[Dialogue] 6/4/09, Spong: Masada, the Jewish-Roman War of 66-73, and the Writing of the Gospels

Thu Jun 4 11:54:41 EDT 2009

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Thursday June 04, 2009 

Masada, the Jewish-Roman War of 66-73, and the Writing of the Gospels

The most impressive memory I have from my last trip to Israel is not of a religious site at all but of a military site, one that played an enormous role in Israel's history. I refer to our visit to the desert fortress of Masada where, according to Josephus Flavius, a first-century Jewish historian, the war against Rome that began in the hills of Galilee in 66 came to an end in 73. 
Masada, an almost impenetrable fortress located near the Dead Sea, had once been a winter palace for Herod. Rising sphinxlike out of the desert, it was destined to be etched into Israel's proud military history, not as the place of a great victory, but as the site of one of its most tragic, if noble, defeats. It is also not far from Nag Hammadi, where so many of the scrolls were discovered that were destined to revolutionize biblical studies in the 20th century. 

Most people are not familiar with the Roman-Jewish War, though I suspect it shaped the writing of the gospels as dramatically as anything that happened in the life of Jesus. In Jesus' day, "freedom fighters," which was what the Jews called them, or "terrorists," as the Romans referred to them, were active in the hills of Galilee. One 
aggressive and uncompromising group was called the "Sicarii," which means "political assassins." From this word many scholars believed the name of "Iscariot" was derived. Generally, these guerillas were designated "the Zealots," a name that was attached to Simon, one of the Twelve, in Luke's Gospel. Whether these titles reflected a reading back into the Jesus story of memories from the Jewish-Roman War or whether this long-simmering Jewish hostility toward the Romans simply boiled just beneath the surface at the time of Jesus before finally erupting into open warfare about two generations later, is still subject to debate, but clearly there is some connection. 

The fact remains that in the year 66 CE, some thirty-six years after the crucifixion, and probably as much as five years before the first of the gospels was to be written, an open and full-scale war on Rome was begun by the Jewish Zealots in Galilee. Deciding that they had absorbed all of the Roman oppression that they could endure, these patriots took to arms. It was a hopeless quest for glory, because the might of Rome was unmatched and it was surely not going to be toppled by these roving bands of armed Jewish guerillas hiding out in the mountains of Galilee. 

Despite the odds, however, the Jews enjoyed great success with their hit-and-run attacks. They would swoop down on an outnumbered band of Roman soldiers, destroy them, take their weapons and armor and disappear, as if by magic, back into those hills. These successful attacks happened so fre
quently that they finally got the attention of Rome, arousing considerable anger. The Jews had always been a difficult conquered province for Rome to govern, so that no love was lost between them, but now they were becoming so costly in terms of both military lives lost and equipment stolen that Rome could tolerate them no longer. So Rome decided to act. First, they strengthened their presence in Galilee, requiring that their military personnel travel in larger units and in battle-ready stances. When that failed to diminish their losses, Rome decided that this war would no longer be fought on the turf chosen by the Jews. 

Reasoning that no enemy is destroyed by attacking its extremities, Rome decided to strike at the Jewish jugular. First under a general named Vespasian, and later under his son Titus, a Roman army was moved into siege positions around Jerusalem, the heart of the Jewish nation. In the year 70 CE, the city of Jerusalem fell and the Romans legions, filled with a loathing for these troublesome people, decided to show the Jews how costly defiance of Rome could be. That city was laid waste and the Temple was leveled. The Jews were treated with great hostility, justified, Rome felt, by their willingness to enter this war with Rome. The Temple authorities, primarily the strict constructionist Sadducees, were publicly persecuted. The Jewish nation was stricken from the maps of human history. Except for a brief revival in the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-135, it would not reappear on those maps until=2
01948. Jerusalem was repopulated with non-Jews. A temple to Jupiter was built where the Temple of Solomon had once been. For all practical purposes, Rome believed that they had ended the existence of the Jewish people in history. 

A few of the defeated defenders, however, managed to escape, and with some new recruits picked up on their retreat into the desert, they marched to join the Jewish defenders in the fortress at Masada. There in that remote place this war would continue. 

Rome pursued, but not vigorously, until their opponents were isolated in Masada, where cisterns caught and held enough rainwater to sustain life and where great amounts of grain and food were stored to help the defenders maintain themselves during a siege. There could be no retreat from Masada. This place was designed as the ultimate last stop. 

Rome seemed content at first simply to bottle up their enemies and wait, so the Masada siege held out for three years. Finally, with supplies of both food and water all but exhausted, with weapons in short supply — a spear or a rock once thrown could never be recovered — the moment of defeat was at hand. Ultimately, the Roman legions constructed a ramp with a tower that would lie against the side of that fortress mountain enabling them to attack the defenders from the same height and finally to leap over the walls. The Jewish commander, Eleazar ben Ya'ir, urged a suicide pact on the remaining defenders, still numbering in the hundreds, as a better alternative t
o crucifixion or slavery at the hands of the Romans. The pact was agreed to and so, by lot, ten of the men among the defenders were chosen to be the executioners. With their swords they struck the bared throats of the defenders until all were dead. Then again by lot, one of the defenders was chosen to execute the remaining nine then to fall on his sword in an act of suicide. It was in this manner that the Jewish-Roman War ended, and only a strange quiet greeted the Romans when they finally entered the mountain fortress. 

We rose in Be'er Sheva at 4:00 a.m. on the Wednesday after Easter to make the trip to Masada, in order to climb by foot into this mountain stronghold to view the rising of the sun over the Dead Sea and to examine the various rooms within this fortress where that ancient drama had been lived out. Above all, we sought to relive that dramatic moment in world history. 

