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Subject: JUICE: Cultural History of the Jews - Masada (Part 1)
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From: Sidney Slivko
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
To: JUICE: Cultural History of the Jews - Part 1 of 2

A Cultural History of the Jews, Tzvi Howard Adelman, Jerusalem

Masada as a Cultural Experience - (Part 1 of 2)

Background: The Intertestamental Period

When did the biblical period end? Technical, scholarly definitions
could locate such a transition at any number of events: the destruction
of the First Temple in the year 586 BCE, the building of the Second
Temple in around the year 515 BCE, the destruction of the Second Temple
in 70 CE are all contenders as transitional events. Other markers
could be based on literary and cultural markers such as canonization of
the Biblical text, which, unfortunately cannot be pin-pointed with total
accuracy, the beginning of rabbinic literature, which either dates with
the earliest known rabbis sometime around the first century BCE or the
first known works around the beginning of the third century CE.

This entire period, including all the various suggested dates is often
called the Intertestamental period and the literature produced during
it, Intertestamental Literature. Although the designation is basically
a Christian one, signifying the transition from what they refer to as
the Old Testament to their New Testament, the designation works as well
for Jewish culture, marking the transition from biblical to rabbinic
texts. During this period, also called The Second Temple Period by
Jews, or Bayit Sheni, a large corpus of literature was produced by the
Jews in Greek, Aramaic, and other languages, in both the land of Israel
and in the Diaspora.

This literature, which includes the Apocrypha (hidden literature),
Pseudepigrapha (writings attributed to biblical characters who did not
write it), the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Bible), the
Elephantine Papyri (a Jewish archive from Egypt), the writings of Philo
of Alexandria, a first century Jewish philosopher, and Josephus Flavius
, a first century Jewish historian, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, a hoard of
manuscripts dating from this period.. This literature would constitute
a separate course. Suffice it to say for now that through this
literature we are able to learn about aspects of Jewish history during
this period, developments in Jewish thought, and how Jews read the
Bible.

To give but a few quick examples (the complete texts of most of this
literature is available on line at http://wesley.nnc.edu/noncanon.htm or
http;//wesley.nnc.edu/noncanon/apocrypha.htm or
http://wesley.nnc.edu/noncanon/pseudepigrapha.hetm): the Book s of
Maccabees describe the events between the Jews of the land of Israel
and the Seluicid rulers of Syria from around 168-165 BCE that culminated
in the holiday of Hanukkah (however it is spelled!). One of the
paradoxes of Jewish historical memory is that the books of Maccabees are
preserved in the Apocrypha which was accepted only into the canon of the
Christian Bible, but not the Jewish Bible, so that if Jews want to learn
the events of a major holiday they must turn to Christian sources. There
are also embellishments on biblical stories such as the Story of Susanna
and the Song of the three Children associated with the book of Daniel.
The Pseudepigrapha contains the fascinating Testament of the Twelve
Sons, the purported ethical wills and last testaments of each of the
sons of Jacob. Written sometime during the second century BCE, these
texts contain elaborations of the events of the biblical narrative that
adumbrate aspects of both subsequent rabbinic Judaism and
Christianity. For example, the idea that Joseph's brothers bought shoes
with the money they received from selling him, an idea that appears in
the high holiday liturgy (The Ten Martyrs-Asarah Harugei Melukha), is
first found here. In both the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls,
dating as far back as 350 BCE, are passages that are different from the
Massoretic text of the Bible, dating from around the sixth century CE,
relied upon by most Jews today. Some of the passages refer explicitly
to "sons of God." Philo read the Bible according to Platonic
philosophy, also positing forces mediating between the divine and the
human realm from which the church would derive much influence. At the
temple the Jews built in Elephantine God, called Yahu, has a female
consort, and women can initiate divorce from their husbands.

In short all these texts raise the question, What was Jewish? From
these texts it is clear that the spiritual and cultural world of the
Jews was much broader than that circumscribed by biblical texts.
Moreover, what now is often glibly characterized as Christian has deep
roots in intertestamental Jewish culture. Jesus, as well as his
rabbinic contemporaries, therefore, must be measured not by biblical
standards but by the Jewish culture of their generation. This culture
reflects a range of values and practices and identifies nothing as
normative, mainline, traditional, or orthodox.

