Captured Temple Treasure
Arch of Titus (detail)
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The Early Christians
The Death of James
The Situation in Palestine Deteriorates
In 36 C.E., Pilate bloodily suppressed a religious demonstration by Samaritans in a village named Tirathana, near the sacred Mount Gerizim.
"The Samaritans believed that Moses had buried the sacred Temple vessels on Mt. Gerizim. Both Jews and Samaritans lived in constant expectation of a deliverer, the Messiah...The Samaritans therefore responded eagerly when a would-be Messiah claimed that if the population assembled at the foot of Mt. Gerizim he would uncover the sacred vessels. As the multitudes began to assemble Pilate became uneasy. Some were warmed and he feared an uprising. As the people prepared to climb the mountain he sent in his troops to disperse them and a pitched battle ensued. Many Samaritans were killed and Pilate gave orders for those taken prisoner to be executed."
- Peter Connolly, Living in the Time of Jesus of Nazareth, p. 52
"Afterward, according to Antiquities 18.88-89, the Samaritan authorities appealed against Pilate to his superior, the Syrian legate Vitellius, 'for they said, it was not as rebels against the Romans but as refugees from the persecution of Pilate that they had met at Tirathana.' Vitellius found in their favor and sent Pilate to explain his conduct before Tiberius in Rome, where the emperor's timely death saved his life if not his career. Vitellius also, according to 18.95, 'removed from his sacred office the high priest Joseph surnamed Caiaphas.'"
"Pilate, in other words, was dismissed from office for excessive cruelty or unnecessary brutality, even by Roman imperial standards. And we may well suspect the same reason for Caiaphas's simultaneous dismissal."
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
"The first really grave break between the Yishuv [Jewish people] and the Roman Empire came under the Emperor Gaius Caligula (37-41 C.E.) Knowing that the emperor was a fanatic who believed himself to be a god and who accepted the worship of Caesar as his due, the foreign minority at Yavneh (Jamnia) set up an altar to Caesar. The Jews of the city, who would not tolerate idolatry on the soil of Judaea, smashed the altar. The emperor retaliated by ordering, among other things, the erection of an enormous golden image in the Jerusalem Temple itself. When news of the edict spread, it aroused fury throughout the Yishuv: open revolt seemed imminent."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
Agrippa I, grandson of Herod, appealed to Caligula to rescind his edict and offered to give up his crown and even his life.
"You release me when I was bound in chains and iron. Who is there who is ignorant of this? But do not, afer having done so, O emperor bind me in bonds of still greater bitterness: for the chains from which you released me surrounded a part of my body, but those which I am now anticipating are the chains of the soul, which are likely to oppress it wholly and in every part."
"You abated me from a fear of death, continually suspended over my head, you received me when I was almost dead through fear, you raised me up as it were from the dead."
- Philo,"On the Embassy To Gaius"
This appeal "led to the withdrawal of the most extreme clauses in the edict, but it was only the assassination of the emperor in the year 41 C.E. that prevented the outbreak of a Jewish-Roman War. Even after Caligula's death, the memory of these events and the fear of their repetition cast a cloud over all relations between the Yishuv and Rome."
"Many features of Roman rule were an affront to Jewish feelings. The presence of a foreign army on Judaean soil and the harsh taxation system were degrading enough. But what aroused the fury of the Jews more than anything else was the support given by the Roman administration to the Greek and Syrian population of the province. These communities, whose status had declined during the great period of the Hasmonean dynasty, were now increasing in power at the expense of the Yishuv. Furthermore, they were becoming a privileged class, for the occupation forces were recruited mainly from the Hellenistic cities - especially Sebaste and Caesarea. Relations between the foreign elements and the Yishuv became dangerously strained."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
"And he said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power [ en dunamei]'."
- Mark 9:1 (Matthew 16:28 // Luke 9:27)
Some scholars translate en dunamei as "by force". One of the meanings of en dunamei is "power consisting in or resting upon armies, forces, hosts".
This saying was "most likely...produced by early Christians who sought to reassure themselves of Christ's coming in glory as the years passed by with no parousia in sight."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"It is worth noting that both Matthew and Luke have rephrased the saying. According to Mark, God's rule 'has set in with power'; according to Matthew, 'God's rule is coming' - at some future date. For Matthew, then, the time has been pushed off into the indefinite future. Luke eliminates the temporal dimension altogether and has them merely 'see God's imperial rule'."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
The Attack on James
Around C.E. 62, James, the leader of the 'Jerusalem Community' was attacked in the Temple at Jerusalem.
"Much blood is shed; there is a confused flight, in the midst of which that enemy attacked James, and threw him headlong from the top of the steps; and supposing him to be dead, he cared not to inflict further violence upon him."
- "Recognitions of Clement" (3rd Century)
"James, however, is not dead. According to the 'Recognitions', his supporters carry him back to his house in Jerusalem . The next morning, before dawn, the injured man and his supporters flee the city, making their was to Jericho, where they remain for some time - presumably while James convalesces."
- Baigent and Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception
"Then after three days one of the brethren came to us from Gamaliel...bringing us secret tidings that the enemy had received a commission from Caiaphas, the chief priest, that he should arrest all who believed in Jesus, and should go to Damascus with his letters..."
- "Recognitions of Clement" (3rd Century)
Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews "reports that the Sanhedrin, the religious high court, called before them James, 'the brother of Jesus who was called Christ'. Accused (most improbably) of breaking the Law, James and certain of his companions are found guilty and accordingly stoned to death....The incumbent procurator had just died. His successor, Lucceius Albinus, was still en route to Palestine from Rome. During the interregnum, effective power in Jerusalem was wielded by the high priest, an unpopular man named Ananus. This allows the account of James death to be dated at around C.E. 62..."
- Baigent and Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception
The high priesthood at this time was known for its widespread corruption.
"At first did they bring the hides of holy things to the room of bet hap parvah and divide them in the evening to each [priestly] household which served on that day. But the powerful men of the priesthood would come and take them by force. They ordained that they should divide it on Fridays to each and every watch. But still did violent men of the priesthood come and take it away by force.... Beams of sycamore were in Jericho. And strong-fisted men would come and take them by force."
- t.Men 13:18-19; cf. t.Zeb 11:16-17; b.Pes 57a
"Apparently the ruling priests (i.e., the 'powerful men of the priesthood') were stealing the tithes (hides, in this case) to which the lowerranking priests were entitled. Because of this practice, it was not long 'before the priests covered the face of the entire porch [of the Temple] with golden trays, a hundred by a hundred [handbreadths], with the thickness of a golden denar' (t.Men 13:18-19; cf. b.Pes 57a: 'they covered the whole Temple with gold plaques a cubit square of the thickness of a gold denar'; m.Sheq 4:4: 'What did they do with the surplus of the heave offering? Golden plating for bedecking the Holy of Holies).
"The four principal high priestly families are remembered for their violence and oppression:"
- Craig A. Evans, "Opposition to the Temple: Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 240
"Concerning these and people like them... did Abba Saul ben Bithnith [first century C.E.] and Abba Joseph ben Johanan [first century C.E.?] Of Jerusalem say, 'Woe is me because of the house of Boethus. Woe is me because of their staves. Woe is me because of the house of Kathros. Woe is me because of their pen. Woe is me because of the house of Hanin [=the family of Annas; cf. John 18:13]. Woe is me because of their whispering. Woe is me because of the house of Ishmael ben Phabi. For they are high priests, and their sons [are] treasurers, and their sons-in-law [are] supervisors, and their servants come and beat us with staves."
- t.Men 13:21; cf. b.Pes 57a; see also t.Zeb 11:16-17; y.Ma'as. Sh. 5:15"But as for the high priest, Ananias he increased in glory every day, and this to a great degree, and had obtained the favor and esteem of the citizens in a signal manner; for he was a great hoarder up of money: he therefore cultivated the friendship of Albinus, and of the high priest, by making them presents..."
- Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Bk XX, Ch IX, Sn 2
"Josephus tells us that Ananus was a Sadducee, but he was much more than that. His father, Ananus the Elder, was High Priest from 6 to 15 C.E., and is known to us from the gospels as Annas. The elder Ananus as father-In-law of Joseph Caiaphas, High Priest from 18 to 36 C.E., a figure also known to us from the gospels. He was furthermore the father of five other High Priests - Eleazar, Jonathan, Theophilus, Matthias, and Ananus the Younger, of present concern. Finally, he was the grandfather of Matthias, High Priest in 65 C.E."
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
"Being therefore this kind of person [i.e., a heartless Sadducees], Ananus, thinking that he had a favorable opportunity because Festus had died and Albinus was still on his way, called a meeting [literally, 'sanhedrin'] of judges and brought into it the brother of Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah [tonadelphon lesou tou legonmenou Christou], James by name, and some others. He made the accusation that they had transgressed the law, and he handed them over to be stoned."
- Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Bk XX, Ch IX, Sn 1
"If Josephus knew of, and referred to James as 'the brother of Jesus, him called the Christ,' why does he not refer to James in regard to his membership in any Christian sect, let alone his leadership of it? If James was the head of a Jerusalem church which had spread its tentacles far and wide across the empire (a la Acts), including right into Rome where Josephus lived and worked, would such an organization, such a success story, have been ignored by him? "
- Earl Doherty (CrossTalk)
In a different account - "according to Hegesippus, the scribes and Pharisees cast James down from the battlement of the Jerusalem temple. They begin to stone him but are constrained by a priest; finally a laundryman clubs James to death (as accounted by Eusebius)."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1.
"So they went up and threw down the Righteous one. They said to each other 'let us stone James the Righteous', and began to stone him, as in spite of his fall [from a parapet of the Temple] he was still alive. While they pelted him with stones...[a member of a particular priestly family] called out: 'Stop. What are you doing...' Then one of them, a fuller, took the club which he used to beat clothes, and brought it down on the head of the Righteous one. Such was his martyrdom."
- Eusebius, The History of the Church 2, 23"Those of the inhabitants of the city who were considered the most fair-minded and who were strict in observance of the law were offended at this. They therefore secretly sent to King Agrippa urging him, for Ananus had not even been correct in his first step, to order him to desist from any further such actions. Certain of them even went to meet Albinus, who was on his way from Alexandria, and informed him that Ananus had no authority to convene the Sanhedrin without his consent. Convinced by these words, Albinus angrily wrote to Ananus threatening to take vengeance upon him, King Agrippa, because of Ananus' action, deposed him from the high priesthood which he had held for three months and replaced him with Jesus the son of Damascus."
- Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Bk XX, Ch IX, Sn 1
"The immediate family of Ananus the Elder had dominated the high priesthood for most of the preceding decades, with eight High Priests in sixty years, yet the execution of James resulted in the deposition of Ananus the Younger after only three months in office. An abstract illegality could hardly have obtained such a reaction, so James must have had powerful, important, and even politically organized friends in Jerusalem. Who were they? Josephus's phrase 'inhabitants...who were strict in observance of the law' probably means Pharisees. Was James a Pharisee?...Did he leave Nazareth long before [the execution of Jesus] and become both literate and involved within scribal circles in Jerusalem?....Did his presence there invite, provoke, challenge Jesus' only journey to Jerusalem?"
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
"...It appears that some Pharisees may have had some differences with Jesus, but the serious conflict between Christians and Pharisees grew up in Jerusalem after Jesus' death, soon became acute, when Paul and (probably) other Pharisees were active in persecuting the new sect, reached a crisis in 41-44 when the Pharisees had the support of Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12), and subsided after the flight of Peter, the death of Herod, and the accession of James, Jesus' brother, to leadership of the church. When Paul visited Jerusalem in the late 50s he found that the church under James was on excellent terms with its Pharisaic neighbors, from whom there were many converts (Acts 21.20); when he was tried there, the Pharisees in the Sanhedrin defended him (Acts 21.20); later, about 62, when James was executed by a Sadducean High Priest, the Pharisees seem to have protested the execution and secured the High Priest's deposition. We hear no more of hostility between them and the Christians until after the Jewish revolt of 66-70, culminating in the fall of Jerusalem, in which the older leaders, both of the Pharisees and of the Christian communities in Jerusalem, were probably displaced or destroyed. After 70 a profoundly reorganized Pharisaic group with Roman support took the lead in forging a new, 'amalgamated,' rabbinic Judaism, but deliberately excluded Christians from the amalgam. This resulted in a period of sharp conflict between the sects..."
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"Jesus' brothers said to him, 'You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.' For even his own brothers did not believe in him."
- John 7:3-5
"Within six years of the death of James the Righteous in 62 C.E., it appears that both Peter and Paul were executed in Rome, during the period when the Emperor Nero was using Christians as scapegoats for the city's disastrous fires."
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
"Immediately after this [James' execution] Vespasian began to besiege them."
- Eusebius, The History of the Church 2,23
"James' martyrdom, says Hegesippus, was followed immediately by Vespasian's siege of Jerusalem (A.D. 70). Eusebius stresses that Hegesippus' account agrees basically with that of the Church Father Clement of Alexandria (2.23.3,19); hence it was apparently the standard Christian story."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1.
"The entire 'siege of Jerusalem', he [Eusebius] says, meaning presumably the whole of the revolt in Judaea [66 C.E.], was a direct consequence of James's death - 'for no other reason than the wicked crime of which had been the victim'."
- Baigent and Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception
"These things happened to the Jews in requital for James the Righteous, who was a brother of Jesus known as Christ, for though he was the most righteous of men, the Jews put him to death."
- Eusebius, The History of the Church 2, 23 quoting Josephus (in a passage no longer extant)
The Jewish War
(1) Prophesies and Portents
Signs of Impending Doom
In 169 B.C.E., impressive portents also reportedly triggered a Jewish takeover of Jerusalem from the ruling Seuclid Greeks. In response Antiochus IV slaughtered many of the city's inhabitants.
"And it happened that over all the city, for almost forty days, there appeared golden-clad horsemen charging through the air, in companies fully armed with lances and drawn swords -- troops of horsemen drawn up, attacks and counterattacks made on this side and on that, brandishing of shields, massing of spears, hurling of missiles, the flash of golden trappings, and armor of all sorts. Therefore all men prayed that the apparition might prove to have been a good omen."
- 2 Maccabees 5:2-4
Immediately proceeding the Jewish revolt (66-70 C.E.), Josephus mentions several signs of impending doom, including a star, comet and unusual light at the Temple.
"Thus there was a star (20) resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year. Thus also before the Jews' rebellion, and before those commotions which preceded the war, when the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus, (21) [Nisan,] and at the ninth hour of the night, so great a light shone round the altar and the holy house, that it appeared to be bright day time; which lasted for half an hour. This light seemed to be a good sign to the unskillful, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes, as to portend those events that followed immediately upon it."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VI, Ch V, Sn 3
"Since Josephus still uses the Syro-Macedonian month Xanthicus for the Jewish month Nisan, this eighth, or, as Nicephorus reads it, this ninth of Xanthicus or Nisan was almost a week before the Passover, on the fourteenth; about which time we learn from St. John that many used to go 'out of the country to Jerusalem to purify themselves,' John 11:55, with 12:1; in agreement with Josephus also, B. V. ch. 3. sect. 1. And it might well be, that in the sight of these this extraordinary light might appear."
- William Whiston (translator of Josephus)
A Star Shall Step Forth
"I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab [Samaritan Pentateuch (see also Jer. 48:45); the meaning of the word in the Masoretic Text is uncertain.], the skulls of [or possibly Moab, 'batter'] all the sons of Sheth [or 'all the noisy boasters']."
- Numbers 24:17
This same prophesy also is associated with the star of Bethlehem and the Joshua/Jesus messianology.
"The star is the Interpreter of the Law who comes to Damascus; as it is written...[The scepter] is the Leader of the whole nation..."
- Damascus Document - Geniza Manuscript A 7.18-20
"That the so-called 'Zealot' movement was also permeated by Messianism is confirmed by Josephus at the end of the Jewish War, when he contends that the thing that most moved the Jews to revolt against Rome in C.E. 66-70 was an obscure and ambiguous prophecy....that a World Ruler would come out of Palestine, i.e. the Star Prophecy (6.312-14)."
- Robert Eisman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered
"What more than all else incited them to the war [even as the Temple burned] was an ambiguous oracle...found in their sacred scriptures, to the effect that at that time one from their country would become ruler of the world. This they understood to mean someone of their own race, and many of their wise men went astray in their interpretation of it. The oracle, however, in reality signified the sovereignty of Vespasian who was proclaimed Emperor in Jewish soil."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VI, Ch V, Sn 4
Roman historians such as Suetonius and Tacitus also reported the prophesy.
"From Judaea would go forth men destined to rule the world."
- Tacitus, The Histories, V, xiii
"Suetonius, in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars - Vespasian 4, 5), recounts the belief, widespread in the Orient, of world-rulers who were to come from Judea. The Jews mistakenly took the prophecy to refer to themselves, when it actually pointed to Vespasian, who paradoxically was in Judea at the time to put down the Jewish rebellion."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
Vespasian as God
"In a passage that is difficult to interpret, Suetonius [Lives of the Twelve Caesars 4, 5] tells us that, when Vespasian consulted the oracle of the god of Carmel in Judea, the lots were very favorable (Vespasian 6, 6). Suetonitus then repeats Josephus' story of his prophecy of Vespasian's rise to the imperial throne. This agreed with omens that supposedly had been observed in Rome. Legitimacy was on its way."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"The rumours were spread quickly throughout the army that their general was to be successful in whatever he planned. His immediate followers, including Josephus who had himself prophesied the emperorship would come to Vespasian, encouraged the general to consider seizing power. Our general was a veteran campaigner and caution was his first course. However, Tiberius Alexander, a lapsed Jew and governor of Alexandria, had the troops under his command take their oath to Vespasian as emperor.
"When the new emperor was in Alexandria preparing for the journey to Rome several portentous events happened. When Vespasian went to the temple of Serapis for an oracle he is recorded by both Tacitus and Suetonius to have received an oracle associated with the name Basilides, ie. 'king's son'. This was taken to mean that the god had acknowledged Vespasian's right to the Principate.
"Then there were the blind and lame whom Vespasian cured with his 'royal touch'. They were brought to him with the assurance from the god Serapis that he could heal them by spitting into the blind man's eyes and healing the lame man with his heel. He was reluctant considering that if he failed he would look the fool. His followers reassured him that he could do it, he did and the two men were healed. This was obviously stage-managed, by whom we will never know. Most likely it was the followers of the new emperor who concocted the circumstances to give more confidence to Vespasian in his new role. Other miracles concerning his birth were now 'remembered', and favourable portents came from all over the empire, including Greece. The stories spread quickly, no doubt helped on their way by the official post.
"Flavius Vespasian became emperor and god. His two sons followed him to the rule and the Flavian dynasty was a fact. While oracles and miracles assisted him in his rule by establishing a supernatural awe around his person Vespasian remained wryly sceptical to the end. He had a great sense of humour. On his death bed he said, as he felt himself dying; 'Now I feel myself becoming a god.'"
- Cliff Carrington, "The Flavian Testament"
(2) Revolt in Judea
Historized Prophesies of Desolation
"Outside is the sword, inside are plague and famine; those in the country will die by the sword, and those in the city will be devoured by famine and plague. All who survive and escape will be in the mountains, moaning like doves of the valleys, each because of his sins."
- Ezekiel 7:15-16"But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it; for these are days of vengeance, to fulfil all that is written. Alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days! For great distress shall be upon the earth and wrath upon this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled."
- Luke 21:20-24
The apocryphal Fourth Book of Ezra, written near the end of the 1st c. C.E., also describes a similar state of desolation (although the author retroactively places the time frame during the Babylonian conquest in 598 B.C.E.)
"Now concerning the signs: behold, the days are coming when those who dwell on earth shall be seized with great terror, and the way of truth shall be hidden, and the land shall be barren of faith.
And unrighteousness shall be increased beyond what you yourself see, and beyond what you heard of formerly.
And the land which you now see ruling shall be waste and untrodden, and men shall see it desolate."
