web analytics

Category: Hadrian

Categories
Ancient Rome Antiochus IV Epiphanes Final solution Hadrian Horace Jerusalem Judaism Old Testament Seneca The Jesus Hoax (book) Vespasian and Titus

The Jesus Hoax, 4

 
CHAPTER 4: ONE AGAINST ALL

If the Jews are chosen by God, then everyone else is, of necessity, not chosen. If Jews are first class humans in the eyes of God, everyone else is second-class at best. And indeed, Jews do view themselves as distinct, special, and superior to others. As Exodus states, “We are distinct from all other people that are upon the face of the earth” (33:16). Similarly, the Hebrew tribe is “a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations” (Numbers 23:9).

Moses adds that “you shall rule over many nations” (15:6)… you shall eat the wealth of the nations” (61:5-6).

Clearly, when other people began to encounter these ideas and the attitudes that derived from them, one would expect a backlash. And there was. Hence we find a consistent thread of opinions from non-Jewish observers, for centuries, who are repelled by such arrogance…

The earliest direct references come from Aristotle’s star pupil Theophrastus. He had a concern about one of their customs: “the Syrians, of whom the Jews (Ioudaioi) constitute a part, also now sacrifice live victims… They were the first to institute sacrifices both of other living beings and of themselves”. The Greeks, he added, would have “recoiled from the entire business.” The victims—animal and human —were not eaten, but burnt as “whole offerings” to their God, and were “quickly destroyed.” The philosopher was clearly repelled by this Jewish tradition.

Egyptian high priest Manetho (ca. 250 BC) tells of a group of “lepers and other polluted persons,” 80,000 in number, who were exiled from Egypt and found residence in Judea… When in power they treated the natives “impiously and savagely,” “setting towns and villages on fire, pillaging the temples and mutilating images of the gods without restraint,” and roasting the animals held sacred by the locals. This is a very different version than we read in the Jewish Bible…

The decline of the Seleucids coincided with Roman ascent. Rome was still technically a republic in the second century BC, but its power and influence were rapidly growing. Jews were attracted to the seat of power, and travelled to Rome in significant numbers. As before, they grew to be hated. By 139 BC, the Roman praetor Hispalus found it necessary to expel them from the city: “The same Hispalus banished the Jews from Rome, who were attempting to hand over their own rites to the Romans, and he cast down their private alters from public places”. In even this short passage, one senses a Roman Jewry who were disproportionately prominent, obtrusive, even ‘pushy.’

Perhaps in part because of this incident, and in light of the Maccabean revolt some 30 years earlier, the Seleucid king Antiochus VII Sidetes was advised in 134 BC to exterminate the Jews… Apollonius Molon wrote the first book to explicitly confront the Hebrew tribe, Against the Jews.

The rhetoric is clearly heating up. In 63 BC, as we know, Roman general Pompey took Palestine. In the year 59 BC Cicero gave a speech, now titled Pro Flacco. The Jewish religion is “at variance with the glory of our empire, the dignity of our name, the customs of our ancestors.” That the gods stand opposed to this tribe “is shown by the fact that it has been conquered, let out for taxes, made a slave.”

Ten years later Diodorus Siculus wrote his Historical Library. Among other things, it again recounts the Exodus: “The refugees had occupied the territory round about Jerusalem, and having organized the nation of Jews had made their hatred of mankind into a tradition” (34, 1).

Here, though, it is Antiochus Epiphanes, not his successor Sidetes, that was urged “to wipe out completely the race of Jews, since they alone of all nations avoided dealings with any other people and looked upon all men as their enemies”.

The great lyric poet Horace wrote his Satires in 35 BC, exploring Epicurean philosophy and the meaning of happiness. At one point, though, he makes a passing comment on the apparently notorious proselytizing ability of the Roman Jews—in particular their tenaciousness in winning over others. Horace is in the midst of attempting to persuade the reader of his point of view: “and if you do not wish to yield, then a great band of poets will come to my aid, and, just like the Jews, we will compel you to concede to our crowd” (I.4.143). Their power must have been legendary, or he would not have made such an allusion.

The last commentator of the pre-Christian era was Lysimachus. Writing circa 20 BC, he offers another variation on the Exodus story. The exiled ones, led by Moses, were instructed to “show goodwill to no man,” to offer “the worst advice” to others, and to overthrow any temples or sanctuaries they might come upon. Arriving in Judea, “they maltreated the population, and plundered and set fire to the local temples.” They then built a town called Hierosolyma (Jerusalem), and referred to themselves as Hierosolymites.

The charge of misanthropy, or hatred of mankind, is significant and merits further discussion, especially in light of the Christian story.

 

Romans of the Christian Era

Emperor Tiberius expelled them in the year 19 AD. The expulsion did not succeed. Eleven years later, as we recall from chapter two, Sejanus found reason to oppose them again.

Anti-Jewish actions continued. In 49, Claudius once again had to expel them. In a fascinating line from Suetonius circa the year 120, we find mention of one ‘Chrestus’ (Latin: Chresto) as the leader of the rabble; this would be perhaps the fourth non-Jewish references to Jesus. “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Claudius] expelled them from Rome”. This is an important observation that, even at that late date, the Romans still identified Christianity with the Jews.

Despite all this, the beleaguered tribe still earned no sympathy. The great philosopher Seneca commented on them in his work On Superstition, circa 60. He was appalled not only by their ‘superstitious’ religious beliefs, but more pragmatically with their astonishing influence in Rome and around the known world, despite repeated pogroms and banishments. Seneca adds: “The customs of this accursed race (sceleratissima gens) have gained such influence that they are now received throughout all the world. The vanquished have given laws to their victors.”

