What makes Luke's Gospel unique? Caligula and the authenticated Temple archives!

Luke's Gospel is a record addressed to the High Priest in Jerusalem. It can be shown that it was the time when Gaius Caligula was the emperor. He wanted to destroy all Jews and followers of Christ. 

The book was designed to provide undeniable facts to a political and religious leader of the Jews. The high priest was a pawn of Rome, chosen by Rome to act in Rome's interests to control the Jews. Luke's book, however, provided fact after fact, known to all Jews and believers, that showed why Rome's policy was dead wrong. Furthermore, it showed why the high priest in this case should be acting against the well-known misdeeds of his priestly father and brother, also recorded in the gospels.  

The book is addressed to “Most Excellent Theophilus” chapter 1:3. He was the ethnarch (Roman designated high priest and native ruler). He  ruled as high priest from 37 to 41 CE. He is mentioned in Josephus as the son of Annas of the NT.

This title (kratiste) shows the book was written in this period of intense persecution. The evangelisation of the world had started with force. Areas like Britain outside the empire became a safe haven. 

Emperor Tiberius had recognized that Christ must be a god as he had reports and dispatches showing that the Resurrection had taken place. The Senate objected to this divine status. They said that in Roman law the Senate alone had the legal right to define who was a god. So Tiberius forbade anyone to persecute believers while he lived.

Caligula, the would-be 'god'

Then Caligula had Tiberius killed in 37 CE and became Emperor Gaius. Caligula saw the danger to the whole infrastructure of Rome. It was based on paganism. Paganism was based on the whim of men in the Senate. Its fall was inevitable. It was only a question of time, not logic. 

Romans were confronted with genuine miracles and a genuine resurrection from the dead, followed by many others, Matt 27:52.

And the tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose, and came out of their graves after his resurrection and went into the holy city, and appeared to many.  

Caligula's single-mindedness to act is described as madness. Flavius Josephus, a eye witness of events, says the emperor had a madness of hubris, an overpowering insolent pride, Antiquities 19,1. Its malevolent power 'extended through all the earth and sea.' It 'filled the empire with more evil than history has ever known.' 

Among all the earth, Caligula said, 'the Jews and their institutions are my worst enemies.' Leg, 256. Why?

Philo, the Jew of Alexandria, says Caligula was 'beside himself with vanity, not only saying but thinking he was god. He then found among the Greeks or the outside world no people fitted better than the Alexandrians to confirm this unmeasured passion craving for what was beyond mankind's nature.' (Leg 162.) 

What motivated such extremism? Why did the Alexandrian Greeks act so enthusiastically? The core of this madness was a desire for absolute autocracy. That reflected his ancestor, dictator Julius Caesar. 

Caligula wanted to set himself up as the indisputable political and religious head of the entire empire. He drank precious pearls dissolved in his drinks; he ate golden bread and golden meat. He had sex with everyone from the prostitute Pyrallis to almost every woman of rank in Rome. They were all his sex slaves. He had homosexual relations with many men. He had incest with his sisters. (Suetonius: Gaius 36.)

Note: his contemporaries considered he increasingly developed his character of inordinate pride, hubris. It was applauded by some groups and nations. It was not seen as a clinical or medical conditions as recently some writers diagnose centuries after the event to explain it away: glandular disorder, hyperthyroidism, interictal temporal lobe epilepsy, encephalitis, schizoid illness etc.

What was his motivation for all this?

Despot or Absolute Sovereign?

Caligula's dilemma may be summed up in one Greek word. That word is Despotes. It means Absolute Sovereign. It is used of a head of a household which had slaves. The slaves' lives and treatment including torture and death were totally in his hands. Roman law gave a master of slaves absolute control as objects and possessions.

The term was not used between freemen. The officers of Caesar might be addressed as lord, kurios in Greek, but not despotes. That term was reserved to the Caesar Gaius, the only one in this period. Why only one? Because the word despotes was usually confined to the supreme god of the universe, the Creator of all.

To call someone despotes implied that all other creatures were his slaves, obedient subjects, bought and owned by him. 

Augustus then Tiberius simply called themselves first citizen, princeps. They said they were chief priest of religion (Pontifex Maximus) or recalled they had been consul, the chief magistrate. That was not enough for Caligula. He insisted he be referred to as despotes, Absolute Master, by Romans, his officers and even his friends, like king Herod Agrippa.

Jews avoided the term despotes whenever they could. That would be confounding the power and dignity of Almighty God with a pagan.

There was one major exception. Jews applied the title despotes to one of their own. Inside the Temple of Jerusalem, the chief priest (not the high priest) was referred to as despotes or oikodespotes (Absolute Sovereign of the House). The Temple was a City-State and the person in control of all its thousands of guards and the high priests was the Chief Priest. He was Teacher of the high priests and Levites. All had to obey him as he spoke the oracles of the living God.

Jesus, the Anointed Chief Priest, was addressed by these titles and he  refers to himself as oikodespotes, Luke 13:25, Matt 10:25, Luke 14:21. Peter and Jude in the NT refer to him as despotes, Absolute Master (2Pet 2:1 and Jude 4). Gentile converts also in Rome referred to Jesus as Despotes (1 Clement 40). In history the larger family of Jesus and his brothers and sisters is referred to as the desposyni, blood relatives of Jesus, the despotes. 

When a Jew or Nazarene or a gentile convert referred to Jesus, he said despotes. They had been bought back, redeemed from their sins, by the Master. Sinners are bought at a price, 1Cor 6:20, 2Peter 2:1. They considered themselves willingly slaves (doulos) of all that is good. Even James the brother of Christ refers to himself as a slave of Jesus the Anointed, James 1:1.  

But the pagans in Rome and elsewhere, cheek by jowl with Jews and Nazarenes, were forced to call Caligula despotes. The implication was that he ruled by crude muscular power of his will and his depraved sexual whims the entire world, reduced to utter slavery. His sense of power was that of a tyrant, who could disregard all law and abrogated all power and decision-making to himself.    

When Caligula was claiming the title of Despotes, he was confronted with Jews and Gentiles for whom the only person deserving of the title was the resurrected Jesus who redeemed them. Caligula had redeemed basically no one. He had saved no one from sin. He had no future to offer them. He was the creator of no one. 

The confrontation of a divine Sovereign and a man wanting to be the despot on earth led to an inevitable confrontation of authority. Who would win: the emperor with his mighty legions and his brutality or Jesus of Nazareth? 

The crux of it was either servile adherence to brute force or conscientious resolve to adhere to the good and become obedient to the proven God of the Universe. 

Attack on Rome's foundations

Gaius Caligula was clear-sighted about the danger for the Roman constitution. He had his ego-centric, personal solution to prevent Rome's collapse. Absolute divine power. It was his response to a legal and theological threat posed by the resurrected Christ to the continued existence of Roman power. He foresaw its possible fall or even immediate collapse. He acted in the only way he knew.

His childhood and youth of abuse and disdain emboldened him to fear no one in accomplishing his goal of unique power. He wanted everyone to fear and venerate him, even when he put on a show. When he was 7 years, his father, the war hero Germanicus, was poisoned, to remove him from succeeding Tiberius. He learned the lesson: be strong and resolute in desires and selfish conviction. Trust no one. Use every means to control or eliminate enemies.

Germanicus

Caligula, as emperor, collected a chest of so much poison to deal with his senatorial and other enemies, that, when it was later thrown in the sea, a huge quantity of fish was killed (Suetonius, Gaius 49). He denounced the whole Senate as agents of Sejanus, the would-be overthrower of Tiberius. The plot was exposed at the last minute. Caligula was also on his death list. 

He learned introspection. He remained silent when his mother, Agrippina, was exiled, and when his elder brothers disappeared.  Who could he trust but himself? His character was revealed as emperor. He exercised brutality, forcing many of Rome's elites to fight as gladiators, and relishing the bloodshed. He would stop at nothing.  