Josephus Flavius or Yosef ben Matityahu

Josephus (38-100 CE) was born in the turbulent period when the Romans
ruled Palestine, Jewish sects proliferated-he describes at least four of
them-- Christianity began, Jewish communities became established
throughout the Roman world, and the tensions increased between the Jews
of Palestine and the Roman rulers. In the year 66 CE the Jews began a
major rebellion which culminated in the destruction of the Second Temple
and the sack of Jerusalem in the year 70 by the Romans.

Josephus was the commander of the Jewish forces fighting the Romans in
the Galilee, the northern district of Palestine, between the sea of the
same name and the Mediterranean. In the year 66 in the town of
Yotapata, surrounded by the Romans (Wars III. VI-VIII,
http://ccel.wheaton.edu/j/josephus/war-3.htm), Josephus and his troops,
after an extended battle, entered into a suicide pact rather than
surrender to their enemies. However, after the rest of his troops took
their lives, instead completing the pact by taking his own life,
Josephus surrendered to the Romans, in whose employ he spent the
remainder of the war. After the war, Josephus retired to Rome living on
an imperial pension and writing in Greek the history and reporting the
accumulated traditions about the biblical text of the Jews from
antiquity, The Antiquities, to the recent wars against the Romans, The
Wars, as well as his own Autobiography, the last Jewish autobiography
for the next 1500 years (
http://ccel.wheaton.edu/j/josephus/JOSEPHUS.html, or
http://wesley.nnc.edu/josephus/).

Masada

One of the events described by Josephus (Wars Book IV, Chapter VII and
Book VII, Chapter VIII, http://ccel.wheaton.edu/j/josephus/war-7.htm or
wgbh/pages/fronline/shows/religion/maps/primary/josephusmasada.html) was
the Roman siege against and the mass suicide of the Jews on Masada, a
desert mountain fortress, in the year 72. For the remainder of this
lecture, I will examine Josephus' account for what it tells, compare it
with the archeology of the site, then examine different versions of the
Masada story which developed among the Jews throughout history, and
finally present aspects of the changing myth of Masada in modern Jewish
and Israeli culture.

Masada was the last remaining Jewish stronghold after the Romans had
subdued the rest of Palestine.
Key to Josephus' account is his vilification of the rebels, whom he
called Sicarii, dagger wielding bandits, or Zealots, all of whom
gradually assembled on Masada and numbered about a thousand. He
accused them of avarice, barbarity, and tyrannizing other Jews,
especially those they suspected of cooperating with he Romans, but also
their innocent Jewish neighbors whose villages they raided for
supplies, including a massacre of several hundred Jewish women and
children at Ein Geddi. Josephus mentioned some of the leading figures
among the rebels, including Eleazar ben Yair, John of Giscahala, and
Simon the son of Gioras. The narrative continues to move back and forth
between descriptions of the preparation for the siege and flashbacks to
descriptions of the site, its surroundings by the Dead Sea (Lake
Asphaltitis), the Serpent path going up the mountain, and the palaces
that had been built on it, and its early history, prepared and stocked
as a fortress by various Jewish kings, but his narrative contains few
references to actual Jewish fighting there.

The description of the actual Roman siege of Masada includes their
installing a wall to prevent Jews from escaping, a siege ramp to reach
the top, catapults to hurl projectiles, and a battering ram to use
against the walls of Masada. Josephus then turned to describe the
Sicarii defense operations which included building another inside wall
to hold back Roman advances. Josephus, after reporting that fires set
by the Romans began to destroy the fortress, made it clear that God was
fighting against the Sicarii on the side of the Romans. There is a
pause in the action and at this juncture Josephus quoted verbatim the
speeches of Eleazar convincing the Jewish to take their own lives, to
die in a glorious manner with their companions rather than abused and
murdered or enslaved at the hands of the Romans. These speeches become
more emotional and philosophical as he discusses the need to free the
soul from the prison of the body, basing himself on the example of
Indian philosophers and later invoking it as a principle of Jewish law
as well. He then described the great zeal with which Jewish men killed
their wives and children, culminating in ten men being chosen by lottery
to kill the rest of the men. Josephus concludes his account by noting
that, when the siege ended on May 2, 72, one woman and five children
survived the siege hiding in the water system and 960 men, women, and
children were killed. From these few survivors the Romans, and
presumably from them, Josephus, learned what had happened.

