Bartholomew's Notes

The Jerusalem Post carries a puff-piece by Shelly Neese on Jim Barfield’s quest (blogged by me several times) to find the treasure described in the Qumran “Copper Scroll”:

…The theory to which Barfield ascribes – and most Dead Sea scholars reject – is that the scroll is neither a hoax nor a remnant of the Second Temple period, but rather was created during the First Temple period. His hypothesis derives from the Second Book of Maccabees, as well as a lesser known seventeenth century book called Emek Hamelech (“Valley of the King”). These two works tell the story of the prophet Jeremiah who, with the help of five Holy men, one named Shimur Halevi, carefully hid the holy objects of the Temple to protect them from the conquering Babylonians, and documented those locations on a copper tablet.

This is nonsense; as Neese goes on to note, the Copper Scroll was written in an early form of Mishnaic Hebrew, and so dates from far later than the time of Jeremiah. The passage from 2 Maccabees to which Barfield refers is in Chapter 2, and it claims to be quoting an older source:

The same document also tells how the prophet, following a divine revelation, ordered that the tent and the ark should accompany him and how he went off to the mountain which Moses climbed to see God’s inheritance. When Jeremiah arrived there, he found a room in a cave in which he put the tent, the ark, and the altar of incense; then he blocked up the entrance. Some of those who followed him came up intending to mark the path, but they could not find it. When Jeremiah heard of this, he reproved them: “The place is to remain unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows them mercy. (NAB)

The New Jerusalem Bible has an acid note on his:

The description is not historical: the Tent of Meeting did not exist after the building of Solomon’s Temple, the ark disappeared when the Temple was destroyed, and the historical Jeremiah did not regret it.

We are directed to Jeremiah 3:16 as evidence of this last point:

When you multiply and become fruitful in the land, says the LORD, They will in those days no longer say, “The ark of the covenant of the LORD!” They will no longer think of it, or remember it, or miss it, or make another. (NAB)

As for the Emek Hamelech, this was written by a German Kabbalist named Naftali Bacharach (also known as Naftali Hertz ben Yaakov Elchanan) in 1648, and it is highly mythological. The claim is that Bacharach derived his account from earlier manuscripts, although I have not been able to find much in English about the text and its origins.  One purported translation of the relevant section can be seen on this somewhat eccentric website (the author of which claims that the Temple treasures were found in the Tomb of Tutankhamun, but let’s deal with one thing at a time…). The site seems to have drawn on writings by Vendyl Jones.

We are told that:

In 1992 Rabbi Rachmael Steinburg…and his student, Rabbi Mendel Tropper, began to search for sources that could shed light on “the other records.” [regarding the Copper Scroll] “They found another source for and reference to “the records” in a book published in Amsterdam, Holland in the year 1648. It was written by Rabbi Naftali (ben Elchanan) Hertz. The work was entitled Emeq HaMelekh (“Valley of the King”) … Rabbi Hertz calls these records Mishnayot, and included them in the introduction to his text.

These rabbis have no other internet presence (at least in non-Hebrew) besides this story.

The text follows (square brackets in original):

These are the vessels dedicated and concealed when the Temple was destroyed: The Tabernacle and the Curtain, the Holy Menorah, the Ark of Testimony [Covenant], the golden forehead Nameplate,the golden crown of Aharon the Cohen, the Breastplate of Judgment, the silver Trumpets, the Cherubim, and the Altar of burnt offerings, the Curtain of the Communion Tent,the forks and the bread molds, the Table [of the Showbread], the Curtain of the Gate, the Copper Altar, the sacred garments of Aharon which were worn by the Cohen HaGadol (High Priest) on the Day of Atonement, Pa’amonim (bells) and Rimonim (pomegranates) on the hem of the robe [of the Cohen Gadol], the holy vessels that Moses made on Mount Sinai by the command of the Holy One, the Staff, and the Jar of the Manna.

These are the holy vessels and the vessels of the Temple that were in Jerusalem and in every place. They were inscribed by Shimur HaLevi and his companions, on a “Luach Nehoshet” (Copper Plate), [this of course is the Copper Scroll] with all the Vessels of the Holy of Holies that Shlomo son of David made. And together with Shimur were Hizkiyahu, Zidkiyah, Haggai the Prophet, and Zechariah, son of Berachiah, son of Ido the Prophet…

We then read an inventory of treasure, and we are told that some was buried in the ground, some was “hidden and concealed in the wall of Babylon and in Tel Bruk under the big willow tree in Babylon upon which they hung their lyres”, and some (this is less promising) “was taken by angel Shimshiel”.

The two stories cannot be reconciled in way Neese would have us believe. In the first story, Jeremiah goes alone to a cave – he does not create a guide to finding it, as it will be revealed by God in due course. There are no five “Holy Men”, either. In the second story there is no Jeremiah and no cave, and although we are told the “Holy Men” made an inventory in copper, we are not told that they also recorded a guide to finding the treasure. And the items and amounts listed, and the locations given, do not match the Copper Scroll anyway.

Barfield has declined to make public how he cracked the true meaning of the Copper Scroll (which, although obscure, is not really a “code”), but Neese tells us that

After looking at the scroll for five minutes he deciphered the first location, and twenty minutes later he identified the next four locations…Once again applying his experience as a fire marshal, Barfield packaged up his research in the style of an arson investigative report. He then boarded a plane, and delivered his report directly into the hands of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in Jerusalem. Given his lack of archeological background, his Christian faith, and the fact that the IAA confronts treasure hunters every day, I asked if they treated him skeptically. “Once they saw my report,” he replied laughingly, “they just moved me to the head of the class.

