Neil Faulkner (1) (1958–2022)

"I saw in the visions by night a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceededly strong. It had great iron teeth and was devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping what was left with its feet... it had ten horns... There were eyes like human eyes... and a mouth speaking arrogantly. "
- (Daniel, 7.7-8) quoted in ch:1, "Nero's Empire", in Apocalypse:The Great Jewish Revolt Against Rome AD66-73.

The events of this book start in AD 63, with the "fire and sword" unleashed by the Roman army under the general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo onto the resisting chiefs in Armenia : "Men were cut down, their women raped, and any survivors enslaved; villages were demolished, crops torched, animals driven off ; and those who escaped became refugees in the hilltops, enfeebled by cold and hunger." (p. 9)
The long-running Armenian War was basically a conflict over this area of strategic importance, between the Roman Empire (to the West) and the Parthian Empire (based in the area of modern day Iran and Iraq.)
There had been an earlier setback for the Romans in AD61, and outright defeat in AD62, so the truce when it came was under heavy terms for the Parthians. "Too much hope [had been given] to the Parthians, their allies and every would-be rebel in the Roman East. Rome's friends needed reassurance, especially the client-kings, the puppet rulers of various small buffer states along the border, whose soldiers had fought beside the legions in the Armenian mountains ...[like]Herod Agrippa, the Jewish ruler of a string of territories in and around Palestine. "(p. 14)

Because, as Faulkner writes" the ancient city of Rome was... a parasite. Its own hinterland - Latium- could not begin to support it. Instead, it fed off its conquests, its subject provinces, sucking out their wealth in taxes, rent, interest and bribes. "(p. 22)

Nero's" bread and circuses"are famous, but sometimes weren't enough to placate the public. The gulf between rich and poor was vast:
"We live in a city for the most part shored up by gimcrack stays and props: that's how our landlords arrest the collapse of their property, papering over great cracks in the ramshackle fabric, reassuring their tenants they can sleep secure, when all the time the building is poised like a pack of cards... If the alarm goes at ground level, the last to fry will be the attic tenant, way up among the nesting pigeons with nothing but tiles between himself and the weather....But if some millionaire's mansion is gutted, women rend their garments, top people put on mourning, the courts go into recess: then you hear endless complaints about the hazards of city life, these deplorable outbreaks of fire;then contributions pour in while the shell is still ash-hot... "(Juvenal, Satires, 3)

The was a big fire in AD64, many poor Romans had been burnt out, there were rumours of arson,and the popular mood was turning ugly. Nero, looking around for a scapegoat, seized upon the then obscure religious cult of Christianity whose members Faulkner notes were "socially marginal - foreigners, freemen, women, slaves". They were rounded up and executed in the Circus Maximus:"bound naked and torn apart by starving dogs; set on fire as human torches in the night; or hammered onto wooden crosses to hang until they perished" (p. 27)

Ch.2: "Insurrection"
But a bigger threat from below was to come to the imperial Roman War-machine, in May AD 66. The Jewish synagogue at Caesarea Maritima (the provincial capital on the coast of the Province of Judea) was built on land owned by a Greek, who had turned the area around it into a building site . Access was through a tricky narrow passage. They'd been arguments between Jewish worshippers and workmen. A rich Jewish financier had offered the Roman procurator a large bribe to put a halt to further building work, and he'd taken the bribe but done nothing,then left for Sebaste, in Samaria. The day after he left was the Sabbath, and worshippers arrived to find a Greek mob outside the synagogue , and birds being sacrificed over an upturned pot. "Nothing could have been more offensive. By this act, the Torah had been violated (i.e. the Law as set out in the canonical books of the Bible), the synagogue and the Sabbath profaned, and the Jews themselves labelled, in effect, 'plague-ridden', since Leviticus specified this particular ritual for the cure of leprosy. "(p. 36).Fighting broke out, the Roman cavalry turned up, confiscated the pot, and the crowds dispersed. But some Jews, fearing a pogrom, fled to a village seven miles away, and a few of their leaders travelled on to see the Roman procurator to ask for protection, who then arrested and imprisoned them.
Faulkner suggests this was par for the course in Greek vs. Jew conflicts. The Greek minority in Palestine made up many of the "decurions" who maintained law and order, collected taxes, and organised public works. So of course they would get the backing of Rome. "The anti-semitic mob which gathered outside the Caesarea synagogue in May AD66 was composed, in effect, of Roman imperial clients." (p. 37)

