Jesus allowed in the USA: Forget it! Jesus would not be welcomed
into most Christian Churches in this country. His strange dress alone
would bar him at the door. And his strange appearance would make him
suspect as a Muslim spy.
And in speaking out against the Empire,. he would be hauled off to be
water boarded.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/26/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Would Syrian Refugee Baby Jesus Be Allowed to Immigrate to the U.S.?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/would_syrian_refugee_baby_jesus_be_allow
ed_to_immigrate_to_the_us_20151224/
Posted on Dec 25, 2015
By Juan Cole
Informed Content
This post originally ran on Truthdig contributor Juan Cole's website.
In this political season in which Syrian refugees have become a political
football, it is worthwhile remembering that baby Jesus is depicted by the
Bible as being a Syrian political refugee not once but twice.
In ancient times, "Syria" referred not to the area of the modern country
but
to the entire Levant- Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel.
Scholars sometimes call it greater Syria."
So given that convention, outsiders in places like Alexandria, Egypt, would
have considered Joseph, Mary and Jesus to be Syrians. That is,
geographical
conceptions such as Judah, Galilee, and Roman Judea, would all have been
hyponyms or specific places within greater Syria, which was the hypernym.
In 135 AD, Roman Judea and Roman Syria were merged administratively into
one
province called Syria.
The wise men or magi from the East and Jesus in the manger are staples of
Christmas celebrations. (Matthew does not say there were three wise men,
and early Syrian tradition held that there were 12 of them). Actually,
however many there were, the wise men caused baby Jesus a very great deal
of
trouble.
Magi were the priests of the Zoroastrian or Parsi religion of ancient Iran.
Iranian religions like Zoroastrianism and Mithraism were present in the
Near
East. In fact, the Iranian Parthian Empire (250 BC-220 AD), stretching
from
Afghanistan to Mesopotamia, had taken the the Near East and greater Syria
away from Rome briefly for a couple of years some 33 years before Jesus was
born. In that couple of years, the Iranians deposed the Rome-appointed
local governor, Herod the Great, who fled to Rome, and the Iranians
installed the Hasmonean, Antigonus, son of Aristobulus II, as their
governor.
h/t Wikipedia
Herod intrigued with Mark Antony, who was planning a counter-offensive, and
offered him a bribe, and talked up the Persian threat, so that the Roman
senate appointed him king over the territory when Mark Antony took it back.
Herod played the same Iran card with the Roman Senate that Binyamin
Netanyahu now plays with the US Congress.
But once back in power, Herod also did diplomacy with the Iranians fearing
that they might come back.
Iranian religious currents that stayed behind in Greater Syria carried a
prophecy of the ancient Iranian prophet Zoroaster in the Zend Avesta, a
book
of scripture:
"You, my children, shall be the first honored by the manifestation of that
divine person who is to appear in the world: a star shall go before you to
conduct you to the place of his nativity; and when you shall find him,
present to him your oblations and sacrifices; for he is indeed your lord
and
an everlasting king."
So Zoroaster predicted that following a star would lead his priests to a
nativity scene, where they would find the world-savior, which they would
have called Saoshyant.
Oh, no, Iranian religious leaders spreading their religious ideology in
Syria! Alert the Republican National Committee!
The delegation of wise men from Iran appear to have met with Herod before
they went off wandering around looking for the savior. Herod tried to keep
good diplomatic relations with the neighboring Parthian Empire, still
strong
in what is now Iraq, explaining why he might have given the priests safe
passage.
In any case, an Iranian invasion had deposed Herod once, and he would have
been very nervous about Iranian priests spreading end-of-days talk about
the
rise of an everlasting king. You just have to read the Qumran scrolls to
see that some Jewish sects would have been primed for this Iranian message.
According to Matthew, their millenarianism got back to Herod.
He says that the magi were instructed in a dream not to go back for an
audience with Herod after he had been angered by their prophecy, and so
they
departed directly "to their own country, by another way." I.e. they
sneaked
back to Iran, avoiding Herod's guards.
