What did the Romans do for Judea?
score:15
Stability.
Survival is not just a theme in Judaism, but a well-learned lesson. If you are not the threatening party, then you are the threatened party, and more often than not Judaism faced complete annihilation or enslavement at the hands of a larger and unfriendly force.
Aside from the ancillary wonders of societal, cultural, and technological advancements (for which they paid as much or more as any other governed people by taxation), as long as the Romans ruled the Jews, the Jews would survive. Their fate was less predictable under other large powers of the time, and the stability of those empires themselves were often called into question.
This would understate why the Jewish authority at the time took such a dim view of Jesus and others like him- Rome wanted no problems, and people like Jesus were nothing but a problem, running around and empowering people under a different 'master' than a Roman one. With Jesus having no actual power or influence amongst the Jewish authorities, it was a logical decision for them (and less predicated on egotistical ideologies) when Rome came a-knockin' - offer up Jesus, or the whole will take a real beating all around. It was a stability move.
Upvote:-3
Yes, the Romans built a whole lot in Judea/Palestine. Of course, the actual building was done by native laborers, so maybe it isn't the Romans that should be credited? :) But, I digress.
Herod, who ruled Judea from 37 BCE to 4 BCE, initiated lots of building projects. One was the renovation of the temple in Jerusalem - the center of the Jewish religion. Renovation is not the right word because it was a huge undertaking and completely changed the temple and its environs. The enormous courtyard Herod had built is still standing and is called Haram esh-Sharif or the Temple Mount. The temple that Herod built was the largest building complex in antiquity and attracted visitors from all over the empire. That construction began in 20 BCE but wasn't finished before 64 CE, six years before the temple's destruction, indicates how massive it was!
Herod's other great building project was a brand new city called Caesarea Maritima at the coast. Caesarea was a state-of-the-art Roman city with every kind luxurious facility: theater, hippodrome, pagan temples to various gods, administrative buildings, etc. The city had one of the largest ports in the eastern Mediterranean, rivaling Alexandria's and Athen's fabled ports. It was the largest artificial harbor ever built in the open sea up to that point. Prior to that, most ports were built in natural peninsulas.
In Herod's days, sacrificing in the temple in Jerusalem was a religious duty for Jews. Jews who could afford it regularly made pilgrimage to Jerusalem and many transited through Caesarea. If they didn't have an animal to sacrifice with them, they would purchase one from the locals. Even non-Jews could bring sacrifice to the temple. During major holidays Jerusalem would be packed with over a hundred thousand pilgrims, so temple sacrifice ought to have been very lucrative. Herod's building projects must have exponentially increased the pilgrimage traffic.
Caesarea and the new temple are just two of Herod's many building projects. He also built palaces for himself, a shrine called the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the fortress Masada, and completely rebuilt Jerusalem.
Herod has a bad rep because the New Testament falsely accuses him of infanticide. But in reality he probably wasn't that bad.
More post
- 📝 What Were the Primary Causes of 15th to 19th Century British Chartered Companies' Failures?
- 📝 How did different asset classes perform during the Weimar hyperinflation?
- 📝 How much did J. Robert Oppenheimer get paid while overseeing the Manhattan Project?
- 📝 Where did the people of Northern kingdom of Israel go?
- 📝 Between which years did a trend of violence toward h*m*sexuals begin and end in America?
- 📝 Did George McGovern publicly support Jimmy Carter in 1976?
- 📝 Were there any well-established land trade routes in the US colonies around 1700? What did they look like?
- 📝 What primary sources are there for Charles I's seizure of gold from the Tower mint?
- 📝 Did the Diggers view property as a sin?
- 📝 How did St. Genevieve manage to feed the Parisians during the 10-year-long blockade?
- 📝 Was hay invented only in the Middle Ages in Europe?
- 📝 Why did Odoacer choose to be king Instead of emperor?
- 📝 Monarchies with built-in rotation
- 📝 What sort of architecture existed in Catholic Eastern Europe around the late 1100's and very early 1200's?
- 📝 How was beer production affected by the war during WW2?
- 📝 Was the Reichspropaganda-Leitung (RPL) known to the Germany public?
- 📝 What are some examples of rulers immediately incorporating conquered population's army into their own?
- 📝 How did women give birth in middle ages?
- 📝 How long was a journey "from the Varangians to the Greeks?"
- 📝 What are the origins of knife and fork language etiquette?
- 📝 How were the modern countries in South America formed?
- 📝 Did humans hunt with dogs before planting crops for food?
- 📝 Did medieval Icelanders write with runes?
- 📝 What prevented empires with territory in North Africa from expanding south of the Sahara? And vice versa
- 📝 What were the rights of various classes of people in the Roman Republic?
- 📝 What is the first verified twin study?
- 📝 Marcellus and his work "Aethiopica"
- 📝 Why did the Dutch West India Company allow Quakers in the New Netherlands?
- 📝 Why Antarctica was never conquered before the advent of the modern men?
- 📝 What uniform is this man wearing (probably Austro-Hungarian circa 1900)?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What did the Romans do for Judea?
- 📝 What is the context for Napoleon's quote "[the Austrians] did not know the value of five minutes"?
- 📝 When did the Romans begin using the sword, as opposed to the axe, for decapitation?
- 📝 What historical reasons did the Nazis give for hating the Jews? How did they identify non-practicing Jews?
- 📝 What reasons did the Confederacy have for believing they would have a quick victory?
- 📝 Did the Romans pour wine down wells for health purposes?
- 📝 What did the Romans call black people (sub-Saharan)?
- 📝 What documented criteria (if any) did the CIA use to determine targets for political assassination during the Cold War?
- 📝 What kind of ID Number, if any, did the Soviets institute for all their citizens?
- 📝 At what point did high school become a standard prerequisite for university students in the USA?
- 📝 What defenses did Lee leave behind when the Army of Northern Virginia left for Gettysburg?
- 📝 How difficult was Muraviev's amassing of troops for the forcing of the Treaty of Aigun, and what effects on development did it have?
- 📝 In what year did Charles Proteus Steinmetz fix Ford's Generator for the famed $10,000 invoice?
- 📝 What were Helfrich's orders for Doorman in 1942 prior to the Battle of the Java Sea, and did he comment on these in later life?
- 📝 What did people used to exchange for goods during the 1920s German hyperinflation while the official currency was not trusted
- 📝 What methods did the Old Babylonian society use for solving equations?
- 📝 What did participants experience in the Nazi one month training course for teachers?
- 📝 What did the Allied WW1 propaganda for the Germans say?
- 📝 What were the key difficulties for the Romans in the conquest of Germanic tribes?
- 📝 How did knights in full suits of armor eventually die in combat? What were the most common causes of death for soldiers in full-body plate armor?
- 📝 How did the Romans build their armies for the First Punic War?
- 📝 What did the Romans call Cardigan the town in West Wales, UK?
- 📝 What responsibility did Golda Meir have for the Yom Kippur war?
- 📝 In the Nuremberg Laws, What did "Approved for Citizenship" is half Jewish mean in practice?
- 📝 How did AIDS generate losses? And what are the methods to compensate for them?
- 📝 Under what circumstances did the Vikings leave for North America?
- 📝 Did Adolf Hitler ever address the fact that his own appearance was almost an exact opposite of what he considered the ideal Aryan appearance?
- 📝 What were the reasons for the Renaissance / scientific revolution in Europe?
- 📝 How did the Romans do division?
- 📝 Did the Romans eat breakfast?