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Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple. Ed. Hershal Shanks. Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1999.
Christians
Of the groups that emerged in the first century C.E., the Christians are the most famous.
Jesus, their leader, was a holy man and a teacher who, like many other such people,
attracted admirers and disciples. Like many of his contemporaries, he apparently believed
that the end time was imminent and that he was sent by God to prepare the way for its
arrival. He therefore prophesied that the Jerusalem Temple would be removed because a
new and more perfect temple would be erected by God as part of the new, perfect and
permanent order of the end time. The high priests, however, regarded Jesus as a
troublemaker and handed him over to the Romans for execution. In a paradoxical way,
his death marked not the end but the beginning of Christianity (a development outside the
purview of this book).
The earliest Christian community, as described by the book of Acts, shares many features
with the Jewish movements surveyed above. The apostles controlled this Christian group,
property was held in common, disbursements were made to the faithful from the common
till and disobedience to one’s superiors was not tolerated (Acts 5:1–11). The group dined
and prayed together. New members were “converted” through baptism and repentance (
Acts 2:38–42). Like the Essenes, the Christians attempted to create a utopian community.
A sense of alienation from the rest of society is apparent in the numerous calls for
repentance and in the eschatological fervor of the group.
Although Christianity emerged from a Jewish context, as one among many first-century
C.E. Jewish apocalyptic groups, by the end of the century it had separated from its
mother religion. Christianity’s development of an independent identity was a process,
however, not a single event. Several early Christian groups abolished circumcision and
welcomed non-Jews. This change of ethnic composition alone was enough to make
Christianity appear to its Jewish neighbors as a new religion. Religious change
accompanied this “gentilization” of Christianity. Primary among the religious changes
were the abrogation of food restrictions and the observance of the Sabbath and the
elevation of Jesus to a position far higher and more significant than that of any angel or
any other intermediary figure in Judaism. At this point, not only the Jews saw
Christianity as a distinct religion, but so did the Romans—and, as the Christian martyrs
soon discovered, the Romans had a marked distaste for new religions. Curiously, while
most Christians and Christian groups had ceased to identify themselves as Jews by the
beginning of the second century C.E., several Christian groups continued to view
themselves as Jewish over the next few hundred years. These groups would be rejected
by Jews as “gentile” and by Christians as heretical. 29
In 66 C.E. the Jews of Palestine revolted against their Roman rulers. To this day, the
reasons for the “Great Revolt,” which ended with the destruction of the Second Temple,
are not entirely clear. Josephus is, once again, our primary source. Despite his general
unreliability, Josephus does provide enough information to piece together the array of
causes that seem to have led to the revolt.
Chief among them were social ferment, Roman misadministration, revolutionary ardor
and a leadership vacuum. As we have noted, brigandage, that unmistakable symptom of
social distress, increased significantly in the countryside after Agrippa I’s death in 44
C.E. Jerusalem too was racked by social turmoil. In the early 60s C.E., work on the
Temple Mount, begun by Herod the Great many years earlier, was finally completed.
Faced with the prospect of having 18,000 laborers added to the ranks of the unemployed,
the priests suggested to Agrippa II that the porticoes be torn down so that they could be
rebuilt! Agrippa II wisely remarked that it was easier to destroy than to build such
edifices and suggested that the laborers devote their energies to repaving the streets. His
suggestion was accepted. The laborers were paid for a full day of work even if they
actually worked for only an hour. In short, the city of Jerusalem became, in effect, a
welfare state, dependent on “make-work” projects for the maintenance of social peace. 30
The wealthy, in contrast, lived their lives and buried their dead in opulence and splendor.
Aristocrats in Jerusalem and throughout the country maintained bands of armed retainers
to threaten their opponents and to work for their own interests. Within the priesthood
there was strife, and sometimes violence, between the upper and the lower clergy.
Peasants in Galilee in 66–67 C.E. wanted nothing more than to attack and loot Sepphoris,
Tiberias and Gabara, the three largest settlements of the district. After the Great Revolt
commenced in 66 C.E., many peasants of both Galilee and Judea fled to Jerusalem, where
they turned on both the city aristocracy and the small, organized priestly elite. These
tensions within Jewish society often surfaced violently during the Great Revolt. For many
of the participants in the war, the primary enemies were not Roman but Jewish. 31
According to Josephus, especially in Jewish Antiquities, the Roman procurators in the
years leading up to the revolt went from bad to worse. Of all these corrupt and
incompetent Roman administrators of Palestine, none was worse than the last one,
Gessius Florus. Albinus, himself an execrable procurator, is described by Josephus as a
“paragon of virtue” when compared to Florus. Florus, according to Josephus,
“ostentatiously paraded his outrages upon the nation, and, as though he had been sent as
hangman of condemned criminals, abstained from no form of robbery or violence … No
man has ever poured greater contempt on truth; none invented more crafty methods of
crime.” 32
The Jews ultimately appealed to Florus’s superior Celestius Gallus, the
governor of Syria, for relief. Not only was the appeal unsuccessful, but it was soon
followed by Florus’s mishandling of ethnic tensions in Caesarea and then his plundering
of the Temple treasury and slaughter of the Jews who sought to prevent him from
desecrating holy ground.
