This history was written by Rabbi Bindmanin "The Seven Colors Of The Rainbow", Resource Publications, Inc. San Jose, California, 1995, p. 8-18).

== Mesopotamia, origin of seventy nations == :See Also: [[Comparison of Hammurabi, Hittite, and Assyrian Codes]] Following the flood, humanity was still one united body, living in one place, the area now known as Mesopotamia or Iraq, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow through a fertile plain. Here the people had settled and given birth to children. Their state of security was so great that they began to consider themselves the masters of all creation, ready to challenge G-d Himself for supremacy. They saw their own unity as the key to this, and they did not commit the sins of banditry and sexual infidelity (bestiality) for which the previous generation had been condemned. They were kind and loving to one another, but they grew arrogant as a group and decided to build a high tower, the Tower of [[Babel]] (Heaven's Gate, Sumerian: Nun.Ki), from which to gain an access to heaven.

This was a form of idolatry (violation of the Covenant of Noah), and their punishment from the heavenly court was that their languages should be confused. They would no longer understand each other as before. This was the origin of separate languages as we now have them; seventy basic tongues were established, from which all of today's languages descended. This was also the number of the actual nations of the non-Jewish world before they were subdivided and intermingled.

Nimrod tried to kill Abraham for speaking out against his ruling cult, but Abraham was miraculously saved. Then G-d told him to leave the land of his birth and to travel to "a land which I shall show you." This was the land of Israel, the Holy Land, which G-d gave to Abraham and his descendants as an inheritance, as a place in which to keep all of His commandments in the Torah and thus to be close to Him.

===Abraham studied at the academy of Shem and Eber===

There Abraham studied at the academy of Shem and Eber, and he acquired great wisdom. He traveled with his wife and his flocks and herds, offering hospitality to people and discussing the concepts of divinity with them, each according to his level. Sarah, meanwhile, instructed the women. Abraham wrote books and devoted all his wealth to doing kindness to everyone who needed it. He brought others to the understanding of the the Seven Laws, by which he himself was bound, but his efforts for the spreading of this awareness earned him a much higher reward; his descendants were to be given the privilege of keeping the whole Torah in the Jewish manner.

While the Jews lived on their land, with the Temple in their midst, they had a high level of spiritual awareness. Prophecy was a constant factor in their lives. These centuries also saw the rise of other empires: Greece, with its scientific and artistic excellence, and Persia and Babylon, with highly developed sorcery cults of a kind that has now disappeared. The Greek world produced many truly great thinkers, such as the philosopher Aristotle, but its cult of beauty also led many people to a self-indulgent way of life, immoral and idolatrous.

===Greek influence in conflict with Torah===

Thus, inevitably, through this Gentile Greek influence as well as others, there were elements that came into conflict with Torah and the world of Jewish learning. During the early years of the Second Temple, these forces mounted an all-out campaign to conquer the land of Israel and to force the Jews away from the Torah. These Greeks opposed the Torah as much because of the Seven Laws as from any concern over the life led by the Jews themselves. They wanted to pollute Jewish wisdom with impure concepts to the point where it would lose the capacity to influence non-Jews in favor of Noachide practice. They sent troops into the Holy Temple itself in an attempt to destroy its altars and to contaminate the sacred olive oil used for lighting the lamps. This was no act of random destruction: this oil and its light correspond in the Temple service to the maintaining of pure Torah wisdom.

In Temple times, the non-Jews who formally took on the duty of observance of the Seven Laws were given the right to live in the land of Israel alongside the Jews, sharing in its divine insights and joys together with them. Both within the land and outside it they formed large communities in association with the synagogues. By the time of the rise of Imperial Rome they had become so prominent that the Roman government gave them special status in law, with the influence of their beliefs felt all across the empire. These were later called "G-dfearers."

They were known as "G-dfearers," yirei shamayim in Hebrew. In Italy and other western regions of the empire they were called by the Latin equivalent metuentes. In the Greek-speaking lands to the east, where they were much more numerous, they were known as phoboumenoi (fearers of the One) or [[Theosebeia|theosebei ]] (worshipers of G-d). A memorial tablet found in the synagogue of Aphrodisias in Turkey in 1976, commemorating donors to charity, has two separate groups of names: one is of Jews, but the other is of Greeks, such as "Polychronios," "Apianos," and "Athenagoras," and it is headed with the words, "and also these Fearers of the One...."

A similar inscription has also been found in the synagogue of Sardis, this time with three groups of names: born Jews, full converts to Judaism, and observers of the Seven Laws. The "Fearers" are mentioned many times by the Roman commentators and historians, often with sarcasm and mockery of their closeness to the Jewish world and its ideas.

However, the senatorial class soon felt their privileges were being threatened, and the church sought to win them over as allies for the Christian cause. Propaganda was spread among the poor, alleging that the Jews and their adherents were planning to exploit them even more, and this was helped by the power which Julian's policies had given to the bureaucrats who administered the reforms. Within two years the emperor's position was under threat; he had gone for high moral stakes, but the empire itself was so unstable that chaos had risen against him.

In order to win final military security, he led an army to the east against the Persian Empire, the last strong power that posed a danger to Rome. His legions reached the Persian capital itself, going further than Roman armies had ever gone before. However, he retreated from the task of mounting a siege in the heat of summer. As the army marched away, he was hit by a stray arrow and died on the sand. Thus fell the last official advocate of the Seven Laws until modern times, a man whose courage was brooked only by the most elemental forces that menace the rule of law. ~~(Rabbi Bindman, The Seven Colors Of The Rainbow, Resource Publications, Inc. San Jose, California, 1995, p. 8~~ ==See also==* [[God-~~18).~~Fearers and the Identity of the Sabians]] ==References==<references /> [[Category:History of Noahism]]

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