Seneca is clearly indignant at their reach. Then came the historic Jewish revolt in Judea, during the years 66 to 70. The Romans were surely gratified; to their mind, the Jews received their just deserts.

In besieging Jerusalem, and consequently the mighty Jewish temple, Titus had the Jews trapped. There was thought of sparing the temple, but Titus opposed this option. For him, “the destruction of this temple was a prime necessity in order to wipe out more completely the religion of the Jews and the Christians.” These two religions, “although hostile to each other, nevertheless sprang from the same sources; the Christians had grown out of the Jews: if the root were destroyed, the stock would easily perish”. The passage closes by noting that 600,000 Jews were killed in the war.

The third and final Jewish uprising occurred just a few years later, in 132. The reasons for this were many, but two stand out: the construction of a Roman city on the ruins of Jerusalem, and Emperor Hadrian’s banning of circumcision: “At this time the Jews began war, because they were forbidden to practice genital mutilation (mutilare genitalia)”. Dio describes the conflict in detail. “Jews everywhere were showing signs of hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly overt acts”. They were able to bribe others to join in the uprising: “many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter.” For those today who argue that Jews were perennially the cause of wars, this would provide some early evidence. Hadrian sent one of his best generals, Severus, to put down the insurgency. Through a slow war of attrition, “he was able to crush, exhaust, and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived.”

Finally we have Celsus, a Greek philosopher who composed a text, The True Word, sometime around 178. The piece is striking as an extended and scathing critique of the increasingly prominent Christian sect.

 

Conclusions

So what can we conclude from this brief overview of some 600 years of the ancient world? To say that the Jews were disliked is an understatement. The critiques come from all around the Mediterranean region, and from a wide variety of cultural perspectives. And they are uniformly negative. I note here that it’s not a case of ‘cherry-picking’ the worst comments and ignoring the good ones. The remarks are all negative; there simply are no positive opinions on the Jews or early Christians. A reasonable conclusion is that there is something about the Jewish culture that inspires disgust and hatred.

In any case, it’s clear that the Jews had few if any friends in the ancient world. Their religion instructed them to despise others (Gentiles), and others in turn despised them. But the originating source was the Jews themselves: their religion, their worldview, their values. They were willing to use and exploit non-Jews for their own ends. They were willing to kill, and to die.

This situation feeds directly into the circumstances of the Roman occupation and Paul’s reaction. The preceding analysis suggests that Paul was interested in nothing other than saving ‘Israel,’ the Jewish people. We have seen a few textual clues indicating that he was willing even to commit murder in order to further his ends. Surely he hated the Romans with a vengeance, and yet he also could see the futility of confronting them directly.

Categories
Hadrian Julian (novel) Literature Pederasty

Julian, 44

Julian presiding at a conference of Sectarians
(Edward Armitage, 1875)

 
The driver indicated a large ruin to the right. “Hadrian,” he said. “Hadrian Augustus.” Like all travellers, I am used to hearing guides refer to my famous predecessor. Even after two centuries he is the only emperor every man has heard of—because of his constant travelling, his continuous building and, sad to say, his ridiculous passion for the boy Antinous. I suppose that it is natural enough to like boys but it is not natural or seemly to love anyone with the excessive and undignified passion that Hadrian showed for Antinous.

Fortunately, the boy was murdered before Hadrian could make him his heir. But in his grief Hadrian made himself and the Genius of Rome look absurd. He set up thousands of statues and dedicated innumerable temples to the dead boy. He even declared the pretty catamite a god! It was a shocking display and permanently shadows Hadrian’s fame. For the first time in history, a Roman emperor was mocked and thought ridiculous.

From every corner of the earth derisive laughter sounded. Yet except for this one lapse, I find Hadrian a sympathetic figure. He was much gifted, particularly in music. He was an adept at mysteries. He used to spend many hours at night studying the stars, searching for omens and portents, as do I. He also wore a beard. I like him best for that. That sounds petty, doesn’t it? I surprise myself as I say it. But then liking and disliking, approval and disapproval depend on many trivial things.

I dislike Hadrian’s passion for Antinous because I cannot bear for a philosopher-emperor to be mocked by his subjects. But I like his beard. We are all so simple at heart that we become unfathomable to one another.

Categories
Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Christendom Destruction of Greco-Roman world Egalitarianism Europe Evil Evropa Soberana (webzine) Hadrian Indo-European heritage Islam Judaism Judea v. Rome (masthead of this site) Psychology Theoderic the Great

Apocalypse for whites • XXXVIII

by Evropa Soberana

 
In conclusion

Primitive Christianity was characterized by its intolerance and intransigence, and by considering itself as the only way of salvation for all men on the planet. These characteristics were inherited from Judaism, from which it came and which it imitated.

Christianity shows, paradoxically, that to consider all human beings equal is the worst form of intolerance: because it is assumed as a dogma of faith that the same religion or moral is valid and obligatory for all men, and therefore it is imposed, even against their will. This aspect was renewed later with the other great and virulent egalitarian doctrines: democracy and communism.

The Aryans, accepting the difference of peoples, also accepted that they worshiped gods other than their own and had different customs; and they would never have thought of preaching their religion or their morals outside of their town. It would have seemed ridiculous to preach Odin’s worship among blacks, for example; and it made no difference to them that the Semites worshiped Molech.

The tactic of the old European was always to dominate through military triumph, not to forcefully convert or manipulate thoughts. The reaction of Christianity, on the other hand, was to wipe out everything that could remind us our old beliefs and traditions. Any medicinal knowledge of plants or animals was branded as heresy and persecuted. In fact, any kind of knowledge that was not Judeo-Christian was persecuted conscientiously. Spiritual terror had made its appearance in Europe.