Did Josephus , however, learn what really happened at Masada from them?
Could these few survivors, cowering underground, have heard and recalled
the long, elaborate, and eloquent speeches and remembered them exactly
as they were delivered? While there are no other contemporary versions
of the events of Masada extant, the site (mentioned in some ancient
works) itself has been preserved. A cursory glance at the material
remains does confirm most of Josephus' observations: location, snake
path, palaces, siege ramp., and even potshards with names written on
them, perhaps from the final fatal lottery The details that indicate
his text was based on observations made from a distance or prior to the
siege are that he mentions only the northern and not the western
palace, that the defenders burned their possessions in one pile rather
than many, and that the columns of the palace were made from single
pieces of stone, but now that they are lying broken on the ground,
actually appear to have been crafted from smaller stones with each
matching end coded with a matching Hebrew letter, still visible.

The most challenging aspect of Josephus' narrative is his report of the
mass suicide. Regularly students read this passage in light of later
developments in Jewish thought which opposed suicide and homicide. Later
Jewish views against suicide are just that, later, and rather than
representing an essential, eternal aspect of Judaism, represent a
post-talmudic view, with radically different attitudes found in the
Bible and early rabbinic literature. In addition, this text does not
deal really with suicide and murder, but martyrdom (and human
sacrifice). The phenomena, however, are identical, in either case
one or more dead bodies remain and the observer must determine motives
in order to attach value judgments, meaning that the difference between
suicide and martyrdom is a mater of a cultural constructed definition
and not based on absolutes. Moreover, in some instances Josephus or
one of his characters claims or the people demonstrate that taking one's
life and the life of others under certain circumstances was considered
praiseworthy not only at Masada, but in Gamala, a city in the Golan in
which in 67, according to Josephus, under siege from the Romans at least
five thousand Jews hurled themselves to their deaths rather than be
killed by the Romans , a fate that befell another four thousand Jews
(VI, I, 9). In other places, however, such as at Yotapata Josephus
speaks forcefully against suicide: " . . . It may also be said that it
is a manly act for one to kill himself. No. Certainly , but a most
unmanly one: as I should esteem that pilot to be an arrant coward who,
out of fear of a storm, should sink his ship of his own accord." (III,
VIII, 5) adding that according to the law the bodies of those who kill
themselves are not to be buried until sun set. He nevertheless
participated in the lottery to determine the order of death.

As in last week's lecture about biblical texts, so too now, we reach a
point where it seems that the values of Jewish culture as found in
Josephus are contradictory. These contradictions, however, are very
illuminating. What emerges from Josephus, therefore, is not a unified
picture of Jewish life, but literary tropes. In at least three
instances, Jotapata in 66, Gamala in 67, and Masada in 72, the events
follow a pattern: the Jews are holding out in a high place on a
precipice, they continue to add walls, the Romans below, lead by
Vespasian and Titus, are attacking their position using conventional
weapons, siege engines and battering rams, and massive construction to
build ramps. The Jews rain down upon their attackers all the
appurtenances of ancient warfare such as boiling oil-less so, if at all,
at Masada despite such pictures in subsequent literature. Amid the
battle Jews leave for provisions. At various junctures individuals and
groups of Jews jump on to the Romans-again, missing from the Masada
narrative-- or simply to their death, the sole survivors are usually a
few isolated woman (Just as he discusses suicide in terms of manliness,
he discusses surviving in terms of womanliness, perhaps also evidence
that at least some women did not agree with their husbands' enthusiasm
to slit their throats.)

Josephus' account of Masada draws on some fixed stock images that he
used in these instances and others. The variable in each case was
Josephus himself, which in turn affected his discourse. At Jotapata he
realized all was lost and wanted to save his life, both arguing against
suicide and forming a suicide pact with the Jews who had trapped him.
At Gamala, which he himself had originally fortified, he reported the
events as a Roman observer. Concerning Masada, circumstances that were
much more circumscribed according to his measures, only 900 dead as
opposed to the 9,000 at Gamala and the 40,000 at Jotapata, Josephus
expended much more moral and rhetorical energy condemning the victims
but not their manner of death.

