Back in the fifth century C. E., things had been looking pretty hopeless for the Jewish people in the Middle East for nearly three centuries.
The Bar Kokhba Revolt, which started in 132 and lasted four years, marked the beginning of the downward spiral. A Judaean military leader, Simon bar Kokhba, launched a fierce rebellion against their repressive Roman overlords, with the immediate cause being Emperor Hadrian's intent to rebuild the damaged city of Jerusalem as an overtly Roman city, dedicated to the worship of Jupiter, and renamed Aelia Capitolina. Bar Kokhba and his followers started a series of ultimately doomed guerrilla actions, and gained some ground for a while, but inevitably the far better armed and trained Roman legions were victorious. The Jewish people in Judaea were destroyed almost completely, with the survivors fleeing to anywhere they could manage to get to.
Even after the devastating aftermath of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, however, the hope still remained that the Jews might eventually win back their lost territory. By the middle of the fifth century, repeated invasions by the Goths, Huns, Alans, and Franks had weakened the Roman Empire to the point that some Jews thought the time was ripe. Add to that the prediction that -- according to one interpretation of the Talmud -- the Messiah would arrive in the year 440, and you have a dangerous confluence of desperation, hope, and prophecy.
This is when a guy named Moses of Crete showed up. According to a writing from the seventh century, the Chronicle of John of Nikiû, his name was originally Fiskis, but that doesn't sound nearly as impressive, so history remembers him as Moses. Also uncertain is whether he actually believed what he preached, or if he was simply a charlatan.
Whatever the truth is, he amassed a huge following amongst the Jewish refugees in Crete, and convinced them he was anointed by God to lead them back to Judaea, where after a Holy War they would re-establish a Jewish kingdom. Further, he said that he -- like his namesake -- would lead them, dry-shod, across the sea and back to the Holy Land. Astonishingly, people believed him. Many left behind everything they owned, followed Moses to a promontory on the southeastern coast of Crete, and walked off the edge.
The predictable happened.
The Chronicle says no one knows what happened to Moses after this debacle, in which hundreds perished. Some say he died with them; others, that he panicked when he saw what was happening, and fled, assuming a different identity somewhere else. Which it was, I suppose, depends primarily on which version you went for earlier -- whether he was a con artist or a True Believer.
I was reminded of the story of Moses of Crete when I saw a post yesterday over at Joe My God that combat unit commanders in charge of the soldiers tasked with carrying out Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth Kegbreath's ill-advised war against Iran have told their troops that the war is part of "God's divine plan" and that Donald Trump was "appointed by Jesus" to carry it out -- with the ultimate aim of triggering Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.
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This attempt to turn the attacks into a Holy War has already resulted in over a hundred complaints by servicemen and women, who (rightly) claim that framing this as some sort of Christian jihad is, to put it bluntly, insane. The last thing we need is the End Times fanatics getting behind this because they've decided that Trump and Whiskey Pete are carrying God's authority to open the Seven Seals.
Don't get me wrong; the regime in Iran in general, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in particular, are a bunch of murderous thugs (well, was in Khamenei's case). But Trump and his cronies started a war, ostensibly to eliminate a nuclear threat that Trump himself said had been "obliterated" only eight months ago, but the obvious goal was distracting everyone from doing anything about the fact that there's credible evidence he and about a hundred other rich white guys were engaging in decades of horrifying and vicious pedophilia. He has no plan beyond that, no strategy, no end game. The entire thing is smoke and mirrors -- except that it has already cost lives, including those of six servicemen and over a hundred Iranian children at a girls' school bombed "accidentally."
Oh, but this is a Holy War! Really it is! Here, American soldiers, follow me right off this cliff! The waters will part and God will grant you victory, I promise!
Hegseth, of course, wants war; it's significant -- although it was widely ridiculed at the time -- that he changed the name of the department he leads from the Department of Defense to the Department of War. He, and people like him, are happiest when they're thumping their chests and telling everyone what Big Bad Tough Guys they are, and there's nothing like bombing the shit out of a country to prove that to the world.
The only hopeful things I can draw from all of this are that (1) the complaints of religious proselytization are being taken seriously enough that an investigation is being launched, and (2) the Epstein files aren't going anywhere. Yeah, the war in Iran has bumped them from the headlines for the moment, but nobody is forgetting about them.
It's pretty clear Trump doesn't have a religious bone in his body, and never has; as far as Hegseth, he appears to be a devout, if frighteningly fanatical, Christian. Ultimately, of course, it doesn't matter, just as it didn't for Moses of Crete and his unfortunate followers. Walking off the edge of a precipice, whether a real one or a metaphorical one, isn't going to result in some kind of miracle; it'll end up producing a pile of mangled bodies.
Not that Trump appears to care. "There'll likely be more [casualties] before it ends," he said at a press conference a couple of days ago. "That's the way it is. Likely be more."
The whole thing reminds me of the trenchant words of Susan B. Anthony: "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
