Fields of Blood (25 page)

To temper the harsh rejectionism of the Deuteronomists, the priestly historians included moving stories of reconciliation. The estranged brothers
Jacob and
Esau finally see the “face of God” in each other.
¹⁴¹
The Chroniclers show
Moses refraining from retaliation when the king of
Edom refused to grant the Israelites safe passage through his territory during their journey to the
Promised Land.
¹⁴²
The most famous of these priestly writings is the creation story that opens the Hebrew Bible. The biblical redactors placed this priestly creation story before the earlier eighth-century tale of
Yahweh’s creating a garden for
Adam and Eve and their fall from grace. This priestly version extracted all the violence from the traditional
Middle Eastern cosmogony. Instead of fighting a battle and slaying a monster, the god of Israel simply uttered words of command when he ordered the cosmos. On the last day of creation, he “saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good.”
¹⁴³
This god had no enemies: he blessed every one of his creatures, even his old enemy
Leviathan.

This principled benevolence is all the more remarkable when we consider that the community of exiles was under almost constant attack by hostile groups in
Judea. When
Nehemiah, dispatched from the Persian court to supervise the rebuilding of
Jerusalem, was overseeing the restoration of the city wall, each of the laborers “did his work with one hand while gripping his weapon with the other.”
¹⁴⁴
The priestly writers could not afford to be antiwar but they seem troubled by military violence. They deleted some of the most belligerent episodes in the Deuteronomist history and brushed over
Joshua’s conquests. They told the stories of David’s chivalric warfare but omitted his grim order to kill the blind and lame in Jerusalem, and it was the Chronicler who explained that David was forbidden to build the temple because he had shed too much blood. They also recorded a story about a military campaign against the
Midianites, who had enticed the Israelites into idolatry.
¹⁴⁵
There was no doubt that it was a just cause, and the Israelite armies behaved in perfect accordance with Deuteronomist law: the priests led the troops into battle, and the soldiers killed the Midianite kings, set fire to their town, and condemned to death both the married women who had tempted the Israelites and the boys who would grow up to be warriors. But even though they had “cleansed” Israel, they had been tainted by this righteous bloodshed.
“You must camp for seven days outside the camp,”
Moses told the returning warriors: “Purify yourselves, you and your prisoners.”
¹⁴⁶

In one remarkable story, the Chronicler condemned the savagery of the Kingdom of
Israel in a war against an idolatrous
Judean king, even though
Yahweh himself had sanctioned the campaign. Israelite troops had killed 120,000 Judean soldiers and marched 200,000 Judean prisoners back to
Samaria in triumph. Yet the prophet Oded greeted these conquering heroes with a blistering rebuke:

The troops immediately released the captives and relinquished all their booty; specially appointed officials “saw to the relief of the prisoners. From the booty, they clothed all those of them who were naked; they gave them clothing and sandals, and provided them with food, drink and shelter. They mounted all those who were infirm on donkeys, and took them back to their kinsmen in
Jericho.”
¹⁴⁸
These priests were probably monotheists; in Babylonia, paganism had lost its allure for the exiles. The prophet who had hailed Cyrus as the messiah also uttered the first fully monotheistic statement in the Bible: “Am I not Yahweh?” he makes the God of Israel demand repeatedly. “There is no other god beside me.”
¹⁴⁹
Yet the
monotheism of these priests had not made them intolerant, bloodthirsty, or cruel; rather, the reverse is true.

Other postexilic prophets were more aggressive. Inspired by Darius’s ideology, they looked forward to a “day of wonder” when Yahweh would rule the entire world and there would be no mercy for nations who resisted: “Their flesh will moulder while they are still standing on their feet; their eyes will rot in their sockets; their tongues will rot in their mouths.”
¹⁵⁰
They imagined Israel’s former enemies processing meekly each year to Jerusalem, the new
Susa, bearing rich gifts and tribute.
¹⁵¹
Others had fantasies of the Israelites who had been deported by Assyria being carried tenderly home,
¹⁵²
while their former oppressors prostrated themselves before them and kissed their feet.
¹⁵³
One prophet had a vision
of Yahweh’s glory shining over Jerusalem, the center of a redeemed world and a haven of peace—yet a peace achieved only by ruthless repression.

