This question had me inspired after asking a question about the significance of Judaism as a whole.

Here is the link for those interested - http://mingle2.com/topic/show/243886


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What if Sennacherib, king of Assyria, had conquered Jerusalem in 701 B.C. when he led his imperial army against a coalition of Egyptian, Phoenician, Philistine, and Jewish enemies, and handily defeated them all? This, it seems to me, is the greatest might have been of all military history. This may be an odd thing to say about an engagement that never took place; yet Jerusalem's preservation from attack by Sennacherib's army shaped the subsequent history of the world far more profoundly than any other military action I know of.

From Sennacherib's point of view the decision not to press the siege of Jerusalem to a conclusion did not matter very much. The kingdom of Judah was only a marginal player in the Near Eastern balance of power, being poorer and weaker than Sennacherib's other foes. And the king of Judah had been well and truly punished for having dared to revolt against him.

For as Sennarcherib declared in an inscription on the walls of his palace at Nineveh that recorded the victories of the entire campaign, his army had occupied no fewer than forty-six wallled places in the kingdom of Judah and compelled Herzekiah, king of Judah, to shut himself up in Jersalem "like a bird in a cage."

But, unlike other rebellious rulers in the area, Hezekiah did retain his throne, and the worship of Jahweh in the Temple of Solomon continued uninterrupted. Sennacherib's victory over the kingdom of Judah was therefore incomplete, a fact whose consequences were far greater than he or anyone else at the time could possibly imagine.

Herzekiah began his reign in a time of acute uncertainity. Seven years before he ascended the throne and became Jerusalem's thirteenth ruler of the house of David, the neigboring kingdom of Israel, comprising the larger and richer part of David's kingdom, met irretrievable disaster when an Assyrian army, commanded by Sargon II, captured the capital, Samaria, and carried off thousands of survivors to distant Mesopotamia.

Strangers came at Assyrian command to cultivate the emptied fields, but they left the city of Samaria a shattered ruin..

Did this mean that the God of Moses and of David, the selfsame God still worshipped in the temple that Solomon had built for him in Jerusalem, was no longer able to defend his people?

Or had God punished the Israelites and their rulers for disobedience to his will as made known in scriptures, continually refreshed and brought up to date by the inspired words of prophets?

The question was urgent, and all the more portentous because, if one took the second view, the God of Moses and of David had used the mightiest ruler of the age as an instrument for punishing his people, even though the Assyrians worshipped other gods and did not even preeend to honor God's commandments. This ran counter to common sense, which that the gods worshipped by different peoples protected their worshippers as best they could. Victory and defeat therefore registered the powers of rival deities as well as the strength of merely human armies. It followed that when the Assyrians began their their imperial expansion, each new victory unsettled older religous loyalites and ideas among the peoples they conquered, creating a religous vacuum in the ancient Near East that was eventually filled by the unique response that occurred among the people of Judah.


That response began to take shape when King Hezekiah embraced the view of a party of religous reformers who set out to purfiy the worship of Jahweh by concentrating it int he temple. Destroying "high places" in the countryside where other rituals prevailed was part of the program. So was respectful consultation with inspired prophets, among whom Isaiah, son of Amoz, was then the most prominent. But King Hezekiah did not rely entirely on supernatural help.

He also strengthened Jerusalem's walls and expanded his borders modestly before joining the alliance against Sennacherib. And when the invading Assyrians defeated the Egyptians, he hurried to come to terms with the victors and had to pay dearly for the privilige of remaining on his throne, handing over various precious materials, including three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, some(perhaps most) of which came from the temple in Jerusalem.

But he did retain his throne; and his heirs and sucessors maintained the little kingdom of Judah for another century and more by paying tribute to Assyria and carefully refraining from rebellion.

Nevertheless, balancing precariously between rival great powers in Egypt and Mesopotamia did not last forever. Instead, in 586 B.C., the kingdom's autonomy collapsed when Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, did what Sennacherib had threated to do, capturing Jerusalem after a long siege and bringin the dynasty of David to an end, destroying the temple, and carrying most of the surviving inhabitants off to an exile in Babylon.

As we all know, this was not the end of Jewish history, for the exiled people of Judah did not pine away. Instead they flourished by the waters of Babylon, and reorganized their scriptures to create an unambiguously monotheistic, congregational religion, independent of place and emancipated from the rites of Solomon's destroyed temple in Jerusalem.