Faulkner writes "native Jewish culture came to express the class antagonism of the excluded and the dispossessed." (p. 42)
While there were areas of rich soil in Palestine,like Samaria in the North, Judea, in the centre, the core of the Old Jewish Kingdom and containing Jerusalem , had soils "often thin, stony and eroded." Most Jewish peasant families only just got by, with 15% or more of their income going to Rome in levies and taxes (on top of rent to a landlord, and tithes to the priests). (South of Judea, the agriculture was even worse, and "the region near the Dead Sea was actual desert, a life-hating land of sweat and thirst, from which men and women shrank back to huddle around occasional pools and winter steams."(p. 34)

So what happened next in Jerusalem, in Judea, only 60 miles from Caesarea on the coast, and already restive from the news there, set the tinderbox alight.
The Roman procurator demanded 102,000 denarii from the Temple in Jerusalem, "for Caesar's needs", and marched on Jerusalem to get it.
But there was massive resistance by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. As Roman troops headed for the fortress near the Temple "the Jews filled the narrow streets, blocking them off with improvised barricades, and lined the flat rooftops above. The troops found themselves hedged in and assailed by a hail of spears, stones and tiles, and their commanders quickly abandoned the attempt to march through the city and pulled their men back to the Palace fortress on the western hill." There only a cohort (500 men) remained holed up, the rest of the Roman troops were pulled out of Jerusalem.

Chapter 3:"Collaborators and compromisers"
There were groups among the Jews who tried to put the brakes on, in the struggle against the Romans, though:

KING HEROD AGRIPPA II / THE JEWISH ARISTOCRACY
"Most of these men were thoroughbred creatures of Rome, a new Herodian nobility formed by purges and promotions in the 130 years since Pompey's invasion first brought the legions to Palestine." (p. 51)
"The Jews - most of them - were not to be trusted with arms, so Herod and his successors recruited a hotchpotch army of professional soldiers, men whose allegiance depended on pay not principle." (p. 53)
The regime was bolstered by military fortresses: two in Jerusalem (one, the Royal Palace where the cohort of Roman troops were holed up, and the other one overlooking the Temple), some in "bleak wilderness locations", and some in the south-east of Palestine opposite the foreign threat that was Nabataean Arabia but "few were in the border itself: they were as much a threat against Jews as Arabs. Some quickly acquired a sinister reputation as places where 'enemies of the state' were incarcerated, tortured and murdered - it was in the dungeon of Machaerus that John the Baptist was later beheaded on the orders of Herod Antipas. "(p. 56)
Herod Agrippa addressed the revolutionary crowd
in late May or early June AD 66, in the Gymnasium in Jerusalem. He argued that the Roman procurator should be obeyed until a replacement could be sent. The crowd turned ugly, hurling stones and abuse, and he fled the city.

THE SADDUCEES AND THE SANHEDRIN
When Herod returned, in late summer AD 66, it was with a counter - revolutionary army after a secret delegation had been sent to him from some Jewish high priests. Most of these were Sadducees. The Sadducees "accepted only the biblical written law, and they were mainly concerned with the correct performance of ancient ceremonial. They also denied the immortality of the soul, the existence of heaven and hell, and the promise of a messiah's advent...The cult of the Sadducees, a dessicated religion of empty ritual, appealed to high priests, courtiers and big landowners, people who were comfortable, conservative and smug." The Sadducees made up most of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council of Elders, "which seemed to have combined the roles of a senate, a high court and a holy inquisition... the Sanhedrin represented a client ruling class, and the Sadducean majority within it formed a self-interested clique whose policy was reactionary, repressive, and pro-Roman, their aim being to safeguard their own property by giving loyal service to the imperial power and firmly suppressing popular opposition. When Jesus of Nazareth entered Jerusalem and began preaching sedition to the festival crowds, it was the high priest Caiaphas and other leading members of the Sanhedrin that had him arrested and handed over to Pontius Pilate. "(p. 65)
So in the summer of AD 66 Sanhedrin and Sadducean - backed Herodian troops together with sn aristocratic militia had seized the Upper City of Jerusalem. The revoltionaries held the Lower City and Temple, now converted into a citadel. There was a standoff for seven days across improvised lines of walls, rooftops and street barricades. The deadlock was broken on 14 August, when "the revolutionaries in the city were reinforced by pilgrims from the countryside, including contingents of the militants known as 'Sicarians' or 'Zealots'.
" The houses of high priest Ananias, Herod Agrippa and Berenike [Herod's sister] were put to the torch. So too, was the public record office, where official copies of the contracts which recorded debtors' obligations to their creditors were held. (Debt was one of the principal mechanisms by which the rich expolited the poor, and the demand for cancellation of debts was a traditional rallying cry of radicals in the ancient world.) (p. 66)

