to promote it but, rather, in order to preserve religion and a religiously unique people in relation to a specific and limited geography." Several scholars regard war narratives in the Hebrew Bible, such as the war against the Midianites in Numbers 31, to be a holy war, with Niditch (1995) asserting the presence of a 'priestly ideology of war in Numbers 31'. Hamilton (2005) argued that the two major concerns of Number 31 are the idea that war is a defiling activity, but Israelite soldiers need to be ritually pure, so they may only fight wars for a holy cause, and are required to cleanse themselves afterwards to restore their ritual purity. The Israelite campaign against Midian was blessed by the Israelite god Yahweh, and could therefore be considered a holy war. Olson (2012), who believed the war narrative to be a fictional story with a theological purpose, noted that the Israelite soldiers' actions in Numbers 31 closely followed the holy war regulations set out in Deuteronomy 20:14, although Moses' commandment to also kill the captive male children and non-virgin women was a marked departure from these regulations. He concluded: "Many aspects of this holy war text may be troublesome to a contemporary reader. But understood within the symbolic world of the ancient writers of Numbers, the story of the war against the Midianites is a kind of dress rehearsal that builds confidence and hope in anticipation of the actual conquest of Canaan that lay ahead." Dawn (2016) stated: "From the earliest days of Israel's existence as a people, holy war was a sacred institution, undertaken as a cultic act of a religious community". Shinto Sikhism Antiquity In Greek antiquity, four (or five) wars were fought in and around the Panhellenic sanctuary at Delphi (the Pythia (Oracle) residing in the Temple of Apollo) against persons or states who allegedly committed sacrilegious acts before the god Apollo.<ref>Encarta Encyclopaedia Winkler Prins s.v. "Delphi".</ref> The following are distinguished: The First Sacred War (595–585 BCE) The Second Sacred War (449–448 BCE) The Third Sacred War (356–346 BCE) The Fourth Sacred War (339–338 BCE) The Fifth Sacred War (281–280 BCE) Firestone (2012) stated that in the eyes of ancient Rabbinic Judaism, the Maccabean Revolt (167–160 BCE), the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE) and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) were "holy wars" or "Commanded Wars" (Hebrew: מלחמת מצווה Milkhemet Mitzvah). Middle Ages Christianisation of Europe