From whence could he assure his power? What could he do to save his Rome against the rising tide of Jews and non-Jews believing in Christ, a god totally excluded from pagan pantheism? It was undermining the pagan system on which the whole Roman constitutional structure and authority was built. 

The logic was undeniable. Educated people and even common people, as Tertullian later records, began to question and then mock the pagan gods. These Roman 'gods' had to have the approval of the Senate to be 'official'. And then they could be worshipped. It was an ancient legal privilege that could override even an emperor's wish, they told Tiberius, who favored Christ. 

Poor gods! They had to pray to the Senate to get approval! 

The followers of Christ and his resurrection had their own independent proof. The followers were everywhere and where themselves performing miracles of healing and even raising the dead to life. So say the Roman public records and petitions to the later emperors. 

They were unstoppable ... or were they? Caligula spent all his energy to stop them, with his plan. 

Julius Caesar wanted to be emperor-dictator and simultaneously high priest (Pontifex Maximus) of the pagan gods. He fused the two previously separate offices of State. 

Caligula went further; he wanted to be god, not just a priest of god, an absolute theocrat of the world, free of all restraint, custom and law. He set up his own mystery cult of worship, hymns, prayers and subservience. He impersonated the gods. At night it culminated in the veneration and adoration of the emperor-god. His child, he declared, putting her on the lap of the idol Jupiter, was the incarnate offspring of both the god Gaius and the god Jupiter. 

He acted like a god of the legends. He restrained himself from no sexual desire; no act of sadism was beyond his command; all despoiling of wealth, all denigration of rich and helpless, all desecration of the beautiful,  all humiliation of persons provoking jealousy were at the command of his hand.  

The Roman Senate was reluctant to declare him a god with godlike power despite his dramatic impersonations talking as a brother to god-idols in the pagan temples. 

The Senate saw the danger again. Assent would wipe out their power of nominating gods forever, at least while the obviously mortal Gaius lived. As absolute god, only Gaius's voice and actions would matter for all the inhabitants of the world.  The senators would become an absolute irrelevance. What would happen when he died? Would it be possible to regain their authority they had abdicated? How would they ever say again that their assent mattered when it came to defining the gods? Without Senate-defined gods how would the Roman Empire survive?

Global Gamble

How could Caligula become the god of the Empire if the Senate refused to recognize him as such? He first set about bringing the Senate to heel. He humiliated them. He brought them to their lowest political ebb, openly sleeping with their wives and deriding them in public. But still they did not agree to this final step. That would have been an act of suicide.

How could Caligula save the Empire if the Senate did not comply? 

He had to act in two directions: 

• make everyone accept him as a god and 
• secondly destroy the Jews and Nazarenes.

He wanted to set up a gigantic statue of himself as Jupiter at first in Rome and then inside the Jerusalem Temple. The latter would have led to a full-scale Jewish revolt. That would be good grounds for the destruction of the population by his legions.

This was a monumental gamble. It would be like setting off a world war as the Jews had allies and lived throughout the Roman Empire, in every town and country. Josephus describes in detail the consternation of the population when this lethal decision was announced. Much of the population felt that they had no real means of defense. Any protest would be met with slaughter. 

The future of pagan Rome seemingly rested on one man who had an impossible puzzle to solve, how to save the foundations of empire. How can Rome stay pagan? How can Rome kill off the anti-pagan opposition?

The Greek Egyptian Slave

We know of one person who had Caligula's ear from morning to night.  That was Helicon, formerly an Egyptian slave, given to Tiberius. 

He became Caligula's chamberlain. These eastern slaves were much treasured in Rome for their corruption, their craftiness, and their knowledge of mysteries and magic arts. Helicon had received a golden education, a skilful use of language and expertise in word play. He knew how to make himself indispensable and welcome. 

He never left his side.

When Caligula awoke, who was there? Helicon.

When he went to the baths, who was there? Helicon.

When he went for  walk, who accompanied him? Helicon.

At the gymnasium, Helicon was his assistant. 

He was always there to amuse, to show off his inventive mind.

In Alexandria of Hellenistic Egypt, Helicon had drunk deeply from the well of anti-semitism. He knew how to revile them, turn their customs to ribaldry, and mock their religious fanaticism. This interaction was also the occasion to flatter Caligula's obsession with his own divinity.

Philo the Jew calls Helicon a scorpion. He was aided in this theocratic flattery by two other Alexandrians of the same ilk.

How would Caligula solve his dilemma of becoming fully a god, if the Senate still refused? 

Helicon had the solution. No people knew more about divinities and deification than the Egyptian priests. They were fully indoctrinated in the process. They held the mysteries.

All that was required was for the emperor to go there to their sacred temples, and the priests would perform the act.

Caligula prepared for his voyage to Alexandria in his fleet. Once fully recognized as divine, he would undertake the journey on to Jerusalem. There he would see his giant likeness in the Temple's Holy of Holies with the words:

To Gaius, the new Jupiter, god manifest (epiphanes).  

The year was 41 CE. The ground for this great sanctification had already been prepared in the years previously. (Philo Leg 250)

Egyptian deaths

Egypt had a large colony of Jews. It was also one of the first areas that had a large group of believers in Christ in the early years after the Resurrection. 

In 38 CE, Flaccus, Rome's prefect in Egypt, ordered that Jews make statues of Gaius to be set up in all synagogues, Antiq 18.8.1 (258). That caused a riot. The extensive Jewish and Nazarene population of Alexandria were deprived of their citizenship that they held since Alexander the Great. They became Untermensch. Property was pillaged and ransacked. Men were slaughtered in the streets, some torn limb from limb, some burned. A famine was induced so that their Jewish families perished. 

Flaccus, whom Caligula disliked, had been appointed under Tiberius, five years earlier, possibly under the influence of Sejanus an arch-antisemite. Tiberius being dead, Flaccus used oily flattery and acts he thought would anticipate Caligula's own plans. He may have thought this attack on Jews, who he knew to be opponents of Caligula's theocratic ambitions, would curry him favor. 

Flaccus turned out to be one of the greatest persecutors of the Jews including the believers in Christ. Mark is considered the evangelist to the Alexandrian Jews. Philo also writes about the Jewish Therapeutae, those who could heal, much like the early believers' miracles elsewhere. Philo does not call them 'Christians' for the simple reason that this term had not yet been invented. 

It would not take Flaccus much reflection to realise such people were enemies of Caesar Gaius.

Flaccus Avillius succeeded Sejanus in his hatred of and hostile designs against the Jewish nation. Philo: Flaccus 1.

It was eventually more than persecution.

He had determined to destroy {the Jews} utterly in his desire for glory. Flaccus 116.

But  Emperor Caligula liked neither the worshippers of the true God, nor Flaccus. He was removed and died in disgrace.

As for the idolatry, Caligula ordered his statue and image to fill every synagogue, everywhere in the Empire. It was intolerable to Jews to have an idol there in their own sacred buildings where idolatry was utterly forbidden. This decree was enforced with deadly strength. Jews everywhere were humiliated and scorned. It was that or death.

A delegation of Alexandrian Jews led by Philo went to Rome. They soon realized that nothing would stop Caligula. He mocked them about not eating pork. They saw he was determined to destroy all Judaism and Christianity. Caligula asked Philo and his delegation:

Are you the god-haters who do not believe me to be a god, a god acknowledged among all other nations but not to named by you? Leg 353. 

I have got the nature of a god. Leg 367. 

Philo concluded: 'He has set himself against God.' 

He challenged the very existence and right for any trace of the Creator God to remain in his all-pagan world.

Caligula ordered that the huge, 40 foot (12 meter) statue of Zeus, the father of the gods, built by Phidas around 400 BCE at Olympia in Greece, be moved to Rome.  Caligula's face would be substituted so all could see him as the god of gods. 

That extraordinary action would involve opposition from worshippers of Zeus/ Jupiter around Greece and the empire. Many called the awe-inspiring idol 'god' and worshipped it. They stood in fear of their god of gods, Zeus, their god of lightning bolts. It inspired them to war and valor. 

