An American citizen was detained by security forces in the museum after being observed shattering the statues, which he claimed were "in violation of the Torah."
The photo looks like it’s of their Head of Athena which was found in Israel despite being made from Greek marble and representing a Greek goddess. It is hard evidence that non-judeo-christian belief systems existed and interacted, and were at least somewhat allowed to do so, before the Talmud but still inside Jewish territory. Specifically, groups like the Cult of Zeus-Akrios, which some people say influenced the development of Judaism and the writing of the Talmud around the time Judaism and Christianity split.
When your worldview requires that you follow the Talmud and that it is the foundations of Judaism and divine law handed down through Moses and oral rabbinic tradition only, but you have evidence that predates the Talmud which demonstrates visible and open polytheistic religious integration in a society you believe was only monotheist judeo-christian… it gets really difficult to dismiss some uncanny similarities between the religions. Similarities that are otherwise easily explained by religions stealing things from other older religions they encountered.
The very idea his God was created partly from pieces of a polytheistic religion is against everything he was raised to believe as truth. His brain probably broke trying to process it.
It’s hard to read the Torah without understanding that Judaism emerged from a sea of competing religions.
Moses only went up a mountain for five minutes and the Israelites started worshipping a golden calf. And the first three commandments he came down the mountain with are basically a ban on polytheism.
The Jewish god (and thus that of the Christians and the Muslims because it’s the same guy) was once part of his own pantheon. He even had a wife at one point.
It’s not thought he’s the same god as Zeus/Jupiter, but his name is suspiciously similar if you squint a bit (a bit more than you do to compare Zeus-Piter, Zeus’s “full name” anyway, because that’s more of a “holy shit” realisation if you don’t know). Almost like the name might have mutated slightly under the influence of neighbouring religions.
Consider: When you’re frightened of saying your god’s name even though you think you might know it, it can help to make it sound a bit more like other peoples’ main god, after all. Your god can’t get mad because you’re not saying his name, and the heathens might start to like the comparison and convert.
Another thing to note, regarding pantheons, is that Jewish god is quoted as saying “you shall have no other gods before me”. That, depending on interpretation, could imply that the other gods are still around twiddling their thumbs and playing solo paddle-ball or something, but we mortals aren’t allowed to talk to them any more.
Honestly, there’s very obvious evidence the Roman Pantheon had some influence, beyond the questionable name similarity theory. When the earliest Jewish written texts were being compiled in the 2nd century, Romans had been running half of Israel for like 300 years. But they were going through a bit of an “emperor-god with token nod to ancestral deities” phase at the time, so nobody else really took it seriously. A big part of the reason the Rabbis were collaborating on a written word version of Jewish law when they were pretty much oral-history-only before that is because they were actively trying not to include any sneaky Roman (or other non-divine) stuff in there.
And we knew that the Ancient Jews around Moses’ time (~1500BC) knew something about other gods that people nearby believed in, because there are references to them by name in the scriptures. Which is suspicious far beyond inference from “no other gods before me”.
And we knew that there was a temple in the ancient town ruins that was dedicated at some point to zeus and greek, but nobody was able to date it accurately. It could have been left over from the period immediately after Jesus, it was too broken to tell and evidence of Greek pantheon cults wasn’t controversial to anyone - provided it was from after Jesus and the Mishnah.
The argument that there couldn’t be Greek influence in the Mishnah because the Greek pantheon never was widely known about/believed in prior to Roman invasion was impossible to prove false for a very long time. Dating stuff that old that accurately is hard and usually impossible. Nobody had good physical evidence of Greek pantheon worship in Israel before the earliest Talmud texts, and if all those Rabbis in the Kingdom knew about Greek gods, the worship of the pantheon would have to have been very common and widespread. It was fair to expect evidence of even a single Greek pantheon household shrine, because the Greeks left them everywhere else they went.
So, the odds of finding a statue head identifiably from the same century as the oldest Jewish law standardisation attempts because of its art style, and being able to definitely date it after the rumoured Greek rulers of that city had been overthrown a few hundred years earlier … and the head using imported stone from only one famous Greek island, which proves trade lines… and the rumours of Greek rulers and in that part of the old city during what was supposed to be the Kingdom of Israel… and the statue head being the right size for a statue with the same footprint as the broken statue plinth mentioning Zeus on the Temple? And all this, when the team digging went there to find proof the Bible was true?
Damn.
The archaeologists did a fantastic job. It cannot have been easy to present evidence contradicting the history of 3 of the world’s dominant religions, using their own artifacts on their turf with their permission.
The museum also knew this statue head was not going to go down well with religious people, it was only recently they allowed it to be exhibited because of its implications. That took courage, even if I wish they had put up better barriers.
Not that the head was in great shape anyway, it’s not even the most upsetting recent artifact destruction.
I’m always kind of glad when articles don’t focus on explaining the crazy, even if that’s the interesting part. Like you and I would be curious to know what delusions this person was suffering, but printing the story just shares and normalizes those delusions among other religious folks. “Oh, those statues depicted left handed mythological figures? Well, in that case, I agree, smash all the sinister south paws, and murder anyone who stands in your way. It’s what Jesus would have done.”
And then people never get to find out stories like The Great Flood were around long before their religion existed and attributed to the word of their God? Nah. Learning is important.
I was hoping the article would explain how it’s blasphemous but it didn’t. Anyone know?
