumultuous for Rome itself. From about 134 to 44BC we have the "Crisis of the Roman Republic." In the 130s and 120s, two brothers known as the Gracchi tried to distribute much of the the land of wealthy patricians to the poor and to veterans. Both were killed, the first violence in Rome since the 500s. This drive to grant more rights to the "populares" stood at the heart of the conflicts--one side fighting for them, the other strongly resisting.

The next decades would see three slave wars and the slave revolt that ended with the death of Spartacus (in 71BC). Sulla would break the rules in 81 and bring his army across the Rubicon, setting a dangerous precedent that Julius Caesar would repeat a few decades later in 49BC. [9] The senate then understandably voted him dictator. As dictator, Sulla was empowered to undo some of the populist reforms that the Gracchi and others had made and reinvigorate the power of the upper class.

9. Then there was Pompey. Pompey distinguished himself as a general in the wars against Mithridates in Anatolia. At the end of those wars, Rome would effectively control the land we now know as Turkey. In the year 64, Pompey would intervene in a dispute between brothers in Jerusalem, and effectively Rome would now control Palestine as well. In 64, Pompey walked into the Most Holy Place of the temple, inspiring the writing known as the Psalms of Solomon.

The powerful Pompey was part of an informal and at first secret pact between three men--himself, the wealthy Crassus, and the popular Julius who would soon be declared Caesar. Julius also was pushing popular reforms, which the powerful senate had been able to resist since Sulla. But with these three in agreement--the first "triumvirate"--Julius was able to push some reforms through.

Crassus died in battle against the Parthians in the east in 53BC. Then Pompey and Caesar became enemies, and their armies fought against each other, with Caesar defeating him in 48. He was assassinated later that year in Egypt.

10. In 49BC, a year before he finally defeated Pompey, Julius Caesar followed the path of Sulla and crossed the Rubicon with his army. Now in control of the capitol, he set out to defeat Pompey, and was declared Caesar for ten years by the senate in his absence in 47BC. Then in early 44BC he was declared Caesar for life, leading to his assassination on the "Ides of March" that year, March 15.

Then Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, took to revenge. A second triumvirate formed with Octavian (who would become Caesar Augustus), Mark Antony, and Lepidus. While the first triumvirate was unofficial, the Senate made this second triumvirate an empowered unit more powerful than the consuls.

Brutus was pursued by Octavian, who defeated him at the Battle of Philippi in 42BC. Brutus committed suicide.

Eventually, tensions between Octavian and Mark Antony erupted into civil war between Roman armies as well. Antony had been having an affair with Cleopatra in Egypt (after marrying Octavian's daughter to create peace between himself and Octavian). Octavian had the senate declare war on Egypt, with Antony declared a traitor. Then Octavian defeated Antony at the Battle of Actium in 39C. Antony and Cleopatra then fled back to Egypt, where they committed suicide. From that point on Egypt was a client kingdom of Rome, a kingdom allowed to rule itself as long as it obeyed Rome.

In 27BC, Octavian was given the title "Augustus" by the Senate.

Take-Aways
  • Foundation legends, symbols, and rituals are incredibly powerful, even though they are often historically dubious. 
  • If you turn to a bully in your hour of need, they will probably be your next oppressor.
  • Sometimes the cost of winning is so great that it is really losing.
  • If a state does not take care of the ordinary person, that person will eventually revolt against the system.
  • Sometimes an enemy provokes you so that, if you bat an eye, he has an excuse to destroy you.
  • When the cat's away, the mouse will play.
  • Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Watch your back.
Next Week: History 9a: Greeks and the Hellenistic Age

[1] The Aeneid was written in the early years of Augustus' reign (late first century BC) as propaganda to portray his reign as destiny, as fated.

[2] These tribes were geographical rather than based on ethnic or family relationships.

