2000 Years Of Jesus. Tia was part of a team at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that published the Empty Cradles series on preterm births, which won multiple awards, including the 2012 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. Where the Mediterranean touched it seems that a common Jewish genetic-cultural pool existed. He wore a tunic, called a chiton in Greek. The Torah also states: "God did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us - who are all here alive today." (Deut. Lower Galilee (at left), where Jesus lived most of his life, was Israel's lushest region, known for its sunny, temperate climate and its spring-watered lands. What Did Herod's Temple in Jerusalem Look Like? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Over a tunic, a man would wear a mantle (himation, Mark 10: 50). Israeli archaeologist Yonatan Adler, director of excavations at the site, inspects chalk mugs and cores from the site. The results from the Syrian Jews imply that either these newcomers were very numerous, or, they were very fecund vis-a-vis the native population of Jews. Haaretz.com, the online English edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, gives you breaking news, analyses and opinions about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. In the, Peter Brown claims that the conversion to Islam by subjects of the Arabs in the Fertile Crescent increased in pace only. The only exception to that for Jews was if you undertook a Nazirite vow (Numbers 6:1-21; Acts 21:24). The research by University of Alberta is the first to pool figures from multiple studies to specifically examine how skin tone may affect the accuracy of heart data in wearables. He is Hollywood handsome. BERLIN On Jan. 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking officials of the Nazi bureaucracy met in a villa on Lake Wannsee on the western edge of Berlin. the shift from Syriac and Greek to Arabic. For most of history, or the history we record, Jews have lived under relatively brutal religious monopolies in the form of Christianity and Islam. Performance & security by Cloudflare. Even if the extent of this was exaggerated, it is likely that this sort of forced transplantation was instrumental in the crystallization of an Aramaic creole which became the lingua franca of the Near East. During the first half of the first millennium before Christ they were arguably the most antique society with a coherent self-conception still flourishing aside from their Babylonian cousins to the south and the Egyptians (other groups like the Hittites who may have been rivals in antiquity had disappeared in the late Bronze Age). I have wondered about the fact that Jews were known in antiquity as a nation of philosophers (Josephus, Apion 1:179). Weddings typically extended over a period of five to seven days. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). Bloodnight 12. Preliminary findings suggest their ancestors may have once mixed with local Jewish populations, and Wesolowski plans to submit these results to a peer-reviewed journal. Even though there always existed connections across the Roman-Persian frontier (which in any case periodically shifted), it is notable that the ancient historical divisions persist down to the present day among those who consider themselves the descendants of the (As)Syrians of that era:the Middle Eastern Christians. As Paul says in his letter to the Corinthian church, Does not even nature tell you that for a man to have long hair is dishonourable to him? (1 Cor. 1. Mandy Velez. In other words, the historical records which suggest Jewish convert kings of Yemen were likely accompanied by mass conversions of populations. But even if most of the Christians of the Arab Middle East are no longer non-Arabs by speech, they preserve a direct link with the ancient pre-Arab Middle East in their liturgy. Though the Semitic populations of the Middle East now generally have an Arab self-identification in keeping with their dominant language. By Kenneth L. Woodward On 3/28/99 at 7:00 PM EST. David Wesolowski, a 31-year-old Australian who runs the Eurogenes ancestry project (http://bga101.blogspot.com), also focuses on understudied populations. Research on ancient skeletons in Palestine suggests that Judeans of the time were biologically closer to Iraqi Jews than to any other contemporary population, according to specialist bio historian Yossi Nagar. Jesus has blue eyes. But this post is not about Egypt. Assyrias political evisceration by its vassals and enemies was inevitable, as a agricultural society on the Malthusian margin can squeeze only so much marginal product out of so many for so long. Based on accounts such as those of Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, by the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70, as many as 6 million Jews were living in the Roman Empire, but outside Israel, mainly in Italy and Southern Europe. Its very easy to idealise a city