This is Christianity, and what came after: feints, collages, palimpsests and mixtures of it with paganism in unstable combinations that never finished curdling in the confused European collective unconscious. In those days the schizophrenia of the current West started: the debate between the heroic Greco-Roman heritage or the humanist Judeo-Christian heritage.

The founders and the great conquerors had wanted their peoples to triumph and be eternal on Earth. They did not achieve it in the long term, and all disappeared. The Romans, then, went to swell that macabre list. In the West, the future of millennia belonged to the Germans, who established throughout Western Europe feudal kingdoms where they rose as aristocracy.

I have listed facts that marked the end of Classical Antiquity with all its wisdom, and the beginning of the Dark Ages. This age used as a tool the Germans, but the Germans were not guilty. They only gave the coup de grâce to a decadent monster—and it was precisely the Germans who preserved Roman works of art from Christian destruction when they seized power (consider the case of King Theodoric).

The occultation would last in Europe until the time of Catharism; of the Vikings and Crusades in the 11th century: when the European knights discovered the tradition that the East had kept. Some friars devoted themselves to collecting natural knowledge such as medicine or botany. The Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Persian and to some extent Greek and Hindu legacies were preserved by the Islamic civilisation which, unlike Christianity, not only did not destroy the pagan legacy, but kept it.

The resurgence of European spirituality came from the warrior and chivalric castes. And the results, some cleaner than others, were the Holy Roman-Germanic Empire, the Vikings, the Occitan civilization, the Templars, the Italian Renaissance with its fascination for the Greco-Roman world, and the Spanish empire.

There are those who get themselves into a mess with the ‘Christian heritage’ of Europe. I do not. I see Europeans living with some customs and their natural rites, beautiful and harmonious, which automatically led to the most normal thing in the world, thus taking part in that immense orchestra that is the Earth.

I see a fanatical creed preached by Semitic fundamentalists from the East and Africa, who inflamed the spirits of the world’s scum against the good people; against the native Europeans, against the representatives of order and light. They said that our ancestral customs were abominations. They said that those who practiced them were sinners. They said that our science was demonic sorcery, and our art, blasphemy.
They said that whoever did not kneel before a strange new oriental god deserved the worst torments. They cursed the strong, the nobles, the fighters, the pure, the philosophers and the wise, and blessed the slaves, the sick, the trampled, the prostitutes, the ignorant and the cowardly.

They destroyed the legacy that we had accumulated for centuries. They killed our leaders. They put an end to an Empire that could well, under Germanic influence, spread throughout the world.

They plunged Europe into ignorance and banned knowledge. For centuries, they spread depression, guilt and the feeling of sin, introducing into Europe that cancer that is the Old Testament, and that castrating poison that is the New Testament.

If Europe could still thrive in these conditions, it was not thanks to Christianity but in spite of it, and thanks to the things that Christianity had not yet touched.

This piece is from a statue of the emperor Hadrian that should have measured about five meters, and was found in Sagalassos, present south-central Turkey, where Christianity took root early.

In short, Christianity was a subversive movement of agitation against Rome, against Greece and, ultimately, against the European world.

We have to assume that what has come down to us from the Greco-Roman world is only a tiny part of what was really there, and that it was taken away by the Judeo-Christian destruction.

Christianity, as a slave rebellion devised and led by Jews with the aim of destroying Roman power—and, ultimately, all European power—was and is a doctrine aimed at converting vigorous peoples into domesticated flock of sheep.

Categories
Ancient Rome Christendom Evropa Soberana (webzine) Hadrian Judaism Judea v. Rome (masthead of this site) Miscegenation Philosophy of history Psychology Tacitus Universalism

Apocalypse for whites • XXIV

by Evropa Soberana

 
Some conclusions
The Greeks and the Romans, from their Olympic naïveté (and I say this because only naïve men could think of forbidding the Torah, the Shabbat or the Brit Milah without realising that the whole of Jewry would prefer to die rather than renouncing their traditions) were too myopic in their approach to the Jewish problem. The Greco-Romans ignored the particularities that differentiated the Jews from the rest of the Semitic peoples of the Near East, and thought that they could place their temples and statues there as if the Jews were nothing more than another Arab or Syrian province, either Hellenised or Persianised. The persistent identity that Jewry had shown did not motivate the carefree Romans to sufficiently wrap their heads around the problem.
The conviction that the Greco-Romans had of being carriers of a superior culture made them fall into a fateful error: to think that a culture can be valid for all humanity and exported to peoples of different ethnicity. The Hellenisation and Romanisation of the East and North Africa had only one effect: the ethnic chaos, the balkanization of Rome itself, ethnic struggles and, finally, the appearance of Christianity.
Even using the brute force of her legions Rome was slow to realize that the Jews, in their resentment and their desire for revenge, did not care to sacrifice waves upon waves of individuals if they managed to annihilate a single Roman detachment. This fundamentalist fanaticism, which went beyond the rational, must have left the Romans speechless, who were not accustomed to seeing an ill-equipped military people immolate themselves in that convinced manner, with a mind full of blind faith coming from a jealous, vengeful, abstract and tyrannical god. What the Jews call Yahweh and in Europe became known as Jehovah is, without a doubt, an extremely real will, and also a force clearly opposed to the Olympian and solar gods of the European peoples, whose height was the Greco-Roman Zeus-Jupiter.
The revolutionary and stirring vocation of Jewry was born here. The Jews realised the primitive and overwhelming power that a resentful, fanatized and ignorant crowd contained, and they used it skilfully in Christianity and later in Bolshevism. The same blind will to sacrifice waves upon waves was seen in the Red Army during the Second World War, with the Germans being the reincarnation of the Roman spirit at that historical moment while the Soviet commissariat, which was more than 90 percent Jewish, undoubtedly represented Israel’s will.
Jews in general faced extinction and ethnic cleansing. The Greeks, who had more power and influence than they in Rome, in the long run would have ended up gradually eradicating them in Asia Minor; while Rome, under Germanic influence, could have lasted forever: the city would simply have become part of the Germanic world thanks to the increasing political influence of the Germans in the legions and to the progressive colonisation of the Empire by the German foederati.
Both Judaism and Christianity are the product of cultural chaos. It is no coincidence that the Jewish quarter was born in the area of greatest ethnic confusion on the planet: no man’s land among Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Akkadians, Chaldeans, Persians, Hittites, Medes, Parthians, Macedonians and Romans; not to mention the tangled mess of peoples like the Amorites, the Philistines, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites and the twelve tribes of Israel who inhabited the same area that concerns us and that, together, annihilated the identity of entire peoples in a genetic maremàgnum.
The direct and martial character of the Romans, who, despite not having grasped the Jewish essence, grasped fairly well their desire for power and their problematic character, forced the Jews to act and exercise their willpower as a people, to rave their brains to elaborate the Christian invention, and also gave the Jews the perfect excuse to spend the next two millennia making themselves the victims and mourning at the only remaining wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. Without the existence of Rome Jewry probably would have ended up falling asleep on its laurels and forgetting its interests.
The Diaspora and the eradication of Judea as a Jewish centre did not lead at all to the dissolution of the Jewish identity. Rabbinic Judaism, after wandering through Egypt and Babylon, was more than accustomed to nomadism; and the Diaspora really came from much earlier, although the wars in Judea did increase it with avalanches of refugees. Jewry, showing an enormous intelligence, realised that it could not defeat Rome in a conventional war and that rebellions, fights and open wars failed because the Romans were stronger, braver, more powerful and better soldiers by nature, despite being less in number.
However, the underground and secret rebellion that the Jews had quietly breathed into Rome was going to prosper, as if it was the seed of discord, ‘by the secret and cowardly means’ that Hadrian foresaw that Jewry would use to finally triumph over Rome. This clandestine anti-European rebellion in general, and anti-Roman in particular, also had a name: it was called Christianity or, in the words of Tacitus, that ‘conflictive superstition’ that ‘not only broke out in Judea, the first source of evil, but even in Rome: where all the horrendous and shameful things from any part of the world find their centre and become popular’.
In the long run, the effect of clashes between Jews and Greco-Romans was the consolidation of Christianity as the only option of Semitic conquest of Rome, which, in turn, had the effect of ethnic cleansing of the European minority in the Eastern Mediterranean—especially the hated Greek community, which had its centre in Alexandria—mainly from the 4th century. It seems obvious to me that, after the invention of Christianity, there was a highly developed intellect, with a great psychological and geo-social capacity throughout the Empire, designed to destroy the Roman Empire: snatching from Europe, especially from the Germanic Europe, the legacy of the classical world.
The importation of oriental cults was nothing but the ritual adaptation of the genetic changes in Rome itself, as well as the slow rise of the ethnic substratum that existed in the lowest part of the original Rome.

Although the racial platform of the Roman ruling caste was Red-Nordid, there are several busts of specimens with strong Armenid influence, in addition to Cato. These three busts are patricians of
the Republic with patent armenisation.[1]

Judea was a special province and the Romans would have needed an equally special policy, consisting of shielding Rome against Jewish influence—and, in fact, against all Oriental influence, including its plebs—; leave the Jews in Judea and not give them Roman citizenship under any circumstances; not desecrate their traditions and, of course, never civilise them: because it was precisely the Hellenisation of certain Jewish social sectors what led to the emergence of Christianity. This was a sinister Jewish and Greco-decadent schizophrenia that is evident in the very name of Jesus Christ: Yeshua, a Jewish name, and Christos, ‘the anointed one’ in Greek.
To give examples of the insane Romanisation of Judea that echo the hybrid Yeshua-Christos: Herod tried to Romanise the province by building cities that would cause discord (like Caesarea); fortresses that would be used by the Jews against the same Romans (like the Antonia and Masada fortresses); and also he enlarged the Second Temple at which the Jews now cry, in spite of the fact that they hate the constructor.
If Rome had wanted to triumph in a more resounding way over Judea, she should not have allowed its Romanisation, and should have kept Hellenisation to a minimum. Imposing a culture on a people does not mean that you have to share it. Because of his genetic and cultural heritage, a Jew who knew how to speak Greek would never really share or understand Hellenic culture—culture is the result of the gene pool, and Jewish genetics was radically different from Hellenic. To force or impose one culture over another that comes from a different genetic well only leads to one thing: miscegenation, which will end up manifesting through the total corruption of the original culture.
All hell rained down upon the Jews, who little by little have become like that typical figure in fiction who has received many blows and becomes, over time, a misanthropic super-villain and resentful against the world. Taking the Jews into Rome, however much they were enslaved, was suicidal.

Forced Romanisation, forced Hellenisation, slavery, deportation and anything that tends to increase the ethnic jumble, are extremely negative elements in the history of any nation. And the first drawback of any Empire is precisely that: that it is cosmopolitan by definition.
 
_______________
[1] Editor’s Note: To understand this passage the reader should become familiar with the new racial classification of the author.

