Intertwined History of Armenia, Kingdom of Judea, Roman Empire, and Christianity – American Minute with Bill Federer

One of the oldest civilizations is that of the Armenians.

According to ancient tradition, Noah’s Ark rested on Mount Ararat in the Armenian Mountain Range.

Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat is featured on Armenia’s National Coat of Arms.

The ancient Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi, 410-490 A.D., recounted the legend that Noah’s son Japheth had a descendant named Hayk.

He refused to submit to Bel or Nimrod, builder of the Tower of Babel in Babylon.

Bel or Nimrod was the first tyrant of the ancient world who centralized government power.

In this legend, Hayk reportedly led his people north to the land near Mount Ararat, but Bel or Nimrod chased them.

In a battle near Lake Van, circa 2,492 B.C. or 2107 B.C., Hayk is said to have pulled his powerful long bow and made a nearly impossible shot with an arrow and killed Bel or Nimrod.

Hayk is the origin of “Hayastan,” the Armenian name for Armenia.

Ancient Armenians may have had some relation with the Hittites and Hurrians, who inhabited that area known as Anatolia in the 2nd millenium B.C.

Armenia’s major city of Yerevan, founded in 782 B.C. in the shadow of Mount Ararat, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

Armenia was mentioned in the Book of Isaiah when King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah around 701 B.C.

In this national emergency, King Hezekiah and the Prophet Isaiah prayed and Judah was miraculously saved.

Sennacherib returned to Assyria, where he was killed by his sons who then escaped to Armenia:

“And it came to pass, as Sennacherib was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia.” Isaiah 37:38

Armenia was first mentioned by name in secular records in 520 B.C. by Darius the Great of Persia in his Behistun inscription, as being one of the countries he sent troops into to put down a revolt.

In 331 B.C., Alexander the Great conquered Persia, but never conquered Armenia.

Between 95-55 B.C., King Tigranes the Great extended Armenia’s borders to their greatest extent, stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, pushing back the Parthians, Seleucids and the Roman Republic.

In 67 B.C., Roman General Pompey invaded the nearby Kingdom of Pontus on the Black Sea. Its king, Mithridates the Sixth, fled to Armenia, which unfortunately implicated that country in the Mithridatic Wars with Rome.

Adding to the tension, King Tigranes’ son wanted to overthrow his father, so he foolishly invited to Pompey to invade Armenia.

Pompey let King Tigranes continue to rule in exchange for tribute, but arrested the son and sent him back to Rome as a prisoner.

Then Pompey received word that there was a terrible civil war going on in Judea between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. He decided it was an opportune time to invade.

Though the history of Judea is somewhat complicated, it is nevertheless important.

In 539 B.C., Cyrus of Persia let Jews return to Israel and build the Second Temple.

Ezra led the nation in returning to studying the Scriptures. This was the origin of the Pharisees.

Then 336-323 B.C., Alexander the Great conquered from Greece, to Egypt, to Persia, spreading the Greek language and culture all over the world, a process called “Hellenization.”

Pharisees vigorously opposed “Hellenization” as they considered Greek culture sensuous, immoral and pagan.

They emphasized a decentralized system where in each village the scriptures were taught by rabbis every Sabbath in a synagogue.

Sadducees were Jews who, in varying degrees, were “Hellenized” in order to have favor with their new Greek rulers.

As a result, they were politically connected, wealthy elites in charge of the centralized priestly system of Temple worship in Jerusalem

The difference between the views of the more liberal Sadducees and more conservative Pharisees is somewhat reflected in the modern differences between Reformed Judaism and Orthodox Judaism.

When Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., four of his generals divided up his empire, with Seleucus the First Nicator taking Syria to Persia, founding the Seleucid Empire in 312 B.C.

This included the land of Israel.

A successor Seleucid king was Antiochus the Fourth Epiphanes.

He was so intent on Hellenizing Judea that he tried to completely erase the Jewish religion.

Jews were rallied by Judah Maccabee to rebel in the Maccabean Revolt, 167-160 B.C. This is commemorated by the Feast of Hanukkah.

