04_Biblica_1_C_Thiessen_Layout 1 30/01/13 13:16 Pagina 550 550 MATTHEW THIESSEN interment to none, whether slain within the city or on the roads; but, as though they had covenanted to annul the laws of nature along with those of their country (a)lla_ kaqa&per sunqh&kaj pepoihme/noi toi=j thj patri/doj sugkatalu~sai kai\ tou_j th~j fu&sewj no&mouj), ~ and to their outrages upon humanity to add pollution of Heaven itself, they left the dead putrefying in the sun” (B.J. 4.381-382). Josephus’s account of the revolt repeatedly portrays the Zealots in the act of abolishing the Jewish Law. Accordingly, Josephus states that “it is the Romans who may well be found to have been the upholders of our laws, while the laws’ enemies, that is, the Zealots, were within the walls” (B.J. 4.184). While these various abolishments are evidence of the lawlessness of the Zealots, it is one action in particular, the Zealot occupation and subsequent pollution of the Temple precincts, that Josephus be- lieves was the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. In speaking of this occupation of the Temple, he says: “[T]hey would surely have proceeded to greater heights, had aught greater than the sanctuary remained for them to abolish” (ei1 ti tw~n a(gi/wn katalusai mei=zon ei]xon, B.J. 4.171). It was a direct result of the ~ Zealot occupation and defilement of the Temple that God’s punish- ment came upon the entire nation. As Josephus concludes: Every human ordinance was trampled under foot, every dictate of re- ligion ridiculed by these men, who scoffed at the oracles of the prophets as imposters’ fables, … by the transgression of which the Zealots brought upon their country the fulfillment of the prophecies directed against it. For there was an ancient saying of inspired men that the city would be taken and the sanctuary burnt to the ground by right of war, whensoever it should be visited by sedition and native hands should be the first to defile God’s sacred precincts (B.J. 4.388). Elsewhere, Josephus makes a similar remark stressing the way in which the Romans demonstrated respect for the Temple precincts, even though some Jewish people entered the holy places, “with hands yet hot from the blood of their countrymen” (B.J. 4.183). For Josephus, the rebels were abolishers of the law, as seen most acutely in the Zealots’ assaults on the Temple precinct and cult. And, as Agrippa had warned immediately prior to the outbreak of the re- volt, because they abolished the law, God abandoned them and brought upon them and the rest of the nation the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Again, the pattern is confirmed that those © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati