The mass suicide of ‘Zealot’ defenders at Masada has become a familiar historical event, the focus of at least two novels, a cinema film and a television mini-series. It has already been referred to in this book, and there will be occasion to look at it more closely shortly. Masada, however, was not the only instance of such mass suicide. In AD 67, responding to the rebellion sweeping the Holy Land, a Roman army advanced on Gamala In Galilee, the original home of Judas and his sons. Four thousand Jews died trying to defend the town. When their efforts proved futile, another five thousand committed suicide. This reflects something more than mere political opposition. It attests to a dimension of religious fanaticism. Such a dimension is expressed by Josephus, who, speaking of the ‘Zealots’, says: ‘They… do not value dying any kinds of death, nor indeed do they heed the deaths of their relations and friends, nor can any such fear make them call any man Lord…’19 To acknowledge a Roman emperor as a god, which Rome demanded, would have been, for the ‘Zealots’, the most outrageous blasphemy.20 To such a transgression of the Law, death would indeed have been preferable.
’Zeal for the Law’ effectively brings the ‘Zealots’ — usually envisaged as more or less secular ‘freedom fighters’ — into alignment with the fervently religious members of the Qumran community; and, as we have already noted, Qumranic texts were found in the ruins of Masada. ‘Zeal for the Law’ also brings the ‘Zealots’ into alignment with the so-called ‘early Church’, to whose adherents the same ‘zeal’ is repeatedly ascribed. The figure cited in the Gospels as ‘Simon Zelotes’, or ‘Simon the Zealot’, attests to at least one ‘Zealot’ in Jesus’ immediate entourage; and Judas Iscariot, whose name may well derive from the Sicarii, might be another. Most revealing of all, however, is Eisenman’s discovery — the original Greek term used to denote members of the ‘early Church’. They are called, quite explicitly, ‘zelotai of the Law’ — that is, ‘Zealots’.21
There thus emerges, in 1st-century Palestine, a kind of fundamentalist dynastic priesthood claiming either genealogical or symbolic descent from Aaron and associated with the expected imminent advent of a Davidic or royal Messiah.22 This priesthood maintains itself in a state of perpetual self-declared war with the Herodian dynasty, the puppet priests of that dynasty and the occupying Romans. Depending on their activities at a given moment, and the perspective from which they are viewed, the priesthood and its supporters are variously called ‘Zealots’, ‘Essenes’, ‘Zadokites’, ‘Nazoreans’ and a number of other things — including, by their enemies, ‘brigands’ and ‘outlaws’. They are certainly not passive recluses and mystics. On the contrary, their vision, as Eisenman says, is ‘violently apocalyptic’, and provides a theological corollary to the violent action with which the ‘Zealots’ are usually associated.23 This violence, both political and theological, can be discerned in the career of John the Baptist — executed, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, for condemning the marriage of Herod Antipas to his niece because it ‘is against the Law for you to have her’. And, indeed, Eisenman has even suggested that John the Baptist may have been the mysterious ‘Sadduc’ who accompanied Judas of Galilee, leader of the ‘Zealots’ at the time of Jesus’ birth.24
To recapitulate, then, there emerge, from the confusing welter of sobriquets and nomenclature, the configurations of a broad movement in which ‘Essenes’, ‘Zadokites’, ‘Nazoreans’, ‘Zealots’ and other such supposed factions effectively fuse. The names prove to be merely different designations — or, at most, different manifestations — of the same religious and political impetus, diffused throughout the Holy Land and beyond, from the 2nd century BC on. The ostensibly separate factions would have been, at most, like the variety of individuals, groups and interests which coalesced to form the single movement known as the ‘French Resistance’ during the Second World War. At most. For Robert Eisenman personally, any distinction between them is but a matter of degree; they are all variations on the same theme. But even if some subtle gradations between them did exist, they would still have been unified by their joint involvement in a single ambitious enterprise — the ridding of their land of Roman occupation, and the reinstatement of the old legitimate Judaic monarchy, together with its rightful priesthood.
