Free Republic

There’s been a lot of discussion and speculation that perhaps divine providence played a role in Trump’s surviving his attempted assassination. Though I’m not qualified to speak to that in a religious context, I can imagine that the scenario might have looked something like this.

In 2nd Century B.C.E, the Greek Seleucid Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes began a systematic campaign against Judaism, which he saw as an obstacle to the spread of Hellenist philosophy in Israel. He forbid certain forms of religious observance (such as circumcision, for example) — disobedience was punishable by death. He desecrated the Temple by sacrificing pigs there, and he put up a statue of the Greek god Jupiter in the Holy of Holies. Enraged, Mattathias the Maccabee and his five sons recruited a small army of Jews and launched a guerrilla war that is commonly known as the Maccabean revolt. After...