The Anti-Semitic Wrath of Rome

The Anti-Semitic Wrath of Rome

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~shaked/Tunisia/meet1.html 

 Rome wiped out most of the history of Carthage and the history of
the relationship Carthage had with the Jews of the world. The
Maccabees made a treaty with Rome when they learned they had
destroyed the revival of one of the largest cities of its time. The
Maccabees loathed the Hellenization of the Jews and I suspect
introduced the worship of YHWH that came in with the reforms of
Hezikiah and Joash, via Jeremiah and Baruch. There was a false
covenant produced so as to abolish the Egyptican and Phoenician
influence in Judaic worship. Many of Moses' objects of worship were
eradicated by the Scribes of Jaramiah much after the fact.

John (and thus Jesus) represented child sacrifice that was popular
in Carthage. Jesus is child sacrifice, while John is the reformation
and abololition of this practice as Melicertes. The point is, Rome
was intent on wiping out the Simitic Carthaginians and their
realtionship with the Semitic Jews, especially in Jerusalem, as the
teaching of John Melicertes was found all over the world, the many
aspects of Horus-Melicertes united into one teaching that appealed
to Jews, Greeks, and Celts alike, not to mention Carthaginian
refugees. This is why Paul has his Romanized Jesus turn on the Jews,
Moses, Horus, and the Celts, whom his army would murder for the next
two thousand years.

The Maccabean Queen, Berenice became the consort of emperor Titus
who resuced her from the revolt in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Some say she
became his wife. She would have loathed to see the Nazarites come
into power in the temple, which they did, she and her brother taking
the oath of the Nazarites to appease a growing rebellion that
gathered around John the Baptist the 'King of Jerusalem'. There is
said to have been two Carthages, was one of them Jerusalem, also
called Tarshish?

Jon Presco

"So ended the Third Punic War. Of all the Semitic states and cities
that had flourished in the world five centuries before only one
little country remained free under native rulers. This was Judea,
which had liberated itself from the Seleucids and was under the rule
of the native Maccabean princes. By this time it had its Bible
almost complete, and was developing the distinctive traditions of
the Jewish world as we know it now."



The trade of the world was in Semitic hands. Tyre, Sidon, the great
mother cities of the Phoenician coast, had thrown out colonies that
grew at last to even greater proportion in Spain, Sicily and Africa.
Carthage, founded before 800 B.C., had risen to a population of more
than a million. It was for a time the greatest city on earth. Its
ships went to Britain and out into the Atlantic. They may have
reached Madeira. We have already noted how Hiram co-operated with
Solomon to build ships on the Red Sea for the Arabian and perhaps
for the Indian trade. In the time of the Pharaoh Necho, a Phoenician
expedition sailed completely round Africa.
. The battle of Zama ended this Second Punic War. Carthage
capitulated; she surrendered Spain and her war fleet; she paid an
enormous indemnity and agreed to give up Hannibal to the vengeance
of the Romans. But Hannibal escaped and fled to Asia where later,
being in danger of falling into the hands of his relentless enemies,
he took poison and died. 5
For fifty-six years Rome and the shorn city of Carthage were at
peace. And meanwhile Rome spread her empire over confused and
divided Greece, invaded Asia Minor, and defeated Antiochus III, the
Seleucid monarch, at Magnesia in Lydia. She made Egypt, still under
the Ptolemies, and Pergamum and most of the small states of Asia
Minor into "Allies," or, as we should call them now, "protected
states." 6
Meanwhile Carthage, subjugated and enfeebled, had been slowly
regaining something of her former prosperity. Her recovery revived
the hate and suspicion of the Romans. She was attacked upon the most
shallow and artificial of quarrels (149 B.C.), she made an obstinate
and bitter resistance, stood a long siege and was stormed (146
B.C.). The street fighting, or massacre, lasted six days; it was
extraordinarily bloody, and when the citadel capitulated only about
fifty thousand of the Carthaginian population remained alive out of
a quarter of a million. They were sold into slavery, and the city
was burnt and elaborately destroyed. The blackened ruins were
ploughed and sown as a sort of ceremonial effacement. 7
So ended the Third Punic War. Of all the Semitic states and cities
that had flourished in the world five centuries before only one
little country remained free under native rulers. This was Judea,
which had liberated itself from the Seleucids and was under the rule
of the native Maccabean princes. By this time it had its Bible
almost complete, and was developing the distinctive traditions of
the Jewish world as we know it now. It was natural that the
Carthaginians, Ph?nicians and kindred peoples dispersed about the
world should find a common link in their practically identical
language and in this literature of hope and courage. To a large
extent they were still the traders and bankers of the world. The
Semitic world had been submerged rather than replaced. 8
Jerusalem, which has always been rather the symbol than the centre
of Judaism, was taken by the Romans in 65 B.C.; and after various
vicissitudes of quasi-independence and revolt was besieged by them
in 70 A.D. and captured after a stubborn struggle. The Temple was
destroyed. A later rebellion in 132 A.D. completed its destruction,
and the Jerusalem we know to-day was rebuilt later under Roman
auspices. A temple to the Roman god, Jupiter Capitolinus, stood in
the place of the Temple, and Jews were forbidden to inhabit the city

CARTHAGE: (print this article)





By : Richard Gottheil Samuel Krauss

ARTICLE HEADINGS:
Josephus.
In the Bible and the Talmud.
Jews in Carthage.
Under the Arabs.


