The Jewish War, Part One

Episode One

There was a book written contemporary to the beginning of Christianity called The Jewish War, and it describes the very events that led up to the creation of synoptic Gospels – Mark, Luke, and Matthew. The Jewish War was written in ancient Greek by Flavius Josephus, a man known to have been a member of the imperial family at the center of things in and around Judea for the events in the book. But it isn’t a book people talk about, and it’s not usually mentioned in history class or Sunday school. Most of us have never heard of it. Unlike the vast majority of Roman literature, this book still exists and you can still read it.

The Jewish War centered on a place called the Levant – that hilly bit of geography between the Eastern Mediterranean shore and the Jordan River long called ‘Palestine’ and now occupied by the states of Syria and Israel. From times ancient even to the Romans, the Levant had been a prize long coveted by empires and royal families. It was captured from the Babylonians by the Persians in the mid 6th century bce, who built the temple in Jerusalem in 516. It was captured again by the Greeks in 332, and the Ptolemies and Seleucids bickered over it for centuries until it had been captured and recaptured so many times that its neighborhoods were interwoven with political conflicts several generations deep.

The peoples in this area who followed Hebrew scripture were legendary for their dietary prohibitions and strict rules for conduct. Yet even among these were those called ‘Nazarenes’ who took on additional rules and restrictions as an act of worshipful service. This was done in order to be bonded by a promise to their god through their acts of service in thanks for a boon, in exchange for aid to the living or in memory of the dead. Nazarenes were forbidden to drink alcohol, cut their hair, or be present near the dead for the period of their binding: at release, they were blessed at the temple, their hair was shorn and burned at the temple fire.

The stories of Sampson in the book of Judges were of a man who had been promised at birth, a Nazarene, who had been given great strength for as long as he didn’t cut his hair. Lifetime bonds for Nazarenes were the exception: generally adults promised themselves and only for a few months or a year. When becoming a high priest of the temple, candidates would first undertake the Nazarene commitment for the duration of their service to the temple. After the destruction of the temple, however, no promise could be redeemed; since that time, all Nazarenes have been lifetime Nazarenes.

A variation of the Nazarene tradition was that of the ‘Messiah’, a political and military leader anointed by the high priest of the temple, and this combined with the unflinching use of violence and a cultural memory of political self-determination drove military efforts toward political independence from the dueling Greek states. An attempt to civilize the rebellious Judean populace by the Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes ended the practice of circumcision, and placed an altar to Zeus in the Jerusalem temple upon which pigs were slaughtered. Riots ensued, and it was a Messiah,  Judas Maccabeus, who drove the Seleucids from Judea beginning in 167 bce. His brother Simon (“the wise”) became the first High Priest and Ethnarch of Judea in 141 bce, establishing Judean self-rule under their Hasmonean Dynasty.

Once Rome had completely absorbed the Greek Seleucid Empire, they found themselves in direct proximity to the Hasmonean province of Judea. Had it just been a peaceful nation of shepherds and olive farmers, that would have been pretty great for Rome, but it was also a wasp nest of internal squabbles and political intrigue that repeatedly spilled over into Roman territory. Centuries of near continuous conflict had left deep scars in the population, and the reaction to every political action was a new opposition group forming, some more violent than others. Finally, the Hasmonean civil war ensnared Rome, who took on the area as a client state and stationed legions in and around it as they took sides and established John Hyrcanus II as the Roman-backed ‘Ethnarch’, or ‘King of the Jews’.