The Jewish War: First half of Book 5

[cahn]

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!

Comments

[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...

[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.

[selenak]

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

[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!