0:06

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This

0:09

is Sam Harris. Just a

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So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please

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consider becoming one. I

0:46

am here with Simon Sebag-Mattefiore. Simon, thanks

0:48

so much for joining me. It's

0:50

great to be with you finally.

0:52

Yeah, yeah. We've been on a

0:54

WhatsApp thread together for quite some time.

0:58

We won't divulge the other attendees,

1:00

but it's great to finally meet

1:02

you, however, remotely. You

1:04

have written these just marvelous

1:08

magisterial histories. I'm

1:10

reading two simultaneously, but you've written many

1:12

others. But the two I'm reading, Stalin,

1:16

the Court of the Red Tsar,

1:18

and Jerusalem, the biography, really

1:21

combined, they offer just an amazing lens

1:23

through which to look at the present.

1:26

My interest in talking to you as a historian is

1:29

to help me worry about

1:31

the present and the near future. And I

1:33

think you're uniquely well-placed to do that, given

1:36

your expertise in both Russian history and the

1:38

history of the Middle East. Before

1:40

we jump in, can you just give me kind

1:42

of a potted intellectual biography? What do you consider

1:44

your areas of focus

1:48

as a historian? You know, my background

1:50

was I did history at Cambridge

1:52

University. Then bizarrely, I went

1:54

into banking for a

1:57

short disastrous career. And then

1:59

I... went out to

2:01

the Soviet Union as it

2:03

disintegrated in the early 90s.

2:05

And so that was really my

2:07

training ground. That was a brilliant

2:10

place, a fascinating place

2:12

to see an empire falling

2:14

apart. And I think for

2:16

a young historian to see

2:18

with their own eyes an empire falling apart

2:21

is the best training you can have better

2:24

than books. And

2:26

so that was a very interesting time.

2:28

And then from that, I started to

2:30

write about Russia, which I'd

2:32

started really when I was at university.

2:34

And I started writing about Catherine the

2:37

Great and Potemkin. And

2:39

that's a subject that's become very

2:41

relevant, of course, because apart

2:43

from their very colorful sex

2:45

life and amazing letters and

2:47

their place in the Enlightenment,

2:50

the Russian Enlightenment, they were

2:52

also empire builders. And

2:54

of course, they conquered South Ukraine and

2:57

Crimea and built all the cities

2:59

that are now being fought over,

3:01

Odessa, Sebastopol, Dniep Pro, and so

3:03

on. And that led

3:05

through a weird favor to

3:07

me, in a way, from Vladimir

3:09

Putin himself to

3:12

having access to Stalin's archives

3:15

and being one of the first

3:17

people to be able to work in

3:19

those archives. And of course, that was

3:21

the big thrill, really, being starting

3:24

to work on Stalin. And that's

3:27

the book you're reading, Stalin the Court

3:29

of the Red Tsar. Yeah, not a

3:31

cheerful subject. It's quite unbelievable how horrific

3:34

history gets. One

3:36

hopes one is not living in a period of

3:38

history like some of the periods

3:40

you've written about. But increasingly, our

3:43

present starts to

3:45

begin to feel like we've

3:47

entered the stream of history. And I remember

3:50

the first period of my life where I felt

3:52

all of a sudden, OK, this is

3:55

history with all of its dangers.

3:57

It was immediately after 9-11.

6:00

and of course historians are

6:02

terrible prophets as, you

6:04

know, the end of history and many other, you know,

6:07

pieces by brilliant historians have shown. But

6:09

I think the thing to understand at

6:11

the moment is how exceptional

6:13

the period that we were living through,

6:16

that we grew up in, was,

6:18

how extraordinary. And of course

6:20

we didn't realize it when we were in it so much.

6:23

But the period from 45, 48, 50, to... to,

6:29

okay, 9-11 or the election

6:31

of Donald Trump or whatever,

6:34

you know, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, even

6:37

October 7th. How

6:39

exceptional was that period where, you know,

6:42

the leaders of... Actually, you

6:44

know, every president of the United States had

6:47

kind of similar views of the world,

6:49

you know, give or take, small differences.