Herod, having heard the Zoroastrian prophecy that the Saoshyant or eternal
monarch had just been born, took it literally and was afraid that on
reaching adolescence an Iranian-inspired boy-king would dethrone him, just
as the Parthian emperor had in 39 BC at the beginning of his career. So he
announced he would kill all boy babies 2 years old or less.
Matthew says that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him and
his family to decamp.
So the flight to Egypt of the holy family was the migration of Syrian
refugees from a combination of religious and political persecution. A
blanket killing of boy babies is what we would now call a war crime, and
Jesus was directly targeted. Like little Aylan Kurdi, who washed up dead
on
a Turkish beach, he was forced by a violent regime out of his home, to seek
refuge in another country. Unlike Aylan, baby Jesus survived the journey
to
Egypt.
The biggest Jewish community in Roman Egypt at that time was in Alexandria,
and I have long felt that was where the holy family were likely given
asylum. Jesus was probably born around 6 or 5 BC, so Egypt would have been
governed by Gaius Turranius. Jews in Alexandria had been given their own
quarter and originally had been made equal to Greeks by the Seleucids, but
there were tensions between those two communities, and both had tensions
with the native Egyptians.
Roman amphitheater in Alexandria
Greeks considered Jews to be "atheists" because they rejected the pantheon
of gods. Just a little over thirty years before Jesus was born, the
Alexandrian Jews had been demoted from being citizens of Alexandria to
being
just Egyptians. The best status was to be a Roman citizen (as Saul/ St.
Paul was), but you couldn't become a Roman citizen without first being an
Alexandrian citizen. The Romans thus abruptly took away from Jews the
urban
citizenship status they had had since the city was founded by Alexander the
Great. In 38 BC there was a riot over these issues between the Greeks and
the Jews.
(The US Congress has just made Iranian-Americans, Iraqi-Americans and some
other ethnicities with dual citizenship second-class citizens by insisting
that these citizens of the USA get visas back to the US if they visit Iran
or Iraq. Just because you think you are a citizen with full rights doesn't
mean that you will remain that way. Franco took citizenship away from
millions of Spanish leftists, and the Bolsheviks took citizenship away from
millions of White Russians).
The holy family was probably refugees for just one or two years in Egypt.
If they weren't in Alexandria, they would have been considered "Egyptians"
by the Roman authorities, a low status. If they made it to Alexandria,
they
would have had more rights, but they likely suffered from not having the
same religion as the Greek and Roman elite. The Egyptian polytheists, who
still worshiped Horus and Anubis, wouldn't have appreciated foreign
"atheists," either.
Joseph was a tekton, a builder or some say carpenter. If a builder he
would
have looked for day work, maybe working with stone. There would have been
no work for a carpenter in Egypt at all. Egypt doesn't have trees suitable
for woodworking, just palms. Wood has long been imported from Lebanon for
the elite, which had cedars. (To this day I have seen Egyptian newlyweds
given big wooden dresser drawers, an extremely expensive imported gift,
meant to last a lifetime). So it is possible that the holy family was
reduced to penury and living on handouts, far from the trees of the Levant
that supplied wood for carpentry. They might have been hungry. As they
fled through Sinai to Egypt, they would have been thirsty. If Joseph could
get no work for a year or two, their clothes might have gotten threadbare
or
even fallen off their bodies. They may have had to beg.
In 4 BC, Herod the Great died.
Matthew says, "But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared
in
a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, "Rise, take the child and his mother,
and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are
dead."
First, the holy family tried to go to Judah in the north, but Herod's son
Archelaus was ruling there as a tyrant, so they had to flee Judah, too.
That was when the three of them went to Nazareth in the Galilee, which
wasn't in the territory of Archelaus but in that of Herod Antipas. (This
ruler later executed John the Baptist for denouncing his marriage to his
niece as incestuous, so the holy family's hope they would be safe under him
was misplaced).
