Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene

CHAPTER SIX THE CYRENEAN REBELLION AND THE ZEALOT MOVEMENT

The destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 did little to alter the basic status of Judaism in the Roman Empire, for this was determined not by a general legislative act but by the policy of the Emperors and the laws of the Greek cities of the eastern Mediterranean.[1282] If a written political treaty had previously existed between the Roman Senate and the Jewish nation in Judaea, this now ceased to be valid,[1283] and we must assume that the Jews of Judaea now became dediticii, meaning, a conquered people without internal autonomous rights or external representation. But one grave discriminatory measure was imposed upon the Jews in all provinces of the Empire, namely, the diversion of the half-sheqel contribution till then paid to the Temple of Jerusalem, to a Fiscus ludaicus to be devoted to the cult of Jupiter Capitolinus. An additional contribution (ἀπάρχη) was also imposed upon them.[1284] In the words of Baron,[1285] “for the first time, the Jews of the whole empire became a special source of revenue. Here was born the idea of the Jew as a specific tax-payer, to play so important a role in later fiscal history.”

The struggle between Jews and gentiles had indeed been growing steadily during the ist century of the common era. The resistance of the Greek cities to Jewish influence had begun as early as in the middle of the 2nd century B.C. with the collision between Antiochus IV and the Hasmoneans, while in Egypt there grew up contemporarily an anti-Semitic propaganda literature and a Jewish literature of counter-propaganda.[1286] This continued antagonism found expression in the attempt of the hellenic cities to abolish the autonomous rights of their Jewish communities, whose confirmation was demanded and implemented by Rome (thus in Ephesus, Alexandria, Tralles, Laodicea, Miletus and Cyrene itself)[1287] Closely associated with this conflict was the continual refusal of the Greek towns to admit a status of equality between their own urban organizations and the Jewish politeumata existent in their midst. The prevailing Jewish attitude seems to have been to demand recognition of such equality, whereas the Greeks desired to impose the supremacy of their city government upon all Jews and other non-citizens resident within the city’s territory.

This struggle however did not persist with equal intensity in every place. We have no record of it in Asia Minor after the beginning of the ist century of the present era.[1288] Yet it is clear from events at the time of the outbreak of the Jewish revolt of 66, that hatred for the Jews burned strongly among most of the Greek populations of the Syrian cities, and no less among the Greeks of Alexandria by Egypt.[1289]

The Greeks justified their attitude by pointing to the nonparticipation of Jews in their cults, to their missionary activity, to their self-seclusion from gentile society and (in Alexandria) to their attacks upon the city’s gymnasia. Greek hatred found expression, more particularly in Alexandria, in fierce and bloody inter-communal collisions such as occurred in the reign of Gaius, Claudius and Nero. Some scholars have further found as a cause of Greek hatred for the Jews in Egypt the factor of economic competition, and it has been stated that the Egyptian grain trade and transport branch were the monopoly of Roman and Jewish groups in the imperial period.[1290] This alleged factor, added to the Roman government’s defence of Jewish rights, it has been claimed, diverted against the Jews the hatred which the Greeks and Egyptians feared to express openly against the imperial rulers. I do not think however, that there is sufficient evidence of the real part played by the Jews of Egypt in the country’s trade in this period, to enable a decision on this question to be made,[1291] but the study of the so-called Acts of the Pagan Martyrs[1292] shows that there is a measure of truth in the idea of a “transference” of hatred, since the Acts frequently exhibit a desire to discredit the Roman administration by claiming it to be the ally of the Jews, also to discredit the Jews by pointing to their connections with the administration. The Jews indeed, like every minority, were interested in stable government, hence their leadership inclined to support, first the Ptolemies, later the Roman regime.