[3] The primary source for the legend is Livy, who wrote a history of Rome at about the same time as Virgil, Books from the Foundation of the City. The expression "from the founding of the city" was the way the Romans marked time. So Jesus was born about 747AUC (ab urbe condita, "from the founding of the city"), 6BC.

[4] Shakespeare has Brutus cry out, "sic semper tyrranus" as he kills Caesar--"thus always [to] a tyrant."

[5] The cursus honorem was not finalized until the time of Sulla's dictatorship in 81BC.

[6] Romans 16:23 seems to indicate that Erastus was an aedile in the city of Corinth.

[7] This is the same Seleucid thrust during which the Maccabean crisis took place in Israel.

[8] Corinth lay in ruins until 44BC, when Julius Caesar refounded the city. Commentaries on 1 Corinthians often quote passages about how immoral the city of Corinth was. Although it no doubt had its fair share of immorality at the time of the New Testament, it is at least worth knowing that the passages being quoted come from the earlier period of Corinth's history, before it was destroyed by the Romans.

[9] The expression, "crossing the Rubicon," refers to a decision that commits you to a certain course of action, whether you regret it or not. It's all or nothing now. Or as Caesar is thought to have said, "the die is cast."
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Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Gen Eds H8a: The Roman Empire

Arch of Titus,
celebrating victory over Jews
The eighth unit of world history in this series is "The Age of Rome."

This is part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. The series consists of ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:
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Caesar Augustus
1. After some five hundred years as a republic, the Roman elite traded in their right to self-govern for the security and potential peace of an emperor. [1] In 27BC, Augustus became the first emperor of Rome. After decades of civil war, he ushered in a peace that came to be known as the Pax Romana or the Pax Augusta, the "peace of Augustus."

Augustus did largely clear the Mediterranean of pirates and the Roman roads of thieves and highwaymen. He extended the Roman roads which shot straight as an arrow around the empire. Under his reign, the Romans added Egypt to their control and completed the conquest of Spain. They also inched northward into Germania.

Perhaps of most interest to Christians is the fact that Jesus was born during his reign, in about 6BC.

2. The first five emperors of Rome were Augustus (27BC-AD14), Tiberius (14-37), Caligula (37-41), Claudius (41-54), and Nero (54-68). [2] These are probably the five kings mentioned in Revelation 17:10. Jesus conducted his earthly ministry under the reign of Tiberius, as did John the Baptist. He was the specific Caesar in view when Jesus said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's" (Matt.22:21).

Caligula was assassinated. In 39 he had the insane idea of setting up a statue of himself in the temple of Jerusalem. The Roman governor wisely procrastinated. The order for Petronius to commit suicide only arrived after Caligula was dead.

Paul's mission took place under the rules of Claudius and Nero. Under Claudius, Christian Jews were expelled from Rome, including Priscilla and Aquila, who were part of the Pauline mission. 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians seem certainly written during Claudius' reign. His other writings would then have come during the reign of Nero.

Nero is likely the king that Revelation refers to as one who had a fatal wound that had healed (Rev. 13:12; 17:11). [3] The title "Caesar Nero" adds up to 666 if you treat the letters as numbers rather than letters (Rev. 13:18). It was Nero that crucified the apostle Peter and beheaded Paul. And Nero was emperor when Paul wrote Romans 13:1. And anyone reading 1 Peter 2:17 would have initially thought of Nero.

He committed suicide in the year 68.

The Flavians
3. The Jewish War took place from 66-72. It was a revolt of the Jews against Rome, an attempt to free themselves from its rule. It failed of course, effectively ending in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. [4] Much of Mark 13 likely refers to various events of this war. There is a tradition, for example, that the believers of Jerusalem did flee to Pella in keeping with Mark 13:14. Luke understands this verse to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 21:20). [5]

After the death of Nero, 69 was the Year of Four Emperors. Two were murdered and one committed suicide. This made way for Vespasian to become emperor (69-79), who at the time had surrounded Jerusalem with the Roman army. His son Titus would complete the siege and destroy Jerusalem and the temple. Mark and Matthew were likely finished during the time of Vespasian, Hebrews also in my dating.

