Daughter of My People: Jesus' Jerusalem destroyed

Preface

You may read this as a history work. You may read this as a religious work. You may read this as a reflective work. The point of this book is to produce all these 3.

My younger self would agree that history matters. There's this saying, "Forget your history, and you're doomed to repeat it!" So I focused on history. There were many people frequently mentioned in history classes: Confucius, Julius Caesar, Martin Luther, Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, and others.

But I noticed that Jesus Christ isn't mentioned.

Generally speaking, this may be because he's such a controversial figure. But being religious also (part of the Seventh Day Adventist Church), my family mentions him a lot, and not as a swear word—that is outright disrespectful, as a P.E. teacher I once had put it. At least she has a sense.

So for this book, Jesus will be mentioned, not merely as a historical figure (like others I'll mention: Nero, James the Just, Vespasian, Josephus, etc.), but as the Messiah. Practically speaking, he is actually in charge of the events in the book.

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I find it difficult to write about the First Jewish-Roman War because of how much details the historian Josephus inserts in his The War of the Jews, so I have to signal out details, and add from other and different sources, like the Bible, Tacitus (but he gives a rather inaccurate representation of Jewish history), dictionaries, etc., in order to present a fuller retelling of the fall of Jerusalem.

Note: not all the details matter!!!

Anyways. In our church, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, we center on Bible prophecy, and that deals with Daniel and Revelation. Taking Daniel 9:24-27, it implies 490 years of Jewish history after the edict to rebuild Jerusalem by a Persian king. In this, we learn of Jesus' crucifixion at A.D. 31, which some people believe to be the real year. This means Jesus' "generation" (Matthew 23:36) of 40 years would end at the Passover of A.D. 71. Note that Jerusalem was destroyed the previous autumn of A.D. 70. So the prophecy has come true.

All in all, this is historical in that history is the object of this book; this is religious in that Christianity, Judaism, and pagan Romanism play a big role in this book; this is reflective in that the breaks in narration can be used for thinking about what was just read in this book.

And by the way, the notes are more comments about events or that explain some events. While brief, they are helpful.

Well, I'm not used to writing prefaces, but I hope I've helped you out, even if it's a little bit.

God bless!

~ R.O. Cuevas (JeremyInChrist)