6:52

They had a view of an internationalist view of an omission

6:54

to the world. And

6:56

where Soviet leaders, despite believing

6:59

in world revolution and

7:01

their mission to change the world, were

7:03

also extremely conservative, really. And

7:06

where, you know, people did respect the

7:08

United Nations that was a

7:11

supranational sanctuary of

7:13

something called international law, which

7:15

existed because people believed it

7:17

existed. And where

7:20

various views became taboo in

7:23

most liberal democracies, anti-Semitism,

7:27

where a great liberal reformation happened with

7:29

gay rights and that, and

7:31

other advances, the pill, the right to abortion, all these

7:33

things were kind of won in this kind of period

7:35

which I call in my world history the

7:38

great liberal reformation, because it was so radical. But

7:40

of course we took it for granted. And

7:43

of course, all of these things will

7:45

have to be fought for again and are now

7:48

under threat. And that exceptional period,

7:50

it's hard to think of a period where

7:52

anything like that really existed. You know,

7:54

maybe the Roman Empire, when

7:57

the Roman Empire faced the Persians and

7:59

the Sassaic, There were

8:01

these kind of two polar powers

8:03

that really kind of kept a sort

8:05

of peace, but of course it was a much more

8:08

brutal world. And of course the rest

8:10

of the world was not included in

8:12

those two powers. It was really just

8:14

Mediterranean and the Near East. So

8:18

the end of this world is a

8:20

sort of return to the way things

8:22

have always been with massive number of

8:24

powers. I guess you'd say

8:26

the sort of the 70

8:28

year piece is what was coming

8:30

to an end, what you were witnessing coming to an

8:32

end, beginning to end with 9-11, which included a sort

8:35

of chess

8:37

game between two great powers. Then

8:40

25 years of American paramountcy,

8:43

a sort of game of solitaire. And now suddenly,

8:46

fascinatingly, a sort

8:48

of multiplayer game where smaller powers

8:50

follow their own interests in ways

8:52

that we don't understand.

8:56

And then of course, the success, the key

8:59

thing about this was the success of liberal

9:01

democracy, which again was extraordinary. And

9:03

one forgets that half of

9:05

Europe was under dictatorship until 91. Even

9:11

Western Europe was under dictatorships until 1974-75.

9:16

So again, one just forgets, a lot of

9:18

it is perception. We've just forgets how recent

9:20

all this is. Yeah.

9:23

So, do you think we've reached

9:25

a point where the unraveling of

9:27

liberal world order, as we've

9:30

come to know it, has

9:32

reached a point of no return, where you're

9:35

expecting America to

9:37

pull back, that multilateralism will

9:40

be less and less effectual,

9:42

and we're going to see a

9:44

period of greater chaos

9:46

globally? Or you do think we can

9:49

pull back from the brink here

9:51

and return to what we in

9:53

our lifetime have considered

9:55

more normal? If

9:59

we can't get quite to... all the

10:01

way to Fukuyama, we can get to something like,

10:04

the expectation going forward is that

10:07

liberal democracy and

10:09

it's however many discontents it

10:11

has will prevail or at least

10:13

be the expected norm

10:15

globally. And that there'll be

10:18

enough power on that side

10:20

of the equation so that despotism will

10:22

still seem both pathological

10:25

and anomalous. I think

10:27

that, first of all, I don't think history

10:29

ever repeats itself exactly, it never goes back.

10:32

But that doesn't mean that liberal

10:34

democracies can't resurge and

10:36

triumph. And, but that needs

10:39

changes within liberal democracies. I mean, America

10:42

is still the greatest power that's ever

10:44

existed in terms of military power, economy

10:46

and all sorts of other tests and

10:48

measures. And American

10:51

power is still the most

10:53

dynamic force in

10:55

the world game, if you like. But

10:57

the democracies are having a huge crisis within

10:59

themselves. And, as

11:02

Ibn Khaldun, the great Arab

11:04

North African historian in the

11:06

14th century said, he said, great

11:08

kingdoms don't fall because of military

11:11

defeats or economic defeats, they fall

11:13

because of psychological defeats. Which

11:15

is a very interesting concept. And he

11:17

said, the loss of assabiyel, forgive

11:21

my pouring Arab pronunciation, but

11:24

the loss of cohesion of solidarity, of

11:26

values that hold together a society

11:29

in a common goal. And this, of

11:31

course, brings us to stuff that Fukiyaum

11:33

has written very well about, about overqualified,

11:38

over entitled population, et cetera, et cetera,

11:40

which, of course, these are things that

11:42

are stopping democracies behaving with confidence. And

11:44

if America regained its confidence, America

11:47

has a huge power to

11:49

change things. But we should be under

11:52

no illusion. The success of liberal democracy was

11:54

not because there was, you know, liberal democracy

11:56

was, was not just because liberal democracy is

11:59

a very nice. live under. It

12:01

was also because liberal democracies

12:03

were successful. And

12:06

the biggest influence, I mean, people,

12:08

when I wrote my world history, people said, why is there so much

12:10

war in your world history? This is

12:12

full of violence. And I said,

12:14

well, of course, wars are when everything

12:17

is speeded up and intensified,

12:19

you know, inventions, ingenuity, all

12:21

of it happens during warfare.

12:24

And we were seeing that now with drone

12:26

warfare and all this, all that's happening in

12:28

the Middle East and Ukraine. That's another thing

12:30

we can talk about. But the point is,

12:33

the reason why there was such liberal democracy

12:35

was so successful. Everyone wanted to have a

12:37

system that looked like a liberal democracy, even

12:39

if it wasn't a liberal democracy, was

12:41

because of the victory of World War II of 45. I

12:44

mean, started with 1918, but then again in 1945, which was

12:46

really a sort

12:50

of Soviet victory, but it was widely

12:53

regarded as a victory of America,

12:55

of American power. And that

12:58

made, if you look at all the new

13:01

states created after 1945 in the sixties, they

13:05

all looked like America. I mean,

13:07

even China today, even Russia have

13:09

presidencies, legislatures, when it's all based

13:11

on America, because America set this

13:15

standard, even though they

13:17

were never democracies and certainly never liberal

13:19

democracies. But the point was everyone wanted

13:21

to look like America. And

13:24

of course, a lot of these countries that

13:26

we presumed were democracies, maybe weren't

13:29

as democratic as we thought all along

13:31

anyway. And one only has to look

13:33

at all the states created in Africa,

13:35

for example, which are now disintegrating. That's

13:37

another subject to discuss perhaps later. But

13:39

it was a great compliment to America that

13:42

many states became liberal democracies. It was a

13:44

great compliment to the success of America in

13:46

wars that were incredibly consequential

13:48

and mattered. And also

13:50

wars, let's be clear, that had clear

13:53

victories. Right. It's very hard to achieve

13:55

now. Yeah.

13:57

Yeah. Well, so I think we can

13:59

focus. focus many of our concerns through

14:02

the nexus of the

14:04

city of Jerusalem. I mean, so much

14:06

of what ails us in terms of

14:09

the past shattering and possible

14:12

future shattering of our world can be, it

14:15

doesn't capture everything, but it captures a

14:17

lot when you look at the fixation

14:22

of the three monotheisms on that

14:24

single city. I remember reading Gershom

14:27

Gornberg's book, the end of days, maybe 20

14:29

years ago or so. And

14:31

this would be obvious to you as a

14:34

historian, but this was the first time I

14:36

realized that the destruction of a single building,

14:38

the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, could

14:41

produce World War III. Right,

14:44

I mean, the level of religious

14:46

fanaticism aimed at that single piece

14:48

of real estate is such that

14:51

the world's Muslims and Christians and

14:53

Jews view it as a,

14:55

I mean, it

14:57

is a sacred symbol, but it is a non-negotiable

15:00

one, right? I mean, it's not at

15:02

all fungible. It seems there's nothing you

15:04

could offer the world's 2. billion Muslims

15:07

in trade for that, that single

15:09

building that would be

15:11

satisfactory. And so it is

15:13

with the millennial expectations of

15:15

evangelical Christians, perhaps even Christians

15:17

more widely who expect that

15:20

the Messiah will return and they're

15:22

joined by Orthodox Jews in

15:25

this expectation once the temple is rebuilt by

15:28

the Jews there. And you

15:30

go into this history in some detail

15:32

in your book, Jerusalem, but

15:34

let's talk about that because

15:36

it is amazing when

15:38

you step back, certainly from a secular perspective,

15:41

to realize that our world

15:43

is essentially rigged to explode

15:46

based on the millenarian

15:49

superstitions of billions of people

15:52

focused on a single building

15:55

and certain, you know, patently

15:57

absurd details like the production of a...