After Judah Maccabee’s death, his brother, Simon Thassi, founded the Hebrew Hasmonean Dynasty, which eventually gained independence for Judea.

Simon Thassi the Hasmonean was assassinated by his son-in-law at a banquet.

Afterwards, Simon’s son, John Hyrcanus, served as both the political leader and the High Priest, though he still respected the decentralized authority of “The Assembly of the Jews.”

Hyrcanus was successful in establishing a relationship with the distant Roman Senate, getting it to recognize Judah’s independence.

Hycranus greatly expanded Jewish territory.

When John Hyrcanus died, his son, Aristobulus the First, seized control, threw his mother in prison, concentrated political power, and reestablished the monarchy.

He was the first person in Jewish history to claim the actual titles of both King and High Priest.

Sadducees, who were Hellenized political insiders, had no problem with Aristobulus the First having both titles.

Pharisees, on the other hand, did have a problem, as they were religious students of the Law and believed that only a descendant of David could be king.

When Aristobulus the First died in 103 B.C., his widow, Alexandra-Salome, married his brother, Alexander Jannaeus, who also was King and High Priest.

Alexander Jannaeus, a Sadducee, ordered 800 Pharisees to be crucified.

When he died, his wife, Alexandra-Salome, ruled Judea, but she switched to align with the Pharisees.

She ruled as a monarch and appointed her son, Hyrcanus the Second, to be High Priest.

Judea was noticeably blessed during the reign of Alexandra-Salome.

After her death in 67 B.C., her two sons started a civil war which culminated in the end of Judea’s independence.

Aristobulus the Second, was backed by the Sadducees.

Hyrcanus the Second was backed by the Pharisees.

As civil war violence escalated, word of it reached Roman General Pompey who was located north of Judea in the area of Pontus and Armenia.

Aristobulus the Second sent a large golden vine weighing over 1000 lbs. to Pompey requesting his help against his brother, Hyrcanus the Second.

Pompey decided this was the ideal time to invade Judea.

In 63 B.C., Pompey left the area of Armenia and marched south toward the city of Jerusalem, which was divided into warring sections due to the civil war.

Hyrcanus the Second and the Pharisees allowed Pompey to enter their section of the city.

The Sadducees, though, refused to let Pompey into the Temple complex.

Pompey laid siege, defeated the Sadduccees, and entered the Holy of Holies of the Temple.

After seeing Ark of the Covenant, he exited the Temple and forbade his soldiers from desecrating it.

The next day, he order the Temple area cleansed of defilement.

Historian Josephus wrote:

“Of the Jews there fell twelve thousand … and no small enormities were committed about the temple itself, which, in former ages, had been inaccessible, and seen by none; for Pompey went into it, and not a few of those that were with him also, and saw all that which was unlawful for any other men to see, but only for the High Priests.

There were in that temple the golden table, the holy candlestick, and the pouring vessels, and a great quantity of spices; and besides these there were among the treasures two thousand talents of sacred money;

yet did Pompey touch nothing of all this, on account of his regard to religion; and in this point also he acted in a manner that was worthy of his virtue.

The next day he gave order to those that had the charge of the temple to cleanse it, and to bring what offerings the law required to God.” Antiquities, XIV.IV.4

Pompey ended Judea’s independence by making it a Roman province.

He recognized Hyrcanus the Second as High Priest, but arrested Aristobulus the Second and sent him back to Rome as a prisoner.

Hyrcanus the Second was a weak ruler.

He had an official named Antipater the Idumaean, who was opportunistic and forceful.

Idumaea was the land of Edom, a neighboring kingdom to Judea, where lived the descendants of Esau, Jacob’s brother.

In 49 B.C., a civil war broke out in the Roman Empire between Pompey and Julius Caesar.

In 47 B.C., a key battle took place near Alexandria, Egypt.

At a critical moment in the battle, when it looked like Caesar would be defeated, Antipater the Idumaean came to his rescue.