…He says that all of the archaeologists, rabbis, and historians presented with his research have been convinced. “It is so simple.” He says. “They just all thump their heads.”

At the foot of the report, we read that

Shelley Neese is managing editor and columnist for the DC-based pro-Israel Christian magazine, The Jerusalem Connection.

An earlier article about Barfield produced for that magazine can be seen here. The Jerusalem Post has relationships with a number of Christian Zionist organisations, so presumably Neese’s gushing article (“I can’t help but wish he is indeed ‘the guy who cracked the code on the Copper Scroll.'”) – which has no note of caution or scepticism, and only the faintest hint of a passing reference to serious scholarship on the subject – is there as a sop to this constituency. In particular, the Post runs a “Christian Edition” in conjunction with the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem.

(Hat tip: Jim West, who suggests that “Whoever the IAA archaeologist who is meeting with him is, he or she should be called on the carpet. And whoever gave him a permit [to dig] should explain himself fully.”)

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Staying with Florida and Governor Charlie Crist, he’s also in the news for another reason:

Crist told a group of real estate agents Friday that he’s had prayer notes placed in the Western Wall in Jerusalem each year and no major storms have hit Florida.

Crist noted that just before his election in 2006, Florida had been affected by a total of eight hurricanes in 2004 and 2005.

Crist, who is a Methodist, has a particular fondness for Jewish cultural practices; in 2007 he invited Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Schneur Oirechman to install a mezuzah on the doorpost to his office. This kind of thing may help him win Jewish votes, but it will also give him credit with the Christian Right, a swathe of which is appropriating Jewish cultural expressions.

Christian attitudes to the Western Wall have changed dramatically over the years: in the Byzantine period, the site of the destroyed Jewish Temple was used by Christians as evidence that Judaism had been supplanted by Christianity as the true religion. More recently, however, the site has come to be treated with respect by Christians, in recognition of its place in Biblical history, and as a sign of increasing good relations between Jews and Christians. The Pope has been known to pray at the Wall, and for many Protestants the Wall is more  congenial than churches associated with events in the life of Jesus, where alien Roman Catholic and Orthodox icongraphy dominate.

However, although Christians may respect Judaism, there is still a tradition of Christian exclusivity. Everyone is urged to “accept Christ” in order to find salvation; what then is the point of Judaism? Should not Christians continue to seek the conversion of Jews to Christianity, even though many Jews complain that this is highly offensive, and perhaps even anti-Semitic? A couple of ways around this problem have been developed by Christian Zionists: the return of Jesus is coming very soon, and so Jews will be converted by supernatural means then, or – more controversially – there is a “dual covenant”, in which both religions are equality valid. Jerry Falwell baulked at this last idea, although it appears to be the de facto position of many Christian Zionists.

The teaching that God has transferred the “chosenness” of the Jews to the Church is derided as anti-Semitic; instead, Christians now share in the “chosenness” of the Jews. Thus we see John Hagee wearing a prayer shawl, support for the building of a new temple in Jerusalem, and specialist outfits selling Jewish ritual and cultural objects to Christians. Jesus becomes known as “Yeshua”, and the habit of writing “G-d” rather than “God” is adopted. Further, there is a vicarious identification with the IDF (such as the “Maccabean Resistance” I noted yesterday), and Christian America becomes  a divinely-favoured “Judaeo-Christian” culture (albeit threatened from within by Obama) allied with Israel against the Muslims in a holy war.

Even the Bible can be revised to fit this religio-nationalistic agenda: WorldNetDaily promotes Joel Richardson’s fantasy of a “Muslim Anti-Christ” emerging (a theory that builds on the rubble of the failed “Soviet Anti-Christ” idea), and his friend Walid Shoebat persuades Christians that the word “666” in the Book of Revelation is a misreading for “In the Name of Allah”. For some Christian Zionist groups, such as the Jerusalem Connection, finding that an ethnic group has Jewish DNA is more important than any actual evangelisation, and Good Friday pales beside Passover. Others, such as Jim Barfield, flirt with the “Hebrew Roots” Movement, which accepts “Yeshua” as Messiah but which rejects all Christian theology. Meanwhile, one aspect of Christian history which becomes foregrounded is the Crusades, whitewashed of their anti-Jewish elements and earthly motives (there’s also some of that in the UK). How far can this be pushed before we’re actually dealing with a New Religious Movement rather than anything recognisable as Christianity?

Of course, the idea of America as “chosen” is as old as the Pilgrim Fathers, but this particular formulation is something new. The discourse has a wider appeal: one criticism of Obama’s speech denying that the USA is a Christian nation memorably made it onto the Daily Show‘s “Moment of Zen”; according to John Kasich of Recharge Ohio:

It would have been more appropriate for Barack Obama to say America is Jewish and Christian.

Meanwhile, a woman in an IDF T-Shirt who opposes health-care reform on the grounds of “Biblical values” can mock an Israeli Jew who takes a different view with a shout of “Heil Hitler”; presumably he’s the wrong type of Jew to identify with.

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The Fathima Rifqa Bary circus in Florida is now shaping up in the tradition of American legal disputes that manage to encapsulate the state of the country at a particular moment. An electric photo essay on the Orlando Sentinal website by Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda parades archetypal tub-thumping attention-grabbers: there’s Alan Kornman of ACT for America waving around a copy of Reliance of the Traveller, a Fourteenth Century manual of Islamic jurisprudence, and pointing out a verse that prescribes death for apostates; meanwhile, Ed and Sandra Warmoth from the “Maccabean Resistance” harangue passersby with placards reading “Know Your Enemy, Know Your Season, Know Your G-d” (the Warmouths are actually Christians, but like an increasingly large swathe of American evangelicals, they prefer to identify vicariously with Jewish cultural expressions and militaristic Zionism than with the historic priorities of Christianity); while Tom Trento of the Florida Security Council gives a press conference. We also see Bary herself poring over a Bible in court; her tearful mother, and the father – a mild looking Westernized Sri Lankan in a suit who, we are to believe, would rather kill his daughter and face the consequences than live with the shame of a daughter who has rejected her Muslim heritage to become a Christian.

Meanwhile, Bary’s attorney, a conservative activist named John Stemberger, is alleging that her family have links to Al Qaeda through their local mosque in Ohio, and that Bary is the victim of “mental, physical and sexual abuse”. Stemberger has also publicised Bary’s parents’ home address; the St. Petersburg Times has a bit of background (link added):

Stemberger is the president and general counsel of the Florida Family Policy Council. Orlando magazine last month called him one of the 50 most powerful people in the city. He’s a leader in Florida’s anti-gay marriage movement and doesn’t believe in teaching evolution “as scientific fact.”

Also part of the story is Governor Charlie Crist, who likes to pander to the  Christian Right. He’s in no mood to appeal for a bit of calm:

I am grateful to Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson for his decision to grant Fathima Rifqa Bary the right to remain in Florida.

The first and only priority of my administration is the safety and wellbeing of this child.

I am grateful for the good work of Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon and my General Counsel, Rob Wheeler, for personally advocating the administration’s position by attending today’s hearing.

We will continue to fight to protect Rifqa’s safety and wellbeing as we move forward.

Curiously, one person is absent from the unfolding drama: Blake Lorenz, the pastor of the neo-Pentecostal Global Revolution Church to which Bary fled after communicating with the church on Facebook. Lorenz is apparently on holiday.

WorldNetDaily has a round-up of exultant conservative punditry on the subject:

[Pamela] Geller said the teen’s case “is a public relations nightmare for Islamist groups, as her plea validates everything that scholars such as Ibn Warraq, Robert Spencer, Dr. Andrew Bostom, Wafa Sultan, etc., have written and said.”

Sultan, a Syrian-born psychiatrist, human rights activist and author, wrote on JihadWatch.org that the case “highlights the danger of creeping jihad in the Western world.”

…Dr. Phyllis Chesler, author of “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” told Fox News Bary’s life will be in danger if she is forced to return to her parents.

“Anyone who converts from Islam is considered an apostate, and apostasy is a capital crime,” she said. “If she is returned to her family, if she is lucky, they will isolate her, beat her, threaten her, and if she is not ‘presuaded’ to return to Islam, they will kill her. They have no choice.”

And so on. Geller claims that she has “been talking to someone who is very close to Rifqa Bary”, who alleges that Bary was regularly beaten.

Also on the bandwagon is W.L. Cati ( whom I blogged here), who explains that

“As far as Muslims are concerned, she should have the death penalty for converting to Christianity…And so even though she is here and appears to be safe, thank God the judge made a good decision as far as her behalf, but what is Islam going to do?”

Cati says she believes the girl is telling the truth based on her own experience of having been married to a Muslim.

WorldNetDaily also notes a news story from Pakistan, which, without any evidence, accuses Bary of promiscuous behaviour and of “conjur[ing] up a story of conversion to Christianity” in the face of parental discipline. WND also carries a photo (from before her flight to Florida) of Bary posing cheerfully with a black American boy of around the same age as her, although the significance of this is unclear.

As I noted in my previous blog entry on this subject, Bary has a strange understanding of what an “honour killing” actually is; she claims it would be a “great honour” for her parents to kill her – but honour killing  (which is rare in Sri Lanka anyway) is about restoring honour which is perceived to have been lost; it’s not about gaining extra merit, as if it were some kind of human sacrifice. Where did she get that idea from? And the formal death penalty for apostasy is a different matter again, with a variety of Islamic opinions about whether it is applicable or not, and if so who has the authority to carry it out. I have no idea what kind of a man Bary’s father is, but it is foolish to claim that a verse from Reliance of the Traveller proves that a Muslim father must kill his daughter, regardless of any paternal feeling and heedless of both the law (in either the USA or Sri Lanka) and of his own imprisonment (and in Ohio, execution) which would invariably follow.

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Much fun at Wonkette after a Townhall blogger named Kristen Atkinson posted a story claiming that a friend of Michelle Obama had revealed that Michelle’s mother was practising Santeria, a form of religion involving magical practices, in the White House. Atkinson’s whole blog has been removed (anyone can start a Townhall blog, by the way), but the story has been reposted elsewhere (e.g. here) and the author has rebuked Wonkette for making mocking comments:

Do you really, truly, seriously think it is OK for a president to use a forged birth certificate? Do you actually believe it is appropriate for a man who was raised a Muslim to pretend he is a Christian and go to a church for 20 years with an anti-American preacher? Do you really want a president who was brainwashed by communists since he was a child, up through university, to hate America to be our president? Do you think that it is fine if a family member of the president defiles the White House with voodoo? Don’t you know what fate could befall our nation as a result of allowing Satanic forces to gather over the White House?