That enterprise, of course, did not end with the destruction of Jerusalem and Qumran between ad 68 and 70, nor with the fall of Masada in ad 74. In the immediate aftermath of the debacle, large numbers of ‘Zealots’ and Sicarii fled abroad, to places where there were sizeable Judaic populations — to Persia, for example, and to Egypt, especially Alexandria. In Alexandria, they attempted to mobilise the local Jewish population for yet another uprising against Rome. They met with little success, some six hundred of them being rounded up and handed over to the authorities. Men, women and children were tortured in an attempt to make them acknowledge the emperor as a god. According to Josephus, ‘not a man gave in or came near to saying it’. And he adds:
But nothing amazed the spectators as much as the behaviour of young children; for not one of them could be constrained to call Caesar Lord. So far did the strength of a brave spirit prevail over the weakness of their little bodies.25
Here again is that strain of fanatical dedication — a dedication that cannot be political in nature, that can only be religious.
More than sixty years after the war that left Jerusalem and the Temple in ruins, the Holy Land erupted again in a new revolt, led by the charismatic Messianic figure known as Simeon bar Kochba, the ‘Son of the Star’. According to Eisenman, the terminology suggests that Simeon was in reality descended by blood from the ‘Zealot’ leaders of the previous century.26 In any case, the image of the ‘Star’ had certainly figured prominently among them during the period culminating with the first revolt.27 And, as we have noted, the same image figures repeatedly in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It derives ultimately from a prophecy in the Book of Numbers (24:17): ‘a star from Jacob takes the leadership, a sceptre arises from Israel’. The ‘War Rule’ invokes this prophecy, and declares that the ‘Star’, or the ‘Messiah’, will, together with the ‘Poor’ or the ‘Righteous’, repel invading armies. Eisenman has found this ‘Star’ prophecy in two other crucial places in the Qumran literature.28 One, the ‘Damascus Document’, is particularly graphic: ‘The star is the Interpreter of the Law who shall come to Damascus; as it is written… the sceptre is the Prince…’29
Josephus, as well as Roman historians such as Suetonius and Tacitus, reports how a prophecy was current in the Holy Land during the early 1st century ad, to the effect that ‘from Judaea would go forth men destined to rule the world’.30 According to Josephus, the promulgation of this prophecy was a major factor in the revolt of ad 66. And, needless to say, the ‘Star’ prophecy finds its way into Christian tradition as the ‘Star of Bethlehem’, which heralds Jesus’ birth.31 As ‘Son of the Star’, then, Simeon bar Kochba enjoyed an illustrious symbolic pedigree.
Unlike the revolt of ad 66, Simeon’s insurrection, commencing in AD 132, was no ill-organised conflagration resulting, so to speak, from spontaneous combustion. On the contrary, much prolonged and careful planning went into the enterprise. Jewish smiths and craftsmen pressed into Roman service would, for example, deliberately forge slightly sub-standard weapons. When these were rejected by the Romans, they would be collected and stored for use by the rebels. From the war of the previous century, Simeon had also learned that there was no point in capturing and holding fortresses such as Masada. To defeat the Romans, a campaign based on mobility, on hit-and-run tactics, would be necessary. This led to the construction of vast underground networks of rooms, corridors and tunnels. In the period prior to the revolt, Simeon used these networks for training. Subsequently, once hostilities had begun, they served as bases and staging areas, enabling the rebels to launch a sudden lightning assault, then disappear — the kind of ambush with which American soldiers, to their cost, became familiar during the war in Vietnam.32 But Simeon did not confine himself solely to guerrilla operatio
ns. His army included many volunteers from abroad, many mercenaries and professional soldiers with considerable military experience. Indeed, surviving records discovered by archaeologists have revealed that a number of Simeon’s officers and staff spoke only Greek.33 With such well-trained forces at his disposal, he could, on occasion, meet the Romans in pitched battle.