when you dont live there, Kennan: A Life between Worlds review: Psycho-political portrait of a US diplomats love for Russia, The New Cold War: The United States, Russia & China, From Kosovo to Ukraine; China & Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord, The Irresistible Attraction of Gravity: Popular title a heroic effort on science of black holes, Freediving is the closest Ill get to flying, effortless soaring-through-the-clouds freedom. I wanted to see Jesus clearly. These are questions I grappled with as I wrote my book, What did Jesus look like? The Jews of ancient Galilee were as observant as their co-religionists in Jerusalemites and Judea, a team of Israeli archaeologists has concluded after discovering a second workshop for stone tableware in northern Israel. The Christians of Syria and Lebanon divide between those who are aligned with theSyrian Orthodox Church, or Christians affiliated with Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. This has a bit of an ironic aspect, because in Late Antiquity the Christian Church was a powerful force in the destruction of the indigenous religious traditions of Syria and Egypt. For that, one needs to move east, to the land of the Assyrians. The coming of Islam changed this dynamic: the eastern and western Syrian world were reunited into one political and cultural order. One plausible explanation of why modern Assyrians are so close to Mizrachi Jews is that the Assyrians and Mizrachi Jews derive from the ancient Semitic populations which have long between resident in the Near East; the Assyrians of antiquity and the Hebrews of antiquity. But outside of these contexts Jews could be quite different in how they behaved. Across the Jourdan 11. The Israelites had been in Egypt for generations, but now that they had become so numerous, the Pharaoh feared their presence. The marriage did not take place in Palestine or among the exiles in Babylon, but among the Jews of Elephantine and Aswan, at the southern border of Egypt. People of Syrian origin became prominent in Roman life, such as the emperor, . News. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, Wired.com and other outlets. In the east, under Persian rule, Assyrians such asManiwere also culturally and socially prominent, though marginalized politically by the dominant Zoroastrian Persian ruling caste. By Joan Taylor. Rather, lets go back to the Assyrians and the Middle East. Historical appearance. Azar Gat has convinced me that we moderns to underplay nationalism in antiquity in. The find also exposed underground tunnels used by rebels during the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135AD. Joan E Taylor is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism, King's College London, I miss Dublin. In the east, under Persian rule, Assyrians such as, were also culturally and socially prominent, though marginalized politically by the dominant Zoroastrian Persian ruling caste. It would be reasonable to think then that at least some Jewish men in Judaea looked like this, even if there is stereotyping. But based on archeological evidence, most first-century Jewish men were about 5' 5" tall and had brown eyes. With the help of a family friend named Slvek, who was in love with Otto's older sister Felicitas (known as Lici), they lived in shelters built in the woods near the town. FollowLiveScience @livescience, Facebook& Google+. New York, After the conquest and dismemberment of the Assyrian Empire the core Semitic lands between the Mediterranean and the Zagros mountains became the cultural domain of the Syrian people. Weaving was quintessential women's work, done at home by women of all social classes. . According to National Geographic, the practice was known as "Cruentation," and it was basically what people did because they didn't know about DNA and they were otherwise pretty hopeless at things like gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses and caring whether or not they found the actual . Two-thousand-year-old chalkstone cores, dating to the Roman period, uncovered at an excavation site in the Israeli village of Reina, near the northern city of Nazareth, on August 10, 2017. It seems as if Iraqi Jews are of equal distance from Assyrians and Iranian Jews. Thousands of years ago, according to the Old Testament, the Jews were slaves in Egypt. Dr Yonatan Adler, director of excavations at a site dating to the Roman period, shows chalkstone mugs and cores uncovered two-months prior, in the village of Reina, near Nazareth, August 10, 2017. I wonder if we would recognise him, as he really looked, if we met him on the way. A cross-section of the one in the painting, which was made between 1645 and 1672, appears to have swirly shapes embedded in six triangular pie-shaped pieces. The connection between Mizrachi Jews and Assyrians probably has to do with them coming out of the same broad North Semitic continuum of peoples. Inside were thousands of stone cores and other waste from making bowls, drinking mugs and other vessels, as well as tableware in various stages of production. Synagogues were classified as colleges to get . Gold Calf Dance 3. They came in and said, You are criminals. In absolute numbers, the 2020 Jewish population estimate is approximately 7.5 million, including 5.8 million adults and 1.8 million children (rounded to the closest 100,000). In terms of a colour palette then, think dark-brown to black hair, deep brown eyes, olive-brown skin. Suffice it to say, by the year 1900 Westerners who were reacquainting themselves with Oriental Christianity observed that they had lost much of its cultural vitality, and been subject to involution. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Given that other peoples around the world did not ascribe the imperviousness of chalkstone to impurity, workshops for stone tableware are believed to be unique to Israel. It didnt exist. 00:00. Past research found that 50 percent to 80 percent of DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the Near East, Richards said. This is one reason that there is some debate as to whether Arab Christians are Arab at all. Even though the majority of the population of the core Middle Eastern nation is descended from the peoples of antiquity, they now consider themselves by and large Arab. For example, the two Jewish rebellions under the Romans or the efficiency of the Jewish subordinates who served the Persian Zoroastrians in the Levant after its conquest in the early 7th century. But even if most of the Christians of the Arab Middle East are no longer non-Arabs by speech, they preserve a direct link with the ancient pre-Arab Middle East in their liturgy. (apart from a period of "reunification" under the Maccabees), and in the time of Jesus it was under a (supposedly) native Herodian prince, while Judea and Samaria had since A.D. 6 been under the direct rule of a . Nor, for 30 years, did anyone pay him much heed. In other words,ArabChristians were far more common thanSyriacMuslims. Why are womens bodies under attack from autoimmune diseases? Entitled Ancient Earth, the site is easy to use.Users simply begin by dropping a pin in a location of their choice. Clearly he is not one of them. Advertisement. Unfortunately the textual records from Persia are not so good. An estimated 2.4% of U.S. adults are Jewish. A new report from Bloomberg claims that Apple is working on selling iPhones and iPads as part of a hardware subscription service. The genetics suggest many of the founding Ashkenazi women were actually converts from local European populations. The piece is part . (Christie's) This detail from a 17th-century painting by Giovanni Stanchi depicts a watermelon that looks strikingly different from modern melons, as Vox points out. According to the company, "predicted faces" from three ancient mummies were revealed last month during the International Symposium on Human Identification in Orlando . 69.163.239.61 You relied on a clock radio to wake you (and not because you were worried about screen addiction) The . In the Gospels, he is not described, either as tall or short, good-looking or plain, muscular or frail. A few weeks ago Paul Givargidze, Davids colleague mentioned above, informed me that it didnt look like the article would be published in the near future due to time constraints. An unclean animal could dance the fandango on it, and the vessel would stay kosher. A family digging in their garden in the Israeli village of Eilabun have unwittingly uncovered a complex of underground stables, hewn into the soft rock in Roman times 2,000 years ago. April 10, 2020. There are some incidental details in the Gospels that tell us what Jesus wore. CNN plans to make noticeable changes that will "affect people, budgets, and projects" before end of 2022, according to CEO Chris Licht. Theyre from thesame setas a Jewish genetics paper from last spring. In Iraq the majority of Christians come from a different stream, the ancient Church of the East which grew out of the Christian communities of pre-Islamic Iran and Iraq. Agnes lives in The Netherlands, with three daughters. The team found that four founders were responsible for 40 percent of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA, and that all of these founders originated in Europe. It is a subject that has interested me for a long time. The division between east and west was also evident among the Jews in Late Antiquity; ergo, thetwo Talmuds. This is a strange finding, in particular since some of the Sephardi samples are from Syria. Jesus, Mary and Joseph by American standard would have been considered black but with a lighter skin tone than Adam and Eve. Enlarge. Julius Caesar and Augustus supported laws that allowed Jews protection to worship as they chose. Rather, the spatial relationships reoriented themselves as the underlying data set from which they emerge are changed. Its surfaces were covered with chisel marks, showing where the chalk had been hewn out. Jesus smiles. 