These prophets may have been inspired by the new monotheism. It seems that a strong
monarchy often generates the cult of a supreme deity, creator of the political and natural order. A century or more of experiencing the strong rule of such monarchs as
Nebuchadnezzar and Darius may have led to the desire to make Yahweh as powerful as they. It is a fine example of the “embeddedness” of religion and politics, which works two ways: not only does religion affect policy, but politics can shape theology. Yet these prophets were also surely motivated by that all-too-human desire to see their enemies suffer as they had—an impulse that the
Golden Rule had been designed to modify. They would not be the last to adapt the aggressive ideology of the ruling power to their own traditions and, in so doing, distort them. In this case Yahweh, originally the fierce opponent of the violence and cruelty of empire, had been transformed into an arch imperialist.

Part Two

5

J
esus of Nazareth was born in the reign of the Roman emperor Caesar
Augustus (r. 30 BCE—14 CE), when all the world was at peace.
¹
Under Roman rule, a large group of nations, some of them former imperial powers, were able for a significant period to coexist without fighting one another for resources and territory—a remarkable achievement.
²
Romans made the three claims that characterize any successful imperial ideology: they had been specially blessed by the gods; in their dualist vision, all other peoples were “
barbarians” with whom it was impossible to deal on equal terms; and their mission was to bring the benefits of civilization and peace to the rest of the world. But the
Pax Romana was enforced pitilessly.
³
Rome’s fully professional army became the most efficient killing machine the world had ever seen.
⁴
Any resistance at all justified wholesale massacre. When they took a city, said the Greek historian
Polybius, their policy was “to kill everyone they met and spare no one”—not even the animals.
⁵
After the Roman conquest of
Britain, the Scottish leader
Calgacus reported that the island had become a wasteland: “The uttermost parts of Britain are laid bare; there are no other tribes to come; nothing but sea and cliffs and more deadly Romans … To plunder, butcher and ravage—these things they falsely name empire.”
⁶

Polybius understood that the purpose of this savagery was “to strike terror” in the subject nations.
⁷
It usually worked, but it took the Romans nearly two hundred years to tame the
Jews of
Palestine, who had ousted
an imperial power before and believed they could do it again. After
Alexander the Great had defeated the
Persian Empire in 333 BCE,
Judea had been absorbed into the
Ptolemid and
Seleucid Empires of his “successors” (
diadochoi
). Most of these rulers did not interfere in the personal lives of their subjects. But in 175 BCE the
Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV attempted a drastic reform of the temple cult and banned
Jewish dietary laws,
circumcision, and
Sabbath observance. The Hasmonean priestly family, led by Judas Maccabeus, had led a rebellion and managed not only to wrest Judea and
Jerusalem from Seleucid control but even to establish a small empire by conquering
Idumaea,
Samaria, and
Galilee.
⁸

These events inspired a new
apocalyptic spirituality without which it is impossible to understand the early Christian movement. Crucial to this mind-set was the
perennial philosophy: events on earth were an
apokalupsis,
an “unveiling” that revealed what was simultaneously happening in the heavenly world. As they struggled to make sense of current events, the authors of these new scriptures believed that while the
Maccabees were fighting the Seleucids,
Michael and his angels were battling the demonic powers that supported Antiochus.
⁹
The book of
Daniel, a historical novella composed during the Maccabean wars, was set in Babylonia during the Jewish exile. At its center was the Judean prophet Daniel’s vision of four terrifying beasts, representing the empires of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and finally, Antiochus’s Seleucid Empire, the most destructive of all. But then, “coming on the clouds of heaven,” Daniel saw “one like the son of man” representing the Maccabees. Unlike the four bestial empires, their rule would be just and humane, and God would give them “an eternal sovereignty which shall never pass away.”
¹⁰

