A DEFINITIVE AND COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY GNOSTIC AND PATRISTIC PART 2

Chapter 2 A HISTORY OF THE EARLY YEARS OF ROMAN INFLUENCE ON ISRAELITE CULTURE

Roman rule of the independent Israelite nation starts brutally, with priests slain at the altar of the Temple. For the next two decades the Hasmonaean family Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II] as King and Chief Priest of the independent Israelite nation try to lead a new rebellion, fired by the same sense of outrage as prompted their ancestors a century earlier against, the Syrians.

During the last decades of the second century B.C., in a war between the Hasmonean brothers [Hyrcanus II as King and Aristobulus II as Chief Priest] on one side and Cæsar and Pompey on the other. Rome is eventually benefited by a splintered Israelite opposition between Hyrcanus II and his brother Aristobulus II for the position of King of Israel. During the revolt, between [Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II] the Jewish community in Rome grew very rapidly. As the Jews who were, taken to Rome as prisoners were, either ransomed by their Jewish brothers living in Rome or set free by their Roman masters, who found their peculiar custom obnoxious. Those Jews ransomed or set free settled as traders on the right bank of the Tiber, and thus originated the Jewish quarter in Rome

As Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II] are fighting each other for sole control of Israel. In 63 B. C., Hyrcanus II calls upon the Roman General Pompey for military support in his war with his brother…