'This was in accordance with a ruling in the Babylonian Talmud stating that only the menorah in the Temple could have seven branches and thus lamps used in domestic contexts commonly had eight to eleven branches. Archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre inspects chalkstone cores and mugs uncovered at an excavation site dating to the Roman period in Reineh, on August 10, 2017. But this is a somewhat deceptive division, as much of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Middle East dates to the Ottoman years, as Iberian Jews fled the increasingly intolerant Catholic monarchies of the peninsulas. Without Lights, Tinsel Or Leisure - A Look At Life In Ancient Bethlehem. Azar Gat has convinced me that we moderns to underplay nationalism in antiquity inWar in Human Civilization. Agnes Laurens is a writer. As for Jesuss body, Ive consulted experts on ancient skeletons in Israel. Just last week, the Department of Art and Design at Bluefield College in Virginia released an . He said the men stole his ring and bashed him on the leg with a pistol. Stone is heavy, chalkstone is absorbent and its no walk in the park to clean. This adoption of this considerable inconvenience was apparently based on evolving thought about purity, originating with a curious omission in the Bibles Book of Leviticus, explains Yonatan Adler of Ariel University, director of the excavations for the IAA. December 18, 2015. Minerals on the ocean floor of Saturn's icy Do YOU struggle to remember faces? Most Americans are aware of the term Assyria, if they are, through the Bible. 11:14). In wearing only an inner tunic, he would have been dressed in very basic clothing. The plastic crisis has spawned a new DISEASE in seabirds: Scientists say 'plasticosis' is caused by small How old are YOU really? He is the most painted figure in all of Western art, recognised everywhere as having long hair and a beard, a long robe . In Iraq the majority of Christians come from a different stream, the ancient Church of the East which grew out of the Christian communities of pre-Islamic Iran and Iraq. Wouldnt Jesus have done so? The Jewish religious texts provide plenty of evidence of this. Long tunics (stolai) were worn by women or occasionally by wealthy men in high-honour positions. Save up to 70% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine. One thing to keep in mind is that thepatterns you observe are partly conditional on the inputs. January 2016. The belief that Ashkenazi Jews have "white privilege" is a popular one, but nevertheless false. Jesuss disciples see his clothing (mantle and tunic) transform into a bright white hue at the Transfiguration (Mark 9:3=Matt. Other scholars believe Jesus was 5' 1" tall and he weighed 110 pounds. It turns out that the term, , the primary god and city of ancient Assyria. For an overview of what transpired between then and now to the Christians of the Middle Eastern Orient, read my review ofThe Lost History of Christianity. Their community was limited and constrained. 01:19. What I have learnt is that Judaeans of this time were closest biologically to Iraqi Jews of the contemporary world. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. The cave is in the town of Reineh, which is situated between Nazareth and Kafr Kana, though to be the site of the wedding where Jesus turned water into wine, according to Christian tradition.The water had been held in the very kind of stone vessels used by the Roman-era Jews: "And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or . Ignoring the reality that whole Arab tribes were known to have been Christian even before Islam, it is probably correct to assume that almost all Arab ChristiansareArabicized Aramaic or Coptic speakers. So theyre showing you the breakdowns by population/individual for K ancestral quantum (8 and 10) respectively. Remember that the Near Eastern constrained data sets arent simply geographical zooms from the West Eurasian set. The slide show below has what I believe are the most pertinent figures (Ive reedited them a bit). The cave is in the town of Reineh, which is situated between Nazareth and Kafr Kana, though to be the site of the wedding where Jesus turned water into wine, according to Christian tradition. It occurred many years after rising tensions following thefailure of the first revoltin 6673AD. Leviticus 11:32-33 specifies that while a cloth, wooden or leather vessel that has become contaminated through contact with the dead body of an unclean that is, unkosher animal can be purified through immersion, and an earthenware, or pottery vessel must be broken, the verses make no mention of stone vessels, Adler points out. For this vow, you let your hair grow, and didnt drink wine, among other things. The involution ofdhimmisthen is simply not cultural,it is genetic. She writes for the local newspaper. Throughout history, Jewish people have been persecuted for their religious beliefs. The Yemeni cluster is straightforward: this looks like a classic Judaizing population. In short, impurity was a metaphysical thing, not a physical one. Some of the populations should be familiar. Its a response, in a way, to the lack of formal work thats been done in certain areas, so were doing it ourselves, he says. But just as modern national identities exhibit some fluidity, they no doubt did in antiquity. The Crash /////ENGLISH TEXT BELOW///// Lorsque les pilotes du vaisseau Space Oddities se . In terms of the before and after of a washing powder advertisement, Jesuss clothing was the before. Reconstructing Petra. Though the Semitic populations of the Middle East now generally have an Arab self-identification in keeping with their dominant language,some among the Christians dissent. But the Jesus we recognise so easily is the result of cultural history. First, we have plenty of records of Assyrian population movements, enforced from on high. An Ashkenazi + Sephardi cluster, a Mizrachi cluster, and finally, a, Yemeni cluster. Jews Are a 'Race,' Genes Reveal. 5:3) Judaism is not miracles. Suzuki has announced that it's joining forces with Tokyo-based flying car firm SkyDrive to develop an electric, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. In contrast, only about 500,000 lived in Judea, said Ostrer, who was not involved in the new study. Thin and borderline lactose-intolerant. Jews and other Aramaic speakers in the Fertile Crescent shared a common language. But since this is focused on Middle Eastern populations, youre looking at these three groups. "The major Jewish communities were outside Judea," Ostrer told LiveScience. But what about where it did not? Jupiter and Venus 'kiss' in a stunning planetary conjunction tonight. (Previously, other scholars had estimated the number of people living in the city at this time as 2,000, 2,500 or 4,500-5,000.) The Arabs were also present in antiquity, and are mentionedearly onas a group on the margins of the ancient world (and sometimesat the center). If it were true, that would make Ashkenazim offshoots of a multi-ethnic. Though the finding may seem intuitive, it contradicts the notion that European Jews mostly descend from people who left Israel and the Middle East around 2,000 years ago. Fifty years ago, leading Israeli scholar Michael Avi-Yonah constructed a now-iconic model . They were allowed to persist and exist, but only marginally tolerated. Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, I wrote up the historical introduction for perspective. But whatever the current configuration,it remains true that to this day these churches can root their lineage back to the Roman and Sassanid period. According to this way of thinking, if it says in the bible that pottery can become impure when in contact with a dead rodent or dead lizard, thats how they led their lives, Adler tells Haaretz. On average, all Ashkenazi Jews are genetically as closely related to each other as fourth or fifth cousins, said Dr. Harry Ostrer, a pathology, pediatrics and genetics professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and the author of "Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People" (Oxford University Press, 2012). An ancient settlement dating back 2,000 years has been discovered in Israel. For speakers of neo-Aramaic in Iraq this makes total sense; but Arabic speaking Lebanese Maronites also object to an Arab identity (though this gains some traction due to the common bilingualism of Maronites in French and Arabic). Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. Others figure they were about the same. Instead, a substantial . . In early Christian art, he often had the big, curly hair of Dionysus. The school preserved the skull for the last 100 years, according to the . This was a large piece of woollen material. As time went on the halo from the sun god Apollo was added to Jesuss head to show his heavenly nature. It has clear political implications in the United States, where Afrocentrism is rooted in part on the presupposition that ancient Egypt was a black civilization. Over the next three years, the family moved from various shelters in the forest to the homes of acquaintances, as each location became dangerous. 2.2K Followers. NY 10036. Overall, the three communities, along with Georgian Jews, form a distinct cluster. Shandigarh 14. The first two are ADMIXTURE plots. Four new crew members join the International Space Station following a 24-hour journey on board Do you consider yourself to be a risk-taker? We don't have photos or even drawings of how Jesus looked. : 161, 194 Thus in terms of physical appearance the average Judean of the time would have likely had brown or even black hair, olive skin, and brown eyes. Leave immediately, said Sharif Aso, a board member of the organization, the, They said, This is an Islamic state. , First, a little etymology. In any case, the key is this: these populations have been isolated from others since the rise of Islam 1,400 years ago. The