Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

ideological/religious motivations of the
     Sicarii (hence their slogan “No lord but God!”), and as a prelude to the much more
     significant murders of the high priest Ananus ben Ananus (62 C.E. ) and Jesus ben Gamaliel (63–64 C.E. ), which ultimately launch the war with Rome.
    Tacitus’s quote about Felix comes from Geza Vermes,
Who’s Who in the Age of Jesus
(London: Penguin, 2005), 89. Josephus’s quote about every man hourly expecting death
     is from
The Jewish War
7.253.
    Rome actually assigned one more procurator to succeed Gessius Florus: Marcus Antonius
     Julianus. But that was during the years of the Jewish Revolt, and he never seems to
     have set foot in Jerusalem.
    Agrippa’s speech is from
The Jewish War
2.355–78. As moving as the speech may be, it is obviously Josephus’s own creation.
CHAPTER SIX: YEAR ONE
    For more on the history of Masada and its changes under Herod, see Solomon Zeitlin,
     “Masada and the Sicarii,”
Jewish Quarterly Review
55.4 (1965): 299–317.
    Josephus seems to deliberately avoid using the word “messiah” to refer to Menahem,
     but in describing Menahem’s posturing as a popularly recognized “anointed king,” he
     is no doubt describing phenomena that, according to Richard Horsley, “can be understood
     as concrete examples of popular ‘messiahs’ and their movements.” Horsley, “Menahem
     in Jerusalem,” 340.
    For some great examples of the coins struck by the victorious Jewish rebels, see Ya’akov
     Meshorer,
Treasury of Jewish Coins from the Persian Period to Bar Kokhba
(Jerusalem and Nyack, N.Y.: Amphora Books, 2001).
    The speech of the Sicarii leader was made by Eleazar ben Yair and can be found in
     Josephus,
The Jewish War
7.335. Tacitus’s description of the era in Rome being “rich in disasters” comes from
     Goodman,
Rome and Jerusalem
, 430.
    The Zealot Party was led by a revolutionary priest named Eleazar son of Simon. Some
     scholars argue that this Eleazar was the same Eleazar the Temple Captain who seized
     control of the Temple at the start of the revolt and ceased all sacrifices on behalf
     of the emperor. For this view, see Rhoads,
Israel in Revolution;
also Geza Vermes,
Who’s Who in the Age of Jesus
, 83. Vermes claims this was the same Eleazar who attacked and killed Menahem. That
     is unlikely. The Temple Captain was named Eleazar son of Ananias, and, as both Richard
     Horsley and Morton Smith have shown, he had no connection to the Eleazar son of Simon
     who took over the leadership of the Zealot Party in 68 C.E . See Smith, “Zealots and Sicarii,”
Harvard Theological Review
64 (1971): 1–19, and Horsley, “The Zealots: Their Origin, Relationship and Importance
     in the Jewish Revolt,”
Novum Testamentum
28 (1986): 159–92.
    Most of the information we have about John of Gischala comes from Josephus, with whom
     John was on extremely unfriendly terms. Thus the portrait of John that comes out of
     Josephus’s writings is of a mad tyrant who put all of Jerusalem in danger with his
     thirst for power and blood. No contemporary scholar takes this description of John
     seriously. For a better portrait of the man, see UrielRappaport, “John of Gischala: From Galilee to Jerusalem,”
Journal of Jewish Studies
33 (1982): 479–93. With regard to John’s zealousness and his eschatological ideals,
     Rappaport is correct to note that while it is difficult to know his exact religiopolitical
     outlook, his alliance with the Zealot Party suggests, at the very least, that he was
     sympathetic to zealot ideology. In any case, John eventually managed to overpower
     the Zealots and take control over the inner Temple, though, by all accounts, he allowed
     Eleazar son of Simon to remain at least nominally in charge of the Zealot Party, right
     up to the moment in which Titus invaded Jerusalem.
    For a description of the famine that ensued in Jerusalem during Titus’s siege, see
     Josephus,
The Jewish War
5.427–571, 6.271–76. Josephus, who was writing his history of the war for the very
     man who won it, presents Titus as trying desperately to restrain his men from killing
     wantonly and in particular from destroying the Temple. This is obviously nonsense.
     It is merely Josephus pandering to his Roman audience. Josephus also sets the number
     of Jews who died in Jerusalem at one million. This is clearly an exaggeration.
    For complete coverage of the exchange rate among ancient currencies in first-century
     Palestine, see Fredric