Fields of Blood

by Karen Armstrong

  117. Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, NJ, 1993), p. 19.

  118. Cyrus Cylinder 18. Quotations from the Cyrus Cylinder are taken from the translation by Irving L. Finkel in John Curtis, The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia: A New Beginning for the Middle East (London, 2013), p. 42.

  119. Bruce Lincoln, Religion, Empire, and Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a Postscript on Abu Graib (Chicago and London, 2007), pp. 36–40.

  120. Cyrus Cylinder 12, 15, 17, p. 42. Shuanna is another name for Babylon.

  121. Isaiah 45:1.

  122. Isaiah 45:1, 2, 4.

  123. Isaiah 40:4–5.

  124. Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, trans. William Whiston (Marston Gale, UK, n.d.), 11.8.

  125. Cyrus Cylinder 16, p. 42.

  126. Cyrus Cylinder 28–30, p. 43.

  127. Lincoln, Religion, Empire, and Torture, p. ix.

  128. Ibid., pp. 16, 95.

  129. Bruce Lincoln, “The Role of Religion in Achaemenian Imperialism,” in Nicole Brisch, ed., Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond (Chicago, 2008), p. 223.

  130. Clarisse Herrenschmidt, “Désignations de l’empire et concepts politiques de Darius Ier d’après inscriptions en vieux perse,” Studia Iranica 5 (1976); Marijan Molé, Culte, mythe, et cosmologie dans l’Iran ancien (Paris, 1963).

  131. Darius, First Inscription at Naqsh-i Rustum (DNa) 1, cited in Lincoln, Religion, Empire, and Torture, p. 52.

  132. Ibid., pp. 55–56.

  133. DNa 4, cited ibid., p. 71.

  134.Darius, Fourth Inscription at Persepolis, cited ibid., p. 10.

  135. Ibid., pp. 26–28.

  136. Ibid., pp. 73–81; Darius, Inscription 19 at Susa, cited ibid., p. 73.

  137. Cross, Canaanite Myth, pp. 293–323; Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford and New York, 1999); Douglas, In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers (Oxford and New York, 2001), pp. 58–100; Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible, pp. 78–89, 97–99, 132–53.

  138. Leviticus 25.

  139. Leviticus 19:34.

  140. Douglas, Leviticus as Literature, pp. 42–44.

  141. Genesis 32:33.

  142. Numbers 20:14.

  143. Genesis 1:31.

  144. Nehemiah 4:11–12.

  145. Numbers 31.

  146. Numbers 31:19–20.

  147. 2 Chronicles 28:10–11.

  148. 2 Chronicles 28:15.

  149. Isaiah 46:1.

  150. Zechariah 14:12.

  151. Zechariah 14:16. See also Micah 4:1–5, 5; Haggai 1:6–9.

  152. Isaiah 60:1–10.

  153. Isaiah 60:11–14.

  5 ♦ JESUS: NOT OF THIS WORLD?

  1. Luke 2:1.

  2. Robert L. O’Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression (New York and Oxford, 1989), p. 81.

  3. E. N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore, 1976), pp. 25–26, 41–42, 46–47; Susan P. Mattern, Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate (Berkeley, CA, 1999), pp. xii, 222.

  4. O’Connell, Arms and Men, pp. 69–81; John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London and New York, 1993), pp. 263–71.

  5. W. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome (Oxford, 1979), pp. 56, 51.

  6. Tacitus, Agricola, 30, Loeb Classical Library translation.

  7. Harris, War and Imperialism, p. 51.

  8. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period, trans. John Bowden, 2 vols. (London, 1974), 1:294–300; Elias J. Bickerman, From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees (New York, 1962), pp. 286–89; The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1990), pp. 294–96; Reuven Firestone, Holy War in Judaism: The Rise and Fall of a Controversial Idea (Oxford and New York, 2012), pp. 26–40.

  9. Daniel 10–12.

  10. Daniel 7:13–14.

  11. Richard A. Horsley, “The Historical Context of Q,” in Richard A. Horsley and Jonathan A. Draper, eds., Whoever Hears You Hears Me: Prophets, Performance, and Tradition in Q (Harrisburg, PA, 1999), pp. 51–54.

  12. Gerhard E. Lenski, Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 1966), pp. 243–48.

  13. John H. Kautsky, The Politics of Aristocratic Empires, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ, and London, 1997), p. 81.

  14. Horsley, “Historical Context of Q,” p. 154.

  15.Josephus, The Life, 10–12, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray (Cambridge, MA, 1926); Alan Mason, “Was Josephus a Pharisee?: A Re-Examination of Life 10–12,” Journal of Jewish Studies 40 (1989); Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven, CT, and London, 1990), pp. 81–82.

  16. Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G. A. Williamson (Harmondsworth, UK, 1967), 6:51–55.

  17. Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews (AJ) 17:157, cited in Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine (New York, 1987), p. 76.

  18. Josephus, The Jewish War (JW) 1:650.

  19. JW 2:3.

  20. JW 2:11–13.

  21. JW 2:57, cited in Horsley, Spiral of Violence, p. 53.

  22. JW 2:66–75.

  23. John Dominic Crossan, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (San Francisco, 2007), pp. 91–94.

  24. AJ 18:4–9, cited in Horsley, Spiral of Violence, p. 81; JW 2:117.

  25. JW 2:169–74.

  26. Philo, On the Embassy to Gaius, trans. E. H. Colson (Cambridge, MA, 1962), pp. 223–24.

  27. AJ 18:292, cited in Horsley, Spiral of Violence, p. 111.

  28. AJ 18:284, cited ibid.

  29. JW 2.260.

  30. JW 261–62.

  31. AJ 18:36–38, cited in Horsley, “Historical Context of Q,” p. 58.

  32. John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (New York, 1994), pp. 26–28.

  33. A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Law and Roman Society in the New Testament (Oxford, 1963), p. 139. Matthew 18:22–33, 20:1–15; Luke 16:1–13; Mark 12:1–9.

  34. Matthew 2:16.

  35. Matthew 14:3–12.

  36. Matthew 10:17–18.

  37. Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (San Francisco, 2006), pp. 67–68.

  38. Matthew 4:1–11; Mark 12–13; Luke 4:1–13.

  39. Luke 10:17–18.

  40. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism (Baltimore, 1971), pp. 31, 32, 35, 127.

  41. Mark 5:1–17; Crossan, Jesus, pp. 99–106.

  42. Luke 13:31–33.

  43. Matthew 21:1–11; Mark, 11:1–11; Luke 19:28–38.

  44. Matthew 21:12–13.

  45. Horsley, Spiral of Violence, pp. 286–89; Sean Frayne, Galilee: From Alexander the Great to Hadrian, 323 BCE to 135 CE: A Study of Second Temple Judaism (Notre Dame, IN, 1980), pp. 283–86.

  46. Matthew 5:39, 44.

  47. Matthew 26:63.

  48. Luke 6:20–24.

  49. Matthew 12:1–23.

  50. Luke 13:13.

  51. Luke 9:23–24.

  52. Luke 1:51–54.

  53. Mark 12:13–17; Horsley, Spiral of Violence, pp. 306–16.

  54.F. F. Bruce, “Render to Caesar,” in F. Bammel and C. F. D. Moule, eds., Jesus and the Politics of His Day (Cambridge, UK, 1981), p. 258.

  55. Mark 12:38–40.

  56. Horsley, Spiral of Violence, pp. 167–68.

  57. A. E. Harvey, Strenuous Commands: The Ethic of Jesus (London and Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 162, 209.

  58. Luke 14:14, 23–24; Crossan, Jesus, pp. 74–82.

  59. Luke 6:20–21; translation amended in Crossan, Jesus, p. 68. The gospel does not use the Greek penes (“poor”), describing people making a bare living, but ptochos, “destitute, beggars.”

  60. Crossan, Jesus, pp. 68–70.<
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  61. Luke 6:24–25.

  62. Matthew 20:16.

  63. Matthew 6:11–13.

  64. Gerd Theissen, The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Analysis of the Earliest Christians, trans. John Bowden (London, 1978), pp. 8–14.

  65. Mark 1:14–15, my translation.

  66. Matthew 9:36.

  67. Warren Carter, “Construction of Violence and Identities in Matthew’s Gospel,” in Shelly Matthews and E. Leigh Gibson, eds., Violence in the New Testament (New York and London, 2005), pp. 93–94.

  68. John Pairman Brown, “Techniques of Imperial Control: The Background of the Gospel Event,” in Norman Gottwald, ed., The Bible of Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics (Maryknoll, NY, 1983), pp. 357–77; Gerd Theissen, The Miracle Stories: Early Christian Tradition (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. 231–44; Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Socio-Political and Religious Reading (Sheffield, UK, 2000), pp. 17–29, 36–43, 123–27, 196–98.

  69. Matthew 6:10.

  70. Luke 6:28–30.

  71. Luke 6:31–38.

  72. Acts 2:23, 32–35; Philippians 2:9.

  73. Matthew 10:5–6.

  74. James B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2007), pp. 13–20, 104–14.

  75. Jonathan Z. Smith, “Fences and Neighbours: Some Contours of Early Judaism,” in Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago and London, 1982), pp. 1–18; John W. Marshall, “Collateral Damage: Jesus and Jezebel in the Jewish War,” in Matthews and Gibson, Violence in the New Testament, pp. 38–39; Julia Galambush, The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament’s Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book (San Francisco, 2005), pp. 291–92.

  76. Acts of the Apostles 5:54–42.

  77. Acts of the Apostles, 13:44, 14:19, 17:10–15.

  78. I Corinthians 11:2–15.

  79. I Corinthians 14:21–25.

  80. Romans 13:1–2, 4.

  81. Romans 13:6.

  82. I Corinthians 7:31.

  83. Acts of the Apostles 4:32, 34.

  84. I Corinthians 12:12–27.

  85. Luke 24:13–32.

  86. Philippians 2:3–5.

  87. Philippians 2:6–11, in The English Revised Bible (Oxford and Cambridge, UK, 1989).

  88.Philippians 2:2–4.

  89. I John 1.

  90. I John 7:42–47.

  91. I John 2:18–19.

  92. Tacitus, History, 1:11, cited in Marshall, “Collateral Damage,” pp. 37–38.

  93. Reuven Firestone, Holy War in Judaism: The Fall and Rise of a Controversial Idea (Oxford and New York, 2012), pp. 46–47.

  94. Michael S. Berger, “Taming the Beast: Rabbinic Pacification of Second Century Jewish Nationalism,” in James K. Wellman, Jr., ed., Belief and Bloodshed: Religion and Violence Across Time and Tradition (Lanham, MD, 2007), pp. 54–55.

  95. Jerusalem Talmud (J), Taanit 4.5 and Lamentations Rabbah 2.4, cited in C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, eds., A Rabbinic Anthology (New York, 1974).

  96. Dio Cassius, History 69.12; Mireille Hadas-Lebel, Jerusalem Against Rome, trans. Robyn Freshat (Leuven, 2006), pp. 398–409.

  97. Berger, “Taming the Beast,” pp. 50–52.

  98. B. Berakhot 58a; Shabbat 34a; Baba Batra 75a; Sanhedrin 100a; Firestone, Holy War, p. 73.

  99. Firestone, Holy War, pp. 52–61.

  100. Berger, “Taming the Beast,” p. 48.

  101. Avot de Rabbi Nathan B.31, cited in Robert Eisen, The Peace and Violence of Judaism: From the Bible to Modern Zionism (Oxford, 2011), p. 86.

  102. B. Pesahim 118a, cited ibid.

  103. Ibid.; Hadas-Lebel, Jerusalem Against Rome, pp. 265–95.

  104. Mekhilta de Rabbi Yishmael 13; B. Avodah Zarah 18a, in Montefiore and Loewe, Rabbinic Anthology.

  105. B. Shabbat 336b; B. Berakhot 58a, ibid.

  106. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (London, 1993), p. 290; Gerald L. Bruns, “Midrash and Allegory: The Beginnings of Scriptural Interpretation,” in Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, eds., A Literary Guide to the Bible (London 1987), pp. 629–30; Nahum S. Glatzer, “The Concept of Peace in Classical Judaism,” Essays on Jewish Thought (University, AL, 1978), pp. 37–38; Eisen, Peace and Violence, p. 90.

  107. Michael Fishbane, Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989), pp. 22–32.

  108. B. Shabbat 63a; B. Sanhedrin 82a; B. Shabbat 133b; Tanhuman 10; Eisen, Peace and Violence, pp. 88–89; Reuven Kimelman, “Non-violence in the Talmud,” Judaism 17 (1968).

