History which never happened both comforts and tantalizes by hinting how we might have avoided present miseries. What if Rome had never grown to be more than a small, undistinguished Italian city-state? It is unlikely that any other Mediterranean empire would have obliterated the Temple of Jerusalem, as did the Roman emperor's son Titus in 70CE - at least, it is very unlikely that the temple would not have been rebuilt or redeployed for a new sort of faith. Total destruction was not the way in the ancient Near East: witness the seventh-century struggle over the ancient holy place of Mecca, which Muhammad transformed into the focus of a newly conceived religion. Without the Romans, temple worship would have continued in Jerusalem, with thousands on thousands converging on it yearly, ecstatic to end their pilgrimage in a centuries-old sacred city, as still happens on the hajj to Mecca.The reality of history is that after 70CE, followers of Judaism throughout the Mediterranean and Near East witnessed the agony of their homeland in Judaea, shattered and traumatised by Titus's victory. Resentment at Roman repression and the temple's continuing ruin provoked rebellion, and a second and decisive round of destruction in 132-35. In the decades between, one messianic offshoot of Judaism, founded by Jesus who was crucified, projected an identity right outside the normal confines of Jewish faith. The Jesus movement's crucial transformation into a religion for Gentiles as well as Jews, pioneered by Paul even before the temple had fallen, gave it potential for growth on a scale unprecedented for a marginal Jewish sect.This book is available on Amazon
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