Why I'll never say Hooray when you say "Hep Hep"

By Randy White , 10 September, 2011

Why I'll never say Hooray when you say "Hep Hep"<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Dr. Randy White
http://www.randywhiteministries.org

Many times the things we say are thoughtless. Sometimes the enemy, Satan, has made them that way.

Soon I will be hosting a seminar arguing that we have forgotten the message of the stars (to receive this seminar on CD or MP3, click here). I believe that God wrote the Gospel in the sky, but the devil perverted the message beyond recognition. This is an example of Satan taking a positive and powerful message and causing its meaning to be so lost that the message is no longer communicated.

Conversely, Satan sometimes takes a powerful negative message and causes its meaning to be so lost that the message continues being communicated, even by those who would be horrified to know what they were saying.

In the year 70AD, Rome entered Jerusalem, utterly destroying the city. A few Jews escaped, running for their lives, when Titus halted for a brief respite before ransacking the city and plundering the temple, leaving it in such ruins that not one stone was left upon another. A small band of Jews remained in rebellion at Masada, the former Dead Sea fortress of King Herod. They died some three years later after what was an embarrassingly expensive and difficult military attack for the Romans.

After a few years passed, the Emperor Hadrian became much more sympathetic to Jews, allowing them to return to Jerusalem in 118AD. This sympathy, however, did not last long. Soon Hadrian went back on his commitments and even shipped Jews out of Jerusalem to North Africa. So the Jews began to defending themselves by forming contingents of soldiers that hid in caves, sabotaging the Roman army whenever possible while preparing for guerrilla warfare.

The Jewish condition under Hadrian continued to decline to the point that in 132AD he changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina and began to build a temple to Jupiter on Temple Mount where the former Temple once stood. Refusing to stand by and watch, Simon Bar Kokhba began to lead a rebel army that was, at first, successful against the Romans. In the end, however, the Romans so outnumbered the Jews that they surrounded 985 villages and starved the Jewish heroes until they were too weak to fight. The remaining Jews fled to the Jewish stronghold of Bethar where, on the ninth of Av (which was the date of the destruction of the first and second Temples), Hadrian's army engaged them in a fierce battle that left every Jew in Bethar lying dead. The war was essentially over. Rome plowed Jerusalem, changed the name of Judea to Palestina, and prohibited all Jews from entering their God-given homeland. The final Roman destruction of Israel was completed. (Information gathered from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/revolt1.html)

When Hadrian returned to Rome, he stated, in Latin, Hieroslyma est perdita,that is, "Jerusalem is destroyed." The response was the celebratory "Hooray!" This Latin phrase became a common greeting among anti-Semitic Romans, and in time was shortened to HEP. When greeted with HEP, HEP, the "patriotic" response was "Hooray!"

Through the years, most American's have changed HEP to hip, but the roots are the same. Satan has done such a work that few, if any, recall the meaning of these bloody and anti-Jew words.

In the early part of the 1800s, riots against Jews began in Wurzburg, Germany and spread across Europe. Historically, these are called the "Hep Hep Riots" because "Hep Hep" was the anti-Semitic rallying cry.

Is it any mistake that to be "hip" today is to be informed, up-to-date, aware of the times? Linguists agree that hip came from hep, and historians agree that hep came from HEP--Hieroslyma est perdita. Satan has worked to make "hip" a great thing.

But now you know!