16:00

perfect red heifer to be sacrificed

16:02

so as to sanctify the implements

16:04

that would rebuild the

16:06

temple. What are your thoughts

16:08

on the Temple Mount, Simon? Simon

16:11

Well, the Temple Mount is the

16:13

most intensely revered piece of land.

16:16

It's a compound, an esplanade. It's a

16:18

platform actually built by Herod the Great,

16:20

created by Herod the Great during his

16:23

reign. It took most of his reign

16:25

to build it. And Herod

16:27

the Great actually sort of formed what

16:30

we now think of as the

16:32

Temple Mount, probably on a

16:34

much rougher structure. And

16:37

the actual sort of space of the platform has

16:40

not changed much since he built it. He was

16:43

basically made King of Judea in 40 BC

16:46

by Antony and

16:49

Octavius, the future

16:51

Augustus. And they

16:53

walked with him through Rome and they said, go

16:56

back and conquer Jerusalem and

16:59

we'll give you some troops to do that.

17:01

It had been taken by the Parthians. And

17:03

so that's the sort of origin of

17:06

the actual space as we see it

17:08

now on which the two beautiful Islamic

17:11

shrines stand. And you're

17:13

absolutely right. I mean, all of the expectations

17:16

of fundamental believers of all

17:18

the three Abrahamic religions are

17:20

focused on that space. And

17:23

many of them believe that outside the

17:25

Golden Gate, which is the Eastern war,

17:27

beautiful structure, probably built

17:29

by Heraclius, by Zantine

17:31

April on the on the on the Eastern

17:34

side, believe that that is the place that

17:37

the apocalypse will happen. And

17:39

you're absolutely right. I mean, when I was writing

17:42

about Jerusalem and I sort of

17:44

realized, you know, so many things could go this

17:46

could be shared, this could there could be a

17:48

peace process that could lead to

17:50

this being a sort of international, the

17:52

holy basin, as it's called by American

17:54

peacemakers, that it could turn into a

17:57

place, a sort of Vatican almost for all

18:00

three. religions, but it could

18:02

also, anything that goes wrong

18:04

there could ignite

18:06

a catastrophe, a Holocaust,

18:09

and a World War III

18:11

that would involve everybody, because everybody

18:13

is involved in the

18:15

future of that place, and that's

18:17

why it's an extraordinary thing. And

18:20

I guess one of the realizations today is that

18:22

for years we thought again, going back to our

18:24

sort of view of the world until

18:27

9-11, we knew there were religious

18:29

people, there were many

18:31

evangelicals in America and West

18:33

Africa, there were Islamic fundamentalists and

18:35

so on, there were Jewish fanatics,

18:39

but we felt that along with liberal democracy,

18:41

a sort of secularity was kind of

18:43

spreading across the world and we were beyond

18:45

that sort of religiosity.

