What was the role of generations of Herod's rulers in Israel? In fact, it was the spokesman of Rome and the head of the puppet regime, whose main function was to help the Romans oppress and exploit their own compatriots, that is, to rule their compatriots by virtue of the authority of the Roman godfather.

For such a two-devil ruler who dismembered the Maccabee dynasty and played the role of a spokesman for foreign races, I am afraid that no nationality will have a good opinion of him. However, the most active opponents of Herod's rule were the middle and lower classes, especially the Jews outside Jerusalem and the lower Jewish priests, who hated the family to the core.

For example, the region of Galilee, where Jesus was born, was the most active and intense rebel against Herod. Before the martyrdom of Jesus, there was a large number of self-proclaimed Messiahs and saviors in Galilee, and even armed uprisings broke out, but they were wiped out by Herod's army and Roman masters.

Naturally, Jesus also disliked the Herod family and the corrupt temple priests and the Sanhedrin, which had become instruments of oppression and exploitation of the Jews by the Romans. What's worse is that these tools are so useful.

Why? For from the time of Moses, priests enjoyed a high status in Jewish society. Especially after Solomon built the temple, the temple priests could almost be said to be the mouthpieces of the gods, they were the mouthpieces of the gods in the world, and the religious ideas of the Jews were so strong that these corrupt priests easily enslaved millions of Jews.

The Jews had no way to resist the authority of the temple priests, and they did not even dare to think about it. It wasn't until the time of Jesus that things changed. Jerusalem, the core of Herod's rule, remained the domain of the temple priests. And beyond Jerusalem. The Jews of the "country" found a way to resist the authority of the Temple (it must be said here.) The temple was so important to the Jews that whoever controlled the temple as God's dwelling place on earth had a voice in Jewish society.)

The temple could not be denied, but the tyranny of the Herod family and the temple priests had to be resisted, and the Jews thought of the ancient legend of the Messiah (literally, the anointed one), the Messiah who was chosen by God. He is God's spokesman on earth and has divine authority beyond the temple and the temple priests.

Seeing this, the big guy should understand why the Jewish temple priests were desperate to deal with Jesus as soon as they heard that Jesus was the so-called Messiah. Because this sincerity was unbearable, once Jesus confirmed his Messian, the temple priests would not have to be confused.

This is why there were so many so-called Messiahs in Israel in Jesus' day, for the simple reason that it was the only legitimate means for the Jews to rebel against the Roman spokesman.

But Jesus was not the Messiah in the beginning. Or that he did not call himself the Messiah. In fact, Jesus' family was very poor. His father, Joseph, was merely a carpenter when Jesus was born. According to Jewish tradition, Joseph was supposed to go to the temple to sacrifice God (thank God for his son), and the average Jewish family usually sacrificed two lambs to get a man, but Joseph was so poor that he only sacrificed two doves (or turtledoves).

It stands to reason that Jesus' family is unlikely to become a priest or engage in superstructure activities in the future. He should be a carpenter or some other small craftsman. It was a very important person who changed the fate of Jesus, and this person is more like the first generation of Christianity or the founder in Li Xiaofeng's view. This man was John the Baptist.

This John the Baptist in the New Testament is almost a soy sauce character, a green leaf that foils Jesus. But in reality, I'm afraid it's the opposite, why? Because John's family was a proper clergy family, and his father Zechariah was a temple priest (of a very low rank), John was able to receive an orthodox Jewish religious education at a very young age (Jesus was still herding sheep at that time).

John the Baptist naturally grew up to be a proper clergyman, and he was a particularly religious one. He lived an ascetic life in the wilderness, as Isaiah had instructed, to "make a way for Jehovah in the desert," in the words of the Bible. This ascetic life earned him his first followers (including Jesus), and many people were speculating about John as a savior.

It is worth mentioning that this John the Baptist was a cousin of Jesus (Mary was a cousin of John's mother. When Mary was pregnant with Jesus, she lived with John's parents.) In Li Xiaofeng's view, Jesus was not born holy, but took the path of preaching under the influence of this cousin.

There is nothing to mention about these missionary lives, nothing more than miracles and healing and saving people. It's just that John and Jesus underwent a reform when they were preaching. The main thrust of this reform was to expand the influence of Judaism among non-Jewish communities.

Why? Because Judaism is quite exclusive, the core of this religion is actually the "covenant (the Ten Commandments)", in which the Jews made a = contract with God, and this covenant made the Jews the chosen people. All Jews must keep this covenant or be forsaken by God.

The Pact did guarantee the survival of the Jews as a people for thousands of years, regardless of their suffering, but the uniqueness of the Pact also excluded the possibility of other peoples being integrated into the Jewish nation. For example, the core idea of the contract is monotheism.