Where will such things end? Before long, we’ll be reading about the President’s wife holding séances in the White House. Or maybe presidential appointments being approved by the First Lady’s astrologer.

In the lead up to the 2008 election, a neo-Pentecostal email rumour warned that Obama’s Kenyan grandmother was killing chickens in occult rituals “to make [John McCain] look confused and like an idiot”.

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A couple of times now I’ve blogged on Jim Barfield, the Oklahoman former fire investigator who claims to have worked out the location of an amazing stash of treasure rescued from Israel’s First Temple and buried in the Judaean Desert. Barfield believes he has divined this information from study of the Copper Scroll, a document found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, although he’s not giving away the secret. Barfield managed to get a hearing from some credulous state senators, and he accompanied an Israeli expedition, although that does not appear to have ended well. However, the quest continues, as Barfield explains on the blog of the Jerusalem Connection, a particularly hardline Christian Zionist outfit:

I’ve been in Israel the last few weeks contacting archeologists and people of influence to try and determine what is holding up the excavation and maybe some clues as to what is going on.

Such as:

For those of you that keep up with Avi [Ben Mordechai], I spent several hours with him going over my research and we actually went to one of the sites to show him how amazingly accurate the Copper Scroll is.  By the end of the day he and his wife were convinced.  So much so, that he made arrangements for me to meet with a very kind gentleman by the name of Dr. Hanan Eshel.

That’s an interesting connection. Ben Mordechai runs “Millennium 7000 Communications”, a “Hebrew Roots” outfit which rejects the Christian tradition (such as the idea of the Trinity) while accepting “Yeshua” as the Messiah (this is too strange to be called “Messianic Judaism”). From his website:

The Two Houses of Israel-“Ephraim” and “Judah,” as taught in Ezekiel 37, is a valid teaching. “Gentiles” that wish to join themselves to the corporate body of Israel are to be welcomed in, but they must agree to observe the commandments of the Holy Written Torah in order to connect to the blessings and to the promised inheritance that belongs to all Israel through the Messiah. Gentiles who say that they are Israel but do not believe that they have to keep and do the Torah commandments that were given to the people of Israel are stealing from YHWH, taking His blessings without the responsibilities of those blessings.

Ben Mordechai is apparently an enthusiast of Kabbalah, and he sees divine messages in natural and political phenomena. For example, he interprets the moon astrologically:

For centuries, scholars have attempted to ascertain the meaning of this prophecy. Jewish tradition and beliefs may help us explain this passage. In 1996, Israel celebrated the 3,000th year anniversary of Jerusalem – from King David’s conquest in 1004 B.C. to A.D. 1996

On Passover, April 3, 1996, a full lunar eclipse appeared over Jerusalem. A photograph of this eclipse appeared in the Jerusalem Post with the caption, “The Moon of Blood.” When a full lunar eclipse appears, the moon takes on a reddish, almost bloody appearance. On September 26 of the same year, a second lunar eclipse created a blood-like image and was visible in Jerusalem on the eve of the Feast of Tabernacles. A third lunar eclipse (90%) happened six months later during PURIM, the celebration to remember how the famed Jewish Queen Esther defeated the wicked plans of Haman.

Thus, THREE lunar eclipses occurring within one year on or near three Jewish celebration days is almost unheard of. These three “blood moons,” caused tremendous excitement and anxiety among rabbis in Israel, according to the same article. A blood moon, which appeared twice the same year and fell on the first and last feast of Israel, indicated to them this was a cosmic sign from God of impending trouble in Israel. The ancient belief was that a blood moon (lunar eclipse) could symbolize BLOODSHED and WAR.

Since 1996, thousands of Israelis have died in their own land from the suicide attacks of Islamic radicals. Just four years after these events in 2000 the Palestinian Authority launched its most recent infitiada or “uprising” against Israel at the hands of the now deceased Yasser Arafat. From a Hebraic understanding, the signs of a sackcloth sun and blood moon can refer to a full solar and lunar eclipse. According to Scriptures, this will be one form of cosmic activity prior to the coming Day of the Lord and the future Tribulation.

This kind of thing appeals to some American Christian fundamentalists; the scholarly realisation that to understand Jesus and the New Testament properly one ought to know about the First Century Jewish context is corrupted into the idea that someone peddling supposed mystical secrets from the Jewish tradition somehow provides special esoteric insight into spiritual reality. His worldview also includes “New World Order” paranoia:

…we are a rebellious nation that refuses to repent and obey the written Torah of Moshe. As a result, we must bear our punishment as we are being led down a path that requires us to step into line, serve the laws of our masters (Ezekiel 20:23-25), and obey the NWO bosses and their plans for global control of the world and its populations…we expect a bodily implantation law to be passed in the future (probably in the very near future). Afterall, Israel is a lawless country and lawlessness demands control and we know from Deuteronomy Chapter 28:15-68 that YHWH, the Eternal One of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) is going to use the nations that surround us and use the system that this nation so loves, to control us. But in the end, we KNOW who is Really in Control!

By contrast to all this, Hanan Eshel is a respected Israeli archaeologist of international standing. It’s remarkable that such a fringe figure as Ben Mordechai would be in a position to arrange for him to spend time chatting to a delusional Oklahoman fire investigator.