- 4 Ezra 5:1-3
Opposition Grows
"...The Romans were engaged in wars to the east of Judea and the eastern provinces were taxed hard to pay for the armies. At the same time the fighting also stopped the trade that was the life-blood of Hellenism. Poor government and severe taxes both exasperated and impoverished much of the eastern Empire. In Judea, the Hellenized merchants and priests lost sympathy with Rome and ordinary citizens, long horrified by the blasphemies of their overlords, found common cause with their native masters. Economics joined religious sentiment, and to no one' surprise but the Romans, thirty years after the crucifixion of Jesus, rebellion broke out, the Temple priests throwing down the gauntlet by refusing the daily imperial offering."
- John Romer, Testament: The Bible and History (1988) p. 134
"The issue of Gentile gifts and Gentile sacrifices in the Temple was a particularly crucial one in the period running up to the war against Rome from the 40s to the 60s C.E. Josephus makes this clear in the Jewish Wars, where he describes the barring of these - demanded by 'the Zealots' and presumably other opposition groups - as 'an innovation which before our ancestors were unacquainted with'."
- Robert Eisman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered
"Under Albinius [the governor of Judaea appointed by Nero] law and order eventually collapsed. Nero tried to correct matters by sending out a strict authoritarian, Gessius Florus, a 'hanger and a flogger' who believed in putting down the slightest disturbance with the utmost severity....Florus sent to Jerusalem to withdraw money from the Temple treasury, claiming it was needed for public works. No one believed him. There was much grumbling and some young wags carried round baskets collecting 'pennies for poor Florus'. In anger the governor advanced on the city with his forces. The action provoked an escalating cycle of repression and demonstrations."
- Peter Connolly, Living in the Time of Jesus of Nazareth
The Jewish authorities refused to produce the trouble-makers, arguing that most were young and foolish.
"Florus was more provoked at this, and called out aloud to the soldiers to plunder that which was called the Upper Market-place, and to slay such as they met with. So the soldiers, taking this exhortation of their commander in a sense agreeable to their desire of gain, did not only plunder the place they were sent to, but forcing themselves into every house, they slew its inhabitants; so the citizens fled along the narrow lanes, and the soldiers slew those that they caught, and no method of plunder was omitted; they also caught many of the quiet people, and brought them before Florus, whom he first chastised with stripes, and then crucified. Accordingly, the whole number of those that were destroyed that day, with their wives and children, (for they did not spare even the infants themselves,) was about three thousand and six hundred."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk II, Ch XIV, Sn 9
Another demonstration gathered in the Temple grounds but were restrained from taking action by priests (who feared for the safety of the Temple treasures). Florus sent in his cavalry and many were killed in the ensuing melèe.
Zealots Seize the Temple
To prevent a full-scale uprising "both sides wrote to Cestius Gallus the governor of Syria who sent a tribune to investigate. When he and the young king Agrippa, son of Agrippa Herod I, attempted to reconcile the two sides they were expelled from Jerusalem."
"The Zealots knew that their time had come. They seized Masada and slaughtered the Roman garrison there. In Jerusalem they gained control for the priests and the daily sacrifice that was offered for the emperor ceased. It was the final act of defiance."
- Peter Connolly, Living in the Time of Jesus of Nazareth
"At the same time Eleazar, the son of Ananias the high priest, a very bold youth, who was at that time governor of the temple, persuaded those that officiated in the Divine service to receive no gift or sacrifice for any foreigner. And this was the true beginning of our war with the Romans; for they rejected the sacrifice of Caesar on this account; and when many of the high priests and principal men besought them not to omit the sacrifice, which it was customary for them to offer for their princes, they would not be prevailed upon."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk II, Ch XVII, Sn 2
The Sicarii burned the archives containing records of debt against the rich, assaulted the Antonia fortress killing the Roman troops inside, and lay siege to the palace.
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"In the mean time, one Manahem, the son of Judas, that was called the Galilean, (who was a very cunning sophister, and had formerly reproached the Jews under Cyrenius, that after God they were subject to the Romans,) took some of the men of note with him, and retired to Masada, where he broke open king Herod's armory, and gave arms not only to his own people, but to other robbers also. These he made use of for a guard, and returned in the state of a king to Jerusalem; he became the leader of the sedition..."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk II, Ch XVII, Sn 8
Eventually the Zealots undermined the wall protecting the palace then chased and slew the Romans before they reached the citadel towers. The following day the Zealots killed the high priest and his brother.
"In its early days, when the revolt still promised to be successful, Manahem [the zealot leader] is described as making a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, 'in the state of a king' - another manifestation of messianic dynastic ambitions."
- Baigent and Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception
"...For he [Manahem] went up thither to worship in a pompous manner, and adorned with royal garments, and had his followers with him in their armor. But Eleazar and his party fell violently upon him, as did also the rest of the people; and taking up stones to attack him withal, they threw them at the sophister, and thought, that if he were once ruined, the entire sedition would fall to the ground. Now Manahem and his party made resistance for a while; but when they perceived that the whole multitude were falling upon them, they fled which way every one was able; those that were caught were slain, and those that hid themselves were searched for. A few there were of them who privately escaped to Masada, among whom was Eleazar, the son of Jairus, who was of kin to Manahem, and acted the part of a tyrant at Masada afterward. As for Manahem himself, he ran away to the place called Ophla, and there lay skulking in private; but they took him alive, and drew him out before them all; they then tortured him with many sorts of torments, and after all slew him, as they did by those that were captains under him also..."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk II, Ch XVII, Sn 9
Revolution and Mark's "Little Apocalypse"
"The revolt at Jerusalem released all the old pent up hatred. All over the country Jews and gentiles slaughtered each other. Towns were sacked and burned. Populations were wiped out. In Alexandria the legions had to be brought in to protect the Greeks. This of course resulted in a massacre of the Jews."
- Peter Connolly, Living in the Time of Jesus of Nazareth
"The revolt against Rome was also a social revolution in may ways. The debt-ridden and landless lower classes together with refugees from the border areas provided the backbone of the rebel forces. There were also some extremist groups, ardent revolutionaries whose leaders (posing as kings or Messiahs) regarded the revolt as a war not only against the Romans but also against those members of the upper classes who had collaborated with the authorities. The extremists pursued these definite ends from the beginning of the revolt, setting fire to the archives of Jerusalem in order to destroy loan contracts, and using terrorist tactics against the leading representatives of the upper classes." BR> - The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
Before the zealots burned Sephoris in 66 C.E., "their first impulse once armed was to destroy the debt archives and revenge themselves on those cities that administered their exploitation and oppression."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (1998), p. 7
"When it became clear that the auxiliary forces in the country were quite unable to suppress the Jewish forces, the governor of Syria was forced to intervene personally at the head of his legions. His forces were routed in the hills of Judaea near Beit-Horon."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
With its warnings of "wars and rumors of wars", Mark's "Little Apocalypse" (Mark 13) seems to describe the violent civil war that accompanied the tribulation in Judaea.
"But take heed to yourselves; for they will deliver you up to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. And when they bring you to trial and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say; but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. And brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all for my name's sake..."
- Mark 13:9-13 ("Little Apocalypse")
"The sayings in Mark 13:9-13 all reflect detailed knowledge of events that took place - or ideas that were current - after Jesus' death: trials and persecutions of Jesus' followers, the call to preach the gospel to all nations, advice to offer spontaneous testimony, and the prediction that families would turn against one another are features of later Christian existence, not of events in Galilee or Jerusalem during Jesus' lifetime. The note about children betraying their parents may be an allusion to the terrible calamities that took place during the siege of Jerusalem (66-70 C.E.)"
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
Good arguments can be made, however, that The Little Apocalypse and related passages in Matthew and Luke are not examples of ex eventu ("after the event") prophecy written after the fall of Jerusalem. (Many of the sources quoted below which support this position were taken from D. G. Conklin's excellent article, "A Study on the Synoptic Gospels".) For example, there is no evidence that members within families fought against each other during the Jewish war - the internecine fighting that occurred was between opposing religious communities. The splitting of the family is a specifically Christian theme (i.e., Matthew 10:34-36 // Luke 12:51-53; Thomas 16:1-4).
"Mark 13 shows very little evidence of being influenced by the course of events in A.D. 70."
- Carson, Moo, and Morris, Introduction to the New Testament p. 98
"But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city."
- Matthew 22:7
"The punishment in this particular parable seems extravagant if the offense is nothing more than the social gaffe of turning down the wedding invitation of a petty monarch. But there is reason to think this offense is more serious: in the first-century world, it smacks of rebellion against one's lord. More important, many of Jesus' parables begin with the commonplace and then introduce elements that destroy the listeners' world expectations. The monarch represented by the king in this parable is God himself; the wedding is the wedding of God's own Son. To refuse his invitation--indeed his command--is dangerous rebellion that invites catastrophic retribution."
- Carson, Moo, and Morris, Introduction to the New Testament p. 77
"In 67 C.E. Vespasian [sent by Emperor Nero] entered Galilee, his first objective, at the head of a tremendous army. The most sturdy resistance was put up by the fortress of Jotapata, where the best fighters of Galilee, under the command of Josephus, managed to hold off the major part of Vespasian's forces for 47 days. But, despite the heroism of the defenders, the fortress was taken, and in a comparatively short time the whole of western Galilee was in Roman hands." Jaffa, Tiberius, Gamala and Mount Tabot fell to the Romans and "the only Galileans to continue fighting were the refugees who somehow escaped to Jerusalem."
"These early defeats dealt a heavy blow to the official leadership, and the zealots of Jerusalem tried to take command. Civil war developed, and almost the whole country, including Transjordan, was occupied by the Romans....Civil war in Rome held up further operations against Jerusalem, but at the beginning of July 69 C.E. Vespasian was crowned emperor by the legions in the east, and in the spring of the following year his eldest son Titus was able to lead the Roman forces against the capital.
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
As Titus approached Jerusalem, The Zealots vied with the priests (Sadducees) and supporters for control of the capital.
