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4. THE BANDIT KINGS

Jesus was probably two years old when Herod the Great died in 4 B.C. Herod had maintained civil order with extraordinary measures such as those described in Antiquities 15.366: "Nor did he permit the citizens to either to meet together, or to walk, or eat together, but watched everything they did, and when any were caught, they were severely punished; and many of them were brought to fortress at Hycrania, both openly and secretly, and were there put to death; and there were spies set everywhere, both in the city and in the roads, who watched those that met together..." Even with these measures, Herod wasn't certain he could contain the resentment of his Jewish subjects; the vast mountaintop fortress at Masada, last redoubt of Jewish resistance in 73 A.D., was built by Herod as his own last redoubt in the event of civil insurrection.

Simply the rumor that Herod was dying in 4 B.C. was sufficient catalyst for the first long-suppressed act of dissent. It was instigated by Judas ben Sariphaeus and Matthias ben Margolathus, two of the most eminent and venerated teachers of the halakah in Jerusalem (they were certainly Pharisees). Judas and Matthias urged their students to pull down a golden eagle Herod had installed above the Temple gate in violation of the Jewish prohibition against images. Arrested and brought before the gravely ill Herod, the scholars confessed to the act and lectured their captor: "We esteem those laws which were given Moses by God [as] more worthy of obedience than your laws." Herod responded by burning the scholars alive (Ant 17.149-167, War 1.647-655).

Shortly after the executions of the halakahic scholars, Herod himself died, at once burdening his heir Archelaus with the legacy of a widely reviled act. Archelaus attempted to satisfy the protests by dismissing his father's High Priest. But at the Passover of 4 B.C., a group of protestors camped in the Jerusalem Temple, supplied with food by their supporters in the city. Archelaus sent a cohort of five hundred men to arrest the dissidents, who responding by whipping the crowd into such a fury that they stoned and killed most of the soldiers. Finally Archelaus "sent out the whole army" against the dissidents in the Temple and their supporters camped to the north of the city; according to Josephus, three thousand were killed and the rest put to flight (Ant 17.213-218, War 2.5-13).

Evidently convinced that he had the dissidents under control, Archelaus sailed for Rome, to seek Caesar's adjudication of the succession disputed between himself and his brother Herod Antipas. But his absence only prompted what must have been a massive, spontaneous uprising. Josephus gives us few specifics about the nature of the unrest, only saying that "this sedition... was a great one," and "the whole nation was in tumult" (Ant 17.250-251). It was sufficiently great that Publius Quinctilius Varus, the newly appointed governor of Syria, entered Judea with the three legions under his command (the number of legions in Syria was later increased to four). This quickly silenced the tumult, but when Varus returned to Antioch he left an entire legion in Jerusalem, under his subordinate, Sabinus, "to keep the Jews quiet" (Ant 17.251).

Sabinus' efforts to keep the Jews quiet evidently featured a great deal of unnecessary harassment and looting, and only inflamed popular sentiment. By the time of the Pentecost festival, fifty days after the Passover, tens of thousands of Jews from all over the nation had arrived in Jerusalem, formed three armed encampments, and attempted to besiege the Roman legion, an effort which persisted even after the Romans sacked the Temple and slaughtered thousands of Jews (Ant 17.254-268, War 2.41-54).

The trouble in Jerusalem coincided with "countless other disorders" throughout the nation. In Antiquities 17.271-284 Josephus describes three principle leaders of these popular rebellions. The first, Judas the Galilean, is identified as the son of Ezekias, a "brigand-chief" who had commanded a "great troop" (Ant 14.159) of bandits operating around the Syrian border more than forty years previously; Ezekias had been captured and slain by the youthful Herod. Judas, "having gotten together a multitude of men of bad character," attacked the Galilean provincial capital of Sepphoris (about three miles from Jesus' home of Nazareth), looting the palace armory and treasury, "out of an ambition to attain the royal dignity."

The second royal pretender was Simon, a former slave of Herod, "but in other respects a handsome man, of a tall and robust stature." Simon actually crowned himself, and his followers "declared [him] to be a king." After burning and looting the great Herodian palace complex at Jericho, he was captured and beheaded.

An even more unlikely yet somewhat more successful aspirant was a shepherd named Athronges; "because he was tall man, and excelled all others in strength of his hands, he was so bold as to set himself up as king. With his four brothers as subordinate commanders, Athronges led a number of successful attacks on the Romans; "he retained his power a great while [and] was also called king."

The bandit-kings seem to have become a kind of contagion. "And so Judea was full of brigandage," Josephus goes on to say, "and, as soon as any of the companies of rebels lighted upon anyone to head them, he was created a king immediately." The country wasn't pacified until Quinctilius Varus returned with the two legions he had withdrawn, burning and sacking cities and villages as he proceeded south, finally capturing and crucifying two thousand rebels.

