Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (10 page)

Like most high priests, Caiaphas was an extremely wealthy man, though his wealth may
have come through his wife, who was the daughter of a previous high priest named Ananus.
Caiaphas likely was appointed to the office of high priest not because of his own
merit but through the influence of his father-in-law, a larger-than-life character
who managed to pass the position to five of his own sons while remaining a significant
force throughout Caiaphas’s tenure. According to the gospel of John, after Jesus was
arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was first brought to Ananus for questioning
before being dragged to Caiaphas for judgment (John 18:13).

Gratus had appointed Caiaphas as high priest in the year 18
C.E.
, meaning he had already served eight years in the office by the time Pilate arrived
in Jerusalem. Part of the reason Caiaphas was able to hold the position of high priest
for an unprecedented eighteen years was because of the close relationship he ended
up forging with Pontius Pilate. The two men worked well together. The period of their
combined rule, from 18
C.E
. to 36
C.E.
, coincided with the most stable period in the entire first century. Together they
managed to keep a lid on the revolutionary impulse of the Jews by dealing ruthlessly
with any hint of political disturbance, no matter how small.

Yet despite their best efforts, Pilate and Caiaphas were unable to extinguish the
zeal that had been kindled in the hearts of the Jews
by the messianic uprisings that took place at the turn of the century—those of Hezekiah
the bandit chief, Simon of Peraea, Athronges the shepherd boy, and Judas the Galilean.
Not long after Pilate arrived in Jerusalem, a new crop of preachers, prophets, bandits,
and messiahs began traipsing through the Holy Land, gathering disciples, preaching
liberation from Rome, and promising the coming of the Kingdom of God. In 28
C.E
., an ascetic preacher named John began baptizing people in the waters of the Jordan
River, initiating them into what he believed was the true nation of Israel. When John
the Baptist’s popularity became too great to control, Pilate’s tetrarch in Peraea,
Herod Antipas, had him imprisoned and executed sometime around 30
C.E
. A couple of years later, a woodworker from Nazareth named Jesus led a band of disciples
on a triumphant procession into Jerusalem, where he assaulted the Temple, overturned
the tables of the money changers, and broke free the sacrificial animals from their
cages. He, too, was captured and sentenced to death by Pilate. Three years after that,
in 36
C.E
., a messiah known only as “the Samaritan” gathered a group of followers atop Mount
Gerizim, where he claimed he would reveal “sacred vessels” hidden there by Moses.
Pilate responded with a detachment of Roman soldiers who climbed Gerizim and cut the
Samaritan’s faithful multitude to pieces.

It was that final act of unrestrained violence on Mount Gerizim that ended Pilate’s
governorship in Jerusalem. Summoned to Rome to explain his actions to the emperor
Tiberius, Pilate never returned to Judea. He was exiled to Gaul in 36
C.E
. Considering their close working relationship, it may be no coincidence that Joseph
Caiaphas was dismissed from his position as high priest in the same year.

With Pilate and Caiaphas gone, there was no longer any hope of stifling the revolutionary
passions of the Jews. By midcentury the whole of Palestine was buzzing with messianic
energy. In 44
C.E
., a wonder-working prophet named Theudas crowned himself messiah and brought hundreds
of followers to the Jordan,
promising to part the river just as Moses had done at the Sea of Reeds a thousand
years earlier. This, he claimed, would be the first step in reclaiming the Promised
Land from Rome. The Romans, in response, dispatched an army to lop off Theudas’s head
and scatter his followers into the desert. In 46
C.E
., two sons of Judas the Galilean, Jacob and Simon, launched their own revolutionary
movement in the footsteps of their father and grandfather; both were crucified for
their actions.

What Rome required to keep these messianic stirrings in check was a steady, sensible
hand, someone who would respond to the grumblings of the Jews while still maintaining
peace and order in the Judean and Galilean countryside. What Rome sent to Jerusalem
instead was a series of bumbling governors—each more vicious and greedy than the last—whose
corruption and ineptitude would transform the anger, resentment, and apocalyptic mania
that had been steadily building throughout Palestine into a full-scale revolution.

