Why did Domitian and Tacitus see in the spread of Judaism a peril to Roman society? The key to the matter is to be sought, I think, in the nature of the revolutionary movement as it had been manifested in the years before the rebellion of 66-73 and during the rebellion itself. The wealthy Jewish upper class, the Sadducee priests, the landowners and the Jewish aristocracy of Alexandria, Cyrene and the other cities of the eastern Empire, distinguishing between Jewish religious morality and questions of social and political behaviour, compromised with Rome. The Pharisees, for their part, as the spiritual heirs of the prophets and the Hassidim, determined to maintain a consistent and compact religious moral outlook, persistently demanded a society built on justice and righteousness, regarding social justice as obligating the Jewish people as a group; hence they found it impossible to reconcile their demands either with idolatry or with Roman economic oppression.[1302] The extreme activist current went further still, refusing to recognize a regime not built on justice, whether it was the Zaddokite priesthood or the Roman power. This outlook brought them logically to direct action against Rome and the Jewish ruling stratum equally.
It is necessary here to pause a moment to consider the connotation of the word “Zealot”. The term has inevitably, though incorrectly, been used by various historians as an overall term applying to all the radical and extremist groups active before and during the Jewish rebellion which led to the destruction of the Temple in 70. In effect, examination of the sources,[1303] confused as their evidence is, shows that the word “Zealot”, though applied prior to the revolt to a general political-religious type originating in the Macca-bean period, was attached almost exclusively during the revolt itself to the extremist, largely peasant, party, in Jerusalem. The architypal organized group which crystallized in the first decade of the century about the figure of Judah of Gamala (or Galilee), and which appears to have laid the foundation of the ideology which influenced in greater or lesser degree the subsequent revolutionary groups emerging during the rebellion of 66-73 — was known to Josephus as the Sicarii. This party took a major part in expelling the Roman forces from Jerusalem, but ceased to be centrally active after the murder of its leader Menahem, and retired to Masada, where it met its end in the year 73. The politically distinct groups which crystallized outside Jerusalem under the respective leaderships of Yohanan of Gush Halav (John of Gischala) and Ele’azar son of Simon, were in Jerusalem grouped under the name of Zealots. The group led by Judah of Galilee — which appears to have had a predecessor in the “bandits” led by Hezekiah, probably Judah’s father, who was put to death by Herod in 47 B.C. — possessed an ideology which probably influenced the remaining activist parties that emerged shortly after the outbreak of the revolt of 66. This has been summarized by Hengel[1304] under the following heads: 1) a refusal to acknowledge any sovereignty but that of God; 2) a devotion to the idea of liberty as expressed historically in the Exodus from Egypt and in the Jewish commandments; 3) the belief that God would aid them in the struggle for their aims only in so far as they were ready to be active in it; 4) resistance to the Roman census as a preparation for the imposition of taxes, arising out of the Jewish prohibition to number the people, and out of the principle that the earth belonged to God, while the imposition of the Roman land-tax (tributum soli) implied a recognition that it belonged to Caesar.[1305] 5) The zeal for the Law, exemplified in various ways in Jewish history, obligates to personal and direct action against its transgressors. Guignebert summed up effectively the general aim of this ideology when he wrote:[1306] “The ideal of the Zealots was a Jewish commonwealth with God as its president and the Law as its constitution”. Such an ideal, a fusion on the one hand of Jewish religion and morality, which rejected any political regime except the Law and its ethics, and on the other of Jewish ethnic and collective compactness — amounted to a revolutionary factor which the Roman Empire could not afford to tolerate. The final trial of arms between the two forces was inevitable.
The fall of Masada put an end for the time being to the extremist movement in Eretz Yisrael as an organized force. The destruction of the Temple terminated the rule of the priesthood and the Sad-ducee aristocracy. The leadership in Judaea now passed to the scholars, whose intellectual direction was Pharasaic; they set about crystallizing national institutions about a body that ruled by moral force with the consent and will of the community, its authority being based on the social system of scholarly rulings known as the halakhah. Most of the new leaders held moderate views, and if they viewed Rome without illusions, saw no prospects in struggling against her. The revolutionary remnants doubtless regarded them as traitors and collaborationists, but no one could accuse them of lack of devotion either to the Law, or to the people. The position of the Diaspora communities, however, was different. There the wealthy had collaborated with the Roman government to stifle the extremist risings at their beginning. But the psychological blow inflicted on entire Jewry, without distinction of class or outlook, by the destruction of the Temple, could not be effaced. If a party seeking some compromise with hellenism had existed in Egypt, it encountered final defeat under Claudius, whose rescript in 41 had emphasized to the Alexandrian Jewish community that they lived in a city not theirs from which they must make no further demands.[1307] The widespread and horrifying pogrom of 66, and the longdrawn tension between Jews and Greeks in the Egyptian capital and in other Greek cities, were apt ultimately to impel many Jews to ask whether a modus vivendi with the gentile world could now be achieved, or whether a final battle was needed to settle the issue for good. Among the messianic section, moreover, so strong was the belief that the “final day” and the rule of the Messiah were coming in their own time,[1308] that their survivors could not but see the destruction of the Temple as “the pangs of the Messiah”, and the Jewish defeat as a sign that redemption was at hand.
The idea of a final decision had indeed been long current among the Jewish people. It already appears in the Third Book of the Sibylline Oracles in the middle of the 2nd century B.C.[1309] and forms the focus of the messianic idea throughout the ist and 2nd centuries of the current era.[1310] Its various forms cannot be detailed here. The profound faith in the Jewish moral mission and in the ultimate victory of justice impelled the oppressed nation to believe that its suffering heralded the final destruction of the criminal government, the day of judgment of humanity and the “reform of the world after the fashion of the kingdom of God.” Contemporary literature expresses this belief along common lines. The end will be heralded by terrible natural catastrophes and wars amongst the nations; a messiah will appear to smite his enemies and the oppressors of Israel; he will inaugurate a kingdom of justice and plenty, will gather the exiles of Israel unto their land (according to certain versions), and before or after this, will come the resurrection of the dead and the judgment of humanity.
1302
For denouncements of Roman oppression and exploitation, cf. the words of Rabban Gamliel (
1305
Hengel, indeed, (
1307
This defeat found expression in Claudius’ final decision recorded in
1309
Schürer,
1310
Klausner,