Wars between the Jews and Romans: the subjugation of Judaea (63 BCE)
http://www.livius.org/ja-jn/jewish_wars/jwar01.htm
article by Jona Lendering ©

"The Jewish queen Alexandra-Salome had died, after which their sons Hyrcanus and Aristobulus had started a bloody civil war, which was ruining Judaea.

"The conflict between the two Jewish princes had escalated. The Pharisees sided with Hyrcanus, the Sadducees with Aristobulus. During the festival of Passover of 63, Aristobulus and the Sadducees were besieged in the Temple of Jerusalem by Hyrcanus and his ally, the Arabian sheik Aretas of Petra. However, Aristobulus managed to send an envoy to Pompey's representative in Syria, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. The Jewish leader promised 8,000 kg of silver, an offer that Aemilius could not refuse: he immediately ordered Aretas to leave. When Pompey arrived on the scene, he received an even larger present: Aristobulus sent him a golden vine of no less than 800 kg, which the Roman commander forwarded to the temple of Jupiter in Rome.

Hyrcanus' followers, the Pharisees, allowed Pompey to enter the lower town of Jerusalem, but Aristobulus' adherents, the Sadducees, still occupied the Temple. In the west, there was a bridge between the Temple and the city, but this had been destroyed; in the south and east, there were deep valleys. Therefore, Pompey decided to attack from the north. His soldiers could be seen constructing a large dam; they attacked on every day, except for the sabbath. When the dam was completed, siege towers were rolled towards the wall of the Temple. Catapults kept up a continuous pressure by hurling heavy stones; a battering ram broke the wall, and Pompey's soldiers entered the Temple terrace, where they started to kill the defenders. Many Jewish soldiers committed suicide, because they did want to see the profanation of the sanctuary (June/July 63).

When the Romans controlled the Temple, Pompey and his officers entered the Holy of Holies - according to the Jews a blasphemous act, because only the high priest was allowed to enter this room. The conqueror saw the Menorah, the treasury and all sacred vessels. His soldiers seem to have sacrificed to their standards (Dead Sea Scrolls, 1QpHab 6.1-6). Next day, he ordered the cleansing of the Temple, and he appointed Hyrcanus as high priest.

Meanwhile, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus attacked Aretas of Petra, but allowed himself to be bribed for another 6,000 kg of silver. Soon afterwards, he was killed (an event mentioned in one of the Dead Sea scrolls). At that moment, Pompey had already left Judaea, and after pacifying Crete, he returned to Rome, where he had become the most influential politician of his age. He took many prisoners with him, who were later released and settled in the large section of Rome beyond the river Tiber (Philo of Alexandria, Embassy to Caligula 155; click here for description).

Hyrcanus was high priest and received the title ethnarch ('national leader'). His position was safe, although Aristobulus tried to come back from Rome in 57-55 BCE. In 49, however, there appeared a dark cloud on the horizon: a civil war broke out in the Roman Empire. Pompey was defeated by Julius Caesar, who pursued his enemy to the East. Caesar chose to co-operate with Hyrcanus, but appointed the latter's courtier Antipater epitropos ('regent'). When war broke out with the Parthians, Hyrcanus was taken prisoner (40 BCE). Antipater's son Herod managed to bring him home, but Hyrcanus was no longer high priest and Herod, who became king, had him executed in 31 BCE.

The Roman annexations

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1. Doris, from an unknown family in Jerusalem: married c.47, sent away 37; recalled 14, sent away 7/6. She was the mother of Antipater, who was executed in 4.
2. The Hasmonaean princess Mariamme I: married 37, executed in 29/28. According to Flavius Josephus, Herod was passionately devoted to this woman, but she hated him just as passionately. Nonetheless, she bore him five children: Alexander, Aristobulus, a nameless son, Salampsio and Cyprus.
3. An unknown niece: married 37. No children.
4. An unknown cousin: married c.34/33. No children.
5. The daughter of a Jerusalem priest named Simon, Mariamme II: married 29/28, divorced 7/6. They had a son named Herod.
6. A Samarian woman named Malthace: married 28, died 5/4. Their children were Antipas, Archelaus and Olympias.
7. A Jerusalem woman named Cleopatra: married 28. They had two sons named, Herod and Philip.
8. Pallas: married 16. They had a son named Phasael.
9. Phaedra: married 16. They had a daughter named Roxane.
10. Elpis: married 16. They had a daughter named Salome.

Herod's reign ended in terror. The monastery at Qumran, the home of the Essenes, suffered a violent and deliberate destruction by fire in 8 BCE, for which Herod may have been responsible. When the king fell ill, two popular teachers, Judas and Matthias, incited their pupils to remove the golden eagle from the entrance of the Temple: after all, according to the Ten Commandments, it was a sin to make idols. The teachers and the pupils were burned alive. Some Jewish scholars had discovered that seventy-six generations had passed since the Creation, and there was a well-known prophecy that the Messiah was to deliver Israel from its foreign rulers in the seventy-seventh generation. The story about the slaughter of infants of Bethlehem in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is not known from other sources, but it would have been totally in character for the later Herod to commit such a terrible act.

A horrible disease (probably a cancer-like affection called Fournier's gangrene) made acute the problem of Herod's succession, and the result was factional strife in his family. Shortly before his death, Herod decided against his sons Aristobulus and Antipater, who were executed in 7 and 4 BCE, causing the emperor Augustus to joke that it was preferable to be Herod's pig (hus) than his son (huios) - a very insulting remark to any Jew.

However, the emperor confirmed Herod's last will. After his death in 4 BCE, the kingdom was divided among his sons. Herod Antipas was to rule Galilee and the east bank of the Jordan as a tetrarch; Philip was to be tetrarch of the Golan heights in the north-east; and Archelaus became the ethnarch ('national leader') of Samaria and Judaea. Herod was buried in one of the fortresses he had build, Herodion. Few will have wept.

Literature

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http://www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah/messianic_claimants00.html

Although we cannot be certain whether a person in Antiquity was indeed called a Messiah (and by whom), the list of messianic claimants in modern literature seems endless. At the moment, it seems a common idea that ancient Judea and Galilee were crowded with Messiahs. It may have been so, but we simply cannot know. The main problem is that our most important source, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, felt a strong dislike for messianism and knew that the Romans shared this dislike. Consequently, he refused to use the title, except for Jesus of Nazareth. Modern scholars, however, suspect that several people mentioned by Josephus were in fact called Messiah, but it is of course tricky to try to know it better than the ancients. The following men, however, are likely candidates.

1. Judas, son of Hezekiah (4 BCE)
2. Simon of Peraea (4 BCE)
3. Athronges, the shepherd (4 BCE)
4. Judas, the Galilean (6 CE)
5. John the Baptist (c.28 CE)
6. Jesus of Nazareth (c.30 CE)
7. The Samaritan prophet (36 CE)
8. King Herod Agrippa (44 CE)
9. Theudas (45 CE)
10. The Egyptian prophet (52-58 CE)
11. An anonymous prophet (59 CE)
12. Menahem, the son of Judas the Galilean (66 CE)
13. John of Gischala (67-70 CE)
14. Vespasian (67 CE)
15. Simon bar Giora (69-70 CE)
16. Jonathan, the weaver (73 CE)
17. Lukuas (115 CE)
18. Simon ben Kosiba (132-135)
19. Moses of Crete (448)

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The Administration of Judaea

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