18:49

That's turned out to be completely false, and

18:52

actually religious people have a

18:54

sort of force and a

18:56

focus that secular people

18:58

don't have, but which secular

19:00

people are afraid of and

19:03

are extremely impressed by. And

19:06

so we're seeing that on the sides taken by

19:08

different people in the Middle East right now. Of

19:12

course, it's not a coincidence

19:14

that that space is revered

19:16

by the three religions, because each

19:18

one led to another in a

19:20

succession, and the

19:22

holiness of each was borrowed,

19:25

commandeered, stolen, reinvented,

19:27

re-channeled by its successor,

19:30

and each successor retooled,

19:33

relaunched, and sort of

19:35

slightly changed those

19:37

stories in order

19:39

to contribute to

19:42

the heritage, to the ancientness

19:45

that is essential for legitimacy in

19:47

religion. And then of course, that's

19:49

why when you look at texts like the Bible,

19:51

for example, the Quran, others, some

19:54

of the texts sort of seem like

19:56

very clear writing, some of it is

19:58

literally history that we can check. And

20:00

some of it is unintelligible

20:03

or weirdly detailed like the famous red heifer

20:06

in Jerusalem. But the point is these

20:09

texts are a mixture

20:11

of a library of

20:13

ancient texts that have

20:15

been superimposed on each other. And

20:18

the most holy thing is the

20:21

revelation that builds on

20:23

an ancient story that already exists, an

20:26

ancient holiness that already exists. And

20:29

this concept of holiness is redoubled,

20:32

multiplied many times by

20:35

the destruction of those places. So the

20:37

destructions of Jerusalem, two most

20:39

famous destructions, Nebuchadnezzar in 586 and

20:42

Titus in 70, but there were

20:44

many, many catastrophic events there. But

20:47

especially those are so mythic

20:49

in scale and so total that

20:51

the very ruins became holier than

20:53

the buildings that they'd replaced. And

20:56

of course, they became hallowed by

20:59

the legitimacy, by the authority, by the

21:03

ancientness of what had gone before.

21:06

So the revelation of the…

21:09

It was a coincidence that Jerusalem became

21:11

the holy city. It could

21:13

have been many different places. The religious

21:15

person wouldn't say that, of course. But

21:17

historically, talking about geostrategy, there was no

21:20

reason why Jerusalem should become such a

21:22

significant place. It wasn't a

21:24

port, it wasn't on a trade route.

21:26

It was a small hilltop, a mountain

21:28

top in the blistered

21:31

Judean mountains in Canaan,

21:33

what became known as Judea. But

21:35

once the Jews had made it their

21:38

holy city, once they'd

21:40

written, the decisive thing that

21:42

happened was not the decision, I think,

21:44

not just the decision to make it at the holy

21:47

place and to build a temple there, but

21:49

to write it down. And that

21:51

was what was special about it because Jerusalem

21:54

gained a biography, the Bible,

21:56

and that biography meant that other people

21:58

could read it. read it, could find

22:00

out about it, could be translated, it

22:02

could be known by successors. And

22:05

so the early Christians were of course

22:07

Jews, despite what you might read on

22:10

Twitter these days or on X these

22:12

days. And... Actually, that's a

22:14

point that I hadn't thought to

22:16

raise with you, but I've

22:18

always found it fascinating that the

22:21

certainly theological versions

22:23

of antisemitism are a kind

22:26

of reductio ad absurdum of

22:28

themselves when you realize that

22:30

Jesus and Mary

22:33

and all of Jesus' disciples

22:36

were Jews, living as Jews, acting

22:38

as Jews, thinking of themselves as Jews.

22:41

It's amazing that you can get a genocidal

22:44

antisemitism out of that piece

22:46

of legacy code somehow in

22:49

a Christian context. It's probably less surprising

22:52

in a Muslim context. But

22:54

perhaps we can just talk

22:57

about the roots of this

22:59

intersection of religious belief

23:02

on the Holy Land more broadly. One

23:05

thing that was also surprising to learn in your book

23:08

is that Jerusalem itself has been abandoned

23:10

or effectively abandoned at various periods

23:12

in history. It became essentially a

23:14

little village of ruins.