The photo looks like it’s of their Head of Athena which was found in Israel despite being made from Greek marble and representing a Greek goddess. It is hard evidence that non-judeo-christian belief systems existed and interacted, and were at least somewhat allowed to do so, before the Talmud but still inside Jewish territory. Specifically, groups like the Cult of Zeus-Akrios, which some people say influenced the development of Judaism and the writing of the Talmud around the time Judaism and Christianity split.
When your worldview requires that you follow the Talmud and that it is the foundations of Judaism and divine law handed down through Moses and oral rabbinic tradition only, but you have evidence that predates the Talmud which demonstrates visible and open polytheistic religious integration in a society you believe was only monotheist judeo-christian… it gets really difficult to dismiss some uncanny similarities between the religions. Similarities that are otherwise easily explained by religions stealing things from other older religions they encountered.
The very idea his God was created partly from pieces of a polytheistic religion is against everything he was raised to believe as truth. His brain probably broke trying to process it.
It’s hard to read the Torah without understanding that Judaism emerged from a sea of competing religions.
Moses only went up a mountain for five minutes and the Israelites started worshipping a golden calf. And the first three commandments he came down the mountain with are basically a ban on polytheism.
Maybe this dude should rip up the Torah?
The Jewish god (and thus that of the Christians and the Muslims because it’s the same guy) was once part of his own pantheon. He even had a wife at one point.
It’s not thought he’s the same god as Zeus/Jupiter, but his name is suspiciously similar if you squint a bit (a bit more than you do to compare Zeus-Piter, Zeus’s “full name” anyway, because that’s more of a “holy shit” realisation if you don’t know). Almost like the name might have mutated slightly under the influence of neighbouring religions.
Consider: When you’re frightened of saying your god’s name even though you think you might know it, it can help to make it sound a bit more like other peoples’ main god, after all. Your god can’t get mad because you’re not saying his name, and the heathens might start to like the comparison and convert.
Another thing to note, regarding pantheons, is that Jewish god is quoted as saying “you shall have no other gods before me”. That, depending on interpretation, could imply that the other gods are still around twiddling their thumbs and playing solo paddle-ball or something, but we mortals aren’t allowed to talk to them any more.
YHWH will pitch a hissy fit if we do.
Edits: Formatting. Typos. The usual.
Honestly, there’s very obvious evidence the Roman Pantheon had some influence, beyond the questionable name similarity theory. When the earliest Jewish written texts were being compiled in the 2nd century, Romans had been running half of Israel for like 300 years. But they were going through a bit of an “emperor-god with token nod to ancestral deities” phase at the time, so nobody else really took it seriously. A big part of the reason the Rabbis were collaborating on a written word version of Jewish law when they were pretty much oral-history-only before that is because they were actively trying not to include any sneaky Roman (or other non-divine) stuff in there.
And we knew that the Ancient Jews around Moses’ time (~1500BC) knew something about other gods that people nearby believed in, because there are references to them by name in the scriptures. Which is suspicious far beyond inference from “no other gods before me”.
And we knew that there was a temple in the ancient town ruins that was dedicated at some point to zeus and greek, but nobody was able to date it accurately. It could have been left over from the period immediately after Jesus, it was too broken to tell and evidence of Greek pantheon cults wasn’t controversial to anyone - provided it was from after Jesus and the Mishnah.
The argument that there couldn’t be Greek influence in the Mishnah because the Greek pantheon never was widely known about/believed in prior to Roman invasion was impossible to prove false for a very long time. Dating stuff that old that accurately is hard and usually impossible. Nobody had good physical evidence of Greek pantheon worship in Israel before the earliest Talmud texts, and if all those Rabbis in the Kingdom knew about Greek gods, the worship of the pantheon would have to have been very common and widespread. It was fair to expect evidence of even a single Greek pantheon household shrine, because the Greeks left them everywhere else they went.
So, the odds of finding a statue head identifiably from the same century as the oldest Jewish law standardisation attempts because of its art style, and being able to definitely date it after the rumoured Greek rulers of that city had been overthrown a few hundred years earlier … and the head using imported stone from only one famous Greek island, which proves trade lines… and the rumours of Greek rulers and in that part of the old city during what was supposed to be the Kingdom of Israel… and the statue head being the right size for a statue with the same footprint as the broken statue plinth mentioning Zeus on the Temple? And all this, when the team digging went there to find proof the Bible was true?
Damn.
The archaeologists did a fantastic job. It cannot have been easy to present evidence contradicting the history of 3 of the world’s dominant religions, using their own artifacts on their turf with their permission.
The museum also knew this statue head was not going to go down well with religious people, it was only recently they allowed it to be exhibited because of its implications. That took courage, even if I wish they had put up better barriers.
Not that the head was in great shape anyway, it’s not even the most upsetting recent artifact destruction.
Yeah, I’ll stop now.
Thank you for a really good answer. I wasn’t aware of the Talmud or most of that stuff.
Well put.
I’m always kind of glad when articles don’t focus on explaining the crazy, even if that’s the interesting part. Like you and I would be curious to know what delusions this person was suffering, but printing the story just shares and normalizes those delusions among other religious folks. “Oh, those statues depicted left handed mythological figures? Well, in that case, I agree, smash all the sinister south paws, and murder anyone who stands in your way. It’s what Jesus would have done.”
And then people never get to find out stories like The Great Flood were around long before their religion existed and attributed to the word of their God? Nah. Learning is important.
At a guess, I’d imagine it would be the no “false idol” thing.
Same, no idea what the problem could have been.