When Caesar's workmen came, some said the god laughed. Some warned that it prophesied the deadly fate of anyone who tried to move it. Then Caligula's ship to bring the idol to Rome was destroyed by thunderbolts.  Meanwhile Caligula looted all Greece of its rich and ancient treasures saying they belonged with him as a god. (Dio LIX, 28.)

He was told this giant idol could not be moved without destroying it. 

Violating the Sanctuary

As for Israel, he then ordered Petronius, his Viceroy and powerful commander in the provinces of the East to build a similar statue of himself. With massive military force, and an exterminatory war against Jews if necessary, he must set up this image of Caligula as god in the Temple in Jerusalem.

This was an extraordinary act of desperation and Roman anarchy. 

The Temple in Jerusalem was not under Roman law. It was an autonomous City-State. It had thousands of its own armed guards. Its legal status was so defined by Julius Caesar himself when he made a treaty with the Maccabees. They had saved him from defeat in the civil war against Pompey and Crassus, both profaners of the Temple. It was perhaps the only morsel of territory, and only some 200 meters square, within the confines of the Roman Empire where Roman law and military might did not apply.

The Temple complex was built like a four-square fortress rising steeply from the Kidron valley ravine. No gentile was ever allowed to enter into its walls. The holy House had further multiple layers of protection. Those who could prove by genealogy that they were Israelites and had purified themselves ritually were allowed inside the outer Court of Israel. No one else, whatever their status. Priests who could prove that their ancestors held hereditary rights to perform specific Temple duties were allowed into the Court of Priests. Any Israelite who was not a priest who ventured there was liable to be put to death. 

At the center of the Court of Priests lay the Holy Temple itself. This was a long room divided into two sections. The first was called the Holy Place. Only specially chosen priests were allowed in there for the rituals. Further inside, another room was separated off by a thick curtain. This was the Holy of Holies. Only the High priest was allowed to enter and then only on one day of the year: the Day of Atonement.  

All around these courts, affixed every few meters to the chest-high barriers, were multilingual warning notices, 90 by 60 cm. In red letters they alerted any unauthorized person who dared entered into a court where he was not permitted that he would be responsible for his own death. 

Because of this holiness, the Temple was cherished and protected by the huge Jewish and Israelite Diaspora as well as all the inhabitants of the Land. The Maccabees had fought many bloody battles to free it from gentiles like the Syrian dictator, Antiochus Epiphanes. They purified it, rebuilt and rededicated it. The Israelites intended to keep it holy.

King Herod himself was not allowed to enter the Temple, even the outer court. He was not Jewish. When Roman legions were stationed at their Fort Antonia just a few hundred meters away, they were never allowed into the Temple. In 70 CE, when Roman legions under Titus surrounded the Temple, Titus called upon the besieged Jews to surrender. He said that in all the years of Roman control, Romans had never violated the Decree of Caesar and the laws of Rome. They had always allowed the high priests to govern. They had authority to forbid by force strangers and foreigners from entering. Even Roman citizens would be killed for violation of the rule. Wars 6.2.4 (124).

But Caligula some three decades earlier, in his desperate attempt to assert his planetary godhead, was determined to abolish this Roman law. He made himself  out to be greater than Julius Caesar. Caligula was prepared to break all Roman laws and customs when he insisted that an idol of himself as Jupiter be displayed inside the Temple. 

For the Jews from the time of the restitution of the Temple to its destruction in 70CE, the sanctity of the House was something to be be defended with the very life and breath of the nation. 

The sole Roman emperor who ruthlessly planned and attempted to violate it was Caligula. He must have concluded that the action was essential to his own existence and that of the Empire.

He wished to turn the Temple of God to his own temple as god. It would conform as all the synagogues in the empire and display his image. He would rule the world from Jerusalem. The richest building in the world would would be his own capital. There was no construction in Rome or the empire that was comparable with it. Titus was later to confess:

This holy building is the most beautiful structure ever built by the hand of man.  

                                                                                (Jesus, James, Joseph, p viii.)

Caligula's motive was not one of mere avarice. His long-term strategy was to defile it, and its God, who opposed the gods of the pantheon. The Jerusalem God and his castle, a furlong square, threatened the destruction of his plan for worldwide divine domination. Thus a square section of land, 185 meters by 185meters, perched above a perilous ravine was the focus of attention of the Emperor who saw it as the sole threat to his theocratic mastery. 

Philo of Alexandria, who around 39 CE led the Jewish delegation of Alexandria to speak to Caligula in Rome, was aghast that, after defiling all synagogues, only one building was left.

The Temple in the Holy City, which alone was left untouched being judged to have rights of sanctuary, he was proceeding to convert and transmogrify into a temple of his own to bear the name of Gaius, the new Zeus. 

Lack of law was leading the world into dark evil.

Do you deem God worthy of nothing in our world here below, no country, no city, but even this tiny area hallowed for Him and sanctified by oracles an divine messages you propose to take away, so that in the circumference of the great earth no trace or reminder should be left of the reverence and honour due to the truly existing veritable God? ... Don't you know that you are opening the springs of a flood of evil, in these strange and monstrous actions which it is unlawful either to do or conceive? (Philo, Leg 347.) 

 

Another witness, Flavius Josephus says Caligula's eventual death saved his country and nation from extermination and genocide:

...our own nation was brought to the very verge of ruin, and would have been destroyed but for his sudden death. .. the story provides good evidence of God's power. Antiq 19,1, 1, (16).

Motivation

The logical conclusion is that Caligula could have ruled his empire by terror, bloodshed and with extreme brutality. That rule by fear had succeeded in his early years. That terror did not involve defiling the Temple. But it is obvious that far more than rule by terror motivated Caligula. He did not want just power, utter obedience and mindless subservience. 

He was on a mission: to destroy Christianity and Judaism. Proof? There was no reason to insist on the desecration of the Temple if all that Caligula wanted was to be an emperor who was feared and obeyed. God was his target.

His plan to desecrate the Temple with the Abomination of Jupiter was to assert his divinity. He had to prove that he was greater than Christ and specifically the prophecy of Christ. In fact he wanted to prove he was greater than God Almighty. He was more than a ruler. He was an ideologue with the aim of destroying the God of the Bible and facts about Christ.

He failed.

What he actually proved was that God Almighty of the Bible rules the universe and this planet Earth. 

The Abomination

In the century after Caligula, the writer Pausanias described the great idol of Zeus at Olympia at Elis.

The god sits on a throne, and he is made of gold and ivory. On his head lies a garland which is a copy of olive shoots. In his right hand he carries a Victory, which, like the statue, is of ivory and gold; she wears a ribbon and—on her head—a garland. In the left hand of the god is a scepter, ornamented with every kind of metal, and the bird sitting on the scepter is the eagle. The sandals also of the god are of gold, as is likewise his robe. On the robe are embroidered figures of animals and the flowers of the lily. 

The position and monstrous-size throne made the idol even more impressive to the pagan worshippers who entered. It included scenes of violence and rape that pagans took as a natural attributes of gods.

The throne is adorned with gold and with jewels, to say nothing of ebony and ivory. Upon it are painted figures and wrought images. There are four Victories, represented as dancing women, one at each foot of the throne, and two others at the base of each foot. On each of the two front feet are set Theban children ravished by sphinxes, while under the sphinxes Apollo and Artemis are shooting down the children of Niobe.

So was this the end of his fanatical venture? Not in the least. Caligula doubled down everywhere, provoking even more violence and raising the stakes to say in effect, 'Accept me as God or accept the destruction of the known world'.

World War

His policy affected not only the Jews in Israel, nor only the millions of Jews scattered throughout the Roman Empire, but much more.  Petronius, Rome's commander in the eastern provinces of Israel and Syria, knew that greater dangers would be ignited. 

Parthia was a huge empire to the east that had defeated Rome and decimated its legions many times previously. Moreover Parthia was favourable to the Jews and the Temple because many Jews and Israelites lived there and had transferred vast amounts of wealth to rebuild the Temple.

