The Greek Abomination

I don't know if it was the Council of Nicea, but it was some kind of council that decided what books would be included in the Bible. Before that there was a bunch of loose texts floating around and it was decided to bind them all together in one book. Some of the texts didn't make the cut and were generally suppressed, but a few of them were dug up later, and some theologians are still arguing about them.

The problem I had with the Apocalypse was that most of the folks at Elsdon didn't believe in it, yet they still called themselves Christians. We used to recite the Apostles' Creed every Sunday morning, and it is consistent with the Apocalypse scenario. It eventually occurred to me that I don't believe in this stuff myself, so I shouldn't be reciting it. It didn't seem to bother anybody else, so maybe they just weren't paying attention. You're right that I would have gone to Alaska regardless. I didn't go to Alaska to get away from my friends and family, I went to Alaska because I wanted to go to Alaska, and I wasn't about to let my friends and family hold me back. It would have pleased me if they all had gone to Alaska with me.

After Alexander died, his kids split up the empire between them. One of the groups, I think it was the Selucid Greeks, ended up in control of Israel. They set out on a program they called "Hellenization". Basically, they were trying to displace the Jewish culture with the Greek culture, and it really pissed the Jews off. The last straw was when the Greeks took over the Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated to their god Zeus. This was the "abomination that makes desolate" that was predicted by the prophet Daniel a century or two previous. Daniel got his information from an angel who told him to write it all down, seal up the scroll, and hide it someplace. Daniel confessed that he didn't understand any of it, but the angel told him that a future generation would discover the scroll at the appropriate time, and they would know what to do with it.  

As luck would have it, the scroll was indeed discovered right about the time the Greeks were desecrating the Temple. One of the priests, I believe his name was Ananias, interpreted the prophecy of Daniel to mean that it was time to launch a rebellion against the Greeks. He took to the hills and began to organize the rebellion, but he died before the thing got off the ground. His son, Judas "The Hammer" Maccabaeus, took over and eventually led his people to victory over Greeks. He went on to re-establish the Kingdom of Israel, extending its borders beyond where they were during the reign of King Solomon. After Maccabaeus died, his followers couldn't agree about his successor, and the kingdom kind of fell apart, just in time for the arrival of the Romans. By some accounts, the Romans had already been there for some time, encouraging the rebellion and waiting for a chance to make their move.

This comes from The Apocrypha, a part of the Bible that is recognized only by the Catholics. Somebody recommended it to me a long time ago, but I wasn't interested because it was, you know, Catholic. I finally stumbled onto this information a few years ago when a question arose on the internet about the abomination that makes desolate. Somebody was wondering if, with the election of our current president, we would become an "Obama nation". They had heard there was something about it in the Bible and suspected it might mean the world was coming to an end. (I am not making this up!) I seemed to remember Jesus saying something about the subject, so I looked it up. Jesus referenced the prophet Daniel as the source of the quote, so I looked that up too. I couldn't make any sense out of Daniel, but I didn't feel too bad because Daniel didn't understand it himself. Then I went to my book "People of the Bible and How They Lived", where I found the whole story written in plain English.

But wait, there's more! Jesus used the quote from Daniel to explain how everyone would know when the Apocalypse was upon them. The problem with that is this particular prophecy had already been fulfilled by the Maccabees'  rebellion, and Jesus seemed to be trying to co-opt it for His own second coming. It is unlikely that the Jews of the time would have been fooled by this because they would have been as familiar with the Maccabaeus story as we are with the story of the American Revolution. So what was Jesus really trying to say? Is it possible that He was talking about our president after all?