Speaking from the heart, polytheism is more popular and acceptable in other parts of the world. And the monotheism of Jewish exclusivity undoubtedly sets an either/or flag, which is vulnerable to attack. And the sign of this contract is circumcision, which is nothing now, but thousands of years ago, this method was still unacceptable to many people.

However, according to the rules of Judaism, if you do not suffer this sword, you will not be considered to have made an oath with God, and the contract will not be counted. This is tantamount to the direct exclusion of peoples other than Jews from Judaism, which creates obstacles to the spread of Judaism.

So when it came to John the Baptist, he reformed and invented a baptism to cleanse sins. And its preaching was not limited to the Jews. Because baptism can replace circumcision. In other words, everyone can serve God as Lord. God will no longer be the Jew's Lord.

Truth be told, this reform is quite important. For thousands of years, Jews have adhered to their own tradition, which is to play their own games. There is also a strong rejection of other populations joining their communities. Although this kind of maverick behavior preserves Jewish traditions and national characteristics, on the other hand, it is not conducive to their external expansion, and this lack of compatibility has kept the Jews independent of other ethnic groups in the Middle East, and has also led to their vulnerability to isolation and hostility.

John the Baptist was really off to a good start, and he got more non-Jews into the faith in God. It can well be imagined. If faith in Jehovah were spread far and wide in the Middle East, the Jews would have a much better life and a completely different influence.

But all reforms were risky, and John the Baptist's reforms undoubtedly threatened the rights of the temple priests and shook the foundations of the Jewish nation. It is conceivable that if more and more Jews accepted John's reforms, the authority of the temple priests would be greatly diminished, and the disciples whom John had developed would probably not be able to bird the temple priests. Once the foundation of the Jewish nation, that is, the "contract", is shaken, Judaism will not only belong to the Jews, and this religion will no longer be able to exist as a carrier of the Jewish nation. Naturally, Jews will be diluted until they disappear.

Neither the former nor the latter could be accepted by many Orthodox Jews. So John the Baptist's Reformation may have been good for God (expanding the circle of believers). But for the minority Jews, I am afraid that it is a major event of national extinction. Therefore, it is understandable that his reforms were not accepted by the Jewish community in the end, but instead shined among the foreign races.

As a temple priest, it was the "natural right" thing to preserve both the Jewish tradition and the preservation of the nation, and it was natural to see John the Baptist and his cousin as a thorn in his side.

But neither John the Baptist nor Jesus were aware of this, or rather, they were more interested in the impact of the reform on the Jewish temple priests, who hoped that by such a reform the temple priests would give up their support for Herod, and that the Jews would be free again from being exploited by the Romans.

That is, realistically, John the Baptist and Jesus were pure idealists who thought they could liberate their fellow man. They probably don't understand how weak the Jews were and how strong the Romans were. A direct confrontation would not liberate the Jews, but would push Israel into a pit of fire (as this was later confirmed).

Of course, these are not the main points, this historical fact makes Li Xiaofeng focus on the reform, the reform of John the Baptist and Jesus, is a good thing for spreading a faith. But for the Jewish people themselves it was a nightmare. Their reforms did not make the Jews, but pushed them into the abyss in the future.

And Li Xiaofeng is very clear about the situation he will face in the future, or what he will face after he comes to power, is reform. The existing system of the Soviet Union is problematic, and the planned economic system that occupies absolute dominance will become more and more out of step in the future, and if we continue to follow this road, we will only become more and more mechanical, rigid and bureaucratic, and I am afraid that the Soviet Union will still avoid disintegration in the future.

Of course, as a traverser, Li Xiaofeng has witnessed the reform in Huaxia, and although that reform has achieved amazing results, to tell the truth, there are many problems. In the first 20 years of reform, the economy has improved greatly, but the people's livelihood problem, to be honest, does not belong to ordinary people. And with the collapse of faith, China became a capitalist country that was not capitalist.

And the evil consequences caused by this collapse are not good to say that they are morally degenerate, and they really look at everything to money, which is really too "utilitarian". Such a reform is lame, and it can even be said that it is quite dangerous. Li Xiaofeng didn't want to make such a mess single-handedly. The organizational structure of the CPSU can be said to be more bureaucratic than ****, and the consequences of such a reform are really unpredictable.

In Li Xiaofeng's view, he is in a similar situation to the Jews back then, reform, the foundation of the Jewish nation no longer exists, without reform, will always be confined to a small circle, can never become bigger and stronger, let alone truly independent. It can be said that this is quite a contradiction, resulting in the fact that even if Li Xiaofeng is an immortal, he has to carefully consider the matter of reform, and he really can't make a mistake.

This is also an important reason why he sighed a lot at the Wailing Wall, because of the rest of history. A true reformer has come along. The man's name was Saul.

There may be comrades who want to be strange. Didn't we tell the story of Saul before? How do you repeat it? Well, this Saul is not Peterus Saul, according to the Bible, it should be Saul, that is, the famous St. Paul in the history of Christianity.