So the toddler Jesus got to be a Nazarene because of having been a Syrian
refugee twice, once from Herod the Great in Egypt, and once from Archelaus
in Judah.
The toddler Syrian refugee would later say,
"31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him,
then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32All the nations will be
gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep
at
his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to
those
at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was
hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me
clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you
visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that
we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to
drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or
naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in
prison and visited you?' 40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell
you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my
family, you did it to me.' "
Maybe when they were refugees in Egypt, Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus were
hungry and thirsty, or lacked proper clothing, having had to flee their
homeland abruptly. Maybe Jesus grew up hearing those stories about the
Syrian refugees.
There are politicians arguing that Syrian refugees should not be admitted
to
the United States, even though the US has taken in 750,000 refugees since
2001, and only a handful have gotten into security-related trouble.
Jeb Bush said that only Christian Syrian refugees should be let in.
These American, Christian politicians would not have admitted the holy
family when they fled Herod the Great. They were Jews and that was before
Christianity. So they were non-Christian Syrian refugees. Out of luck.
Here is the rest of what the Syrian refugee said in Matthew 25:
41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed,
depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;
42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me
nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and
you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'
44 Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or
thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care
of you?' 45 Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did
not
do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these
will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Maybe they should chisel it above the Capitol building.
Oxfam America's Syria Donation Page.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
Would Syrian Refugee Baby Jesus Be Allowed to Immigrate to the U.S.?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/would_syrian_refugee_baby_jesus_be_allow
ed_to_immigrate_to_the_us_20151224/
Posted on Dec 25, 2015
By Juan Cole
Informed Content
This post originally ran on Truthdig contributor Juan Cole's website.
In this political season in which Syrian refugees have become a political
football, it is worthwhile remembering that baby Jesus is depicted by the
Bible as being a Syrian political refugee not once but twice.
In ancient times, "Syria" referred not to the area of the modern country
but
to the entire Levant- Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Israel.
Scholars
sometimes call it greater Syria."
So given that convention, outsiders in places like Alexandria, Egypt, would
have considered Joseph, Mary and Jesus to be Syrians. That is, geographical
conceptions such as Judah, Galilee, and Roman Judea, would all have been
hyponyms or specific places within greater Syria, which was the hypernym.
In
135 AD, Roman Judea and Roman Syria were merged administratively into one
province called Syria.
The wise men or magi from the East and Jesus in the manger are staples of
Christmas celebrations. (Matthew does not say there were three wise men,
and
early Syrian tradition held that there were 12 of them). Actually, however
many there were, the wise men caused baby Jesus a very great deal of
trouble.
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/firealtar_sassanid.jpg
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/firealtar_sassanid.jpg
Magi were the priests of the Zoroastrian or Parsi religion of ancient Iran.
Iranian religions like Zoroastrianism and Mithraism were present in the
Near
East. In fact, the Iranian Parthian Empire (250 BC-220 AD), stretching from
Afghanistan to Mesopotamia, had taken the the Near East and greater Syria
away from Rome briefly for a couple of years some 33 years before Jesus was
born. In that couple of years, the Iranians deposed the Rome-appointed
local
governor, Herod the Great, who fled to Rome, and the Iranians installed the
Hasmonean, Antigonus, son of Aristobulus II, as their governor.
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/3350px-Roman-Parthian_War_58-60.svg_.
png
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/3350px-Roman-Parthian_War_58-60.svg_.
png
h/t Wikipedia
Herod intrigued with Mark Antony, who was planning a counter-offensive, and
offered him a bribe, and talked up the Persian threat, so that the Roman
senate appointed him king over the territory when Mark Antony took it back.
Herod played the same Iran card with the Roman Senate that Binyamin
Netanyahu now plays with the US Congress.
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/NookAntony7301-e1361135417750.jpg
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/NookAntony7301-e1361135417750.jpg
But once back in power, Herod also did diplomacy with the Iranians fearing
that they might come back.
