cahn | The Jewish War: First half of Book 5

Happy day-after-Easter!

Last week: Eyeliner shows that the Zealot faction is really bad! (No, really!) The Year of the Four Emperors, and those emperors discussed. Nero and his end. Lord Hervey of Frederician salon makes a surprise appearance!

This week: Titus attacks Jerusalem, but the factions have already done a lot of the work for him...

Next week: Rest of book 5!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

selenak

This is fascinating!

I thought so, and I may not have noticed but for the fact that the podcast "The History of Egypt" last year did the Battle of Kadish, and also still is doing Ramses II (well, he had a Louis XIV length reign; shares other qualities with Le Roi Soleils, too). Like I said, though, given the lack of accessability to Ramesid records at the time of Josephus, I'm near 100% certain he could not have known about this particular precedence and styled his description accordingly - hence my theory the trope wandered from the walls of Abu Simbel and the Ramesseum in Egypt into folklore over a millennium and into Josephus' subconscious this way.

I looked up the exact passage in Mark (it's in 13), and it's even more blatantly foreshadowing the events Josephus described than I remembered, so, here it is again:

13 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?”

5 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

9 “You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. 10 And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. 11 Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.

12 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 13 Everyone will hate you because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

14 “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’[a] standing where it[b] does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 15 Let no one on the housetop go down or enter the house to take anything out. 16 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 17 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 18 Pray that this will not take place in winter, 19 because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again.

20 “If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. 21 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. 22 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 23 So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.

The reason why I'm quoting this at length isn't just the foreshadowing of the destruction of the Temple but for the "brother will betray brother" and the false messiahs elements. Again, going by the general assumption that Mark and Josephus are writing at roughly the same time, post Jewish War but not too long after it, it's hard to read this not as a reference to the internal strife between various Jewish factions. (And hey, possibly even to Josephus himself if his Vespasian prophecy did indeed not use the term "Emperor" but "Messiah" as Feuchtwanger has it.)

From:

cenozoicsynapsid

I had to look this up, but all 3 of the Synoptics have this passage. Interestingly, they gloss "the abomination" slightly differently from Mark:

Matt 24:15 'So when you see standing in the holy place the ‘evil that defiles’ which was communicated through the prophet Daniel (whoever reads this let them think about it carefully), then those living in Judea should run away to the mountains.'
Luke 21:20 'But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by legions of soldiers, you can be sure that the destruction of the city will soon occur.'

Matthew reminds us that the 'abomination' is a quote from Daniel, and Luke quite straightforwardly ignores the 'abomination' and tells us the sign is soldiers.

While I was searching Matthew, btw, I noticed 23:35: 'Consequently you’ll be held accountable for all the blood of the good, poured out on the land—from the blood of Abel who did what was right to the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, who you killed between the temple and the altar. '

Apparently Zachariah (the patronymic is not given in every gospel, or even apparently in every MS of Matthew), is sometimes identified with the Zacharia who was executed by the Zealots in our last chapter of J. See here for a detailed discussion: https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/36360/in-matthew-2335-who-was-zacharias-son-of-barachias
Of course the obvious issue with this is that, if true, it is an anachronism: Matthew has Jesus referring to someone who would not be killed until 40 years afterwards. It strikes me as at least possible that the author of Matthew *intends* to refer to an earlier Zacharia, but substitutes the patronymic of someone of the same name who was scandalously killed in the temple within recent memory.

One of Daniel's passages on the Abomination (probably with reference to a Hellenistic ruler), chapter 11 tells us of a struggle between "the king of the south" and some other kings, successors of a great ruler in Persia (presumably Alexander... I have not referred to a commentator but this seems pretty plain): "And a warrior-king will arise, and he will dominate with great dominion, and do as he wishes. 4 And when he arises, his kingdom will be shattered, and divided according to the four winds of heaven, and not to his descendants, and not according to the strength of his reign, because his kingdom will be uprooted for others besides these."

11:30 And ships of Kittim will come against him, and he will lose heart, and turn, and rage against the holy covenant. And he will act, and turn, and show favor toward those who abandon the holy covenant. 31 And his supporters will stand and defile the sanctuary-fortress, and remove the daily offering, and put there the appalling abomination. 32 And by intrigue he will pervert those who act wickedly against the covenant, while the people who know their god will be strong, and act. 33 And those of the people who are wise will teach many, but they will fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, for some time. 34 And as they fall, they will be aided will a little aid, and many will join themselves to them by intrigues. 35 And among the wise some will fall, for refining and purification and cleansing, until the time of the end, because the appointed time is yet to come.

From:

cahn

This is great, thank you!

Also: kudos to Luke to just being straightforward about it :P But interestingly I Feel like "the evil that defiles" in Mark could be taken (?) to mean the internal strife regarding the temple that Josephus talks about, but Matthew bringing in Daniel seems rather to implicate the "king" (presumably Vespasian or Titus) rather than internal strife?

I also appreciated the commentary on Zacharias, whom I admit I have never thought of before at all.

From:

cahn

Yeah, wow, that "brother will betray brother" part hits in an entirely different way after reading Josephus, and then the false messiahs! I'm a little bit losing it at the idea of Josephus as a false prophet, or possibly the elect who is deceived by a false messiah...

From:

cenozoicsynapsid

I forgot to add this, but I suspect actually that what happened was not that J said Vespasian was the messiah, but that some of the rebel leaders claimed to be the messiah (or were so claimed by their followers). Simon bar Giora (who is going to be paraded as the Jewish leader at the Roman triumph after all this is over) is a good candidate. He's a rural leader who clearly has some kind of charisma and ability to mobilize the common people, but J hates him. If he claimed to be the messiah, that would account for both of these things. (Why isn't it in the text? Probably because J assumes his Greek and Roman audience have no clue what a 'messiah' is and wouldn't care if they did.)

Some of the rabbis seem to have understood a later Simon, Simon bar Kochba, as the messiah after his brief success in the 3rd Roman-Jewish war (in 132)... as I understand it, this is why Rabbi Akiva, one of the Talmud's greatest sages, was martyred by the Romans. So the idea that an anti-Roman leader could be proclaimed as the messiah seems historically plausible.

To digress: Akiva's story as given in the Talmud is really wild. He learned to read at age 40, in order to marry his wife Rachel, who did not want to marry an unlearned man. He then studied for years and finally went back to his home village at night, only to hear his wife saying "I'd be even prouder of him if he studied longer"... so he left again. By the time he finally got back, he was the greatest scholar of his age, but his kids didn't know him. Akiva was so learned that the Talmud tells a legend in which Moses asks God for the opportunity to see one of his classes, hears him explaining some detail of the Torah (I forget what) and asks God if this is really Judaism, because he doesn't understand any of it. God tells him to calm down, and after a while, he hears Akiva answer a question from the audience: "How do you know all this stuff?" "It was revealed to Moses at Sinai."

Anyway, if I had to bet, there were indeed false messiahs all around. But I think Vespasian isn't the messiah. (He's a very naughty boy.) My money's on Simon.

From:

selenak

That is a wild story, thank you for telling us about it!

From:

cahn

Ah, that makes a lot of sense that an anti-Roman leader would be styled as the Messiah -- and that this could be what the text in the Synoptics is referring to.

That is really a wild story about Akiva!