Random Politics & Religion #00

It can simply be in opposition to a political goal and still be terrorism. It doesn't even have to be a generally accepted or even known political goal. It's the tactics that make it terrorism, not the goals.

Nero wasn't even born when Jesus was put to death for sedition and Nero also brutally killed all kinds of people.

The feeding of Christians to lions is widely overstated. There's some evidence it happened more than once in the outer territories over the course of a few centuries, but it's not like it was a weekly event in Rome.

Any other long since debunked persecutions you'd like to throw out before we get into the 1200 years of Christians murdering everyone in their path?

The Romans sure thought it was political.

Right, but there has to be some type of political goal or an ideology in effect behind any type systematic violence to call that violence terrorism. You kept calling terrorism an ideology in itself (no ideology, or terrorism is the ideology) and telling me that I was wrong using the widely accepted definition. I'm trying to figure out what you are talking about.

Sorry you've absolutely lost me here. Can you explain the quote that I answered to then. When I gave reasons the Romans could of taken Christianity politically.

The Romans thought Jesus's message was political, and it absolutely was. They put him to death for sedition. And, it wasn't some witch hunt because they were "pegan". He was actively subverting the government.

Romans killed Jesus because of political pressure from the Jews and their beliefs on Jesus.
Netherless we are talking about Christianity which is based on the belief that Jesus died and was resurrected. How can Romans believe Christianity is political before it was even born?

Terrorism as an ideology is just to instill fear.

ideology (ˌaɪdɪˈɒlədʒɪ )
Definitions
noun (plural) -gies
a body of ideas that reflects the beliefs and interests of a nation, political system, etc and underlies political action

Uh, are you talking about the actual church organization or just the message of Jesus. You said that Jesus's message wasn't political, which it most certainly was viewed as political by the government that put him to death for it.

One other thing, the story of the Jews pushing to have Jesus killed and Pilot not wanting to and the underlying blasphemy is not documented anywhere besides the Christian story. Romans kept quite good records for the time and make no mention of Jesus being wanted or tried for blasphemy, only sedition, and not with any particular notoriety.

The U.S. Air Force has fired off more than 20,000 missiles and bombs since the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS began 15 months ago, according to the Air Force, leading to depleted munitions stockpiles and calls to ramp up funding and weapons production.

As the U.S. ramps up its campaign against the Islamist terror group in Iraq and Syria, the Air Force is now "expending munitions faster than we can replenish them," Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh said in a statement.

"B-1s have dropped bombs in record numbers. F-15Es are in the fight because they are able to employ a wide range of weapons and do so with great flexibility. We need the funding in place to ensure we're prepared for the long fight," Welsh said in the statement. "This is a critical need."

The bombing campaign has left the U.S. Air Force with what an Air Force official described as munitions depot stocks "below our desired objective."

The official told CNN that the Air Force has requested additional funding for Hellfire missiles and is developing plans to ramp up weapons production to replenish its stocks more quickly. But replenishing that stock can take "up to four years from time of expenditure to asset resupply," the official said.

"The precision today's wars requires demands the right equipment and capability to achieve desired effects. We need to ensure the necessary funding is in place to not only execute today's wars, but also tomorrow's challenges," the official said.

The Air Force's publication of the number of missiles and bombs dropped comes amid continued criticism from Republicans -- in particular those running for president -- who insist the Obama administration has been too timid in the fight against ISIS, with many on the right calling for the U.S. to loosen the rules of engagement and lead a more aggressive fight against the militant group.

American pilots have fired weapons in less than half of the nearly 18,000 sorties they have in the first 10 months of 2015, according the latest figures available.

That's up from 2014, when pilots fired their weapons just one third of the time.

The case against Caiaphas

Introduction

No trial or execution in history has had such a momentous outcome as that of Jesus in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, 2000 years ago.

But was it an execution or a judicial murder; and who was responsible?

The story begins when the Galilean rebel Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, deliberately fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah. He's mobbed by an adoring crowd.

The next day Jesus raids the Temple, the heart of the Jewish religion, and attacks money-changers for defiling a holy place.

The leaders of the Jewish establishment realise that he threatens their power, and so do the Romans, who fear that Jesus has the charisma to lead a guerrilla uprising against Imperial Rome.

Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, tried by Caiaphas and then by the Roman Governor. He's sentenced to death and executed.

Caiaphas

Caiaphas Caiaphas had a privileged position
Caiaphas was a supreme political operator and one of the most influential men in Jerusalem. He'd already survived 18 years as High Priest of the Temple (most High Priests only lasted 4), and had built a strong alliance with the occupying Roman power.

Caiaphas knew everybody who mattered. He was the de-facto ruler of the worldwide Jewish community at that time, and he planned to keep it that way.

The case against Caiaphas is that he arrested Jesus, tried him in a kangaroo court and convicted him on a religious charge that carried the death penalty.

What were Caiaphas' motives?

Jesus threatened Caiaphas's authority. Caiaphas could not afford to allow any upstart preacher to get away with challenging his authority; especially not at Passover time. This was the biggest Jewish festival and scholars estimate that around two and half million Jews would have been in Jerusalem to take part. Caiaphas did not want to lose face.

Jesus threatened Caiaphas' relationship with Rome

Caiaphas' power base was the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of Jews which controlled civil and religious law. It had 71 members, mostly chief priests, and Caiaphas presided over its deliberations.

It was hard work but it had big rewards - modern archaeologists have discovered that Caiaphas and his associates lived lives of luxury with large and lavishly decorated houses.

But, of course, the Sanhedrin only ruled because the Romans allowed them to and the way to keep the Romans happy was to maintain order in society. Caiaphas himself was a Roman appointment, so he needed to keep cosy with the governor, Pilate, if he wanted to stay in power and preserve his luxurious way of life.

So if Jesus was making trouble, he was making trouble for both Caiaphas and Pilate - and trouble for Pilate was still trouble for Caiaphas.

Jesus was undoubtedly a threat; the public liked him, indeed they may have been paying more attention to Jesus than to the priests, and the public were listening to his condemnation of what he saw as wrong in the religious establishment.

Jesus threatened the Temple's income

Jesus was also threatening a useful source of income for the Temple priests.

The Temple apparatus brought in huge revenues for simple matters like purification and the forgiveness of sins. Archaeologists have discovered 150 mikvehs around the Temple. Mikvehs are ritual baths which Jews use in order to purify themselves before any act of worship.

Jewish people could only enter the Temple if they were ritually pure and almost everyone arriving in Jerusalem for Passover was deemed ritually unclean. They had to use a mikveh before they could fulfil their religious obligations. The priests controlled the mikvehs and charged people to use them.

There were so many regulations requiring ritual purification that control of the mikvehs was a way of making money.

Jesus thought the whole thing was rubbish. He taught that the elaborate purity rituals were unnecessary - the Kingdom of God was available to everyone and they didn't have to go through these rituals or pay the money in order to get there.

Bad news for the Temple apparatchiks. A quick way to raise a revolt was to tell people that they were being ripped off. This could cause a riot in the Temple if it got out of hand.

But there was worse. Jesus stormed into the Temple and accused the moneychangers and sacrificial dove sellers of extortion and of turning the Temple into a den of thieves.

The ultimate challenge to any religious leaders: What you are doing is against God and God will destroy you and cleanse the whole religious apparatus. And God, as every Jew knew, had the power to do it - he'd demonstrated that many times before.

Jesus was doing this in the Temple, in front of the crowds and without any fear or respect for Caiaphas and his staff.

Caiaphas had to do something to show that he was still boss, and he had to do it quickly; Jesus was on a roll, and who knew what he was going to do next.

What Caiaphas did

You don't get to stay High Priest without being able to take the tough decisions and follow them through.

Caiaphas decided Jesus had to be stopped and he called a meeting of the chief priests. Matthew's Gospel tells us that Caiaphas told them that Jesus had to be killed.

The priests weren't at all sure about this. If Jesus was killed, there might be riots. But Caiaphas got his decision and put it into effect at once.

The Temple guards arrested Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane that night and he was put on trial before the High Court.

We might disapprove of some of the self-interested motives behind Caiaphas' actions: protecting his income and his power-base; but it doesn't amount to a crime of any sort.

Jesus was causing trouble in Jerusalem. He was a known rebel and he was endangering public peace at a time when large and volatile crowds were thronging the city. It was entirely reasonable to arrest him.

The rigged trial

At this point Caiaphas crossed to the wrong side of the law. He rigged the trial.

Caiaphas took on the usually incompatible roles of chief judge and prosecuting lawyer.

Scholars know the rules that applied to Jewish trials at that period and the trial of Jesus broke many of those rules:

It was at night - Jewish trials had to take place during the day
It took place on a feast day - this was not allowed
It took place in Caiaphas's house - it should have been conducted in the council chamber
The trial went wrong for Caiaphas. He needed to prove that Jesus had threatened to destroy the Temple, which would have been both treason and an offence against God. But the witnesses couldn't agree on what Jesus had said. So that charge failed.

Caiaphas decided to see if he could induce Jesus to utter blasphemy.

He asked Jesus, point blank, "Are you the Son of God, the Son of the Blessed? Are you The Messiah?"

The Gospels vary a little, and only in Mark's account does Jesus answer that he is.

It's enough. Caiaphas announces that Jesus has spoken blasphemy. The rest of the Court agree. Jesus deserves the death sentence.

Just one problem; the court didn't have the power to execute people. And that's where the Romans come into the story.

Actually, there are two problems: blasphemy against the God of Jews was not a crime under Roman Law, and unless Caiaphas could think of something better, it might not be enough to persuade the Romans to execute Jesus.

Caiaphas's fate

Caiaphas was removed from office soon after the death of Jesus and lived quietly on his farm near Galilee.

Top

The case against Pontius Pilate

Pontius Pilate

Pontius Pilate Why did Pilate execute Jesus when he believed him to be innocent?
Pilate was the Governor of Judea, a province of the Roman Empire. He had 6,000 crack troops with him and 30,000 more on call in nearby Syria.

Pilate was effectively a dictator; so long as he kept Rome happy, he had absolute power, including power of life and death.

The case against Pilate is that he found Jesus not guilty, but had him executed in order to keep the peace.

The two Pilates

We don't know what Pilate was like. The Bible story paints him as a weak but innocent man who didn't want to execute a man he believed innocent, but who gave in to political pressure.

Some historians disagree. Philo, writing at the time, said that Pilate was calculating, cruel and brutal. He probably had a typical Roman's disdain for any other culture, thinking the Jews not nearly as civilised as the Romans.

Pilate was well known for having executed prisoners even without trial, so it would not be out of character for him to be responsible for killing Jesus.

What were Pilate's motives?

Pilate was desperate to keep the peace. His career in the Roman Empire depended on his running the province smoothly and efficiently.

He had 6,000 soldiers on hand to keep the peace in a city bulging with 2.5 million Jews. The religious authorities, whose cooperation he needed for a quiet life, wanted him to execute Jesus and there was an angry mob baying for Jesus' blood.

To release Jesus would have been likely to cause a riot; Pilate could have lost control of the city, and possibly the province.

Pilate sacrificed Jesus to preserve Roman rule and his own career.

Passover

No matter how little he thought of the people of Judea, Pilate could not get out of attending the major festival of Passover.

The message of Passover was one that was certain to unsettle anyone who was trying to keep the Jewish people under their thumb, for it celebrated the time when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt into the Holy Land, shaking off foreign oppression.

So it's no accident that nearly all of the riots that we hear about in the first century took place at Passover.

Pilate would have been anxious about any possibility of trouble breaking out, particularly trouble near the Temple, the heart of the Jewish community.

And because trouble in that sort of situation is contagious, Pilate knew that he would have to be ruthless in stamping out any sort of disorder.

The Romans wouldn't have been able to rule without an extensive network of spies, so it's certain that Pilate knew all about Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem, his preaching and the havoc he'd caused in the Temple.

But Pilate was probably unprepared for the problem that Caiaphas presented him with when he brought Jesus before him.

A trial for treason

Instead of leading with the conviction for blasphemy, Caiaphas claimed that Jesus was guilty of sedition.

Jesus, Caiaphas said, thought himself, or his followers thought, or people said that he was the King of the Jews. This was a capital crime against Rome and Pilate had to deal with it whether he wanted to or not.

The rumour raced round Jerusalem: Jesus of Nazareth was on trial for his life.

Crowds began to gather, some of them probably a mob organised by the Temple authorities; just what a Roman governor hoping for a peaceful Passover did not want.

Pilate asked Jesus if he was calling himself King of the Jews. Jesus made little or no reply.

Pilate read the reports that he had from his officials and saw that it was quite clear that Jesus wasn't leading a military revolution. There was simply no evidence against Jesus.

Pilate said, 'this man is innocent'.

The crowd was angered by the verdict and began to shout for Jesus to be crucified.

Pilate faced a dilemma: If he released Jesus there might be serious riots. But the alternative was to execute an innocent man.

Pilate wanted a way out (he didn't need one - it was well within his authority to execute people on flimsy evidence) and he tried a masterstroke of lateral thinking.

There was a Passover amnesty, which allowed the Roman governor to release a prisoner on the festival. Pilate offered the crowd a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, a convicted murderer.

The crowd shouted for Barabbas to be released.

There was no way out for Pilate, but he made a last attempt at saving his own reputation.

Pilate declared that Jesus was innocent and condemned him to death by crucifixion. Then he symbolically washed his hands in front of the crowd, telling them he was innocent of Jesus' blood.

Pilate's fate

Pilate was recalled to Rome to be tried for his brutal treatment of Jews, but the Emperor Tiberius died, and Pilate was never brought to trial. He is thought to have committed suicide in 37 AD - not long after the crucifixion.

There is a Christian tradition that Pilate and his wife eventually converted to Christianity.

Top

One other thing, the story of the Jews pushing to have Jesus killed and Pilot not wanting to and the underlying blasphemy is not documented anywhere besides the Christian story. Romans kept quite good records for the time and make no mention of Jesus being wanted or tried for blasphemy, only sedition, and not with any particular notoriety.

Can you link any sources to back up your claim?

You pulled this card before. The name Pilate (not Pilot) as an actual historical figure is only documented in one place, on a stone found in the 1960s. If the Roman record keepers only have one remaining mention of Pontius Pilate, why do you think there'd be a thorough record of some meddling Jew's crimes from the same era?

Yeah terrorism isn't an ideology on it own.

a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

probably

Pilot/Pilate is irrelevant, there isn't any evidence he ever lived. Have you not done any research on that tablet? The tablet itself is consistent with the time period shortly after the time of Jesus, but the inscription of the name was not done by the same mason who did the rest of it and not at the same time, either. All 3 of the analysis done on it came to the same conclusion: Pilate was added later.

So, there's still no evidence he was even real, and there are literally no records from the time he was said to be the governor of the area that mention him, yet they mention all kinds of other people.

Yeah, and how many important people from that era do we know absolutely nothing about because no surviving records mention their existence? How many important people have only one mention? How do you know that Pilate's case is special aside from your blanket statement about Roman record keeping?

Citation? I can't find anything in Google searches to back that up.

If you're going to claim he was real and directly involved in the trial and execution of Jesus, you'd better have more than a piece of stone that was inscribed before he supposedly ruled the area and re-purposed 4 centuries later. It's also inscribed in latin, not any of the 3 languages that would have actually be used in the area at the time.

I found information on a book that details 441 inscriptions in both Latin and Greek from excavations of Ceasarea Maritima from the first century to seventh century A.D., with most of the earlier inscriptions being in Latin. Yeah, your claim is looking rather rocky.

Islamic State said on Saturday that the married couple who killed 14 people in a mass shooting in California which U.S. authorities are investigating as an act of terrorism were its followers.

The militant group made the statement in an online radio broadcast three days after U.S.-born Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife Tashfeen Malik, 29, from Pakistan, attacked a holiday party for civil servants in San Bernardino, about 60 miles (100 km) east of Los Angeles.

The pair, who had left their six-month-old baby daughter with relatives, were killed two hours later in a shootout with police.

Officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is leading the probe into the Dec. 2 shooting, said Malik and her husband appeared to have been inspired by foreign militant groups, but that there was no sign they had worked with any of them or that Islamic State even knew who they were.

If the mass shooting proves to have been the work of people inspired by Islamist militants, it would mark the deadliest such attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

U.S. President Barack Obama's team said on Saturday it has not yet found evidence that the couple was part of an organized group or broader terrorist cell.

There were, however, "several pieces" of information that "point to the perpetrators being radicalized to violence," the White House said in a statement.

If that turned out to be the case, Obama said in a radio address, "it would underscore a threat we've been focused on for years, the danger of people succumbing to violent extremist ideologies."

Islamic State also claimed responsibility for a Nov. 13 series of attacks in Paris in which gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people.

"Two followers of Islamic State attacked several days ago a center in San Bernardino in California," the group's daily online radio broadcast al-Bayan said on Saturday.

An English-language version of the broadcast released later called the attackers "soldiers" of Islamic State, rather than "followers" as in the original Arabic. It was unclear if the English version was claiming them as members, or why there was an inconsistency.

The broadcast came a day after Facebook confirmed that comments praising Islamic State were posted around the time of the mass shooting to an account on the social media website established by Malik under an alias.

However, it was uncertain whether the comments were posted by Malik herself or someone with access to her page.

The carnage marked the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since the Newtown school massacre in 2012.

Hours after the attack, US-born Farook and Malik died in a firefight with police, leaving investigators to comb through their belongings to try to determine a motive.

"We have uncovered evidence that has led us to learn of extensive planning," David Bowdich, the assistant FBI director in charge of the Los Angeles office, told reporters.

- 'Mind-boggling' -

"There's a number of pieces of evidence that has essentially pushed us off the cliff to say we are now investigating this as an act of terrorism," he said, adding that the couple had attempted to destroy their digital fingerprints.

Bowdich said investigators were examining a Facebook posting in which Malik is believed to have pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made around the time of the attack.

The massacre, if proven to be terror-related, would be the deadliest such assault on American soil since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Julias ceaser didn't exist

Wow so the multiple cross referenced, multi sourced accounts that are within the same or 1 generation of the events are all hearsay started by people who died for beliefs they knew to be a lie. Lots of people could of come out and said it was a lie. None did.

Sorces included Jewish, pagan, Roman, Greek sorces, 3 of which hated Jesus and would rather forget him but recorded damaging hearsay.
Archaeology gives more evidence but that is hearsay too.

On this thinking we can say Julius Ceaser didn't exist and Alexander the great didn't exist and pretty much anything over a certain period of time.

Pretty much any historic scholar would laugh at that.

Except they don't laugh at it. The only scholarly historians that think it's settled are ones who started at the conclusion. Again, there is no evidence outside the Christian story that any of the events happened that way. There's just enough with it to call it plausible.

Jesus, assuming he existed (which I do) was killed for a political crime, not a religious one. His message was viewed, at least by the Romans, as a political one. The only reason there is a distinction is because you're trying to argue that Mohammed's message was political or that Muslim activists are political and Christians' aren't. It's nonsense. Sure, Christians aren't blowing up shopping malls, but neither are Muslims, the people doing it are political fundamentalists hiding behind interpretations of Islam, just like the "Christians" shooting up abortion clinics.

Bukhari Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24:

Narrated Ibn 'Umar:

Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a that, then they save their lives an property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah."

Quote:
Sura 9:29-33 “Make war upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given as believe not in God, or in the last day, and who forbid not that which God and His Apostle have forbidden, and who profess not the profession of the truth, until they pay tribute out of hand, and they be humbled.”

Well, that is correct.

My claim? The only inscriptions I've seen mentioned from the period and region are in Greek, but it doesn't really matter, since you found information about a book.

Jesus, assuming he existed (which I do) was killed for a political crime, not a religious one. His message was viewed, at least by the Romans, as a political one.

Well your entitled to your opinion but all the sorces refute you. All you have is your bias opinion.
And I'll repost this. Tell me how it's been misinterpreted.


or sharia law does it not exist?
How is that not political?