These factors, notwithstanding, were superficial, compared with one basic characteristic deeply inherent in Judaism, namely, the close identity between the Jew’s religious consciousness and his ethnic-national awareness. The decline of the religion of the city-state in the hellenistic period had caused a growing separation between the Greek community’s religion and the religion of the individual. The taboos bound up with the purity and destiny of the city, which had imposed certain cultic rites upon the community and certain restrictions upon the behaviour of its citizens, retreated before rationalism and the growth of larger political entities. The cults of the rulers of the hellenistic states and their successors, the emperors, were mere political instruments (albeit successful ones), and religious experience was relegated to the sphere of the individual, who now sought an answer to his spiritual needs in the philosophical schools or in the collective experience of the mystery cults. The attention of the individual turned to problems of personal moral behaviour, while the masses sought satisfaction and an outlet for their emotions in new symbologies. Throughout the Empire no single major group existed to advocate a conscious ethical code operable both in individual life and equally in politics — with the exception of the Jews. Some cultured and conscientious Roman officials believed, doubtless, in Rome’s civilizing mission and in the Stoic doctrine which saw in them the servants of humanity, but the character of their task and their class derivation restricted the realization of their outlook.[1293] Only from Trajan’s day were emperors chosen who were faithful to such conceptions and strove to carry them out. Yet it was precisely the first two of these, Trajan and Hadrian, in whose reigns the most violent conflicts between Rome and the Jews occurred. The Greek Cynic agitator might seek, indeed, to fan the spark of liberty among the populace of the eastern Mediterranean,[1294] but the disappearance of the Greek polis as a political factor robbed it of its moral content and uprooted the social tradition capable of serving as the basis of a community wishing to realize its teaching. It was, in fact, Cynic influence that appears to have contributed in Alexandria to anti-Semitic violence.

The Jews, on the other hand, presented the unique synthesis of an ethnic unit with a geographical centre and a specific code of conduct based on a coordinated philosophy. There was no distinction amongst them between the religious and the secular, which sprang from a common source.[1295] In other communities social evolution from a tribal structure had caused the separation of law from religious experience; the Jews had achieved a certain continuity of evolution which preserved the unity of the personal ethical (the prophetic) and legalist currents, and made them identical with a definite ethnic group. It was this peculiar complex which formed in the ancient world (as it does today) the source of confusion and misunderstanding among non-Jews. For the gentile of the hellenistic period and the Roman Empire, religion was a matter for the individual or an expression of loyalty to the state; he could not understand the unity of a religious-ethical group and an ethnic entity, and frequently feared it. The Jew felt his ethical code and ethnic identity to be inseparable; the effective application of the first was ensured by the preservation of the second, and this made him a force in gentile society — a group individuality in an empire that possessed, otherwise, an almost unlimited power of cosmopolitan absorption. It might be true to say that Judaism was the only fully-fledged nationalism of the ancient world. Thus the Jewish fusion of group identity and ethical code has widespread repercussions when the Jewish diaspora began to expand; it became a missionary force that made numerous converts. Although borderline groups of half-proselytes arose, full proselytes inevitably became assimilated to the Jewish community: the Jews presented in the diaspora the anomaly of a persistent sub-nation, active and distinct. That their “exclusiveness” alienated the gentile is, however, unconvincing, since their widespread proselytizing activity could never have been carried on had they maintained it. Nor are proofs lacking of active assimilation by Jews to the gentile world, whether internally or externally. Hellenistic Jewry sought various compromises with its environment, and tried to make itself comprehensible to the non-Jew; there is no doubt that the wealthy Jewish upper class saw no contradiction between loyalty to the Ptolemies or the Caesars, and loyalty to Judaism; this is amply evidenced by the Aristeas Letter, by the attitude and apology of Josephus, by the conduct of the House of Herod and the Jewish groups which deserted to Rome during the war of 66-73, or by the behaviour of the Jewish upper class of Alexandria and Cyrene in the years 70-73. But the Jewish fate was not to be decided either by these or by the assimilated elements; the gentile was quicker than many Jews to reject the reconcilability between a nation-religion imposing a complete way of life, and the demand for complete equality of status on the part of its adherents living in alien communities. The Jewish nation-religion was ultimately unrealizable except on its own soil. Not Jewish “exclusiveness” (a historical anachronism in this period) alienated the Greeks, but Jewish difference.