It started with Ventidius Cumanus, who was stationed in Jerusalem in 48
C.E
., two years after the uprising by Judas’s sons had been quelled. As governor, Cumanus
was little more than a thief and a fool. Among his first acts was the posting of Roman
soldiers on the roofs of the Temple’s porticoes, ostensibly to guard against chaos
and disorder during the feast of Passover. In the midst of the holy celebrations,
one of these soldiers thought it would be amusing to pull back his garment and display
his bare ass to the congregation below, all the while shouting what Josephus, in his
decorum, describes as “such words as you might expect upon such a posture.”

The crowd was incensed. A riot broke out in the Temple plaza. Rather than calming
the situation, Cumanus sent a cohort of Roman soldiers up to the Temple Mount to butcher
the panicked crowd. The pilgrims who escaped the slaughter were trapped by the narrow
exits leading out of the Temple courtyard. Hundreds were trampled underfoot. Tensions
escalated further after one of Cumanus’s legionaries grabbed hold of a Torah scroll
and tore it to
pieces in front of a Jewish assembly. Cumanus had the soldier hastily executed, but
it was not enough to quell the growing anger and disaffection among the Jews.

Things came to a head when a group of Jewish travelers from Galilee were attacked
while passing through Samaria on their way to Jerusalem. When Cumanus dismissed the
Jews’ appeal for justice, allegedly because the Samaritans had bribed him, a group
of bandits, led by a man named Eleazar son of Dinaeus, took justice into their own
hands and went on a rampage throughout Samaria, killing every Samaritan they came
across. This was more than an act of bloody vengeance; it was an assertion of freedom
by a people fed up with allowing law and order to rest in the hands of a crooked and
fickle administrator from Rome. The outbreak of violence between the Jews and Samaritans
was the last straw for the emperor. In 52 c.e., Ventidius Cumanus was sent into exile
and Antonius Felix was shipped off to Jerusalem in his stead.

As governor, Felix fared no better than his predecessor. Like Cumanus, he treated
the Jews under his control with utter contempt. He used the power of the purse to
play the different Jewish factions in Jerusalem against one another, always to his
benefit. He seemed at first to have enjoyed a close relationship with the high priest
Jonathan, one of the five sons of Ananus who served in the position. Felix and Jonathan
worked together to suppress the bandit gangs in the Judean countryside; Jonathan may
have even played a role in Felix’s capture of the bandit chief Eleazar son of Dinaeus,
who was sent to Rome and crucified. But once the high priest had served Felix’s purpose,
he was cast aside. Some say Felix had a hand in what happened next, for it was under
his governorship that a new kind of bandit arose in Jerusalem: a shadowy group of
Jewish rebels that the Romans dubbed
Sicarii
, or “Daggermen,” due to their penchant for small, easy-to-conceal daggers, called
sicae
, with which they assassinated the enemies of God.

The Sicarii were zealots fueled by an apocalyptic worldview and a fervent devotion
to establishing God’s rule on earth. They
were fanatical in their opposition to the Roman occupation, though they reserved their
vengeance for those Jews, particularly among the wealthy priestly aristocracy, who
submitted to Roman rule. Fearless and unstoppable, the Sicarii murdered their opponents
with impunity: in the middle of the city, in broad daylight, in the midst of great
hordes, during feast days and festivals. They blended into assemblies and crowds,
their daggers tucked inside their cloaks, until they were close enough to strike.
Then, as the dead man collapsed to the ground, covered in blood, the Sicarii would
sheath their daggers stealthily and join their voices in the cries of indignation
from the panicked crowd.

The leader of the Sicarii at the time was a young Jewish revolutionary named Menahem,
the grandson of none other than the failed messiah Judas the Galilean. Menahem shared
his grandfather’s hatred for the wealthy priestly aristocracy in general, and the
unctuous high priests in particular. To the Sicarii, Jonathan son of Ananus was an
imposter: a thief and a swindler who had grown rich by exploiting the suffering of
the people. He was as responsible for the bondage of the Jews as the heathen emperor
in Rome. His presence on the Temple Mount defiled the entire nation. His very existence
was an abomination to the Lord. He had to die.

In the year 56
C.E
., the Sicarii under Menahem’s leadership were finally able to achieve what Judas
the Galilean could only dream of accomplishing. During the feast of Passover, a Sicarii
assassin pushed his way through the mass of pilgrims packed into the Temple Mount
until he was close enough to the high priest Jonathan to pull out a dagger and swipe
it across his throat. He then melted back into the crowd.

