Chapters 8-10 Reading Response

So, I noticed something right away when diving into these new chapters provided for us by Armstrong; she continually makes analogies to the modern era of Jerusalem and where it stands as a country and as parts, and throws us back in time to when religion converted itself into a new age for its people and their practices. As we were told by Armstrong, people in ancient Jerusalem were controlled by the Roman Empire for quite a long period of time. During this time, the Jewish population was either revered, hated, or removed from the city through out the span of about 150 years. For majority of this time, Jews were not allowed to practice Judaism within the city and especially near the Temple Mount which was destroyed and replaced with temples of gods that belonged to the Roman Empire. Of course at this time, we are told that before this era of time, it was impossible to pray to your god if your religion incoorporated them, without having a temple of worship.When the Roman army placed their Tenth LEgion withint the city walls and destroyed the Judaist Temple, it destroyed the divine world for Jewish people living wihtin Jerusalem, and then not soon after, to those who lived further away that eventually recieved the news. What I am trying to do for those of you reading my response; I am simply making a connection or an analogy that shows that with change in religion according to Armstrong, she is also metaphorically synapsing it with the present. To continue; she describes that in order for the Jews and other much smaller secular cults and religions that did not pray to Athena, Zeus and many others amongst the Roman gods, it became unfathomable to continue their religion without a temple, but this idea was radically redefined and the idealism through knowledge and persuasion of Rabbii's allowed for Jewsish people by the turn of a hundred years of prejudice and exile, to pray where they stood, at any time during the day. I must say this makes a strikingly similar resemblence to that of which the modern Israeli governemnt is showing towards Palestinians today. Now whether or not the case is true that Armstrong tried to make these similarities between, I am not sure. For Palestinians today, the removal of their homes and the "exile" from their living space is the analogy placed with ancient Jerusalem and the removal of the Jewish Temples. It's not that the Israeli Governemnt is seeking revenge and has been for 2,000 years (because that would be perposterous), but it appears as if the tides have changed and the roles have been reversed. thsi is my view from what I gathered by the chapters we read.