check for more than half a century: First, Roman rule continued to improve
the material quality of life in Judea. Second, each of the Jewish sects had an
ideological justification for not revolting. For the Sadducees, the Temple and
its cultic service were largely undisturbed. For the Pharisees, the Romans did
not impede their religious practice. For the Essenes, revolt was irrelevant
while awaiting the “day of the Lord.”
In this regard, a key element in the eventual outbreak of revolt was the
emergence of the Zealots. The Zealots were the most uncompromising of
the sects, even more rigid in their beliefs than the most parochial of the
Sadducees. They rejected foreign rule, as the Maccabees had done a century
earlier, but with far greater intensity, their singular goal being to eliminate
all traces of Roman rule from the Land of Israel. They were most active in
Galilee, where Jews were by and large the least educated and the most crude,
and where the presence of foreigners and foreign culture was the most wide-
spread. Like other freedom-fighters, the Zealots distrusted everyone, even
members of other Zealot cells. They carried out sporadic attacks on Romans
and Hellenized Jews, adding to the growing tensions in first-century Judea
following the death of Herod.
Since Herod had virtually eliminated all indigenous Jewish forms of lead-
ership, following his death the administration of Judea transferred into the
hands of Roman procurators. In 7 C.E., Judea reverted to the status of a
Roman province, and was subject to all the associated requirements. The
procurators raised taxes and imposed new ones, and were generally insensitive
to Jewish concerns. Rising taxes, along with periodic droughts, forced many
small farmers to sell their farms and sharecrop or find work as day laborers in
Jerusalem. The situation reached a low point in 37 when the emperor
Caligula, obsessed with being worshiped as a deity all over the empire,
ordered that a statue of himself be erected in the Temple.
This crisis, though, passed when Caligula died in 41. He was succeeded by
Agrippa, tetrarch of Transjordan, who was crowned king of Judea. Agrippa,
the grandson of Herod and Mariamne, was the last surviving member of the
Hasmoneans, and thus popular in Judea. He enhanced his favorable standing
by presenting himself as a pious Jew, although it is clear that he did this only
in Jerusalem; elsewhere he was indifferent to Judaism, and a patron of
Hellenistic culture. For a few years, it appeared that the golden age of the
Hasmoneans might return. Such expectations, however, were short-lived.
Agrippa died in 44, and the procurators returned as rulers of Judea. His son,
Agrippa II, who ruled in Lebanon, was placed in charge of the Temple in 49,
but this was a far cry from the rule of his father.
Circumstances during the 50s indicated that conditions were worsening.
In 52, when a Galilean Jew was murdered by Samaritans, fighting broke out
and spread to Jerusalem. Two Zealot leaders led an expedition to Samaria to
wreak vengeance. At the request of Agrippa II, Emperor Claudius intervened,
punishing the original Samaritan criminals and dismissing the procurator.
38 The challenge of Hellenism