masada: zealots on high

Masada. Is its history a cautionary tale to call down scorn on fanaticism? The craggy stronghold beside the Dead Sea is a symbol of resistance as well as destructive extremism….

Some of the Jews awaiting the end of the world- like the Essenes, the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls, withdrew in order to prepare themselves for the time when the great battle between the forces of good and evil would erupt, signaling the beginning of the end. Others followed the preacher John the Baptist, who called on them to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” or listened to Jesus of Nazareth, who preached the same message in Galilee and in Jerusalem. Still others, a few years after Jesus’s execution, followed a prophet named Theudas to the banks of the Jordan, carrying all their riches, expecting the river to part so that they could walk across it to God’s kingdom.

---Now then, there's a very good investigative political researcher called John Judge. He is a co-founder of an organization called COPA, The Coalition on Political Assassinations. He is also a co-founder of 911 citizenswatch.org. One of his specialties is researching so-called mass suicides. So far he cannot find one instance is human history of a mass suicide; and this has some relation to his work on 9/11, but I'll come back to that. Mr. Judge goes way back through history. According to Judge, the Roman historian Josephus admitted that the Jewish suicide at Masada involved six people and the rest were slaughtered---read more:http://wingedcentaur.hubpages.com/hub/The-Scooby-Doo-Moment

—Now then, there’s a very good investigative political researcher called John Judge. He is a co-founder of an organization called COPA, The Coalition on Political Assassinations. He is also a co-founder of 911 citizenswatch.org. One of his specialties is researching so-called mass suicides. So far he cannot find one instance is human history of a mass suicide; and this has some relation to his work on 9/11, but I’ll come back to that.
Mr. Judge goes way back through history. According to Judge, the Roman historian Josephus admitted that the Jewish suicide at Masada involved six people and the rest were slaughtered—read more:http://wingedcentaur.hubpages.com/hub/The-Scooby-Doo-Moment

Some took to the hills of Galilee and harried the Romans and their Jewish puppet rulers in any way they could, to hasten the end of the old order. The authorities met this agitation with force. Year after year, expeditions were dispatched into the Galilee hills to flush the rebels from their hideouts. John and Theudas were beheaded and Jesus was crucified, for any talk about the end of the world was interpreted by the Romans, and by most of the populace as well, as a call to rebellion.

When the rebellion finally did break out, the Jews fought fanatically. It took four years for the Romans to reconquer Jerusalem; the city was finally captured and all but destroyed in the spring of A.D. 70 after a terrible six month siege.But the zealots still refused to surrender and sought refuge in desert fortresses. Masada, an almost inaccessible rock rising above the shore of the Dead Sea, was the last of these strongholds to be captured. In the winter of A.D. 73, its besieged defenders at last understood that further resistance was futile; instead of surrendering, hundreds of them killed themselves, their wives and their children.

Ultimately, there is much divergence of opinion on the issue of suicide as exemplified by Masada. There is the heroic aspect like the Alamo is to Americans, or the consternation about killing oneself in the face of inevitable doom, where the role of martyrdom and the morality of the decision blends into a context of dark moments. After Masada’s excavation it became a symbol of courage and a courgeous last stand, though the role of religious fanaticism and inflexibility should not be overlooked, resulting in a xenophobic delusion that all faith would be extinguished and the Jewish star would never rise again. if anything, they lost faith in the idea of the Jewish nation as the people of eternity.

John the Baptist.---When that did not convince them, he lied to to them again, and entered into a false mutual suicide pact in which they drew lots, as in Masada, as to who would kill whom. By "chance" or pre-arrangement, Josephus drew the last lot according to his story and then reneged on the plot and escaped along with another. (Josephus Flavius, Jewish Wars, Book 3 8:7) By his own account, he had risked his life in this pact, and had no intention of killing himself if he could help it. The pact and its outcome are his story and we have only his word for the events. The only certain fact is that Josephus emerged alive. Josephus was always outspoken about the evils of the Sicarii according to his view of the matter. Moreover, the defenders of Masada had faithfully carried out a suicide pact of a type which he himself, by his own admission, had betrayed. ---click image for source...

John the Baptist.—When that did not convince them, he lied to to them again, and entered into a false mutual suicide pact in which they drew lots, as in Masada, as to who would kill whom. By “chance” or pre-arrangement, Josephus drew the last lot according to his story and then reneged on the plot and escaped along with another. (Josephus Flavius, Jewish Wars, Book 3 8:7)
By his own account, he had risked his life in this pact, and had no intention of killing himself if he could help it. The pact and its outcome are his story and we have only his word for the events. The only certain fact is that Josephus emerged alive.
Josephus was always outspoken about the evils of the Sicarii according to his view of the matter. Moreover, the defenders of Masada had faithfully carried out a suicide pact of a type which he himself, by his own admission, had betrayed. —click image for source…

ADDENDUM:

(see link at end)…Ben Yehuda seems to create his own myth. He tells us that according to Josephus Flavius there were no battles between the Romans and the Sicarii (Ben Yehuda, 1995 p. 9). This is not literally true. Josephus makes no statement about how many battles there were. He doesn’t mention any battles, which is peculiar. But Josephus Flavius does mention, as we noted, that the activities of the Sicarii were rekindling the revolt in Judea. This contradicts the impression given by Ben Yehuda that the Sicarii were only engaged in assassinations and killing of innocent women and children, unless we adopt the view that the entire interest of the Jews in the revolt was robbery and assassination.

Anti-Zionists and critics of Israel have insisted that Israelis have developed a “Masada complex” – that is, a feeling of being walled up inside a fortress with imminent doom approaching and no way out. The taunt

eant as a claim that Israeli security fears are not realistic. Given the fact that several Palestinian organizations, as well as the government of Iran, are publicly committed to the destruction of Israel, and take steps to implement it, there appear to be good grounds for Israeli security fears. Read More:http://zionism-israel.com/dic/Massada.htm

 

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