THE PHARISEES / ARISTOCRATIC NATIONALISTS
This group had it's roots in the Maccabaean Revolt against the Seleucids of 167-142 BC, and even earlier, (6th century BC) Yahwism. Yahwism was an inflexibly monotheistic religion, which arose in response to 'Babylonian Exile' in Mesopotamia. (whereas @10 century BC, "Solomon and the kings of Israel and Judah had never been monotheists: for them, Yahweh, however important, had been one of a pantheon of deities.". p.69.)
The aristocratic nationalists had backed the popular revolt, but fearing Zealot extremism would threaten their own property and positions , ambushed and killed their leader, Menahem, and his supporters.

Chapter 4:" The revolutionary movement"
This chapter is where the narrative of the big revolt which then spread throughout Palestine starts, which is the subject of the rest of the book.

And it's a great read! There are nice big colour photos of the places mentioned, as well as detailed maps, in the book. There are great line drawings of Roman legionaries, Jewish militiamen, etc. There's even an inky black drawing of a crucifixion with an evil looking crow perched on top of the cross.
All of which make the events described in the book easy to imagine.

But to end this review I'll summarise Faulkner's description in ch. 4 of the groups involved in the revolt:

ESSENE MONKS
Based in Qumran, "a desolate spot. It lies on the edge of the Judaean Desert - the biblical 'Wilderness' - an orange-yellow furnace of rock and sand. About a mile away, glinting through the heat haze, is the Dead Sea, a vast salt-filled depression flooded by the Jordan."

" The dead of the community were buried in a cemetery to the east of the settlement: 1,100 bodies were found there, placed in recesses in the walls of vertical, rock-cut shafts, apparently with minimal fuss, and little in the way of grave-goods. They are simple burials conforming to an austere and democratic lifestyle. "(p. 82)

The "Dead Sea Scrolls" hidden in caves by the monks before the destruction of Qumran by the Romans in AD 68, and discovered between 1947 and 1956, in Faulkner's estimation show the Essenes "to have been a revolutionary millenarian sect whose aim was to destroy the Romano-Jewish state in Palestine as the prelude to a world war of poor against rich." (p. 94)

MESSIAHS
Faulkner quotes Norman Cohn's definition of the millenarian sect: "a group with a quite specific view of salvation: as being something collective (not personal), earth-bound (not heavenly), imminent (not distant in time), all embracing (not limited in scope), and involving supernatural intervention (not just human action). "
According to Faulkner," The New Testament... records the work of a first-century Jewish Messiah and the fate of the millenarian sect he left behind. " (p. 97)

BANDITS
Descendents of figures like" one Judas, son of the brigand-chief Hezekiah, who had previously overrun the country and been crushed by King Herod, got a large crowd together, broke into the Royal armoury, equipped his followers, and attacked other rivals in the struggle for power. "(p. 108)

PEASANTS AND PREACHERS
" These groups always exist, but the proportions vary, and crucial to this- the balance within the viable rich and middle and the marginal poor and landless - is the overall rate of exploitation imposed on villages by the ruling class. All the evidence we have points towards intensified exploitation and impoverishment of the Jewish peasantry in the Greco-Roman period. " (p. 112)
"... that which centuries before may have been a matter of practical reformism - regular minor adjustments to maintain an essentially egalitarian set-up - now, in the context of the present age, amounted to a set of far-reaching revolutionary demands. This brought about a merging of the traditional egalitarian Judaism of the peasants with the revolutionary millenarian politics of the sects. The existing order could not celebrate a Year of Jubilee, for to cancel debts, free bondsmen and redistribute land would be to destroy the wealth and power of the ruling class. The time - honoured social aspirations of the peasantry could not be realised without revolution. The Year of Jubilee had to become the Apocalypse. "(p. 117)

THE END.… (mehr)