by Minimalist » Mon Oct 14, 2013 10:49 pm
I went through this some months ago with Ishtar.
The worst thing with Atwill is the timing and his fixation on Palestine. Titus Flavius Vespasianus crushed the Jewish revolt in Galilee and then swept down to systematically cut Jerusalem's routes to the north and East. The Xth legion famously destroyed the facilities at Qumran in 68. With Egypt and the coastal roads firmly under Roman control (Titus the Younger had marched the XVth legion overland from Alexandria to Ptolemais) the Romans had Jersualem isolated with Roman troops to the north and west, the Dead Sea to the East and the desert to the south backed up by Arab troops supplied by allied states they were well and truly contained.
So Vespasian watches events in Rome for some time before deciding to make a play for the throne. His armies defeat Vitellius but Rome is badly burned in the process, the empire is broke, a serious revolt breaks out in Germany and Gaul but Atwill acts as if the only thing Vespasian gives a rat's ass about is the friggin' Jews.
Titus handled the Jews in the traditional Roman method. He killed scads of them. The message was so thoroughly implanted that when trouble broke out in other Jewish communities in 115 the Jews in Judaea said "no thanks, boys...we'll sit this one out." In fact, until Hadrian provoked them beyond the breaking point in 132 they probably would have retained the lesson a lot longer. Vespasian certainly did not need to make his son Titus into a god for the Jews. They understood what Roman swords could do. That was enough of a "god."
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin