Haran

The city of Haran is located near, but not on, the northwestern end of the Euphrates River. It was a flourishing trade center in the 19th and 18th centuries B.C.; it was on the main route between Nineveh and other major cities. On Abraham’s trip from Ur to the Jordan River area, he stopped at Haran.

Sumer

The great empire of Babylonia was formed by merging two smaller, but important, empires: Akkad and Sumer.

The name of the earliest inhabitants of Mesopotamia of whom there are historical records is ‘Sumerians’ — their cultural contributions to later Mesopotamian civilizations were great and original. Archaeologists have recovered tens of thousands of Sumerian tablets and revealed extensive remains of cities and temples. The Sumerian language can now be read by scholars and the history of Sumer from the beginning of written records reconstructed and dated with some assurance. This is a remarkable achievement; as recently as 1915 leading scholars denied that the Sumerians ever existed!

The Sumerians were not a Semitic people; their language is related to Turkish, Finnish, and Hungarian. They probably entered Mesopotamia via the Persian Gulf about 3000 B.C.; they were not the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. The geographical name ‘Sumer’ in ancient times designated lower Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf.

Prior to 2800 B.C., the Sumerians appear organized in cities which are temple communities. The god is the king of the city and the temple is the owner of the land; the people are the servants and tenants of the temple. Writing and art are known and monumental temples are built. Commerce and the crafts and the division of labor permit fuller realization of natural resources.

After 2600 B.C., independent city-states have a tendency to league themselves under one king as an overlord.

From 2500 B.C. until 2350 B.C., Ur was the dominant power among the Sumerian cities. Its wealth and artistic progress are evident from royal tombs. Its kings have left numerous inscriptions and records.

A family of kings from Akkad ruled from 2350 to 2150 B.C.; such a royal family is called a ‘dynasty’ — in this dynasty, two important kings were Sargon and Naram-Sin. The empire expanded into most of Mesopotamia and even a bit beyond; it is not clear whether to call it the ‘Sumerian Empire’ or the ‘Akkadian Empire’ at this stage, because Sumer and Akkad would eventually merge to become Babylonia.

The most important Sumerian invention was the cuneiform script. This was first used for records and accounts. Although their writing system would grow to be complex and sophisticated, the Sumerians remained a largely pre-religious culture: they were dominated by myth, magic, and attempts to manipulate nature (which characterize the pre-religious phase), rather than a relational connection with the personality of the deity (involving acceptance and appreciation rather than manipulation) which characterizes a religious or even post-religious phase. Given this pre-religious state, archaeologists have found conclusive evidence of human sacrifice as a ritual practice among the early Sumerians.

Akkad

On the Euphrates River in northern Babylonia lies the city of Akkad. The city, which existed as independent city-state before merging with Sumer to form Babylonia, was influential and the area around it is also called Akkad. The Babylonian empire, before it was called ‘the Babylonian empire’, was originally called simply ‘Sumer and Akkad’. Prior to the merger with Sumer, Akkad dominated the region from approximately 2355 B.C. to 2165 B.C., and the two greatest rulers of Akkad were Sargon the Great (not to be confused with Sargon I and Sargon II of Assyria) and Naram-Sin. The empire of Akkad included all of Mesopotamia, and at times expanded to include even Syria. The dynasty of Akkad saw great advances in culture and the arts, and was long remembered in saga, despite its brevity. The dynasty of Akkad represents the successful irruption of Semitic peoples into Mesopotamia.

Agrippa

The name ‘Agrippa’ can be used for either Marcus Julius Agrippa (known as Agrippa II), or his father, Herod Agrippa (known as Agrippa I). When the father died in 44 A.D., the son was regarded by Roman emperor Claudius as too young to succeed, and the rule was entrusted to his uncle, Herod, brother of Agrippa I. The uncle died in 48 A.D., and the kingdom was granted to Agrippa II in 50 A.D.; later he would also govern some portions of Galilee. Like his father, Agrippa II was careful to win the goodwill of the Jews by deference to Jewish law and custom; at the same time he was a patron of the Hellenistic culture and religion. He contributed to the building of the temple in Jerusalem, but a dispute arose when he constructed a terrace on his palace from which he could observe the temple area. Agrippa II was present when the new procurator, Festus, found Paul (Rabbi Saul) in prison, and Agrippa II asked that Paul might be permitted to speak to him. Bernice, the widow of his uncle Herod, was also his sister, and the two had an openly incestuous relationship. It became clear to the Jews that Agrippa II was not really on their side, and when the Jewish revolt broke out in 66 A.D., Agrippa II and Bernice did all they could to prevent the revolt in Palestine from going any further. When they were unsuccessful, they remained stoutly loyal to Rome throughout the war, confirming the suspicions of the Jews. After the war, he received additional territories from Rome, presumably as a reward for his loyalty. The date of his death is not certain, but he seems to have reigned until around 100 A.D.

