viewed humans as housing an immortal soul within a mortal, perishable body.
In his later work, Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus added a fourth group: the Zealots.10
Those who wanted a new high priest were not just concerned with intellectual protest. The clamor for the change came at the end of the weeklong mourning period for Herod. His son Archelaus had every expectation that he would become king in turn, but the decision was in the hands of Augustus Caesar.
Archelaus was in the middle of a grand funeral feast at the Temple prior to his departure for Rome when he heard the noise of an angry mob outside making their demands. The main focus of the clamor—the high priest—must have also been present at the feast. Archelaus was enraged by this noisy demonstration, but he did not wish to inflame the situation, so he sent his military commander to reason with the crowd gathered in the Temple. It was a crowd enlarged by the many who had traveled in from the outlying countryside in preparation for the approaching Passover. But those present stoned the officer before he could even begin to speak. He quickly withdrew.
Archelaus must have panicked, fearing for his own life, because after that point things turned very ugly, very quickly. Moving swiftly, Archelaus ordered a cohort of troops to enter the Temple and arrest the leaders of the crowds who were calling for the changes. This was a sizable force: in the regular Roman army it would have meant six hundred soldiers; for auxiliary forces, which these were most likely to have been, it could have meant anything from five hundred to seven hundred or more soldiers. It is clear that trouble was imminent and Archelaus intended to crack down fast and hard. But his plan didn’t work. The people in the crowd were outraged by the sudden appearance of armed troops and attacked them with stones as well. Incredibly, Josephus reports, most of the soldiers were killed, and even the commander was wounded, narrowly escaping death. This was clearly a major battle, indicating that these “people” not only wanted a high priest of “greater piety and purity” but that they were serious, organized, and prepared to fight and die for their beliefs.
Following their defeat of the troops, the crowds proceeded to perform the Temple sacrifices as though nothing untoward had happened. Archelaus took this opportunity to order his entire army into action: his infantry attacked the streets of Jerusalem, while his cavalry attacked the surrounding countryside. It is clear that this opposition to the high priest was far greater, far more structured, and far more widespread than Josephus is prepared to admit. For some reason, Josephus plays down the extent of what was evidently a major insurrection centered in the Temple followed by a major and bloody street battle throughout Jerusalem. Josephus is clear, however, about how he views the event. For him, it was “sedition.” Through his use of this derogatory term we can be sure that Josephus took the side of Archelaus and the Romans.
The battle ended with several thousand civilian deaths, including most of those who were in the Temple. Those who survived fled, seeking refuge in the neighboring hills. The funeral feast was promptly ended, and Archelaus, without further delay, departed for Rome. Meanwhile, his brother Antipas contested the will and claimed the throne for himself.
While Archelaus was arguing his case before the emperor in Rome, further revolt erupted in Judaea. On the eve of the Pentecost feast (Shavuot, the fiftieth day after the Passover Sabbath), a huge crowd surrounded the Roman bases, effectively placing them under siege. Fighting broke out in both Jerusalem and the countryside. Galilee especially seemed to be a breeding ground for the most serious organized discontent, and it was from there, in 4 B.C., that the first leader emerged, Judas of Galilee, who raided the royal armory to seize weapons. At the same time, Herod’s palace at Jericho was burned down. Could this act of political heresy have been revenge for the drowning of the last legitimate high priest? It seems very likely. Moving as rapidly as possible, the Romans gathered three legions and four regiments of cavalry, together with many auxiliaries, and struck back. In the end some two thousand Jews, all leaders of the resistance, were crucified—for sedition, of course.
Meanwhile in Rome, during that same year, Augustus Caesar had decided to divide Judaea among Herod’s sons, each of whom would rule with a lesser title than king. He gave the richest half of the kingdom, including Judaea and Samaria, to Archelaus, who ruled as an ethnarch; he divided the other half into two tetrarchies (from the Greek meaning “rule over one-fourth of a territory”), giving one tetrachy each to two other sons, Philip and Herod Antipas. Herod Antipas held Galilee and lands across the Jordan; Philip received lands north and east of Galilee.
Two points need to be noted here: first, while Josephus seems to suggest on the surface that the demands for a pure and pious high priest came from a loosely gathered, even impromptu mob that was simply part of the usual crowd in the Temple assembled for the coming Passover, it is clear, given the extent of the fighting and the opposition mounted in both Jerusalem and beyond, that this opposition group was well led and its network extensive. It was no accident that they had gathered at the Temple on the day of the funeral feast. They had come deliberately, prepared for trouble. In fact, they must surely have expected trouble. This begs two questions: Who were these people? And what if anything can we glean about their ideology from their deep desire to see a “pure and pious” high priest put in place?
It seems that these events provide an essential context for Jesus’s early life: in 4 B.C., when Herod died, Jesus was, according to the most widely held estimates, approximately two years old. Thus, we can be sure that his birth and life occurred against a background of agitation against the corrupt and hated Herodian dynasty. And though his birthplace was Bethlehem, in Judaea, Matthew (2:22-23) records that Jesus was taken to Nazareth in Galilee as a child. After a long period of silence in the gospel record, Jesus is said to have emerged from Galilee to be baptized by John the Baptist. And it is from Galilee that he gathered his disciples—at least two of whom were Zealots. Certainly he was commonly called Jesus of Galilee. As we have seen, Galilee was a hotbed of revolt, and it was from here that Judas, the leader of a large group of rebels, came. What then was the relationship of Jesus with these political agitators, these crowds bent upon sedition? Was he later to become their leader? Clues once again come from Josephus.
The opposition Josephus describes was reaching a wide movement that he takes great pains to play down while at the same time disparaging as “sedition.” Yet Josephus also records that the opposition did not end with the vicious slaughter in Jerusalem. In fact, he notes, it became worse with time. Archelaus proved so brutal in his rule that after ten years Caesar exiled him to Vienne in France. The lands of Archelaus were then ruled directly by Rome as the Province of Judaea. Since Philip and Herod Antipas were elsewhere, ruling their respective tetrarchies, a prefect, Coponius, was appointed and dispatched from Rome to rule Archelaus’s domains from his capital, the coastal city of Caesarea. Traveling with him was the new governor of Syria, Quirinius. Rome wanted a full accounting of the regions it now had to rule, and so Quirinius undertook a census of the entire country. This census was, to say the least, deeply unpopular. The date was A.D. 6. Trouble was inevitable.
Judas of Galilee led an uprising. He accused all men who paid a tax to Rome of cowardice. He demanded that Jews refuse to acknowledge the emperor as master, claiming that only one master existed and that was God. This question of the tax was the key means of knowing who was for Judas and who was against him. At the same time, Josephus reports, the hotheaded Sicarii first appeared. They were the faction behind all the violence. Josephus hints that Judas of Galilee either founded the group or led them, and it is clear from his accounts that Josephus hated them. He accuses them of using their politics as a cloak for their “barbarity and avarice.”11
Amazingly, a mention of Judas in the New Testament corroborates this profile. “After…rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished” (Acts 5:37). Josephus further explains that Judas, along with another fighter, Zadok the Pharisee, was responsible for adding a fourth faction to Judaism after the Sadducees,