  109. Avot de Rabbi Nathan A. 23, cited in Eisen, Peace and Violence, p. 88.

  110. Mishnah (M), Avot 4:1, in Montefiore and Loewe, Rabbinic Anthology.

  111. Eisen, Peace and Violence, p. 89.

  112. B. Berakhot 4a; Megillah 3a; Tamua 16a.

  113. Exodus 14; B. Megillah 10b, in Montefiore and Loewe, Rabbinic Anthology.

  114. M. Sotah 8:7; M. Yadayin 4:4; Tosefta Kiddushim 5:4; Firestone, Holy War, p. 74.

  115. J. Sotah 8.1.

  116. Song of Songs 2:7, 3:5, 8:4; B. Ketubot 110b—111a; Song of Songs Rabbah 2:7.

  117. Firestone, Holy War, pp. 74–75.

  118. Aviezer Ravitsky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chapman (Chicago, 1997), pp. 211–34.

  119. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150–750 (London, 1989), pp. 20–24; Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, AD 200–1000 (Oxford and Malden, MA, 1996), pp. 18–19.

  120. Brown, World of Late Antiquity, pp. 24–27.

  121.Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1978), p. 48; Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, pp. 19–20.

  122. Revelation 3:21; Tacitus, Annals 15:44. Tacitus, however, was writing decades after the event, and it seems unlikely that at this early date Christians were recognized as a distinct body. Candida R. Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (New York, 2013), pp. 138–39.

  123. Tertullian, Apology 20, cited in Moss, Myth of Persecution, p. 128.

  124. W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of the Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Oxford, 1965), p. 331.

  125. Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Temple and the Magician,” in Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago and London, 1978), p. 187; Peter Brown, “The Rise of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971).

  126. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire, pp. 207–8.

  127. Ibid., pp. 68, 82.

  128. Moss, Myth of Persecution, pp. 127–62; G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?” in Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, ed. Michael Whitby and Joseph Streeter (Oxford, 2006).

  129. James B. Rives, “The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire,” Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999); Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York, 1987), pp. 455–56.

  130. B. Baba Metziah 59b, Montefiore and Loewe, Rabbinic Anthology.

  131. Collatio Legum Romanarum et Mosaicarum 15:3, cited in Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, p. 22.

  132. Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200— 400 (Atlanta, 2009). Christians had traditionally worshipped in private houses. Churches like the offending basilica were a recent innovation.

  133. Moss, Myth of Persecution, pp. 154–58.

  134. Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (Oxford, 2010).

  135. Victricius, De Laude Sanctorum 10:452 B, cited in Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981), p. 79.

  136. Decretum Gelasianum, cited ibid.

  137. The Martyrs of Lyons 1:4, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, trans. H. Musurillo (Oxford, 1972).

  138. Perpetua, Passio, 9, in Peter Dronke, ed. and trans., Women Writer
s of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua († 203) to Marguerite Porete (†1310) (Cambridge, UK, 1984), p. 4.

  139. Perpetua, Passio, 10, cited.

  140. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, p. 15.

  141. Brown, World of Late Antiquity, pp. 82–84.

  142. Origen, Contra Celsum 2:30, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge, UK, 1980).

  143. Cyprian, Letters 40:1, 48:4.

  144. Cyprian, Letters 30:2; Brown, Making of Late Antiquity, pp. 79–80.

  145. Lactantius, Divine Institutions, in Lactantius: Works, trans. William Fletcher, (Edinburgh, 1971), p. 366.

  146. Ibid., p. 427.

  147. Ibid., p. 328.

  6 ♦ BYZANTIUM: THE TRAGEDY OF EMPIRE

  1. Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, NJ, 1993), pp. 13–16, 34.

  2. Eusebius, In Praise of Constantine: A Historical Study and New Translation of Eusebius’ Tricennial Orations, trans. H. A. Drake (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976), p. 89.

  3. Aziz Al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian, and Pagan Polities (London and New York, 1997), pp. 27–33.

  4. Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2005), p. 88.

  5. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1:5, 1:24, 2:19, trans. and ed. Averil and Stuart G. Hall (Oxford, 1999).

  6. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 4:8–13; Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth, pp. 93–94.

  7. Al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship, pp. 43–46.

  8. Matthew 28:19.

  9. John Haldon, Warfare, State, and Society in the Byzantine World, 565–1204 (London and New York, 2005), pp. 16–19.

  10. Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth, pp. 93–94; Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 62–63.

  11. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4:61.

  12. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4:62, cited in Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 63–64.

  13. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 51–59.

  14. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4.24.

  15. Constantine, Letter to Aelafius, Vicor of Africa, in Optatus: Against the Donatists, trans. Mark Edwards (Liverpool, UK, 1988), appendix 3.

  16. The Donatists argued that Caecilian had been ordained by Felix of Apthungi, who had apostatized during the persecution of Diocletian. Their protest was an act of piety to the memory of the martyrs.