Barfield also had a meeting with Gershon Salomon, a Jewish “Third Temple” obsessionist who is popular with Christian Zionists, and with Vendyl Jones, with whom he has a natural kinship. Jones is another pseudo-archaeologist, and he provides lazy hacks with easy copy once every few years with dramatic announcements of being “on the verge” of discovering the Ark of the Covenant. Jones is an ex-Christian “Noachide”, and he is associated with the right-wing “Sanhedrin” that has also excited Christian Zionists (the Sanhedrin recently held a bizarre friendly meeting with the Turkish Islamist Adnan Oktar). With both these characters, there’s more chance of Lucy actually letting Charlie Brown kick that ball than that they will actually deliver on their grandiose promises.

In the past Ben Mordechai has associated with Moshe Koniuchowsky, whom I blogged on here.

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So, was the Jewish Temple secretly dismantled and moved to what later became Las Vegas, where it currently provides refuge to Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson?

No, not quite: WND is just making a meal out of the long-known fact that the Roman armies which beseiged Jerusalem in 70CE consisted in large part of soldiers recruited in the east. WND thinks this is of “prophetic significance”:

As Joel Richardson, author of “The Islamic Antichrist,” writes today in WND’s commentary section, one of the pillars of the European Antichrist theory is a prophecy in Daniel 9: “The people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.”

When the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 and the city of Jerusalem sacked, while under Roman occupation, many prophecy scholars assumed the future dark prince needs to be Roman. However, historical research by Richardson now suggests otherwise.

Richardson’s research found the army that destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem was actually overwhelmingly comprised of Middle Eastern peoples, not Europeans. Explicit accounts cited come from Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Titus Flavius Josephus as well as more modern scholars and historians.

“All said, the historical evidence is overwhelming. After examining a sampling of evidence from both ancient historians as well as the most cutting-edge modern scholarship to date, we may very confidently conclude that the ‘Roman’ soldiers in the Eastern provinces that destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple were in fact Eastern peoples – the inhabitants of Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia and Egypt,” Richardson writes. “Again, they were the ancestors of the modern-day inhabitants of the Middle East.”

First, there is no such thing as a “prophecy scholar”. There are Biblical scholars, some of who study prophetic texts in historical and literary context, and there are “prophecy cranks”, who  read all kind of nonsense into ancient texts, particularly if the text is difficult to understand. The author of the Book of Daniel had no concept of an “Antichrist” or of a Roman Empire – he was writing around 200 years before the events of 70CE, and the “prince” refered to was a Hellenistic Syrian monarch who had enforced Greek religious practices at the Temple shortly before the text was created.

Second, there is no “research by Richardson”. Instead, he guides us through some of the primary sources and recent secondary literature on the subject. And even here Richardson fails to provide page numbers and his quotes are dubious. Here’s one he uses, supposedly from Antonio Santosuosso’s Storming the Heavens: Soldiers, Emperors, and Civilians in the Roman Empire:

During the first half of the first century, approximately 49 percent of the soldiers were Italians, but by A.D. 70 that number had fallen to only 22 percent. By the end of the first century, only 1 percent of the soldiers were Italians.

Using Amazon’s “Search Inside the Book Function” I have been unable to find this phrase. I have, however, found the following, on page 98:

…49 percent under Claudius and Nero, 22 percent during the rest of the first century, and only 1 percent from Hadrian onwards.

Nero died in 68, and Hadrian came to power in 117. Obviously, the figures for 70CE would be much closer to the 49 percent of two years before than than the general declining average of “22 percent” over the fifty-year period. And if we look further down the page, we read that enrollment “typically meant automatic Roman citizenship”. So, Roman soldiers were Roman no matter what their ethnic background, and during the siege of Jerusalem they were of course under the ultimate control of ethnically European Roman commanders answerable to a European emperor.

Another scholar, Sara Elise Phang,  gets the same treatment:

That Italians were increasingly replaced in the legions during this period by provincials is in itself no longer a novelty among scholars. … In the East, that is Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, it seems clear that local recruitment was well under way under Augustus [d. A.D. 14], so that by his death only a very small number of legionaries derived from Italy or indeed any of the western provinces. … Under Nero [d. A.D. 68], when the eastern legions required supplementation … it was to Cappadocia and Galatia that [Rome] looked for recruits. This was doubtless standard procedure. [The] legions of the East consisted largely of “orientals” (Middle Easterners).

Richardson ignores a passage which follows:

Traditionally legions stationed in the East were of poorer quality than their western counterparts…The prospect of major campaigns regularly brought a stiffening with troops from the Danube, which…provided two out of the three legions besieiging Jerusalem in AD 70.

Richardson’s general point about an ethnically diverse army is valid, but it is uncontroversial, and he is typically sloppy in his use of the evidence. It is also valid that he notes the role of auxilary non-Roman armies:

There were four full legions and two partial legions involved in the attack. This would mean that there were approximately 25,000 men who were full-time legionaries with the remaining 35,000 men who were either volunteers or auxiliaries. The auxiliaries were non-Roman people raised up from the provincial peoples. Josephus confirms this when he says that the auxiliaries were “sent by the kings” from “the neighborhood” of Syria, Asia Minor and Arabia.

However, the conclusion is overblown, based on a speculative calculation:

…at the very most, there was one Western European soldier to every 11 Middle Eastern soldiers. Eleven to one!

But, again, overall command was Roman.