23:17

But let's talk about the roots here because I'm

23:19

going to want to lead you in this conversation to

23:22

an analysis of what's happened post-October

23:25

7th with

23:27

notions of settler colonialism

23:29

and the illegitimacy of Jewish

23:31

claims to that particular piece

23:33

of real estate and the

23:36

view worldwide that the Jews

23:38

and the nation of Israel

23:40

are interlopers of a

23:42

kind and a remnant of

23:44

colonialism. So knowing that we're going to get

23:46

there, let's talk a little bit about the

23:49

history of the

23:51

region, of Jews in the region,

23:53

and of the emergence of Christianity

23:55

and Islam out of that

23:57

region. The Judeans. which

24:00

was the word Jew comes from Judean. The

24:03

Judeans were one of the Levantine

24:05

people who emerged in Canaan

24:09

and controlled between about

24:12

1000 BC and

24:14

about the beginning of the New for

24:17

about a thousand years, or about 10

24:19

centuries, lived in kingdoms

24:21

that they mainly ruled in

24:24

the small land that was

24:26

around Jerusalem. If you

24:28

were a believing Jew, you'd say that

24:30

they were the chosen people who came

24:32

out of Egypt in the Passover story,

24:35

and you would believe that they were the

24:37

chosen people. If you were a

24:39

secular person and look at history, you

24:42

would say that they were one of the

24:44

peoples that emerged from Levantine

24:46

Canaanite peoples who lived in the

24:48

region, that

24:51

they created kingdoms in

24:53

the north, a kingdom called Israel in the south, a

24:56

kingdom ruled by a house of

24:58

David, which appears on

25:00

the tail down steel. So we know that

25:02

there was a house of David, and

25:05

that David and his successors in

25:07

the house of David, a dynasty,

25:10

ruled from Jerusalem that they built

25:12

a temple there at some point,

25:15

maybe not as early as it's impossible to prove

25:17

when it was exactly built, but it was built,

25:19

and that was the first temple. It

25:22

was built on what

25:24

is now the temple, Mount Moriah in

25:27

Jerusalem, and there

25:29

was a northern kingdom, Israel.

25:32

They were tiny kingdoms that really

25:35

prospered during a period

25:37

when the great powers of the region,

25:40

Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and

25:42

so on, were in times

25:44

of crisis. When

25:46

those big empires

25:50

woke up again and were

25:52

restored to power, they swept down

25:54

and conquered these kingdoms.

25:57

The peoples of Israel were

25:59

removed to power. Babylonian exile.

26:01

Jerusalem was destroyed in 586, but

26:05

the Judean people remained there. In

26:07

63, well, in the 320s, Alexander the Great arrived.

26:09

His successors, two kingdoms, the Seleucids

26:17

and the Assyrians, ruled

26:20

Syria and Egypt and

26:22

fought for about a hundred years

26:24

for control of Judea and Jerusalem.

26:26

In about 164, they rebelled

26:29

against the Assyrians, created

26:33

a new kingdom, the Maccabean Kingdom,

26:36

the Hasmonean Kingdom. We're

26:38

still in BC here, right? Yes,

26:40

which is celebrated by Jews

26:42

in the festival of Hanukkah.

26:45

And they ruled for about a hundred years, and

26:48

then they broke up in civil war. Some

26:50

people make parallels with Israel today,

26:54

with that process where that

26:56

kingdom disintegrated. And then

26:59

the Romans arrived in about 63 in the

27:02

person of Pompey the Great, a great

27:04

Roman warlord. And

27:06

then his successors gave

27:09

Judea to Herod the Great, who was a

27:11

fascinating character, a key character,

27:13

because his mother was

27:16

Arab. She was an Apertian, which was the

27:18

Arab kingdom in what is now Jordan and

27:20

northern Saudi Arabia. And

27:22

his father was an Idumean, an Edomite,

27:25

a recent convert to Judaism.

27:28

And so he's an interesting person, half

27:30

Arab, half Jew, half Judean, if

27:33

you like. And he created

27:35

a dynasty that lasted for five generations,

27:38

ruling various bits of

27:41

Roman dominated near and

27:44

in 66, there was a

27:46

huge rebellion against the Romans during

27:48

the reign of Nero, partly

27:50

caused by Nero's managerial

27:53

incompetence in his rule of the

27:55

Empire. And winning personality. And

27:57

winning personality. general

28:01

sinister character. And,

28:04

you know, he was one of, Nero's interesting, because he's

28:06

one of those politicians who merge

28:09

entertainment and politics, which

28:12

we should be familiar with today, and

28:15

use the power of entertainment and

28:17

the power of politics to feed on each other, to

28:20

promote himself. But moving aside

28:23

from that, there was the Jewish revolt

28:26

run by, led by fundamentalist Jewish

28:28

fanatics, I think we'd say now.

28:31

And many of the Judean people backed the Romans.

28:33

And in fact, the Herod

28:36

family were one of the, you know,

28:38

and the historian Josephus actually, in

28:40

the end backed the Romans, thinking Roman, Roman

28:43

Hellenic life was preferable to life under

28:45

a Jewish religious state. These

28:47

were the Maccabees? These weren't

28:49

the Maccabees. These were

28:51

different sects and factions

28:53

that fought each other murderously.

