Messianic Roots of the Jewish Revolt in 66 AD- Robert Eisenman
Eleven years after the death of Herod the Romans annexed the country and, in anticipation of direct taxation by governors or procurators, imposed a census. This is the 6-7 CE Census of Quirinius (Cyrenius), Roman Governor in Syria, the Census by which the Gospel of Luke dates the birth of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew by contrast has Jesus being born some time before the death of Herod in 4 BC, so that Herod can attempt to chase him down and kill all the Jewish children, as did Pharaoh at the time of the birth of Moses. The two accounts are, of course, irreconcilable.
This is the Census, and the taxation consonant upon it, referred to above, which ‘the Zealots’ or ‘Sicarii’ oppose and against which Judas the Galilean and ‘Saddok’ preach. [The tax] is supported by the Pharisees and, of course, Herodian Sadducees.
There is, in fact, a plethora of revolutionary outbursts even at the time of the death of Herod, with which the unrest begins, by groups Josephus pictures as being zealous for the Law - Mosaic not Roman - and as having ‘an inviolable attachment to liberty’. One of these, led by someone he calls Judas Sepphoraeus (probably identical with Judas the Galilean) broke into the arsenal at Sepphoris in 4 BC, the principal town at that time in Galilee. There is no doubt about the popularity of the Movement, because Josephus, in his lengthy description of it and the woes the people suffered in consequence of their support for it in the Antiquities, admits not only that ‘our young men were zealous for it’ but that ’the nation was infected by it to an incredible degree’.
At the end of the book Jewish War, when describing the signs and wonders that presaged the fall of the Temple, Josephus finally reveals something that he neglected for some reason to tell us earlier. He claims that the thing that most moved the people to revolt against Rome was an ambiguous prophecy from their Scripture that 'one from their country should rule the entire world'.
This is the prophecy we have been calling ‘the World Ruler’ or ‘Messianic Prophecy‘, ‘the Star Prophecy’. At Qumran, where it occurs three times even in the extant corpus, it receives a wholly other, completely uncompromising, nationalistic and Messianic interpretation.
Not only was the Uprising aimed at burning the palaces of the High Priests and the Herodian Kings but the debt records as well, in order, as Josephus makes clear, ‘to turn the Poor against the Rich’. Once again, this is the same genre of language evinced in the Letter of James and the Dead Sea Scrolls in their condemnation of ‘the Rich’. It is also the language applied to the Movement led by James, and to the later Ebionites, so named because of it, as well as the nomenclature used by the Movement represented by the Scrolls to describe its own rank and file - called there as well ‘the Ebionim’ or ‘the Poor’.
Josephus tells us that it was ‘the principal Pharisees, the Chief Priests, the men of power [ Herodians], and all those desirous for peace’ who invited the Roman army into Jerusalem ‘to put down the Uprising’. This is what Josephus meant in the Introduction to the War about how the Romans were invited into the city by ‘the Jews’ own leaders’. Here one comes to an even more startling detail provided by Josephus, if what he seems to be saying can be tied to characters we know in early Christian history. The intermediary in this process of inviting the Roman army into the city was a member of the Herodian family called ‘Sautus’ or ‘Saul’. He is the one who delivered the message of ‘the Peace Coalition’ to the Roman army camped outside Jerusalem to enter, and a final report even to Nero’s headquarters, then in Corinth in Greece, a favorite haunt too of the religious activities of ‘Paul’.
The anti-national, pro-Roman policy of the Pharisees should by now be clear. This is also the stance of the Pauline Gentile Christians, following the teaching of the person above, who even describes himself as having been trained as a Pharisee and, according to the picture in Acts anyhow, vaunts a Roman citizenship, something not easily acquired in these turbulent times. Nor can the Pharisees in this period by any twist of the imagination be considered ‘the popular party’. If anything, the Zealot and/or Messianic were the popular parties (as nationalist parties predictably are) at least until the fall of the Temple and the re-education policy undertaken by the heirs of the Pharisees under Roman suzerainty thereafter.