So what’s his point? Obviously, this is part of the Christian Zionist fantasy of an essentialised eternal conflict between east and west, which today pits the USA and Israel against Muslims. Roman responsibility for the destruction of Jerusalem cannot be denied, but can be mitigated and forced into the narrative framework by suggesting that it was really the work of “the inhabitants of Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia and Egypt”. He quotes Tacitus as noting

a strong contingent of Arabs, who hated the Jews with the usual hatred of neighbors…

Richardson concludes from this –  sweeping over centuries of complex social interactions that followed – that “little seems to have changed since the first century regarding the general Arab hatred of the Jewish people.” The argument appears to be that ethnically non-Italian Romans were not really Roman, and that their involvement in Roman military campaigns reflects the essential character of easterners playing out a role in a supernatural conflict:

They were the ancestors of the peoples that dominate the entire region today. For this reason and many others, many students and teachers of the Bible are increasingly rejecting the Euro-centric end time perspective and are looking instead to the Middle East as the epicenter of all Bible prophecy.

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The above headline – “Terror Target Sugar” – provided a front page splash for the Sun in January. The story explained that Muslims were plotting on an on-line forum to attack British Jews over Israel’s actions in Gaza; the paper’s evidence was postings made by a certain “Abu Islam” and brought to the attention of the newspaper by Glen Jenvey, an “anti-terrorist” expert who had previously appeared on BBC Newsnight discussing extremist Muslims and as a pundit for the American Obsession documentary. However, Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads found evidence strongly suggestive that Jenvey himself was Abu Islam, and that he had made the postings which he then “exposed” for the Sun. The story was removed from the internet, and Sugar’s lawyers announced plans to sue.

Since then, a lot has happened – and the most unexpected development has been Jenvey’s own conversion to radical Islam. Jenvey has now confessed his authorship of the “Abu Islam” posts in a message to a moderator at Ummah.com, the forum where this all began. I have had some private correspondence with Jenvey myself, and I can confirm the authenticity of this message:

Brother i’m sorry for the Allan Sugar story plant. I’m retired now from spying on Muslims. I saw a chance to install fear back in Jews who were killing Muslims.I was wrong to use you and your site.If you need any thing to help you in any way in the name of Allah just ask.

But yes the Sun did not know who posted it.I say sorry to you from my heart. if you want show the police and get me arrested. but with the first ramadaam coming i want to clear my past sin’s before i start my fasting and pray.

I would write this on your forum but im blocked out. may Allah reward you for your good work you do.Ameen

Omar Hamza Jenvey

aka

Glen Jenvey

This is extraordinary: Jenvey admits to being “Abu Islam”, and he tells us that his deliberate purpose was to cause Alan Sugar and other Jews to fear fear and distress. And that he was able to get the Sun to oblige with a front page story that spread rapidly across the media.

However, it is also rather weird: Jenvey announced his intention to convert to Islam only in June. This followed a Daily Mail article which mentioned him in passing in a story about football hooligans in Luton (Jenvey was an associate of Paul Ray, the Luton-based anti-Muslim blogger known as “Lionheart”. Ray dismissed the claim that Jenvey was Abu Islam as “propaganda!“, and after the Sun article was published Ray appeared on No Compromise, a right-wing American internet radio programme, to explain that Jenvey was now in hiding from Muslim extremists who had vowed to behead him). Jenvey found the Mail article very offensive, and this was the apparent catalyst for his conversion. He was not a Muslim when he wrote the “Abu Islam” posts – at the time, causing Jews to feal fear was just a means to an end, the end of course being to generate general public fear and disgust against Muslims for targeting Jews.

But there are also some bigger questions: how can the media be manipulated so easily in this way? The reality and dangers of Islamic fundamentalism of course must not be underestimated, but now we have to ask: what other information about radical Islam which has come through the media is of dubious provenance? We know there was a channel by which material “discovered” by Jenvey made its way to the desk of Patrick Mercer MP, the former Conservative Shadow Minister for Homeland Security. Mercer, and those who generated this channel, are now in rather embarrassing situation, it seems to me. Are court cases involving extremists now really in jeopardy, as Jenvey claims is the case as regards Abu Hamza?

And what about the credibility (as if it ever had any) of Obsession, which was distributed as a free DVD to 28 million American homes in 2008, and which featured Jenvey along with the likes of Daniel Pipes, Alan Dershowitz, and Brigitte Gabriel?

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WorldNetDaily strikes yet again:

Obviously, this is meant to imply that something fishy is going on, and it should be seen in the context of the attacks on Obama’s late mother which WND editor Joseph Farah is now focusing his energies on – recently, Farah put forward the idea that Dunham was in fact Obama’s sister, and that she only pretended to be his mother to disguise an adulterous union by Obama’s grandmother. This comes on the tail of various irrelevant insinuations  from Jerome Corsi: that Obama’s parents did not live at their supposed address in Hawaii (unless they lived in a “small cottage behind the house”, he anti-climactically concedes) or that Dunham was enrolled at university at a suspiciously short time after giving birth. It’s easy to see why Farah and Corsi do this – as well as generally promoting the idea that Obama’s family background means that he is somehow uniquely mysterious and questionable, Farah knows that the last thread of hope for the “birther” movement is that Dunham somehow managed to have a false place of birth recorded on Obama’s birth certificate. There’s no evidence that she did this, or even any credible speculation as to how this could have been achieved in theory, but  if Obama’s mother’s character can be blackened it might bring out a few more screaming gun-toting nutjobs at town hall meetings.

