Apr 66 – Lawlessness Was Increased. (Eleazear’s Lawless Actions

244 of course! The message was clear: you want money, take it in your own abundant coin, not the scarce image-free coin that is acceptable for Temple donation. One could hardly have been procurator of Judea and failed either to get the point, or to understand the underlying religious issue; indeed, it could hardly have been mistaken even in Rome, where Jews, by AD 66, were a far-from-unfamiliar governance problem. Florus’ action can only be construed as Josephus construes it: as a deliberate religious provocation, intended to force the Temple to accept the image of the Emperor, represented as a god, onto its premises as part of its ritual. By ceasing to strike Torah-compliant coins after 62 CE, Roman authorities in Judea had been systematically pursuing this policy even before Florus attempted to seize the Temple’s small remaining stock of Torah-compliant coin in AD 66. Where Caligula’s statue had been too large to enter, might not Nero’s small coins infiltrate?

“Not surprisingly, the Temple priesthood responded, after some contentious deliberation, by discontinuing sacrifice for the Emperor – effectively delegitimating Roman rule over Judea and countenancing revolt.” Taken from the website (accessed on 6/28/13):

http://spengler.atimes.net/viewtopic. php?t=10921&start=20&sid=5aeda15f797cdeedbb266867c5 0d4780

A person who goes by the email epithet of “Collingwood” wrote the post that we just quoted, and claimed that the Jewish writer Spengler was right on target when he asserted that the robbing of 17 talents from the temple was directly related to emperor worship and the bringing of images of the emperor into the temple (via the coinage that had the emperor’s deified image on it). In Jewish eyes, it was the same issue they confronted earlier in AD 40 when Caligula ordered Petronius and his army to go to Jerusalem to have a statue of himself placed in the temple there. That was an abomination which the Jews were prepared to resist to the bitter end. Fortunately Caligula died before the order was ever carried out. But the same kind of thing is involved here with Florus. He was not only robbing the temple of its imageless gold (which was a sacrilege), but also attempting to force the Jews to bring images into the Temple. The Jews would rather go to war than allow that to happen. See also War 2:433, 435; Antiq. 20.11.1 (20.257-258) and Antiq 10:137.

This incident fits all the requirements of the Abomination of Desolation that were predicted by Daniel and reiterated by Jesus in Matt 24. It is the very kind of threat against the Temple, at the very time and place, that the prophets predicted. It deserves a closer look than it has been given to date.

Apr 66 – Lawlessness Was Increased. (Eleazear’s Lawless Actions)

Throughout the period from AD 30 to AD 66, there were several false messiahs mentioned both in the New Testament and in external literature [War 2.433-434 (2.17.8); War 2.258-263 (2.13.4-5); War 2.652-654 (2.22.2); War 4.503-510 (4.9.3-4); Antiq. 20.97-102 (20.5.1-2); Antiq. 20.167-172 (20.8.6) cf. Acts 5:36-37 (Theudas and Judas the Galilean); [cf. Antiq. 17.271 (17.10.5) and footnote, War 2.56 (2.4.1); 2.118 (2.8.1)], Euseb. 2.11.2-3 (Theudas); Acts 21:38 (the Egyptian); Euseb. 2.21.1-3 (the Egyptian); Antiq. 18.4,9,23 (18.1.1-6), [cf. Eleazar b. Yair at Masada (acc. to Josephus) War 7.252-254 (7.8.1), or was it Eleazar b. Ananias? (acc. to Yosippon and Hegesippus)]. From AD 64 onwards, the number of these false messiahs increased rapidly, so that by the time of the revolt in AD 66, it was not unusual to see such false messiahs (Sicarii, Bandits, Robbers, Deceivers, and Zealot rebels) gathering up followers and lawlessly plundering the countryside [War 2:264-265 (2.13.6); cf. War 2:272 (2.14.1) and Antiq 20.197ff (20.9.1-5)]. Since the Roman Procurators Albinus and Florus were given a share of the booty, they ignored the pleas of the law-abiding citizens to stop the plundering [War 2.277 (2:14.2) and Antiq 20.252-257 (20.11.1)]. So lawlessness was rapidly increasing at this time, both by the Roman procurators and by the bandits.

At Paul’s trial in Jerusalem in AD 58, the High Priest Ananias broke the Law by striking Paul on the mouth (Acts 23:1-3). This was not the only law-breaking that Ananias was guilty of (sent his goons to seize all the tithes for himself), and it set the example for his son Eleazar to follow here in 66 AD. Like father, like son. In this case, the son went way beyond the example of his father. After Eleazar b. Ananias blew the shofar and took control of the temple during the incident with Florus in