An American citizen was detained by security forces in the museum after being observed shattering the statues, which he claimed were "in violation of the Torah."
Honestly, there's very obvious evidence the Roman Pantheon had some influence, beyond the questionable name similarity theory. When the earliest Jewish written texts were being compiled in the 2nd century, Romans had been running half of Israel for like 300 years. But they were going through a bit of an "emperor-god with token nod to ancestral deities" phase at the time, so nobody else really took it seriously. A big part of the reason the Rabbis were collaborating on a written word version of Jewish law when they were pretty much oral-history-only before that is because they were actively trying not to include any sneaky Roman (or other non-divine) stuff in there.
And we knew that the Ancient Jews around Moses' time (~1500BC) knew something about other gods that people nearby believed in, because there are references to them by name in the scriptures. Which is suspicious far beyond inference from "no other gods before me".
And we knew that there was a temple in the ancient town ruins that was dedicated at some point to zeus and greek, but nobody was able to date it accurately. It could have been left over from the period immediately after Jesus, it was too broken to tell and evidence of Greek pantheon cults wasn't controversial to anyone - provided it was from after Jesus and the Mishnah.
The argument that there couldn't be Greek influence in the Mishnah because the Greek pantheon never was widely known about/believed in prior to Roman invasion was impossible to prove false for a very long time. Dating stuff that old that accurately is hard and usually impossible. Nobody had good physical evidence of Greek pantheon worship in Israel before the earliest Talmud texts, and if all those Rabbis in the Kingdom knew about Greek gods, the worship of the pantheon would have to have been very common and widespread. It was fair to expect evidence of even a single Greek pantheon household shrine, because the Greeks left them everywhere else they went.
So, the odds of finding a statue head identifiably from the same century as the oldest Jewish law standardisation attempts because of its art style, and being able to definitely date it after the rumoured Greek rulers of that city had been overthrown a few hundred years earlier … and the head using imported stone from only one famous Greek island, which proves trade lines… and the rumours of Greek rulers and in that part of the old city during what was supposed to be the Kingdom of Israel… and the statue head being the right size for a statue with the same footprint as the broken statue plinth mentioning Zeus on the Temple? And all this, when the team digging went there to find proof the Bible was true?
Damn.
The archaeologists did a fantastic job. It cannot have been easy to present evidence contradicting the history of 3 of the world's dominant religions, using their own artifacts on their turf with their permission.
The museum also knew this statue head was not going to go down well with religious people, it was only recently they allowed it to be exhibited because of its implications. That took courage, even if I wish they had put up better barriers.
Not that the head was in great shape anyway, it's not even the most upsetting recent artifact destruction.
Honestly, there's very obvious evidence the Roman Pantheon had some influence, beyond the questionable name similarity theory. When the earliest Jewish written texts were being compiled in the 2nd century, Romans had been running half of Israel for like 300 years. But they were going through a bit of an "emperor-god with token nod to ancestral deities" phase at the time, so nobody else really took it seriously. A big part of the reason the Rabbis were collaborating on a written word version of Jewish law when they were pretty much oral-history-only before that is because they were actively trying not to include any sneaky Roman (or other non-divine) stuff in there.
And we knew that the Ancient Jews around Moses' time (~1500BC) knew something about other gods that people nearby believed in, because there are references to them by name in the scriptures. Which is suspicious far beyond inference from "no other gods before me".
And we knew that there was a temple in the ancient town ruins that was dedicated at some point to zeus and greek, but nobody was able to date it accurately. It could have been left over from the period immediately after Jesus, it was too broken to tell and evidence of Greek pantheon cults wasn't controversial to anyone - provided it was from after Jesus and the Mishnah.
The argument that there couldn't be Greek influence in the Mishnah because the Greek pantheon never was widely known about/believed in prior to Roman invasion was impossible to prove false for a very long time. Dating stuff that old that accurately is hard and usually impossible. Nobody had good physical evidence of Greek pantheon worship in Israel before the earliest Talmud texts, and if all those Rabbis in the Kingdom knew about Greek gods, the worship of the pantheon would have to have been very common and widespread. It was fair to expect evidence of even a single Greek pantheon household shrine, because the Greeks left them everywhere else they went.
So, the odds of finding a statue head identifiably from the same century as the oldest Jewish law standardisation attempts because of its art style, and being able to definitely date it after the rumoured Greek rulers of that city had been overthrown a few hundred years earlier … and the head using imported stone from only one famous Greek island, which proves trade lines… and the rumours of Greek rulers and in that part of the old city during what was supposed to be the Kingdom of Israel… and the statue head being the right size for a statue with the same footprint as the broken statue plinth mentioning Zeus on the Temple? And all this, when the team digging went there to find proof the Bible was true?
Damn.
The archaeologists did a fantastic job. It cannot have been easy to present evidence contradicting the history of 3 of the world's dominant religions, using their own artifacts on their turf with their permission.
The museum also knew this statue head was not going to go down well with religious people, it was only recently they allowed it to be exhibited because of its implications. That took courage, even if I wish they had put up better barriers.
Not that the head was in great shape anyway, it's not even the most upsetting recent artifact destruction.
Yeah, I'll stop now.