Critical examination of the above story, as related by Josephus, raises several problems, not all of which are soluble. Klausner long ago remarked[1185] that the term “Sicarian” applied to Jonathan hardly accords with his behaviour, namely, the leading of an unarmed mob towards the desert on the promise of showing them signs and wonders. The Sicarians generally believed in armed insurrection against Rome and their other enemies, whereas “signs and wonders” belong to the sort of action ascribed in Judaea, in the years before the great rebellion, to “the Egyptian prophet,” who led 30,000 people from the desert to the Mount of Olives with the purpose of capturing Jerusalem by performing miracles,[1186] and to one Theudas, who led a large mob to the Jordan in order to take them to the desert,[1187] and was killed by the procurator Fadus. The contradiction between the acts of Jonathan and his title of “Sicarian” can indeed be resolved, and to this we shall return. But first another question arises: Why did the Roman authorities fail to notice Jonathan’s departure at the head of two thousand Jews in the direction of the desert? The answer might be that they had left the towns secretly, in small groups, making for a common meeting place, yet the whole action rather suggests an excited assembly and a mass-march under the influence of Jonathan’s personality. The explanation is rather to be sought elsewhere; that the assembly took place not in the city, but in the rural area.[1188]
Another question forces itself upon the enquirer; why did Catullus believe that there was no danger in putting to death wealthy Jews since he had confiscated their property to the treasury? It is easy to connect this remark with the avarice and covetousness of Vespasian; it is known that the new emperor faced an empty treasury at the end of the civil war, hence his severity in the collection of taxes and in the augmentation of revenue,[1189] nor are anecdotes lacking of his greed.[1190] Suetonius accuses him of promoting corrupt officials so that he could condemn the wealthier ones, and it was said of him that he then wrung them out like sponges.[1191] On the other hand Suetonius writes that “no innocent person was ever punished except in his absence, because he did not know of it, against his will, or because he had been deceived.”[1192] Suetonius’ two statements are contradictory, and the first accords better with the conduct of Catullus. Yet even if we assume that it is correct, Josephus would not have admitted the reality of this vicious characteristic on the part of the patron to whom he owed his life. The facts remain to carry their own condemnation.
Catullus’ execution of the Jewish aristocracy of Cyrene can indeed be interpreted in the light of the situation prevailing at the time with regard to the Jewry of the Empire as a whole and of Cyrene in particular. In Judaea the last embers of rebellion had only just been stamped out, while violent reactions had occurred also among Alexandrian Jewry.[1193] No one knew where new reactions might appear, and the nervousness of the authorities in those provincial centres where Jews were numerous is understandable. The destruction of the Temple made it natural to anticipate insurrectionary conspiracies in every Jewish community, and Jonathan may not have been isolated in his revolutionary plans. At Cyrene, in addition, socially explosive material had accumulated in the form of a landless proletariat on the one hand, and in the discontent of the landowners who held themselves to be injured by the new regulation of the ager publicus on the other. The confiscation of the land of Jewish proprietors would have been an “ideal” solution in such a complex situation, the more so if they were accused of fostering sedition against the Emperor.[1194] As a number of the condemned Jews were citizens of the city (or cities), no small part of their possessions would have been landed property, which now passed to the imperial fiscus. Catullus, according to Josephus, was not tried or punished by Vespasian, a fact which appears to prove the latter’s concurrence with the judicial murder and with the spoliation of the possessions of the accused. In defence of Vespasian it can only be said that the punishment of a governor at this juncture, when the Jewish insurrection had just ended and the Flavian dynasty was barely consolidated in power, would not have been popular among the groups about the Imperator. Whatever the case, the facts served to emphasize the cynical attitude to a perversion of justice affected by political considerations. The most moderate of the Cyrenean Jews was bound to realize clearly that from now on the Jews were outside the law. A boundary-stone found below the Jebel escarpment 500 metres south of the modern townlet of Susa, which impinges on Apollonia, records the acquisition and leasing of two farms covering 23% medimnia (about 251 iugera) of land by the city of Apollonia.[1195] The transaction was carried out with the sanction of the Emperor Vespasian by the provincial governor C. Arinius Modestus, who was discharging a second term of governorship, two local men acting as guarantors. Arinius’ prolonged term was probably necessitated by the disturbances of 73; the acquisition and leasing of the land — presumably state property, may well have been a consequence of the confiscations of Jewish property by Flavius Catullus.
It has already been observed that an apparent contradiction exists between Jonathan’s description as a “Sicarian” and his conduct as a prophet and revealer of signs and wonders. There can be no doubt, however, that the Zealot aspirants to the Messianic kingdom in the last years before the destruction of the Second Temple, included two principal currents, one of which saw the road to the achievement of its aim in military action and political organization, while the other sought realization in the anticipation of miracles and wonders to be performed by the Almighty through the instrumentality of men of particular charisma. To the second current doubtless belonged the Egyptian prophet and Theudas, whose acts are described by Josephus. But there was a close connection between the two currents, and there was also a group or trend that combined both aspirations. This group is described by Josephus[1196] after he has described the Sicarii: “Additional to these men of blood was another group, evil men, whose hands were clean of blood, but were themselves even more wanton in heart, since they, no less than the assassins, destroyed the peace of the city. For themselves misled, they misled others, and pretending to Divine inspiration, engaged in revolution and revolt, influencing the multitude to madness, leading them to the desert and claiming that there God would reveal to them omens of liberation”. The Qumran scrolls have now proved to us the activist revolutionary content of the sect’s aims — more particularly the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness.[1197] This document appears to belong to a period between the ist century B.C. and A.D. 70, and very probably, in Yadin’s opinion, to the Roman period, i.e., between 64 B.C. and the latter date. Its contents are the definition of the aims and phases of the war to be waged by Israel against the nations on the final day in order to attain complete redemption. It drafts the regulations and the regime to prevail among the combatants, describes the organizational structure and armament of their army, its array and tactics. As Devir has observed,[1198] the desert performed an important function in Jewish history, as a symbol and source of religious and political inspiration, in which divers trends and individuals in Judaism saw a place of devotion and solitary retreat, where the spiritual powers could be renewed and purified, where profounder contact with God could be attained, lhe desert symbolized the furnace in which the nation had been annealed, the heroic cradle of its unsullied youth, and the place of creation of its law of righteousness. For this reason the men of the Qumran sect saw their sojourn in the desert as a stage of spiritual and physical preparation for the final struggle which was to bring about the liberation of Israel and the redemption of mankind.
1188
Some confirmation of this suggestion is perhaps to be found in the wording of Josephus, who writes: “After he (sc. Jonathan) had convinced two-thousand of the ἐγχώριοι”. The last word has two meanings, viz. “local people”, and “country-people”.
1191
1192
1194
It is interesting that Josephus’ words can be interpreted to mean that the property had been confiscated before the execution of its owners.
1197
Y. Yadin.
1198
Y. Devir,