In the fact of Jewish difference the Greek and Roman world encountered a phenomenon which it did not understand and to which it ultimately reacted with hostility; the active Jewish social offensive further increased this hatred. In contradiction to this reality stood the generally moderate policy of most of the emperors towards the Jews until Hadrian’s time. The reason for this moderation, expressed in the defence of Jewish internal rights throughout the Empire, was not connected with any sympathy for Jewish doctrine or for the Jewish people. The populous diaspora communities, their distribution on both sides of the eastern frontier, and the military potential ascribed to oriental Jewry by the Roman commanders, combined to deter Rome from provoking Jewish hostility so long as this could be avoided. Even Vespasian, after his victory in Judaea, did not abolish the rights of Diaspora Jewry, and Hadrian was the only emperor who attempted to root out Judaism by prohibiting the performance of its fundamental commandments. But concomitantly with Vespasian’s imposition of the discriminatory Jewish tax, two warning notes are heard in the first century. Claudius, in confirming the internal communal rights of the Jews of Alexandria, warns them not to encourage the arrival of additional Jews in the city, lest he be compelled to take measures against them “as those provoking a general sickness throughout the world” (καθάπερ κοινόν τεινα τῆς οἰκουμένης νόσον ἐξεγείροντας).[1296] Domitian, although he did not infringe Jewish rights, took aggressive steps against judaization among the Roman aristocracy.[1297] The conception of Jews, therefore, as authors of an “international conspiracy”, as a nuisance and an anomaly which might be tolerated but could become intolerable, because they were the agents of a world-wide disease, was near to Claudius, and Domitian saw in the diffusion of Jewish ideas in Roman society a danger to the Empire’s established order.

The situation leading to Domitian’s murder in 96 was indeed closely bound up with the impact of Judaism on Roman society. Its occasion was the execution of Flavius Clemens, Domitian’s close kinsman, for judaization. It came as the culmination of the Emperor’s widespread persecution of members of the senatorial order, in which the charge of judaizing frequently figured. Both Dio Cassius and Epictetus, himself the slave of a high equestrian official who probably had Jewish contacts, testify to the widespread influence of Judaism in contemporary Roman society, and Epictetus[1298] describes clearly the intense struggle for influence throughout the Empire between the Syrian, Egyptian and Jewish cults. The opposition to Domitian’s absolutism on the part of the Stoic and Cynic philosophers of the time was considerable, and probably constituted a far more serious factor than historians have appreciated, while Epictetus, who constituted a link between them and the influential circles that suffered from his tyranny, was fully cognizant of the determined stand of the Jewish revolutionaries against imperial oppression.[1299] In the years following the destruction of the Second Temple, in fact, Judaism became closely associated with the protest of the Roman upper classes against Domitian’s repressive rule.[1300] It was Domitian who not only converted the collection of the Jewish tax into an aggressive hunt for secret judaizers, but also investigated collateral descendants of Jesus whom he suspected of messianic aspirations. How far conservative senatorial groups continued to see in Judaism, even after Domitian’s death, a threat to the moral order, is revealed by Tacitus’ anti-Semitic travesty of Jewish history in the Histories (V, 1-13), the more scandalous and calculated because Tacitus was certainly better informed on Jewish character and beliefs than his text could convey.[1301] Yet the apprehensions of these circles were not exaggerated, as time was to show.

Why did Domitian and Tacitus see in the spread of Judaism a peril to Roman society? The key to the matter is to be sought, I think, in the nature of the revolutionary movement as it had been manifested in the years before the rebellion of 66-73 and during the rebellion itself. The wealthy Jewish upper class, the Sadducee priests, the landowners and the Jewish aristocracy of Alexandria, Cyrene and the other cities of the eastern Empire, distinguishing between Jewish religious morality and questions of social and political behaviour, compromised with Rome. The Pharisees, for their part, as the spiritual heirs of the prophets and the Hassidim, determined to maintain a consistent and compact religious moral outlook, persistently demanded a society built on justice and righteousness, regarding social justice as obligating the Jewish people as a group; hence they found it impossible to reconcile their demands either with idolatry or with Roman economic oppression.[1302] The extreme activist current went further still, refusing to recognize a regime not built on justice, whether it was the Zaddokite priesthood or the Roman power. This outlook brought them logically to direct action against Rome and the Jewish ruling stratum equally.