Once they had achieved imperial rule, alas, the
Hasmoneans’ piety was unable to sustain the brute realities of political dominance, and they became as cruel and tyrannical as the Seleucids. At the end of the second century BCE, a number of new sects sought a more authentically Jewish alternative;
Christianity would later share some of their enthusiasms. To initiate their disciples, all these sects set up systems of instruction that became the closest thing to an educational establishment in Jewish society. Both the
Qumran sect and the
Essenes—two distinct groups that are often erroneously identified—were attracted toward an ethical community life: meals were eaten together, ritual purity and cleanliness were stressed, and goods were held in common. Both were critical of the Jerusalem temple cult, which, they believed, the Hasmoneans had corrupted.
Indeed, the Qumran commune beside the Dead Sea regarded itself as an alternative temple: on the cosmic plane, the children of light would soon defeat the sons of darkness, and God would build another temple and inaugurate a new world order. The
Pharisees were also committed to an exact and punctilious observance of the biblical law. We know very little about them at this date, however, even though they would become the most influential of these new groups. Some Pharisees led armed revolts against the Hasmoneans but finally concluded that the people would be better off under foreign rule. In 64 BCE, therefore, as the Hasmonean excesses had become intolerable, the Pharisees sent a delegation to Rome requesting that the empire depose the regime.

The following year the
Roman warlord Pompey invaded Jerusalem, killing twelve thousand
Jews and enslaving thousands more. Not surprisingly, most Jews hated Roman rule, but no empire can survive unless it is able to co-opt at least some of the local population. The Romans ruled Palestine through the priestly
aristocracy in Jerusalem, but they also created a puppet king,
Herod, a prince of Idumea and a recent convert to Judaism. Herod built magnificent fortifications, palaces, and theaters throughout the country in the Hellenistic style and on the coast constructed
Caesarea, an entirely new city, in honor of
Augustus. His masterpiece, however, was a magnificent new temple for
Yahweh in Jerusalem, flanked significantly by the
Antonia fortress, manned by Roman troops. A cruel ruler, with his own army and secret police, Herod was extremely unpopular. The Jews of Palestine were therefore ruled by two aristocracies: the Herodians and the
Sadducees, the Jewish priestly nobility. Both collected taxes, so Jews bore a double tax burden.
¹¹

Like all agrarian ruling classes, both aristocracies employed an order of dependent retainers, who in return for extending their masters’ influence among the common people enjoyed higher social status and a share in the surplus.
¹²
They included the publicans, or tax farmers, who in the Roman Empire were obliged to pass on a fixed sum to the colonial government but were allowed to retain the difference between that and what they managed to extort from the peasants. As a result, they gained a certain independence, but as is apparent in the
gospels, they were hated by the common people.
¹³
The “scribes and Pharisees” of the gospels were another group of retainers who interpreted the
Torah, Jewish custumal law, in a way that supported the regime.
¹⁴
Not all Pharisees assumed this role, however. Most concentrated on the stringent observance of the
Torah and the development of what would become rabbinic exegesis, and did not ally themselves too closely with the nobility. Had they done so, they would not have retained their popularity with the people. Indeed, so great was the esteem in which they were held that any
Jew who hoped for a political career had to study civil law with the Pharisees.
Josephus, the first-century-CE Jewish historian, for example, probably became a disciple of the Pharisees to acquire the legal education that qualified him for public life, although he may never have become a full member of the sect.
¹⁵

Once colonized, a people often depends heavily on their religious practices, over which they still have some control and which recall a time when they had the dignity of freedom. In the Jewish case, hostility toward their rulers tended to reach new heights during the important temple festivals, which spoke explosively to the Jews’ political subjugation:
Passover commemorated Israel’s liberation from
Egypt’s imperial control;
Pentecost celebrated the revelation of the Torah, a divine law that superseded all imperial edicts; and the
harvest festival of Weeks was a reminder that the land and its produce belonged to
Yahweh and not the Romans. This simmering discontent erupted in 4 BCE, when Herod was on his deathbed. He had recently installed in the temple a large golden eagle, symbol of imperial Rome, and
Judas and
Matthias, two of the most respected Torah teachers, denounced it as an offensive challenge to Yahweh’s kingship.
¹⁶
In a well-planned protest, forty of their students climbed onto the temple roof, hacked the eagle to pieces, and then courageously awaited the attack of Herod’s soldiers.
¹⁷
Galvanized by fury, Herod rose from his bed and sentenced the students and their teachers to death, before dying in agony himself two days later.
¹⁸

It is important to note that most of the protests against imperial rule in Roman Palestine were nonviolent; far from being fanatically driven to suicidal aggression by their faith, as Josephus would later suggest, Jews conducted principled demonstrations that resorted to armed force only under extreme pressure. When angry crowds protested against the cruel death of their beloved teachers,
Archelaus, Herod’s eldest son, asked them what he could do for them. The response reveals that their hostility to Rome was not solely inspired by religious intransigence: “Some clamoured for a lightening of direct taxation, some for the abolition of purchase-tax, others for the release of prisoners.”
¹⁹
Even though Jerusalem still rang with lamentation, there was no violence against the authorities
until Archelaus panicked and sent troops into the temple. Even then the crowds merely pelted them with stones before returning to their devotions. The situation could have been contained, had not Archelaus sent in the army, which killed three thousand worshippers.
²⁰
Protests then spread to the countryside, where popular leaders, acclaimed as “kings,” waged guerrilla warfare against Roman and Herodian troops. Again, taxation rather than religion was the main issue. Mobs attacked the estates of the nobility and raided local fortresses, storehouses, and Roman baggage trains to “take back the goods that had been seized from the people.”
²¹
It took P. Quintilius
Varus, governor of neighboring
Syria, three years to restore the
Pax Romana, during which he burned the Galilean city of
Sepphoris to the ground, sacked the surrounding villages, and crucified two thousand rebels outside Jerusalem.
²²

Rome now decided that Herod’s realm should be divided among his three sons: Archelaus was given
Idumaea,
Judea, and
Samaria;
Antipas
Galilee and
Peraea; and
Philip the
Transjordan. But Archelaus’s rule was so cruel that Rome soon deposed him, and for the first time Judea was governed by a Roman prefect, supported by the Jewish priestly
aristocracy, from his residence in
Caesarea. When
Coponius, the first governor, arranged for a census as a prelude to tax assessment, a Galilean named Judas urged the people to resist. His religious commitment was inseparable from his political protest:
²³
paying Roman taxes, Judas insisted, “amounted to slavery, pure and simple,” because God was “the only leader and master” of the Jewish people. If they remained steadfast in their opposition and did not shrink “from the slaughter that might come upon them,” God would intervene and act on their behalf.
²⁴

Typically peasants did not resort to violence. Their chief weapon was noncooperation: working slowly or even refraining from work altogether, making their point economically and often cannily. Most Roman governors were careful to avoid offending Jewish sensibilities, but in 26 CE
Pontius Pilate ordered the troops in the
Antonia fortress to raise military standards displaying the emperor’s portrait right next to the temple. At once a mob of peasants and townsfolk marched to Caesarea, and when Pilate refused to remove the standards, they simply lay motionless outside his residence for five days. When Pilate summoned them to the stadium, they found that they were surrounded by soldiers with drawn swords and fell to the ground again, crying that they would rather die than break their laws. They may have relied on divine intervention, but they also
knew that Pilate would risk massive reprisals had he slaughtered them all. And they were right: the Roman governor had to admit defeat and take down the standards.
²⁵
The chances of such a bloodless outcome were much slimmer when, fourteen years later, Emperor Gaius
Caligula would order his statue to be erected in the Jerusalem temple. Once again the peasants took to the road, “as if at a single signal … leaving their houses and villages empty.”
²⁶
When the legate
Petronius arrived at the port of
Ptolemais with the offending statue, he found “tens of thousands of Jews” with their wives and children massed on the plain in front of the city. Again, this was not a violent protest. “On no account would we fight,” they told Petronius, but they were prepared to remain in Ptolemais until after the planting season.
²⁷
This was a politically savvy peasants’ strike: Petronius had to explain to the emperor “that since the land was unsown, there would be a harvest of banditry, because the requirements of the tribute would not be met.”
²⁸
Caligula was rarely moved by rational considerations, however, and the episode could have ended tragically had he not been assassinated the following year.