Hereupon they sent for one of the pontifical tribes, which is called Eniachim, and cast lots which of it should be the high priest. By fortune the lot so fell as to demonstrate their iniquity after the plainest manner, for it fell upon one whose name was Phannias, the son of Samuel, of the village Aphtha. He was a man not only unworthy of the high priesthood, but that did not well know what the high priesthood was, such a mere rustic was he ! yet did they hail this man, without his own consent, out of the country, as if they were acting a play upon the stage, and adorned him with a counterfeit thee; they also put upon him the sacred garments, and upon every occasion instructed him what he was to do. This horrid piece of wickedness was sport and pastime with them, but occasioned the other priests, who at a distance saw their law made a jest of, to shed tears, and sorely lament the dissolution of such a sacred dignity."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk IV, Ch III, Sn 1
"The rebels had failed to exploit this golden opportunity to set up a united leadership and strengthen their military position. There had been constant disagreement between the three leaders, Yohanan of Gush Halav, Ele'azar Ben Shim'on (a priest), and Shim'on Bar Giora (the zealot leader who controlled the upper city), and no joint defense plan had been worked out before the siege began."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
"It is most unlikely that Matthew should have committed such a leap of thought from God to Nero that he actually had the siege of Jerusalem in mind when he quoted the parable [of the Marriage Feast above]. One might better assume that he quoted it before this event took place. The picture of God sending his armies to punish all quests not willing to follow his invitation was in no way applicable to the war started by Nero to punish the leaders of rebellion against Roman supremacy."
- Reicke, Bo, "Synoptic Prophecies on the Destruction of Jerusalem" in Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature: Essays in Honor of Allen P. Wikgren, p. 123
The vocabulary of this passage "represents a fixed description of ancient [punitive] expeditions and is such an established topos of Near Eastern, Old Testament [such as Isa. 5:24-30?] and rabbinic literature that it is precarious to infer that it must reflect a particular occurrence."
- K.H. Rengstorf , "Die Stadt der Morder (Mt. 22:7)," in Judentum-Urchristentum-Kirche Festschrift fur Joachim Jeremias
"Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the LORD Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.
Therefore the LORD's anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down. The mountains shake, and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.
He lifts up a banner for the distant nations, he whistles for those at the ends of the earth. Here they come, swiftly and speedily!
Not one of them grows tired or stumbles, not one slumbers or sleeps; not a belt is loosened at the waist, not a sandal thong is broken.
Their arrows are sharp, all their bows are strung; their horses' hoofs seem like flint, their chariot wheels like a whirlwind.
Their roar is like that of the lion, they roar like young lions; they growl as they seize their prey and carry it off with no one to rescue.
In that day they will roar over it like the roaring of the sea. And if one looks at the land, he will see darkness and distress; even the light will be darkened by the clouds."
- Isaiah 5:24-30
"The language of Matthew 22:7; including the reference to the burning of the city, is the standard language of both the Old Testament and the Roman world describing punitive military expeditions against rebellious cities."
- Carson, Moo, and Morris, Introduction to the New Testament p. 77
Josephus himself viewed the fall of Jerusalem as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophesies.
"These men, therefore, trampled upon all the laws of men, and laughed at the laws of God; and for the oracles of the prophets, they ridiculed them as the tricks of jugglers; yet did these prophets foretell many things concerning [the rewards of] virtue, and [punishments of] vice, which when these zealots violated, they occasioned the fulfilling of those very prophecies belonging to their own country; for there was a certain ancient oracle of those men, that the city should then be taken and the sanctuary burnt, by right of war, when a sedition should invade the Jews, and their own hand should pollute the temple of God. Now while these zealots did not [quite] disbelieve these predictions, they made themselves the instruments of their accomplishment."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VI, Ch II, Sn 1
Months later Josephus exhorted the besieged rebels in Jerusalem to surrender to the Romans.
"And who is there that does not know what the writings of the ancient prophets contain in them, - and particularly that oracle which is just now going to be fulfilled upon this miserable city? For they foretold that this city should be then taken when somebody shall begin the slaughter of his own countrymen. And are not both the city and the entire temple now full of the dead bodies of your countrymen? It is God, therefore, it is God himself who is bringing on this fire, to purge that city and temple by means of the Romans, (8) and is going to pluck up this city, which is full of your pollutions."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VI, Ch II, Sn 1"And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, 'Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation'."
- Luke 19:41-44
"The description of military operations is here more detailed [as compared to Mark 13:2, 14-8 and Matthew 13:14-20]. The enemy is to construct a palisade, encircle the city so as to invest it completely, and finally raze it to the ground. This is in fact what happened, broadly speaking, in the war of A.D. 66-70. ... But these operations are no more than the regular commonplaces of ancient warfare."
- Dodd, C.H. "The Fall of Jerusalem and the 'Abomination of Desolation'," Journal of Roman Studies 37 (1947): pp. 49-50
"Jesus' predictions reflect stock Old Testament and Jewish imagery having to do with the besieging of cities rather than the specific circumstances of the siege of Jerusalem."
- Carson, Moo, and Morris, Introduction to the New Testament p. 98
Seige of Jerusalem by the Assyrians:
"As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my (Sennacherib's) yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities ... and conquered (them) by means of well-stamped (earth-) ramps and battering-rams ... Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem (pre-Exilic Jerusalem), his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork...."
- The Prism of Sennacherib, possessed by the Oriental Institute"Now you are walled about with a wall; siege is laid against us..."
- Micah 5:1aSeige of Ariel (David's city) by "many nations":
"I will encamp against you all around; I will encircle you with towers and set up my siege works against you."
- Isaiah 29:3Attack of the Aramites on Israel:
"'Why is my lord weeping?' asked Hazael. 'Because I know the harm you will do to the Israelites,' he answered. 'You will set fire to their fortified places, kill their young men with the sword, dash their little children to the ground, and rip open their pregnant women.'"
- 2 Kings 8:12Babylonian conquest of Israel:
"An enemy will overrun the land; he will pull down your strongholds and plunder your fortresses."
- Amos 3:11bDestruction of Tyre by the Babylonians:
"They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea."
- Ezekiel 26:12
"In Josephus's account of the Roman capture of Jerusalem there are some features which are more distinctive; such as the fantastic faction-fighting which continued all through the siege, the horrors of pestilence and famine (including cannibalism), and finally the conflagration in which the Temple and a large part of the city perished. It is this that caught the imagination of Josephus, and, we may suppose, of any other witness of these events. Nothing is said of them here."
"So far as any historical event has colored the picture, it is not Titus's capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, but Nebuchadrezzar's capture in 586 B.C. There is no single trait of the forecast which cannot be documented directly out of the Old Testament."
- Dodd, C.H. "The Fall of Jerusalem and the 'Abomination of Desolation'," Journal of Roman Studies 37 (1947): pp. 49-50, 52
"This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I am about to turn against you the weapons of war that are in your hands, which you are using to fight the king of Babylon and the Babylonians who are outside the wall besieging you. And I will gather them inside this city. I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm in anger and fury and great wrath. I will strike down those who live in this city--both men and animals--and they will die of a terrible plague. After that, declares the LORD, I will hand over Zedekiah king of Judah, his officials and the people in this city who survive the plague, sword and famine, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and to their enemies who seek their lives. He will put them to the sword; he will show them no mercy or pity or compassion.' "
- Jeremiah 21:4-7
"When Titus, Vespasian's son, and the legions arrived beneath the walls of Jerusalem it was heavily defended by several different factions including many of Josephus' own commanders, refugees from Galilee. So fierce was the rivalry among these diverse groups that the Romans simply encamped and waited while street battles, a real reign of terror, ravaged the besieged city. After six months of murder, starvation and populist rule, the Romans built siege towers against the walls and stoned the Temple Mount."
- John Romer, Testament: The Bible and History (1988) p. 136
"Titus' siege operations started in the early spring of the year 70 C.E. and were completed only five months later, in the late summer....The fall of Antonia (the citadel defended by Yohanan) opened the way for a direct assault against the Temple Mount, and during the first half of the Hebrew month of Av (July-August) the Romans succeeded in overcoming its defenders."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
(3) Desecration of the Temple
The early Christian community believed that the last days, when God's reign would be reinstated on earth, was immanent after the destruction of the Temple.
"Again, it was revealed how the city and the temple and the people of Israel should be betrayed. For the scripture saith; And it shall be in the last days, that the Lord shall deliver up the sheep of the pasture and the fold and the tower thereof to destruction. And it came to pass as the Lord spake."
"The day is at hand, in which everything shall be destroyed together with the Evil One. The Lord is at hand and his reward."
- Barnabas 16:5; 21:3
The Sacrilege of Antiochus IV
"But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand)..."
- Mark 13:14a ( (Matthew 24:16)
"Scholars are inclined to the view that Mark 13:14 was inspired by the Roman event, although it employs the language of Daniel and Maccabees, which has been occasioned by the earlier event."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"Soldiers commanded by him will desecrate the sanctuary and the citadel. They will abolish the regular offerings and will erect 'the devastating desecration'."
- Daniel 11:31
"The term desolation-inducing sacrilege had been coined by Fourth Daniel, and referred to the pollution of the Temple by Antiokhos IV in 168 B.C.E (Daniel 9:27; 12:11, 1 Maccabees 1:20-21)."
- William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus
"On the fifteenth day of Chislev, in the one hundred and forty-fifth year (167 B.C.E.], he [an agent of Antiochus IV] erected a devastating desecration on the altar of burnt offering."
- 1 Maccabees 1:54
"Antiokhos's act had lead to a war that, although ultimately successful (from the Jewish viewpoint), had taken many Jewish lives. In 66 C.E the Temple was again polluted, this time by the presence of Zealot warmongers who would start a War of Independence without waiting for the return of the Nazirate messiah to lead it."
- William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus
The passage in Mark 13:14 might also refer to Emperor Caligula when he attempted to set up a statue of himself in the Temple of Jerusalem in 40 C.E The phrase "flee into the mountains", however, links it to the Maccabee rebellion.
"He and his sons fled to the hills and left all they had in the city."
- 1 Maccabees 2:28 (referring to Mattathias Maccabeus and his sons)"Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak."
- Mark 13:14b-15 (Matthew 24:16-18 // Luke 21:21)
"Eusebius (Church History III.5.3) tells us that Christians abandoned Jerusalem before the siege began and fled to the city of Pella."
- Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?, (1995) p. 382
"...Jesus' cousin Shimeown, who had succeeded Jacob [James] the Righteous as Head Nazirite...lead his followers out of Jerusalem and into the Decapolis [surrounding the Sea of Galilee] at the first sign of impending war."