It is necessary here to pause a moment to consider the connotation of the word “Zealot”. The term has inevitably, though incorrectly, been used by various historians as an overall term applying to all the radical and extremist groups active before and during the Jewish rebellion which led to the destruction of the Temple in 70. In effect, examination of the sources,[1303] confused as their evidence is, shows that the word “Zealot”, though applied prior to the revolt to a general political-religious type originating in the Macca-bean period, was attached almost exclusively during the revolt itself to the extremist, largely peasant, party, in Jerusalem. The architypal organized group which crystallized in the first decade of the century about the figure of Judah of Gamala (or Galilee), and which appears to have laid the foundation of the ideology which influenced in greater or lesser degree the subsequent revolutionary groups emerging during the rebellion of 66-73 — was known to Josephus as the Sicarii. This party took a major part in expelling the Roman forces from Jerusalem, but ceased to be centrally active after the murder of its leader Menahem, and retired to Masada, where it met its end in the year 73. The politically distinct groups which crystallized outside Jerusalem under the respective leaderships of Yohanan of Gush Halav (John of Gischala) and Ele’azar son of Simon, were in Jerusalem grouped under the name of Zealots. The group led by Judah of Galilee — which appears to have had a predecessor in the “bandits” led by Hezekiah, probably Judah’s father, who was put to death by Herod in 47 B.C. — possessed an ideology which probably influenced the remaining activist parties that emerged shortly after the outbreak of the revolt of 66. This has been summarized by Hengel[1304] under the following heads: 1) a refusal to acknowledge any sovereignty but that of God; 2) a devotion to the idea of liberty as expressed historically in the Exodus from Egypt and in the Jewish commandments; 3) the belief that God would aid them in the struggle for their aims only in so far as they were ready to be active in it; 4) resistance to the Roman census as a preparation for the imposition of taxes, arising out of the Jewish prohibition to number the people, and out of the principle that the earth belonged to God, while the imposition of the Roman land-tax (tributum soli) implied a recognition that it belonged to Caesar.[1305] 5) The zeal for the Law, exemplified in various ways in Jewish history, obligates to personal and direct action against its transgressors. Guignebert summed up effectively the general aim of this ideology when he wrote:[1306] “The ideal of the Zealots was a Jewish commonwealth with God as its president and the Law as its constitution”. Such an ideal, a fusion on the one hand of Jewish religion and morality, which rejected any political regime except the Law and its ethics, and on the other of Jewish ethnic and collective compactness — amounted to a revolutionary factor which the Roman Empire could not afford to tolerate. The final trial of arms between the two forces was inevitable.

The fall of Masada put an end for the time being to the extremist movement in Eretz Yisrael as an organized force. The destruction of the Temple terminated the rule of the priesthood and the Sad-ducee aristocracy. The leadership in Judaea now passed to the scholars, whose intellectual direction was Pharasaic; they set about crystallizing national institutions about a body that ruled by moral force with the consent and will of the community, its authority being based on the social system of scholarly rulings known as the halakhah. Most of the new leaders held moderate views, and if they viewed Rome without illusions, saw no prospects in struggling against her. The revolutionary remnants doubtless regarded them as traitors and collaborationists, but no one could accuse them of lack of devotion either to the Law, or to the people. The position of the Diaspora communities, however, was different. There the wealthy had collaborated with the Roman government to stifle the extremist risings at their beginning. But the psychological blow inflicted on entire Jewry, without distinction of class or outlook, by the destruction of the Temple, could not be effaced. If a party seeking some compromise with hellenism had existed in Egypt, it encountered final defeat under Claudius, whose rescript in 41 had emphasized to the Alexandrian Jewish community that they lived in a city not theirs from which they must make no further demands.[1307] The widespread and horrifying pogrom of 66, and the longdrawn tension between Jews and Greeks in the Egyptian capital and in other Greek cities, were apt ultimately to impel many Jews to ask whether a modus vivendi with the gentile world could now be achieved, or whether a final battle was needed to settle the issue for good. Among the messianic section, moreover, so strong was the belief that the “final day” and the rule of the Messiah were coming in their own time,[1308] that their survivors could not but see the destruction of the Temple as “the pangs of the Messiah”, and the Jewish defeat as a sign that redemption was at hand.

