BC10-AD9 Judea Province Ruled by Syria

In this twenty year period from 10BC-AD9 the Celts invade Greece and settle in Turkey about 3 BC (becoming the Galatians); examinations were introduced for public office in China about 6 (AD); trouble broke out in Judea with the Jews; the estimated world population in the year 1 (AD) was about 255,000,000; and Octavian, the Roman Emperor Augustus (pictured) ruled.

The Romans held a strict policy of rule through client kings and had, essentially, come to rule Judea by accident. First through Pompey's establishment of the province of Syria in 64 BC, and second through bad government by the Jews themselves.

When the Jewish dynasty that ruled after the Seleucids came to an end long before in 37BC, a local Jewish general named Herod took over the throne and when Egypt fell to the Romans in 31BC he transferred allegiance to the Romans and survived until 4BC when his kingdom was divided among his three sons.

The son who ruled the Jerusalem area was a failure, and when he was deposed in 6AD the area was organized as the province of Judea under the oversight of the governor of Syria.

From then on, the Jews became hateful towards the Romans who by necessity had to live among them in order to keep peace between them.

The Jews found it impossible to accept foreign rule because their sense of nationhood was based upon a special relationship with their god - laid out in the books of the Hebrew bible - which manifested in the secular success of their state over all enemies, in particular the idea that a "messiah" would free them from oppressors.

The Roman government accommodated local religious sensibilities -- especially concerning Jerusalem and its great Temple to the Jewish god around which all cult practice was centered -- but since the Jews themselves were divided it was difficult not to give offence.

The Romans were particularly upset because they had assisted the Jews in their revolt against the Seleucid dynasty last century and expected gratitude not resentment.

did islam prolong paganism in england?

Rome's grand plans for England in 597 - mass conversion to Christianity under rule of the Roman Pope - did not eventuate due to something entirely unexpected. The unexpected event was, of course, the birth in 622 of the new Moslem religion in the Middle East.

By 638, the Moslem Arabs had conquered Jerusalem and their impending conquest of Spain (achieved by 715) had so threatened Rome that many Roman priests fled to Ireland - an incredibly poor and backward country that had been thoroughly Christianized by St. Patrick 200 years before - and as a result of this Ireland, not England, became the cradle of western civilization and the safe haven for Roman Christianity.

Having been under Roman rule from 54BC to 407AD, England in 638 was a far more civilized country than Ireland. Also, as a result of invasions between 410-442 by fierce north European tribes - the Jutes, Angles and Saxons - England in 638 also had a far more polyglot ethnic mix than Ireland's Celts. England, of course, had its ancient Britons and Celts, but it now included Jutes, Angles and Saxons - most of whom, in 638, were fiercely Pagan - and after 787 it also included the Danes (who arrived on raids from north Europe and eventually settled in England).

Although Christianity eventually filtered through to England - and the knights of England made history in the Crusades against the Moslem Arabs - Christianity was not only never as strong in England as it was in Ireland but it was also never as Roman influenced as it was in Ireland. This is also true of the north European countries from whence a large part of both English ethnicity and the Protestant movement - which took hold in the 1500s, leading to the establishment of the Anglican Church in 1563 - is derived.

England did not reject Christianity, but it most certainly came to reject Roman rule of the new religion, especially the Pope's refusal to allow the English language to supplant Latin in services and literature.

The particular ethnicity of England - and its civilized state by 638 - may have mitigated against Roman Catholicism ever taking 100% control of England as it did in Ireland, but the threat to Rome of the Moslem Arabs that turned its attention away from England towards Ireland most definitely prolonged paganism in England and changed the course of English history.