- William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus
Caesar in the Holy of Holies
"Titus ordered his troops to burn the Temple to the ground, intending by this action to destroy the main root of Jewish strength and inspiration."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
This is not what happened according to Josephus. When Titus saw that his men were suffering unacceptably high losses in assaulting the Temple, he ordered the gates set on fire. The conflagration spread and soon engulfed the building. The soldiers entered and went an unrestrained rampage of slaughter and "the house burnt down without Caesar's approbation". (Josephus was an apologist for the Romans, however, and it is more likely that the Temple was burnt on Titus' explicit orders.) The killing continued right into the inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies.
"Caesar shouted and waved to the combatants to put out the fire; but his shouts were unheard as their ears were deafened with a greater din, and his hand-signals went unheeded amidst the distractions of battle and bloodshed. As the legions charged in, neither persuasion nor threat could check their impetuosity: passion alone was in command...Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak, and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Around the Altar the heap of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom. The soldiers were like men possessed and there was no holding them, nor was there any arguing with the fire. Caesar therefore led his staff inside the building and viewed the Holy Place of the sanctuary with its furnishings, which went far beyond the accounts circulating in foreign countries, and fully justified their splendid reputation in our own."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VI, Ch IV, Sn 6
"According to Josephus, Titus lost control of his troops and the Temple was unintentionally burned. This aspect of Josephus' account seems true to fact, since great treasures were lost to everyone, and Josephus wrote this unflattering account in Rome, under the patronage of the Flavian dynasty (of which Titus was the middle member). Although he lauded Titus throughout his War (especially in reconstructing Titus' famous speech and the manner in which he describes how Titus took Gamla in contrast to his father, Vespasian), it is impressive that Josephus depicted this pinnacle moment in the capture of the Temple in a way that makes Titus look incompetent. Josephus wrote the Jewish War around 79 C.E., the year Titus became emperor."
- James H. Charlesworth, "Jesus as 'Son' and the Righteous Teacher as 'Gardener'" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), p. 174
The Romans soon completed their conquest of the Lower city and began their assault on the Upper city (Mount Sion).
"But now at this time it was that one of the priests, the son of Thebuthus, whose name was Jesus, upon his having security given him, by the oath of Caesar, that he should be preserved, upon condition that he should deliver to him certain of the precious things that had been reposited in the temple came out of it, and delivered him from the wall of the holy house two candlesticks, like to those that lay in the holy house, with tables, and cisterns, and vials, all made of solid gold, and very heavy. He also delivered to him the veils and the garments, with the precious stones, and a great number of other precious vessels that belonged to their sacred worship. The treasurer of the temple also, whose name was Phineas, was seized on, and showed Titus the coats and girdles of the priests, with a great quantity of purple and scarlet, which were there reposited for the uses of the veil, as also a great deal of cinnamon and cassia, with a large quantity of other sweet spices, which used to be mixed together, and offered as incense to God every day. A great many other treasures were also delivered to him, with sacred ornaments of the temple not a few; which things thus delivered to Titus obtained of him for this man the same pardon that he had allowed to such as deserted of their own accord. "
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VI, Ch IV, Sn 6
These events are also described in the Apocalyse of Baruch (Syriac - dated about 100-120 C.E.).
"And I saw him descend into the Holy of Holies, and take from thence the veil, and the holy ark, and the mercy-seat, and the two tables, and the holy rainment of the priests, and the altar of incense, and the forty-eight precious stones, wherewith the priest was adorned, and all the holy vessels of the tabernacle."
- 2 Baruch 6.7
"There is no evidence that the altar that stood before the temple was similarly desecrated in Jesus' time. After the temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., however, Roman soldiers celebrated their victory by raising their standards, which bore the image of the emperor, on the holy place."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"And now the Romans, upon the flight of the seditious into the city, and upon the burning of the holy house itself, and of all the buildings round about it, brought their ensigns to the temple and set them over against its eastern gate; and there did they offer sacrifices to them, and there did they make Titus imperator with the greatest acclamations of joy."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VI, Ch VI, Sn 1
"This is a remarkable place; and Tertullian truly says in his Apologetic, ch. 16. p. 162, that the entire religion of the Roman camp almost consisted in worshipping the ensigns, in swearing by the ensigns, and in preferring the ensigns before all the [other] gods."
- Havercamp quoted by William Whiston (translator of Josephus)
(4) Awaiting Jesus' Return
"And then if any one says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it. False Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect."
- Mark 13:21-22 ("Little Apocalypse")
Josephus refers to false prophets during the final phase of the Roman assault on the Temple as it was engulfed in flame.
"A false prophet was the occasion of these people's destruction, who had made a public proclamation in the city that very day, that God commanded them to get upon the temple, and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance. Now there was then a great number of false prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose on the people, who denounced this to them, that they should wait for deliverance from God; and this was in order to keep them from deserting, and that they might be buoyed up above fear and care by such hopes."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VI, Ch V, Sns 2
The time frame was very short, however, and none appear to have been a "false Christ". It is far more like that Mark was referring to the prosecutions of Antonius Felix more than a decade earlier when a number of Messianic claimants came forward.
"Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging."
- Psalms 46:2-3"The earth is broken up, the earth is split asunder, the earth is thoroughly shaken."
- Isaiah 24:19"The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light."
"All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from the fig tree."
- Isaiah 13:10; 34:4
Both the Gospel of Mark and the apocryphal Fourth Book of Ezra use similar apocalyptic imagery.
"But in those days, following that distress, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'
- Mark 13:24-25 ("Little Apocalypse")"But if the Most High grants that you live, you shall see it thrown into confusion after the third period; and the sun shall suddenly shine forth at night, and the moon during the day.
Blood shall drip from wood, and the stone shall utter its voice; the peoples shall be troubled, and the stars shall fall."
- 4 Ezra 5:4-5 (1st c. CE Jewish Apocalypse)
Jesus "said, according to Mark 13:24, that there would be a clear but not prolonged interval between the Temple's destruction and his own return. Mark's community was living in that interval, having rejected those false but Christian prophets who, in 13:5-8 and 21-23, had proclaimed Jesus' return at...the destruction of the Temple in the First Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 C.E. Mark, in other words, clearly and deliberately separates all that led up to the parousia of Jesus in 13:24-37. And all is placed on the prophetic lips of Jesus himself. That, says Mark, was what he actually said."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
"In Matt. 10:18 Jesus warns the disciples whom he is sending out on their mission that they will be persecuted both by Jewish and by Gentile authorities."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 155
"Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles."
- Matthew 10:17-18 // Luke 21:12
The author of Matthew reassures his readers that Christ will reappear.
"For a son dishonors his father, a daughter rises up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law-- a man's enemies are the members of his own household."
- Micah 7:6"Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes."
- Matthew 10:21-23
"Notice the emphasis on generation rather than on gender. The Kingdom's attack is at the point of hierarchy. of the older generation over the young one. The Kingdom tears the family apart along the axis of its (abused?) power.
- John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (1998), p. 151
"There was no thoroughgoing mission by Jesus' disciples to all the towns of Israel during his public ministry, and there certainly was no fierce, widespread, and possibly lethal persecution of Jesus' disciples by their fellow Israelites prior to Jesus' death. On the other hand, the disruption in Palestine caused by the First Jewish War (C.E. 66-70), the destruction of Jerusalem, and the reorganization of social and political life after the war seem to have spelled an end to any organized, wide-ranging mission of Jewish Christians to their fellow Jews in the holy land."
"The tribulation external to the church in this chaotic period will be matched by chaos within as false messiahs and prophets appear."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
The prophesy in Matthew more accurately portrays the civil unrest in the late 50's C.E. when Antonius Felix waged a bloody campaign against the Zealots and their sympathizers. This was also the period (58 C.E.) when the evangelist Paul was targeted by Jews "zealous for the law" and had to be rescued by Roman troops. Many of Paul's followers in Palestine may not have been so fortunate. Elsewhere in the empire, Christians suffered persecution by the Romans during the reign of Nero (54-68 C.E.).
1st century Jewish apocryphal literature also describes a period of tribulation, though more global in scale.
"Behold, the days are coming when the Most High will deliver those who are on the earth. And bewilderment of mind shall come over those who dwell on the earth. And they shall plan to make war against one another, city against city, place against place, people against people, and kingdom against kingdom.
And when these things come to pass and the signs occur which I showed you before, then my Son will be revealed, whom you saw as a man coming up from the sea. And when all the nations hear his voice, every man shall leave his own land and the warfare that they have against one another; and an innumerable multitude shall be gathered together, as you saw, desiring to come and conquer him.
But he shall stand on the top of Mount Zion. And Zion will come and be made manifest to all people, prepared and built, as you saw the mountain carved out without hands. And he, my Son, will reprove the assembled nations for their ungodliness (this was symbolized by the storm), and will reproach them to their face with their evil thoughts and the torments with which they are to be tortured (which were symbolized by the flames), and will destroy them without effort by the law (which was symbolized by the fire)."
- 4 Ezra 13:29-38
"At last the end arrives, accompanied by chaos in the cosmos, as the Son of Man comes on the clouds to gather his elect from the four corners of the earth."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven....Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place. "
- Mark 13:26-27, 30 ("Little Apocalypse" Matthew 24:30-31, 34 // Luke 21:27-28, 32)
"Verses 24-25 are based on typical apocalyptic imagery derived from earlier sources, principally Daniel 7:13-14, along with Isaiah 13:10,; Ezekiel 32:7; Joel 2:10, 31. The same imagery appears on other Christian writings without reference to its having been said by Jesus: Acts 2:19-20, 2 Thessalonians 1:7; 2 Peter 3:7; Revelations 1:7 and 8:10-12.
"It is the opinion of most scholars that Mark intends v. 26 ('the son of Adam will come on the clouds') as an oracle addressed to his own readers and not as something Jesus addressed to his disciples decades earlier. The same can be said of v. 27."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
The Aftermath
"For you see that our sanctuary has been laid waste, our altar thrown down, our temple destroyed; our harp has been laid low, our song has been silenced, and our rejoicing has been ended; the light of our lampstand has been put out, the ark of our covenant has been plundered, our holy things have been polluted, and the name by which we are called has been profaned; our free men have suffered abuse, our priests have been burned to death, our Levites have gone into captivity, our virgins have been defiled, and our wives have been ravished; our righteous men have been carried off, our little ones have been cast out, our young men have been enslaved and our strong men made powerless."