The idea of a final decision had indeed been long current among the Jewish people. It already appears in the Third Book of the Sibylline Oracles in the middle of the 2nd century B.C.[1309] and forms the focus of the messianic idea throughout the ist and 2nd centuries of the current era.[1310] Its various forms cannot be detailed here. The profound faith in the Jewish moral mission and in the ultimate victory of justice impelled the oppressed nation to believe that its suffering heralded the final destruction of the criminal government, the day of judgment of humanity and the “reform of the world after the fashion of the kingdom of God.” Contemporary literature expresses this belief along common lines. The end will be heralded by terrible natural catastrophes and wars amongst the nations; a messiah will appear to smite his enemies and the oppressors of Israel; he will inaugurate a kingdom of justice and plenty, will gather the exiles of Israel unto their land (according to certain versions), and before or after this, will come the resurrection of the dead and the judgment of humanity.

The degree of seriousness with which the emperors regarded the possibility of such a movement, is demonstrated by the interrogations of the alleged surviving members of the House of David conducted by Domitian and Trajan;[1311] Trajan, moreover, appears to have put to death those related to the family in 107.[1312] The idea of the overthrow of Rome had been popular among the Jews ever since Sulla’s time,[1313] and during the war of 66-73 the belief was rife that Judaea would conquer the world.[1314] The extremist Sicarian ideology, vocal since the foundation of the sect by Judah of Galilee, inspired the activists with the belief that only personal action would earn Divine assistance and complete redemption.[1315] Hence not merely did the defeat of the Great Rebellion not allay the storm, or induce resignation in accordance with the Pharisaic belief in a future life which would compensate the sufferings of thepresent world, but, on the contrary, it induced the readiness for immediate action and a renewed assault upon the hated Roman power throughout the Diaspora. More particularly in this period, (cf. p. 228) the very destruction of Jerusalem promoted a greater disposition to proselytism among a wide circle of the Roman populace, nor is this mood explicable except by an assumption that the situation was interpreted to mean that redemption was imminent.

The echo of this conviction is to be heard in Jewish works written immediately before the Diaspora rising, nor can it be doubted that their study has something to teach us of the aims of the movement, The principal sources are four: the fourth and fifth books of the Sybylline Oracles, the Second (also called the Fourth) Book of Ezra and the Vision of Baruch.[1316]

The fourth book of the Sibylline Oracles is generally thought to have been completed about 80 C.E., the fifth book in the reign of Domitian, but with later additions under Hadrian which in-elude several references to the diaspora rebellion of iiS-ity.The Second Book of Ezra was redacted at the end of the 1st century of the current era, or at the beginning of the 2nd, while the Vision of Baruch assumed its present form at the beginning of the 2nd century.

The fourth book of the Sibylline Oracles was composed, in the opinion of scholars, by a Jew of Asia Minor or Eretz Yisrael; it is imbued with profound religious feeling, and expresses throughout its author’s pain at the destruction of the Temple. The book preaches faith in one God and the moral life, prophesying the destruction of sinful gentile society, and listing a long list of cities doomed to punishment; finally it describes the resurrection of the dead and the day of judgment. It further predicts the return of Nero from over the Euphrates, that is, from Parthia.

That part of the fifth book of the Sibylline Oracles composed before the revolt, of 115-117 is the work of an Egyptian Jew. It alternates praise of the Torah with expressions of hatred for Rome and with apocalyptic visions. It foresees the return of Nero with the aid of the Parthians and accompanied by frightful natural catastrophies, the conquest of Eretz Yisrael and the Temple by the Jewish people. It describes the coming and deeds of the sacred ruler, who will burn down cities and slay the wicked. In the catalogue of the numerous cities doomed to destruction by the author, Memphis, Salamis of Cyprus, Barka, Cyrene and Teucheira appear.

The Second Ezra, on the other hand, sets forth the foundations of the Jewish faith, dwelling more especially on the peculiar value of the Jewish people and its perpetuation. The author struggles with the problem of the sufferings of the righteous, but announces that the end is near and will not be delayed; the community of sinners is condemned to extinction and only a few will be redeemed. Violent hatred for Rome is expressed in the vision of the eagle; the symbol of the Empire, whose doom is pronounced by the lion, the symbol of the Messiah, for —

The concluding chapters of the poem describe the new Jerusalem which will arise in the days of the Messiah and will flourish four hundred years, when foes have been annihilated and the Ten Tribes have returned to Eretz Yisrael. It should be noted that this chapter (11-12) is also the latest in the work, added by the last redactor between the years 100-120 C.E. Box dates it to 120 approximately,[1318] but I see no reason for not dating it in the time of Trajan.

The Vision of Baruch also sees the messianic kingdom as a temporal kingdom of this world, unlike the writers prior to the ist century B.C., who envisage it as an everlasting empire.[1319] Although the messianic rule is to put an end to the corruption of human society, the poet wrestles with bitter doubts over the meaning of human existence. Among the signs foretelling the coming of the Messiah he numbers earthquakes (27, 7-9). He tells a beautiful parable of the destruction of Rome and the rebirth of the Jewish people — the burning of the cypress and the springing of the vine: “And I beheld the cypress burning, and the vine growing, it and all around it, and the valley was filled with unfading flowers. And I awoke, and rose.”[1320]

The peoples which have not oppressed Israel will find pardon, but the oppressors will be trampled under foot. Chapters 78-87 describe a letter sent to the nine and a half Israelite tribes in Assyria, announcing to them the Destruction of the Temple, arousing their hopes and loyalty to the Law, warning them that “the time is very near”. A letter to the two tribes in Babylon is also referred to but not quoted by the author.

It is an interesting question, how far the above writings reflect the extremist ideology of the Sicarii, the Zealots and their allied currents. The expectation of the messianic coming, the rejection of Roman rule and the aspiration to a regime of justice, are certainly a continuation of the general ideology to which the extremist elements of 66-73 were party. But it must also be asked whether in confirmation of the same trend we can trace in the ideology of these works a class orientation hostile to the wealthy.

The only expression in the Vision of Baruch suggesting a class orientation is not in favour of the poor. In Chapter 70 the poem numbers among the horrors of the period before the messianic coming a situation in which “the poor shall enjoy abundance beyond the measure of the rich”; yet in Chapter 74 we encounter an emphasis on the ideas of labour and plenty:

In the fourth book of the Sibylline Oracles the absence of the pronounced views in favour of social equality to be found in the third book, (mid-2nd century B.C.E.) and in the fourteenth (4th century C.E.) is conspicuous. But a denunciation of wealth is found in the fifth book (line 405) and lines 416-17 foretell that the Messiah will restore to all righteous men the wealth which the wicked have taken from them.

The literature which reflects the ideas of the generation before the revolt, then, possesses no one uniform direction with regard to class questions, and this, I think corresponds to the reality reflected in what information we possess of the various extremist currents. The revolutionaries burned the records office at Jerusalem at the outbreak of the revolt,[1321] not merely because it contained deeds of property drafted in contravention of the principle that the land belonged to God,[1322] but because, as Josephus wrote explicitly, “they rejoiced to destroy the loan-records and to prevent the payment of debts, in order to gain the support of the multitude of debtors and to incite the poor to revolt without fear against the rich.” The Zealots further demand the appointment of a High Priest by lot and elevate a simple peasant to this office.[1323] The followers of Bar Giora destroy the houses of wealthy landowners[1324] and liberate slaves.[1325] On the other hand we do not hear of any “left” revolutionary tendencies on the part of Yohanan of Gush-halav (Gischala), nor is it clear if the disciples of Judah of Galilee and his son Mena-hem fostered ideas of this sort. It is a fact, at any rate, that while they were at Masada after the outbreak of the war and the death of Menahem, they found no common ground with Simon bar Giora, and ultimately the two groups parted from one another.[1326] The question of the degree of community of ideas between the Sicarii of Masada and the “Serah ha-Yahad” of Hirbet Qumran also awaits its final clarification. The revolutionary messianism of the latter is no longer to be doubted, since the discovery of the “Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness”,[1327] nor is the scroll’s military character open to allegorical interpretation.[1328] It is further probable that the organization led a life based on the principles of collectivism,[1329] but this would be more credible if we could accept the identity of the Yahad with the Essenes[1330], which is far from proven and may be a fallacy.[1331]