The murder of the high priest threw all of Jerusalem into a panic. How could the leader
of the Jewish nation, God’s representative on earth, be killed in broad daylight,
in the middle of the Temple courtyard, and seemingly with impunity? Many refused to
believe that the culprit could have been a Jew. There were whispers that the Roman
governor, Felix, had ordered the assassination
himself. Who else could have been so profane as to spill the high priest’s blood on
the Temple grounds?

Yet the Sicarii had only just begun their reign of terror. Shouting their slogan “No
lord but God!” they began attacking the members of the Jewish ruling class, plundering
their possessions, kidnapping their relatives, and burning down their homes. By these
tactics they sowed terror into the hearts of the Jews so that, as Josephus writes,
“More terrible than their crimes was the fear they aroused, every man hourly expecting
death, as in war.”

With Jonathan’s death, the messianic ardor in Jerusalem reached fever pitch. There
was a widespread sense among the Jews that something profound was happening, a feeling
born of desperation, nurtured by a people yearning for freedom from foreign rule.
Zeal, the spirit that had fueled the revolutionary fervor of the bandits, prophets,
and messiahs, was now coursing through the population like a virus working its way
through the body. No longer could it be contained in the countryside; its influence
was being felt in the towns and cities, even in Jerusalem. It was not just the peasants
and outcasts who were whispering about the great kings and prophets who had freed
Israel from her enemies in the past. The wealthy and upwardly mobile were also becoming
increasingly animated by the fervent desire to cleanse the Holy Land of the Roman
occupation. The signs were everywhere. The scriptures were about to be fulfilled.
The end of days was at hand.

In Jerusalem, a holy man named Jesus son of Ananias suddenly appeared, prophesying
the destruction of the city and the imminent return of the messiah. Another man, a
mysterious Jewish sorcerer called “the Egyptian,” declared himself King of the Jews
and gathered thousands of followers on the Mount of Olives, where he vowed that, like
Joshua at Jericho, he would bring the walls of Jerusalem tumbling down at his command.
The crowd was massacred by Roman troops, though, as far as anyone knows, the Egyptian
escaped.

Felix’s bumbling reaction to these events ultimately led to his sacking and replacement
with another man, Porcius Festus. But
Festus proved no better in dealing with the restive Jewish population, either in the
countryside, where the number of prophets and messiahs gathering followers and preaching
liberation from Rome was growing out of control, or in Jerusalem, where the Sicarii,
buoyed by their success in killing the high priest Jonathan, were now murdering and
pillaging at will. So overwhelmed was Festus by the stress of the position that he
died soon after taking the office. He was followed by Lucceius Albinus, a notorious
degenerate, swindler, and incompetent who spent his two years in Jerusalem enriching
himself by plundering the wealth of the populace. After Albinus came Gessius Florus,
whose brief, turbulent tenure was remembered because first, it made the years under
Albinus seem positively peaceful in comparison, and second, he would be the last Roman
governor Jerusalem would know.

It was now 64
C.E
. In two years’ time the anger, resentment, and messianic zeal that had been steadily
building throughout the land would erupt into a full-scale revolt against Rome. Cumanus,
Felix, Festus, Albinus, Florus—each of these governors contributed through his malfeasance
to the Jewish uprising. Rome itself was to blame for its mismanagement and severe
overtaxation of the beleaguered population. Certainly the Jewish aristocracy, with
their incessant conflicts and their sycophantic efforts to gain power and influence
by bribing Roman officials, shared responsibility for the deteriorating social order.
And no doubt the Temple leadership played a role in fostering the widespread sense
of injustice and crushing poverty that had left so many Jews with no choice but to
turn to violence. Add to all this the seizure of private lands, the high levels of
unemployment, the displacement and forced urbanization of the peasantry, and the drought
and famine that devastated the Judean and Galilean countryside, and it was only a
matter of time before the fires of rebellion would engulf the whole of Palestine.
It seemed that the entire Jewish nation was ready to erupt into open revolt at the
slightest provocation—which Florus was foolish enough to provide.