Morevero, the revised Jewish faith, tempered in exile, subsequently gave birth to Christianity and Islam, the two most powerful religions of our age, and of course also retains its own, distinctive following around the world and especialy in the contemporary state of Israel.

None of this could have come to pass if the kingdom of Judah had disappeared in 701 B.C. as the kingdom of Israel had done a mere twenty-one years earlier in 722 B.C.

On that occasion, the exiles from Israel soon lost their separate identity. By accepting commonsense views about the limits of divine power, they abandoned the worship of Jahweh, who had failed to protect them, and became the "Ten Lost Tribes" of biblical history.

In all probability, the people of Judah would have met the same fate if the Assyrian army had attacked and captured Jerusalem in 701 B.C. and treated its inhabitants as they had treated those of Samaria and other conquered places before.

If so, Judaism would have disappeared from the face of earth and the two daughter religions of Christianity and Islam could not possibly have come into existence. In short, our world would be profoundly different for better, or for worse, or the same as we know it today. This is why I asked the question in the other thread for opinions of those knowledgeable to answer without using death threat emails or harsh words of disgust for asking the question.

But figuring out what actually happened before the walls of Jerusalem so long ago is quiete impossible in my opinion. Sennacherib's boastful inscription, carved onto the walls of his palace of Nineveh is a peice of imperial propaganda rather than sober history; and the three biblical narratives that tell the story of how the Assyrians failed to take the holy city were shaped by ideas about God's miraculous intervention in public affairs that few historians accept today.

Nonetheless, the biblical stories, inaccurate or exaggerated though they may be, were what really mattered. In all subsequent generations, they shaped Jewish memories of what had happened before the walls of the city, and this memory made it plausible to believe that the God of Moses and of David was in fact omnipotent, protecting his worshippers from the mightiest monarch of the day.

So it seems paradoxical to argue that the vindictions of Isaiah's prophecy and of Hezekiah's religious policy by Sennacherib's withdrawal was critical for the emergence of unambiguous monotheism in the little Kingdom of Judah, whereas Nebuchadnezzar's success in carrying through what Sennacharib had merely threatened, instead of discrediting that faith, had the effect of confirming Jewish monotheism, and permitting the daughter religions Christianity and Islam to arise in later centuries.

But so it was, or so it seems to me, although most historians I have read from are so much shaped by the world's subsequent religous history as to be unable or unwilling to recognize how fateful the Assyrian withdrawal in 701 B.C. turned out to be.

But, at least for me, pondwring how a small company of prophets and priests of Jerusalem interpreted what happened outside the city walls in 701 B.C. and reflecting on how their views came to prevail so widely in later times are a sobering exercise of historical imagination.

Never before or since has so much depended on so few, believing so wholly in their one true god, and in such bold defiance of common sense.

Whatever it is worth good luck on your search to what you believe to be true at this point of time.

all wars go the way of the Lord of hosts - for He is unbeatable...once upon a time I saw a Rambo movie and laughed when Rambo as an individual decided he was going to take on the whole army by himself...I saw it as an impossibility at the time, however I have since come to know that God is indeed real, and such a feat is easily possible if He fights for you!

fighting in the name of the lord. may god be with you when the drums echo, and may he be with those you lay your blade upon, and maybe he be with the heretics you slay, and the city you trample. and maybe he with peace, where ever that may be.

Winning a war doesn't mean you are right, just that you are the last one standing.

If God exists all humans are his children and to think that he would take sides in human wars just shows how wrong human thinks.

I would have to disagree. Yahweh says he hates the Amalikites.. Why does he?

When Yahshua comes back how many will be killed by him?


Many things have happened telling us what is coming if we will listen. It also tells us how to avoid it.

The best example I know of this is Nineveh. He sent Jonah to tell them to repent or be destroyed. They took it to heart and was spared yet us Humans like Jonah get upset when Yahweh shows mercy when we say thats what we want. Then the tables are turned back on us as we become the deciever who Yahweh HATES.

In the last few years when excavating in Ireland a backho;e was digging when a spotter for him saw something and had him stop.

What was it? a Very old bible turned to Psalms 83.

What is Psalms 83 it is the confetericy that Yahweh says will come against Jerusalem and reads as if you were picking up a paper and read the headlines that day.

We look to Europe all tese days and the reborn Roman Empire as so evil when we can not find that in scripture but we can find Psalms 83.

We do not want to believe what is before us and read the scriptures for what they say becase if we do we become evil in the peoples eyes because tradition has said this is the way it is so many can not be wrong.
Yet what happened to the Jews when Yahshua came and what happened to those who disagreed with them.

Yahweh hates the deciever he hates the ones who kills babies as the Amorites did. But we are smarter than Yahweh we need to be right at all cost so to say Yahweh does not exist or that he is a tirant a murderer is for our own egos.

What we need to do is study to shew ourselves approved so we can fight of the fiery darts of Helel and where he is fighting you can be sure is where Yahweh's true people/followers are.

His people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Thier is nothing new under the sun.. Shalom...Miles

All religions and all beliefs have a God they call them differently but it is the same God in the end.

Each one of them have writings text and scriptures that says what they want to believe you know why because they were written by humans to fuel their beliefs and not by God, All religions and beliefs think they are right but they are all wrong.

The tsunami of couple years ago would have been describe as an act of God thousands of years ago because first they didn't understand and secondly because humans used those events to fuel their belief system and put fear into humans.

In today's world we understand those events and can explain them analyze them so we do not hear the religious groups say it was God actions. In today's world do we see or hear of people claiming they were spoken to by God or write a book to tell his word NO because in today's world they would end up in an asylum.

Makes me laugh when people of today used the sayings or writings of old that claims to have been spoken by God, in today's world those same people would be laugh at and put in a straight jackets right away but because they were written in times when people didn't know better we still think God spoke to them.

Why are the writings still believed today because you cannot erase thousands of years of being told that it is the word of God just by snapping your fingers, so many are blind and so many just hope that something out there can help them and that they are not the only one responsible for their life and death. So it will take many generations to hopefully erase the thousands of years of brainwashing.

In today's world where we know that because it is written does not actually mean it is truth I find it hard to believe that people still think that any religious books is the absolute truth and even any truth at all.

May all my fellow brothers and sisters of this planet have a good day.

This is true with all most all of the world.

Yahweh never called his people his large flock but instead his small flock.

He tells us thier will only be 144000 on earth out of how many>

Allah is a play on words for Yahweh.We can look at the middle east and see that his Poetic for of his name Yah in many of the cities.

Just look on a map. Cities back then usually were named for a king why would they name a city after a make believe diety.

I know he is reeal and his writing are real i have spoke what i have seen not knowing what it meant even on hear and when it was going to happen and it did.

I have never been taught yet i go to scholars and explain scriptures and they will not tell me i am nuts they want to know what school i went to. When I tell them The Holy Spirit has only taught me as was prophecied would happen they are dumb founded.

I was and this is just 1 probally the worst case though I was electricuted by 14000 volts. I wiegh around 230 lbs and was being thrown around like a ragdoll. I could not see nor speak. I tried to throw myself in the air to free fall to the ground and that would not work i saw my life as in fast pictures flash in my brain I thought this is it. Only one thing could i do and that was think in my head "Yahshua Help Me" immedieately i was let go and tje sub went dead. I insulater went to ground taking the sub out freeing me.

Was not a chance thing I did as Yahshua was waiting for to prove something to me because that was the last thing I did.

I went outside the substation where lineman were and they checked my heart and one told they other they never felt a heart beat so fast in thier life.

I was rushed to Merc y Hospital Burn unit in Jefferson city Mo. Tested all night and let go the next day. The dr could not explain how I was alive let alone he could not find anything wrong with me.

2 days later my super called me inand wanted to know if i wanted to take a less dangerous job i said no. He said i was not taking this serious enough and I told him i know i could of died. He then told me in the companies 105 year history i was the 1st to survive what happened to me net alone walk away from it and he let me go back to my job.

In 1982 i met a girl who had been given 6months to live before i knew what i was doing I said Angie thier is nothing wrong with you. She got very upset me saying this. A few days later she was flown to El Paso Texas for some test and they confirmed she had advanced Hodgison disease she was more depressed and a week later they sent her to San Antone to do surgery and when they opened her up she was a picture of heath and again the drs were dumbfounded and sent her home and she is alive still today, We became very good friends as she was engaged to be married at 19 years old and i had went to meet her with her fiance.

Many more of these type instances have happened and i was speaking but it just came out just as the bible has for told would happen.