Christians need to know that the first gospel, Mark, was probably written between the fall of Jerusalem and the fall of Masada. Its apocalyptic end of the world chapter 13 describes the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple and the persecution that enveloped the Jews, including those Jews who were followers of Jesus. It was written as if this devastating destruction was a prelude to Jesus' second coming and the expected dawning of the Kingdom of God. That is why Mark portrays Jesus as the messiah at whose second coming the world would come to an end. That is also why Mark wraps mi
racles around the memory of Jesus because the Jews believed that when the Kingdom of God arrived in human history, it would be accompanied by acts of healing. The prophet Isaiah had written that the messiah would be recognized by the fact that at his coming the blind would see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the mute sing. That is also why in the ninth chapter of Mark a story is told in which Jesus is made translucent by the light of God that previously was said to fall only on the Temple. It further suggests that Israel's two greatest heroes, Moses and Elijah, not only share that light, but also find their fulfillment in him. It is clear in this "transfiguration" narrative that Jesus was being presented as the "New Temple," the new meeting place between God and human life, an idea that would have been unthinkable if the Temple had not already been destroyed by the Romans. That is also why the activities of both Moses and Elijah are wrapped around Jesus throughout the gospels. Mark, Matthew and Luke all included accounts of Jesus taken directly from the Elijah-Elisha cycle of stories. Matthew in particular would develop these Markan themes to portray Jesus as the new Moses. That is why Matthew has Herod, like the Pharaoh of old, try to destroy the male messiah at birth. Then he parallels Jesus' baptism with the Red Sea, Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness with Moses' 40 years in the wilderness, and the trials of Mos es are retold as the temptations of Jesus. Then Matthew puts Jesus on20a new mountain to deliver a new interpretation of the Torah, which we today call "The Sermon on the Mount." Luke, on the other hand, portrays Jesus as the "New Elijah," retelling Elijah stories about Jesus as if he had actually replicated Elijah's life. This culminates in Luke's account of both the ascension of Jesus and the Pentecost story, both of which are little more than Elijah stories adapted to Jesus. 

This context may also explain why Mark, the first gospel to be written, introduces the traitor as a man named Judas. My study has convinced me that Judas Iscariot is a Christian creation, not a figure of history. The idea that Jesus had been betrayed by one of his own was unknown before Mark. After the fall of Jerusalem, Jewish Christians, seeking to separate themselves from the Temple Jews, who were being blamed for starting that war, decided to show that they had a common Jewish enemy, just like the Romans, so they made the anti-hero of the Jesus story a man who bore the name of the Jewish nation. Judas is nothing but the Greek spelling of Judah. Increasingly, while both Mark and Matthew were making the Jews the villains of the Jesus story, they were also portraying Pontius Pilate, the Roman official, as sympathetic to Jesus. The fall of Jerusalem in 70 and Masada in 73 became the context in which the gospel tradition was formed. If you ever get to Israel, spend some time at Masada and then read the gospels through the context of those days in which the gospels were written 
instead of pretending that they describe the time of Jesus. It will be a new lens, a powerful and accurate lens, and the gospel stories will never be the same. I recommend a visit to Masada if one wants to be a serious New Testament scholar. 

– John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Michael Neal Arnold of Santa Barbara, California, writes: 
Your vision of a reformed Christianity is easy for me to embrace. However, I am concerned that this vision is not compatible with "The Church Catholic." Do you believe the dream of a unified church is a necessary casualty of the Reformed Church?

Dear Michael,

The first thing that I think you and everyone else must face is that there never has been a unified church. That is nothing less than ecclesiastical propaganda on the part of those who like to suggest that anyone disagreeing with their church today disagrees with a specific historic Christian tradition. What Christians refer to today as "orthodox Christianity" is a reference to that part of the Christian Church that actually won the battle for supremacy. Winning never means you were right, it means only that you were stronger. If you read the work of someone like Bart Ehrman, a University of North Carolina Religion Professor and New York Times best-selling author, the multiplicity of competing Christian groups in the early years of Christian history becomes very apparent. There was really no such thing as "early Christianity," as church
 polemicists use that phrase today. There were in fact "early Christianities." The battle to be able to define what orthodox Christianity consisted of was finally decided on the basis of political power. The Bishop of Rome turned the power of his location in that capital city of the known world into the ability to define Christianity and to limit the understanding of the past to his particular interpretation of the past. So we need to disabuse our minds of the idea that there ever was a unified Christianity to which we must now seek to return.

Second, we need to recognize that the New Testament never speaks of Christianity as a majority movement. The Fourth Gospel has Jesus pray that "they all may be one," which clearly implies that they were not one or the prayer would not have expressed this hope. The image of the relationship of the Church to the world in the gospels is never an image of Christianity dominating or ruling the world. Christianity is always portrayed as a minority movement, a remnant if you will. The New Testament expresses the idea that in the vast darkness of the world, the Christians are to be a lighted candle, in the soup of life the Christians are to be the salt, and in the lump of dough, the Christians are to be the leaven that makes the bread edible. 

Our job as Christians is never to conquer or to dominate the world, but to give the world a new quality. That is all I seek to do today. I want to be a light shining in both the darkness of the=2
0world and of the church. I want to be the seasoning that makes the soup tasty or the leavening agent that causes the loaf to rise. History teaches me that the reformation of Christianity never comes from the dominant center of the church, but only from the marginalized edges. In this generation I watch a faithful church slowly emerging, but it is not yet and may well never be a majority movement. I listen in despair to Christian leaders who think they can bring unity by imposing propositional truth on all people, or to leaders who are willing to sacrifice truth in order to achieve unity. I believe that being faithful is always more important than being unified. This means that in the present struggle in my particular church, I would rather see my church divided than to see it united in homophobia, patriarchy or racism.

My best,
John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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