Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Apostate prophet visits Jerusalem; caliph Umar stole Temple mount?

In answer to the video "Muhammad's Destruction of Idols"

Umar did not steal anything, he restaured this area that was abandonned by both Jews and Christians, to its purpose, dignifying and honoring it. To understand the issue precisely, lets go back in time. 

Physical destruction and abasement came on Jesus' rejecters soon after his departure. In the years 69-73, the Temple of Jerusalem was razed to the ground as Jesus predicted in Matt23,24,Mk13,Lk23 (Quran 17:7,3:56), their priesthood was destroyed, the Israelites were slaughtered in large numbers women and children included, by the Romans. Many more were enslaved and sold in the markets, as Jesus prophesied lk21:24, deported throughout the Roman empire and colonies for hard labor. 

Some were boarded on prison ships and sent to Corinth for the digging of an isthmus. Soonafter in the years 114-135 they suffered further destruction and enslavement by the tens of thousands, impoverishment and scattering throughout the earth. The greatest abasement was that for the next 1900 years they would have no authority in this land that was divinely granted to them. Following Jesus, Judea would be wrecked and destroyed several times by pagan forces, in accordance with Jesus' prophecy that not a stone would be left standing on another, for the Israelites' rejection of him Luke21. 

The predictions as reported in the NT however seem to be retrospectively written. The Temple was destroyed in 70CE. The Gospels were written after that time. If the Prophecy of the Temple's destruction was made by Jesus in the 30s as is suggested in the Gospels, then one needs to explain why earlier NT books seem uninformed of it. We're not talking about the tearing down of a place of worship in some remote location, but of Jerusalem's Temple, known throughout the empire and beyond, a place of particular significance to the authors' own religion. Yet the book of Hebrews, written in the 60s describes it as a reality which is in competition with the nascent Jesus sect because it epitomises rabbinic Judaism.

Previous prophecies, in their own books warned them that should they turn away from the commands of God, as was the case with their rejection of Jesus, God Himself will uproot them from the land they were settled in. 

They were not settled in it to enjoy it as an unrestricted holiday resort but to assert therein true faith and righteousness. Failure to do so would instead turn their sacred shrine into an object of ridicule among the nations 2Chronicles7:19-22. Eusebius the early church father notes that
"stones from the Temple itself, and from its ancient sanctuary and holy place, were used for the building of idol temples, and of theatres for the populace".
The Romans, led by Hadrian sought to build upon its ruins their new city "Aelia Capitolina". To achieve that vast project, the erasure of the previous city of the Jews had to be complete. In the process, their oppression was so intense, their expulsion so effective following their repeated rebellions and the 3 years of vicious warfare led by their messiah Simon bar Kochba, that by the 4th century the exact location of the temple edifice was beyond recall
"Rabbi Yermiah, son of Babylonia came to the Land of Israel and could not find the site of the Temple" (Tractate Shevuot 1 4b).
If 4th century Christian historian Eusebius is to be believed, the new city that Emperor Hadrian built upon the ruins of Jerusalem was colonized by a "new race of Gentiles" after "a total destruction of its ancient inhabitants". The whole province of Judea was even renamed Philisti as a further humiliation, after the ancient inhabitants of the land and bitterest enemies of the Israelites, the Philistines.
The new laws forbid Jews to live in the city or anywhere between Jerusalem and Hebron. Capital punishment faced any Jew who so much as stepped foot in the city. The harshness went so far as imposing penalties on any Jews caught laying eyes on the city on their "day of mourning". A day of mourning is one where they would remember the calamities that befell them. In Josephus' words
"Jerusalem ..was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited".
The scarcity of archaeological evidences for the biblical stories attests to this.

As 4th century churchman Jerome tells us, a statue of Hadrian, seated on horseback, was erected on the levelled platform of Jerusalem's Temple Mount after the crushing of the bar Kochba revolt in 135 AD. The Roman Emperor despised the Jews for their insularity and arrogant claims for a single concept of the divine. Just as Hadrian had erected a Temple to Zeus on the top of Mt Gerizim close to which the Samaritan Temple stood, it isnt inconceivable that he had erected a similar temple in Jerusalem, more precisely a temple dedicated to Jupiter, next to his imperial statue, as some scholars suggest. 

It was not until the Christianization of the Roman empire late in the 4th century that these pagan "abominations" were eventually torn down. Stones from the ruined sanctuary were looted for use in later Christian structures. On the neglected esplanade the Byzantine emperor Justinian built a church to Mary Mother of God but little else. 

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