christian@topaz.UUCP (01/13/87)
[For the benefit of those who have not followed Eitans' comments before, let me note that he uses "Nazarian" where the term "Jewish Christian" is more commonly used. --clh] This piece reffer to the Great Revolt & resaults of it . "The loss of life in the war was apalling. Josephus estimates that one million one hundred thousand perished in the siege of Jerusalem alone. Befor this many thousands had died or been killed in Jerusalem and in other parts of the country. The totalof captives taken throughout the war numbered only ninety seven thousands. Of those who survived the siege, the combatants, the aged and feeble were killed. Eleven thousand prisoners died of starvation before their fate could be determined, and the tale of death was to continue to mount with those sent to the mines, or dispatched to the various provinces to be killed in the hteatres by the sword or torn limb from limb by wild beasts." [Saints Against Caesar, p.142] The casualties at Jerusalemwere so heavy because the population of the city was swollen with refugees who had sought safety there, and with pilgrims come to worship in the Temple who were caught by the Roman encirclement. The followers of Jesus, The Nazarians, had had their headquarters at Jerusalem. There James, the brother of Jesus, had presided over their affairs until his death at 52 A.D, reported by Josephus and others [Josephus Antiq. XX. ix. 1 and Hegesippus, Memoirs (quoted by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. Bk. 2, ch. xxiii).] When the war threatened the capital the Nazarian community fled across the Jordan. We do not know how far this story is correct, Though it appears that some of the leaders escaped. In any case they were only a fraction of the Nazarians of Palestine, who were numerous in other parts of the country, and we may believe that not a few took refuge in Jerusalem and perished there. Their fate would probably have been much the same if they stayed in their own homes, as we can see from what Josephus reports regarding places they inhabited such as Caesarea,Lydda and Joppa, mentioned in the Acts, and of course Galilee down to the lakeside. At the beginning of the revolt the Gentile of Caesarea "masscared the Jews who resided in their city; within one hour more then twenty thousand were slaughtered, and Caesarea was completely emptied of Jews, for the fugitives were arrested by order of florus and conducted ib chains to dockyards". Reaching Lydda, Gallus found the town deserted, because the inhabitants had gone to Jerusalem, but fifty persons discovered were killed and the town burnt. [Joesphus, wars, II. xviii. 11, xix 1.] Galilee, where Jesus had lived and taught and which was the home of the Jewish resistance movement, suffered particularly. "the romans never ceased, night or day, to devastate the plains and pillage the property of the countryfolk, invariably killing all capable of bearing arms and reducing the inefficient to sevitude. Galilee from end to end became a scene of fire and blood; from no misery, n no calamity was it exempt." Later in the war there was heavy slaughter along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. "One could see the whole lake red with blood and covered with corpses, for not a man escaped. During the following days the district reeked with a dreadful stench and presented a spectacle equally horrible. The beaches were strewn with wrecks and swollen carcases." [Josephus, Wars, III. iv. 1, x. 9.] In these circumstances we may fairly hold that a high precentage of the Nazarians of Palestine perished in the war. Mortality among the elderly and infirm was specially heavy. So if Jesus was crucified before 37 A.D, very few who had seen him could have can been alive forty years later. The war created a gap only tenuously bridgeable in early christianity history. As Dr. S.G.F Brandon has remarked in his book "The fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church"; `Christianity went into a tunnel and when it emerged again a decade or more later much had changed'. Though the Nazarian community has lossed many members the power of its ideology has increased in to jewish community after the Revolt, but this trend has been ended to the end of the first century A.D. [The Pharasees has begun to regain their power at that time] from the 2nd century and on the nazarian and the other sects has very little importance inside the Jewish society and from 150 A.D and on , The Nazarians were considered heretic also by the Gentile Churchs. The nazarians has finally disappeared around the 5th century though in that time they were no longer Jews [at least not by their Ideology, The separation from Judaism has begun from the 3rd century. That's all I hope i've explained myself better in this posting .