Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

proceeded from Judas
     [of Galilee], among whom messianic pretension became evident at least in one, Menahem,
     allows one to surmise that the ‘Fourth Sect’ had a messianic foundation already in
     its founder.” See
The Zealots
(London: T&T Clark, 2000), 299. However, I disagree with Hengel that the members
     of the Fourth Philosophy can be adequately labeled Zealots. Rather, I contend that
     they preached zealotry as a biblical doctrine demanding the removal of foreign elements
     from the Holy Land, which is why I use the term “zealot,” with a lowercase z, to describe
     them. For more on Josephus’s use of the term “sophist,” see note 71 in Whiston’s translation
     of
The Jewish War
, book 2, chapter 1, section 3.
CHAPTER FIVE: WHERE IS YOUR FLEET TO SWEEP THE ROMAN SEAS?
    There is very little historical evidence about the life of Pontius Pilate before his
     tenure as prefect in Jerusalem, but Ann Wroe has written an interesting account titled
Pontius Pilate
(New York: Random House, 1999), which, while not a scholarly book, is definitely
     a fun read. With regard to the difference between a Roman prefect and a procurator,
     the short answer is that there was none, at least not in a small and fairly insignificant
     province like Judea. Josephus calls Pilate a procurator in the
Antiquities
18.5.6, whereas Philo refers to him as prefect. The terms were probably interchangeable
     at the time. I have chosen to simply use the term “governor” to mean both prefect
     and procurator.
    For more on Pilate’s introduction of the shields into the Temple of Jerusalem, I recommend
     G. Fuks, “Again on the Episode of the Gilded Roman Shields at Jerusalem,”
Harvard Theological Review
75 (1982): 503–7, and P. S. Davies, “The Meaning of Philo’s Text About the Gilded
     Shields,”
Journal of Theological Studies
37 (1986): 109–14.
    A great deal has been written about the reasons why the Jews rebelled against Rome.
     No doubt there was a combination of social, economic, political, and religious grievances
     that ultimately led to the Jewish War, but David Rhoads outlines six principal causes
     in his book
Israel in Revolution: 6–74
C.E . (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976): (1) the Jews were defending the Law of God;
     (2) the Jews believed God would lead them to victory; (3) the Jews wanted to rid the
     holy land of foreigners and gentiles; (4) the Jews were trying to defend God’s city,
     Jerusalem, from desecration; (5) the Jews wanted to cleanse the Temple; and (6) the
     Jews hoped it would usher in the end time and the coming of the messiah. However,
     some scholars (and I include myself in this category) emphasizethe eschatological motivations of the Jews over these other reasons. See for example
     A. J. Tomasino, “Oracles of Insurrection: The Prophetic Catalyst of the Great Revolt,”
Journal of Jewish Studies
59 (2008): 86–111. Others caution about putting too much weight on the role that
     apocalyptic fervor played in stirring the Jews to revolt. See for instance Tessa Rajak,
     “Jewish Millenarian Expectations,”
The First Jewish Revolt
, ed. Andrea M. Berlin and J. Andrew Overman (New York: Routledge, 2002), 164–88.
     Rajak writes: “Expectation of an imminent End … was not the normal mindset of first-century
     Judaism.” However, I think the evidence to the contrary far outweighs this view, as
     the link between messianism and the Jewish Revolt could not be clearer in Josephus’s
     account of the Jewish War.
    Concerning the list of messianic aspirants that arose in the buildup to the Jewish
     War, P. W. Barnett suggests that the fact that Josephus fails to call these messianic
     figures
baselius
, or “king” (with the exception of “the Egyptian”), proves that they thought of themselves
     not as messiahs but rather as “sign prophets.” But Barnett notes that even these sign
     prophets “anticipated some great act of eschatological redemption,” which, after all,
     is the inherent right of the messiah. See P. W. Barnett, “The Jewish Sign Prophets,”
New Testament Studies
27 (1980): 679–97. James S. McLaren tries (and, in my opinion, fails) to avoid relying
     too much on the idea that the Jews expected “divine assistance” to defeat the Romans
     or that they were fueled by messianic fervor, by claiming that the Jews “were simply
     optimistic that they would succeed,” in the same way that, say, the Germans were optimistic
     that they would defeat Britain.