The first centuries in the Common Era were a tumultuous period in the history of Europe and the Near and Middle East. The Romans conquered large parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East (including what is now considered the Middle East). Additionally, Judea was conquered (by Rome), then rebelled, lost, and the Jews were exiled. Christianity, too, was making its debut, and Britain was conquered by Emperor Tiberius Claudius. As we will see in this chapter, the exile of the Jews and their dispersion throughout Europe are tightly connected to the evolution of desires.
During those first centuries, a new and different world was forming. Having been exiled, Jews were spreading throughout the Near East and Europe, and Christianity was gradually taking hold, becaming the official religion of the Roman Empire when Emperor Constantine the Great adopted it in the 4th century.
When Islam was promulgated in the 7th century, it created a situation where the majority of the people in Europe and the Near and Middle East adhered to one of the three Abrahamic faiths. Today, this may not seem extraordinary. But in those years, this shift of faith was a revolution caused by the emergence of the next stage in the evolution of desires—Stage Two.
Stage Two, the emergence of the desire to give within the desire to receive, instigated a crossing of two paths—that of Israel with that of all other nations. For the first time since Abraham departed Babel and formed the group that aimed Yashar El (straight to God), which evolved into the nation of Israel, his message—love thy neighbor as thyself—was being heard en masse. Because Stage Two—the desire to give—was beginning to manifest, the message of giving and compassion could now be heard, though it was clearly not executed as well as it was taught.
This chapter will examine the sub-surface processes that unfolded between the writing of The Book of Zohar (also called The Zohar for short) in the 2nd century C.E. and the writing of The Tree of Life in the 16th century. These dates (very) roughly parallel the period between the Roman conquest of Judea and the onset of the Renaissance, or what we now call “the Middle Ages.” As with the rest of the book, the goal is not to focus on particular events, but to provide a “bird’s-eye” view of history, showing how processes correspond to the evolution of desires. In the case of the time frame just mentioned, it is probably best to begin with the Roman conquest and the ruin of the Second Temple.