The Zealots Seize the Temple

When John entered Jerusalem the whole populace poured out, and around each of the fugitives a vast crowd gathered, asking what disasters had happened outside. Their breath, still hot and panting, showed the straits they had been in, yet they boasted even in their misfortunes. They had not fled from the Romans, they said, but had come to fight them from a safe position; it would be senseless and useless to run reckless risks for Gischala and feeble little towns, when they ought to husband their arms and their strength and keep them for the capital. But when they went on to tell of the capture of Gischala, most people understood their “withdrawal,” so decently described, to be a flight. And when the news about the captives was heard, no small confusion seized the people, and they reckoned it a strong sign that they too would be taken. John, for his part, was not much ashamed of those he had left behind. He went round to everyone, urging them to war with his hopes. He made out that the Romans were weak and extolled his own strength, and he mocked the ignorance of the inexperienced: not even if they grew wings, he said, would the Romans ever get over the wall of Jerusalem, when they had suffered so badly at the villages of Galilee and had worn out their engines against the walls there. [a]

With this talk most of the young men were corrupted and stirred up for war. But of the sensible and the old there was not one who did not foresee what was coming and mourn as though the city were already lost. Such was the confusion among the people. But even before the strife broke out in Jerusalem, the people of the countryside had already split into factions. Titus went from Gischala to Caesarea, and Vespasian from Caesarea to Jamnia and Azotus. He subdued both, placed garrisons in them, and came back bringing with him a great number of people who had come over to him under his pledge of safety. Meanwhile turmoil and civil war broke out in every city, and as soon as they had a breathing space from the Romans they turned their hands against one another. Between those who loved war and those who longed for peace there was bitter strife. First the spirit of rivalry seized households that had long been of one mind; then the dearest friends broke loose from one another, and each man joined those who chose as he did, until they stood ranged in bodies against each other. Faction was everywhere, and the party of revolution and of arms prevailed over the old and sensible by its youth and daring. First each of the local people turned to plunder; then they formed into companies to rob throughout the countryside, so that in cruelty and lawlessness their own countrymen were no different from the Romans, and to those who were plundered capture by the Romans seemed far lighter. [b]

The garrisons of the cities, partly from reluctance to take on hardship and partly from hatred of the nation, gave the victims little or no help. At last the robber chiefs of the bands everywhere, glutted with plundering the countryside, gathered together into one pack of villainy and stole into Jerusalem. It was a city without a commander, and by ancestral custom it received everyone of its own race without scrutiny; and at that time everyone supposed that all who were pouring in came out of goodwill, as allies. This, quite apart from the faction, afterward sank the city. The supplies that could have sustained the fighting men were used up beforehand by a useless and idle crowd, and on top of the war these men brought faction and famine upon themselves. [c]

Other robbers came in from the countryside and joined those inside, who were worse still, and from then on they left no horror undone. They did not measure their daring by robbery and stripping people alone, but went as far as murder, and not at night or in secret or against ordinary men, but openly, by day, beginning with the most eminent. First they arrested and imprisoned Antipas, a man of the royal family and one of the most powerful in the city, so much so that the public treasury had been entrusted to him. After him they seized Levias, a man of note, and Syphas son of Aregetes, who were also of royal descent, and besides these the men reputed to be leaders in the countryside. A terrible dismay took hold of the people, and as if the city had been taken in war, each man cared only for his own safety. [d] But the chains of the prisoners did not satisfy them, nor did they think it safe to keep powerful men under guard so long. Their households were large and strong enough to avenge them, and the people too might perhaps rise up, stirred by the lawlessness. So they decided to kill them, and sent a certain John, the readiest of them for murder, who in the native tongue was called “son of Dorcas.” Ten men went with him into the prison with drawn swords, and they cut the prisoners’ throats. For so great a crime they made up grand lies and pretexts: the men, they said, had been in talks with the Romans about surrendering Jerusalem, and they had killed traitors to the common freedom. In short, they boasted of their deeds as if they had become the benefactors and saviors of the city. [e]

