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Only one followup to Richard Landes' comments: Kraft wrote: > >Enough for now. I also wondered what the evidence is for the first revolt > >against Rome (66-73 CE) being "Messianic" in nature, as Richard seemed to > >claim in passing. The second revolt (132-135 CE) is more clearly so. > Landes replied: > i didn't claim it was messianic (we have no clear evidence of a messiah > like bar kochba, it seems more like a broad coalition of eventually > mutually hostile groups). but i will argue that it was millennial (ie, > they believed that by overthrowing the romans they would inaugurate, as the > maccabees believed they were inaugurating, the messianic age when each sat > under his own fig and vine and none made them afraid. josephus' > description of the zealots is a classic depiction of activist apocalyptic > millennialists and his comment that "the nation began to grow mad with this > [Zealot] distemper in the time of Gessius Florus, who was our procurator > and occasioned the Jews to go wild with it by the abuse of his authority." > is a good example of an apocalyptic movement spreading to activate an > entire region or people. > > if the war in 66-72 is not millennial, then what do you think it is, or > what do you think motivated it? try, in answering, not to use words like > "merely" or "simply" or "just" -- they may help us minimize things, but > neither the participants, nor the leaders had our concerns in mind. In discussing history, words like "merely," "simply," or "just/only" are seldom found on my lips (or from my keyboard). I am convinced that history "then" was as complex for the participants as it is for us (me) now. I like to say that the historian should not shave with Occam's razor! My question was one of evidence, and your Josephus quote is an interesting pointer in the desired direction. I have no doubt that among the complex "Jewish" populace of first century Palestine (and probably elsewhere) there were influential strata that saw (almost?) everything through the filter of eschatological/apocalyptic expectations (which I think you are calling "millennial"), as some of the Dead Sea documents amply illustrate (whenever one dates them), not to mention Paul the Jew. I had interpreted your comment to mean that the immediate "spark" (if there was a single spark) that set off the chain of events that led to the fall of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE was "millennial," but I knew/know of no direct evidence to support such a reconstruction (while with Bar/Ben Kochba/Kosiba, there is such evidence). That once the spark was lit, the eschatological radicals would be ready and anxious to get involved makes perfect sense to me, even without Josephus' corroboration. I could make similar comments about the Maccabean/Hasmonean uprising(s), where the situation seems to be similarly complex, and the degree of "millennial" motivation is not at all clear from the surviving evidence, although conjectures about who the "hasidim" may have been and how they may have been connected with later eschatologically oriented "groups" such as some of the Dead Sea document producers or the first century Pharisees help fuel the discussion. As I suspect you would agree, not all Jews were "millennialists" in the Greco-Roman era, and not every outbreak of unrest was directly connected to eschatological expectations/hopes. A major problem for us is how to get at the underlying complexities through sources such as Josephus, who seems to conceal whatever he knows of these factors in his surviving writings (at one point he claims to have explained some of the Daniel materials "elsewhere," but that elsewhere does not seem to have survived -- perhaps it was never written and/or circulated). Philo is no help, and is perhaps even anti-millennial. The early Jesus traditions (despite some "Jesus seminar" claims about Jesus' actual viewpoint) and Paul do help, along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, but these sources seldom take a broader view of the "socio-political" scene(s). So we squeeze the sources and play around with what seem to us to be the probabilities, but for the most part the picture remains foggy. I agree that eschatological fervor MUST HAVE played significant roles in the development of such situations (as also in other periods of unrest about which we know even less, such as under Trajan around 117 CE, perhaps "Messianically" motivated; or what MUST HAVE happened when Gaius Caligula ordered his image to be erected in the Jerusalem Temple around 40 CE -- see Claudius' Letter of 41 with a possible reference to "missionary" activity in spreading the unrest; etc.). In short, I suspect that whatever disagreements Richard and I may have on these issues (and perhaps we have none!), they are matters of degree and of how to read the scant evidence, not of whether "millennial" motivation was present and significant at all. It MUST HAVE BEEN. Bob (lunch time; I can avoid the exams/papers for a bit longer!) -- Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania 227 Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827 [log in to unmask] http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html