Ancient city and republic in northern Africa; of special interest to
Jews on account of the Phenico-Semitic origin of its inhabitants,
its government under the suffetes, recalling the "shofeṭim" 
(judges)
among the Hebrews, and on account of the religion of the
inhabitants. The city, called ("New City") in native inscriptions
(Lidzbarski, "Nordsemitische Epigraphik," i. 365), is mentioned in
Jewish writings since Talmudic times only as ("Ḳarthigini"), a 
name
equivalent to the Byzantine form
Kαρϑαγένη and in agreement 
with the
Syriac (Payne Smith, "Thes. Syr." cols. 3744, 3765), the Greek form
Kαρχηδών being found with the 
latter.
Notwithstanding the peculiar
form, perhaps chosen with reference to the founder Dido ( +
γυνή, "Woman-City"), the Hebrew word certainly 
designates
Carthage
in Africa, not Cartagena in Spain. Later Jewish chronicles, which
make the founding of Carthage contemporaneous with David, use the
variants "Ḳarṭagena" (Yuḥasin, ed. London, 236b),
"Ḳarṭigini" (with ט
instead of ח, as sometimes even in the Talmud; David Gans to 
the
year 3882), "Ḳartini," and "Ḳartigni" ("Seder ha-Dorot,"
s.v. "David"), sometimes adding the curious remark that the Talmud
refers to two cities of Carthage, which is, however, an erroneous
conclusion.
Josephus.
Josephus Flavius writes Kαρχηδών 
like the
Greeks. He says it is
recorded in the public documents of Tyre that King Solomon built the
Temple at Jerusalem 143 years and eight months before the Tyrians
founded Carthage ("Contra Ap." i. § 17). Josephus intends to prove
by this statement the antiquity of the Jewish people, drawing the
same conclusions from Menander's account of the reign of Hiram,
according to which Hiram came to the throne 155 years and eight
months before the founding of Carthage, and the Temple was built in
the twelfth year of his reign (ib. i. § 18). Through this
computation Josephus refutes the grammarian Apion, who placed the
exodus from Egypt at the time that the Phenicians founded Carthage
(ib. ii. § 2). The Maccabean Judah formed a treaty with the Romans
for the reason, among others, that he had heard that the Romans had
vanquished the Carthaginians ("Ant." xii. 10, § 6; compare "B. J."
ii. 16, § 4; vi. 6, § 2). Josephus does not say that any Jews lived
at Carthage.
In the Bible and the Talmud.
Although Carthage is not mentioned in the Bible, modern scholars are
inclined to identify the Biblical Tarshish with Carthage, since it
is thus translated in the Septuagint, the Targum, and the Vulgate,
Ezek. xxvii. 12. A unique statement in the Talmud, based probably on
the legend of the emigration of the Girgashites, identifies Kenizzi
(Gen. xv. 19) with Carthage (Yer. Sheb. 36b; Yer. Ḳid. 61d; 
Gen. R.
xliv. 23). But a wide-spread rabbinical legend identifies the land
of the Amazons with Carthage (Lev. R. xxvii. 1), or with Africa
(Tamid 32b), in both instances agreeing with classical tradition.
Carthage was considered one of the four largest cities of the Roman
empire (Sifre, Num. 131; p. 47b, ed. Friedmann). An amora of the
third century has the following curious sentence: "From Tyrus to
Carthage Israel and his 'Father in heaven' are known; from Tyrus to
the west and from Carthage to the east Israel and his God are not
known" (Men. 110a); which is probably meant to indicate the extent
of the Semitic race.
Jews in Carthage.
The fact that the Talmud mentions the Carthaginian teachers of the
Law, R. Abba, R. Isaac, and R. Ḥana, proves that Jews were 
living in
that city, although Frankel, without reason, takes it to mean an
Armenian city ("Mebo," pp. 6b, 66a), and Kohut a Spanish city
("Aruch Completum," vii. 220). It is evident from the introduction
to the work "Adversum Judæos," ascribed to Tertullian, that Jews
were living in Carthage; and they are found still further west
(Schürer, "Gesch." 3d ed., iii. 26, note 64). Münter ("Primordia
Eccl. Afric." p. 165, Copenhagen, 1829) mentions a certain R.
Jisschak (the one in the Talmud?). The Jews of Africa (see Africa)
are often referred to in the correspondence between Jerome and
Augustine; and in recent times there has been found in Gamart, near
the city of Carthage, a great Jewish necropolis with many
inscriptions in Latin (see Catacombs). From the conquest of Carthage
by the Vandals (439) to the subjection of the latter by the
Byzantines (533), the holy vessels from the Temple of Jerusalem,
that had been taken from Rome, were kept in Carthage
(Evagrius, "Scholasticus," Fragment iv. p., 17; Procopius, "Bellum.
Vand." ii. § 9). The Jews then passed under the rule of Justinian,
who instructed Solomon, the governor of Africa, to transform the
synagogues as well as the churches of the Arians and the Donatists
into orthodox churches (Novellæ, No. 37). Solomon, however, was soon
compelled to flee from the rebellious Africans.
Under the Arabs.
