Albinus and the Stoning of James

When Caesar heard of Festus’s death, he sent Albinus to Judea as procurator. The king took the high priesthood from Joseph and gave the succession to the son of Ananus, who was also called Ananus. They say that this elder Ananus was a most fortunate man. He had five sons, and every one of them came to serve God as high priest, after he himself had enjoyed that honor for a very long time before them, something that has happened to no other of our high priests. The younger Ananus, who, as we said, had received the high priesthood, was brazen in temper and remarkably reckless. He belonged to the party of the Sadducees, who are harsher in their judgments than any of the other Jews, as we have already shown. Being a man of this kind, Ananus thought he had a fitting opportunity, because Festus was dead and Albinus was still on the road. So he convened a sanhedrin of judges and brought before it the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James, together with some others. He accused them of breaking the law and handed them over to be stoned. [a]

But those of the citizens who were thought the most considerate, and who were strict about the laws, were deeply offended at this. They sent to the king in secret, urging him to order Ananus to do no such thing again, since he had not acted rightly even this first time. Some of them also went to meet Albinus on his journey from Alexandria and informed him that Ananus had no right to convene a sanhedrin without his consent. Albinus, persuaded by what they said, wrote to Ananus in anger and threatened to punish him. For this reason King Agrippa took the high priesthood from him when he had held it only three months, and made Jesus the son of Damneus high priest.

When Albinus reached the city of Jerusalem, he put all his effort and care into keeping the country at peace, and he did it by destroying many of the Sicarii. But the high priest Ananias grew greatly in glory from day to day and was splendidly honored with the goodwill and esteem of the citizens, for he was skilled at raising money. Every day, at any rate, he courted Albinus and the high priest with gifts. He also had servants who were thoroughly wicked. They joined up with the most brazen men, went to the threshing floors, took by force the tithes that belonged to the priests, and did not hold back from beating anyone who would not give them up. The other high priests did the same as his slaves, and no one was able to stop them. So it came about that priests who had always lived on those tithes now died for lack of food. [f]

Once more the Sicarii came into the city by night during the festival, which had now begun. They seized alive the secretary of Eleazar, the captain of the temple (Eleazar was a son of Ananias the high priest), bound him, and led him away. Then they sent to Ananias and said they would release the secretary to him if he would persuade Albinus to set free ten prisoners who had been captured from their party. Ananias, under compulsion, persuaded Albinus and got what he asked. That was the beginning of greater troubles. The robbers used every scheme to seize some of Ananias’s household; they kept taking them alive and would not let them go until they had got back some of the Sicarii in exchange. And when they had again grown to no small number, they took heart and did harm to the whole country. [h]

About this time King Agrippa enlarged Caesarea, the one called Caesarea Philippi, and renamed it Neronias in honor of Nero. He built a theater for the people of Berytus at great expense and presented them with shows every year, spending many tens of thousands on them. He also gave the people grain and distributed oil, and adorned the whole city with statues he set up and with copies of ancient works of art. In fact, he moved almost all the adornment of his kingdom there. This made his subjects hate him all the more, because he was stripping them of what was theirs to adorn a foreign city. [i]

Jesus the son of Gamaliel now received the succession to the high priesthood from the king, who had taken it from Jesus the son of Damneus. Because of this, strife broke out between the two of them. Each gathered a band of the most brazen men, and they often went from insults to throwing stones at each other. But Ananias came out on top, because his wealth won over those who were ready to take money. Costobarus and Saulus also gathered gangs of wicked men on their own account. They were of royal descent and found favor because of their kinship with Agrippa; but they were violent men, ready to plunder anyone weaker than themselves. It was from that time above all that our city grew sick, and everything went from bad to worse.

When Albinus heard that Gessius Florus was coming to succeed him, he wanted to seem to have done the people of Jerusalem some favor. So he brought out the prisoners and ordered those who plainly deserved death to be executed; but those who had been put in prison for some small, ordinary offense he set free on his own authority, taking money from them. In this way the prison was emptied of prisoners, and the country was filled with robbers.

Those of the Levites (this is one of our tribes) who were singers of hymns persuaded the king to convene a sanhedrin and allow them to wear linen robes as the priests did. They said it would befit the times of his reign to introduce something new by which he would be remembered. Nor did they fail to get what they asked. The king, with the agreement of those who came to the sanhedrin, allowed the singers of hymns to lay aside their former dress and wear linen as they wished. And since a certain part of the tribe served in the temple, he allowed these too to learn the hymns by heart, as they had requested. All this was contrary to the laws of our fathers, and whenever those laws have been broken, it has never been possible to escape the penalty. [m]

By now the temple had been finished. The people saw that the workmen, more than eighteen thousand of them, were idle and would be short of wages, since they had earned their living by working on the temple. They did not want to keep money stored away, for fear of the Romans; and wanting to provide for the workmen and spend the treasures on them (for if anyone worked even one hour of the day, he was paid for it at once), they urged the king to rebuild the eastern colonnade. This colonnade belonged to the outer temple and stood in a deep ravine. Its walls measured six hundred feet, and it was built of square stones, very white, each of them thirty feet long and nine feet high. It was the work of King Solomon, who first built the whole temple. [n]

But the king, who had been entrusted by Claudius Caesar with the care of the temple, reasoned that it is easy to pull down any building but hard to put one up, and with this colonnade harder still, since the work would need time and a great deal of money. So he refused their request on that point, but he did not prevent them from paving the city with white stone. He also took the high priesthood from Jesus the son of Gamaliel and gave it to Matthias the son of Theophilus, under whom the Jews’ war with the Romans began.