Categories
Ancient Rome Architecture Art Aryan beauty Christendom Constantine Ethnic cleansing Evropa Soberana (webzine) Hadrian Jerusalem Judaism Judea v. Rome (masthead of this site) Slavery

Apocalypse for whites • XXIII

by Evropa Soberana

 
Consequences of the Palestinian revolt
The revolt had paramount consequences both for Rome and for Jewry. To begin with, the Roman losses were such that, in addition to Hadrian’s refusing to say in the military offices to the Senate that everything was going well, he was the only Roman leader in history who, after a great victory, refused to return to Rome celebrating a triumph. Titus Vespasianus had only rejected a crown of laurels in his day; Hadrian took it to the next step.
However, if the Roman losses were considerable, the Jewish losses were huge. According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 cities and 985 Jewish villages were completely destroyed—and they were not rebuilt—and hundreds of thousands of Jews sold as slaves throughout the Empire.
It is not surprising that the Talmud called this process ‘the war of extermination’, and that it even made outrageous statements to mythologize the conflict, such as ‘Sixteen million Jews were wrapped in parchments and burned alive by the Romans’ (Gittin, 58-A). The Jews, in any case, were definitively deprived of the will to rise against Rome by force of arms. On the other hand the Jewish threat, which had caused so many headaches to Rome, was going to increase throughout the Mediterranean due to the greater extension of the Diaspora and the ideal breeding ground that this meant for the expansion of another anti-Roman rebellion: Christianity.
The conditions of the defeat imposed on the Jews were even harsher than the triumph of Titus in the year 70. As measures against the Jewish religion, Hadrian prohibited the Jewish courts, the meetings in synagogues, the Jewish calendar, the study of the religious writings and Judaism itself as a religion! He executed numerous rabbis and burned masses of sacred scrolls at a ceremony on the Temple Mount. He tried to eradicate the very Jewish identity and Judaism itself, sending them into exile, enslaving them and dispersing them away from Judea. This persecution against all forms of Jewish religiosity, including Christianity, would continue until the death of the emperor in 138.
Furthermore, in another attempt to obliterate Jewish identity and dismantle its centre of power, the eastern provinces were restructured, forming three Syrian provinces: Syria Palestina (named in honour of the Philistines: a people of European origin and enemies of Jewry who had inhabited the area); Phoenicia under Roman rule and Coele-Syria.
In the new territorial order decreed by Hadrian, Judea became Syria Palestina, and Jerusalem was turned into Aelia Capitolina: a Greek and Roman city in which the Jews were proscribed. The three Syrias form the Levant: an extremely active and conflictive strip in history, to this day. From there came the Neolithic, the Phoenicians, Judaism and Christianity, and practically all the civilizations of antiquity, creating an ethnic chaos that always ended up in conflicts. Centuries later, these areas would see the establishment of European Crusader States.
As for the city of Jerusalem, Hadrian carried out with it the plans that had unleashed the revolt: the Jewish capital was demolished and destroyed, and the Romans ploughed over the ruins to symbolize its ‘purification’ and its return to the earth. Hadrian finally built the projected Aelia Capitolina over the ruins, introducing a new urban planning, so that even today the old city of Jerusalem coincides with the one built by the Romans.

In the centre of the city a forum was established, which contained a temple dedicated to Venus. In the place of the temple Hadrian had two statues erected, one of Jupiter and another of himself, although he respected the Wailing Wall.
Also, next to Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, Hadrian placed a statue of Aphrodite. This was intended to symbolize the triumph of Rome over Orthodox Judaism and over Christianity, considered a Jewish sect like so many: another sect that in Rome was persecuted without distinguishing it from official Judaism. For the Greeks and Romans, the statues of their gods were representatives of the divine, solar, luminous and Olympic spirit on earth, while for the Jews, including the Christians, nothing stirred their stomach more than a naked, strong statue, beautiful, of Nordic features and invincible aspect.

To top off the de-Judaization of the city, Hadrian prohibited any Jew from settling in Aelia Capitolina, on pain of death. (This law would only be revoked two centuries later by Constantine, the first Christian emperor.)

Categories
Ancient Rome Ethnic cleansing Evropa Soberana (webzine) Final solution Hadrian Jerusalem Judaism Judea v. Rome (masthead of this site)

Apocalypse for whites • XXII

by Evropa Soberana

 

Third Jewish-Roman War:
The Palestinian Revolt or
Rebellion of Bar Kokhba (132-135)

Hadrian at first had been minimally conciliatory with the province of Judea. He allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, began rebuilding the city as a gift from Rome and even gave them permission to rebuild the Temple. However, after a visit to the ‘Holy Land’, he had a sudden change of mind and began again to make Roman authority felt in the troubled province.
While the Jewish quarter was preparing the construction of the Temple, Hadrian ordered it to be built in a different place from the original, and then began deporting Jews to North Africa. Planning the complete transfiguration of Judea, its de-Judaization, its repopulation with Roman legionaries and its impregnation of Greco-Roman culture, he ordered the foundation, on Jerusalem, of a new Roman city, called Aelia Capitolina.
This implied the massive irruption of the classic art, extremely hated by the Jews, besides the construction of numerous Roman buildings—and the construction of a Roman building necessarily went through a ceremony of consecration of religious character that, according to the Talmudic mentality, polluted the Holy Land for being a pagan ritual. Jerusalem, before the nervous eyes of Jewry, was going to become the scene of a highly ‘profane’, ‘impure’ and ‘pagan’ place for their mentality, such as streets decorated with naked statues with a prepuce!
The Jews, again indignant, prepared for a rebellion, but Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah calmed them down, so they were content to prepare themselves clandestinely in case they had to rebel in the future, which seemed every time most likely. They built caches in caves and began to accumulate weapons and supplies. Although they did not carry out an open rebellion, in 123 terrorist actions began to take place against the Roman forces of occupation.