- 4 Ezra 10:20-22 (1st c. CE Jewish apocalypse)"And now the Romans set fire to the extreme parts of the city, and burnt them down, and entirely demolished its walls."
"Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple, but should leave as many of the towers standing as were of the greatest eminency; that is, Phasaelus, and Hippicus, and Mariamne; and so much of the wall as enclosed the city on the west side. This wall was spared, in order to afford a camp for such as were to lie in garrison, as were the towers also spared, in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valor had subdued; but for all the rest of the wall, it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VI, Ch IX, Sn 4; Bk VII, Ch II, Sn 1"Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.'"
- Mark 13:2; (Matthew 24:2; Luke 21:6)
The reference to the Temple here was symbolic and did not necessarily infer destruction by an invading army.
"If Matthew were writing after the horrors of the Jewish wars, why does Mt 24 fail to recite the characteristic features of that war-- such as the burning of the temple?"
- Davies, W. D. and Dale C. Allison, "The Gospel According to Saint Matthew," International Critical Commentary, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988)
In comparison, examples of ex eventu prophecy following the fall of Jerusalem can be found in the following works.
"And a Roman leader shall come to Syria, who shall burn down Solyma's [Jerusalem's] temple with fire, and therewith slay many men, and shall waste the great land of the Jews with its broad way."
- Sibylline Oracles 4.125-7
"We have overthrown the wall of Zion and we have burnt the place of the mighty God."
- 2 Baruch 7.1 (Syriac)"They delivered ... to the enemy the overthrown wall, and plundered the house, and burnt the temple."
- 2 Baruch 80.3 (Syriac)
Depictions of the temple on coins minted during the Bar Kochba revolt sixty years later suggest that portions of the ruined temple still remained standing.
(2) A Culture in Crisis
"The destruction of Jerusalem brought bitter suffering to the Jews. Tens of thousands had been killed in battle, tens of thousands had been taken captive; large areas of land had been confiscated. Some of the Jewish land was taken over by the Roman state, which either leased it out or used it to settle newcomers. Many of the Jews remained as tenants on land that had previously belonged to them. Taxation was heavy - particularly the tax for Capitoline Jupiter, principal god of the empire."
"...Judaea was made an ordinary imperial province, to be governed by a member of the senatorial order. Under his command was a force of regular soldiers, the Tenth Legion (Legio X Fretensis), established in the ruins of Jerusalem. The regiments of auxiliary troops (composed of men from Sebaste and Caesarea), whose conduct had been largely responsible for the unrest were removed."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
"The excavations of Broshi and those of Nahman Avigad in the Jewish quarter of the Old City...revealed that from the destruction of the city by Titus (70 C.E.) until the beginning of large-scale Byzantine building activity in the middle third of the fourth century, Zion was essentially uninhabited. The location of the Legio X Fretensis was assigned to the area of the Citadel and its adjacent Armenian quarter within the wall of the present Old City."
- Rainer Riesner, "Jesus, the Primitive Community, and the Essene Quarter of Jerusalem" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 199
"In this defeat these Jewish people had lost their nation, their holy city, their Temple, and their priesthood. They had also lost their ordered social and worship life, which the Jewish leadership people of Jerusalem had established. Because their very identity was tied into these things, it is fair to say that in this moment the Jews had all but lost their identity."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 44
All the Jewish records in the Temple had been destroyed, including family genealogies. This was disastrous for the continuation of the Jewish priesthood since there was no longer a way to trace legitimate ascendancy through the house of Levi. The Jews were not only without a temple, they were bereft of any means of reconstituting a new temple. (This also would have preventing anyone from confirming or discrediting the genealogies of Jesus which appear in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.)
Before the fall of Jerusalem, the Jews who believed in the gospel of Jesus "were not yet called Christians. They were rather called the 'followers of the way.' Prior to the year 70, they were at best an enriching new tradition and at worst a minor irritation. But on the other side of that fateful year, these 'followers of the way' began to find themselves classified as a threat to Jewish survival. That fact that many followers of Jesus throughout the empire, both Jewish and gentile, had begun to interpret the fall of Jerusalem and the loss of the Temple as God's punishment of the Jerusalem Jews for their rejection of Jesus did not ingratiate the Jewish Christians to the surviving staunchly traditional worshipers of Jerusalem."
"...Acrimony grew - with almost textbook inevitability - between Jews committed to Jesus and Jews committed to the concept that in their sacred scriptures they possessed the ultimate truth of God in a final and complete form [the Torah]."
"As hostility toward all things Jewish pervaded the empire...Jewish Christians, following the example of the Jewish Paul, began to talk openly of their own difficulties with Jewish authorities. The idea that even Jesus himself had been a victim of the Jews began to be enhanced. The role played by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, in the death of Jesus began to be softened, his blame lessened or transferred to the Temple priesthood. The dark portrait of the traitor named Judas ['Jew'] began to grow. Christian Jews began to suggest that God had created a new Israel based on the twelve apostles, designed to replace the old Israel based on the twelve sons of Jacob, who had become in Jewish mythology the fathers of twelve tribes of Israel."
Jesus perfect sacrifice rendered the destroyed Temple redundant "as a place for continuous sacrifices to be offered. It began to be said of Jesus that he was himself the eternal and great high priest, who by entering the temple in heaven had put away forever the need even to have an earthly high priest (Hebrews 4:4)."
"The final fracture occurred in the late 80s, when these orthodox Jewish leaders revised their regular worship traditions to include 'anathemas' against all who deviated from strict orthodox standards and all who relativized the ultimate truth of the Torah. This was the last straw in the rising tension, and it resulted in the excommunication of the Jewish Christians from synagogue life and ultimately from Judaism."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 46, 47, 49-50, 53
The Drowning of the "Legion"
A possible argument in support of the theory that Mark is ex eventu of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E. is the passage in Mark 5:8-13. According to Mark, Jesus encountered a wild man in Gerasa, city of the Gerasenes (some manuscripts Gadarenes, other manuscripts Gergesenes) - across the lake from Galilee) possessed by unclean spirits.
"For Jesus had said to him, 'Come out of this man, you evil spirit!' Then Jesus asked him, 'What is your name?'
'My name is Legion,' he replied, 'for we are many.' And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, 'Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.'
He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned."
- Mark 5:8-13 (Matthew 8:20-32 // Luke 8:28-33)
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus exorcises two demoniacs at Gadara, city of the Gadarenes (some manuscripts Gergesenes; others Gerasenes) and the demons don't call themselves "Legion". Luke retains the Gerasa location, the single demoniac and the name "Legion" but calls the swine "a large number" and doesn't mention how many.
"...He [Vespasian] sent away the rest of his army to the several places where they would be every one best situated; but permitted the tenth legion to stay, as a guard at Jerusalem, and did not send them away beyond Euphrates, where they had been before."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk XII, Ch I, Sn 3
"Since the fall of the city a few months earlier [in 70 C.E.], Jerusalem had been occupied by the Roman Tenth Legion [X Fretensis], whose emblem was a pig. Mark's reference to about two thousand pigs, the size of the occupying Legion, combined with his blatant designation of the evil beings as Legion, left no doubt in Jewish minds that the pigs in the fable represented the army of occupation. Mark's fable in effect promised that the messiah, when he returned, would drive the Romans into the sea as he had earlier driven their four-legged surrogates."
- William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus
"While the eagle was common to all legions, each unit had several of its own symbols. These were often associated with the birthday of the unit or its founder or of a commander under whom it earned particular distinction, and took the form of the signs of the Zodiac. Thus the bull signifies the period 17th April to 18th May, which was sacred to Venus the goddess mother of the Julian family..."
- Graham Webster, The Roman Imperial Army (1979), p.137
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"Neptune the emblem of legion IX, and a trireme as an additional emblem to the bull on the standard of X Fretensis implies that these legions took part in the war against Sextus Pompeius..."
The explanation of the boar is unknown.
- H. M. D. Parker, The Roman Legions (1928), p. 262-263
"While the boar is not a symbol from the Zodiac panoply, there is some evidence that it was used as a symbol in this legion. This includes tile antefixes from Holt bearing a boar above the inscription 'LEG XX', and a bronze decoration in the French National library..."
- Daniel Peterson, The Roman Legions Recreated in Colour Photographs (1992), p. 54
X Fretensis later assaulted and took the cliff top fortress of Masada, where the Sicarii, the most extreme of the Zealots, had taken refuge. (It is interesting to note that six decades after the war following the Bar Kochba revolt, the emblem of the garrison legion - a boar - decorated Jerusalem's gateways.)
Parallels between Josephus and Barnabas
The normal operating strength of a legion was 5,000 not 2,000 men. While the initial reference to the wild man in Mark 5 may refer to a notable event in or around Gerasa, a gentile city in the Decapolis, the part about the legion was likely a later addition. Gerasa was not near the sea of Galilee (the lake into which the pigs supposedly rushed and drowned) but lay a distant 30 miles away. In addition, Gerasa was one of the few Hellenic cities which did not fall upon and destroy its Jewish inhabitants after the uprising began. Those who wanted to leave were actually conducted to safety (Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk II, Ch XIII, Sn 5).
"The placing of this episode in Gerasa...led to several 'corrections' in the manuscript tradition. The story is one of Mark's longest and provides a good example of his rambling descriptive style. (Matthew and Luke retell the story just as effectively with many fewer words)."
- The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller (Ed.), p.23
"The story is strange on all counts. It is by far the most dramatic exorcism attributed to Jesus, and it combines exorcism with 'nature' - the swine. One of its details renders it unlikely. Gerasa is about thirty miles south-east of the Sea of Galilee, and there is no other large body of water around. Matthew shifts the scene to Gadara, six miles from the sea, perhaps thinking that this reduces the problem - though a six mile leap is just as impossible as one of thirty miles. I am at a loss to explain the story in the sense of finding a historical kernel."
- E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (1993) p. 155
Unlike Gerasa, Gadara was the scene of a a great massacre of Jewish rebels by the Roman troops in 69 C.E. Like the pigs, the fleeing rebels were driven into the water.