Parthian Jews every year dispatched envoys ... conveying to the Temple a great quantity of gold and silver amassed from the first fruits. (Philo Leg 216)

Petronius divided his armies into two sections. One was to deal with the Jews and their expected national revolt. The other half would defend the frontier with Parthia. In Egypt the populous Jewish colony of Alexandria was already defending itself, as best it could, against this rabid antisemitic persecution. 

In the West, Britain was showing its support against the tyrant. In 39 CE Caligula sent his legions there against the Kelts and Germans. His armies massed on the Channel coast. He made a show of preparing an invasion against Britain, a stronghold of early Christianity and resistance to Roman paganism. (Christianity and Celtic Druidism that focused on ultimate truth were the only religions banned in the Roman Empire.) 

The leader of the small tribe of the Canninefates at the mouth of the Rhine derided Caligula's military arrogance at even thinking of invasion. Why was Britain so important to him? He wasn't known as a great, battle-hardened war leader.

Yet now, due to him alone, the civilized world was about to explode into war and violence everywhere. Why? It was all based on Caligula's decision to deify himself and erect statues of himself as almighty god of the world. 

Why would Caligula do this? Why cause world war on all fronts? For what advantage? 

The prophecy of Christ

Caligula wanted to show he was greater than Christ who prophesied in 30 CE that he would destroy an abomination of desolation if it was put in the Temple, Matt 24:15. Caligula wanted to be greater and attempted to prove the prophecy wrong.

When you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, ... the let those in Judea flee to the mountains... As the lightning comes out of the east, and shines as far as the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Then the legions suddenly left Britain alone. The conquest was off. Why? The public secretly mocked him for this decision to reverse his invasion plans. Did Caligula realise it was more strategic to attack Israel and crush the anti-pagans at their source in Jerusalem? He would need all his troops there rather than set off wars in both east and west. 

He planned to be declared a god in Egypt according to ancient rites. Then he would rule as god of all the world from Jerusalem. There his goal was genocidal to all who would not believe him and deicidal of the Sovereign Authority of the Temple.

But as Philo wrote:

It is easier for God to change into a man than for a man to become God. Leg118.

Expedition

Caligula made great preparations for this event. He would not take his fleet of ships directly to Egypt. Only the grain cargo ships did that. He would make a procession around the coast of the Mediterranean and be acclaimed in each port and feted as divine. 

For Egypt he had prepared in secret a huge idol of himself as Jupiter. This would be taken with him.

Nothing seemed able to stop his plans. 

But then a dagger did. He was assassinated in 41 just before he could travel there. 

Training a high priest

Some commentators speculate that Theophilus was some unknown Christian convert. Not so. The Bible shows he was high priest and trained by a Temple Teacher to follow the rituals with exactness and purity. Luke does not say anywhere that he was a Christian. But he does say that he had this training.

Luke uses a word that shows Theophilus had priestly training: catechetized, 1:4. 

A high priest had to maintain a difficult balance between the orders of Rome, the instructions of Caligula's friend and deputy King Agrippa, and the survival of the Jewish people. He learned his metier by repetition under a Teacher.

The expert teacher had to be sure he managed the operations in the Temple in a way that conformed to the precise instruction of the Torah and the Hebrew Scriptures. Disobedience to God would endanger the whole people. 

In this fight with a would-be Jupiter, attention to detailed obedience was essential. 

Who was Theophilus?

What happened when Annas and Caiaphas were sacked by the Romans or retired as priests or died? The Romans wanted a high priest who acted as ruler of the people for them who conformed to Roman policy and that included not demolishing the pantheon by confirming the divinity of Christ.

It is not sure that Caiaphas was of real priestly stock. Caiaphas is always mentioned in conjunction with Annas who was the retired high priest. He was very rich and had married the daughter of Annas. In 30 CE he was acting as a substitute for Annas whom Romans had deposed in 15 CE. 

After Annas was sacked in 15 CE, his son, Eleazar, lasted only a year as high priest. The high priesthood was hereditary according to Jewish law, even though Annas might not have been the most legitimate office holder. The Romans wanted someone who was subservient. The next high priest was equally short in office before Caiaphas, known more as businessman than priest, temporarily re-established the Annas family line. His background is obscure but he had good relations with the Romans. Whatever the evidence he tried to deny that Jesus the Christ rose from the dead and was the true priest. What is known is that his father-in-law, Annas, expected him to produce a male child that would become priest by virtue of Annas's bloodline. There is no indication that Caiaphas produced a male child. He was deposed under Tiberius in early 37, around the time Pilate was recalled for trial. Caiaphas's policy of denial failed. 

So what would happen to the high priesthood? The family held on to the various offices of high priests. It would fall back to the other sons of Annas, who seem to have been much younger. They were now adults.

The first son, Jonathan, was nominated high priest. This hothead who tried to deny Christ lasted for only a few weeks in early 37 CE. The outcry of the public was so strong he had to be removed. Theophilus, perhaps ill- prepared for the post but clearly less of an anti-Christian ideologue was put into the office of high priest. 

Thus Luke stresses that Theophilus had to be trained to be acceptable to the public who knew the resurrection was a fact. He had to be sure of the facts of the Messiah, if he were to stand up against Roman propaganda and attack. Who was his teacher? James the brother of Jesus had taken over the post during his work in Galilee. He stayed in the Temple until his death in the 60s. He was of the special lineage of chief priest, a royal line of teachers, stemming from David and his son Nathan. James may have been one of the teachers or Theophilus, who was installed as high priest by Roman power.

Luke reminds Theophilus of the details of the miraculous birth of Jesus to the aged Mariam, a daughter of Aaron, the truest line. He produces the priest-list that shows Jesus taking office 'as he was beginning to be about thirty' -- the official age to become Chief Priest according to Hebrew reckoning. He lists the miracles. He describes the Council of 70 Elders that Jesus set up, Luke 10. And he provides proof of the resurrection according to Hebrew records and detailed Roman legal procedures. He finishes with the witness of believers in the Temple, giving absolute proof of the events.  

Luke writes to Theophilus as if he were a State librarian accepting a valuable artefact. The Temple held the archives of the nation. So at least we know that high priest Theophilus did not refuse to admit authenticated, witnessed records, either during the reign of Gaius Caligula or later when it came to the books of Acts of the Apostles.  Theophilus may therefore have had and retained an office of chief archivist in the Temple both before and after his years as high priest.

The later Theophilus 

Proof that this Theophilus was the high priest is shown when Luke wrote Acts. There Theophilus is not called Most Excellent (kratiste). Why? Because he was no longer high priest in the 60s.

Calling someone by such a title would be considered illegal, even treasonous, to the political leader and high priest in office. He only could carry this honorific title. Paul addresses the Roman governors by this title kratiste in Acts. That shows it was a political form of address of the highest order. The ethnarch of the Jews held such an office but with the Roman conquest was subservient to Rome. But he still retained the political title -- while in office.

Luke's Gospel carried the facts that everyone knew to be true. Truth was victorious. There were many records, many eye-witnesses, as well as Luke himself, who was acquainted with all the facts from the beginning, Luke 1:1-. Their belief and conviction in them was tried in the fire of utmost danger when the whole nation was on the verge of Caligula's genocide.

This word kratiste is living proof that Luke’s Gospel was written as an authentic record, sent to the high priest personally, to be kept in the Temple archives as proof of events. 

As required by Hebrew law, the gospel is authenticated by multiple honest witnesses. It is a record of the history of Israel, validated by Jews, the high priest, imperial Roman authorities and undeniable events of history such as Caligula’s planned extermination of the Jews. It explains the otherwise unexplainable behavior and extremely costly strategy of Caligula. 

Caligula's great gamble would make no sense UNLESS he was scared about losing his throne and empire because of the prophesied Return of Christ, recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke: to destroy the Abomination of Desolation. Luke wrote to Theophilus the words of Christ:

Settle therefore in your hearts not before what you shall answer: for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries will not be able to gainsay, nor resist. You shall be betrayed and hated of all men ... but a hair of your head shall not perish. Luke 21:14ff. 

Nazarenes in the Temple

In the first seven years after his father, Annas, who had been a principal agent in having Christ crucified, the priesthood was unable to persecute the Nazarenes. In this period, Tiberius decreed that they should not be killed.

We know from Luke that the disciples were continuously in the Temple.  So under the high priesthood of Theophilus they were not banned. 

They were continually in the Temple, praising God. ch24:53.

Was Theophilus popular with the people of Israel? No. We have good evidence that he did not stand firm with the Nazarenes against the theocratic attack of Gaius. 

But first what happened to Caligula? Did he reach Egypt?

Parthian signals

Gaius was anxious to reach Egypt as soon as possible. This can be seen from the urgency of his orders to Petronius his Commander in Syria to complete the giant idol of himself and erect it in the Temple, regardless of the cost in lives and the danger of war with Parthia and other countries.

Were events in Parthia signalling success or danger? Caligula had benefited from the Parthian Peace process of Tiberius until his death in 37 CE. A mutually beneficial truce had been forged with Artabanus II but then a war over the buffer State of Armenia took place. Decades of dispute followed. 

Artabanus seized the country when Artaxias died, the nominee of Germanicus, Gaius's father. Then Artabanus was forced to concede it as the Roman general Vitellius marched towards the Euphrates. Rome sowed discord and revolt among the cities and tribal adversaries of Artabanus and tried to replace him by a Roman puppet, Tiridates. Artabanus fled to the court of King Izates at Adiabene, who together with his mother Queen Helena had converted to Judaism. Artabanus, however, fought back and regained his throne.

Then in the autumn of 40, events seem to favor Gaius, the Roman 'god'. The Parthian emperor Artabanus was again deposed, this time by the Megistanes, bicameral body of the Assembly and Senate of Magi and Wise Men. Who would rule? Rivalry between his sons presaged a civil war. Seleucia and other cities wanted independence. 

Was this the divine moment to act?

Caligula took major risks to achieve a tight timetable. What was the deadline? Why was he in such a hurry at the start of year 41? Was it to coincide with an Egyptian festival of deification? Was his Temple glorification planned for a Jewish festival like Passover, the time when Jesus died and rose again?

To fit in with a timetable where he would present himself in Jerusalem in the Spring after visiting Egypt would mean setting out from Rome months before. He planned a glorious itinerary where at every step, every port, the crowds and authorities would worship him with pomp.

The Rome-built idol was ready in January. But to travel directly across to Egypt in winter was not only dangerous but foolish. Ships were often lost in storms. So Caligula planned to take his fleet around the coast of the Mediterranean. 

Plans were set to leave on 25 January. Then Caligula was slain by his guards. So ended the life of the would-be God of the World. 

Why I am discontented with Robert Kuhn's 'Closer to Truth'

The Mission of getting Closer to Truth

https://www.closertotruth.com

I can't say that I have listened to all Robert Kuhn's series in his format called Closer To Truth. There is a vast library now of 3500 videos of the world's greatest thinkers. Over the years I dipped into quite a few. Overall Robert Kuhn has done a magnificent job in covering such a range of views and expertise that is rarely found with such sympathetic yet probing integrity. His interviews cover physicists, biologists, scientists, philosophers, theologians, historians and many scientific disciplines of all hues.

I found them all interesting in that they were interviews with specialists and experts but I came away dissatisfied with almost all of them.

Why? 

True and whole Science

I found that they lacked a coherent scientific structure. Academic disciplines are becoming more and more separated into silos and few experts can have the vision of an overview from the heavens to the deep analysis of the infinitesimal detail. Silo-hopping results in lack of overall cohesion. Then there were failings of internal logic, which is natural. As humans we are all reluctant to yield our own prejudice for pure fact and logic. This is especially the case when it comes to theological foundations of knowledge. Materialistic liberalism infuses much modern thought, even (or especially!) among theologians. Iron needs to sharpen iron, but the right sort of iron is needed to make a sharp blade to bring overall satisfaction. Some borrow extradisciplinary iron that is already rusty.

Theology creates the big divide in academia, where the predominant philosophy disdains it. Knowledge of God requires logically obedience to God as our Creator. Or at least reverence and awe. Skeptics disparage moral laws. Or to put it another way, those who refuse the Ten Commandments call themselves atheists or excuse themselves with a religious label. What is their conscientious objection? 

True science requires a pure conscience. A persistent, pure conscience can also break empires. The conscience of Judeo-Christian believers in DDR, Hungary, Poland and Russia brought the downfall of the atheistic USSR. It showed Marxism was unscientific. The Politburo was biased. It banned free discussion of the spiritual, or non-materialism. Education in Museums of Atheism did not work.

Today, however, the West is still suffering from USSR's ideological attacks and materialism that emptied churches and more. Soviet propaganda undermining society structures was long-lasting. Now the more subtle Chinese atheism and autocracy produces thousands of choking weeds. But even media and internet censorship in USA will not stop the quest for truth. There may be more professing Christians in China than in Europe.             

Origin of modern Science

The scientific method derives from classical reform theology. In our modern era, the Hon Robert Boyle in the 17th century and later the Royal Society laid down personal rules that a searcher for truth must make sure that his conscience is absolutely clear of prejudice, and preconceptions. Experiments must be totally impartial. Facts and logic should provide the answers. The early scientists learned logic from the Bible -- for example debunking apparent contradictions by testing multiple hypotheses. They also compared the standard Roman Catholic belief and myths with historic documents now published and translated into the common languages for the first time. The vast collection of papal claims made over a millennium were exposed as frauds. 

Today our knowledge is increased in many areas. (In some other areas it has declined, such as the motor motive of science that there is one truth and fraud should be exposed and rejected.) The ideology of the popes is replaced by a Darwinistic / neo-Marxist premise (both failed theories). That results in false conclusions that everything evolved or economics dictates all human history and knowledge.

It is not progress to turn all phenomena into mindless, purposeless materialism. Such nonsense permeates the whole framework of present day thought. It represents the greatest danger to civilization -- materialism, only matter is important, not the spiritual world. Did electrons evolve to create Dark Energy, did amoebas grow to become elephants? Was it a triumph of workers over capitalists? Class warfare failed, so atheistic Marxists turn to race wars as the new Dialectical materialism.

Use your brain!

All civilizations knew that human mind is different from rocks and chemicals and far superior in its potential to the animal brain. The whale does not do better at mathematics or astronomy because its brain is seven or eight times bigger than man's 1300 gms. Or an elephant brain with 256 billion neurons, three times more than a human.

On the other hand some birds can circumnavigate the whole planet and find their way home. The aptly named godwit, shaped like a high tech fighter aircraft, travels from Alaska to New Zealand in one go, and later flies back across oceans. No stops for food.

Some humans get lost in their own city. Could you manage two non-stop trips totalling 29,000 kms?

The godwit reduces the size of its internal organs to make space for fuel. Its brain size? The whole bird weighs about 300 gms -- and its brain must be just a couple of grams. Butterflies also travel across oceans and back.   

 

Big Picture

The search for truth must take all new facts and conclusions into account.

What new knowledge needs to be integrated?

The great scientists of its modern foundation period knew man was a spiritual being. They applied this knowledge. Newton and William Whiston, his successor as Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, John Wilkins, cryptologist, philosopher, Anglican bishop and first Secretary of the Royal Society, John Ray the pioneering biologist, and many others were fervent Christians. Science boomed because they were scientists in mind and spirit. Ray like Paley described how each creature was finely constructed for its own good purpose. The Bible animated all their researches. The same can be said for the next generations, such as Faraday and Maxwell who electrified our present society. Their electromagnetic wave theory is based on 'spiritual fields'. The designs of God indicate his purpose and plan but also act as a spearhead to new discoveries.

Your God is too small

No-God atheists and small-minded ministers need to stretch their minds to the reality of Creation and obviously the Creator. 