In 692 the city was wrested from the Christians by Ḥasan, a 
general
of the calif 'Abd al-Malik, and in 698 the Greeks were permanently
driven from Carthage and Africa by Musa (Weil, "Gesch. der
Chalifen," i. 478). Previous to this the Arabs had founded the city
Ḳairwan, which became as important to the Jews as Carthage had 
been.
Following Arabic writers, Parḥi defined the situation of 
Carthage as
36° latitude by 35° longitude ("Kaftor wa-Feraḥ," ed. 
Edelmann, 26b).
The Carthaginians were Phoenicians, of Canaanite ancestry, who
settled on the northeastern coast of what is now Tunisia. By the
beginning of the Iron Age (c. 1200 B.C.), the Phoenicians had taken
control of that part of the Levantine coast now occupied by northern
Israel, Lebanon and Syria. The Phoenicians were known throughout the
Mediterranean world as merchants, sailors and craftsmen. According
to the Hebrew Bible, the Phoenician king Hiram of Tyre provided the
Israelite king Solomon (c. 965-928 B.C.) with masons and architects
to help build the Jerusalem Temple (1 Kings 5ff.). It was from the
literate, Semitic-speaking Phoenicians, moreover, that the Greeks
borrowed the alphabet?the direct ancestor of the alphabetic
characters that you see before you.*
No one knows exactly how the Phoenicians got to Carthage, where they
settled among the Berbers, a semi-nomadic people who had been in
North Africa since the fifth millennium B.C. According to the not-
always-reliable Greek historian Timaeus (c. 356-260 B.C.), Carthage
was founded in 814 B.C. by a Phoenician princess named Dido (who is
called Elissa in Phoenician). Dido was the sister of Pygmalion, a
king of Tyre who ruled a century after Hiram (this Pygmalion is not
to be confused with the Pygmalion who fell in love with a statue
that he himself had carved). When Pygmalion murdered Dido's husband,
she gathered up the royal treasury and a group of supporters and
headed off to nearby Cyprus. There she managed to attract more women
to her group. She then headed out over the open sea to Carthage, a
name which means "new city" in Phoenician.
Dido and her band settled on a large hill called the Byrsa.
According to Virgil's Aeneid (late first century B.C.), the local
Berber chieftain told Dido that her people could have as much land
as could be covered with a single oxhide (a form of monetary
exchange in the ancient world). So the ingenious princess cut an
oxhide into tiny strips and set them end to end, so that they girded
the entire Byrsa hill. (In fact, the term "Byrsa" in Phoenician
means citadel or fortress, which is probably how the hill actually
got its name. The oxhide story may have arisen because the phonetic
equivalents of "Byrsa" in both Greek and Latin mean hide?from which
we derive our words "bourse," or stock market, and "purse.")
We know little about Queen Dido's successors. Even though the
Phoenicians transmitted the alphabet, virtually nothing of their
literature and little of their history have survived. Most of what
we know about them comes from 20th-century archaeological
excavations or from ancient Egyptian, biblical, Assyrian, Greek and
Roman sources. The name "Phoenicians," for instance, was not what
they called themselves but what the Greeks called them; the word
means dark red and refers to the royal purple dye that Phoenicians
extracted from murex shells. Some scholars believe that they were
mercenary traders with little culture or literature of their own.
Others are convinced that the literature existed but was obliterated
when their civilization was destroyed and assimilated by the Romans?
whether in the Levant or in Carthage. The existence of a Phoenician,
and particularly Carthaginian, literature, is hinted at in Roman
sources, though only in the briefest of references.
The Carthaginians were adventurers. They loved to travel and trade
all over the Mediterranean?and as such they came into conflict with
Greek and then Roman expansionists. Possessing superior ships, the
Phoenicians sailed from the eastern Mediterranean through the Strait
of Gibraltar and beyond, looking not only for gold and tin but also
for the murex shells from which they produced the dye for their
famed Tyrian purple robes, so admired by the Romans, among others.
Carthaginian explorers certainly sailed beyond the strait and up the
Iberian coast, possibly reaching England.
One remarkable expedition led by Hanno the Navigator around the
middle of the fifth century B.C. seems to have set out to
circumnavigate the African continent from the west?this at a time
when the size of Africa was not known. Amazingly, Hanno's account of
his voyage survives. Originally written in Punic,** the account was
later translated into Greek and Latin, but only the Greek version is
extant. The Periplus [literally, "Sailing Around"] of Hanno recounts
how Hanno sailed beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, where the
