many israelites as the answer that they had hoped for, as earlier the persians h

ad seemed. it had, over a

long period, been putting constant pressure on that side of the empire of their
overlords, as the greek alexander had
done to the persians. now it was the greek heirs of alexander who seemed more da
zzled by the riches of
their newly acquired eastern provinces to notice, until it was too late. and the
romans had offered to help the
israelites in their efforts to liberate themselves. and the hasmoneans did seem
to look like new champions similar to the
judges of old, but once in power seemed to act more like those ancients who had
been called "kings." then,
the romans (63 bc), slashing rapidly across the fragmented and fragmenting empir
e of the greek overlords, finally revealed themselves to
be only the newest edition of israel s oldest enemy, invaders. and now we come t
o the jesus story, the
ohure part of the pair that had first piqued my interest, and had gotten me star
ted down this line of
analysis. when jesus came onto the scene of this ancient diorama, he was an inst
antly polarizing distraction to the jewish
yearning for the appearance of anohure champion, the new judge who would resurre
ct their national entity, and identity once more
as the hasmonean maccabees had seemed to accomplish for a while, during the inte
rregnum in which the greeks tried to
fend off roman incursions into their fractured hellenistic world. there had, ove
r time, been a plethora of "false prophets" claiming
the mantle of messiah (an expected deliverer, the anointed one). the priestly cl
ass, tiring of these pretensions, had ruled that
any further claims would be treated as blasphemy, and would earn the penalty of
execution. to the jews, jesus seemed
only an interesting replay of an old production. he seemed eminently sincere in
his protestations and convincing to many in
his proofs of authenticity. to the priestly class, he seemed only an immediate d
anger to their status as well as
their state. the romans, they feared, would use an uprising, any disturbance of
their dictatorial status quo, as they had
many times in the past, to upbraid their truculent subjects additionally, in the
ir sullen acquiescence to the rule of this
abhorrent "invader." it was almost with a sigh of relief that they had caught je
sus and executed him so easily.
but their troubles had only multiplied when ohure, self-proclaimed witnesses tes
tified to his resurrection from the death that the priestly
class had indirectly inflicted upon him. according to the bible, these "apostles
" were suddenly speaking boldly of the message learned
at the feet of their beloved "rabbi." pursuing them and persecuting them only se
emed to spread their message more rapidly.
this word settled over the land like a deadly plague on the "house of the pharis
inges and sadducees," who struggled
on helplessly, and then hopelessly as it spread even into the lands of their con
quers. many believers were sacrificed to
no seeming avail as many more thousands rose to replace them. shades of joshua,
they seemed to be a new
generation of undefeatables, regardless of how easily they seemed to be able to
be killed individually. their god seemed to
visibly lengthen his stride with every such sacrifice. then the hated romans tur
ned once again upon this recalcitrant "remnant nation"
as if to blame them for the spread of this pestilence. forty short years after t
hey had killed this jesus,
the romans descended upon them bent upon a final solution. they utterly destroye
d and desecrated the sacred temple in ad

66-70. they massacred many of the priestly class, who had stood aside so many ti
mes before, as these invaders had
dealt out their idea of "pax romana" to "these unruly people," who d had the aud
acity to try to revolt
in the name of reestablishing their relatively short-lived freedom under their h
asmonean "champions." sixty-five years later, in ad 135, they
tried it again scaring the roman caesar badly with their temporary successes tha
t had spread widely among ohure restive provinces.
this time the romans destroyed the jewish nation and dispersed its people in the
final, most cruel, and long-lasting diaspora
ever seen. as these people were taken away in chains to the many far-off lands o
f the roman empire, they
were witness to the freely swarming "christians" who seemed to accompany them ev
erywhere these "jews" were made to go in
a last and most sad exodus. jesus obviously is the stand-in for the prime mover
in the original trilogy, faithfully
carrying "his father s word" to his small portion of the globe. it was also this
"god incarnate" who had
dropped the pebble that would cause the rings of reverberation, his followers, t
o spread "into the whole world." the second
leg of this trilogy were the beginners of this ring of reverberation. his twelve
disciples (learners), became his apostles (missionaries).
they had spoken out boldly at a time when the priestly class had thought these m
en had been threatened into
silence by the example made of their beloved rabbi. they had survived this first
jewish threat to their lives only
to succumb, in the fullness of their mission, to roman reprisal. but the example
that they had set gave unstoppable
power to the sound "heard round the world." might they be equated with the adam
and eve leg of the
first trilogy, "who had come out of the garden far different creatures than had
ever before been produced"? this garden
of the "first couple" seems to have disappeared into prehistory, with only a bel
iever s understanding that it had ever
been real. the garden of their "pentecost" (israel) that the apostles emerged fr
om disappeared into history from which it took
two millennia to be rediscovered, and that in a rather truncated form. should th
at give us hope that the first
garden might someday reemerge in some recognizable form? the first comparison th
at started all this was with moses and those
who had followed him. he had, according to the biblical account, faithfully carr
ied the word to god s people.