Hello, friend, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.
If you require orientation, please refer to the first posting of this writing here.
We've no time to waste, today, so we will jump right in to the fourth of our five part series on first-century Jewish sectarianism. Here we go.
Sects of Judaism Existing in Palestine at or Immediately Prior to the Time of Jesus - A Shallow Survey
Number Four: The Zealots
Let's quickly review who we've met so far in our study. We've met: 1) The Pharisees, the most popular ideological movement within Judaism at the time of Christ. 2) The Sadducees, a movement of the elite priestly class whose power was derived from The Temple. And... 3) The Essenes, a movement of Jews who practiced asceticism, celibacy, and ritual purity.
Recall that these three constitute the main philosophies of Judaism as it existed around the time of Jesus. However, the ancient Romano-Jewish historian, Josephus, also spoke of a "fourth philosophy." That fourth philosophy was adhered to by a group of Jews we call "The Zealots."
The philosophy of The Zealots was, in a word, "war."
Etymologically, the English word "Zealot" comes from the Greek "zēlos," which means "zeal or jealousy." It is the most common translation of the Hebrew "kanai," which translates directly as "fanatic." In a modern context, the word zealot denotes a fanatic of some kind.
The Zealots lived all around Palestine, and their heyday was from 6 to 70 AD. The Zealots shared a common cosmology with The Pharisees, but differed with non-Zealot Pharisees in that they advocated for war against Rome, which had made a province of Judea in 6 AD. In the sense that The Zealots were arguing for changes in public policy, i.e. "we should kick Rome out of Judea by military force," they can be looked at as a political movement, as well as a sect.
In the Gospel, Jesus does not interact with Zealots the way he does with Pharisees and Sadducees. The Gospel is basically silent on The Zealots, except to tell us (in each of The Synoptics) that one of Christ's apostles was a Zealot. This is most clear in Luke 6:15, where "Simon who was called a Zealot," is listed as one of The Twelve. Notation in the New American Bible explains that it is not perfectly clear from the Gospel that Simon the Zealot was an actual Zealot. The language is ambiguous as to whether Simon was zealous, or a Zealot. We will chase that thread down later when we study the apostles each in detail. Some scholars also believe that Paul of Tarsus was a Zealot, and that his Zealotry led him to his persecution of early Christians. Again, we will chase this apostolic thread down later.
Josephus is our best source for information on The Zealots, but we must bear in mind that he was not a proponent of Zealotry. He held them accountable, in fact, for Jerusalem's eventual ruin. He felt that the Jewish-Roman War, which led to the destruction of The Second Temple in 70 AD, was caused by The Zealots. Josephus was of the mind that the Jews ought to have tolerated Rome's dominion over Judea, up to and including participation in the census and payment of taxes. To the contrary, The Zealots felt that the Jewish people had to be completely free, and were the constant advocates and instigators of confrontation between Jews and the Roman authorities. Without The Zealots, there would not have been a rebellion, and The Temple might have remained.
The Zealots were so zealous that they did not mind spilling blood in the name of their cause. The Sicarii, an ancient Jewish assassin's brotherhood (yes, an ancient Jewish assassin's brotherhood) were a sub-group of the Zealot community. The Sicarii took their name from the small daggers they would use for targeted political killings. These killings were designed to demoralize Roman sympathizers and embolden Jewish nationalists, and went on throughout the first-century AD. The Sicarii terrorized and killed Jew and Gentile alike in the name of a liberated Jewish people.
The Zealot movement died out in the aftermath of year 70, as the Jewish people resigned themselves to their new reality. Rome had had the final word.
As for us, we can say that, of the four sects we have studied thus far, this sect had the least bearing on Jesus' philosophy. Some modern pop-scholarship portrays Jesus as being a Zealot or a proto-Zealot. It will become necessary to confront these ideas in detail some day, but I can tell you now that Jesus' philosophy was not compatible with that of The Zealots.
Here are your "must-remembers:"
a) As far as scriptural validity, The Zealots believed whatever The Pharisees believed (which was that the oral traditions of their community were valid and supplementary to the Torah.)
b) The Zealot movement died out when Rome took complete control of Judea around 70 AD.
c) When it came to the afterlife, The Zealots again followed The Pharisees, believing in a coming resurrection of the faithful dead into a beautiful "world to come." It is arguable whether or not they believed in a "hell."
d) They were a nascent movement around 6 AD, and gained power steadily among the Jews until 70 AD. Zealots had little to no sway over Temple affairs at any juncture.
The Zealots are another one of the many divisions of Jewish culture that existed during the Ministry of Jesus Christ. The Zealots, and their presumably awesome cloak-and-dagger assassin's brotherhood, The Sicarii, are critical context for our understanding of Jesus' message.
Next time, our final first-century Jewish sect: The Christians. (You read it right.)
Now, let's get back to our Gospel.
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Matthew 2:19 through Matthew 2:21
19 When Herod had died, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt
20 and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.”
21 He rose, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.
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And, just like that, Herod was unceremoniously dead. Here, the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in the fourth dream of divine data thus far, letting Joseph know that Herod is dead. "It's safe to make your journey out of Egypt," he says. So, Baby Jesus and his family went out of Egypt, in a kind of literary homage to the time their Israelite ancestors had been led out of Egypt by Moses, according to their traditions.
Again, this Flight to Egypt and subsequent Flight Out of Egypt likely never occurred, not least of all because Herod likely never ordered a massacre of babies. And, again, the text points to the author's desire to emphasize Jesus' congruence with Judaism. What better way to accomplish this than to show Jesus taking a course that is parallel with that of Moses, the great Jewish patriarch?
While Herod's death narrative in Matthew spans only three words, Herod's death narrative in Josephus' War of the Jews is quite lengthy. It seems Josephus had a flare for this gruesome stuff. It seems that he revelled in it. About the illness that led to Herod's death, he says the following:
After this, the destemper seized upon his whole body, and greatly disordered all its parts with various symptoms; for there was a gentle fever upon him, and an intolerable itching over all the surface of his body, and continual pains in his colon, and dropsical tumours about his feet, and an inflammation of the abdomen, and a putrefaction of his privy member, that produced worms.
Oh man that's gross! Did you see that? I mean, it was all pretty gnarly, but, "a putrefaction of his privy member, that produced worms?!" You know you're having a bad day when putrefied worms are crawling out of your privy member.
You do not want that!
Josephus continues on to describe what Herod wanted once he was resigned to his death. Apparently, Herod had the idea that, in order to increase and prolong the amount of mourning in the land after his death, he would gather "the most illustrious men of the whole Jewish nation, out of every village, into a place called the Hippodrome, and there shut them in." He gave instructions to subordinates to "send soldiers to encompass these men that are now in custody, and slay them immediately upon my death, and then all Judea, and every family of them, will weep at it whether they will or no."
Woah. He wants to kill a bunch of the most important Jewish men in the land at the time of his death so that there will be true universal mourning.
Woah.
Herod deserves far more study. I promise a multi-part, in-depth study of Herod at some point in the future.
As for Shoehorn Matthew, we'll have to retire of him here.
Join us next time. Please share this writing.
Love
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