We know now that the Universe is far more magnificent and vast than any could have imagined. It stretches 14 or 15 billion light years to the visible rim. Who knows what lies beyond it?  The maximum speed of 74 km/second for a rocket was achieved by the Juno probe to Jupiter using the slingshot of gravitational assist. It would take such a probe 15 billion x 300,000 x 31.56 million seconds divided by 74 -- 6 trillion years -- to reach the rim of the universe and peak into what is beyond our visible sighting of stars. I can't wait that long.

The voyage is likely to be lonely. Even though the universe is dotted with stars and many may have planets, the Earth is the only known planet in our solar system and beyond where we know there is life such as bacteria. But we see good and negative spiritual forces in battle all day long. 

As we look deeper we find that the Earth has not only an extraordinary abundance of life but it is in forms that earlier man had could not imagine. Life exists in the deepest oceans and in the upper atmosphere. The simplest of cells, seen through microscopes, is as well organized as a massive city. But a cell has powers that go far beyond it. It can search for chemical foodstock. It can reproduce. It can make other cities. 

Each of the creatures on earth can tell us a lesson about how to live, care for young or not, or avoid our predatory enemies. They are education. We have a book of wisdom written in Nature. Modern technologies look to Nature's original design to find new designs and inspirations. 

Diseases caused by man's foolishness find their therapeutic solutions in Nature. The Nobel-prize-winning therapeutic Ivermectin, a powerful world-changing corrective and preventative to viruses (including in practice corona viruses), was found in the soil of a golf course in Japan by Satoshi Omura. It is one of the most tested, effective and cheapest of drugs. Then 'science' changed. Today the 'science' of its use may be distorted by profits of Big Pharma or a globalist agenda of those like WHO. 

A detailed View

Let's go smaller. Small, small fingers are required.

Last century's scientists started off by believing that the fundamental building blocks of our world, whether atoms or then atomic particles, would be simple systems. (atom= Greek indivisible) We could then work out the Lego construction of the universe.

The truth turned out to be far more complex, as is all nature. A whole zoo of particles and anti-particles, quarks, neutrinos, photons and strange and beautiful beasts act both as waves and particles. But they all work well and the average citizen does not have to look 'under the hood' to see how the material world works. Complexity and functionality is everywhere in harmony.

The universe is founded in wisdom down to the smallest detail we can figure out.

A pair of the smallest particles retain an intimate interconnection. When a human observes and measures one, the other, perhaps now at the far reaches of a galaxy, 'knows' and reacts faster than light travels. Man's decision-making affects the physical characteristics of the universe in ways we are only beginning to understand. Man operates on a spiritual plane. The human mind acts beyond the material physics.

From the least particle to the entire spread of the universe each brings a lesson to Mankind. The Great Creator God will not fit into man's box of experiences. From the stuff a billionth of a centimeter to that billions of light years, all give a lesson: if we wish we can grow in knowledge, wisdom and maturity. But silo academics must abandon 'Greek' thinking about atoms, universal measures of time and space to come to truth.

Truth, then what?

The crux of my remarks here would be to pose the question: where does one start?

Information, it has now been shown to the satisfaction of astrophysicists, can survive a Black Hole collision. Information existed before the beginning of the Universe 14 or so billion years ago. An impartial look at the existence of humankind and human observation of nature shows that it involves not only information but knowledge (from whence we deduce our sciences) and wisdom -- which is necessary for human maturity, the building of virtuous character.

Therefore all scientific analysis must start with the Wisdom Giver. Even the skeptics think they are wise. Usually groups of humans become unwise.

The early scientists were Jews or Christians but they shunned organised religion. Newton's researches led him to reject the pagan trinity. Whiston was expelled from Cambridge because of 'heresy'! Others adhered to obscure congregations of believers or were known as non-conformists and unitarians like many of America's founding fathers. They did not conform to crowd psychology. They rejected the church that absorbed paganism. They searched for truth and paid the price for non-conformity to errors. That showed that their pure conscience was fundamental to science and faith in God. Which scientist today is persecuted? Which scientist is not influenced by peer pressure or by grants from industry or government? Which real scientists are able to teach or debate in group-think universities?

After analyzing the proofs of God and how the atheistic skeptic refused them, Whiston concluded that biblical prophecy was paramount. He foretold in the 1700s, based on the Bible, that Jews would rebuild their homeland in Israel. A Temple would be built. The first happened in 1948, despite centuries of skeptics saying it was impossible. The second is yet to come. 

Diamond quality

Why did I feel unsatisfied with Closer to Truth? Getting close to truth is a start. Truth merely excludes the false. Wisdom is better than knowledge; knowledge is better than information, information is better than data. A diamond is more valuable than raw carbon. 

I was taught that Wisdom is the principle thing. Above all seek wisdom. Awe of the Eternal is the beginning of wisdom. 

 

 

Why did John the Baptist wear a black belt and camel hair garment?

John the Baptist and the Black Belt business

John the Baptist,
by Brueghel the Elder

Among the score of surviving manuscripts in Hebrew of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3, all manuscripts are unanimous about describing John the Baptist.
He wore a black belt.
Thanks to the tireless work of Nehemia Gordon and his team, some 21 Hebrew manuscripts have been found and checked in Museums like the British Museum, Israel and even in the recesses at the Vatican. Those derived from the Hebrew Matthew manuscript of Shem-Tov, known as 'the Ancient', a fourteenth century Jewish polemicist, repeat one word:

Black.
The Greek and the Latin Vulgate do not say that. Nor do other translations. The Greek Matthew and the KJV say that John wore a coat of camel hair and was girded with a leather belt. It says nothing of the color.
So why are the Hebrew versions so adamant on the color being black?
History records that Matthew wrote his gospel first in Hebrew. What we have today are a variety of documents, but none of them are originals from the first century. They are either copies of copies etc of the originals with variations and mistakes or some may be translations from the Greek for use in the grand and dangerous debates between Jews and Roman Catholics. In these debates the Jews had to maintain a position without contradicting Catholic doctrine. A difficult and sometimes lethal game of words.

But whoever wrote these multiple documents, whether free or persecuted, careful or not, they all wrote a word that is not found in Greek: black.

What is the significance of the black belt? Black belt has a special connotation today: martial arts. Obviously this black belt does not relate to Judo. What about Judah? Hebrew descriptions must have something to do with Jews!  Why do all the Jewish scribes writing over several centuries and in different countries and cultures, emphasise black? How could it be coordinated so widely and accurately?
But does it really even relate to Jews? Is there a deeper, traumatic story about Israel that no one could forget? Why was the 'black' belt not relevant for Gentile/ Greek Christians who had the Greek NT?

Rabbi John the Baptist
John is called a Rabbi in the Greek NT, John 3:26. This has nothing to do with a modern Jewish synagogue rabbi – the NT and other writings use another term for the ruler of the synagogue, ‘archon’. ‘Rabbi’ in the first century meant a member of the Council of the Temple, or perhaps the Great Council (sanhedrin). It was most likely the anointed head of the Temple Council. Only two people in all the NT are called rabbi: John and Jesus. Paul is not called a rabbi.
This restricted sense of Rabbi as an anointed post is confirmed by the Hebrew version of Josephus’s ‘Jewish War’ known as the ‘Destruction of Jerusalem’ by ‘Josephus ben Gorion’. Flavius Josephus said he wrote his first account to his countrymen, that is Israelites, and identified them as Scythians, Parthians and Kelts. They spoke many languages with Hebrew and Aramaic as a common tongue. Despised and feared by Romans, Latins and Greeks, who called them ‘the Upper Barbarians,’ they lived and roamed across the whole earth North of Rome from the Steppes to Northern Europe.
With the rise of biblical scholarship, this Hebrew Destruction of Jerusalem was translated and first printed in English in 1558 by Peter Morvyn. Many reprints followed. Thus it predates the English translation of the Greek Flavius Josephus. It was much better known until Whiston's translation of the Greek became a standard in Christian homes alongside the Bible.
The Hebrew version, known as Josippon, has some surprises.
In it John is not only called Rabbi but ‘Rabbi John Baptist the High Priest.’
High Priest!