The Hellenistic education of Hadrian is evident in his beard. The Romans, a people of soldiers, like the Macedonians, had the deep-rooted habit of facial shaving. Although Nero brought partial beard at some moments of his life, it was Hadrian the first emperor to leave it permanently. Such a man would naturally be more inclined to take a stand for the ethnically Greek populations of the Eastern Mediterranean against his main rivals: the Jews, especially Alexandrians.

Hadrian, who was increasingly regretting his previous indulgence for the Jewish quarter, brought the Legio VI Ferrata to act as a police force. To make matters worse, the emperor was a man of Hellenistic education. In addition to the anti-Judaism traditionally associated with it, the Greek formation considered circumcision as a barbaric act of mutilation.
Although they admired the nakedness of a beautiful human body, the Greeks, who in Judea formed the most influential social sector after the Romans, considered it an act of extreme bad education to show the glans in public (for which those who had too short a foreskin from birth, had to cover the glans with some accessory). Instead, according to Jewish tradition, Adam and Moses were born without foreskin, and the Messiah will also be born circumcised. The Jews were not the only people to practice circumcision: it was also practiced by other Semitic peoples such as the Syrians and the Arabs. But in the case of the Jews it was a religious matter: a sign of covenant between them and Jehovah. To make matters worse, Hadrian also decided to prohibit the observance of the Sabbath, which forced the Jews not to work and practically do nothing on Saturdays.
The year 131, after an inauguration ceremony by the governor Quintus Tineius Rufus, began the works of Aelia Capitolina, and the following year coinage was minted with the new name of the city and works were begun on a Temple dedicated to Jupiter in the location of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem. Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef convinced the Sanhedrin to proclaim as Messiah and commander of the coming rebellion Simon Bar Kokhba (‘Son of a star’): a cunning, bloodthirsty and shrewd leader. Bar Kokhba must have planned carefully, noting the issues where previous rebellions had failed.
Instantly, as soon as Hadrian left Judea, that same year of 132, the Jewish quarter rose, attacked the Roman detachments and annihilated the Legio X (Legio VI was encamped watching the passage of Megiddo). The Jews from all the provinces of the Empire and beyond began to attend, and also obtained the support of many Syrian and Arab tribes.
With their fundamentalist Semitic hordes—supposedly 400,000 men, of whom it was said to have been started by cutting off a finger or plucking a cedar from the roots—they stormed 50 fortified plazas and 985 defenceless towns (including Jerusalem), exterminating the Greek communities, the Roman detachments and all the opponents they encountered; atrocities being common. Later, they dedicated themselves to the construction of walls and underground passages; in short, to entrench themselves in each square.
After these fleeting victories, the Jewish state in the area was reorganized. In Betar, a mighty fortress in the mountains, Bar Kokhba was crowned Messiah in a solemn ceremony. During the years of the revolt, Ben Yosef and Bar Kokhba reigned together, one as a dictator and the other as a religious ‘pontiff’ who proclaimed the ‘era of the redemption of Israel’ and even minted their own coins.
General Publicius Marcellus, governor of Syria, was sent to support Quintus Tineius Rufus; but both Romans were defeated by forces vastly superior in number, which also invaded the coastal areas, forcing the Romans to fight with them in naval battles. At this moment so worrying for Rome, Hadrian called Sextus Julius Severus, who at that time was governor of the province of Britain. He also required a former governor of Germania, Quintus Lollius Urbicus. With them, he gathered an army even greater than the one that Titus had gathered last century, a total of perhaps twelve legions: from one third to half of all the military troops of the Empire.
In view of the vast number of enemies and the desperation with which they acted, the Romans avoided open battles; limited themselves to attacking scattered groups and destroying the populations where they could find sustenance: the tactics of anti-partisan warfare. The Jews had fairly well entrenched themselves in some 50 fortified cities, many of them truly impregnable complexes in the mountains, so the Romans advanced slowly by besieging the squares, cutting off supplies and entering when the defenders were weak.
This painful tactic, which also required long journeys through hostile areas, cost the Romans innumerable deaths—in fact, it seems that the Jews annihilated, or at least caused very heavy losses, to the Legio XXII Deiotariana which had come from Egypt. To confirm the hardships passed by the legions, Hadrian eliminated from his military reports to the Senate and the people of Rome the traditional opening formula ‘I and the legions are fine’ for the simple reason that the legions… were not fine.
After enormous sacrifices and waste of discipline and feeling of duty, the Romans were triumphing little by little. In the year 134 the Betar fortress remained, where Bar Kokhba had become strong with the Sanhedrin; his most loyal followers, and thousands of Jews who had come as refugees. The same day of the anniversary of the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem, the fortress fell into the hands of the Roman soldiers, who put the entire population to the sword and did not allow the dead to be buried for six days.

‘Even if they swear to become good Roman citizens and worship Jupiter and our other gods, kill them, if you do not want them to destroy Rome or conquer it by the secret and cowardly means that they usually do’.

—Emperor Hadrian to his legions

Categories
Ancient Rome Arthur Schopenhauer Caesar Augustus Caligula Claudius Hadrian Judaism Julius Caesar Karlheinz Deschner Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Nero Old Testament

Kriminalgeschichte, 9

Below, a translated passage from the first volume of Karlheinz
Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums
(“Criminal History of Christianity”)

 
The Jewish religion, tolerated by the pagan state

But even the masters of Rome were tolerant of the Jews (in whom they found peasants, artisans, workers—at that time they were not yet characterised as merchants), and in some cases showed some sympathy for them. They enjoyed some special privileges, especially in the East, such as Sabbath observance. They had their own jurisdiction and were not obliged to submit to Roman jurisdiction.