In particular Josephus directs a great deal of invective against those
on Masada as having acted against the wishes of the Jewish people, a
statement which attempts to diminish the popular support that this
group of a thousand must have had to have been able to hold out against
a vast number of Romans for more than two years. Thus, although Josephus
was a traitor to the Romans, these passages are actually profoundly
pro-Jewish. Josephus attempted, writing in Greek for an upper class
Roman audience, borrowing forms from Greek literature, to isolate in the
mind of his readers the disruptive element among the Jews and then to
literarily excise it forever. This way he could tacitly offer the
Romans a de-zealotized picture of the remaining Jewish population of
Palestine, which had been presumably led astray by these tyrants and now
was willing to live with the Romans in peace. As evidence of this view
and proof of Josephus' falsification of the situation is the fact that
the Jews of Palestine did continue to rebel against the Romans in 119,
135, and later. Thus Josephus' Masada narrative was not an objective,
factual narrative, but a carefully constructed polemic aimed at creating
future peaceful relations with the Romans, a situation that failed to
materialize.

Other competing, but less well received interpretations of the suicide
story include the possibility that Josephus invented it either to clear
his own conscience for betraying the Jews or to cover up a Roman
massacre of the survivors, less likely since he reported other more
major Roman massacres (Trude Weiss-Rosmarin and Mary Smallwood).

The Masada Story in Sefer Yossippon

Sefer Yossippon was a tenth century Hebrew translation of a fourth
century Christian, Latin version of Josephus. Although it was made in
southern Italy, it was considered by Jews to have been the original
Hebrew of Josphus and studied carefully by the leading rabbis of the
middle ages such as Rashi and Meir of Rothenburg. Yossippon was soon
translated into many other languages including Arabic, Ethiopian, as
well as the languages of Europe. This popular version, regularly
republished and more accessible than Josephus's Greek, contains some
major departures from its source. In particular, the mass suicide is
missing and in its place, the Jewish men kill their families, describing
them as ritual sacrifices pleasing to the Lord (lekorban oleh leratzon
lifnei hashem) which they then cast into pits and covered with earth,
again reflecting the language of biblical sacrifice. After a brief, but
not peaceful nap, they girded their loins and went down and fought the
Romans, and despite the losses they inflicted on the Romans, they were
all killed.

As the memory of the actual site faded, so too did the accounts of
Josephus and Yossippon, only recently published in a modern Hebrew
version and not yet translated in English. At least one early modern
Jewish writer, Samuel Usque, recorded reference to the events of Masada
based on Yossippon. Writing, however, in Portuguese in 1552, Usque did
not do much to rekindle interest in the events of Masada. It was only
in the nineteenth century with the rediscovery of both the place and the
account of Josephus that interest was renewed in the story. In the past
century, the story has attracted a wide range of interpretations. As
with biblical interpretations, I must emphasize that these
understandings of the events of Masada are not based upon primary
research but upon popular, often politicized and romanticized notions
that are rooted deeply in the culture and affect greatly attitudes and
behaviors. Moreover, because of the tendentious and polemical quality
of the basic text about the events, there is no yardstick to measure the
various interpretations against. The purpose, therefore, of this
presentation is not to de-mythologize the various versions of the Masada
story but to show how an ancient text regularly acquires new levels of
meaning as changing circumstances require. Hence, these understandings
of Masada tell more about the tellers than the event itself.

The Masada Myths During the 19th and 20th Centuries

Masada returned to Jewish consciousness in the nineteenth century
because of a confluence of factors. It was during the early part of
the century that the movement for the scientific study for Judaism
(Wissenschaft des Judentums) emerged, ultimately leading to the massive
histories of Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow, as well as two
translations of Josephus into Hebrew at the end of the century and
another one published in Palestine during the 1920s. It was also at
this time that European colonialism, Christian pilgrims and
missionaries, and geographical and archeological explorations beginning
with Napoleon's abortive invasions, brought a new consciousness of the
land of Israel, which culminated in the Zionist movement and renewed
settlement and Hebrew intellectual activity in the land of Israel.

