In the fourth book of the Sibylline Oracles the absence of the pronounced views in favour of social equality to be found in the third book, (mid-2nd century B.C.E.) and in the fourteenth (4th century C.E.) is conspicuous. But a denunciation of wealth is found in the fifth book (line 405) and lines 416-17 foretell that the Messiah will restore to all righteous men the wealth which the wicked have taken from them.
The literature which reflects the ideas of the generation before the revolt, then, possesses no one uniform direction with regard to class questions, and this, I think corresponds to the reality reflected in what information we possess of the various extremist currents. The revolutionaries burned the records office at Jerusalem at the outbreak of the revolt,[1321] not merely because it contained deeds of property drafted in contravention of the principle that the land belonged to God,[1322] but because, as Josephus wrote explicitly, “they rejoiced to destroy the loan-records and to prevent the payment of debts, in order to gain the support of the multitude of debtors and to incite the poor to revolt without fear against the rich.” The Zealots further demand the appointment of a High Priest by lot and elevate a simple peasant to this office.[1323] The followers of Bar Giora destroy the houses of wealthy landowners[1324] and liberate slaves.[1325] On the other hand we do not hear of any “left” revolutionary tendencies on the part of Yohanan of Gush-halav (Gischala), nor is it clear if the disciples of Judah of Galilee and his son Mena-hem fostered ideas of this sort. It is a fact, at any rate, that while they were at Masada after the outbreak of the war and the death of Menahem, they found no common ground with Simon bar Giora, and ultimately the two groups parted from one another.[1326] The question of the degree of community of ideas between the Sicarii of Masada and the “Serah ha-Yahad” of Hirbet Qumran also awaits its final clarification. The revolutionary messianism of the latter is no longer to be doubted, since the discovery of the “Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness”,[1327] nor is the scroll’s military character open to allegorical interpretation.[1328] It is further probable that the organization led a life based on the principles of collectivism,[1329] but this would be more credible if we could accept the identity of the Yahad with the Essenes[1330], which is far from proven and may be a fallacy.[1331]
We may sum up by stating, that the “leftist” class content of the revolutionary groups of 66-73 was not common to all currents, hence it is not clearly reflected in the Jewish literature which expresses the extremist mood in the years before the outbreak of the diaspora rising under Trajan. But we may conclude from the same literature, that the revolutionary spirit did not die down among Jewry in the years after the destruction of the Temple. Josephus wrote in the year 93 C.E. or thereabouts[1332] that the behaviour of the Zealots and Sicarii was known to all; in the same period Epictetus mentions the Jewish revolutionaries’ resistance to tyranny and their faith in the exclusive kingship of the Almighty.[1333] This being the case, was the spirit at work in organized form as the main factor in the revolt of the Diaspora?
Josephus’ information leaves no doubt that Sicarian refugees reached both Alexandria and Cyrene after 70 with the aim of rousing the Jewish masses to revolt.[1334] We hear from the same source of the “Egyptian prophet” who had entered Judaea in the years 56-58 in order to incite the people.[1335] This man was one of the “desert prophets” and “seers” (γόητες) who have already been discussed, and whose affinity with the revolutionaries is clear. It follows that at this period a like movement existed also in Egypt. Tcherikover and Fuks have indeed concluded from the course of events there in the ist century C.E. and from literary evidence, that the revolutionary movement grew and spread among Egyptian Jewry, more particularly among the Jews of Alexandria, under the influence of Judaea and of its revolutionary movement.[1336] The blow dealt to the Alexandrian Jews in 66 and the destruction of the Temple undermined the position of the peace party and transferred the initiative to the extremists. The aristocratic leadership was nevertheless able to arrest the incitement of elements from Judaea after 70,[1337] and after the initial failure of an organized minority in 115 the remaining Jewish majority in the city seems to have been the victim of attack rather than the attacker; the focus of the rebellion passed to the rural areas outside Alexandria (see below p. 266). Lesquier indeed stated that the revolt in Egypt bore “a prominently rural character”,[1338] and Yeivin[1339] concluded from an analysis of the evidence that most of the inhabitants of the towns of Judaea and Galilee remained indifferent to the rising of 66-73, and that the active element was the peasantry.[1340] Hengel also emphasizes the withdrawal of the revolutionary groups from city-life.[1341] If this was so, the violence of the revolutionary movement among the Jews of the Egyptian countryside in Trajan’s reign is apt to support the view that the influence at work came from the Sicarian, Zealot and other activist groups of Judaea.
We have already seen that the nature of the activity of Jonathan the Weaver in Cyrene in 73 forms a link between the contemporary Sicarian movement in Judaea and the origins of the rising in Cyrene. In his action of leading 2,000 Jews into the desert, Jonathan resembled the “desert prophets” of Judaea before the great revolt, and in this reveals an affinity with the ideas and aims expressed in the literature of Hirbet Qumran — organized life in the desert for the purpose of spiritual and military preparation for the final messianic war. The finding of fragments of the Qumran literature at Masada[1342] is suggestive in this respect, for it indicates contact between the Yahad and the Sicarii of Eleazar ben Yair, if nothing more, and Josephus explicitly calls Jonathan a Sicarian.
The revolutionary movement which broke out under Trajan reveals three additional features closely associated with the Judaean extremist groups. These are: (a) the aggressive activism of the movement; (b) the character of its leadership; (c) the attitude of the insurgents towards all manifestations of idolatry, such as temples, altars and images.
The first characteristic requires little emphasis: the gentile sources stress the suddenness of the rising in Cyrene and in Egypt, where the Jews fell upon the Greeks, rising “with an incredible fury and all at once,... as if smitten with madness,” (ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πνεύματος δεινοῦ —[1343] quasi rabie efferati);[1344] “suddenly and all impelled by rage” (repentino omnes colore permoti);[1345] and if there is some doubt who were the first aggressors in Alexandria,[1346] it would nevertheless appear that the Jews began the attack in Cyprus. The large number of casualties among the gentiles in Cyprus and Cyrene (even if Dio’s figures are exaggerated) indicates the fury of the Jewish attack and evidences the element of surprise involved. The implication is that this was a movement initiated by the insurgents according to a prepared plan. The scale and systematic character of the destruction at Cyrene also witness to the organized character of the movement, and to its prior preparation.[1347]
1328
Millar Burrows,
1330
For a bibliography of the controversy, (to 1967), see Brandon,
1331
Perhaps a distinction ought to be made between the purely “internal” socialism of the Essenes, which possessed a “kibbutzic” significance, and the political revolutionary trend of Bar Giora’s men and those that thought like them. Yet it may be doubted whether in that period such a distinction existed. For the social equalitarian trend in contemporary Judaism, cf.
1333
Arrian,
1340
Rostovtzeff,
1346
A battle (μάχη) took place between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria in October, 115, and in this the Jews were the attackers (