Josephus' account of the revolt of 4 B.C. offers us a virtual catalog of Jewish political dissent at the time of Jesus. The trouble began among the Jerusalem intelligentsia; the halakahic scholars who pulled down the eagle icon were the same "scribes and Pharisees" who appear dozens of times in the New Testament as conservative opponents of Jesus (who did not have the formal training of a scribe). But the political conservatism attributed to the scribes in the New Testament is an anachronism dating from the period after the 66 A.D. revolt, when the conservative scribes,or rabbis, who were reshaping Judaism in the wake of the revolt, opposed most politically radicalized forms of Judaism, including Christianity. During Jesus' time, as we will see later, the Jerusalem scribes were the most respected proselytes of Jewish nationalism -- certainly that was their role in the 4 B.C. revolt.

After the execution of the scholars, the revolutionary impetus passed to the "multitude," the tens of thousands of pilgrims, many of them peasants, who descended on Jerusalem for the four annual festivals. Josephus mentions the "lack of skill in war," of these crowds (War 2.47), which made them easy prey to the Roman soldiers. But the slaughter of thousands of these protestors -- in the Temple, no less -- inspired "those of a more warlike sort, to get together, to oppose the Romans" (War 2.51). These more warlike Jews continued to press the fight in Jerusalem, and also took it to the countryside. In light of the preceding decades of enforced civil obedience, when citizens talking on the street were regarded with suspicion, the sudden appearance of these seasoned revolutionary warriors immediately raises the question: Where did they come from?

They were, most likely, what English translators usually call bandits, or brigands. The Greek word for them, lestes, is the same used in the New Testament (Mk 15.27, Mt 27.38) to refer to the two men between whom Jesus was crucified, as well as the man, Barabbas, who was allegedly released in place of Jesus (Jn 18.40). A lestes was no mere thief, however; Barabbas, "Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison" (Lk 23.18), represents an accurate picture of the lestes as revolutionary fighter. While some if not many bandits may have been simple cutthroats who made the roads unsafe for rich and poor alike, they were often regarded by the peasant culture in which they operated as freedom fighters, divinely-sanctioned to deliver the poor and meek from the rapacious Romans and their wealthy Jewish collaborators. And although Herod scored notable victories against bandits such as Ezekias, it is clear from the events of 4 B.C. that he had hardly eradicated these Jewish Robin Hoods from the countryside or the political landscape.

The status of the bandit-chief in Jewish peasant culture is manifest in the sudden vogue for bandit "kings" in 4 B.C. The diadem to which pretenders like Judas and Athronges aspired wasn't Herod's crown. These men modeled themselves on a far more venerable prototype, the shepherd/king David. Anointed by the prophet Samuel as the future king while still a boy (the term used in 1 Samuel for the Lord's anointed is the usual masiach, or Messiah), David had been outlawed by a jealous King Saul, whom Samuel had previously anointed, but who had lost the Lord's sanction. Pursued by Saul, David did what was expected of a divinely sanctioned ruler confronted by an illegitimate despot -- he gathered a band of desperadoes and became a bandit chief: "And every one [that was] in distress, and every one that [was] in debt, and every one [that was] discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men" (1 Sam 22:2).

That the memory of the first messianic shepherd/king was deeply embedded in Jewish peasant culture at the beginning of the Christian era is evident in the eagerness with which supporters of the bandit-chiefs proclaimed them kings. Josephus specifies that both Simon and Athronges not only called themselves king, but were regarded as such by their followers. Other rebel bands were quick to create kings of anyone who would lead them, suggesting that popular demand as much as individual ambition was responsible for the proliferation of royal pretenders. Josephus typically avoids the politically-charged term Messiah in referring to these popular kings (in fact he never uses the term "messiah" in his writing), but there is no question that in the bandit-kings we have a good picture of what most Jewish peasants at the time Jesus expected in a Messiah: A latter-day David, rising from the ranks of the poor and meek to lead them to military victory over their oppressors.

The insistence in the New Testament on Jesus' descent from the house of David, found in Luke 2.3 and the elaborate genealogy of Matthew 1.1-18, is an important proof in Jesus' own messianic legitimacy; it allows Jesus to fulfill God's promise to David in 2 Samuel 7.12-14: "I will set up thy seed after thee... I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son." Jesus met his death, as we will later see, in a fashion reserved for bandit-chiefs and their followers; the writ of execution Pilate placed over Jesus' cross, "King of the Jews" (written in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin), is very likely historical, and certainly refers to the same sort of popular king that became so troublesome to the authorities in 4 B.C.

But although banditry was a constant problem in Judea throughout the Roman occupation, Josephus himself mentions no popular kings between the 4 B.C. uprising and the revolt of 66 A.D., when again several popular kings emerged as revolutionary leaders. The accusation that Jesus was one such bandit-king -- a king of the Jews -- may only have been a politically convenient slander of a popular nationalist leader whose peasants followers inevitably included some if not many violent militants. And the 4 B.C. uprising shows how quickly a festival crowd could become a determined, if inept, rebel army. It is possible that at the Passover of 31 A.D., Jesus simply found himself at the head of an army he never intended to lead .

Next: THE FOURTH PHILOSOPHY

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