In gratitude for his timely assistance, Caesar appointed Antipater as epitropos – regent – over Judea with the right to collect taxes, and left Hyrcanus the Second as High Priest.

Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C., and Antipater was poisoned in 43 B.C.

Another Roman civil war began between Caesar’s general, Mark Anthony, and Caesar’s nephew, Octavian.

Then, in 40 B.C., war broke out between the Romans and the Parthians over who would rule Armenia.

The conflict spilled over into Judea.

The son of Aristobulus the Second, Antigonus Mattathias, sided with the Parthians and with their support, was proclaimed King and High Priest in Judea.

He seized his uncle, Hyrcanus the Second, and, according to Josephus, bit off his ear to disqualify him from being High Priest, and had him taken away captive by the Parthians into Babylonia.

In 36 B.C., Antigonus was defeated by Antipater’s son, Herod, with help from the Romans. Herod ransomed Hyrcanus the Second from the Parthians.

Herod then ruled in Judea.

He married Mariamme, the granddaughter of both Hyrcanus the Second and Aristobulus the Second, which provided Hasmonean legitimacy to Herod’s rule.

Mariamme pressured Herod to appoint her 17-year-old brother, Aristobulus the Third, as High Priest,

Since Aristobulus the Third was the last male of the Hasmonean royal line, Herod feared him as a potential rival to the throne.

Two years later, Herod ordered Aristobulus the Third to be assassinated by drowning while bathing in a pool at a party.

At the height of the Roman civil war, the naval Battle of Actium took place in 31 BC, between Octavian and Mark Anthony with Cleopatra the Seventh of Egypt.

It is considered one of the most consequential battles in history, as it effectively ended the Roman Republic and began the Roman Empire, with Octavian, the victor, becoming Emperor — the undisputed most powerful man in the world.

Octavian changed his name to Augustus Caesar.

Mark Anthony and Cleopatra the Seventh committed suicide in Egypt.

That same year, 31 B.C., a terrible earthquake devastated Judea, killing some 30,000.

Herod met with Augustus Caesar on the Island of Rhodes and pledged his allegiance. In return, Augustus confirmed Herod as King of Judea.

Suspicious of plots against him, Herod had the 80-year-old former High Priest Hyrcanus the Second executed.

Herod the Great supported the Sadducees and funded the reconstruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

When Jesus’ disciples were admiring the Temple, He told them: “Do you see all these buildings? I tell you the truth, they will be completely demolished. Not one stone will be left on top of another!” Matthew 24:2 NLT

Since Herod was a “Hellenized” leader, he funded the restarting of the Olympic Games in the honor of Zeus, as they had been discontinued since the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 B.C.

Herod also erected pagan temples in honor of Apollos, Baal, and a temple in honor of Augustus Caesar in the city he named Caesarea.

Herod had many wives and children.

His sons by Mariamme were Aristobulus and Alexander.

Alexander married a Cappadocian Princess Glapyre, and together they had a son, Tigranes the Fifth, who became the future King of Armenia.

Herod was paranoid of treason.

He divorced, disowned, exiled or executed many of his family, including his wife, Mariamme, and her sons, Alexander and Aristobulus; as well as Antipater, a son by another wife.

His psychotic behavior was displayed when the magi visited from the east to see the new born “King of the Jews,” resulting in Herod massacring all the male children in Bethlehem who were two years old and younger.

Herod was so hated that he feared no one would mourn him when he died, so he ordered that upon his death all the distinguished leaders in Jerusalem would be immediately arrested and executed.

Herod’s son, Herod Archelaus, did not carry out this order.

Herod’s young grandson Tigranes the Fifth, after Herod had killed his father, Alexander, departed with his Cappadocian mother Glaphyra to Armenia.

Glaphyra later married Herod’s son, Herod Archelaus.

Tigranes the Fifth was sent to finish his education in Rome, and afterwards he was appointed by Augustus Caesar to be King of Armenia.

Tiberius, the future Emperor, accompanied Tigranes to Armenia’s capital of Artaxata, where he was crowned in 6 A.D.

Tigranes the Fifth ruled until 12 A.D., when he was forced out, ending the Armenian Artaxiad Dynasty.

Armenia was then under the control of the Parthian Empire.

In 52 A.D., the King of Parthia installed his brother, Tiridates the First as King of Armenia, beginning the Arsacid Dynasty.

For the next several centuries, Armenia was caught in the violent middle between Rome in the West and Parthia in the East during the Roman-Parthian Wars,

According to tradition, it was during this time in the First century A.D., that the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus of Edessa went to the area of Armenia and healed Abgar the Fifth of Edessa of leprosy.

They then founded the Armenian Apostolic Church, which is considered one of the oldest Christian institutions in the world.

Briefly, from 114 to 118 A.D., Armenia was once again a Roman province under Emperor Trajan.

In the 3rd century A.D, Roman Emperor Diocletian betrayed Armenian King Tiridates the Third and captured large areas of Armenia.

In this crisis, King Tiridates the Third released Saint Gregory the Illuminator, whom he had imprisoned for 12 years for being the son of his father’s killer.

Gregory preached to King Tiridates, and then baptized him in 301 A.D.

St. Gregory the Illuminator is credited with turning Armenia from paganism to Christianity.

Armenia is considered the first nation to “officially” adopt Christianity as its state religion when King Tiridates the Third converted in 301 A.D.

Other countries at that time also had majority Christian populations, such as Syria, Cappadocia, and Egypt.

In 313 A.D., Constantine the Great ended the persecution of Christians throughout the Roman Empire.

A section of the Old City of Jerusalem is known as “The Armenian Quarter.”

Not long after Armenia, another kingdom became Christian.

King Ezana of the African Kingdom of Aksum, 320-360 A.D., converted to Christianity and adopted it as the official religion of his kingdom, which included:

The Kingdom of Askum included:

  • Ethiopia, also called Abyssinia;
  • Yemen;
  • southern Arabia;
  • northern Somalia;
  • Djibouti;
  • Eritrea, and
  • parts of Sudan.

Aksum’s King Ezana originally minted coins with a pagan symbol at the top of a star and crescent moon. After he converted to Christianity, he replaced the star and crescent with a Christian cross, though pagans in the Middle East continued using the star and crescent symbol for centuries.

Armenia’s thousands of years of history included independence, interspersed with occupations by:

 Assyrians, Medes, Achaemenid Persians, Greeks, Parthians, Romans, Sasanian Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Mongols, Ottoman Turks, Russians, Safavid Persians, Afsharid Persians, Qajar Persians, and again Russians.

Armenia’s medieval capitol of Ani was called “the city of a 1,001 churches,” with a population of 200,000, rivaling the populations of the cities of the largest cities of the era, such as: Constantinople, Baghdad, Damascus, Florence, Rome, Paris, London, and Milan.

Islam emerged in the 7th century and quickly conquered throughout north Africa, Egypt and the Middle East.

In 704 A.D., Caliph Walid tricked Armenian nobles to meet in St. Gregory’s Church in Naxcawan and Church of Xram on the Araxis River.

Once they were all inside, he broke his promise, a practice called “taqiya.” He had his soldiers surround the church, set it on fire, and burn everyone inside to death.

In 1064, Muslim Sultan Alp Arslan and his Seljuk Turkish army invaded Armenia and after a 25 day siege, destroyed the city of Ani.

Arab historian Sibt ibn al-Jawzi recorded:

“The city became filled from one end to the other with bodies of the slain … The army entered the city, massacred its inhabitants, pillaged and burned it, leaving it in ruins … … Dead bodies were so many that they blocked the streets; one could not go anywhere without stepping over them. And the number of prisoners was not less than 50,000 souls … … I was determined to enter city and see the destruction with my own eyes. I tried to find a street in which I would not have to walk over the corpses; but that was impossible.”

Ottoman Turks reduced conquered Christians, Jewish, and non-Muslim populations to a second-class status called “dhimmi,” and required them to annually ransom their lives by paying an exorbitant tax called “jizyah.”