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/htg.jpg
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/htg.jpg
Iranian religious currents that stayed behind in Greater Syria carried a
prophecy of the ancient Iranian prophet Zoroaster in the Zend Avesta, a
book
of scripture:
"You, my children, shall be the first honored by the manifestation of that
divine person who is to appear in the world: a star shall go before you to
conduct you to the place of his nativity; and when you shall find him,
present to him your oblations and sacrifices; for he is indeed your lord
and
an everlasting king."
So Zoroaster predicted that following a star would lead his priests to a
nativity scene, where they would find the world-savior, which they would
have called Saoshyant.
Oh, no, Iranian religious leaders spreading their religious ideology in
Syria! Alert the Republican National Committee!
The delegation of wise men from Iran appear to have met with Herod before
they went off wandering around looking for the savior. Herod tried to keep
good diplomatic relations with the neighboring Parthian Empire, still
strong
in what is now Iraq, explaining why he might have given the priests safe
passage.
In any case, an Iranian invasion had deposed Herod once, and he would have
been very nervous about Iranian priests spreading end-of-days talk about
the
rise of an everlasting king. You just have to read the Qumran scrolls to
see
that some Jewish sects would have been primed for this Iranian message.
According to Matthew, their millenarianism got back to Herod.
He says that the magi were instructed in a dream not to go back for an
audience with Herod after he had been angered by their prophecy, and so
they
departed directly "to their own country, by another way." I.e. they sneaked
back to Iran, avoiding Herod's guards.
Herod, having heard the Zoroastrian prophecy that the Saoshyant or eternal
monarch had just been born, took it literally and was afraid that on
reaching adolescence an Iranian-inspired boy-king would dethrone him, just
as the Parthian emperor had in 39 BC at the beginning of his career. So he
announced he would kill all boy babies 2 years old or less.
Matthew says that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him and
his family to decamp.
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/Holy-Family-flight-to-Egypt.jpg
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/Holy-Family-flight-to-Egypt.jpg
So the flight to Egypt of the holy family was the migration of Syrian
refugees from a combination of religious and political persecution. A
blanket killing of boy babies is what we would now call a war crime, and
Jesus was directly targeted. Like little Aylan Kurdi, who washed up dead on
a Turkish beach, he was forced by a violent regime out of his home, to seek
refuge in another country. Unlike Aylan, baby Jesus survived the journey to
Egypt.
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/ak.jpg
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/ak.jpg
The biggest Jewish community in Roman Egypt at that time was in Alexandria,
and I have long felt that was where the holy family were likely given
asylum. Jesus was probably born around 6 or 5 BC, so Egypt would have been
governed by Gaius Turranius. Jews in Alexandria had been given their own
quarter and originally had been made equal to Greeks by the Seleucids, but
there were tensions between those two communities, and both had tensions
with the native Egyptians.
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/roman_amphitheater.jpg
http://www.juancole.com/images/2015/12/roman_amphitheater.jpg
Roman amphitheater in Alexandria
Greeks considered Jews to be "atheists" because they rejected the pantheon
of gods. Just a little over thirty years before Jesus was born, the
Alexandrian Jews had been demoted from being citizens of Alexandria to
being
just Egyptians. The best status was to be a Roman citizen (as Saul/ St.
Paul
was), but you couldn't become a Roman citizen without first being an
Alexandrian citizen. The Romans thus abruptly took away from Jews the urban
citizenship status they had had since the city was founded by Alexander the
Great. In 38 BC there was a riot over these issues between the Greeks and
the Jews.
(The US Congress has just made Iranian-Americans, Iraqi-Americans and some
other ethnicities with dual citizenship second-class citizens by insisting
that these citizens of the USA get visas back to the US if they visit Iran
or Iraq. Just because you think you are a citizen with full rights doesn't
mean that you will remain that way. Franco took citizenship away from
millions of Spanish leftists, and the Bolsheviks took citizenship away from
millions of White Russians).
The holy family was probably refugees for just one or two years in Egypt.
