Contents
 

Who Would Rule the World?
Josephus' Biases
Table of the Faction Leaders
Maps of the Fighting
Chronological Table

"There broke out a prodigious storm in the night, with the utmost violence, and very strong winds, with the largest showers of rain, with continued lightnings, terrible thunderings, and amazing concussions and bellowings of the earth, that was in an earthquake. These things were a manifest indication that some destruction was coming upon men, when the system of the world was put into this disorder; and any one would guess that these wonders foreshowed some grand calamities that were coming.

....The Idumeans thought that God was angry at their taking arms, and that they would not escape punishment for their making war upon their metropolis. Ananus and his party thought that they had conquered without fighting, and that God acted as a general for them; but truly they proved both ill conjectures at what was to come...

For as the night was far gone, and the storm very terrible, Ananus gave the guards in the cloisters leave to go to sleep; while it came into the heads of the Zealots to make use of the saws  belonging to the Temple, and to cut the bars of the gates to pieces. The noise of the wind, and that not inferior sound of the thunder, did here also conspire with their designs, that the noise of the saws was not heard by the others.

So they secretly went out of the Temple to the wall of the city, and made use of their saws, and opened that gate which was over against the Idumeans..."

                                    - The Jewish War, 4.4.5 286-287
 
 

Who Would Rule the World?

"What more than all else incited them to the war was an ambiguous oracle…that that that time one from their country would become ruler of the world." (War 6.5.4 312)
 

Galilee's defeat by the Romans caused an upheaval in Judaea. Refugees from Galilee, including revolutionaries intending to fight another day, made their way to Jerusalem, swelling the ranks of the rebels that had held the Temple since the start of the revolt. But the moderates were also strengthened in their conviction that the Romans could not be stopped. The initial defeat of the Twelfth Legion under Cestius, which had so emboldened the revolutionaries and caused even the loyalists to wonder if divine providence might be on the side of Judaea, now looked to them like an aberration. There was no guarantee that heaven wouldn't favor the Romans.

A further fracture, though, was occurring among the rebels. Vespasian to them appeared to be dithering in Galilee, afraid to attack Jerusalem, and the death of Nero and rebellion elsewhere in the Empire would have provided proof that the new Judaean state was secure. So far as they were concerned, the revolt had been won. Thus the next question was already being addressed: Who would become ruler now?

Who would be King of Israel? And if the "oracle" reported by Josephus was correct (War 6.5.4 312), that person would become Ruler of the World. This prize encouraged would-be rulers to develop their own armies and defeat all opponents, for the winner of these struggles would by this means be proven to be the One anointed by the Lord to rule Israel and the World -- a Messiah.
 
 

Josephus' Biases

The scenario just described is one way of explaining the factional fighting in Jerusalem during the war. Josephus himself does not make things so clear.

During the period he was in Galilee Josephus had very little information on what went on in Jerusalem. His description of events there is sketchy, with some confusion of chronology and apparent duplication of stories (such as the two accounts of the election of a new high priest by the rebels). His accounts of Jerusalem in the period of 67-69 CE are not nearly as detailed as those of Galilee under his own command. The sketchiness continues until the arrival there of his foe John of Gischala, by which time Josephus had become a Roman prisoner and apparently had some access to the reports to General Vespasian that were coming from Jewish defectors; Josephus may even have acted as translator of some of these reports. And when the Roman army under Titus arrived at Jerusalem -- with Josephus now an honored associate due to his successful prediction of Vespasian's accession to the imperial throne -- Josephus was able to hear of events as they unfolded daily.

The sketchiness of Josephus' information is additionally marred by his lack of objectivity, evidenced by his relentless hostility and acidic comments about the pro-war parties. For him, the rebels are not true Jews at all, but only use religion as a shield behind which they perform all manner of sin, including robbery, bloodthirsty violence, and sexual licentiousness. The rebel leaders only want power for themselves, and will murder anyone who stand in their way.

But Josephus himself is aware of his biases, stating in his preface to The Jewish War:

"Should, however, any critic censure me for my strictures upon the tyrants or their bands of marauders…I ask his indulgence for a compassion which falls outside an historian’s province." (War 1.3.1 11)

Despite the biased view, Josephus still manages to tell us what the pro-war party thought they were doing. Judicious reading enables us to tease out some facts, and thus in the following chronology (see table) these apparent facts are presented, rather than Josephus' interpretation. We see that the revolutionaries, far from being simple robbers, continually were led and had support among some of the wealthiest and most prominent men of Jerusalem, such as Eleazar son of Simon, a wealthy and influential man and apparently one of the guardians of the Temple treasure. (It may be that Eleazar son of Simon is the same man as Eleazar son of Ananius, who started the revolt by halting the Temple sacrifices to the Roman Emperor; but that is a subject for another article.)

We also know that, despite Josephus' characterization of Jerusalem as being continually wracked by violence during this period, that there must have been some stability. There are plentiful coins of the period minted by the revolutionary government that have been found. A careful look at the chronology shows the worst episodes of violence occurred infrequently; the robbery of the populace of which Josephus accuses the revolutionaries could be seen, from the rebels point of view, as nothing but the collection of taxes to support the war effort.

It has been popular among critics to ascribe this anti-rebel bias of Josephus to his own weakness of character: either he is being a cowardly mouthpiece of the Roman government by denouncing any who oppose the Empire, or else he is trying to distance himself from his own revolutionary activities. Far less attention has been paid to the manifest reason for his hostility, which he both states himself and which is obvious to common sense: that the revolution was responsible for the unimaginable destruction of Josephus' home and the religious center of his people, Jerusalem and the Temple, the latter the abode of the Holy Spirit and one of the most magnificent structures of the world. This is sufficient reason for a post-war hatred of the revolutionaries, compared to which any personal aggrandizement that could come to Josephus is minuscule in comparison.
 
 

Table of the Faction Leaders

                                                          Click here for full-sized maps.

 
Where Josephus explicitly give dates of the Hebrew calendar (or the Macedonian equivalent), they are cited here; the translation to the modern calendar follow Niese’s as reported in the Loeb Edition. Other dates are estimates.

The chronology on this page is derived directly from the works of Flavius Josephus by G. J. Goldberg.

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