Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

William Madden’s colossal work,
History of Jewish Coinage and of Money in the Old and New Testament
(London: Bernard Quaritch, 1864). Madden notes that Josephus refers to the shekel
     as equal to four Attic drachms (drachmas), meaning two drachmas equals one-half shekel
     (238). See also J. Liver, “The Half-Shekel Offering in Biblical and Post-Biblical
     Literature,”
Harvard Theological Review
56.3 (1963): 173–98.
    Some scholars argue, unconvincingly, that no perceptible shift occurred in the Roman
     attitude toward Jews; see, for example, Eric S. Gruen, “Roman Perspectives on the
     Jews in the Age of the Great Revolt,”
First Jewish Revolt
, 27–42. With regard to the symbol of parading the Torah during the Triumph, I think
     Martin Goodman said it best in
Rome and Jerusalem
: “There could not be a clearer demonstration that the conquest was being celebrated
     not just over Judea but over Judaism” (453). For more on Judaism after the destruction
     of the Temple, see Michael S. Berger, “Rabbinic Pacification of Second-Century Jewish
     Nationalism,”
Belief and Bloodshed
, ed. James K. Wellman, Jr. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 48.
    It is vital to note that the earliest manuscripts we have of the gospel of Mark end
     the first verse at “Jesus the Christ.” It was only later that a redactor added the
     phrase “the Son of God.” The significance of the gospels’ being written in Greek should
     not be overlooked. Consider that the Dead Sea Scrolls, the most contemporary set of
     Jewish writings to survive the destruction of Jerusalem, whose themes and topics are
     very close to those of the New Testament, were written almost exclusively in Hebrew
     and Aramaic.
PART II PROLOGUE: ZEAL FOR YOUR HOUSE
    The story of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the Temple
     can be found in Matthew 21:1–22, Mark 11:1–19, Luke 19:29–48, and John 2:13–25. Note
     that John’s gospel places the event at the start of Jesus’s ministry, whereas the
     Synoptics place it at the end. That Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem reveals his kingly
     aspirations is abundantly clear. Recall that Solomon also mounts a donkey in order
     to be proclaimed king (1 Kings 1:32–40), as does Absalom when he tries to wrest the
     throne from his father, David (2 Samuel 19:26). According to David Catchpole, Jesus’s
     entry into Jerusalem fits perfectly into a family of stories detailing “the celebratory
     entry to a city by a hero figure who has previously achieved his triumph.” Catchpole
     notes that this “fixed pattern of triumphal entry” has precedence not only among the
     Israelite kings (see for example Kings 1:32–40) but also in Alexander’s entry into
     Jerusalem, Apollonius’s entry into Jerusalem, Simon Maccabaeus’s entry into Jerusalem,
     Marcus Agrippa’s entry into Jerusalem, and so on. See David R. Catchpole, “The ‘Triumphal’
     Entry,”
Jesus and the Politics of His Day
, ed. Ernst Bammel and C.F.D. Moule (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984),
     319–34.
    Jesus explicitly uses the term
lestai
to signify “den of thieves,” instead of the more common word for thieves,
kleptai
(see Mark 11:17). While it may seem obvious that in this case Jesus is not using
     the term in its politicized sense as “bandit”—meaning someone with zealot tendencies—some
     scholars believe that Jesus is in fact referring specifically to bandits in this passage.
     Indeed, some link Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple to an insurrection led by bar Abbas
     that took place there around the same time (see Mark 15:7). The argument goes like
     this: Since bar Abbas is
always
characterized with the epithet
lestai
, Jesus’s use of the term must be referring to the slaughter that took place around
     the Temple during the bandit insurrection he led. Therefore, the best translation
     of Jesus’s admonition here is not “den of thieves,” but rather “cave of bandits,”
     meaning “zealot stronghold,” and thus referring specifically to bar Abbas’s insurrection.
     See George Wesley Buchanan, “Mark 11:15–19: Brigands in the Temple,”
Hebrew Union College Annual
30 (1959): 169–77. This is an intriguing argument, but there is a simpler explanation
     for Jesus’s use of the word
lestai
instead of
kleptai
in this passage. The evangelist is likely quoting the prophet Jeremiah (7:11) in
     its Septuagint (Greek) translation: “Has this house, which is called by my