Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

inscribed in sacred letters on a plate of gold … having
     been judged worthy to wear these emblems in the ministrations. Their appearance created
     such awe and confusion of mind as to make one feel that one had come into the presence
     of a man who belonged to a different world. I am convinced that any one who takes
     part in the spectacle which I have described will be filled with astonishment and
     indescribable wonder and be profoundly affected in his mind at the thought of the
     sanctity which is attached to each detail of the service.”
CHAPTER ONE: A HOLE IN THE CORNER
    For a primer on Rome’s policy in dealing with subject populations, and especially
     its relationship with the high priest and priestly aristocracy in Jerusalem, see Martin
     Goodman,
The Ruling Class of Judea
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); also Richard A. Horsley, “High Priests
     and the Politics of Roman Palestine,”
Journal for the Study of Judaism
17.1 (1986): 23–55. Goodman’s
Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations
(London: Penguin, 2007) provides an indispensable discussion of the remarkably tolerant
     attitude of Rome toward the Jews while also providing a range of Roman views about
     Jewish exceptionalism. It is from Goodman’s book that the quotations from Cicero,
     Tacitus, and Seneca are pulled (pages 390–91). Further discussion of Roman attitudes
     toward Jewish practices can be found in Eric S. Gruen, “Roman Perspectives on the
     Jews in the Age of the Great Revolt,” in
The First Jewish Revolt
, ed. Andrea M. Berlin and J. Andrew Overman (New York: Routledge, 2002), 27–42. For
     more on the religious practices and cults of Rome, see Mary Beard, John North, and
     Simon Price,
Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook
, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
    The act of “utter annihilation” (
herem
in Hebrew), in which God commands the wholesale slaughter of “all that breathes,”
     is a recurring theme in the Bible, as I explain in my book
How to Win a Cosmic War
(New York: Random House, 2009), 66–69. It is “ethnic cleansing as a means of ensuring
     cultic purity,” to quote the great biblical scholar John Collins, “The Zeal of Phinehas:
     The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
122.1 (2003): 7.
    For precise taxes and measures taken by Rome upon the Jewish peasantry, see Lester
     L. Grabbe,
Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian
, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 334–37; also Horsley and Hanson,
Bandits, Prophets, Messiahs
, 48–87. Grabbe notes that some scholars have cast doubt on whether the Jewish population
     was forced to pay tribute to Rome, though no one questions whether the Jews were forced
     to finance the Roman civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar. On the subject of
     mass urbanization and the transfer of populations fromrural to urban centers, see Jonathan Reed, “Instability in Jesus’ Galilee: A Demographic
     Perspective,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
(2010) 129.2: 343–65.
CHAPTER TWO: KING OF THE JEWS
    The term “messiah” in the Hebrew Bible is used in reference to King Saul (1 Samuel
     12:5), King David (2 Samuel 23:1), King Solomon (1 Kings 1:39), and the priest Aaron
     and his sons (Exodus 29:1–9), as well as the prophets Isaiah (Isaiah 61:1) and Elisha
     (1 Kings 19:15–16). The exception to this list can be found in Isaiah 45:1, where
     the Persian king Cyrus, though he does not know the God of the Jews (45:4), is called
     messiah. In all, there are thirty-nine occurrences of the word “messiah” in the Hebrew
     Bible that refer specifically to the anointing of someone or something, such as Saul’s
     shield (2 Samuel 1:21) or the Tabernacle (Numbers 7:1). And yet not one of these occurrences
     refers to the messiah as a future salvific character who would be appointed by God
     to rebuild the Kingdom of David and restore Israel to a position of glory and power.
     That view of the messiah, which seems to have been fairly well established by the
     time of Jesus, was actually shaped during the tumultuous period of the Babylonian
     Exile in the sixth century B.C.E .
    Although there is little doubt that the bandit gangs of Galilee represented an apocalyptic,
     eschatological, and millenarian movement, Richard Horsley and John Hanson view these
     as three distinct categories, and as a result they refuse to label the bandits a “messianic”
     movement. In other words, the authors