Yuval Noah Harari

And the idea was that they can combine the lessons, the legacy of

of Judaism with working the land and building an army and building a country.

And maybe it was just wrong that ultimately a choice had to be made, whether you want to be Vespasian and command a legion, or whether you want to be Yochanan ben Zakkai and study and develop your spiritual side, and the two cannot go together.

I don't know.

I mean, history is a very complex and unexpected process.

I don't think that there is an inherent contradiction between power and justice or between developing your power and developing your spiritual wisdom.

But I think it's very difficult to combine the two.

that temptations of power are very, very big and not a lot of people or a lot of movements throughout history have managed to resist it.

So it's not such a big surprise, but it's still disappointing.

Yeah, I think this is a very accurate way to present it.

And of course, they adhere to the biblical Judaism, which was a very different religion than what developed over 2,000 years in the diaspora.

Biblical Judaism was a very violent religion.

very illiberal, very intolerant religion.

For its time, it was probably one of the least or maybe the most intolerant religion in the world.

You still, you know, in the Bible, you have a commandment to kill all the Canaanites people.

you have an intolerance, a very deep intolerance towards the religions and religious practices and beliefs of all other people.

The ancient world, it has its own horrors, but religiously it was a very tolerant place.

Polytheistic religions, which believed in many gods, they had no problem accepting the religions, the gods of other people.

And also practicing them to some extent.

You know, you look at, say, the Roman Empire.