Caesar supported them in many ways. Augustus generously endowed the Temple of Jerusalem. According to the terms of the imperial donation, a bull and two lambs were sacrificed there every day “to the highest God.” Agrippa, an intimate friend of Augustus, also favoured the Jews.

On the other hand, Emperor Caligula (37-41)—somewhat eccentric and aspiring to have his own temple, appeared in public clothed with the attributes of various divinities, even female, and lived married to his sister Drusilla and intended that an image of him be erected even in the Holy of Holies of Jerusalem—expelled the Jews of the main cities of Parthia, where they were especially numerous.

But even the emperor Claudius, before persecuting the Jews of Rome, had issued a decree in their favour, in the year 42, granting them a special jurisdiction valid throughout the empire, but at the same time warned them not to abuse imperial magnanimity and that they did not despise the customs of other peoples. Nero’s wife, Poppaea Sabina, was a great protector of Judaism. In general terms, the Roman administration was always ready “to accommodate as much as possible, and even more, with all the demands of the Jews, justified or not” (Mommsen).

Not even after the conquest of Jerusalem did the emperors harass the Jewish faith, which for them was religio licita. Vespasian and his successors corroborated the privileges already granted by Caesar and Augustus. Jews could marry, sign contracts, acquire property, hold public office, possess slaves, and many other things, like any Roman citizen. Jewish communities could manage their own goods and had their own, albeit limited, jurisdiction.

Even after Bar Kokhba’s insurrection, Emperor Hadrian and his successors consented to the public celebration of Jewish cults, and granted the dispensation of common obligations which were incompatible with their religion. Even in the provinces there were almost no restrictions against them; they built synagogues, appointed their trustees, and were exempt from military service in accordance with their beliefs.

And all this because, just as today the primitive peoples do not know, in their beliefs, the claim of exclusiveness of a “superior being,” also the old Hellenism was characteristically tolerant. In polytheism, no deity can claim the exclusive. The native cults amalgamated without problems with the imported ones. In the ancient pantheon prevailed a kind of collegiality or friendly companionship; the faithful could pray to the god they preferred, believed to recognize their own gods under the appearances of others, and certainly did not bother trying to “convert” anyone. Schopenhauer says that intolerance is an essential characteristic of monotheism, that only the one God is

by its nature, a jealous god, that does not want to consent the subsistence of any other. On the other hand, the gods of polytheism are by nature tolerant; Live and let live, and in principle tolerate their colleagues, the gods of the same religion. Later on, that tolerance extends equally to foreign deities.

To the pagans, the belief in a unique God seems to them a poverty of concepts; uniformity, un-sacralisation of the universe, atheism. Nothing more foreign to their way of thinking than the idea that the foreigners’ gods are idols. Nothing sounds to them as incomprehensible as the “thou shalt have no other God but Me” of the Jews; “I am the Lord,” “I am the Lord your God,” an expression that is repeated up to sixteen times in the 19th chapter of Leviticus, to give but one example and not the longest. Paganism knows nothing comparable to the covenant of blood between Yahweh and his “chosen people.” And nothing excited more the antipathy against the Jews than their behaviour on account of their beliefs.

Categories
Final solution Hadrian Israel / Palestine Jerusalem Judaism Karlheinz Deschner Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books)

Kriminalgeschichte, 7

Below, translated excerpts from the first volume of Karlheinz
Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums
(“Criminal History of Christianity”)

 
Bar Kokhba and the “Last War of God” (131-136)

To this new uprising, in 115 C.E. different uprisings were added among the Jews of the diaspora, which were very numerous in the Mediterranean area according to Philo. Only in Alexandria there was more than a million. They were still not disillusioned with the Messianic dream. During the war of Trajan against the Parthians (114-117 C.E.), the rumour of a disastrous defeat of the empire ran, and there was also a great earthquake that destroyed Antioch and other cities of Asia Minor. In the face of these disasters, the Zealots believed their time had come.

In the province of Crete and Cyrene, where 200,000 non-Jews were reported to have died, the “king” and “Messiah” Lukuas destroyed the capital, Cyrenaica. In Cyprus, the insurgents devastated Salamis and, according to the chronicles, killed 240,000 non-Jews, an obviously exaggerated figure. From then on, however, the Jews were barred from access to the island and even the castaways, if they were Israelites, were executed. In Egypt, where the Romans liquidated all the Jews of Alexandria in reprisals, the fighting lasted for years. In all places, the Jewish diaspora was severely punished.

In the same Palestine, the successor of Trajan, Emperor Hadrian (reign 117-138 C.E.), a great devotee of the gods, built a new city on the ruins of Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the Temple built an altar to Jupiter And a temple of Venus.

And here it is that in the year 131, Simon ben Kosevah (Bar Kokhba) begins a war of guerrillas so generalized and so deadly, that forces the very emperor to take command of the Roman troops. Bar Kokhba (in Aramaic means “son of the star,” so named after the success of his uprising; in the Talmud, the loser received the name Ben Koseva, “son of lies”) takes power in Jerusalem. His principal counsellor is Rabbi Aqiba, who greets him with a classic messianic appointment calling him “star of Jacob,” the saviour of Israel. He is also supported by the high priest Eleazar, later killed by Bar Kokhba himself because he advised surrender.

