I See Why They Made This Guy Leave Halicarnassus

Committing to read Herodotus is like signing up for a hitch in the military. You can’t appreciate the obligation with which you have buried yourself until you’re in the midst of it. The book goes on forever, and it is literally impossible for anyone except a genetically gifted freak to keep track of everything.

I am not that freak. I am a different type of freak.

Herodotus got on my last nerve day before yesterday. He had the gall to introduce two totally different characters named Miltiades on one page. Come on, man. That’s inhuman. Can I have a roster or something? Maybe one of those photo charts the FBI uses to keep track of Mafia families.

“Here is Miltiades A, also known as ‘Milty Four Toes,’ and this line goes from his photo to Miltiades B, also known as ‘Milt the Stilt.’ He is frequently seen in the company of Aristagoras of Miletus (not Jersey City Aristagoras), sometimes known as ‘Ari Red Sandals,’ and he is believed to be the consigliere of ‘Darius the Bull,’ current head of the notorious Achaemenid Family.”

I stop constantly to Google stuff, but I know it’s hopeless. Herodotus is the unrivalled king of the digressors, and I will never be able to understand it all. It’s my punishment for all the digressions I’ve made on my blog.

I completely set aside Rick Renner’s giant books on the early church, because the reading I was doing on the ancient world was just too much. It will work out well for me in the end, though, because when I resume, I’ll have a few clues regarding the world in which early Christians lived.

I’m also watching Youtubes and shows about the ancient world. I saw a neat one yesterday about Roman engineering. They talked about the Coliseum, properly known as the Flavian Amphitheater. I learned something I had never known before: the Coliseum was paid for through the sale of the treasures stolen from the temple in Jerusalem, and it was built by 1200 Jewish slaves.

I had been under the impression that the emperor Titus was solely responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem, but that’s wrong. His dad Vespasian got the ball rolling. There was a revolt in Israel, and the Romans had to mobilize to squash the freedom fighters. Vespasian ran the Roman effort until he was drawn away to Rome after the death of Nero, and Titus, his son, took over. Titus besieged Jerusalem. He was in charge when Jerusalem fell, and that’s why the Jews complain about Titus all the time, to the point where you wouldn’t even know Vespasian was involved.

The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D., and the Coliseum’s construction started in 72. Vespasian died in 79. Construction was finished in 80.

It looks like “Colosseum” is the preferred spelling. Wikipedia says this popular, unofficial name may have come from the fact that a “colossal” statue of Nero stood nearby.

Anyway, I find the whole thing fascinating.

I don’t like professional sports. I’ve written about it a lot. Sports figures do silly, unimportant things for a living, such as throwing balls through hoops. They play games invented to amuse children. But we treat them as though they were gods. This problem is ancient; the Greeks did the same thing, and so did the Romans.

In Israel under the Greeks, many Jews wanted to assimilate into the Greek culture, which involved nude athletic competition. This is obviously incompatible with Jewish laws regarding nudity, and it also caused Jews to be ashamed of circumcision, which is an extremely important part of Judaism; it’s an outward sign of their unique contract with God. Many Jews refused to circumcise their sons, and men who were circumcised looked for ways to change their appearance.

The Jews call the Greek system “Hellenism.” There was great tension between the demon-worshiping Greeks and the Yahweh-worshiping Jews. You would think sports wouldn’t have a big impact on religion, but it did. It still does.

Sports corrupt our morals today. Sports make us aggressive, proud, wasteful, and somewhat stupid. We screw up our cities with gigantic, expensive stadiums the public has to pay for, we spend incredible amounts on athlete worship (tickets, licensed merchandise, ridiculous tattoos…), and we neglect useful activities so we can celebrate extremely trivial accomplishments. We encourage people to peak in high school, and we even replace church with an endless procession of Sunday sporting events.

It’s nice to go outside and exercise and enjoy friendly games, but it’s insane to pay an unintelligent person of low character fifty million dollars a year to carry a leather bag around on a field.

If you criticize sports, people act as if you’re blaspheming. They get very angry. Most trivial hobbies aren’t like that. Chess people won’t threaten to beat you up in bars just because you think chess is stupid. Sports people are under the influence of spirits that warp their perception.

Sports arenas are temples where the flesh is worshiped, and the worship of the flesh is the worship of Satan. You can’t exalt the flesh without exalting the devil. It’s not possible. There are only two paths in life: toward God or toward Satan. There are no alternatives. You can’t sit the game out. You’re playing right now, and you are making a choice.

The COLOSSEUM (might as well go with the weight of authority) is interesting, because it was a place where people were killed as part of the exaltation of the flesh. Criminals, Jews, Christians, and political prisoners were thrown into the arena to die in athletic contests. That makes it a temple where people (and animals) were sacrificed. Satan destroyed the real temple and used the proceeds to put up a false one. He replaced the sacrifice of ritually clean animals with the unclean sacrifice of Jews and Christians.

Furthermore, the real temple was a place that was supposed to help the Jews assure themselves a place at the top of the food chain. Worship was supposed to help them live victorious, peaceful lives. The Colosseum was a place where failed Jews were robbed, enslaved, and murdered. They were so defeated, their own treasures were used to build the facility where they were destroyed!

It’s a picture of what has happened throughout history. People who were supposed to serve God screwed up, and they became the slaves of Satan’s worldwide system. It’s a picture of what’s happening in America now.

It’s also very similar to Hitler’s system. The Nazis murdered Jews, took their wealth, and used it to exterminate them. They even made Jews do the dirty work. As Sonderkommandos, the Jews had to lead other Jews to their deaths, sort their belongings for the Nazis, and put their dead bodies in ovens. They were Satan’s sick imitations of the priests in the temple. They weren’t able to warn people; they were forbidden on penalty of death, and people didn’t believe them anyway. The Sonderkommandos were a lot like today’s preachers, who can’t seem to tell us anything that would help us save ourselves.

Jews were even transported in railroad cars designed to carry cattle, which are clean animals suitable for eating and sacrifice. That’s not a coincidence.

Sports fans hate this kind of revelation. They turn red in the face and talk about all the wonderful Christian athletes who pray in huddles and honor God when they win boxing matches. God has to work within the system we’ve given him; it doesn’t mean he endorses it. The first gentile to accept Jesus was a Roman centurion; that doesn’t mean God was a fan of Rome or the occupation.

The world is very, very badly screwed up. Even in America, power has shifted firmly into the hands of Satan and his children. Christians know almost nothing. They have almost no power. We’re like the disarmed Jews who were herded onto cattle cars. And no one cares. No one can hear it. You tell them, and they dismiss you.

I can’t wait to get done with this book. Someone ought to write a new version of it with the digressions separated as appendices. Better yet, a hypertext version with the digressions connected to the main text via links.

If you can hear the truth, be glad. Time is getting short, and you want to be on the right side when it gets completely crazy.