The people sank so low in abjectness and fear, and these men rose so high in madness, that even the appointment of high priests passed into their hands. They set aside the families from which the high priests had been appointed in succession, and installed obscure and lowborn men so as to have partners in their impieties; for those who had gained the highest honor without deserving it had to obey those who gave it. They also set the men in authority against one another with various schemes and stories, making their opportunity out of the quarrels of those who might have stopped them, until, glutted with the wrongs they had done to men, they turned their outrage against the Deity and entered the holy place with polluted feet. The people were already rising against them, for Ananus, the eldest of the high priests, was urging them on. He was a man of great good sense, and he might perhaps have saved the city if he had escaped the hands of those who plotted against him. These men made the temple of God their fortress and their refuge from the disturbances of the people, and the holy place became their tyrant’s stronghold. To the horrors they added mockery, which was more painful than what they did. To test how cowed the people were and to try their own strength, they undertook to make the high priests by lot, though, as we have said, the succession went by family. The pretext for the scheme was an ancient custom, for they said that in old times the high priesthood had been given by lot. In truth it was the overthrow of the firmer law, and a trick for gaining power by having the offices filled through themselves. [f]

So they summoned one of the high-priestly clans, called Eniachin, and cast lots for a high priest. By chance the lot fell on the man who best displayed their lawlessness, one Phanni, son of Samuel, from the village of Aphthia. He was not only not descended from high priests; he was such a rustic that he did not clearly know what the high priesthood was. They dragged him from the country against his will and, as if on a stage, decked him out in a mask not his own: they put the sacred vestments on him and taught him what he had to do at each moment. To them so great an impiety was a joke and a game, but the other priests, watching from a distance as their law was made sport of, could not hold back their tears, and groaned at the overthrow of the sacred honors. [g]

The people would not bear this audacity, and all were roused as if to overthrow a tyranny. Those who were reputed their leaders, Gorion son of Joseph and Simeon son of Gamaliel, urged them on, both in the assemblies when they were gathered together and in private, going round to each man: now at last they must punish these destroyers of their freedom and cleanse the holy place of the murderers. The most respected of the high priests, Jesus son of Gamalas and Ananus son of Ananus, also reproached the people in their meetings for their sluggishness and stirred them up against the Zealots. For that was the name these men gave themselves, as though they were zealous for good practices, and not zealous for the worst of deeds, in which they outdid everyone. [i]

When the crowd had come together in assembly, everyone was indignant at the seizure of the holy places, at the robberies and the murders, but they had not yet moved to resist, because they thought the Zealots hard to attack, as indeed they were. Ananus stood up in their midst. Looking again and again toward the temple, his eyes filled with tears, he said: [j]

“Truly it would have been well for me to die before I saw the house of God filled with so many abominations, and its holy places, where no foot may tread, crowded with the feet of murderers. Yet I, who wear the high priest’s vestments and bear the most honored of sacred names, live on and cling to life, and will not endure a death that would bring glory to my old age. If I must, I will stand alone, as if in a wilderness, and give up my life, alone, for God’s sake. For what good is it to live among a people who have no feeling for their calamities, and who have lost all sense of the sufferings at hand? You are plundered, and you put up with it; you are beaten, and you keep silent; and no one so much as groans aloud for the murdered.

“O bitter tyranny! But why do I blame the tyrants? Were they not reared by you and by your patience with them? Was it not you who overlooked the first men who banded together, while they were still few, and made them many by your silence, and by sitting quiet while they armed, turned their weapons against yourselves? You should have cut short their first attacks, when they assailed your kinsmen with abuse. Instead, by neglecting it, you spurred the wretches on to plunder. When houses were sacked, no one said a word; so they seized the owners themselves, and when these were dragged through the middle of the city, no one came to their help. Then they outraged with chains the men you had betrayed to them. I will not say how many or of what kind; but though they had been neither accused nor tried, no one helped the men in chains. It followed that we would see the same men murdered. We have seen that too, while, as from a herd of dumb beasts, the finest victim was dragged off each time, and no one so much as uttered a sound, let alone lifted his right hand.