Do not meditate on what you will say for in that hour the Holy Spirit will give you the words to say.

He has I am living proof to several people telling a terminally ill person thier is nhothing wrong with them and believe me they get upset. They will tell you what made you so darn smart you know nmore than the dr.

I don't but when it happens i am not planning it it comes out and themn i realize what i just said. I am trying to learn from it just as I am the dreams I have had and the visions i have seen i have relayed on the net in a chat room and 15 minutes later the tv is interupted for a special report that says what i already said in the chat room. People do not know how to handle it.

I told you demons were speaking to you when you were so sure you knew this was an Arch Angel telling you and teaching you now you reject thier is a Yahweh. This is not common it is the Demons goals.

If they were coming after you like that you should rejoice because they know something you do not. Demons do attack who Yahweh is teaching. They do not attack who does not believe or who just gives lip service.

I would re-evaluate what you believe and see what really happen if it was not a made up story.

The 3rd horseman is just ending as the 4th one is riding. As a world depression comes on and millions die of disease and hunger as so many already are they will Cuss Yahweh and even more will fall away. I have stepped on toes on here explaining what names mean and who certain dieties are and that they will get very powerfull but will never be who they want to be but the world will hate them. That say who they really are as I spoke of in Ps 83 that is not what is taught yet it goes right back to the beginning when Abraham was chosen and the events that led to these days now a threesome because Esau is thier also if you can see. People do not seem to be able to defend the scriptures and so many know more about the scriptures than they do that slam them as fairy tales. As for me and My House I will Believe and follow Yahweh for who can stand. Blessings...Miles

Amazing story Milesoftheusa,

Regardless in what one believes in, I find it interesting that a group of tribes of Jewish faith small and not powerful used diplomatic savvy, clever timing, and strong faith to make their belief system stand out and survive the perils of such harsh conditions at the time.

I personally am more interested in the historical evidence of the time and can see how a certain event can make a difference to the survival of a people and their beliefs.

I think like any civilizations that existed or exists now has their moments of contributing positive results as a whole for the planet, but also had their downs and created negative results as a whole.

I think there has been some great scientists, inventors, entertainers, as of other great personalities that helped make a big difference to society that where and are of Jewish faith.

Then we also have those of Jewish faith that make things worse. It is in the human itself that makes these decisions. If they are triggered by the religion they follow that is another question. I am sure that it is possible and has been done before.

In the end if we as a people can somehow accept each other or at least tolerate our differences the chances of having a better future as a whole and for mankind can be achievable. It will take great strides of education and willpower to do so.

It is unfortunate that many people (or so it seems after seeing replies here on Mingle2) have given up on trying. They just admit and accept that the world will never be perfect and wars will always continue, instead of trying to make it a better place by starting with just themselves and building to help others in their community to eventually doing bigger projects.

One of my favorite projects that I have watched (not participated) but seen and said "wow" this is such a great thing is how in Israel younger students created a foundation of how they can get along with the Palestiniens. They invite Palestiniens to do family activities together. So here you have both Jews and Muslims having a great time together. I would have to seek the website for it, but it exists somewhere!

but that in itself is a start and proof that we are all not so different afterall. We CAN make peace and live good lives together if we want to and educate ourselves not only about what we believe in but also what others believe in. Accepting of course doesn't have to apply if it is to hard to accept, but tolerating and understanding is something we can do if we want to.

AS for the OP we would have had another underdog to believe in had that happened.


It is interesting how many will recite the books written by men (bible, koran, etc...) for the control of men as if it gives them unknown knowledge of some kind. It is but the words of interpretation of interpretation of interpretation of an orginal texts that were written by men of old meant to be parables and stories to inspire those who read it. We don't even get the real interpretation of the original texts.

That is another good point you give and my initial question on a different thread. (link above to click on). How would it have been if this event would have changed to where the Assyrians actually conquered the Jews to where they don't exist.

How would this world be then and now?

Such events can change much in history.

Now I know many don't care or say it is irrelevant, but for some of us, we are interested and curious to see the timing of events of how significant they could have been for mankind later.

Also it is very true that the original text of ancient writings usually are changed little by little over the centuries to where the initial meaning of what was written then could be totally different and interpeted differently today.

It is a good study and I can see how historians can get lost in this spending their entire lives trying to figure much of what was then for us to read today.