My wife received her masters in Judeo-Christian studies from Seton Hall ,and I've always wanted to be able to discuss this subject of her masters degree with her in a more adept manor. Having found this, I will look for more of your lectures. Thank you for making your knowledge accessible to people like myself. Have a great day and keep up the good work.
@@HenryAbramsonPhD Construction over deconstruction in our criticism is always nice. I'll say something nice too. This channel is very nice and the scholarship is impressive. You present it in a friendly and accessible manner. In fact, every lecture has taught me things I had no idea about. I thought I knew everything but I guess it must have been the Dunning-Krueger effect. Now I just want to ask you a whole lot of hard questions about everything...
My favorite history, entertainment channel. I've watched almost eveything The Good Dr Abramson has produced on YT. I'll get his Book's. His published Doctorate Dissertation/Thesis(?) on Ukrainian Jewish history looks interesting.
+Henry Abramson I have a Question for you why was Jerusalem so important to the Romans, because when the Romans had not been aloud to Worship in Jerusalem that helpped kick off the Jewish-Roman wars, yet i thought Rome had its own pantheon gods based around Capitol hill Zeus etc
Have you published any books on the Roman-Jewish wars? It would be a handy academic citation to bring up when dealing with people who think the exile was "voluntary dispersion".
Good to hear. There is an ongoing campaign of historical erasure of our people, both in academia and Wikipedia. We need scholars to fight this very important battle.
Much respect to the people of the Jew belief. Though receive the persecute of many peoples the people of the Jew belief maintaining their good cohesive history and good faith to the God who is one. I wish good fortunes to the peoples of the Jew belief. All Glories To His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Of all religions (I'm a former Catholic), I respect the Jewish religion/ *history* /people the most. How the Jewish religion managed to survive as a distinct people over 2200yrs of persecution/misfortunes when 100's of thousands (millions?) of other peoples had disappeared, most without a historical trace....makes an agnostic like me wonder; "Is there a personal God?" Probably not, like most things in the *known* history of humanoid life on earth....it's just dumb luck, and one Hell of a lot of Stubbornness.
As an agnostic, I’m not sure you will want to hear this…but…HaShem, The CREATOR of everyone and everything, The ONE and ONLY G-D Promises that His Chosen First Born Son, ISRAEL, Is ETERNAL. As long as the world continues to exist, so will the Jewish people. Individually we are mortal and can get sick, be injured and tortured, killed and die…but Am Yisrael Chai… The Jewish People LIVES! Not “dumb luck”, coincidence or accidental. EVERYTHING that HaShem Promises Comes to Fruition…EVERYTHING!
Anyone reading this. There is a story of 2 Roman soldiers that are sitting and learning the Torah and they can not be told grom the Jews. Where is this story from?
Is Elieser "Masada hero" or the biggest villain in Jewish history? I mean, he, Zealots and Idumeans directly caused hundred of thousands of deaths and finaly, destroying of the temple.
Josephus Flavius say YES. The war was useless with no hope to win. Their strategy of Zealots was to inflict so much destruction and death to the people in Jerusalem so Yahve will intervene in their favor and defeat the Romans as in many past occasions (mentioned in the Bible). Being a religious revolt it was impossible to make peace with Romans. If the war would have been caused by political divergence a solution would had emerged. It was no chance for that. The loss of human live was big. As well, the Temple was brand new being finished in 68 AD being restoration being started by Herodes the Great. So, it is no positive side of this war.
religious Jews do not care about Masada at all in their teachings it is trumped up by secular Israelis there is discussion those on Masada may have been heretics anyway and preemptively committing suicide, even in war, is highly questionable in Jewish practice
That was not a war. Pompey entered Ierusalem without fight and visited the temple without taking anything. Later on Crassus entered Ierusalem and took all the gold for the temple without fight.
According to Josephus Book 6 Chapter 6 section 2 page 584 Titus spared the temple but it was John of Gischala a Galilean and his effeminate army who destroyed it Book 4 chapter 9 Pages 542-543.
Dr. Abramson, are you saying that the only eyewitness account extant of the war is Josephus? IE: If he lied about what happened we would never know? For such a powerful empire as Rome, that seems odd, does it not?
Have a look at the work of Michael Grant for a larger discussion of the implications of this fact. One of the challenges of studying ancient history is that certain historical counts plagiarize earlier accounts, which are then lost other than in citations.
@@HenryAbramsonPhD even just reading ancient historians, especially Greek and Roman ones, you can tell they just "copy pasted" a previous historian and people who don't pick this up are basically using "circular sources"
We should always remember that it was Herod Agippia II who help destroy Jerusalem not his wonderful father ( Agippia I) who is often praised in the Talmud ....
Herod Agrippa II was for peace with Romans and he left Jerusalem before the fights started. He had no inclinations to fight with Romans. He was not fanatic.
There's another Roman-Jewish war he left out: the Kitos War of 115-117. Hmmmm, I wonder why? I quote from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia: "More serious was the insurrection of the Jews of Cyrene under Trajan (117 C.E.). This was quelled by Marcius Turbo, but not before about 200,000 Romans and Greeks had been killed (Dio Cassius, lxviii. 32). By this outbreak Libya was depopulated to such an extent that a few years later new colonies had to be established there (Eusebius, "Chronicle" from the Armenian, fourteenth year of Hadrian). Bishop Synesius, a native of Cyrene in the beginning of the fifth century, speaks of the devastations wrought by the Jews ("Do Regno," p. 2)."
Vespasian stole the throne of Rome and his oracular bona fides from Jesus, who being descended from Julius Ceased and Cleopatra, oh woe! what a pedigree. He was a shoe in, king/prince if big up and coming kingdom of Osroene/Edessa which converted to Judaism, I believe or at least the nobility did. But alas, as Josephus describes him being the only one of the three to still be alive after being taken down from the 'cross' (wasn't it lacking a crossbar, which was a different Greek word); I could see how he list his list for the throne of Rome, rightful candidate though he was. Vespasian was a commoner as well.
@Lucius Sulla I've been studying Urantia Book lately and I've had to reevaluate my understanding of the nature of Jesus; it's so bizare though because all the evidence (and lack of evidence) seem to fit perfectly together to support the Cleopatra connection. But novel approaches are always welcome sources of spiritual growth. Under the "anything is possible" theory which so many resonate with-- we must be receptive to what new ideas offer and what they lead us to. Every thing one has ever learned is a precious component of our overall Truth Seeking Quest to forge our own philosopher's stone of critical thinking.
A historical fact is that the Romans crucified 70,000+ Galileans and Judeans during their first century of occupation there. During the siege of Jerusalem, brutal Romans crucified hundreds of Jews upside down and sideways, in order to amuse themselves. The Roman Empire was ruthless in every way (as Hitler's Nazis were). It was Jewish gold that Vespasian used to build the Coliseum.
Dr Abramson's superb lecture was once again focussed unwaveringly on history, not theology or religion, therefore he didn't touch on the reason given by the Jewish sages for this tragedy and the subsequent two thousand years of exile. The first exile, into Babylon, was only for seventy years and the reasons given were sexual immorality, widespread murder and idolatry. The second exile, into the entire world, was for nearly two thousand years and the reason given was baseless hatred. This naturally prompted the question, Why did such heinous sins receive a lighter sentence than the apparently less serious sin of baseless hatred? And the profound answer given was that, when a person commits an obvious sin such as murdering someone he is much more likely to come to his senses and admit his error, therefore the sentence can be shorter. However, the sin of baseless hatred was prompted by a sense that they were justified in hating whatever and whoever it was that they hated and when a person feels this sense of being justified it is much harder to convince him that he is wrong, hence the much more severe sentence. For further information: www.jewishmag.com/93mag/baseless/baseless.htm The million dollar question is: What or Who was it that the Jews of that era hated without cause?
rather by their own sins and hatred for their compatriots regardless, they actually gave the Romans such a hard time compared to other rebels, they were called "porcupines" and of course, the Rabbis themselves actually did not support the rebellion or the zealots either according to the Talmud, the Pharisee leader , Rabbi Yochanon Ben Zakkai, attempted to negotiate on behalf of the pacifist Jews during the early stages of the siege of Jerusalem so there goes your theory...