"Vespasian sent Placidus with 500 horse and 3000 foot to pursue those who had fled from Gadara..." (Sn 4)
"Placidus, relying on his cavalry and emboldened by his previous success, pursued the Gadarenes, killing all whom he overtook, as far as the Jordan. Having driven the whole multitude up to the river, where they were blocked by the stream, which being swollen by the rain was unfordable, he drew up his troops in line opposite them. Necessity goaded them to battle, flight being impossible... Fifteen thousand perished by the enemy's hands, while the number of those who were driven to fling themselves into the Jordan was incalculable; about two thousand two hundred were captured..." (Sn 5)
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk IV, Ch 7
Josephus reports that as a result of the battle "the Jordan was choked with dead", and "even the [Dead Sea] was filled with bodies." (War of the Jews, Bk IV, Ch 7 Sn 6)
The story of the demoniacs and the pigs also appears in the pseudo Gospel of Barnabas. The gospel, which may also have been written in the 1st century, does not use material from the New Testament. Here the location of the story is Capernaum and the number of the demons is given as "six thousand six hundred and sixty-six".
"Jesus went up to Capernaum, and as he drew near to the city behold there came out of the tombs one that was possessed of a devil, and in such wise that no chain could hold him, and he did great harm to the man. The demons cried out through his mouth, saying: 'O holy one of God, why are you come before the time to trouble us?' And they prayed him that he would not cast them forth.
"Jesus asked them how many they were. They answered: 'Six thousand six hundred and sixty-six.' When the disciples heard this they were affrighted, and prayed Jesus that he would depart. Then Jesus said: 'Where is your faith? It is necessary that the demon should depart, and not I.' The demons therefore cried: 'We will come out, but permit us to enter into those swine.' There were feeding there, near to the sea, about ten thousand swine belonging to the Canaanites.
"Thereupon Jesus said: 'Depart, and enter into the swine.' With a roar the demons entered into the swine, and cast them headlong into the sea. Then fled into the city they that fed the swine, and recounted all that had been brought to pass by Jesus. Accordingly the men of the city came forth and found Jesus and the man that was healed. The men were filled with fear and prayed Jesus that he would depart out of their borders. Jesus accordingly departed from them and went up into the parts of Tyre and Sidon."
- Barnabas 21:1-3
Cliff Carrington, "The Flavian Testament", has identified some interesting similarities between the story in the Gospel of Barnabas and an account in Josephus' Jewish War (below). In 69 C.E. the Roman general Vespasian and his son Titus recovered much of the territory lost to Jewish rebels a year earlier. During the campaign, Titus' forces assaulted the fortified city of Taricheae on the shores of Lake Gennesareth in Galilee. Josephus (Jewish War, Bk III, Ch X Sn 8) states that this area locally was known as Capharnaum. As the Roman soldiers poured into the city, many of the rebels, who were led by Jesus, son of Shaphat, attempted to escape.
"...Some of those that were about Jesus fled over the country, while others of them ran down to the lake, and met the enemy in the teeth, and some were slain as they were getting up into the ships, but others of them as they attempted to overtake those that were already gone aboard." (Sn 5)
- Flavius Josephus, Jewish War, Bk III, Ch X
Titus' forces sailed after the rebels who had managed to flee by boat and decisively defeated them in a pitched naval battle.
"Now those which were driven into the lake could neither fly to the land, where all was in their enemy's hand...One might see the lake all bloody, and full of bodies, for not one of them escaped...The number of the slain...was six thousand and five hundred." (Sn 9)
- Flavius Josephus, Jewish War, Bk III, Ch X
A Proof of Conversion?
George M. Lamsa advances a different explanation based on the Aramaic origins of the story.
"The demons begged Jesus, 'If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.'
He said to them, 'Go!' So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water."
- Matthew 8:31-32
"The Aramaic al means 'enter into,' 'attack,' 'chase'; but it has been exclusively translated 'enter into,' so as to imply...that the demons entered into the swine. According to the context and the style of Aramaic speech, the word al here means that, not the demons but the lunatics attacked the swine. These lunatics were Syrians or Gadarenes, whose people kept swine, which were an abomination to the Jews....As a mark of appreciation of what Jesus was doing for them and as a proof of their conversion, these lunatics were willing to destroy the herd of swine which belonged to their people. This was doubtless one reason why the owners of the swine got into a panic and urged Jesus to leave their land, lest their business be completely destroyed by more conversions to the Jewish faith. On the other hand, the demons did not need the permission of Jesus to enter into the swine any more than they needed any permission to enter into the lunatics."
- George M. Lamsa (translator), The Four Gospels : According to the Eastern Version (1933) p. xiv
(4) Masada
The Sicarri
The strategies of the Sicarii "were classical terrorist ones...The ideology was always elitist and urban, the purview of learned teachers. It is only Josephus' deliberate attempt to lump all unapproved insurgents into one great bandit mass that could mislead David Rhoads [Israel in Revolution, 1976] to conclude that 'the Sicarii were lower-class revolutionaries from the Judean countryside'."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
Yet they share a common origin with the Zealots, a lower class movement of Galilean freedom fighters formed in 6 C.E. to oppose a new tax census by Quirinius, the Roman governor of Syria.
"It was one Eleazar [son of Jairus, who was of kin to Manahem], a potent man, and the commander of these Sicarii, that had seized upon it [Masada]. He was a descendant from that Judas who had persuaded abundance of the Jews, as we have formerly related, not to submit to the taxation when Cyrenius was sent into Judea to make one..."
- Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Bk VII, Ch VIII, Sn 1
Then, after a four decades of relative inaction, the Sicarii began a campaign of terror against Roman collaborators in the mid-fifties C.E.
"The sicarii seized it [Masada] from a Roman garrison in A.D. 66, long before the siege of Jerusalem had begun, and conducted raids from it on neighboring territories, which Josephus carefully describes. Various participants in the rebellion, including Menahem ben Judah, his nephew Eliezer ben Yair and others, and a band under Simon be Giora, repaired there from Jerusalem before or during the siege. When the capital fell to the Romans, great numbers of the Jews fled, three thousand of whom were slain in the otherwise unknown forest of Jardes, evidently as they tried to make their way to Masada."
- Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?, (1995) p. 131
Death over Surrender
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- Shaye Cohen, Journal of Jewish Studies: Essays in honor of Yigael Yadin Vol. XXXIII, pp. 385-405 Spring-Autumn 1982
Orthodox Judaism supports the idea of dying, or allowing oneself to be killed for a just cause, but not suicide. According to Josephus all the men killed their families, then ten of them, chosen by lots, executed the other men, and a last man killed the remaining nine then committed suicide by falling on his sword. Pot shards found with the name of Ele'azar Ben Ya'ir, the leader of the Sicarii at Masada and the nicknames of others supports Josephus' account of the drawing of lots. Josephus, however, refers to 950 defenders who perished at Masada but archaeologists have located only 25 skeletons. In addition, Josephus said that only three women and five children survived, by hiding in a cistern. It is unlikely, then, that they could have been eyewitnesses of the events related.
- from "Mysteries of the Bible", A&E
"The mass suicides at Masada [73 C.E.], at Gamala and at other sites are explained by Eisenman as resting ultimately on the uniquely 'zealot' concept of resurrection. This concept derived primarily from two Old Testament prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel, both of whose texts were found among the Dead sea Scrolls at Qumran."
- Baigent and Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception
"I mean to raise you from your graves...and lead you back to the soil of Israel. And you will know that I am Yahweh, when I open your graves and raise you from your graves...And I shall put my spirit in you, and you will live..."
- Ezekiel 32:12-14
"So important was this passage deemed to be that a copy of it was found buried under the floor of the synagogue at Masada."
"In 2 Maccabees 6:18ff., a priest and teacher of the Law kills himself as an 'example of how to make a good death...for the venerable and holy laws. This incident, according to Eisenman, is the prototype for the establishment of later Zealot mentality. The principle finds its fullest expression in 2 Maccabees 7, where seven brothers submit to death by torture rather than transgress the Law:"
- Baigent and Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception
"The next said to his tormentors, 'Ours is the better choice, to meet death at men's hands, yet relying on God's promise that we shall be raised up by Him; whereas for you...there can be no resurrection, no new life."
- 2 Maccabees 7:14, 23
"We have no reason to doubt that at least some of the Sicarii killed themselves and their families, even if they did not perform the deed with the deliberation and concord alleged by Josephus. Archaeology shows that portions of all the public buildings on Masada were set ablaze, and since it is unlikely that the Romans would destroy their own loot, we may assume that this was the spontaneous act of the Jews. That some of the Sicarii sought death through battle with the Romans is a suggestion based merely on plausibility. That some of the Sicarii tried to escape is confirmed by the twenty-five skeletons in the cave [on the southern slope of the cliff].
"Sitting in his study in Rome, Josephus improved on this story. He wanted Eleazar, the leader of the Sicarii, to take full responsibility for the war, to admit that his policies were wrong, to confess that he and his followers had sinned, and to utter the blasphemous notion that God had not only punished but also had rejected his people. Condemned by his own words, Eleazar and all his followers killed themselves, symbolizing the fate of all those who would follow in their footsteps and resist Rome. This was the work of Josephus the apologist for the Jewish people and the polemicist against Jewish revolutionaries....Josephus modeled the Masada narrative in part on his own description of the Jotapata episode [where he chose surrender over death], in part on the Greco-Roman historiographical tradition. Inspired by the former, he gave Eleazar a second speech, an antilogos to the speech which he claimed to have himself delivered at Jotapata, and invented (or exaggerated) the use of lots in the suicide process. Inspired by the latter, he had each Jew kill his wife and children (a motif derived from Greco-Roman stories of one pattern) and contribute his possessions to one large pile which was then set ablaze (a motif derived from stories of another pattern)."
- Shaye Cohen, Journal of Jewish Studies: Essays in honor of Yigael Yadin Vol. XXXIII, pp. 385-405 Spring-Autumn 1982
(5) The Descendent's of Jesus' Family
The Master's People
"According to a reliable tradition in Eusebius (Church History 3.5.3) and Epiphanius, the Jewish Christian community left the Holy City at the outbreak of the Jewish War (66-70 C.E.) to settle at Pella in the Decapolis. The absence of the Jewish Christians does not appear to have been longer than six or seven years. Evidence for this duration comes from Eutychus, a patriarch of Alexandria in the first half of the tenth century. Relying on earlier sources, he reported that the primitive church of Jerusalem, under the leadership of Simon Bar-Cleophas in the fourth year of Vespasian (72/73 C.E.), returned from the east side of the Jordan to the Holy City and built a church there. This account could be true, since at this time the final resistance of the Zealots was destroyed at Masada, and the political climate in Jerusalem was calm enough by then to make a return understandable. The continuity of place traditions would have been guaranteed by Simon Bar-Cleophas, who himself was a bridge between the time of Jesus and the postapostolic period. As a matter of fact, like James, the 'Lord's brother' who led the Jerusalem community until his death in 62 C.E. (see Josephus, Ant 20.199-203), Simon was a relative of Jesus.
