Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

easy-to-conceal daggers, called
sicae
, with which they assassinated the enemies of God.
    The Sicarii were zealots fueled by an apocalyptic worldview and a fervent devotion
     to establishing God’s rule on earth. Theywere fanatical in their opposition to the Roman occupation, though they reserved their
     vengeance for those Jews, particularly among the wealthy priestly aristocracy, who
     submitted to Roman rule. Fearless and unstoppable, the Sicarii murdered their opponents
     with impunity: in the middle of the city, in broad daylight, in the midst of great
     hordes, during feast days and festivals. They blended into assemblies and crowds,
     their daggers tucked inside their cloaks, until they were close enough to strike.
     Then, as the dead man collapsed to the ground, covered in blood, the Sicarii would
     sheath their daggers stealthily and join their voices in the cries of indignation
     from the panicked crowd.
    The leader of the Sicarii at the time was a young Jewish revolutionary named Menahem,
     the grandson of none other than the failed messiah Judas the Galilean. Menahem shared
     his grandfather’s hatred for the wealthy priestly aristocracy in general, and the
     unctuous high priests in particular. To the Sicarii, Jonathan son of Ananus was an
     imposter: a thief and a swindler who had grown rich by exploiting the suffering of
     the people. He was as responsible for the bondage of the Jews as the heathen emperor
     in Rome. His presence on the Temple Mount defiled the entire nation. His very existence
     was an abomination to the Lord. He had to die.
    In the year 56 C.E ., the Sicarii under Menahem’s leadership were finally able to achieve what Judas
     the Galilean could only dream of accomplishing. During the feast of Passover, a Sicarii
     assassin pushed his way through the mass of pilgrims packed into the Temple Mount
     until he was close enough to the high priest Jonathan to pull out a dagger and swipe
     it across his throat. He then melted back into the crowd.
    The murder of the high priest threw all of Jerusalem into a panic. How could the leader
     of the Jewish nation, God’s representative on earth, be killed in broad daylight,
     in the middle of the Temple courtyard, and seemingly with impunity? Many refused to
     believe that the culprit could have been a Jew. There were whispers that the Roman
     governor, Felix, had ordered the assassinationhimself. Who else could have been so profane as to spill the high priest’s blood on
     the Temple grounds?
    Yet the Sicarii had only just begun their reign of terror. Shouting their slogan “No
     lord but God!” they began attacking the members of the Jewish ruling class, plundering
     their possessions, kidnapping their relatives, and burning down their homes. By these
     tactics they sowed terror into the hearts of the Jews so that, as Josephus writes,
     “More terrible than their crimes was the fear they aroused, every man hourly expecting
     death, as in war.”
    With Jonathan’s death, the messianic ardor in Jerusalem reached fever pitch. There
     was a widespread sense among the Jews that something profound was happening, a feeling
     born of desperation, nurtured by a people yearning for freedom from foreign rule.
     Zeal, the spirit that had fueled the revolutionary fervor of the bandits, prophets,
     and messiahs, was now coursing through the population like a virus working its way
     through the body. No longer could it be contained in the countryside; its influence
     was being felt in the towns and cities, even in Jerusalem. It was not just the peasants
     and outcasts who were whispering about the great kings and prophets who had freed
     Israel from her enemies in the past. The wealthy and upwardly mobile were also becoming
     increasingly animated by the fervent desire to cleanse the Holy Land of the Roman
     occupation. The signs were everywhere. The scriptures were about to be fulfilled.
     The end of days was at hand.
    In Jerusalem, a holy man named Jesus son of Ananias suddenly appeared, prophesying
     the destruction of the city and the imminent return of the messiah. Another man, a
     mysterious Jewish sorcerer called “the Egyptian,” declared himself King of the Jews
     and gathered thousands of followers on the Mount of Olives, where he vowed that, like
     Joshua at Jericho, he would bring the walls of Jerusalem tumbling down at his command.
     The crowd was massacred by Roman troops, though, as far as anyone knows, the Egyptian