Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (34 page)

For more on Judea as a “Temple-State,” see H. D. Mantel in “The High Priesthood and
the Sanhedrin in the Time of the Second Temple,”
The Herodian Period
, ed. M. Avi-Yonah and Z. Baras,
The World History of the Jewish People
1.7 (Jerusalem: New Brunswick, 1975), 264–81. Josephus’s quote regarding Jerusalem
as a theocracy is from
Against Apion
, 2.164–66. For more on the Temple of Jerusalem as a bank, see Neill Q. Hamilton,
“Temple Cleansing and Temple Bank,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
83.4 (1964): 365–72. A very concise breakdown of the Temple’s revenues can be found
in Magen Broshi, “The Role of the Temple in the Herodian Economy,”
Jewish Studies
38 (1987): 31–37.

The Qumran community rejected the Temple of Jerusalem for having fallen into the hands
of the corrupt priesthood. Instead, it saw itself as a temporary replacement for the
Temple, referring to the community as the “temple of man/men,” or
miqdash adam
. Some scholars have argued that this is why the Qumranites were so interested in
ritual purity; they believed that their prayers and lustrations were more potent than
the rituals and sacrifices in Jerusalem, which had been tainted by the Temple priests.
For a detailed discussion of the phrase “temple of man/men” at Qumran, see G. Brooke,
Exegesis at Qumran: 4QFlorilegium in its Jewish Context
(Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1985), 184–93; D. Dimant, “4QFlorilegium
and the Idea of the Community as Temple,” in
Hellenica et Judaica: Hommage à Valentin Nikiprowetzky
, ed. A. Caquot (Leuben-Paris: Éditions Peeters, 1986), 165–89.

It is Josephus who famously refers to the entire priestly nobility as “lovers of luxury”
in
The Jewish War
, though he was not alone in his criticism. There is a similar criticism of the priests
in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where they are called the “seekers of smooth things” and
those who are “flattery-seekers.”

There is a wonderful description of the high priest in the famed
Letter of Aristeas
, written sometime around the second century
B.C.E.
, a translation of which appears in the second volume of James H. Charlesworth, ed.,
The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
(New York: Doubleday, 1985), 7–34. Here is the excerpt: “We were greatly astonished,
when we saw Eleazar engaged in the ministration, at the mode of his dress, and the
majesty of his appearance, which was revealed in the robe which he wore and the precious
stones upon his person. There were golden bells upon the garment which reached down
to his feet, giving forth a peculiar kind of melody, and on both sides of them there
were pomegranates with variegated flowers of a wonderful hue. He was girded with a
girdle of conspicuous beauty, woven in the most beautiful colours. On his breast he
wore the oracle of God, as it is called, on which twelve stones, of different kinds,
were inset, fastened together with gold, containing the names of the leaders of the
tribes, according to their original order, each one flashing forth in an indescribable
way its own particular colour. On his head he wore a tiara, as it is called, and upon
this in the middle of his forehead an inimitable turban, the royal diadem
full of glory with the name of God inscribed in sacred letters on a plate of gold … having
been judged worthy to wear these emblems in the ministrations. Their appearance created
such awe and confusion of mind as to make one feel that one had come into the presence
of a man who belonged to a different world. I am convinced that any one who takes
part in the spectacle which I have described will be filled with astonishment and
indescribable wonder and be profoundly affected in his mind at the thought of the
sanctity which is attached to each detail of the service.”

For a primer on Rome’s policy in dealing with subject populations, and especially
its relationship with the high priest and priestly aristocracy in Jerusalem, see Martin
Goodman,
The Ruling Class of Judea
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); also Richard A. Horsley, “High Priests
and the Politics of Roman Palestine,”
Journal for the Study of Judaism
17.1 (1986): 23–55. Goodman’s
Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations
(London: Penguin, 2007) provides an indispensable discussion of the remarkably tolerant
attitude of Rome toward the Jews while also providing a range of Roman views about
Jewish exceptionalism. It is from Goodman’s book that the quotations from Cicero,
Tacitus, and Seneca are pulled (pages 390–91). Further discussion of Roman attitudes
toward Jewish practices can be found in Eric S. Gruen, “Roman Perspectives on the
Jews in the Age of the Great Revolt,” in
The First Jewish Revolt
, ed. Andrea M. Berlin and J. Andrew Overman (New York: Routledge, 2002), 27–42. For
more on the religious practices and cults of Rome, see Mary Beard, John North, and
Simon Price,
Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook
, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