“Bear it, then! Bear it, as you watch the holy places trampled! You yourselves have laid down for these impious men every step of their audacity; do not complain now of the height they have reached. Surely by now they would have gone further still, if there were anything holier left for them to destroy. They have taken the strongest place in the city; for now let the temple be called a citadel or a fortress. With so great a tyranny walled in against you, and your enemies over your heads, what do you plan, and with what do you warm your hopes? Will you wait for the Romans, then, to come to the help of our holy places? Things in the city have come to this, and we have sunk to such misery, that even our enemies might pity us.

“Will you not rise up, you most wretched of men, and turn on those who strike you, as even wild beasts can be seen to do, and take revenge on them? Will each of you not remember your own calamities, set before your eyes what you have suffered, and whet your souls for vengeance? Then among you the most honored and most natural of passions, the desire for freedom, is dead. We have become lovers of slavery and lovers of masters, as if we had inherited submission from our forefathers. Yet they fought many great wars for their independence, and were never so overcome by the power of the Egyptians or of the Medes as to do what they were ordered.

“But why speak of our forefathers? This present war against the Romans (I will not examine whether it is profitable and advantageous or the opposite), what pretext does it have? Is it not freedom? Then shall we refuse to bear the masters of the world, and put up with tyrants of our own race? To obey foreigners one might put down to the fortune that has once defeated us; but to give way to wicked men of one’s own people belongs to men who are base, and who choose it.

“Since I have mentioned the Romans, I will not hide from you what struck me in the midst of my words and turned my thoughts: even if we are captured by them (may the word never be put to the test!), we can suffer nothing harsher than what these men have done to us. How is it not worth our tears to see in the temple the offerings of the Romans, beside the spoils of men of our own race, who have plundered and destroyed the nobility of our capital and murdered men whom even the Romans would have spared had they conquered? The Romans never passed the boundary set for the profane, nor broke any of our sacred customs, but shuddered as they looked from afar at the walls around the holy places; while men born in this very land, raised under our customs and called Jews, walk about in the midst of the holy places with their hands still hot from the murder of their countrymen. Does anyone, then, fear the war from outside, and men who by comparison are far more moderate than our own people? Indeed, if names must truly fit the things they name, one might find that the Romans are the upholders of our laws, and the enemies are the men within.

“That these plotters against freedom deserve utter destruction, and that no one could devise a punishment fit for what they have done, I think you all came from home convinced; even before my words, the deeds you have suffered had roused you against them. Perhaps most of you are daunted by their numbers and their daring, and also by the advantage of their position. But as these things arose through your negligence, so now they will grow greater if you delay. Their numbers swell daily, as every scoundrel deserts to his own kind; their daring is kindled because so far nothing has stood in their way; and they will use their higher ground, and with preparation too, if we give them time. Believe me: if we go up against them, their consciences will humble them, and their reasoning will throw away the advantage of the height. Perhaps the Deity they have outraged will turn their missiles back upon them, and the impious will perish by their own weapons. Only let us be seen, and they are finished. And it is a noble thing, even if some danger comes with it, to die at the sacred gates and give up our lives, if not for children or wives, then for God and for the holy places. I will lead you with counsel and with my own hand. You will lack no plan for your safety that we can provide, and you will not see me sparing my body.”

With these words Ananus roused the crowd against the Zealots. He knew well that they were now hard to put down, for their numbers, their youth and their resolution, but most of all because of their consciousness of what they had done; they would never give in, having no hope of pardon in the end for their deeds. Still, he chose to suffer anything rather than look on while affairs were in such confusion. The crowd shouted to him to lead them against the men he had spoken of, and every man was most eager to be first into the danger.