Masada bathed in new attention beginning with the identification of the
site and visits to it by European and American Christians beginning in
1838. Starting in 1912 and increasing during the 1920s, Jewish groups
from Palestine (the Yishuv) fastened their attention to the site, a
difficult and dangerous place to reach. During the 1920s, two the of the
giants of modern Hebrew literature who had recently settled in
Palestine, the Nietzschean Micha Yosef Berdichevski (Bin Gurion) and
his critic, editor, and friend, Ahad Haam debated the issue of Jewish
heroism in which Masada was invoked. Masada inspired the 1923-1924
Hebrew poem by Isaac Lamdan (1899-1954), "Masada," published in 1926.
This passionate Zionist poem, placing Masada in the context of previous
tragedies of the Jewish people, saw Masada as a metaphor for Zion and
the Jewish people, giving birth to the famous slogan: "Masada shall not
fall again! (shenit masada lo tipol) Stumble? Surely we will go up!
Ben Yair again will be revealed, he is not dead, not dead!.. ." The poem
is filled with both courageous, militant optimism as well as depressed
thoughts, especially given the state of affairs in Palestine at that
time, a time of suicides (a phenomenon, once hidden, that is now
getting more attention among researchers) and Lamden's own despair.
Interestingly, although his poem inspired thousands to visit Masada, he
never visited the site, ending his life in suicide.

Serious investigations of the site, not in Jewish hands nor intended to
be according to British plans, began only in the 1930s, conducted by
German Christians. Jewish schools and youth movements made arduous
trips to the site during the 1930s and 1940s, where passages from
Josephus or Lamden were read or kindled in flame as part of a bonfire.
Jews gave the site scientific attention only in the 1950s, despite-or
perhaps because of--- the initial lack of interest from leaders such as
the Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, the President Zalman Shazar, and
Yigael Yadin, the former chief of staff of the Israeli military and a
professor of archeology. Popular and scholarly interest reached a
frenzy during the archeological digs there from 1963 to 1965 led by
Yigael Yadin himself. Among the finds were three skeletons, a man,
woman, and child, on the top of the mountain and twenty-five others
buried in a cave. These were immediately identified as one of the last
fighters of Masada , his wife and child and, after several years of
debate, given a state burial as defenders of freedom-that they could
have been Christian monks who established a presence there during the
Byzantine period was not considered.

The key to the growing attraction of Masada was the understanding that
there a small number of Jewish patriots fought the last battle for
freedom and independence to the bitter end against the massive forces of
the Romans, despite the lack of any extensive descriptions of battles in
Josephus (Most current writers say that there was no battle between the
Jews and the Romans, but Josephus does say that after the Romans
completed their attack tower and began to hurl darts and stones, it
"soon made those that fought from the walls of he place to retire,"
which seems to me to imply some fighting.) This heroic view, described
as the Masada Myth, heightened the Jewish religious aspects of the
Zealots (trying to show that the bathtubs on Masada matched subsequent
rabbinic specifications for ritual baths) and was accompanied by the
downplaying of the mass suicide and the violent and tyrannical behavior
of the Sicarii (a term rarely mentioned). This myth provided the Jews
of Palestine and Israel with a local response to the Holocaust and the
passivity associated with the victims by the Jews of Palestine who
adopted what they saw as an alternative model of militant resistance in
the face of absolute evil.

Masada became during the 1960s a site for Bar Mitzvah ceremonies and
for swearing in ceremonies for the Israeli armored corps, ceremonies
which tapered off almost as soon as they began, partly because of
competition offered by the Western Wall and the monument to the armored
brigades established at Latrun, both sites conquered in 1967, and partly
because of a growing unease with what Masada stood for. During the 90s
it has become a place for early morning rock concerts and drug parties,
something that once would have been impossible given the almost sacred
quality of the site. There also seems to be a ritual that on finishing
the major part of the descent each hiker tosses the empty water bottles
over the side where they accumulate in vast quantities.

End Part 1

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