The real Rabbi
First what did Rabbi mean? Historically the word ‘rabbi’ appears in writing first in the NT. At that time it may have been an Aramaic title—it means ‘anointed’ in Aramaic.
It is not in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In the first century it was later confused by Christ's enemies with Hebrew for ‘my master’, as Jesus says, Matt 23. The scholars  'have sat down on' or placed themselves falsely on 'Moses's seat' (took it over). They act holy but are hypocrites. They prostrate themselves in the streets, then shout ‘my master’ to each other in the market place, hoping the common people would understand it as Aramaic ‘Anointed One’.  (The scholars were NOT anointed.)
Jesus told the disciples not to call each other Rabbi = Christos or Messiah.
Did the false scholars stop? Obviously not.
‘Rabbi’ became a common term in the Talmud, (2nd/3rd century) synagogues or among Jewish scholars of the Pharisaic persuasion. Some Jews including Karaites objected to this title. They dismissively called such people ‘rabbinites’.

Black Belt
So what of the black belt? Why do the Jewish MSS insist on it? Simply because the high priest did not wear a black leather belt. He does not wear any leather. In the Temple he wore linen and no leather, not even sandals. In the synagogue pious Jews do not wear leather, especially on fasting days such as the Day of Atonement. They don't even wash. Yet the Torah scrolls themselves are made of leather.
As for camels, a single camel hair might render a priest ceremonially unclean.
The High Priest’s dress is specified in the Bible, Ex 28. No camels, no leather!
The Jewish versions are trying to insist that John was not a regular high priest. The NT is also shouting this out.
Why did John have a black leather belt? A priest has a white linen girdle. The Pharisees might say:

Imagine that! Black leather! Is he really an Aaronic high priest?

Yes, he was.
An additional fact supports the case. The Romans' economy required leather in large quantities. Their tanning process produced brown cow leather in large amounts, but outside towns and cities. The tanning process caused bad and persistent smells.
This leather was not only for belts and clothes but for military tents. If leather was tawed with alum it became softer and had a lighter tone but could then be dyed. Sheep leather is also softer; goat leather may be tougher. Softer leather is not best for a testing environment like a desert. So if it was dyed black by the Roman process it would be too soft for a sturdy belt. Roman leather was typically brown. A brown belt would be normal in a Roman context.
Black was unusual for Romans. Did it identify the wearer as coming from Parthia? Methods of curing leather vary with social cultures. East of the Roman Empire smoking and the use of special green leaves and fats would have produced a different-looking product.

This character, Rabbi John the Baptist the high priest, was wearing clothes that were not typical of Jews, certainly not of high priests like Annas, and not of Romans.

The Camel Superpower
The further clue is in the other part of his dress: a garment of camel hair. This was even more removed from the Torah's byssus, sparkling white linen, from the flax plant. More so, camel hair was foreign and, to some, inappropriate and even unclean.  The camel was not a sacrificially pure animal. Moreover it was so basically foreign, no Jew in Israel would wear it.
Camels today are associated with regions like Arabia. In the first century they were a symbol of powerful lands further East like Parthia and Bactria. (The Bactrian camel famously has two humps.)

Parthia was the great superpower rival of the Romans. Compare the rivalry to that of USA and USSR. But Parthia was not a military dictatorship like Rome, but a freer mercantile confederation, run by a royalty that had been formerly transported as slaves under the Assyrians. It had links as far away as China.
It was mighty in battle too. It had defeated Roman legions several times and even liberated Israel from Rome. It installed its own high priest there.
Parthia, under its Semitic kings, the Arsacids, with major populations of Israelites and Jews, was intimately involved with the priesthood.
So the NT is saying that John came from those many worshippers in Parthia (as mentioned in Acts 2:9, and the Parthian Magi of Matt 2).

Phraates IV, defeated Mark Antony.
Augustus made a peace treaty with him.

Parthia had made a peace treaty with Rome around 20 BCE so the Temple could be rebuilt and glorified in peace. The Magi were the powerful priestly class of Parthia who selected, elected and deposed their kings. The commander, the surena, traveled with a personal entourage and personal baggage train of 10,000 camels, Rawlinson's Parthia, p94.

Who did John proclaim to?
The KJV says that John proclaimed the coming of God's ruler, the Messiah, and his Kingdom of the Heavens at the Jordan river. Why not Jerusalem? Why not elsewhere?
Those who came to him came from 'Jerusalem and all Judea and all the country around about the Jordan.' KJV. 'All the adjacent region' is somewhat vague in Greek and may have been so phrased with political sensitivity as the Greek text was read by Romans and Gentiles.
But the Hebrew says much more. It is not just the countryside that is mentioned in the Hebrew, or the cities.
It says they came from 'all the kingdom around about the Jordan.'
Legally speaking only Herod had been proclaimed a king, that of Judea, by the Romans. Is that what is meant? Judea is already mentioned without the name of the hated Herod. So 'kingdom' must be elsewhere.
The Hebrew Malkhut can be translated 'kingdom' but also 'Empire'.
For those in the East of Israel that was an unmistakable reference. Israel was living next to the big superpower of Parthian Empire and its satellite kingdoms. These were part of the Israelite 'family business' -- members of the Arsacid dynasty as distinct from Rome where the most powerful military leader became the Caesar. Israel was a small State captured by Rome next to a huge empire. Imagine being occupied by the Soviet Union with a major superpower just across the borders!
So those who came to hear John herald the coming Kingdom of Heaven would know that
(a) John was speaking about a regime change of both Rome and Parthia and everyone else.
(b) John's dress showed he knew what he was talking about when it came to Parthia and military power.
(c) the Roman-Parthia peace treaty and the Temple was the start of something really BIG. 

Preserving the Aaronic line
John as an infant may have been taken in Parthia for safety after the turmoil around the death of Herod and the bloody civil and religious war and the subsequent Roman war of Varus against Jews, which devastated the country. Two thousand people were crucified. Jesus was taken to Egypt for safety.
Later in the same condemnation of Matt 23, Jesus denounces the cultic high priests (the sons of Annas, the son of Seth) and Pharisees who had taken over the high priesthood. He says they were hypocrites taking control of holy things while being responsible for the death of Zacharias (the father of John?), slain between the Holy Place and Altar.
The key fact that is often forgotten is that John’s mother and Mariam, the mother of Jesus, were cousins, Luke 1:36. Both were registered in genealogical archives not only as being of the priestly Levitical tribe but direct descendants of Aaron, Luke 1:5. That made their sons far more legitimate than Annas, Caiaphas and the later sons of Annas, who claimed the office.
Both women gave birth, one to John, and Mariam to Jesus, in their old age (Greek, gera. Luke 1:36 Elizabeth has ALSO conceived a son in her old age.) There is no evidence that Mariam was 14 years old. The NT says the opposite. These names reflect back to Miriam, the sister of Moses, who also gave birth in her old age, and Elizabeth = Hebrew Elisheva, the Jewish wife of Aaron.
John became the true Aaronic priest at 30 years.
Outside the Temple, authentic high priests do not have to wear white linen garments, as some Pharisees might have said. He can wear a black leather belt and also camel hair garments like the Magi from Parthia.
If John had been living in Parthia, he would have known from the Magi that they had proof that the Messiah of royal David descent had been born in the Davidic city of Bethlehem. His genealogy was confirmed not only in the Jewish archives but by the Roman authorities who had demanded the registration of families.

Rome’s aim in destroying the Temple was to destroy Christianity

Why was the medieval Roman church and the Orthodox church so antisemitic? Why were the Hebrew scriptures and all knowledge of Hebrew banned? Why were Christians expelled for 'judaizing' when it is clear that Jesus and nearly all the early Christians were Jews?