Within the first year of the revolt, Simeon had destroyed at least one complete Roman legion, and probably a second.34 Palestine had been effectively cleared of Roman troops. Jerusalem had been recaptured and a Judaic administration installed there. The campaign came within a hair’s-breadth of total success. It failed primarily because Simeon was let down by his expected allies. According to his overall grand design, his troops were to be supported by forces from Persia, where a great many Jews still resided and enjoyed the sympathetic favour of the reigning dynasty. Just when Simeon most needed these reinforcements, however, Persia itself was invaded from the north by marauding hill tribes, who effectively pinned down Persian resources, leaving Simeon bereft of his promised support.35
In Syria, safely outside Palestine, the Romans regrouped under the personal leadership of the Emperor Hadrian, with Julius Severus, formerly governor of Britain, as his second-in-command. Another full-scale invasion ensued, involving as many as twelve legions, some eighty thousand troops. In a two-pronged advance, they fought their way from post to post down the entire length of the Holy Land. Eventually Simeon was cornered, making his last stand at Battir, his headquarters, a few miles west of Jerusalem, in ad 135.
During the entire course of the revolt, Simeon’s troops were in constant occupation of Qumran. Coins found in the ruins attest to their presence in what would, after all, have been a site of considerable strategic importance. It is thus possible, despite the claims of Father de Vaux, that some, at least, of the Dead Sea Scrolls were deposited in Qumran as late as Simeon’s time.
15. Zealot Suicide
Once the broad messianic movement of 1st-century Palestine is seen in perspective, and once the apparently diverse sects are seen as integral parts of it, a number of hitherto inexplicable elements and anomalies slip into place. Thus, for example, the apocalyptic and eschatological ferocity of John the Baptist begins to make sense, as does his role in the events recounted by the Gospels. Thus, too, can one account for a number of theologically awkward passages and incidents pertaining to Jesus’ own career. There is, as we have noted, at least one ‘Zealot’ in his following, and possibly more. There is the violence of his action in overturning the tables of the money-changers at the Temple. There is his execution not by Judaic but by Roman authorities, in a fashion specifically reserved for political offenders. There are numerous other instances, which the authors of this book have examined at length elsewhere. Finally, there are Jesus’ own words:
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth; it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother… (Matt. 10:34-5)
And, more tellingly still, in unmistakably Qumranic phraseology:
Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete [or fulfil] them… not one dot, not one little stroke shall disappear from the Law until its purpose is achieved. Therefore the man who infringes even one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be considered the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt. 5:17-19)!
In this passage, it is almost as if Jesus had anticipated Paul’s advent. Certainly he could not have warned against it any more specifically. By the standards he lays down, Paul’s status in the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be much higher than that of official pariah-in-residence.
Another anomaly that emerges in a fresh light is the fortress of Masada, and the character and mentality of its tenacious defenders. When the Holy Land rose in revolt in ad 66, Masada was one of the first strongholds to be seized — by Menahem, the son or grandson of Judas of Galilee, founder of the ‘Zealots’. Perched high on a sheer-sided mountain overlooking the south-western shore of the Dead Sea, some thirty-three miles below Qumran, the place became the rebels’ most important bastion, the supreme symbol and embodiment of resistance. Long after that resistance had collapsed elsewhere, Masada continued to hold out. Jerusalem, for example, was occupied and razed within two years of the insurrection’s outbreak — in ad 68. Masada remained impregnable, however, until ad 74. From within its walls, some 960 defenders withstood repeated assaults and a full-scale siege by a Roman army estimated to have numbered fifteen thousand.
Despite the tenacity of this resistance, Masada’s position, by the middle of April ad 74, had become hopeless. Cut off from reinforcement, entirely encircled by Roman troops, the garrison no longer had any prospect of withstanding a general assault. The besieging Romans, after bombarding the fortress with heavy siege machinery, had constructed an immense ramp running up the mountainside and, on the night of 15 April, prepared for their final onslaught. The garrison, under the command of Eleazar ben Jair, came to their own decision. The men killed their wives and children. Ten men were then chosen to kill their comrades. Having done so, they proceeded to draw lots, choosing one to dispatch the remaining nine. After he had performed this task, he set fire to what remained of the buildings in the fortress and killed himself. Altogether, 960 men, women and children perished. When the Romans burst through the gate the following morning, they found only corpses amid the ruins.