While Ananus was enrolling and drawing up those fit for battle, the Zealots learned of the attempt, for there were men who reported to them everything the people did. In a fury they rushed out of the temple, in a mass and in companies, and spared no one they met. Ananus quickly gathered the people. They had the advantage in numbers, but were inferior to the Zealots in arms and in having had no training. Eagerness on each side made up for what it lacked: the men from the city had taken up an anger stronger than arms, and the men from the temple a daring greater than any numbers. The people believed the city would be no place to live unless they cut the robbers out of it; the Zealots, that unless they won there was no punishment they would escape. So they clashed, with their passions for generals. At first they threw stones at one another in the city and in front of the temple and hurled javelins from a distance, but whenever one side gave way, the winners used their swords. There was great slaughter on both sides, and many were wounded. The wounded of the people were carried to their homes by their relatives, but any Zealot who was hit went up into the temple and stained the sacred floor with his blood; one might say that their blood alone defiled the holy places. In these clashes the robbers, sallying out, always came off best. But the people grew enraged and ever more numerous. They reproached those who gave way, and those behind would not let the men who turned back retreat, but forced them on, until they turned their whole force against their opponents. The Zealots could no longer withstand the pressure and fell back little by little into the temple, and Ananus’s men burst in along with them. Dismay fell on the Zealots now that they had lost the first court. They fled into the inner one and quickly shut the gates. Ananus did not think it right to assault the sacred gateways, especially since the Zealots were hurling missiles from above, and he thought it unlawful, even if he won, to bring the crowd in before they had been purified. So he chose by lot from them all about six thousand armed men and posted them as guards in the colonnades. Others relieved these, and every man had to take his turn at the watch; but many men of rank were excused by those who seemed to be in charge, and hired poorer men to go on guard in their place. [m]

The man who became partly to blame for the ruin of all these was John, who, as we said, had escaped from Gischala. He was a most crafty man, carrying in his soul a terrible lust for tyranny, and he had long been scheming against the state. At this time, pretending to be of the people’s mind, he went about with Ananus when he consulted with the leading men by day and when he went the rounds of the guards by night. But he reported their secrets to the Zealots, and through him every plan of the people was known to the enemy before it had been properly considered. Contriving not to fall under suspicion, he paid boundless attentions to Ananus and the leaders of the people. But his eagerness worked against him: his senseless flattery made him the more suspected, and his being everywhere without being invited gave the appearance that he was betraying their secrets. They could see that the enemy knew all their plans, and no one was more likely to be suspected of passing them on than John. Yet it was not easy to get rid of him. He was powerful through his villainy, and in any case no obscure man, and he had won over many of those who sat in the council. So they decided to bind him to them by oaths of loyalty. John readily swore that he would be loyal to the people, would betray no plan or action to the enemy, and would help to overthrow the attackers with hand and counsel alike. Ananus and his party trusted his oaths and from then on admitted him to their councils without suspicion. They even sent him in to the Zealots as their envoy to arrange a settlement, for they were anxious that the temple should not be defiled through any act of theirs, and that none of their countrymen should fall in it. [o]

But John, as though his oath of loyalty had been sworn to the Zealots and not against them, went in, stood among them, and told them that he had often run risks on their account, so that they might not be ignorant of any of the secret plans that Ananus and his party had made against them. But now, he said, he was running the greatest risk together with them all, unless some help from heaven came to them. For Ananus was no longer delaying. He had persuaded the people and sent envoys to Vespasian, inviting him to come quickly and take over the city, and he had proclaimed a purification against them for the next day, so that his men might get in either on the pretext of worship or by force, and fight them. John did not see how long they could bear the blockade, or how they could stand up against so many. He added that it was by God’s providence that he himself had been sent in as envoy for a settlement, for Ananus was offering terms so that he might come upon them off their guard. They must therefore either beg their besiegers to spare their lives or find some help from outside. Those who warmed themselves with the hope of pardon if they were defeated had forgotten their own daring deeds, or supposed that as soon as the doers repented, those who had suffered must at once be reconciled to them. But often the very repentance of wrongdoers is hated, and the anger of the wronged grows harsher once they have the power. The friends and kinsmen of the dead were lying in wait for them, and a whole people enraged at the overthrow of their laws and law courts; and even if some part of them felt pity, it would be swallowed up by the greater part in its indignation. [p]