[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, July 30, 2014

[Poppa Bear]

Good article, but I would offer a possible correction, in my studies I have
found that though the Roman Catholic Church consider the apocrypha sacred,
they do not consider it divinely inspired or prophetical as they do the 66
books of Canonized scripture. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Faith-talk [mailto:faith-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Paul
via Faith-talk
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2014 10:29 AM
To: Spiritual discussion list
Subject: [Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Hello and good day to you all on this Wednesday or, as this is being
written, a Friday morning to you down in Australia and New Zealand.  I hope
that, by God's matchless grace and His providential care, that you are all
doing well today.

I don't know how many of my readers like history, but I do, and it's for
this reason that I'm going to present an article dealing with an area of
history too much neglected by the church and even those of the Jewish
persuasion.  The article in question was written by J. Birney Dibble, a
writer living in Wisconsin, and the name of his article is "The Missing 300
Years," rendered as follows:

Christians and Jewish people alike share ignorance in common about what
happened in Palestine in the 300 years between Joel--chronologically the
last of the biblical prophets--and the birth of Jesus.  Is it safe to say
not much worth noting happened during that time? Hardly.

In the recorded history of that time, we run into many familiar names:
Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Seleucus, the Macabees,
Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Herod the Great, and many others.

The story of those "missing years" begins in Greece in the year 336 BC.
While the ancestors of the Jewish people were reestablishing their place in
Palestine--and putting the final touches to the Second Temple--20-year-old
Alexander III ascended to the throne.  Alexander's tutor was Aristotle, who
in turn had been a student of Plato.

In 333 he led his troops to easily conquer persia (modern-day Iran), which
had been declining under the uninspired leadership of Darius III.  Alexander
followed this up with the conquest of Palestine and Egypt.  Then he marched
east into Babylon, Parthia (modern Afghanistan), and India, and conquered
them all.  On his return trip to Macedonia, he fell ill and died.

This is important to our understanding of the three century "gap" because of
what followed Alexander's death.  Four of his generals fought for mastery
for 20 years and none succeeded.  In 301 BC Alexander's empire was divided
into four parts:  Macedonia, given to Cassander; Thrace and Asia Minor to
Lysimachus; Syria and Babylon to Seleucus; Egypt to Ptolemy.

In Egypt, the descendants of the original General Ptolemy ruled for almost
300 years, with each successive ruler called Ptolemy and their wives,
Cleopatra.  During the reign of Ptolemy II (282-246), 70 Greek-Hebrew
scholars in Alexandria translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek so that the
ancestors of the Jewish people, who now spoke Greek as their native tongue,
could read the scriptures in their own language.  This translation was
called the Septuagint and was used for centuries as the definitive Bible.

In Western Asia, the descendants of General Seleucus continued a more or
less benign rule.  Similar to Egypt, the descendants of the rulers were
called either Seleucus or Antiochus.  In 232 BC, Antiochus III began a
vicious campaign to restore all of the original empire of Alexander the
Great to Seleucid control.  By 187, he had conquered Egypt and Palestine.
In 170, Antiochus IV invaded the temple in Jerusalem and stripped it of
everything made of gold or silver.  Two years later, he took captive the
women and children.  He built strong towers and a massive wall, transforming
the Temple Mount into a conqueror's citadel.

The final desecration--predicted by Daniel (9:27)--was the invasion of the
holy sanctuary again.  This time, Antiochus erected the "horrible
abomination" which was, according to legend, swine offered as a sacrifice on
the holy altar.  He also erected a statue of Zeus with a likeness of his own
face portraying Zeus.

This outrage triggered the Maccabean Revolt, led by Mattathias.  At first
the revolt began as a guerilla force, striking from ambush in small parties,
tearing down pagan altars, and harshly punishing any Jewish person found
obeying the orders of Antiochus.  But when Mattathias died in 166, his five
sons under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus organized a formal army and
began to systematically attack the Syrians.  One of the first places they
headed for was the citadel in Jerusalem.  After two years, they finally
captured it.

They were now able to purify the temple--predicted in Daniel 7:25.  Judas
Maccabeus ordered eight days of celebration and sacrifice, still celebrated
by Jewish people as Hanukkah.

But the war was not over.  In fact, it had barely begun and would go on for
another 22 years.  Three of the five sons died in battle, leaving just two
brothers:  Jonathan Apphus and Simon Thassi.  In 152, Jonathan was made high
priest.  War and peace alternated until 142 BC.  In 141, the temple was
again consecrated and rededicated, the first permanent occupation by the
descendants of the Jewish people since 345 years earlier.

The Seleucid Empire effectively died in 135 BC when Antiochus VII was killed
during an invasion of Persia.  Palestine now entered a half century of
prosperity and glory.

It was a short half century.  In 63 PC, Pompey invaded Palestine and ended
the Maccabean monarchy.  Pompey died in a civil war with Julius Caesar;
Caesar himself was assassinated in 44 BC.  Herod Antipater, Rome's puppet
ruler in Palestine, was assassinated in 43 BC.  Five years later, Antipater,
son Herod Antipas (later to be called "The Great") persuaded Mark Antony to
make him king of Palestine.  With Roman help, he took Jerusalem, executing
the remaining male Maccabeans.

In 6 BC, when Jesus was born, we come full circle with both the Greeks and
the Seleucids out of Palestine.  The Romans are the world power, ruling over
much of the known world including Palestine.  The rest, as they say, is
history.

And there yu have Mr. Dibble's article.  I realize that much of it dealt
with war, insurrection, murder and capture.  However there was a body of
literature written during that time period which some Christian groups,
chiefly the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, still use and
venerate as sacred Scripture just as much as they do Psalms or Micah or
other Old Testament books.  Protestants call that body of literature
"apocrypha," meaning "hidden," but I prefer the term "deuterocanonical,"
meaning basically additions.  I would venture that portions of Ezekiel,
Daniel and Revelation are more "hidden" to us Christians than what is
referred to as the Apocrypha.

If you would like to read more of Mr. Dibble's writings visit
http://www.dibblebooks.com.

Also, in the beginning of this article, the name "Iran" was mentioned.  If
you can somehow get your hands (or more probably computers) on a copy of the
August 2008 National Geographic magazine, there's a very interesting article
on ancient Iran that students of history might like to read.  I myself have
a copy of that particular issue.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe,
individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Lord
willing, tomorrow we will have another Daily Thought article of hopefully a
more pleasant and generally accepted nature.  Your Christian friend and
brother, Paul _______________________________________________
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