If
they weren't in Alexandria, they would have been considered "Egyptians" by
the Roman authorities, a low status. If they made it to Alexandria, they
would have had more rights, but they likely suffered from not having the
same religion as the Greek and Roman elite. The Egyptian polytheists, who
still worshiped Horus and Anubis, wouldn't have appreciated foreign
"atheists," either.
Joseph was a tekton, a builder or some say carpenter. If a builder he would
have looked for day work, maybe working with stone. There would have been
no
work for a carpenter in Egypt at all. Egypt doesn't have trees suitable for
woodworking, just palms. Wood has long been imported from Lebanon for the
elite, which had cedars. (To this day I have seen Egyptian newlyweds given
big wooden dresser drawers, an extremely expensive imported gift, meant to
last a lifetime). So it is possible that the holy family was reduced to
penury and living on handouts, far from the trees of the Levant that
supplied wood for carpentry. They might have been hungry. As they fled
through Sinai to Egypt, they would have been thirsty. If Joseph could get
no
work for a year or two, their clothes might have gotten threadbare or even
fallen off their bodies. They may have had to beg.
In 4 BC, Herod the Great died.
Matthew says, "But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared
in
a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, "Rise, take the child and his mother,
and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are
dead."
First, the holy family tried to go to Judah in the north, but Herod's son
Archelaus was ruling there as a tyrant, so they had to flee Judah, too.
That was when the three of them went to Nazareth in the Galilee, which
wasn't in the territory of Archelaus but in that of Herod Antipas. (This
ruler later executed John the Baptist for denouncing his marriage to his
niece as incestuous, so the holy family's hope they would be safe under him
was misplaced).
So the toddler Jesus got to be a Nazarene because of having been a Syrian
refugee twice, once from Herod the Great in Egypt, and once from Archelaus
in Judah.
The toddler Syrian refugee would later say,
"31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him,
then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32All the nations will be
gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep
at
his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to
those
at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was
hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me
clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you
visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that
we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to
drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or
naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in
prison and visited you?' 40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell
you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my
family, you did it to me.' "
Maybe when they were refugees in Egypt, Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus were
hungry and thirsty, or lacked proper clothing, having had to flee their
homeland abruptly. Maybe Jesus grew up hearing those stories about the
Syrian refugees.
There are politicians arguing that Syrian refugees should not be admitted
to
the United States, even though the US has taken in 750,000 refugees since
2001, and only a handful have gotten into security-related trouble.
Jeb Bush said that only Christian Syrian refugees should be let in.
These American, Christian politicians would not have admitted the holy
family when they fled Herod the Great. They were Jews and that was before
Christianity. So they were non-Christian Syrian refugees. Out of luck.
Here is the rest of what the Syrian refugee said in Matthew 25:
41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed,
depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;
42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me
nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and
you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'
44 Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or
thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care
of you?' 45 Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did
not
do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these
will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Maybe they should chisel it above the Capitol building.
Oxfam America's Syria Donation Page.
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/one_quarter_of_people_earning_10
0k_or_more_yearly_say_theyre_20151226/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/one_quarter_of_people_earning_10
0k_or_more_yearly_say_theyre_20151226/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/one_quarter_of_people_earning_10
0k_or_more_yearly_say_theyre_20151226/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/cli-fi_is_all_the_rage_20151226/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/cli-fi_is_all_the_rage_20151226/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/cli-fi_is_all_the_rage_20151226/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_year_in_movies_superheroines_s
uperheroes_singers_and_sex_20151226/
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uperheroes_singers_and_sex_20151226/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_year_in_movies_superheroines_s
uperheroes_singers_and_sex_20151226/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/would_syrian_refugee_baby_jesus_be_allow
ed_to_immigrate_to_the_us_20151224/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/would_syrian_refugee_baby_jesus_be_allow
ed_to_immigrate_to_the_us_20151224/
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ed_to_immigrate_to_the_us_20151224/ http://www.truthdig.com/
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