Titus then reigned after his father (79-81), and then his other son Domitian (81-96). Luke-Acts was likely written during these reigns. John and Revelation are traditionally dated to the reign of Domitian (or we might suggest they reached their current form at that time). 79 was the year when the volcano Vesuvius erupted, freezing the city of Pompeii in time.

From Nerva to Commodus (96-192)
4. The next five emperors enjoyed relatively peaceful reigns (the Five Good Emperors), although it is during this era that we begin to see a rise in the martyrdom of early Christians. Ignatius of Antioch was put to death around 110 by Trajan (98-117). A governor by the name of Pliny the Younger would write Trajan about that time about how Christianity had permeated the countryside of Pontus where he was governing. He put to death those who were too stubborn to renounce their allegiance to this competing king, Christ.

The early Christian Polycarp died during the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-61), although he was put to death by a governor for refusing to burn incense to the emperor. He was 86 years old at the time. Emperor worship had become standard during this time and is possibly alluded to in Revelation 16:2.

Hadrian's Wall (AD122)
Justin "Martyr" was put to death under Marcus Aurelius (161-180). Marcus Aurelius is famous for his grand Stoic philosophy in the secular world, but we might know him better for his actions toward this famous Christian. The reign of Commodus (177-92) is often thought to be a turning point in the history of the empire, perhaps the beginning of its decline. [6]

Under the emperor Hadrian (117-38), the famed "Hadrian's Wall" was built in Britannia. The Romans had ruled southern Britain from the days of Claudius. They would continue to dominate there until 410, the year when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths.

Severus
6. Commodus was strangled to death. After him, twenty-five of the next twenty-six emperors died violently, mostly by murder, although a small number were either executed, died in war, or committed suicide. One of the only ones to die of natural causes was Septimus Severus (193-211). [7]

This political instability clearly was part of Rome's decline. In addition, it was overstretched, with an empire that stretched from Britain to Egypt. It's population began to decline, not least because of plague in the 200s. In 212, the emperor Caracella granted Roman citizenship to everyone in the empire, in an attempt to increase the Roman base. Many soldiers were foreigners, who lacked the loyalty or chance of advancement leading them to fight as earlier generations had.

But the emperors could not administrate the empire's wide holdings, and Germanic tribes increasingly became a preoccupation to the north. Trade declined significantly. The historian Edward Gibbon (1737-94) controversially suggested that Christianity weakened the empire because it undermined traditional devotion to the state. Many, however, disagree with this hypothesis.

In general, this part of Roman history is sometimes called the "crisis of the third century." In 284, the Roman empire was more or less split into three different empires: Gaul (France), Palmyra (Turkey, Palestine, Egypt), and the Roman center (including Spain). Aurelian (270-75) reunited it in 284, marking what is sometimes considered the dividing point between the time of classical and late antiquity.

An important year from a Christian perspective was 250, when the emperor Decius (249-51) made an edict requiring all Romans to offer a sacrifice to the gods in the presence of a Roman magistrate. Decius was trying to restore traditional Roman values, attempting to revive the empire. It of course created a crisis for Christians, who could not in good conscience do so. The result was the worst persecution of Christians yet. Decius was killed in battle the next year against the Goths.

Diocletian
7. Christians enjoyed about 40 years of tolerance until the emperor Diocletian (284-305). In 303 he initiated the last and most intense of the Roman persecutions. He purged the Roman military of all Christians, burned copies of Scriptures, forbade public worship, and demanded sacrifices to Roman gods. Perhaps some 3000 Christians were put to death.

One effort Diocletian made to try to save the empire was to divide it into two administrative jurisdictions. In 285, he appointed Maximian as a subordinate co-ruler in Rome, while he focused his his rule from Byzantium in the east.