Sennacherib

From 705 B.C. to 681 B.C., Sennacherib, the son of Sargon II, was the king of Assyria. At his accession he was greeted by a general rebellion through much of the Assyrian empire, with its two principal centers at Babylon and in Syria and Palestine. The rebellion in Syria and Palestine was led by King Hezekiah of Judah with the assistance of Egypt. In 701 B.C., Sennacherib moved against the revolts in Syria and Palestine. Judah and the cities of the Philistines offered the only effective resistance; the Egyptian forces were defeated. Jerusalem was eventually forced to capitulate. Sennacherib made Nineveh a central city in his empire; he was assassinated by his sons.

Trying to Re-Design Europe

In February 1945, the three winning military powers of World War Two met in the city of Yalta: the USSR, the USA, and England. Personified by Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, they wanted to plan how they would structure Europe once the war was over. It was clear that Germany would lose, so this was the time to organize the post-war world.

Sadly, it soon became clear that Stalin would agree to anything, but would never keep his word. Soviet Communism had a clear goal of dominating eastern European nations, and would never allow them the civil rights and personal freedoms which the Yalta plan envisioned. For people in places like Poland and Czechoslovakia, the end of the war simply meant exchanging the inhumane oppression of the Nazis for the inhumane oppression of Soviet Communism.

Roosevelt desperately wanted the conference to succeed, and spent a great deal of effort to organize it, and to travel thousands of miles, even when his own personal health was very shaky.

So why did Roosevelt risk his life by traveling halfway around the world? His chief goals were twofold: to persuade Stalin to enter the Pacific war, which he hoped would avert the bloodshed of an invasion of the Japanese home islands and to persuade Stalin to join the United Nations.

These two goals, as reported by The Washington Times, motivated Roosevelt. On paper, he would succeed; but in reality, Stalin would not be of much help in the Pacific, and he would join the United Nations only to subvert it, not to promote it.

To achieve the first goal, Roosevelt blithely granted Stalin control of wide swaths of territory that by rights should have gone to his “ally,” Chiang Kai-shek of China. As for the Poles, FDR agreed to huge slices being taken off both its east and western borders.

Although Roosevelt had noble intentions, his desire clouded his judgment. He gave away too much, and got only false promises in return. Harvard’s Professor Plokhy writes that Churchill and Roosevelt both agreed

to redraw international borders and forcibly resettle millions of people without consulting the governments and nations involved.

Perhaps Roosevelt and Churchill couldn’t really believe that Soviet Communism was as savage as it actually was. For example, a Soviet soldier captured by the enemy was treated by the Soviets as a deserter, not a prisoner of war: and the punishment for deserting was death. The Washington Times continues:

One of the more cynical - and bloody - concessions to Stalin was the forcible return to the USSR of Red Army soldiers taken captive by the Germans, and hordes of displaced civilians. To Stalin, capture was akin to treason, and soldiers knew they faced imprisonment or death when returned; Hundreds chose suicide rather than return.

Although a historic moment, the Yalta conference was ultimately a failure: it created no safety and no freedom for the people in the post-war world. But it taught us an important lesson: free societies cannot enter into good-faith negotiations with totalitarian dictatorships.

Turkey - Then and Now

The modern nation of Turkey has a rich and ancient heritage. One of the the earliest ethnicities of Turkey was a group known as the Hittites. They developed a sophisticated literacy and left behind expansive libraries of complex clay tablets. Their intellectual heritage, however, was trampled beneath the boots of invading armies - the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans, all of whom subjugated the territory long before the pacifistic teachings of Jesus. Eventually confined under the rule of the Ottoman Emperors, Turkey was not to taste cultural independence until the early 1920s. Although it seemed that Turkey was finally emerging into the societal sunshine, recent events have raised the hypothesis, according to the Washington Times,

that the semi-secular state founded by Ataturk in 1923 was merely a quaint experiment of the 20th century, and that the new millennium may witness a return of the Islamist orientation that defined the preceding Ottoman Empire for 600 years.

Would Turkey really step back from the hints toward civil rights, human rights, and democracy which it enjoyed for approximately eighty years?

This is hardly a foregone conclusion because Turkish politics teeter-totters through cycles of moderation and radicalism, but Turkey’s oft-neglected history is relevant no matter which direction the republic turns.

So there may yet be hope for the people of Turkey. But why would the leaders or the people of Turkey toy with the notion of returning to the darkness of the brutal medieval regime which so harshly crushed any flickering spark of the cultural glory that once was the original nation of Turkey? Why would there be even the possibility of anyone accepting this gigantic step backward into gloom which overshadowed the nation for centuries? Perhaps because it offers the lure of expansionist glory: the citizens might be content to surrender their chances at personal liberty and individual freedom for a chance to conquer neighboring territories. The Turks remember

the long and bloody history of Turkish conquest in Europe, which culminated in the siege of Vienna in 1683. The cautionary tale is that Islamic jihadist armies made it that far into the heart of Europe and nearly prevailed. Many fear a new invasion is in the works. And indeed, in the Islamic world, the expansionist vision is not a relic of the past. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared that, “Islam will return to Rome conquering and victorious.” Religion is thus still central to this old conflict.

Will Turkey continue to nudge itself toward a social structure which values peace and human life? Or will it trade that option for a chance to dominate parts of eastern Europe? At this time, nobody knows.