Word: vespasian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...tantalizing hints ("I come not to bring peace but a sword"), little of Jesus' militancy appears in the Gospels. The reason, argues Brandon, was that Christianity early in its history underwent an earth-shaking trauma: the fall of Jerusalem. In A.D. 70, the legionaries of the Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus put down a four-year rebellion led by a group of Jewish rebels known as the Zealots, and destroyed the city. In Rome, where Titus returned in triumph brandishing trophies from the ruined Temple, feelings were running high against Jewish intransigence in general and the Zealot rebellion...
...This likeness of the Emperor Vespasian [979 A.D.] from the Bardo Museum in Tunis, may well interest any of your Texas readers who are themselves concerned with their place in history...
...When Vespasian finally took the citadel, Josephus went into hiding with 40 other Jews in a cave beneath the city. His companions were resolved to resist to the death, but Josephus, impressed in spite of himself by Roman might and discipline, wanted to surrender. To solve the impasse, Josephus proposed a kind of Jewish roulette: they would kill each other, one by one, by drawing lots; the survivor would then kill himself...
Brought before Vespasian, Josephus pleaded for his life by relating a dream he had had: Vespasian would become Emperor of Rome. Vespasian was so delighted by the news that he set Josephus up in style and provided him with a wife; in turn, Josephus spent the rest of the war trying to persuade the Jews to surrender. He believed it to be God's will that Rome, the mightier culture, should prevail. In their bullheadedness, the Jews ignored the classic portents of disaster: chariots darting through the clouds, a cow giving birth to a lamb in the Temple...
...Religion. In Rome, a happier prophecy also came true: Vespasian became Emperor. As a protégé of the court, Josephus was able to devote the rest of his life to his massive histories: The Jewish War, and Antiquities, a 20- volume history of the Jews. While fulsomely admiring his adopted country, Josephus sought to explain and vindicate the Jewish people, to communicate the unique sense of theocracy (he is credited with coining the word) that was to pervade the Christian world. He wrote: "The whole nation is fashioned for religion. Practices which other nations call mysteries and sacred...