Constantine the Great (306-337)
8. Constantine was in Britain on a military campaign when his soldiers acclaimed him as emperor in 306. In the year 312 at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine is reputed to have seen a vision of the cross in the sky with the words, "In this sign you will conquer" written beneath. After the battle, he had solidified his status as emperor in the west. In 324 he beat the claimant to rule in the east, becoming the sole emperor of the whole empire.

He shifted the capital of the Roman empire to Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople in 330. This half of the Roman Empire would become the Byzantine Empire and continue to exist until the Ottoman Turks took the city in 1453.

Constantine is perhaps better known for the imprint he left on Christianity, although whether that impact was ultimately more positive or negative is a matter of dispute. On the one hand, he made Christianity a legal religion with the Edict of Milan in 313. In the year 325, he summoned the Council of Nicaea in hope that Christians might come to some agreement on the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ. The result would become official in the Nicene Creed that was finalized in 381 at the Council of Constantinople.

Constantine himself was not baptized until his deathbed, perhaps because he was unsure whether sins committed after baptism could be forgiven.

9. In 381, Theodosius 1 (379-95) made Nicene Christianity the only legal religion of the empire. Contrary to popular belief, Constantine did not force the Roman empire to become Christian. It was Theodosius, 44 years after his death, who did so.

For a brief time, Julian the Apostate (360-63), half-brother of Constantine, tried to reverse the Christian trajectory of the empire. He revoked all the monies and lands Constantine had given to the church and forbade "Galileans" (Christians) from being teachers of rhetoric and grammar. In Julian is the lesson that often before a trajectory of history reaches its final destination, there is a final gasp of the dying resistance. So it was that after Nicaea, Arianism had a massive resurgence before it finally lost the historical battle.

Fall of Rome
Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410. The sacking would not stop until the final emperor (at least in name), Romulus, was overthrown by Odoacer. This event, in 479, is often considered the end of the Western Roman empire.

A final push to restore the Roman empire took place under the eastern emperor Justinian I (527-65), who is sometimes called "the last Roman." His soldiers retook Italy from the Visigoths, North Africa from the Vandals, and even the southernmost part of Spain. But the problem of over-extension simply returned, and these lands fell away again in the years after his death.

Justinian enacted legal reforms that are still part of civil law in the modern age, the so called Code of Justinian. At the same time, Justinian is known for finally closing Plato's Academy in 529, considered by some to be the beginning of the Dark Ages. An outbreak of bubonic plague largely ended the cultural flourishing of his reign in the 540s.

 Take-Aways
  • In times of great danger or conflict, people will often surrender their freedoms or core values for security.
  • Over-extension, especially when coupled with oppressive taxation, is a frequent characteristic of empires and organizations right before their final decline.
  • Persecution sometimes strengthens your enemy. What doesn't kill them makes them stronger.
  • If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
  • There is often a final gasp of opposition before a historical trajectory is definitively established.
  • A comfortable movement often becomes a weak movement.
Next Week: History 8b: The Roman Republic

[1] The imagery of Star Wars partially comes from this transition from republic to empire.

[2] The Julio-Claudian line.

[3] Anyone reading Revelation 17:9 initially would have thought of Rome when it mentions a city of kings with seven hills. Similarly, "Babylon" was a well-known cipher for Rome after Rome destroyed Jerusalem as Babylon had six hundred years earlier (cf. Rev. 18).

[4] Although technically we might say it officially ended with the taking of Masada in AD72.

[5] There are a number of places where I consider some evangelical scholarship to come up lacking on obvious conclusions because of putting tradition over evidence. In my opinion, no one putting the emphasis on the evidence will conclude that Luke-Acts was written before the destruction of the temple. Similarly, the way Matthew 22:7 is presented seems to confirm that Matthew was also written after the destruction of the temple.

[6] The movie Gladiator fictionally has Commodus poison his father Marcus Aurelius. However, there is no evidence of this.

[7] I feel quite confident that the character Severus Snape in Harry Potter was named after him.
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