Manse Everard, reflecting during his conversation with Janne Floris:
"...the Jewish War. That was what detained Vespasian and his son Titus after their victory over Vitellius."
-Time Patrol, p. 492.
OK. Here is a direct reference to the next of Suetonius' Caesars:
DIVUS TITUS
Everard continues:
"The rising of the Jews, the bloody suppression of it, the destruction of the Third Temple - with everything that that was to mean for the future, Judaism, Christianity, the Empire, Europe, the world." (ibid.)
The Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. A council of rabbis closed the Jewish canon in 100 AD. Thus, Judaism as we know it, organized around the reading of the Torah in synagogues, was getting started at the same time as Christianity. The Time Patrol is kept busy:
"'Patrol units are concentrated on guarding Palestine. You can well imagine what emotions are engaged, through how many centuries. Fanatics or freebooters who want to change what happened in Jerusalem, researchers crowding in and multiplying the chances of a fatal blunder, and the situation itself, the near-infinity of causes radiating into that episode and effects radiating out from it....'" (ibid.)
Reality is unstable. Poul Anderson makes us feel this more than anyone else. One quantum fluctuation might change everything. And the Patrol maintains the status quo, no matter how much suffering is involved.
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