rest are. So theyre showing you the breakdowns by population/individual for K ancestral quantum (8 and 10) respectively. The question I have is if David found any haplotype blocks connecting the Assyrians and Mizrachi Jews, and compared them in relation to the Sephardi + Ashkenazi cluster. But their hair would not have been very long. In his new book, "Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People," Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine . This was probably just a coincidence of geography, as the forced conversion which Justinian the Great imposed on the non-Abrahamic minorities (and to a lesser extent on the Jews and Samaritans as well) in the 6th century was unfeasible so close to the border with the Sassanid Empire. were free to convert from one religion to another so long as Islam was not part of the picture. Dippy the Dinosaur: Understanding the Famed Diplodocus. They Sported . But with the linguistic unity likely came a level of fluidity between the fuzzy sets which bounded the communities which we perceive so clearly later in history. Cave art from ~10,000 years ago in the Magura Cave, Bulgaria (Wikimedia Commons) Around 7,000 years ago - all the way back in the Neolithic - something really peculiar happened to human genetic diversity. The half-acre site, the searchers claim, is evidence Jewish culture and practices stretched to the very edge of the Judea province and also suffered from the disruption of the time. The rest areMDSwhich relate individuals within populations on a two-dimensional surface. In other words, Even though the majority of the population of the core Middle Eastern nation is descended from the peoples of antiquity, they now consider themselves by and large Arab. In terms of height, an average man of this time stood 166 cm (5 ft 5 in) tall. The finding should thoroughly debunk one of the most questionable, but still tenacious, hypotheses: that most Ashkenazi Jews can trace their roots to the mysterious Khazar Kingdom that flourished during the ninth century in the region between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire, Richards and Ostrer said. We cannot know today whether the ancients thought stone vessels could become contaminated, and as a result would have to be either smashed or purified. A rare oil lamp emblazoned with the nine-branched menorah was also found and is being heralded as the most culturally significant find at the site in the desert. China's Mars rover may be dead in the dust, new NASA images reveal, Insect that flings pee with a butt catapult is 1st known example of 'superpropulsion' in nature, Lab-grown minibrains will be used as 'biological hardware' to create new biocomputers, scientists propose, Otherworldly 'fairy lantern' plant, presumed extinct, emerges from forest floor in Japan, Cosmic rays reveal 'hidden' 30-foot-long corridor in Egypt's Great Pyramid, The ultimate action-packed science and technology magazine bursting with exciting information about the universe, Subscribe today and save an extra 5% with checkout code 'LOVE5', Engaging articles, amazing illustrations & exclusive interviews, Issues delivered straight to your door or device. It has clear political implications in the United States, where Afrocentrism is rooted in part on the presupposition that ancient Egypt was a black civilization. In 1977, a study determined the ABO blood types of 68 skeletons of Jewish residents from 1,600 to 2,000 years ago in and around Jerusalem. 2,000-year-old image of 9-stem menorah found in rare Jewish site in Beersheba | The Times of Israel, Wordle has a hidden 'hard mode' - but players claim it might actually make the game EASIER, Apple could start selling iPhones and iPads as part of a SUBSCRIPTION service from 2023, report claims, YouTube adds thousands of FREE TV shows and movies to its service including The Sandlot, Legally blonde and There Will Be Blood as company moves to compete with streaming giants, Project Skyway: World's largest network of 'drone superhighways' could be built in ENGLAND - connecting the Midlands with the Southeast over 165 miles, About time! The marquee finding of the haul is thenine-stemmed menorah, which some say may be a'hanukkiah,' a menorah which has a total of nine flames and is used during Hanukkah. Although the Bible traces Jewish roots back to the time of Abraham some 4000 years ago, most historians have concluded that the actual Jewish identity dates to only a little over 2000 years ago. The archaeological find shows how different it was 2000 years ago: There were no Christians or Muslims, the Jewish Temple stood in Jerusalem and tiny Nazareth stood near a battleground between . It turns out that the termSyrianlikely has a root in Assyria. And even after the Islamic conquest. But Jesus states: Beware of the scribes who desire to walk in long tunics (stolai), and to have salutations in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets (Mark 12:38). country music half marathon results,