Phoenicians had established Punic colonies both in North Africa and
southern Spain. In Lixus, not far from modern Tangiers, Morocco, he
recruited translators who knew something of the tongues spoken
beyond the strait and around the western coast of Africa. Hanno
sailed down the African coast, probably as far as the Senegal River,
which forms the border of modern Senegal and Mauritania. Hanno's
party appears to have traveled inland along the river, where they
entered the tropical rain forest and encountered fantastic creatures
they had never seen before, like hippopotami and crocodiles.
Hanno's account reads like a script for an Indiana Jones movie: The
Carthaginians move cautiously through the eerie, thick forest, as
barbarous natives play flutes and beat drums in the distance.
Suddenly Hanno comes across strange savages:
The biggest number of them were females, with hairy bodies which our
Lixite interpreters called gorillas. Chasing them we could not catch
any of the males, because all of them escaped by being able to climb
steep cliffs and (by) defending themselves with whatever was
available; but we caught three females who bit and scratched their
captors and they did not want to follow them. So we had to kill them
and flay them, and we brought their skins to Carthage.
It seems likely that Hanno did indeed scuffle with a family of what
we, too, call gorillas. Our term "gorilla," which refers to the
large anthropoid apes of west equatorial Africa, only goes back to
1847 when it was coined by Thomas Staughton Savage, an American
clergyman and naturalist. Savage was a missionary sent to Africa on
behalf of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Cromwell, Connecticut.
Where did Savage get the term "gorilla"? He had read it in a 1797
English translation of the Periplus of Hanno!
Upon returning to Carthage, Hanno had the gorilla skins displayed
and offered to the gods in a special open-air cultic precinct in
Carthage, which is known today as the Tophet. According to the
Hebrew Bible, the Tophet was a place just south of ancient Jerusalem
where erring Israelites sacrificed their children by burning them.
The Judahite king Josiah (640-609 B.C.) is said to have destroyed
the Tophet "so that no one would make a son or daughter pass through
fire as an offering" (2 Kings 23:10).
Did the ancient Phoenicians, in Carthage and elsewhere,* sacrifice
living children to their gods? For the past two decades this has
been the subject of heated scholarly debates. (See "An Odyssey
Debate: Were Living Children Sacrificed to the Gods?") Although some
French and Tunisian scholars have argued that children were not
sacrificed in large numbers at Carthage, the evidence is against
them.
Certainly in ancient times the Phoenicians had a reputation for
sacrificing children. The third-century B.C. Greek author
Kleitarchos was quoted by a later source as writing: "Out of
reverence for Kronos [the Greek equivalent of Ba'al Hammon, the
chief god of the Punic pantheon], the Phoenicians, and especially
the Carthaginians, whenever they seek to obtain some great favor,
vow one of their children, burning it as a sacrifice to the deity,
if they are especially eager to gain success."(1)
The Carthage Tophet first came to modern attention in 1921, when a
local official caught an antiquities trafficker removing decorated
stelae from the site. A few years later the Tophet was bought and
excavated by the French explorer/adventurer Count Byron Khun de
Prorok, who uncovered numerous burial urns containing charred human
remains. "This is a dreadful period of human degeneracy," de Prorok
wrote, "that we are now unearthing in the famous temple of Tanit
[the consort of Ba'al Hammon]."(2) De Prorok later recalled that he
had found "six thousand funerary urns" in the sanctuary of
Tanit, "where the little children of Carthage made their great, but
unwilling, gift of life for the sake of the city's security."(3)
**Referring to the Phoenicians?and their language?in the western
Mediterranean, the term "Punic" derives from the Latin adjective
punicus, a transliteration of the Greek Phoinikos (Phoenician),
which derives from the Greek word for purple (as in purple dye).
Major excavations of the Tophet were conducted in the mid- to late
1970s by Lawrence Stager (then with the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago, and now at Harvard) and a team that included
the author. Stager concluded that child sacrifice took place on the
site "almost continuously for a period of nearly 600 years," from
the mid-eighth to mid-second centuries B.C.(4) The Carthage Tophet
is a huge precinct of at least 54,000 square feet. Between 400 and
200 B.C. alone, as many as 20,000 urns containing the remains of
children offered to the gods may have been deposited in this
sanctuary.