This St. Paul was a man of all kinds, and he lived at the same time as Jesus (and may have even met him). St. Paul's father was a Pharisee, please note that the Pharisees are not a race or a people, and the so-called Pharisees should actually be called Pharisees. is a sect within Judaism that is known for its complete observance of the commandments of Moses.

So. St. Paul was a complete Jew. It's just that he is a Jew who is a bit special, because his family is wealthy, and St. Paul's family is a Roman citizen. As a young man, St. Paul received a meticulous and complete Jewish education (studied in the temple), and for a time St. Paul mixed well among the temple priests and became an agent of the high priest!

In the famous trial of Jesus, St. Paul's choice was not to spare Jesus, but to "intimidate and kill." Actually, this is not difficult to understand, because he was a Pharisee after all, and the Pharisee valued the temper of the Ten Commandments of Moses and the Torah, and Jesus' reform was a typical apostasy. It's normal to kill Jesus.

If this continues, St. Paul will always be Saul the Pharisee. But the miraculous turning point occurred in 37 A.D. (one more aside. The exact date of Jesus' crucifixion is generally said to be 30, 33, and 36 A.D.), but it was after the crucifixion that St. Paul suddenly became enlightened.

In St. Paul's own words, on his way to Damascus, he experienced an apocalypse: "Suddenly the heavens shone on all sides". He also heard the resurrected Jesus say to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Jesus is said to have appointed him as the thirteenth apostle to preach the gospel to the non-Jews.

To tell the truth, this story is so bizarre that São Paulo's sudden change of stance cannot be explained by common sense. Of course, even Jesus' disciples didn't believe it until Jesus' brother James (note that Jesus had a brother, and this James was one of the twelve. It's just that in the Bible, in order to highlight the divinity of Jesus, James and other brothers and sisters of Jesus have become soy sauce parties) accepted Paul and allowed Paul to preach the gospel.

In a sense, St. Paul was the founder of Christianity, without whom there would have been no later Christianity. Why? John the Baptist and Jesus did not really complete the reform, even if they emphasized the importance of baptismal rites and showed a denunciation of the dogmatic observance of the commandments of Moses, but John and Jesus did not take the most important step of completely liberalizing non-Jewish communities into Judaism. Let's put it this way, what John and Jesus did was pry open the door of Judaism, and Paul knocked it down with one kick.

Paul openly promoted non-Jews and led the Jews away from the Law of Moses, and even at one point Paul rejected his fellow citizens by claiming that the Jews had killed Jesus and their own prophets. He called it a heinous act, and the Jews had to pay for it. Paul also argues that the circumcision of the Jews was an obligation of the Jews to God, and not to the non-Jews: "Beware of dogs and of the circumcision, for it is we, the Spirit of God, who are the worshippers of God, who boast in Jesus, and do not trust in the flesh." ”

It can be said that Paul took a crucial step in the first radical separation of Jewish tradition from Judaism, and thus gave birth to a new Christianity. And it was Paul's radical reform that made Jehovah's faith truly spread from the Middle East to the whole world, and Jehovah was no longer the Lord of the Jews!

The partition was so successful and thorough that Li Xiaofeng had to applaud Paul, St. Paul succeeded, but the Jews failed. In the future, the most ruthless Christians who are officially born out of Judaism to the Jews have to be said to be a great irony. John the Baptist and Jesus dreamed of freeing themselves from Roman slavery and restoring the independence and autonomy of the Jewish people. But in Paul's hands, it all turned to smoke.

Li Xiaofeng didn't want his reforms to end up being a lifeline for the Soviet Union, and he really didn't want to be the communist São Paulo. So how do you avoid this? Then we have to dig out what happened to the biggest turning point in São Paulo's life!

Anyway, Li Xiaofeng didn't believe that Jesus Christ had appeared to St. Paul for any divine inspiration, because the leading brother among the twelve apostles at that time was not St. Paul, and even he was not one of the twelve apostles. Doesn't this mean that he found the wrong person when he was alive!

Obviously, this is unreasonable. And judging from St. Paul's later interactions with Jesus' younger brother James (who was the leading elder brother of the year), it is James who gave St. Paul the legal right to preach the gospel. For fifteen years, from 37 C.E. to around 62 C.E., St. Paul preached a personal version of the Gospel of Jesus that resolutely resisted Jewish xenophobia. Obviously, St. Paul was probably in the minority among the early Christians, not the mainstream.

So, back to the most crucial question, what prompted Paul's conversion? In fact, the answer lies in that period of history...... (To be continued.) )

PS: Bow and thank you to Ghoul Kiss Ink, Wind and Rain, Pig Ronnie, Orphein, xxxxxxjj, MFL, Glorious Charter, Wind and Rain Once, and Comrade Juventus!