"The statements of the Alexandrian patriarch are supported by a report of Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis (315-403 C.E.). He also passes on interesting information about Jewish Christianity which he attributes to older sources. In the passage cited below he is writing about Hadrian's visit to Jerusalem during his second excursion to the eastern part of the empire in the summer of 130 C.E.:"
- Rainer Riesner, "Jesus, the Primitive Community, and the Essene Quarter of Jerusalem" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 202
"He found the whole city destroyed and the Temple of the Lord trampled down, except for a few small dwellings such as the small Church of God (he tou Theou Ekklesia mikra), which lies on the spot where the disciples went into the upper room (hyperoon) when they had returned from the Mount of Olives after the ascension of their Savior. Of course it was build on Zion (Sion)..."
- Epiphanius, De mensuris et ponderibus 14
"...Judah, the last Jewish Christian bishop, outlived the Jerusalem catastrophe [the Bar Kochba rebellion, 132-135 C.E.] by several years, that is until the eleventh year of the reign of Antoniunus Pius (148/149 C.E.). The designation appended to his name, Kuriakos (kyriakos), indicates that Judah was from the family of Jesus."
- Rainer Riesner, "Jesus, the Primitive Community, and the Essene Quarter of Jerusalem" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 203
"...There still survived of the Lord's family the grandsons of Jude, who was said to be His brother, humanly speaking. These were informed against as being of David's line and brought...before Domitian Caesar...Domitian asked them whether they were descended from David, and they admitted it...."
- Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine
Jesus's grandnephews "acknowledged their royal descent when Domitian [81-96 C.E.] arrested them for the purpose of putting into effect a plan first conceived by Vespasian of exterminated the entire Davidic family. Domitian changed his mind and released them when he concluded that they were too simple to be dangerous.
"Domitian's failure to execute the extremely competent Shimeown bar Klofas is more difficult to fathom. Perhaps he took pity on the Head Nazirite because of his advanced age and because the surviving Davidic heirs would soon enough solve his problem by dying childless. Such compassion would have been inconsistent with surviving portraits of Domitian's character; but then few historians regard it as coincidence that the Emperors of whom only unfavorable biographies survive tended to be those who took the severest measures to protect the empire from the malevolence of the Christians. Following the deaths of Shimeown (whom Trajan did execute in 105 or 107 C.E.), Jacob and Zakharyah, leadership of the Nazirites passed to persons not of Jesus' family, and this enabled the Christians finally to dismiss the Nazirites as heretics and claim that they were the true heirs of Jesus' teachings."
- William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus
"Eusebius reports that the Desposyni [the Master's people] - the descendants of Jesus's family... survived to become leaders of various Christian churches, according, it would seem, to a strict dynastic succession. Eusebius traces them to the time of the Emperor Trajan, A.D. 98-117."
- Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy
Bar Kochba Revolt
"The Yishuv's second great revolt against Rome broke out between 132 and 135 C.E., during the Emperor Hadrian's rule.... The leader of the rebellion was Shim'on Bar Kosiba - known as Bar Kochba [Son of the Star] - who acted as nassi or prince of Israel."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
"Akiba, the famous rabbi who had had fixed the canon of the Hebrew Bible and had gotten the Song of Solomon accepted into the Bible c. 132 AD pronounced the Zealot Bar Kochba as the Messiah, announcing that he saw in Bar Kochba the fulfillment of the prophecy in Numbers 24:17: 'A star shall come forth out of Jacob'."
- Chris King, "The Apocalyptic Tradition"
"In Hebrew, "branch" is zemah, but the Greek term is anatole - the word Matthew uses when referring to the achronychal rising of the Magi's 'star'."
- Paul William Roberts, Journey of the Magi (1995) p. 272
This was also the same prophesy that was earlier applied during the Jewish revolt of 66-70 C.E.
"…Persian armies were on their way to provide reinforcements for Simeon Bar Khochba's troops during the second Jewish revolt-beginning in A.D. 132-when they were waylaid in a battle with marauding northern tribes. Had they reached the Zealots in time Simeon might well have beaten Rome's legions. He had done it before. Earlier in this highly organized and well-financed revolt, Simeon managed to defeat a force of nearly 12,000, effectively ridding Israel of all occupying troops and even reinstating Judaic rule in Jerusalem."
- Paul William Roberts, Journey of the Magi (1995) p. 269
"The Zealots' last great leader was also hailed as a Messiah by the renowned Rabbi Akiba; and Simeon's adopted nom-de-guerre, Bar Khochba, means 'son of a star,' a term related to another Old Testament prophecy evidently concerning two messiahs: 'the star' and the 'scepter' that shall come to Israel's rescue - both of them from David's line, too. According to recent work by Dr. Robert Eisenman…Simeon was directly related to Jesus' family."
- Paul William Roberts, Journey of the Magi (1995) p. 269
"Although many considered him to be a Messiah, Bar Kochba did not assume the royal title.
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
"The revolt, as had happened sixty years earlier, had an initial success. Coins were issued decorated with a picture of the destroyed Temple with a star over its door, dated from the first, second or third years 'of the freedom of Zion'."
- John Romer, Testament: The Bible and History (1988) p. 151
Eventually the Romans marshaled their forces and inflicted an even a more devastating defeat on the Jews than during the 66-73 War.
"It is said that at the end the Roman cavalry charged crowds so dense that the blood of the slain splashed the withers of the horses. It is said also that to prevent the enslavement of their children some Jews wrapped them up in sacred scrolls and set fire to the parchments. Judea was virtually destroyed. The Romans pursued the last survivors into the desert to frightful, lonely endings."
- John Romer, Testament: The Bible and History (1988) p. 152
"'I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals; and I will lay waste the towns of Judah so no one can live there.' What man is wise enough to understand this? Who has been instructed by the LORD and can explain it? Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert that no one can cross?"
- Jeremiah 9:11-12
"In practice the meant a policy of scorched earth - fields bared, trees uprooted, towns sacked, and houses destroyed - to starve into submission the rebels and their sympathizers who were isolated and encircled by the Roman legions. The Roman historian Dio Cassius tells of a land turned into a bleak wilderness, of jackals and wolves howling in the city streets. A Jew writing as long afterward as the third century C.E. summed up Hadrian's ravages in a single phrase: 'Only now are olives again to be found in Palestine."
"Jewish losses were tremendous: Dio Cassius wrote of the destruction of 50 fortresses and 985 villages, and the killing of 580,000 men. The Romans themselves suffered heavy casualties - so heavy, in fact, that in his report to the Senate, Hadrian omitted the customary formula: 'I and my army are well'."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
"After AD 135 all Jews were banished from the Holy City, forbidden even to set eyes on it. A new city called Aelia Capitolinia was raised on the ruins. New temples housed the gods of Rome, and a boar, the emblem of the garrison legion, decorated the city's gateways."
- John Romer, Testament: The Bible and History (1988) p. 152
"'Aelia Capitolina,' the pagan city that the Roman emperor Hadrian had established c. 135 C.E. after the Bar Kochba rebellion, lay to the north of the present King David Street [in the Old City of Jerusalem]. King David Street runs through a valley, to the south of which stood the first northern wall within the Gennath Gate (War 5.142-46). This archaeological picture accords with a statement of Eusebius who, in recounting his visit to Zion at the beginning of the fourth century, says that there he saw 'Roman men (probably veterans of the legion stationed in Aelia) cultivating the fields."
- Rainer Riesner, "Jesus, the Primitive Community, and the Essene Quarter of Jerusalem" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 199-200
"The broad effects [of the savage battles] were threefold: devastation of the country; decimation of the community; laws to uproot the Jewish religion and force conversion."
- The Jews in Their Land (David Ben-Gurion Editor}
A vivid prophesy of the eventual fate of Jerusalem can be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls:
"Woe to us [...] has become burned by fire and overthrown [...] our distinction, and there is nothing pleasing in it, in [...] [...] his holy courts have become [...] Jerusalem, city of [the sanctuary, has been handed over] to wild animals, and there is no [...] and her avenues [...] all her fine buildings are desolate [...] there are no pilgrims in them, all the cities of [Judah...] our inheritance has become like the desert..."
- A Lament for Zion 4Q179 Frag. 1 5-12
Fate of the Nazarene Jews
"Although some semblance of a Jewish Christian bishopric seems to have survived until the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132 C.E., essentially the loss of the Temple...marked the breaking point with Judaism for at least some of Jesus' followers. There could no longer be any strong justification for Jerusalem remaining the new movement's spiritual headquarters."
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
Eusebius in History of the Church, says that the 15th N'tzari Paqid (leader, lit. "Overseer") was exiled with the other Jews from Jerusalem in 135 C.E. In the following centuries, the group gradually faded away.
"The N'tzarim (pop. Nazarene Jews, Matthew 2:23) were the original pro-Torah Jews who followed Y'hoshua of Nazareth.....The N'tzarim vanished from history as a distinct group in 135 C.E. when the 15th N'tzarim Pakiyd (leader, lit. 'Clerk') was exiled with the other Jews from Jerusalem. Hellenist Roman Christians seized this opportunity to install their gentile, Rome-oriented, Christian bishop in his place - and in 135 C.E. the Christian church was born of Daniel's 4th beast: Rome (Daniel 7:23)."
- Anonymous
In A.D. 318, the then Bishop of Rome (now known as Pope Sylvester) is said to have met personally with eight Desposyni leaders - each of whom presided over a branch of the Church - at the Lateran Palace. They are reported to have requested (1) that the confirmation of Christian bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus and Alexandria be revoked; (2) that these bishoprics be conferred instead on members of the Desposyni; and (3) that Christian churches 'resume' sending money to the Desposyni Church in