28:56

And in the end, were

28:59

stormed by Titus Caesar, the

29:02

son of the emperor of Spacing, who emerged

29:04

out of the civil war of 68, the

29:06

year of three emperors, and

29:09

stormed Jerusalem and destroyed it for the second

29:11

time completely. Many Jews

29:13

then went into exile, but

29:15

many Jews remained there. And

29:18

in the 130s, another

29:20

emperor, Hadrian, decided to

29:23

build a Roman temple on top

29:25

of the ruins of the Jewish

29:27

temple in Jerusalem, of the second

29:29

temple which had been destroyed. And

29:31

this caused a second huge Jewish

29:34

revolt led by Simon Bar Kokhba.

29:37

And once again, this led to

29:39

what everyone agrees is it was

29:42

a genocidal war against the Judeans.

29:44

They were banned from Jerusalem. Jerusalem

29:46

was renamed Aelia Capitolina and

29:48

remained under a new name for

29:50

300 years. But

29:53

the Jews or Judeans always

29:55

revered it, prayed round its ruins,

29:58

but were spread around the Mediterranean for

30:00

the first time. So there was a

30:02

glut of Judean slaves, for example, in

30:04

Rome. It's funny to think of Jews

30:06

as slaves, but there

30:08

were most of the many of the slaves in

30:11

the Roman Empire were Judean, of course, because

30:13

after these wars. And out

30:16

of this came a new Jewish religion

30:18

that was always linked to look back

30:20

to Jerusalem, but also

30:22

looked to the Torah

30:24

as a kind of portable Jerusalem almost,

30:27

which they carried with them always. And

30:30

the religion changed fundamentally. Before then,

30:33

Jewish religion had been based on

30:35

sacrifices on the Temple Mount outside

30:37

the Temple to God. And

30:40

since they no longer had the Temple and they

30:42

no longer had access to the Temple Mount itself,

30:44

a new sort of religion developed,

30:46

which were Jews prayed in synagogues,

30:49

and they lived in Spain, in

30:51

Italy, in Cyprus, in North

30:53

Africa. So that was

30:56

a new era. And at the same time, the

30:59

Christian religion had separated itself from

31:03

Judaism. Jesus, Joseph,

31:06

Mary, their family were

31:08

Jews, the Judeans were Judeans,

31:10

but they lived in…they

31:12

were known as Nazarenes because they

31:15

came from Galilee. And

31:17

in the early part of the

31:19

Christian story, they were

31:21

really a Jewish sect. They prayed, they

31:24

followed one of Jesus' brothers

31:26

or cousins, James, they prayed

31:28

in the Temple like other

31:30

Jews. And

31:32

it was

31:34

only really after 70, after

31:37

the destruction of the

31:39

Temple, had shown many that God

31:43

had withdrawn his blessing from

31:45

the Jews. Again, war, failure in

31:47

war, is so decisive

31:49

in history. And that

31:52

many decided that actually

31:54

they needed to embrace a new revelation in

31:56

the revelation of Christianity.

31:59

And of course, It was the

32:01

preaching of Christianity to non-Jews, and

32:03

the fact that Christianity would open

32:06

their arms completely to non-Jews, partly

32:08

made it so successful. But it

32:10

was also a rebellion

32:13

against the class

32:16

structure in the Roman Empire,

32:18

enslavement, and also it

32:20

had a new concept, which was, if

32:22

you behave well in this life, you'd

32:24

go to heaven in the next one.

32:26

So salvation was

32:28

a promise. And so it contained

32:30

new things that have really affected us right

32:34

until this day. And

32:36

the conversion of Constantine

32:38

in the fourth century,

32:40

Constantine the ruler of the

32:42

whole Roman Empire, the conversion

32:45

to Christianity was a

32:47

decisive moment in world history and

32:50

made and really allied Christianity

32:52

with power, with state, with

32:54

empire, and Jesus

32:57

with war and

32:59

victory. Three hundred

33:01

years later in Arabia emerged

33:04

the revelation of the prophet Muhammad.