We may sum up by stating, that the “leftist” class content of the revolutionary groups of 66-73 was not common to all currents, hence it is not clearly reflected in the Jewish literature which expresses the extremist mood in the years before the outbreak of the diaspora rising under Trajan. But we may conclude from the same literature, that the revolutionary spirit did not die down among Jewry in the years after the destruction of the Temple. Josephus wrote in the year 93 C.E. or thereabouts[1332] that the behaviour of the Zealots and Sicarii was known to all; in the same period Epictetus mentions the Jewish revolutionaries’ resistance to tyranny and their faith in the exclusive kingship of the Almighty.[1333] This being the case, was the spirit at work in organized form as the main factor in the revolt of the Diaspora?

Josephus’ information leaves no doubt that Sicarian refugees reached both Alexandria and Cyrene after 70 with the aim of rousing the Jewish masses to revolt.[1334] We hear from the same source of the “Egyptian prophet” who had entered Judaea in the years 56-58 in order to incite the people.[1335] This man was one of the “desert prophets” and “seers” (γόητες) who have already been discussed, and whose affinity with the revolutionaries is clear. It follows that at this period a like movement existed also in Egypt. Tcherikover and Fuks have indeed concluded from the course of events there in the ist century C.E. and from literary evidence, that the revolutionary movement grew and spread among Egyptian Jewry, more particularly among the Jews of Alexandria, under the influence of Judaea and of its revolutionary movement.[1336] The blow dealt to the Alexandrian Jews in 66 and the destruction of the Temple undermined the position of the peace party and transferred the initiative to the extremists. The aristocratic leadership was nevertheless able to arrest the incitement of elements from Judaea after 70,[1337] and after the initial failure of an organized minority in 115 the remaining Jewish majority in the city seems to have been the victim of attack rather than the attacker; the focus of the rebellion passed to the rural areas outside Alexandria (see below p. 266). Lesquier indeed stated that the revolt in Egypt bore “a prominently rural character”,[1338] and Yeivin[1339] concluded from an analysis of the evidence that most of the inhabitants of the towns of Judaea and Galilee remained indifferent to the rising of 66-73, and that the active element was the peasantry.[1340] Hengel also emphasizes the withdrawal of the revolutionary groups from city-life.[1341] If this was so, the violence of the revolutionary movement among the Jews of the Egyptian countryside in Trajan’s reign is apt to support the view that the influence at work came from the Sicarian, Zealot and other activist groups of Judaea.

We have already seen that the nature of the activity of Jonathan the Weaver in Cyrene in 73 forms a link between the contemporary Sicarian movement in Judaea and the origins of the rising in Cyrene. In his action of leading 2,000 Jews into the desert, Jonathan resembled the “desert prophets” of Judaea before the great revolt, and in this reveals an affinity with the ideas and aims expressed in the literature of Hirbet Qumran — organized life in the desert for the purpose of spiritual and military preparation for the final messianic war. The finding of fragments of the Qumran literature at Masada[1342] is suggestive in this respect, for it indicates contact between the Yahad and the Sicarii of Eleazar ben Yair, if nothing more, and Josephus explicitly calls Jonathan a Sicarian.

The revolutionary movement which broke out under Trajan reveals three additional features closely associated with the Judaean extremist groups. These are: (a) the aggressive activism of the movement; (b) the character of its leadership; (c) the attitude of the insurgents towards all manifestations of idolatry, such as temples, altars and images.