The act of “utter annihilation” (
herem
in Hebrew), in which God commands the wholesale slaughter of “all that breathes,”
is a recurring theme in the Bible, as I explain in my book
How to Win a Cosmic War
(New York: Random House, 2009), 66–69. It is “ethnic cleansing as a means of ensuring
cultic purity,” to quote the great biblical scholar John Collins, “The Zeal of Phinehas:
The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
122.1 (2003): 7.

For precise taxes and measures taken by Rome upon the Jewish peasantry, see Lester
L. Grabbe,
Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian
, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 334–37; also Horsley and Hanson,
Bandits, Prophets, Messiahs
, 48–87. Grabbe notes that some scholars have cast doubt on whether the Jewish population
was forced to pay tribute to Rome, though no one questions whether the Jews were forced
to finance the Roman civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar. On the subject of
mass urbanization and the transfer of populations from
rural to urban centers, see Jonathan Reed, “Instability in Jesus’ Galilee: A Demographic
Perspective,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
(2010) 129.2: 343–65.

The term “messiah” in the Hebrew Bible is used in reference to King Saul (1 Samuel
12:5), King David (2 Samuel 23:1), King Solomon (1 Kings 1:39), and the priest Aaron
and his sons (Exodus 29:1–9), as well as the prophets Isaiah (Isaiah 61:1) and Elisha
(1 Kings 19:15–16). The exception to this list can be found in Isaiah 45:1, where
the Persian king Cyrus, though he does not know the God of the Jews (45:4), is called
messiah. In all, there are thirty-nine occurrences of the word “messiah” in the Hebrew
Bible that refer specifically to the anointing of someone or something, such as Saul’s
shield (2 Samuel 1:21) or the Tabernacle (Numbers 7:1). And yet not one of these occurrences
refers to the messiah as a future salvific character who would be appointed by God
to rebuild the Kingdom of David and restore Israel to a position of glory and power.
That view of the messiah, which seems to have been fairly well established by the
time of Jesus, was actually shaped during the tumultuous period of the Babylonian
Exile in the sixth century
B.C.E
.

Although there is little doubt that the bandit gangs of Galilee represented an apocalyptic,
eschatological, and millenarian movement, Richard Horsley and John Hanson view these
as three distinct categories, and as a result they refuse to label the bandits a “messianic”
movement. In other words, the authors contend that “messianic” and “eschatological”
must not be viewed as equivalents. Yet, as I discuss in this section, there is no
reason to believe that such a distinction existed in the minds of the Jewish peasant,
who, far from having a sophisticated understanding of messianism, would have most
likely lumped all of these “distinct categories” into a vague expectation of the “End
Times.” In any case, Horsley and Hanson themselves admit that “many of the essential
conditions for banditry and messianic movements are the same. In fact, there might
well have been no difference between them had there not been among the Jews a tradition
of popular kingship and historical prototypes of a popular ‘anointed one.’ ”
Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs
, 88–93.

For Caesar as Son of God, see Adela Yarbro Collins, “Mark and His Readers: The Son
of God Among Greeks and Romans,”
Harvard Theological Review
93.2 (2000): 85–100. Two zealous rabbis, Judas son of Sepphoraeus and Matthias son
of Margalus, led an uprising that attacked the Temple and tried to destroy the eagle
that Herod placed atop the Temple gates. They and their students were captured and
tortured to death by Herod’s men.

The complexities of Jewish sectarianism in first-century Judaism are tackled
nicely by Jeff S. Anderson in his cogent analysis
The Internal Diversification of Second Temple Judaism
(Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 2002).