33:06

He claimed to speak as a

33:09

messenger of God, but

33:11

he was knowledgeable about both

33:14

Christian and Jewish religion. And

33:17

whether he read it or he heard of it,

33:19

he'd certainly traveled with members of

33:22

his family who were merchants to

33:24

Syria, to Judea, to

33:27

Palestine. And

33:30

so he encompassed, he embraced

33:32

these stories as prophets. He

33:35

embraced Moses and David,

33:38

he embraced Mary, he

33:40

embraced these people, Jesus, as prophets

33:43

in his new third and final

33:45

revelation. And part

33:47

of the success of Muhammad was

33:50

based on what seemed like an

33:52

eclipse of the Roman Empire in

33:54

a time that must have seemed

33:56

like a sort of world disaster. He

34:01

died in 632, but in

34:04

the early part of that

34:06

century, the Sassanian Persians invaded

34:08

the Eastern

34:10

Roman Empire, defeated it, took Egypt,

34:13

Jerusalem, and fought their way

34:15

all the way close

34:17

to Istanbul. The

34:20

world seemed to be tilting in

34:22

an extraordinary way. No one knew what would happen. During

34:26

that period, the two great

34:29

powers, the Sassanian Persian Shars

34:31

and the emperors in Constantinople,

34:34

had formally financed

34:36

proxy kingdoms of Arabs that

34:38

fought as their border proxies

34:41

in the Middle East. They

34:44

discontinued these pensions that they paid

34:46

to these local kings, these Arab

34:48

kings. So there's

34:50

always been a great mystery. How

34:53

come these Arabs from great

34:55

obscurity managed to conquer so much

34:57

of the world? Part

35:00

of it was religious fervor. Part of

35:02

it was military toughness. Part

35:04

of it was sort of military

35:06

efficiency, a centrality of belief. Part

35:10

of it may have been that there were these

35:12

kind of actually experienced

35:14

and trained warriors around, trained

35:17

by both superpowers, if you like, who

35:19

were available. But anyway, Muhammad

35:21

was not only the founder of a

35:23

religion like Jesus Christ, but he was

35:25

also a head of state

35:27

and a commander who created a new

35:29

community and a new state. His

35:32

successors sent their troops out

35:34

into the world and a world

35:37

that was completely destabilized. It

35:41

seems like nothing is certain of

35:43

that period. It's such a misty period, but

35:46

it seems like they very

35:48

shrewdly offered all mono-atheists the

35:50

chance to join this religion,

35:52

which at the time had rules that

35:55

were unclear, that were

35:57

inchoate, that were developing. And

36:00

there are, for example, in Jerusalem, there are

36:02

very clear records that when they took Jerusalem,

36:04

first of all, it was surrendered to them

36:07

by Christian bishop without fighting

36:10

and in return for tolerance. But

36:12

secondly, that when they arrived there, they

36:15

immediately went up to the Temple Mount, which

36:17

had been left empty as a sign of

36:19

Christian disdain for the Jews. And

36:22

they built an early mosque there on

36:26

the site of the Al-Aqsa. And

36:28

they also later built the

36:30

Dome of the Rock in

36:32

691 on

36:35

the site, almost certainly on the site

36:37

of the Judean or Jewish Temple. But

36:41

in those early mosques and the early Dome of

36:43

the Rock, Christians and Jews were

36:45

allowed, it's believed, to pray there

36:47

as well. And of course, the

36:49

rules hardened later as

36:51

the religion became a formal faith of

36:54

the Great Arab Empire.

36:57

But all that time, Jews had been there in

37:00

that region, had prayed around the

37:02

walls. And when the Muslims came,

37:04

they allowed the Jews to return to live

37:06

there, providing, as Demi,

37:09

they recognized the

37:13

supremacy of the Islamic religion and the Islamic state.

37:16

And that was the basis in which Jews

37:18

lived there for many centuries to come. So

37:22

how do you understand the

37:24

roots of anti-Semitism? I

37:27

guess the simplest theological

37:29

rationale for it is that the

37:32

persistence of Jews as Jews

37:35

is just logically. If

37:38

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37:40

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