The Jewish War: Second half of Book 1

[cahn]

Last week: Some really interesting discussions on (among other things) Caesar Augustus, the temple in Egypt, and the destruction of the temple (in Jerusalem) as divine punishment and also free will.

This week: More Herod! Definitely went quite a bit faster than last week! Featuring lots and lots of family drama... the kind that includes a ton of bloodshed. I'll talk more about it in comments.

Next week: selenak can you give us a halfway point for Book 2? It looks a bit shorter but I'm also going to be crunched for time next week (and definitely won't be able to post until Sunday) so half a book is what it's going to have to be! ETA: Death of Emperor Claudius!

Comments

[cahn]

Oh wow, I didn't even think about how much money that was, thanks for pointing that out!

This makes some sense with the NT's preoccupation with taxes and tax collectors. I had assumed that this was based on post-Herodian Roman tax collection--- Roman taxes were collected by private contractors who had no set tax rate, but bid on the tax concession for a province and then extracted as much as they could get, so they were understandably unpopular. But Herod seems to have been pretty extortionate himself.

*nods* that makes a lot of sense! (I knew that the NT was preoccupied with taxes/tax collectors, and that they were unpopular, but that was about it.)

Throwing around all this money seems to let him play both sides: He can appear as a powerful and civilized Hellenic king, while also doing enough for the temple and the Jews that they only seem to begrudge him his Hellenism once during the chapter, in that incident with the eagle statue.

Yeah, I mean, everyone who came before him seems to have had a lot more problems, he's clearly doing something right, politically.