Two women and five children escaped the carnage, supposedly having hidden in the water conduits under the fortress while the rest of the garrison killed themselves. Josephus recounts the testimony of one of the women — drawing, he says, on her interrogation by Roman officers.2 According to Josephus, she furnished a detailed account of what transpired on the last night of the siege. If this account is to be believed (and there is no reason why it shouldn’t), Eleazar, the commander of the fortress, exhorted his followers to their mass suicide by his charismatic and persuasive eloquence:
Ever since primitive man began to think, the words of our ancestors and of the gods, supported by the actions and spirits of our forefathers, have constantly impressed on us that life is the calamity for man, not death. Death gives freedom to our souls and lets them depart to their own pure home where they will know nothing of any calamity; but while they are confined within a mortal body and share its miseries, in strict truth they are dead.
For association of the divine with the mortal is most improper. Certainly the soul can do a great deal when imprisoned in the body; it makes the body its own organ of sense, moving it invisibly and impelling it in its actions further than mortal nature can reach. But when, freed from the weight that drags it down to earth and is hung about it, the soul returns to its own place, then in truth it partakes of a blessed power and an utterly unfettered strength, remaining as invisible to human eyes as God Himself. Not even while it is in the body can it be viewed; it enters undetected and departs unseen, having itself one imperishable nature, but causing a change in the body; for whatever the soul touches lives and blossoms, whatever it deserts withers and dies: such is the superabundance it has of immortality.3
According to Josephus, Eleazar concludes: ‘Let us die unenslaved by our enemies, and leave this world as free men in company with our wives and children. That is what the Law ordains.’4
On occasion, Josephus is unreliable. When he is so, however, it shows. In this instance, there is certainly no reason to doubt his word; and the excavations of Masada conducted in the 1960s tend to support his version of events. It is, of course, probable that he embellished Eleazar’s speeches somewhat, making them perhaps more eloquent (and long-winded) than they might actually have been, availing himself of some poetic licence. But the general tenor of the narrative rings true, and has always been accepted by historians. What is more, Josephus had a unique and first-hand understanding of the mentality that dictated the mass suicide at Masada. At the beginning of t
he revolt, he himself had been a rebel commander in Galilee. In AD 67, his forces were besieged by the Romans under Vespasian at Jotapata — now Yodefat, near Sepphoris. When the town fell, many of its defenders committed suicide rather than submit to capture. Many others, including Josephus himself, fled and hid in caves. According to his own account, he found himself in one cave with forty other fugitives. Here, as at Masada, lots were drawn as to who would kill his comrades. Whether ‘by chance’, as Josephus suggests, or by ‘the providence of God’, or perhaps by a fiddle which aided and abetted one or the other, he and another man ended up as the sole survivors. Persuading his companion to surrender, he then himself defected to the victorious Romans.5 He does not emerge from the adventure in any very creditable light, of course. But even if he himself could not live up to them, he was no stranger to ‘Zealot’ attitudes, including their preparedness for self-immolation in the name of the Law.
In reality, there was a fairly sophisticated logic governing such self-immolation, which would not have been readily apparent to Josephus’ readers, either at the time or subsequently. The mass suicides at Masada, at Gamala and at other sites are explained by Eisenman as resting ultimately on the uniquely ‘Zealot’ concept of resurrection. This concept derived primarily from two Old Testament prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel, both of whose texts were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. Daniel (Daniel 12:2) was the first to give expression to the concept in any developed form: ‘Of those who lie sleeping in the dust of the earth many will awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting disgrace.’ He speaks, too, of an imminent ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, and of ‘End Times’, of the ‘coming of an anointed Prince’, of a ‘Son of Man’ on whom ‘was conferred sovereignty’ (Daniel 7:13-14).
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