The revolutionaries may also have believed that they were living at the threshhold of the
end time. Josephus narrates that “what more than all else incited them to the war 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.” 33
In the years immediately preceding the
revolt, many “eschatological prophets” were active, predicting the imminent approach of
the end time or attempting, by means of a symbolic action (for example, splitting the
Jordan River), to hasten or implement its arrival. Although Josephus states that the
equivocal prophecy quoted above was the primary inducement for the Jews to go to war,
in the body of his narrative he seldom alludes to the eschatological expectations of the
revolutionaries. Perhaps some of the revolutionary leaders regarded themselves as
messiahs, or were so regarded by their followers, but Josephus nowhere makes this point
explicit. Accordingly, while few scholars would deny that eschatological expectations
played a role in the motivation of the revolutionaries, the relative importance of this
factor remains the subject of debate. 34
The Jewish aristocracy was just as unhappy with Roman rule as were the lower classes,
and they took a leading role in the early stages of the revolt. Although established by the
Romans as local leaders, the Jewish aristocrats were systematically deprived of the means
to govern. Hence, they were left in the awkward position of being identified with the
Romans, but of having no real power to respond to the needs of their compatriots. The
way out of this predicament was to oppose the Roman procurator, a choice that put them
on the fast track to war. 35
Yet it is clear that Josephus does not want his readership to conclude that the Jewish
revolt was led and embraced by the Jewish aristocracy. Reading his Jewish War, one
could easily conclude that it was the work of a few fanatics. In his desire to repair
Roman-Jewish relations, however, Josephus protests too much. Aristocratic involvement
in the revolt was far too prominent to conceal.
Josephus’s apologetic for the Romans is also evident from his account of the war itself.
Vespasian and Titus, the Roman generals, were perfect gentlemen who gave the Jews
every opportunity to come to their senses and surrender. They even commiserated with
the poor innocents who had to suffer the tyranny of the revolutionaries and the horrors of
war. According to Josephus, Titus did his best to save the Temple (see below) and wept
when he beheld the destruction of the city and of the house of God. Josephus is clearly
saying that Titus and the Romans bore no responsibility for the destruction of the
Temple, and that this unfortunate consequence of the war should not bar the resumption
of normal relations between the Romans and their Jewish subjects.
In Jewish Antiquities, Josephus writes anew about the prehistory of the war. Here he is
much less concerned about war guilt and much more prepared to admit that responsibility
for the war should not be ascribed to the revolutionaries alone. In The Jewish War
Josephus wanted to cover up any connection between the revolutionaries and the
“official” representatives of Judaism; in Jewish Antiquities he no longer felt constrained
to do so. For example, in Jewish Antiquities, one procurator even colludes with the
assassins in order to remove an opponent; another empties the prisons of all those who
were arrested for seditious activity. The emperor Nero, by favoring the pagan element of
the city of Caesarea in its dispute with the Jewish citizenry, also bears some
responsibility for the ensuing catastrophe. 36
Here the corruption and incompetence of the
Roman procurators is far more evident.
Most modern scholars see the war as the result of a complex array of factors, both
internal and external. The perspective of modern scholarship resembles that of Jewish
Antiquities much more than that of The Jewish War. Moreover, unlike Josephus, many
modern scholars admire the revolutionaries, or at least do not condemn them. For
Josephus, even in Jewish Antiquities, they are villains and scoundrels, the dregs of
society. For modern Israelis and for many others, they are heroes who were trying to
reclaim what was rightly theirs.
The rabbis of the Talmud shared the perspective of Josephus in The Jewish War: The
revolutionaries were crazed fanatics who did not listen to the sage counsel of the rabbis
and persisted in their folly. They brought disaster upon the entire house of Israel. In the
Talmudic account, the hero of the war is Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, a man who fled
from Jerusalem, went over to the Roman side and acknowledged the suzerainty of
Vespasian, the Roman general and soon-to-be emperor. Isaiah’s prophecy that “Lebanon
shall fall to a mighty one” (Isaiah 10:34) was interpreted by Yohanan ben Zakkai to mean
that the Temple (constructed from the cedars of Lebanon) would fall into the hands of
Vespasian (a mighty one). The rabbinic hero thus hailed the Roman general as victor and
emperor well before his actual victory and his elevation to the purple. From the
perspective of the revolutionaries, this was treason; but from the perspective of the
rabbis, viewed with acute hindsight, this was wisdom, a course of action that to their
regret had not been followed.
Whether the historical Rabban Yohanan did anything even remotely approximating the
deeds ascribed to him in the rabbinic account is, of course, unknown and unknowable.
The story probably tells us much more about the political outlook of the rabbis of the
third and fourth centuries than about the actions of Rabban Yohanan in the first. 37
The social tensions and eschatological expectations that impelled Judea to war with
Rome were not uniquely Jewish. In fact the war of 66–70 C.E. follows a pattern evident
in other native rebellions against the Roman Empire. Tensions between rich and poor,
and between city and country, were endemic to ancient society and often contributed to
native rebellions. Like the uprising in Judea, other native rebellions were often led by
aristocrats, although peasants, day laborers and landless poor formed the bulk of the
revolutionary army. As so often happens in revolutions ancient and modern, in its initial
phases the struggle is led by aristocratic (or bourgeois) elements, which are later ousted,
usually with great violence, by more extreme (or proletarian) groups. Like the Jews, other
rebels in antiquity also dreamed of subjugating the universal Roman Empire. The revolt
of the Gauls in 69 C.E. was prompted in part by a Druid prediction that Rome would be
destroyed and that the rule of the empire would devolve on the tribes of Transalpine
Gaul. The Jewish revolt was, therefore, hardly unique in the annals of Rome. 38
What
makes it special is its intensity, its duration and, most important of all, the fact that an
ancient historian saw fit to write its history in great detail. Because of Josephus’s The
Jewish War, we are better informed about this war than about any other native revolt
against Rome.