My question is to a person living during the revolt and revolting against Rome, was Zion the religion of the priest in the temple they wanted to preserve, or would the average person think "Zion" just mean Jerusalem and they wanted to keep it from the Romans. And of course how different or the same is the modern version of the word Zion to what it meant on the coins 2000 years ago to average people?
And before you think to quote a Roman source, on this Roman coin below the Romans wrote BACCHIVS IVDAEVS commemorating a victory of Pompey over Jewish leader Aristobolis who was the high priest of Bacchus? (the God of Wine?)
And who could blame them because if you don't see a statue of a God in the temple and you see a lot of reverence for cups of wine you might just think Jews worship wine and move on...
Quote: And before you think to quote a Roman source...
I'd much rather quote the world's foremost authority on Judaean coinage, David Hendin. He addresses the issue thus:
"The modern word Zionism, according to the Encyclopedia Judaica, 'first appeared at the end of the 19th century, denoting the movement whose goal was the return of the Jewish people to Eretz Israel.' But, the word Zion is ancient, referring most often to the city of Jerusalem or the people of Judaea. Some two thousand years ago there was a Zionism very similar to the 'modern' Zionism. Nowhere is this more clearly shown than on the Zionist slogans of the coins minted during the Jewish wars of the first and second centuries CE."
In the catalog Hendin states that the "(for the) freedom of Zion" legend on the second and third year bronze prutot "represented a kind of rallying cry for the Jews" - and that Roman coins, with their political messages, served as a sort of inspiration for this.
The legend "ligulat Zion" (for the redemption of Zion) of the fourth year bronze coins - the first siege coins ever minted (Jerusalem was under seige by Titus) - "give us what must have been the daily prayer of the hard pressed and despairing Jews during the last few terrible months of their heroic revolt."
Interesting: So David is saying it was a term for the City or the People, but there was a Zionist movement much like today. Except at first it was to free themselves from Rome and at the end of the revolt it was to redeem the people and city. So in the early 1900's it meant return as a movement and again today it is protect Israel. I know there are a lot of tie clips from the 1950's that just say Zion in Hebrew made in Israel so maybe the term is always the same. Thanks!
As you say a deep topic and one well beyond my understanding. I understood Zion to mean Judaea and Zionist to mean a person that did not want a foreign power to impose their rule of Judaea. Keeping to the point where this is related to the legends on the coins. I look at it as a means to a call to arms against a foreign powers attempt to control there way of life and religion.
So it may mean a place but only be used in a context of defending. Like if you are from Judaea and someone 2000 years asked you on a trip where you were from you probably don't say, oh I am from Zion second street from the left etc. And if you were asked what you were you would say a tribe but not Oh I am a Zion. And even if asked what religion you did not say I practice Zion probably. Maybe you did say all the above who knows as it is 2000 years ago. Or maybe it was just used in context of defending.
consider any coin you want and every coin tells his own history , it is the opinion of the man or people who made it . It is logic that every people made coins to make a propaganda for his opinions . Our problem is to interpret the words and the images . In this case , the whole problem is the word ZION , word that has a political sence only since the end of the 19th century , so IMO 2000 years ago , it is used only to indicate a town ,without other sence . I do not think that the word Zion is used by Flavius Josephus in his history of the work of the Jewish history of the Roman province of Judea . It only indicates the town of Jerusalem . albert
Weird. Seems like in Egyptian texts from the 19th century BC they have a city called Rušalim and by 1300 BC a local chief calls it Urušalim who says he serves at the pleasure of the Pharaoh of Egypt. Samuel says David took the Canaanite Jebusite fortress of Zion and called the the City of David.
So maybe it is as easy as there was a good name for the city prior to the Jews and a good name for the old Canaanite fortress separate and by the time the Romans took down the temple it was like you just said Albert, just one of the two names people called the city and nothing deeper than that.
Thanks! I might just ask the question, who used the word first, like was it a Canaanite word for risen up etc. I have no idea why I am curious now, but that is where this is heading in my mind.
As I understand it, "Zion" was/is the name of the hill that the original city of Salem/Jebus/Jerusalem was built on. In ancient Jewish poetic literature, "Zion" was just one of the names which were used to represent Israel, both as a place and as a people. Jerusalem, as the holy city and site of the Temple, was central to the concept of Israel and thus could also be used as a synonym for the nation and people as a whole. The issuer of the coin was calling anyone who held the coin to remember everything the scriptures said about "Zion" and that God would protect them if they remained faithful.
Exactly which hill had the name "Mount Zion" applied to it has changed over time. It originally applied to the area known as the "City of David" today, just south of the Temple Mount. Once the Temple was built, the name was applied to the Temple Mount itself. And in post-Revolt times, after the Romans had flattened the place, the name was applied to the much more impressive-looking "Western hill", the site of the current Abbey of the Dormition.
Modern "Zionism" takes the biblical imagery, of linking the land and people, and turns it into the political ideology that the Jewish people and the ancient Jewish lands need to be reunited, ASAP.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Right correct of course. Before the Jews it being the name of the fortress and why may be lost to history. Just like Jerusalem is far more ancient then the Jews as a name of the city this word was could have come from so many beginnings but as you said to the Jews it is exactly what you say at the time. And I am being told to stick to Tsiyyon like the actual letters spell out and you say it with a Z in Hebrew it means male anatomy and it is not to be said that way. That is what they hear anyway.
Let's not confuse ourselves into a muddle. The English word "Zion" is an anglicized pronunciation of a word in Greek, who wrote the equivalent of Sion (i.e. see - OWN). The Greeks did not use the tsadi in their alphabet and so approximated it both in spelling and pronunciation. What comes to us as a Z consonant came to them as an S (sigma) from Punic.
Quote: you say it with a Z in Hebrew it means male anatomy and it is not to be said that way.
As for the shift in vocabulary, you are being thrown off by the substitution of a zayin for a tsade in your pronunciation, which takes you to a word formed from an entirely different root. In all this it is important to remember that when you say Zion (ZI-on) you are speaking English, not Hebrew.
I am fluent in Hebrew, and agree that you should not trouble yourself with how you pronounce Zion or Tsiyon. If you were speaking Hebrew then yes your would say Tsiyon just like you would also say Yapan for Japan and Sin for China. As far as the meaning of Zion goes, it had nothing to do with ideology, it is a name used throughout scriptures to refer to Jerusalem and the People of Jerusalem.
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Posted 04/01/2017 12:59 am