In fact, as expected, the headline refers to a posthumous “baptism” performed in Dunham’s name by the Mormon Church, which has a well-known and controversial history of “baptising” dead people without the consent or knowledge of living relatives. Following complaints (especially from Jewish groups), the practice now undertaken more cautiously, and the Church is “investigating” Dunham’s baptism because it may have breached its own guidelines. The original Politico story makes this clear with the headline “Mormon Church investigates baptism of Obama’s mother”.

Various stories on WND that involve Mormonism all identify the Mormon Church as such specifically – so why did Farah scrub the word “Mormon” from his link on WND? The answer is obvious – Farah, a man devoid of shame, decency, or even dignity, has seen a chance to misled a few of his readers into thinking that someone is generating bogus documentation about Dunham’s life. It would therefore follow that documents about Obama might also be bogus, and that there must be some dark secret behind it all; Farah’s redacted headline further hints at an attempt to create a false religious affiliation, making a subtle play for the “Obama is a Muslim” conspiracy theory.

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Just a further thought on the idiotic hysteria over the “evacuation bus” which is being fanned by WorldNetDaily and Janet Porter, and which has been decisively debunked by RightWingWatch. Here’s the video that set it off:

This sums up quite nicely the vacuous vanity which leads so many people to jump on the most absurd conspiracy bandwagons. The driver sees an unusual vehicle. He hasn’t seen such a thing before. But for some reason he doesn’t feel any need to find out what it is or what it’s for – instead, he thinks that he can simply deduce what it must be for by running it through the limited information in his head already; in this case, probably culled from fringe crank websites.  There’s no need for any actual research or to consider the evidence – indeed, any explanation which subsequently comes to light can be dismissed as fodder for the “sheeple”.

Some say that conspiracy theories are attractive because they put an end to uncertainty, but I think there’s another factor: the smug sense of superiority that embracing  a conspiracy can endow. As Candide observes,

“is there not a pleasure…in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties?”

Most people might think that a large ambulance capable of carrying up to 40 people in wheelchairs is a potentially useful thing to have around, and that Americans can be proud to have developed such an item. But that’s because most people are stupid: in fact, it’s a sign that the usurper Kenyan Muslim president of the USA is planning to transport conservatives into special camps on the pretext that they won’t accept a killer vaccine.

And the cheap glow of lazy self-satisfaction doubtless grows brighter with the increasing grandiosity of any conspiracy theory accepted.  Imagine: billions of people think that something is true – be it the Apollo moon landings, Islamic extremist responsibility for 9/11, the theory of evolution, or whatever – but I know better. Does this not mean that I enjoy sharper critical skills than almost everyone else on the planet? Does this not mean that when I come across subject I don’t really understand I can just dismiss most of the serious literature in favour of some crank pseudo-interpretation?

(PS: how exactly is that clown safely driving a car while waving a camera around?)

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One of the earliest topics I blogged about, back in 2004, was opposition to the polio vaccine in nothern Nigeria, where Islamists spread conspiracy theories about how the vaccine either spreads AIDS or causes to genital malformation in boys. But it’s not just developing countries where demagogues use fear and uncertainty around disease and medicine to fan paranoia; here’s Janet Porter, former co-chair of Mike Huckabee’s Faith and Values Coalition, writing at (where else?) WorldNetDaily:

…Austrian investigative reporter Jane Burgermeister, on Wednesday’s Faith2Action radio program, said France is already responding to the Pandemic “Level 6” complete with military-enforced mandatory vaccinations. She added, “They are going to be mandatory throughout Europe.” But that’s not all.

Burgermeister reported:

According to the International Health Regulations of 2005, which has been incorporated into legislation also in The International Partnership on Avian Influenza of 2005 of the USA … the WHO and the U.N. become the controlling agencies of the U.S. in the event of a declared Level 6 Pandemic, and are entitled to control of this country under martial law … under the pretext of fighting a pandemic emergency.

Refusing a WHO-mandated vaccination has been criminalized; police can therefore use deadly force against “criminal suspects” refusing these vaccines.

Perhaps this is a reason why the Pentagon is preparing to “make troops available,” as Fox News reported, to work with FEMA. Fisher said Congress passed post 9/11 regulations, over the objections of the governors, granting the federal government the authority deploy the National Guard.

Last week, I reported about the ads the Army and National Guard are posting for “Internment/Resettlement Specialists” for “confinement,” “control,” “custody,” “supervision” and “counseling individual prisoners in rehabilitative programs.”

…Check out this YouTube video from a guy who spotted a “Mass Evacuation Bus.”

Who gets put on one of these huge government buses without windows?

In fact, as RightWingWatch notes,  the “huge government buses without windows” are in fact large-capacity ambulances for use in emergencies – the “Internment/Resettlement Specialists” conspiracy theory has also been debunked. There are no reports of “military-enforced mandatory vaccinations” being underway in France – in fact, the vaccine is not even being distributed yet. According to Roselyne Bachelot, the French Health Minister a couple of weeks ago:

Le passage au niveau d’alerte 6 engendre la gratuité des médicaments antiviraux, délivrés sur ordonnance. Ce niveau “ouvre une boîte, les outils permettant d’accélérer certaines démarches administratives en termes d’organisation et de réquisition, permettant par exemple une fermeture centralisée de certains établissements”, a-t-on expliqué au ministère de la Santé. Il correspond au Plan national de prévention et de lutte “Pandémie grippale” du gouvernement.

