Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

by Reza Aslan

  The biblical concept of zeal is best defined as “jealous anger,” and it is derived from the divine character of God, whom the Bible calls “a devouring fire, a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24). The most celebrated model of biblical zeal is Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron (Moses’s brother), whose example of spontaneous individual action as an expression of God’s jealous anger and as atonement for the sins of the Jewish nation became the model of personal righteousness in the Bible (Numbers 25). See my How to Win a Cosmic War, 70–72. Also see relevant entry in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1043–54.

  Once again, Richard Horsley rejects the proposition that Judas the Galilean had messianic aspirations. But his rejection is based on two assumptions: first, that Judas the Galilean is not descended from Hezekiah the bandit chief, which we have already questioned above; and second, that Josephus does not directly call Judas “king” or “messiah” but instead calls him “sophist,” a term with no messianic connotations. See Menahem in Jerusalem, 342–43. However, Josephus clearly derides Judas for what he calls his “royal aspirations.” What else could this mean but that Judas had messianic (i.e., kingly) ambitions? What’s more, Josephus uses the same term, “sophist,” to describe both Mattathias (Antiquities 17.6), who was overtly connected to messianic aspirations during the Maccabean revolt, and Menahem (Jewish War 2.433–48), whose messianic pretensions are not in dispute. On this point I agree with Martin Hengel when he writes that “a dynasty of leaders 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) emphasize the 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. Yet what else did “optimism” mean in first-century Palestine but confidence in God? See “Going to War Against Rome: The Motivation of the Jewish Rebels,” in The Jewish Revolt Against Rome: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. M. Popovic, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 154 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2011), 129–53.

  It should be noted that while “the Samaritan” called himself “messiah,” he did not mean it exactly in the Jewish sense of the word. The Samaritan equivalent of “messiah” is Taheb. However, the Taheb was directly related to the messiah. In fact, the words were synonymous, as evidenced by the Samaritan woman in the gospel of John who tells Jesus, “I know that the messiah is coming. When he will come, he will show us all things” (John 4:25).

  Josephus is the first to use the Latin word “Sicarii” (Josephus, Jewish War 2.254–55), though it is obvious he borrows the term from the Romans. The word “Sicarii” appears in Acts 21:38 in reference to the “false prophet” known as “the Egyptian,” for whom Paul is mistaken. Acts claims the Egyptian had four thousand followers, which is a more likely figure than the thirty thousand that Josephus claims in Jewish War 2.247–70 (though in Antiquities 20.171, Josephus provides a much smaller number).

  Although Josephus describes the Sicarii as “a different type of bandit,” he uses the words “Sicarii” and “bandits” interchangeably throughout The Jewish War. In fact, at times he uses the term “Sicarii” to describe groups of bandits who do not use daggers as weapons. It is likely that his reason for differentiating the Sicarii from “the other bandits” was to keep all the various bandit gangs distinct for narrative’s sake, though a case can be made that after the rise of Menahem in the first year of the war, the Sicarii became a recognizably separate group—the same group that seized control of Masada. See Shimon Applebaum, “The Zealots: The Case for Revaluation,” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 155–70. In my opinion, the best and most up-to-date study of the Sicarii is Mark Andrew Brighton, The Sicarii in Josephus’s Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Scholarship, 2009).

  Other views on the Sicarii include Emil Schurer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1890), for whom the Sicarii are a fanatical offshoot of the Zealot Party; Martin Hengel, The Zealots (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), who disagrees with Schurer, arguing that the Sicarii were just an ultra-violent subgroup of the bandits; Solomon Zeitlin, “Zealots and Sicarii,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962): 395–98, wh
o believes the Sicarii and the Zealots were two distinct and “mutually hostile” groups; Richard A. Horsley, “Josephus and the Bandits,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 10 (1979): 37–63, for whom the Sicarii are just a localized phenomenon, part of the larger movement of “social banditry” that was rife in the Judean countryside; and Morton Smith, “Zealots and Sicarii: Their Origins and Relation,” Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971): 7–31, whose view that labels such as Sicarii and Zealot were not static designations but rather indicated a generalized and widespread yearning for the biblical doctrine of zeal is wholeheartedly adopted in this book.

  In the Antiquities, written some time after The Jewish War, Josephus suggests that it was the Roman proconsul Felix who spurred the Sicarii to murder the high priest Jonathan for his own political purposes. Some scholars, most notably Martin Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), continue to argue this point, viewing the Sicarii as little more than hired assassins or mercenaries. This is unlikely. First of all, the explanation given in the Antiquities contradicts Josephus’s earlier, and likely more reliable, account in The Jewish War, which makes no mention of Felix’s hand in the assassination of Jonathan. In fact, the description of Jonathan’s murder in the Antiquities fails to mention the role of the Sicarii at all. Instead, the text refers to assassins generally as “bandits” (lestai). In any case, the account of Jonathan’s murder in The Jewish War is written deliberately to emphasize the 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 Uriel Rappaport, “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 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 ex
ample 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 name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, utters the LORD!” That translation uses the phrase spaylayon laystoun to mean “den of thieves,” which makes sense in that the Septuagint was written long before lestai became a byword for “bandits”—indeed, long before there was any such thing as a bandit in Judea or Galilee. Here, lestai is the preferred Greek translation of the Hebrew word paritsim, which is poorly attested in the Hebrew Bible and is used, at most, twice in the entire text. The word paritsim can mean something like “violent ones,” though in Ezekiel 7:22, which also uses the Hebrew word paritsim, the Septuagint translates the word into the Greek by using afulaktos, which means something like “unguarded.” The point is that the Hebrew word paritsim was obviously problematic for the Septuagint translators, and any attempt to limit the meaning of the Hebrew or Greek words to a specific meaning or an overly circumscribed semantic range is difficult, to say the least. Thus, it is likely that when Jesus uses the word lestai in this passage, he means nothing more complicated than “thieves,” which, after all, is how he viewed the merchants and money changers at the Temple.