The first characteristic requires little emphasis: the gentile sources stress the suddenness of the rising in Cyrene and in Egypt, where the Jews fell upon the Greeks, rising “with an incredible fury and all at once,... as if smitten with madness,” (ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πνεύματος δεινοῦ —[1343] quasi rabie efferati);[1344] “suddenly and all impelled by rage” (repentino omnes colore permoti);[1345] and if there is some doubt who were the first aggressors in Alexandria,[1346] it would nevertheless appear that the Jews began the attack in Cyprus. The large number of casualties among the gentiles in Cyprus and Cyrene (even if Dio’s figures are exaggerated) indicates the fury of the Jewish attack and evidences the element of surprise involved. The implication is that this was a movement initiated by the insurgents according to a prepared plan. The scale and systematic character of the destruction at Cyrene also witness to the organized character of the movement, and to its prior preparation.[1347]

The rising in Cyprus was headed by a leader named Artemion (Ἀρτεμίων),[1348] while the leader of the rebels of Cyrene is given one name by Eusebius, another by Dio.[1349] Dio calls him Andreas, Eusebius — Lucuas, and there is no certainty if one man is meant, or two. It is however a fact, that each historian had heard of one leader only. Eusebius calls Lucuas “their (i.e. the Jews’) king”.[1350] Eutychius ibn Batrik,[1351] whether or not he derived the information from Eusebius, writes that the Jews returned to Jerusalem in Trajan’s reign and crowned a king there. The monarchical or one-man leadership characterizes the Jewish revolutionary groups of 66-73, and if this phenomenon can be explained by the need for a single commander in a warlike situation, this is inadequate as an explanation regarding the Sicarian movement headed by Judah of Galilee, whose leadership descended hereditarily through three generations. Judah’s place was taken by his sons Simon and Jacob, their’s by Menahem, and Menahem was succeeded by his nephew Ele’azar ben Yair.[1352] It may be supposed, therefore, that those men enjoyed the reputation of a hereditary charisma; furthermore, Judah, Simon[1353] and Menahem are all alleged to have aspired to royal status.[1354] The tendency to hereditary leadership was characteristic, it seems, and perhaps peculiar, to a given current or perhaps to several currents of the revolutionary movement, and appears also to have been manifested by the rebels of Cyrene in Trajan’s time. It is not irrelevant to recall that a similar hereditary leadership of the descendants of Jesus, persisted in the early Christian community in Eretz Yisrael, and this was probably one of the factors which drew upon them the suspicions of Domitian and Trajan (see above, p. 248).

The uncompromising attitude of the Jewish rebels of Cyrene to idolatry is reflected in the clearest possible fashion by the archaeological testimony. The evidence of the systematic destruction of buildings, and especially of temples, during the revolt, is clear and prominent at Cyrene and has left not inconsiderable traces at other places in Libya,[1355] and to some extent in Alexandria and Cyprus. This extremist attitude to images as an expression of idolatry is associated in Eretz Yisrael more especially with the opponents of the Herodian dynasty and of Rome, from the time of the conquest of Judaea by Pompey. Examples are the tearing down of the eagle figure from the fagade of the Temple under Herod,[1356] the resistance to the introduction of the Roman military standards into Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate,[1357] and the destruction at Tiberias of the palace of Antipas, adorned with animal figures, after the outbreak of the Great Rebellion in Galilee.[1358] It can hardly be doubted, from Josephus’ accounts, that the first and last actions were the fruit of the influence of the extremist revolutionary groups such as the Sicarii and the Zealots, if not actually carried out by them.

In short the insurrectionary movement at Cyrene and elsewhere in the reign of Trajan reveals some of the features most characteristic of the current collectively (and in a sense erroneously) known as the Zealots; the influence of the same trend is visible in the rising in Egypt as well. The spirit of the movement was messianic, its aim the liquidation of the Roman regime and the setting up of a new Jewish commonwealth, whose task was to inaugurate the messianic era.