La ministre de la Santé a aussi indiqué mardi que la vaccination contre le virus “sera prise en charge par les systèmes de solidarité nationale”. “Nous avons 94 millions de doses qui sont achetées ferme, nous avons calculé qu’à peu près les trois quarts de nos compatriotes souhaiteraient se faire vacciner, puisque nous ne sommes pas dans une stratégie de vaccination obligatoire pour l’instant”…

In other words, enough vaccine will be available for those “trois quarts de nos compatriotes souhaiteraient se faire vacciner” – the three quarters of the population who want it. There is no “stratégie de vaccination obligatoire pour l’instant” – and if there were one, there is no evidence that it would involve anything as preposterous as the use of “deadly force” against those who refuse, or the handing over of sovereignty to the WHO. The site to which Porter links in relation to this last point begins thus:

There is evidence that shows that there presently exists an international corporate criminal syndicate that, in violation of the RICO Act (18 USC sec 1961-1969), is intent upon embarking upon a cascading event of genocide within the United States, in the UK, and in other countries around the world, most likely in Autumn 2009/Winter2010, using as their weapon an enforced program of toxic vaccines after a deliberate release of a virus to spark a pandemic could immensely profit vaccine companies.

The toxic vaccinations, classified as bioweapons by the US and EU governments’ own regulations.

…WHO has made a unilateral declaration of pandemic level 6 on the basis of a relatively harmless H1 N1 influenza, manipulating data and so misusing a provision designed for a deadly plague, in order to declare a pandemic level 6 and acquire new emergency powers throughout the globe. Cases of H1N1 influenza have been relatively mild, requiring little or no medical intervention. And deaths from the H1N1 virus remain extremely low, at less than one half of one percent of reported cases as of July 6, 2009. There is no sign of the virus mutating to become more deadly.

This is the view of Jane Burgermeister, who alleges a massive criminal conspiracy. Burgermeister runs a website which includes as part of its URL “birdflu666”, where she tells us:

I have filed criminal charges in Austria against Baxter and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology for producing and distributing contaminated bird flu vaccine material this winter, alleging that this was a deliberate act to cause a pandemic, and also to profit from that pandemic.

Furthermore, I present evidence to support the notion that Baxter is a smaller entity operating within a bigger aggregate of entities that belong to an international organised crime group, which I maintain can be identified with the group known informally as “The Illuminati”.

I allege there is evidence the US “Illuminati”-controlled government plans to release the bird flu on the US population in the near future, citing bird flu drills, FEMA camps, mass graves among other facts.

She also rails against other conspiracy theorists she has fallen out with, such as a certain JoAnne Cremer, who describes herself as an “Apostle” and who has a website here (Cremer in turn is a follower of Eric Vonanderseck, who mixes Christian apocalypticism with teachings about UFOs and crop circles and such). Burgermeister complains that  Cremer has “swung over to the WHO/UN side.”  Other opponents are noted on this conspiracy theory website:

Jane was also interviewed by Kerry Cassidy and Bill Ryan of Project Camelot, who are now caught in the crossfire bacause they have also been on friendly terms with and interviewed Dr Bill Deagle, who is currently claiming that Burgermeister is a fraud, and she is responding by taking legal action against him and Jeff Rense, True Ott, Arthur Evangelista and Devvy Kidd for defamation.

For the uninitiated, “Project Camelot” creates interviews with all kinds of conspiracy theorists; Bill Deagle runs “Clay and Iron Ministries“, which is “commissioned by the Most High God to bring the truth of the end of this secular age and prepare His People for spiritually and physically for the Times of Jacobs Trouble.” He tells us that (take a deep breath):

As a prolife messianic Christian physician, I expose the evils of abortion and genetically engineered designer babies, euthanasia – on demand, trans-human gene enhancement cyborg technology, RFID National and Global ID, Scalar Mind Control, GMO genetically modified and irradiated foods, toxins of Mercury and Fluoride, Depleted Uranium DNA Landmines, planned American Hiroshimas, NeoCon Iranian WWIII, World Trade Organization Codex Alimentarius, Illegal Immigration, End of the Age eschatology, classified above-government technologies, DUMB1 Deep Underground Military Bases One, Scalar Sacred Geometric Vortex Technologies, Zero Point Energy, SDI Strategic Defense Initiative ‘Star Wars’, ET “Doctrines of Devils”, apostasy in the church and the coming One World False Church and the weaponized Avian Flu Pandemic from a Biblical, scientific-logical and prophetic viewpoints.

True Ott, meanwhile, runs a health food store in Utah, but he also finds time to expose links between the Mormon Church and “the Knights of Malta, Freemasons, Jesuits, the Bush crime family and other top U.S. government officials.”

Burgermeister, incredibly, has a serious journalistic background; back in March she wrote a remarkably restrained piece on new energy technology in Europe for American Prospect.

Of course, as a player in the Christian Right, Porter (and WND editor Joseph Farah) has no qualms about promoting a conspiracy theory which will make more people hate science and regard Obama as a lethal danger (perhaps tipping some wackjob over the edge); if people die unnecessarily from swine flu as a result, why should they care? However, it should be remembered that despite a weakness for conspiracy theories, American Christianity has not always been so violently and opportunistically opposed to the public good. At the start of the eighteenth century, Cotton Mather and Benjamin Colman (grandfather of Jonathan Edwards) were early champions of innoculation against smallpox, facing down a bitter campaign against it led by a newspaper controlled by James Franklin (brother of Benjamin), which mocked inoculation as a worthless folk remedy.

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