Josephus says Simon of Peraea called himself “king,” by which Horsley and Hanson infer
that he was part of the “popular messianic movements” that erupted after Herod’s death.
See
Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs
, 93. Again, for me there seems to be no reason to assume any distinction whatsoever
in the minds of the Jewish peasantry between “messiah” and “king,” insofar as both
titles relied not on the scriptures, which the vast majority of Jews could neither
access nor read, but rather on popular traditions and stories of messianic movements
from Jewish history, as well as on oracles, popular images, fables, and oral traditions.
Of course, some scholars go so far as to refuse to consider “king” to mean messiah.
In other words, they make a distinction between, as Craig Evans puts it, “political
royal claimants and messianic royal claimants.” Among this camp is M. De Jong,
Christology in Context: The Earliest Christian Response to Jesus
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988). But Evans is right to argue that when dealing
with any royal aspirant in first-century Palestine, “the presumption should be that
any Jewish claim to Israel’s throne is in all probability a messianic claimant in
some sense.” I couldn’t agree more. See Craig Evans,
Jesus and His Contemporaries
(Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1995), 55.

On the population of ancient Nazareth, see the relevant entry in the
Anchor Bible Dictionary
(New York: Doubleday, 1992). See also E. Meyers and J. Strange,
Archaeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1981) and John Dominic Crossan,
The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
(New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 18. Scholars disagree about just how many people
lived in Nazareth at the time of Jesus, with some claiming fewer than a couple hundred,
and others saying as many as a couple thousand. My instinct is to hedge toward the
middle of the scale; hence my estimate of a population consisting of about one hundred
families. For more about provincial life in the Galilee of Jesus see Scott Korb,
Life in Year One: What the World Was Like in First-Century Palestine
(New York: Riverhead, 2011).

Despite the stories in the gospels about Jesus preaching in his hometown’s synagogue,
no archaeological evidence has been unearthed to indicate the presence of a synagogue
in ancient Nazareth, though there very well could have been a small structure that
served as such (remember that “synagogue” in Jesus’s time could mean something as
simple as a room with a Torah scroll). It should also be remembered that by the time
the gospels were written, the Temple of Jerusalem had been destroyed and the sole
gathering place for Jews was the
synagogue. So it makes sense that Jesus is constantly presented as teaching in the
synagogue in every town he visits.

No inscriptions have been found in Nazareth to indicate that the population was particularly
literate. Scholars estimate that between 95 and 97 percent of the Jewish peasantry
at the time of Jesus could neither read nor write. On that point see Crossan,
Historical Jesus
, 24–26.

On Nazareth as the place of Jesus’s birth, see John P. Meier,
A Marginal Jew
, vol. 1, 277–78; E. P. Sanders,
The Historical Figure of Jesus
(New York: Penguin, 1993); and John Dominic Crossan,
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
(New York: HarperOne, 1995), 18–23.

For more on messianic views at the time of Jesus, see Gershom Scholem,
The Messianic Idea in Judaism
(New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 1–36. Scholem outlines two distinct messianic trends
within early Judaism: the restorative and the utopian. Restorative messianism seeks
a return to an ideal condition in the glorified past; in other words, it considers
the improvement of the present era to be directly linked to the glories of the past.
But while the restorative pole finds its hope in the past, it is nevertheless directly
concerned with the desire of an even better future that will bring about “a state
of things which has never yet existed.” Related to the restorative pole is utopian
messianism. More apocalyptic in character, utopian messianism seeks catastrophic change
with the coming of the messiah: that is, the annihilation of the present world and
the initiation of a messianic age. Restorative messianism can be seen in the kingly
traditions that look to the Davidic ideal—it seeks to establish a kingdom in the present
time—while the utopian messianism is associated with the priestly figure found in
the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. Of course, neither of these messianic trends existed
independently of the other. On the contrary, both poles existed in some form in nearly
every messianic group. Indeed, it was the tension between these two messianic trends
that created the varying character of the messiah in Judaism. For more on Jewish messianism,
see studies by Richard Horsley, including “Messianic Figures and Movements in First-Century
Palestine,”
The Messiah
, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 295; “Popular Messianic
Movements Around the Time of Jesus,”
Catholic Biblical Quarterly
46 (1984): 447–95; and “ ‘Like One of the Prophets of Old’: Two Types of Popular
Prophets at the Time of Jesus,”
Catholic Biblical Quarterly
47 (1985): 435–63. All three of Horsley’s studies have been vital in my examination
of messianic ideas around the time of Jesus. I also recommend the relevant entry in
The Anchor Bible Dictionary
, ed. D. N. Freedman et al. (New York: Doubleday, 1992); and
The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion
, ed. J. Werblowsky et al. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966).