Eleven years after the death of Herod the Romans annexed the country and, in anticipation of direct taxation by governors or procurators, imposed a census. This is the 6-7 CE Census of Quirinius (Cyrenius), Roman Governor in Syria, the Census by which the Gospel of Luke dates the birth of Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew by contrast has Jesus being born some time before the death of Herod in 4 BC, so that Herod can attempt to chase him down and kill all the Jewish children, as did Pharaoh at the time of the birth of Moses. The two accounts are, of course, irreconcilable.
This is the Census, and the taxation consonant upon it, referred to above, which ‘the Zealots’ or ‘Sicarii’ oppose and against which Judas the Galilean and ‘Saddok’ preach. [The tax] is supported by the Pharisees and, of course, Herodian Sadducees.
There is, in fact, a plethora of revolutionary outbursts even at the time of the death of Herod, with which the unrest begins, by groups Josephus pictures as being zealous for the Law - Mosaic not Roman - and as having ‘an inviolable attachment to liberty’. One of these, led by someone he calls Judas Sepphoraeus (probably identical with Judas the Galilean) broke into the arsenal at Sepphoris in 4 BC, the principal town at that time in Galilee. There is no doubt about the popularity of the Movement, because Josephus, in his lengthy description of it and the woes the people suffered in consequence of their support for it in the Antiquities, admits not only that ‘our young men were zealous for it’ but that ’the nation was infected by it to an incredible degree’.
At the end of the book Jewish War, when describing the signs and wonders that presaged the fall of the Temple, Josephus finally reveals something that he neglected for some reason to tell us earlier. He claims that the thing that most moved the people to revolt against Rome was an ambiguous prophecy from their Scripture that 'one from their country should rule the entire world'.
This is the prophecy we have been calling ‘the World Ruler’ or ‘Messianic Prophecy‘, ‘the Star Prophecy’. At Qumran, where it occurs three times even in the extant corpus, it receives a wholly other, completely uncompromising, nationalistic and Messianic interpretation.
Not only was the Uprising aimed at burning the palaces of the High Priests and the Herodian Kings but the debt records as well, in order, as Josephus makes clear, ‘to turn the Poor against the Rich’. Once again, this is the same genre of language evinced in the Letter of James and the Dead Sea Scrolls in their condemnation of ‘the Rich’. It is also the language applied to the Movement led by James, and to the later Ebionites, so named because of it, as well as the nomenclature used by the Movement represented by the Scrolls to describe its own rank and file - called there as well ‘the Ebionim’ or ‘the Poor’.
Josephus tells us that it was ‘the principal Pharisees, the Chief Priests, the men of power [ Herodians], and all those desirous for peace’ who invited the Roman army into Jerusalem ‘to put down the Uprising’. This is what Josephus meant in the Introduction to the War about how the Romans were invited into the city by ‘the Jews’ own leaders’. Here one comes to an even more startling detail provided by Josephus, if what he seems to be saying can be tied to characters we know in early Christian history. The intermediary in this process of inviting the Roman army into the city was a member of the Herodian family called ‘Sautus’ or ‘Saul’. He is the one who delivered the message of ‘the Peace Coalition’ to the Roman army camped outside Jerusalem to enter, and a final report even to Nero’s headquarters, then in Corinth in Greece, a favorite haunt too of the religious activities of ‘Paul’.
The anti-national, pro-Roman policy of the Pharisees should by now be clear. This is also the stance of the Pauline Gentile Christians, following the teaching of the person above, who even describes himself as having been trained as a Pharisee and, according to the picture in Acts anyhow, vaunts a Roman citizenship, something not easily acquired in these turbulent times. Nor can the Pharisees in this period by any twist of the imagination be considered ‘the popular party’. If anything, the Zealot and/or Messianic were the popular parties (as nationalist parties predictably are) at least until the fall of the Temple and the re-education policy undertaken by the heirs of the Pharisees under Roman suzerainty thereafter.