The last verse of Luke says that Christ's disciples were “continually in the Temple, praising and blessing God.” In the book of Acts, James, the brother of Jesus, instructs the Apostle Paul how best to perform Temple ritual. In early Christian writings up to the time of Jerome around 400, James is described as bishop of bishops, praying inside the Temple as Sagan priest.
Church history has been turned upside down. Black means white and white black. Judaism is allegedly anti-Christian. Paul is proclaimed as making a break with all aspects of the Temple tradition. The Bible, on the other hand, shows Paul anxious to fulfill the Temple tradition scrupulously. He is taught by someone whom the Roman church writes out of their history—James the brother of Jesus!
Why in short was Christian history re-written between the first century when Christians took full part in the Temple services, as the gospels and Acts say, and the time of Constantine in 325 when at Nicea he created an imperial Catholic Church profoundly anti-Jewish?  

Meir Ben-Dov pointed out the Titus pillar

A major discovery mentioned in archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov's book 'In the Shadow of the Temple' p187f  helps explains what was behind the so-called 'lost centuries' of Christian history.

Here's what he wrote about an extraordinary discovery during the first modern dig near Temple Mount:

"Among the most outstanding volunteers working on our dig were students from Ambassador College in Pasadena, California, who returned annually in groups of 100 and spent six weeks in arduous and energetic labor. Because of their remarkable fortitude and energy we often assigned them to particularly difficult projects.
One was to uncover what could be found under the remains of the Moslem palace south of the Temple Mount. A group of Ambassador students set work among the foundations of the building, which sometimes extended as far down as 7 meters and included parts of columns from earlier buildings placed in secondary use by the Moslem builders. The year was 1970 and we were approaching the 9th of Av -- when one of the members of this group came running towards me flushed with excitement.

"I've been looking all over for you!" he shouted. "What's up?" I asked, though it seemed pretty clear from the state he was in that he had found something interesting. "There's an inscription down there," he told me, and I accompanied him back to the area and climbed down the ladder to find that a column that the Moslems had incorporated into the palace foundation walls bore a clear inscription in Latin letters.
Even at first glance I could tell that this was a royal inscription, though most of it was still not visible. After a few hours' hard work we managed to free the column from the wall of which it had become a part -- without damaging the wall itself -- and cleaned off the remaining plaster that still clung on to it. Then came our startling discovery that it was a dedicatory inscription to the Tenth Legion mentioning none other than Titus himself.
We were filled with emotion because of the uncanny symbolism of the find. Here we were on the eve of the 9th of Av. One thousand nine hundred years ago to the day, Titus had briefed his troops on the storming of the Temple Mount. And now, in the renewed State of Israel, standing in Jerusalem, digging alongside the Temple Mount, we had come into tangible contact with Titus and his legions." (emphasis added.)

Ambassador College was collaborating in the first dig at Jerusalem organized by Prof Benjamin Mazar of the Hebrew University and the Israel Exploration Society. 

 Dr Ernest L Martin, who led the Ambassador College group, revealed the truth about Titus at the time that student John Turner uncovered the Titus Pillar inscribed with the imperial name of his father Emperor Vespasian.
There are two versions of the briefing that Titus gave to his General Staff about storming and looting of the Temple in 70 CE. One is a short version. It looks more like Roman propaganda. Why? Because it appears to be a censored version that gives the entirely wrong impression of the facts. This was a common technique in Rhetoric or "spin" management as we would say today. It excises inconvenient facts from and account to lead the reader to a distorted conclusion.

What it leaves out is more significant than what it mentions. The fragment is attributed to the historian Tacitus and says:
The military staff told Titus:

“This holy building is the most beautiful structure ever built by the hand of man and should not be destroyed. If we leave it unharmed, its continued existence would serve as a witness to the moderation of the Romans. But if it were destroyed, the Roman name would be forever blackened. "

What it admits is striking. That the 'Jewish' Temple outshone anything in the Roman world is an extraordinary admission for any Roman writer, proud of Rome's achievements.

Many other writers, however, make the same assessment. This account, in itself, indicates the desperation to put some form of positive gloss on what in effect was a global disaster to its prestige. Rome destroyed the World's Wonder, a city greater than Rome and in direct violation to the Treaty between Caesar and the Jewish Ethnarch at the time of the Maccabees. It blackened its reputation forever.
The extract implies that the Roman army were careful not to harm this Wonder of the World.
Is it true?
  

The fuller story is revealed in the Sacred History of Sulpicius Severus, an educated Gallic Christian, a post-Nicene father (NPNF, s2, vol xi, p111). He appears to be quoting from the same or similar historical records but this time he gives the unvarnished truth. The Caesars wanted to destroy the Temple because the Temple Teacher and his Resurrection made nonsense of their pagan pantheon of false gods. Hence the Empire was threatened.

"Titus is said, after calling the council, to have first deliberated whether he should destroy the Temple, a structure of such extraordinary work. For it seemed good to some that a sacred edifice, distinguished above all human achievements, ought not to be destroyed, inasmuch as, if preserved, it would furnish an evidence of Roman moderation, but, if destroyed would serve as a perpetual proof of Roman cruelty. But on the opposite side, others and Titus himself, thought that the Temple ought especially to be overthrown, in order that the religion of the Jews and Christians might more thoroughly be subverted; for these religions, although contrary to each other, had nevertheless proceeded from the same authors; that the Christians had sprung up from among the Jews; and that, if the root were extirpated, the offshoot would speedily perish. "

The Titus Pillar may have been a Roman celebration of the brutal destruction of the Temple and the subjugation of Jews and Christians. It was the victory pole of paganism. If it was erected near where it was found, it would have stood like a vile asherah, decorated with an pagan eagle in the court before the Temple.
If that is so, it would have echoed repeated attempts to erect the pagan symbol in the Temple to proclaim to all Roman supremacy of their pantheon.

The Roman Governor Pontius Pilate had, according to the contemporary historian Josephus, tried to infiltrate Roman Legion standards into Jerusalem, something forbidden by the earlier treaty between Julius Caesar and the Maccabees. He failed, due to the passive resistance of the Jewish nation, who would rather die than see their Temple defiled.
An even more remarkable event occurred around the time of the birth of Christ and the dying days of Herod the Great. Josephus records that Romans attempted to raise an eagle at the great gate of the Temple. Jews, in fervent expectation of the coming of the Messiah at this time, ripped it down. They were led by two fervent Jewish scholars, Judas of Sepphoris and Matthias of Margalus. Fearing the whole nations would rise against him and Rome, Herod burnt alive the main perpetrators and killed their students in a bloody slaughter. Wracked with a putrefying disease, Herod in his last days instructed his soldiers to gather the most illustrious leaders from the entire Jewish nation into the hippodrome and slaughter them all at his death.


Seventy years later Titus may have erected this Pillar as the Roman signal of their definitive destruction of Judaism and Christianity.


Despite the myriad of martyrs who maintained the facts of the resurrections, miraculous healings and personal revelations, Rome was unable to accomplish the human destruction of Christianity or Judaism. Roman emperors conceded that the resurrections and miracles had taken place and were taking place in their own times. (Jesus, James, Joseph, p530 and chapter 32).

Then it became obvious that Rome had lost the war against truth. It tried another tactic: Fake history, disinformation and dissembling about why the Temple was destroyed.
The Titus Pillar reveals one reason for the truth gap, the so-called 'missing centuries' of Christian history. It took centuries of antisemitic propaganda before the Romans could dissociate and expunge the real facts of the New Testament. The NT showed Christians' strong involvement in the Temple. Jesus, James and Joseph taught and officiated there.
Rome was destroyer of the building God had decreed to be built. How then could Rome, the determined destroyer of the King of Jews, the Chief Priest of that building, present itself as champion of Christianity? It banned first the Hebrew Scriptures and then the Greek New Testament. It persecuted and exiled its opponents.

It took centuries of killings and propaganda to subvert all connections between Christ, the Bible and Israel. Then with an empire that had only modified its effete and dying paganism, Constantine could proclaim an imperial religion that he called 'Christianity' where the Hebrew scriptures, the Temple, Sabbath and the festivals were banned on pain of death.

                                      David Heilbron Price, Nazarene Project   8/2018