Sultan Murat I, 1359-1389, began the practice of “devshirme” — taking away boys from the conquered Armenian and Greek families.

These innocent boys were systematically traumatized and indoctrinated into becoming ferocious Muslim warriors called “Janissaries,” similar to Egypt’s “Mamluk” slave soldiers.

Janissaries were required to call the Sultan their “father” and were forbidden to marry, giving rise to depraved practices and abhorrent pederasty — “the sodomy of the Turks.”

For centuries Ottoman Turks conquered throughout the Mediterranean, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Spain and North Africa, carrying tens of thousands into slavery.

Beginning in the early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire began to decline. Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania won their independence.

When Armenia’s sentiments leaned toward independence, Sultan Abdul Hamid II put an end to it by massacring 100,000 from 1894-1896.

President Grover Cleveland reported to Congress, December 2, 1895:

“Occurrences in Turkey have continued to excite concern … Massacres of Christians in Armenia and the development … of a spirit of fanatic hostility to Christian influences … have lately shocked civilization.”

The next year, President Cleveland addressed Congress, December 7, 1896:

“Disturbed condition in Asiatic Turkey … rage of mad bigotry and cruel fanaticism … wanton destruction of homes and the bloody butchery of men, women, and children, made martyrs to their profession of Christian faith …

Outbreaks of blind fury which lead to murder and pillage in Turkey occur suddenly and without notice … It seems hardly possible that the earnest demand of good people throughout the Christian world for its corrective treatment will remain unanswered.”

President William McKinley told Congress, December 5, 1898:

“The … envoy of the United States to … Turkey … is … charged to press for a just settlement of our claims … of the destruction of the property of American missionaries resident in that country during the Armenian troubles of 1895.”

On December 6, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt reported to Congress of:

 “… systematic and long-extended cruelty and oppression … of which the Armenians have been the victims, and which have won for them the indignant pity of the civilized world.”

Sultan Abdul Hamid the Second made a league with Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, trading guns for access to oil.

When Sultan Hamid was deposed in 1908, there was a brief euphoria among the citizens of Turkey, as they naively hoped the country would adopt a constitutional government guaranteeing individual rights and freedoms.

Instead, the government was taken over by the “Young Turks” — three leaders or “pashas”: Mehmed Talaat Pasha, Ismail Enver Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha.

They acted as if they were planning democratic reforms while they clandestinely planned a genocidal scheme called “Ottomanization,” ridding the country of all who were not Muslims Turks.

The first step involved recruiting unsuspecting Armenian young men into the military.

Next they made them “non-combatant” soldiers and took away their weapons.

Finally, they marched them into the woods and deserts where they were ambushed and massacred.

With the Armenian young men gone, Armenian cities and villages were defenseless.

Nearly 2 million old men, women and children were marched into the desert, thrown off cliffs or burned alive. Armenian cities of Kharpert, Van and Ani was leveled.

Entire Armenian populations were deported to the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia where hundreds of thousands were killed or starved to death.

During World War One, Armenia briefly received aid from Russia until that country’s military was decimated by German artillery, followed by Tsar Nicholas the Second being killed during Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution.

Theodore Roosevelt recorded the fate of Armenians in his 1916 book Fear God and Take Your Own Part:

“Armenians, who for some centuries have sedulously avoided militarism and war … are so suffering precisely and exactly because they have been pacifists whereas their neighbors, the Turks, have … been … militarists …

During the last year and a half … Armenians have been subjected to wrongs far greater than any that have been committed since the close of the Napoleonic Wars …

Fearful atrocities … Serbia is at this moment passing under the harrow of torture and mortal anguish …”

Roosevelt continued:

“Armenians have been butchered under circumstances of murder and torture and rape that would have appealed to an old-time Apache Indian …

 The wholesale slaughter of the Armenians … must be shared by the neutral powers headed by the United States for their failure to protest when this initial wrong was committed …

The crowning outrage has been committed by the Turks on the Armenians. They have suffered atrocities so hideous that it is difficult to name them, atrocities such as those inflicted upon conquered nations by the followers of Attila and of Genghis Khan …

It is dreadful to think that these things can be done and that this nation nevertheless remarks ‘neutral not only in deed but in thought,’ between right and the most hideous wrong, neutral between despairing and hunted people — people whose little children are murdered and their women raped — and the victorious and evil wrong-doers …

I trust that all Americans worthy of the name feel their deepest indignation and keenest sympathy aroused by the dreadful Armenian atrocities. I trust that they feel … that a peace obtained without … righting the wrongs of the Armenians would be worse than any war.”

Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote:

 “The Turks draft the criminals from their prisons into the Gendarmeri – military police – to exterminate the Armenian race …

In 1913 the Turkish Army was engaged in exterminating the Albanians … Greeks and Slavs left in the territory … The same campaign of extermination has been waged against the Nestorian Christians on the Persian frontier … In Syria there is a reign of terror …”

Toynbee continued:

“Turkish rule … is … slaughtering or driving from their homes, the Christian population … Only a third of the two million Armenians in Turkey have survived, and that at the price of apostatizing to Islam or else of leaving all they had and fleeing across the frontier.”

Armenia’s pleas at the Paris Peace Conference led Democrat President Wilson in a failed effort to make Armenia a U.S. protectorate.

Woodrow Wilson, who was born December 28, 1856, addressed Congress, May 24, 1920:

“The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has established the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered … deplorable conditions of insecurity, starvation, and misery now prevalent in Armenia …

Sympathy for Armenia among our people has sprung from untainted consciences, pure Christian faith and an earnest desire to see Christian people everywhere succored – helped – in their time of suffering.”

In 2006, Director Andrew Goldberg produced a documentary film The Armenian Genocide.

In 2016, actors Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac and Charlotte Le Bon starred in the film The Promise, depicting the Armenian genocide in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. In some areas, entire Armenian populations were decimated.

Some heroic and caring Turks refused to carry out orders kill Armenians and were themselves punished, as represented in a scene in The Promise, where the character Emre Ogan, played by Marwan Kenzari, risked his life to rescue American journalist Chris Myers, played by Christian Bale.

On August 29, 2014, the California Senate unanimously passed the Armenian Genocide Education Act mandating that among the human rights subjects covered in public schools, instruction shall be made of the genocide committed in Armenia at the beginning of the 20th century:

“The Legislature encourages the incorporation of survivor, rescuer, liberator, and witness oral testimony into the teaching of … the Armenian, Cambodian, Darfur, and Rwandan genocides … teaching about civil rights, human rights violations, genocide, slavery … the Holocaust … and … the Great Irish Famine of 1845–50 …

For purposes of this article, ‘Armenian Genocide’ means the torture, starvation, and murder of 1,500,000 Armenians, which included death marches into the Syrian desert, by the rulers of the Ottoman Turkish Empire and the exile of more than 500,000 innocent people during the period from 1915 to 1923, inclusive.”

Hitler allegedly gave orders August 22, 1939, to brutally invade Poland, adding: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Secular leaders, such as Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk, Egypt’s Gemal Nasser, Iran’s Reza Pahlavi, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Syria’s Hafez al-Asad, had ushered in an era of moderation and tolerance in the Middle East, but their legacy has been rejected by fundamentalists.

Minorities in have increasinly suffered persecution and even genocide:

Iraqi Chaldean Christians, Assyrian Christians, Syriac Christians, Lebanese Maronite Christians, Egyptian Coptic Christians, Aramaic Christians, Melkite Christians, and Kurds.

Judge Learned Hand reportedly wrote:

“The use of history is to tell us … past themes, else we should have to repeat, each in his own experience, the successes and the failures of our forebears.”

Will and Ariel Durant wrote in The Lessons of History, 1968, New York: Simon & Schuster:

“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew, if the transmission should be interrupted … civilization would die, and we should be savages again.”

Harvard Professor George Santayana wrote in Reason in Common Sense, 1905, Volume One of The Life of Reason:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”