31. Suetonius, Nero, 38
32. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Books XIX and XX, hereafter, “Antiquities,” Wars of the Jews, esp., Chapter 8, Book II, hereafter “Wars,” in The Complete Works of Josephus, trans. William Whiston, 1960, Kregel. NOTE: The Very names of the rebel groups are suggestive of religious terrorists. The first, the “Zealots,” were credited with being an entirely new ideology or school of philosophy within Judaism by the historian Flavius Josephus, and the name of the other major rebel group, the “Sicarrii,” actually means “dagger men.” Both groups can only be described as “terrorists.” The Sicarii, for example, hid daggers under the cloaks and mingled in crowds to disguise their assassinations. (See, Chaliand, Gerard, The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to al Queda, 2007, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 68.) These groups are associated with both assassinations and kidnappings by the ancient historians. Apart from disturbances in both Rome and Alexandria, these terrorists were even accused of arson. When a terrible fire destroyed much of the city of Antioch in Syria shortly before Vespasian arrived in the East, the locals believed it was arson and blamed the Jews. Although Josephus tries in his text to absolve Jews of any guilt, both the leadership and the populace of the city were still convinced that Jews had set the blaze. (Josephus, Wars, ante, Book VII, chapter 3, sec. 4, and see, Levick, Barbara, Vespasian, 1999, New York: Routledge, pp. 147-148.) The Great Fire of Rome would not be the only instance of a major urban fire that was blamed at the time on messianic Jews. Moreover, Tacitus himself provides clear evidence that the fire Nero blamed on Christians was arson, although Tacitus’s own implication is that Nero himself was to blame: “And no one dared to stop the mischief, because of incessant menaces from a number of persons who forbade the extinguishing of the flames, because again others openly hurled brands, and kept shouting that there was one who gave them authority, either seeking to plunder more freely, or obeying orders.” (Tacitus, ante, Annals, Book XV, 38, emphasis added.)
Josephus ultimately blames the burning of the Jewish Temple on the Jewish rebels themselves, but that instance of arson must surely be laid at the feet of the Romans. Writing around the year 400, the early Christian historian Sulpicius Severus, a historian normally given only little credit for the period before his own time, quotes Pliny the Younger as Pliny quotes from the missing volume five of Tacitus’s Histories. Being lost, only quotations from other authors who quote Tacitus’s work survive. In Pliny/Severus’s description of the siege of Jerusalem (which varies considerably from that of Josephus), Titus is said to have called a meeting in which he discussed the question of whether or not to destroy the Temple—and the reason cited in favor of doing so is stated to be the Temple’s inspirational power for both “the Jews and the christiani.” (S. Severus, Chronicle, chapter XXX.) Whether this means “Christians” or not is a matter of scholarly controversy. In any case, other instances of arson may well have been part of the Jewish war effort.
Of note, while the term Paul uses to describe himself, “Zealot,” on two occasions (Acts 22:3; Galatians 1:14) is usually translated simply as “one who was zealous” for Jewish tradition, that term is actually a noun. It may therefore be an assertion on Paul’s part that he was a member of the rebel group known as the Zealots. Two recent translations (The Jewish New Testament and The Alternate Literal Translation) translate this simply, “a zealot.” While Jay P. Green’s Modern King James Version makes this out to be “a zealous one,” the passage from Galatians is rendered “being an absolute zealot for the traditions…” in The Unvarnished New Testament (1991). This in itself may suggest that the Jewish Christians and the Zealots were one and the same group, if not close rivals. In either case, we must bear in mind that Paul’s various self-descriptions, as we shall continue to see, are a moving target and far from reliable.
33. Eisenman, Robert, James the Brother of Jesus, 1996, Viking, and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians, 1996, Element.
34. Galatians 5:1-6, emphasis added.
35. Ephesians 2:11-20, emphasis added. NOTE: At Matthew 21:41 Jesus even informs the chief priests and the elders of the Jews, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” Jesus’s context, the Parable of the Two Sons, is also noteworthy.
What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, “Son, go and work today in the vineyard.”
“I will not,” he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, “I will, sir,” but he did not go.
“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.” (Matthew 21:28-32)
Tax collectors are still mentioned right alongside “sinners” in the Gospels: “When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” (Mark 2:15; curiously, Matthew, a Gospel directed at a Jewish audience, drops the first “third-person” listing of tax collectors with sinners.) From this should we conclude that all tax-collectors as such are sinners? Tax collectors were already widely regarded as cheats, and while our Gospel references do mention tax collectors in the same breath as “sinners,” the distinction between the two is intriguing, especially since the Gospels depict Jesus as being friendly with tax-collectors. Jesus had “many” followers who were publicans (tax collectors) and even recruited a major disciple who was one. (Mark 2:13-17, Luke 5:27-32 and Matthew 9:9-13) So, just as one might have guessed, tax collectors are likely to have been among the most grateful for Christ’s message. One Zacchaeus, the wealthy “chief tax collector” in Jericho, was so anxious to hear Jesus speak that he climbed a tree to get the best vantage, according to Luke. Favorably impressed, Jesus insisted on dining at the man’s house. (Luke 19:1-10) When the crowd complains that he was dining with “a sinner,” Jesus defends him:
All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:7-10)
By Christ’s reckoning, then, tax collectors can be honest, and he is said to have regarded them as worthy friends and followers.
36. 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, emphasis added.
37. Galatians 2:2-13, emphasis added. NOTE: Galatians is a first-person narrative, a letter, making it far more credible than Acts’ historical reconstruction of events after-the-fact. In addition, such a heated debate between the Apostles would have been embarrassing to later Christians and for that very reason Galatians is almost certainly authentic, even if it also still contains Paul’s own deceptions. Peter and Titus may well have been granted special exemptions from Mosaic Law. In emergency situations, Jewish tradition sometimes permits avoiding strict Torah observance. King David may have cut corners in a time of need at 1 Samuel 21, for example, which Jesus himself cites to justify the Torah-violating behavior of his own disciples in a non-emergency situation at Mark 2:23-28. Also, during the Hasmonean Revolt, many Jews decided that it was permissible to engage in defensive warfare on the Sabbath rather than be slaughtered (1 Maccabees 2:41).