Faction and Daggers in Jerusalem

Under Nero, while Felix was governor of Judea, Josephus again writes, in his very words, of the faction among the priests against one another, in the twentieth book of his Antiquities, somewhat as follows. “A faction flared up between the high priests on one side and the priests and the leading men of the people of Jerusalem on the other. Each of them gathered a band of the most reckless and revolutionary men and made himself their leader. When they clashed, they abused one another and threw stones. There was not a single person to rebuke them; these things were done with full license, as in a city with no one in charge. [a] Such shamelessness and audacity took hold of the high priests that they dared to send slaves to the threshing floors to take the tithes owed to the priests, and so it came about that the poorer priests could be seen dying of want. In this way the violence of the factions overpowered all justice.”

The same writer also records that at about the same time a kind of robbers sprang up in Jerusalem, “who by day,” as he says, “and in the middle of the city, murdered those they met.” [b] Especially at the festivals, he says, they mingled with the crowd and stabbed their enemies with small daggers hidden under their clothes. Then, when the victims fell, the murderers themselves joined those who cried out in indignation, and so, because they were trusted, they were never found out. [c] The first they slaughtered was Jonathan the high priest, and after him many were killed every day. The fear was worse than the disasters themselves, since each man, as in a war, expected death at any hour. [d]