Chapter 3 Jerusalem

But remember, when I refer to certain historical events, I am not writing a history book, I am not trying to find out the truth of history (according to the most reliable historical sources), I am only trying to state the Jewish people's mind Yes, they believe the facts. We know that there is a big gap between "true facts" and "what people believe are true facts."The history books of each country contain a wealth of historical sources that their own people firmly believe in, but when you go across the border and read the history of neighboring countries, the events and conclusions are very different, and the children who read these books do not go Doubt the veracity of these accounts.

Of course there may be some historian, polymath, or some eccentric who will read all the records, and he may find something close to the "absolute truth", but if he wants to live a quiet life, he'd better Still keep silent. The Jews are no different from the rest of the world. The Jews of 3,000 years ago, the Jews of 2,000 years ago, and the Jews of today are ordinary people just like you and me.They are neither better (as they claim to be) nor worse (as their enemies often say), and they have some unique advantages and many common disadvantages.So much has been said about the Jews, in praise, in disparagement, and in ambiguity, that it is difficult to come to an accurate judgment on their history.

The Jews had their own chronicles of their adventures among the Egyptians, Canaanites, and Babylonians.But when we try to judge its historical value, we run into the same difficulty. Latecomers are generally unwelcome.During the long wandering life of the Jews, whenever they went to a region, they were always foreigners.The inhabitants of the Nile valley, the valley of Palestine, and the banks of the Euphrates did not welcome them with open arms.Instead they said, "Our children have no place to live, let them go somewhere else." And a conflict arose. When Jewish historians look back on this period of history, they always want to glorify their ancestors, and of course we do the same today.We praise the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts, and describe the horrors of those poor whites who were early targets for the savages, but never the fate of the red races, the North American Indians, who later became cruel musketeers for the white man.

If you respect history and write from the perspective of Indians, it may be more moving to read.But it is a pity that the Indians have withdrawn from the stage of history. For many centuries, the Old Testament was the only history book about ancient Asia that our ancestors could understand.But a hundred years ago, people learned to recognize hieroglyphs in ancient Egypt.Fifty years ago, people read the mysterious Babylonian cuneiform script.We find that a completely different story is being told here than the Jewish ones. We finally see that they committed the common mistake of patriotic historians, distorting the facts to glorify their nation.

But I reiterate that this book has no such drawbacks. I am not writing the history of the Jews, I am not going to defend them nor attack their motives.I'm just repeating what they say about ancient Asian and African history.I don't need to study the profound works of historians, but a pocket Bible for a few cents will provide me with enough information. If you were talking to a first-century Jew and you mentioned the word "Bible," he wouldn't know what you were talking about.The term "Bible" is relatively new, coined in the fourth century by John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople.

Over a period of about a thousand years, the volume of this collection continued to increase, and with a few exceptions, most of it was written in Hebrew.But by the time Jesus was born, Hebrew had fallen out of vogue, replaced by Aramaic (simpler and familiar to common people), and some of the prophetic revelations in the Old Testament were written in Aramaic .But please don't ask me "when was the Bible written" because I don't know. Every small Jewish village, every small Jewish temple has some relevant records, and devout elders tirelessly recorded them on animal skins or Egyptian grass coins.

By the eighth century BC, the Jewish people settled in Palestine, and there are more and more such records.From the third century BC to the first century BC, these records were translated into Greek and spread to Europe.Later, it was translated into various languages ​​in the world. As for the New Testament, its history is simple.In the two or three centuries after Christ's death, the believers who followed the humble carpenter of Nazareth (that is, Jesus) were under the persecution of the Roman authorities. The doctrine of forgiveness was a threat, so early Christians couldn't walk into a bookstore and say, "Give me a copy of Christ and Acts." They could only pass around hand-copied pamphlets.Thousands of pamphlets were copied so many times that it was not clear what was true.

Later, the church won, and the persecuted Christians became the rulers of the Roman Empire. The first thing they had to do was to eliminate the confusion in the religious books caused by the three hundred years of persecution.The leaders of the church assembled some scholars, read all the popular editions, and abolished most of them, except for a few Gospels and a few letters of believers. Then, after hundreds of years of controversy, many religious conferences were held in Rome and Carthage. It was not until seven hundred years after the death of Christ that the Eastern and Western churches made it clear that the current "New Testament" should be used.Since then, the original Greek text has been translated into countless other languages, but the content has not changed much.