In reviewing once again the "tortuous logic" propagated by the likes of Shoebat, Richardson and Silva, an item which I had at first overlooked in Silva's article jumped out at me. This item is in the beginning of the article where Silva accuses Dr. Reagan of dogmatism, insufficiently examined premises, and arrogance. And what was the object of Silva's unwarranted scorn of his brother in Christ? I'll quote Dr. Reagan verbatim, the last sentence of which I hightlight as it is key and absolutely correct per the Gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded by Matthew:
"Shoebat and Richardson argue that the Roman legions that carried out the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD were composed primarily of Arabs, mainly Syrians and Turks. They therefore conclude that the Antichrist will arise from the Syrians or Turks and will be a Muslim. This is really grasping at straws in the wind! It doesn’t matter whether or not the legions were composed of Australian Aborigines, it was the Roman government that decided to destroy Jerusalem, it was the Roman government that gave the orders, and it was Roman generals who carried out the destruction. Rome was the rod of God’s judgment and it is from the Roman people that the Antichrist will arise."
Rodrigo, these are not arrogant words. On the contrary, Dr Reagan has restated what our Lord Jesus Christ stated in His condemnation of the Scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23. I noted this specific item in my latest article "
All these things be fulfilled..." which I repeat for emphasis in support of Dr. Reagan and to reprove, refute and exhort Rodrigo Silva, et. al, regarding Rome and Daniel's identification of the Antichrist's origin in Chapter 9, verse 26:
The absolute truth of this statement, aside from the fact that it was uttered by our Lord God incarnate, is reinforced in the prophetic truth of what our Lord had said just moments before to the Scribes and the Pharisees. In Matthew 23:1-35 Jesus lays out in detail how all of the offenses committed over many years and the innocent blood spilled from the murder of Abel to their murder of Zacharias will come upon them [Israel] in the following explicit way: “Truly I say to you, all these things shall come upon [tautē genea] this generation.” (Matthew 23:36)
The generation of which Jesus spoke was living in the period from 66 to 136 AD when the Jews' three wars against the Roman Empire occurred, and with each war came more disaster, Diaspora and death upon the Jews, exactly as Jesus had foretold. The first Jewish-Roman war was also known as the Great Revolt which began in 66 AD, saw the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the city and the sanctuary at the hands of three Roman legions as prophesied by Daniel and culminated in the fall of Masada in 73 AD. The second Roman Jewish war was also known as the Kitos war and occurred throughout the Roman Empire between 115-117 AD. The third and final war is known as the Bar Kokhba Revolt from circa 132 to 136 AD. The sum total of years between 66 and 136 AD, consistent with Jesus declaration of “this generation,” was precisely 70 years in duration.
There is no question that the Roman Empire was indeed was "rod of God's judgment upon Israel." This rod of judgement was used by the Lord on three distinct occasions between 66 and 136 AD, the sum total of which amounted to 70 literal years, or according to Psalm 90:10, a generation without strength. It is with great dismay that I must note the error of my bretheren in being ignorant of these explicitly prophetic words of our Messiah.
"Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching." 2 Timothy 4:2 (NKJV)
UPDATED 11 February 2009: Bill Salus has a new entry directly related to this subject on his
PROPHECY DEPOT blog. The entry is titled "IS THE EUROPEAN ANTICHRIST A SATANIC MYTH?" A comment I submitted to Bill's entry is also included in the comments below.
2 February 2009 (UPDATED with additional data 9 February): I was reading the above named article by Rodrigo Silva at
raptureready.com and came away with some items on what I think are inadvertant admissions that count against the argument he is attempting to make, interpretive or historical errors, and one clear faux pas.
By no means is this an all-inclusive review of Silva's article, but just items I'm going to present as insights which may initiate further thought and analysis on this topic.
Silva wrote:
"Now, the fact that the Roman legions that destroyed the city and the Temple (mainly legion X Fretensis) comprised of Syrian soldiers lead us to identify the people of the Antichrist as Syrians, therefore the Antichrist must be a Syrian."
Rodrigo Silva has done those supporting the traditional Antichrist exegesis a superb favor by citing as "fact that the Roman legions destroyed the city and the Temple." This is a key admission. Silva confirms the longstanding view which indentified Legio X Fretensis (LXF hereater) as one of the primary Roman legions involved in the destruction of the city and the sanctuary, and supports a literal fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy concerning the origin of the future Antichrist in declaration of "the prince of the people who will come"
However, Rodrigo Silva's most blatant error is found in his description of the legionaires of LXF as "Syrians." This error is non-exegetical because there are no detailed Biblical texts to interpret regarding the Roman citizen-soldiers in LXF. Secular historical records and sources, such as that of the non-Biblical Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, are all that exist to research the subject.
The sum my research of these sources is as follows.
Gaius Octavius Thurinus was born in Rome, the Roman Republic, on 23 September 63 BC. In September 45 BC, Octavius was adopted by his great-uncle Julius Caesar and immediately took the name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. It was just six months later, in March of 44 BC, that Julius Caesar was assassinated by the Roman senatorial mob. It was during 41-40 BC between the age of 22 and 23-years old that Gaius Octavianus founded the LXF in the region of Calabria and Sicily, Italy. It is this region from which the name Fretensis, meaning 'of the sea straits' was derived according to the great German historian Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903). In 31 BC, after Gaius Octavianus defeated the forces of Marc Antony at the Battle of Actium, the final battle of a Roman civil war, he became Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar.
After Actium LXF was sent to Cremona in northern Italy where many of the Calabrian and Sicilian legionaire veterans were pensioned and discharged. Legio X was then re-staffed by nortern Italians from the colony in Venice. Legio X was then re-deployed into the Balkans and then to its new base at Cyrrhus in extreme northern part ofthe Roman province of Syria.
Cyrrhus had been founded as a Greek colony by Seleucus (Seleucus I Nicator) circa 300 BC, a couple of decades after having receiving his portion of Alexander the Great's empire, exactly as prophecied by Daniel in chapter 11, verses 2-4. Seleucus was one of Alexander's principal Macedonian generals and may have even been his cousin. Cyrrhus is a Macedonian name and had been populated by Macedonians, Greeks and eventually Romans for over 300 years by the time LXF arrived there in garrison.
Cyrrhus was selected as LXF's base of operations for this very reason - it was a distinctly Macedonian/Greek (i.e. European) colony as were many others in the area (i.e. Antioch, Seleucia, Laodicea and Apamea) which were almost exclusively populated by ethnic Greeks, Macedonians and Romans. LXF stayed encamped in Cyrrhus until it was redeployed to Judea which had been an administrative part of the Roman province of Syria since 6 AD. Thus was the core of LXF manned and commanded by European stock, the "people of the prince who is to come."
Silva wrote:
"In fact, the opposite is true. In his work, "The Wars of the Jews," book 6 chapter 4, Josephus who most likely was an eyewitness to these events says that the Roman government DID NOT want the Temple to be destroyed. The Roman soldiers did it out of disobedience to the Roman government simply because they hated the Jews."
No, the opposite is not true by any means. Firstly, there's no 'most likely' about it, Flavius Josephus was present at the siege, taking and destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. In one instance in the run-up to the taking of Jerusalem, Josephus was a direct participant in beseeching his fellow Jews to stand down in their rebellion against Rome. Josephus wasn't able to witness the entirety of that epic struggle with the same battlespace awareness of our modern warfighting observation capabilites within electronic command and control. However, he was able to view specific events at specific locations, and as any good historian was able to seamlessly blend his experiences with the eyewitness accounts of others in different parts of the city over the entire duration of the siege, capture and destruction. I would argue that Flavius Josephus makes this abundantly clear in his narrative.
Secondly, the Roman soldiers hated the Jewish defenders for a couple of reasons. One reason, as Josephus reported, was that the rebellious Jews had routed a small garrisoning contengent of LXF in Jerusalem. This is the same LXF contingent which just 30 years earlier had been in direct contact with the Lord Jesus Christ, had been the enforcers of what little taxation they could extract from Judea and the basis for the Lord's comment to "render unto Caesar (Tiberius) what is Caesar's, and unto God what is His," had whipped and ridiculed a captive Jesus with a crown of thorns, crucified him, and finally, gambled for His garment. All of this was done by the Roman soldiers of the LXF. During all of this activity there is not one mention in God's Word that these Roman soldiers were "Syrians" or "Arabs". They were Roman soldiers, period.
According to Flavius Josephus, the Jewish revolt against Rome began in 66 AD in Caesarea and quickly spread to Jerusalem. The son of the Temple Kohen Ha-Gadol (i.e. the high priest), a man named Eleazar ben Simon, led the rebellious Jewish troops in their driving of the LXF Jerusalem garrison out of the city. This eviction of Roman power from Jerusalem continued in a northward progression and led to the complete annihilation of the newly arrived Roman 12th Legion Fulminata (LXIIF) under the command of Gaius Cestus Gallus by the same Jewish force under Eleazar ben Simon's command at the Battle of Beth Horon. The defeat of LXF, and the annihilation of LXIIF, was a tremendous blow to the pride and prestige of the Roman Empire, and resonated badly all the way to Rome itself, even into Caesar Nero's private chambers. The Romans were uniformly determined to make a strong, violent example of the Jews in their upcoming retribuition campaign; the retaking of Judea would be an example for all other restless provinces to seriously consider prior to embarking on similar acts of folly - particularly those in Egypt who would have been Rome's target had not the Jews rebelled first, humiliated the LXF, destoyed LXIIF and had re-taken not only Jerusalem but virtually all of Judea.
LXF was permitted the 'honor' when it came time after the siege to storm the city. It's position of encampment on the Mount of Olives laid the Temple before them as a shining strategic target they were determined to achieve. Once the fortress of Antonia was breeched and the city taken there was an ensuing rampage of the LXF and individual Roman soldiers identified by name in Josephus' account. The Temple was razed exactly as Jesus had predicted it would be 30 years earlier, and all arguments related to this not being the desire of General Titus are rendered moot.
Silva wrote
"Then did Caesar, both by calling to the soldiers that were fighting, with a loud voice, and by giving a signal to them with his right hand, order them to quench the fire... And now, since Caesar was no way able to restrain the enthusiastic fury of the soldiers...And thus was the holy house burnt down, without Caesar's approbation... It is pretty clear that Titus and Caesar as the rulers of the Roman government did not want to Temple to be destroyed and actually gave the order to stop the fire so the Temple would not be destroyed."
Rodrigo Silva has made here a silly faux pas in that he has promoted General Titus Flavuius Vespasianus to Caesar, a postition held his father, Titus Flavius Caesar Vespasianus Augustus, who was in Rome at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the 2nd Temple. Titus would not become Emperor of Rome until 79 AD upon the death of his father. What Rodrigo Silva does not realize in his reading of Josephus is that Josephus was actually quoting General Titus, who would become Caesar at a point some 9 full years into the future, in 79 AD, and upon the death of his father Caesar Vespasian Augustus. The obvious conclusion is that Josephus, or others unknown, wrote or edited this account of the Jerusalem siege and Temple destruction at a point no earlier than 79 AD when General Titus Flavius Vespasianus succeeded to the Roman throne after the death of his father and became Caesar himself. Thus the references to words spoken by "Caesar" in Josephus account were actually words spoken by Titus, but attributed to him with the honorific titile of "Caesar."
Silva wrote:
"How could Paul having been born in Tarsus in Asia Minor be a Roman? The answer is simple. When the Roman Empire conquered a region, it established Roman law and required that from that time on, some privileged ones and those who served for a number of years be considered Roman citizens."
Incorrect. Saul of Tarsus (later Paul the Apostle) was born to his father, an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, in the city of Tarsus, Roman province of Cilicia. Paul the Apostle did not directly make the claim of Roman citizenship, but it is recorded that he made this citizenship claim by the author of Acts 21 and 22. In this the Acts author states that the Roman Tribune informed Paul that he had paid a great sum to obtain his Roman citzenship (*), to which Paul replied that he was a natural born Roman citizen. This very strongly implies that Paul's citizenship was (a) due to his father's having purchased it, or (b) that the family has previously rendered outstanding service to Rome and were awarded their citizenship, or (c) the family was actually a part of the Herodian family descended from Antipater (Herod the Great's father).
(*) This is also important. Only Roman citizens served in the Legions of Rome. The Auxilia formations were not Roman citizens. This detail goes a long way in refuting the claims of those who maintain a nationality of "Syrian" or "Arab" for the soldiers of the LXF. Had any "Syrians" or "Arabs" been members of the LXF they would also of necessity had to have purchased their Roman citizenships as did the Tribune who questioned Paul. Therefore they would be, by definition, Romans.
SOURCES:
NOTE: Cyrrhus' ruins lie 14 km northwest near modern-day Kilis, Turkey which is on the present-day Syrian border.