There were two years of high morale in Jerusalem, resuming worship in the Temple and proclaiming a new era of freedom until the Emperor Hadrian sent four legions under the command of his best general, Julius Severus, with large numbers of auxiliary troops and a large fleet.

The Romans start regaining ground little by little.

According to Dion Casio, whose exaggerations are notorious, 580,000 Jewish fighters were killed and 50 fortresses destroyed, 985 villages destroyed, and tens of thousands of prisoners sent to captivity. Mommsen believes that these figures “are not unlikely,” since the fighting was fierce and surely led to the extermination of the entire male population.

Women and children flooded the slave markets, leading to lower slave prices. The last population to fall was Beth-Ter (the present Battir), west of Jerusalem, where Bar Kokhba himself died in circumstances not well explained.

The site of the Temple and its surroundings were ploughed with oxen. As for the Zealots, the Romans utterly exterminated them, for at last they understood that the religious fanaticism of the Jews was the true cause of the revolt. “For the next fifty years we did not see the flight of a bird in Palestine,” says the Talmud.

The Israelites were forbidden under penalty of death to enter Jerusalem, and the garrison doubled. Until the fourth century the Jews could not return there to weep once a year, on the 9th day of the Aw month, the loss of the “holy city.” And until the twentieth century, or more precisely until May 14, 1948, they failed to found a Jewish state, Eretz Yisrael.

Categories
Art Hadrian Homosexuality Julian (novel)

JVLIAN excerpts – XI

“Why were you so ungrateful to our gods
as to desert them for the Jews?”

—Julian, addressing the Christians

Julian

The Memoir of Julian Augustus

I arrived at Piraeus, the port of Athens, shortly after sunrise 5 August 355. I remember every one of the forty-seven days I spent in Athens. They were the happiest days of my life, so far.

I engaged a cart and driver after considerable haggling (I was able to bring the driver’s cost down to half what he asked: good but not marvelous). Then I climbed into the little cart. Half standing, half sitting on the cart rail, I was borne over the rutted road to Athens.

The sun rose in a cloudless sky. Attic clarity is not just a metaphor; it is a fact. The sky’s blue was painful.

My first reaction was delight at anonymity. No one stared at me. No one knew who I was. I looked a typical student with my beard and plain cloak. There were dozens like me. Some were in carts, most were on foot; all of them moving toward the same goal: Athens and the knowledge of the true.

On every side of me carts rattled and creaked, their drivers cursing and their contents, human or animal, complaining. The Athenian Greek is a lively fellow, though one looks in vain from face to face for a glimpse of Pericles or Alcibiades. As a race, they are much changed. They are no longer noble. They have been too often enslaved, and their blood mixed with that of barbarians.

[Chechar’s note: See Pierce’s take on this subject]

The Dipylon Gate was as busy in the early morning as any other great city’s gate might have been at noon. It is a double gate, as its name indicates, with two tall towers on the outside. Guards lolled in front, paying no attention to the carts and pedestrians who came and went. As we passed through the outer gate, our cart was suddenly surrounded by whores. Twenty or thirty women and girls of all ages rushed out of the shadows of the wall. They fought with one another to get close to the cart. They tugged at my cloak. They called me “Billy Goat,” “Pan,” “Satyr,” and other less endearing terms.

With the skill of an acrobat one pretty child of fourteen vaulted the railing of my cart and firmly grasped my beard in her fist. The soldiers laughed at my discomfort. With some effort I pried my beard from her fingers, but not before her other hand had reached between my legs, to the delight of those watching. But the driver was expert at handling these girls. With a delicate flick of his whip, he snapped at the hand. It was withdrawn with a cry. She leapt to the ground. The other women jeered us. Their curses were splendid, Homeric!

I arranged my tunic. The sharp tug of the girl’s hand had had its effect upon me, and against my will I thought of lovemaking and wondered where the best girls in Athens might be found. I was not then, as I am now, celibate. Yet even in those days I believed that it was virtuous to mortify the flesh, for it is a fact that conscience increases intellectual clarity. But I was also twenty-three years old and the flesh made demands on me in a way that the mind could not control.

Youth is the body’s time. Not a day passed in those days that I did not experience lust. Not a week passed that I did not assuage that lust. But I do not agree with those Dionysians who maintain that the sexual act draws men closer to the One God. If anything, it takes a man away from God, for in the act he is blind and thoughtless, no more than an animal engaged in the ceremony of creation. Yet to each stage of one’s life certain things are suitable and for a few weeks, eight years ago, I was young, and knew many girls. Even now in this hot Asiatic night, I recall with unease that brilliant time, and think of lovemaking. I notice that my secretary is blushing. Yet he is Greek!

♣

The driver indicated a large ruin to the right. “Hadrian,” he said. “Hadrian Augustus.” Like all travelers, I am used to hearing guides refer to my famous predecessor. Even after two centuries he is the only emperor every man has heard of—because of his constant traveling, his continuous building and, sad to say, his ridiculous passion for the boy Antinoüs. I suppose that it is natural enough to like boys but it is not natural or seemly to love anyone with the excessive and undignified passion that Hadrian showed for Antinoüs. Fortunately, the boy was murdered before Hadrian could make him his heir. But in his grief Hadrian made himself and the Genius of Rome look absurd. He set up thousands of statues and dedicated innumerable temples to the dead boy.

Antinous Mondragone 130 ADHe even declared the pretty catamite a god! It was a shocking display and permanently shadows Hadrian’s fame. For the first time in history, a Roman emperor was mocked and thought ridiculous. Yet except for this one lapse, I find Hadrian a sympathetic figure.