The Masada Mess

[ricus suavus]

There are several mysteries about the Zealot story of Masada in Josephus' "Jewish Wars" history which need to be solved. Of course at this late date the only way to do this is by interpreting what Joseph wrote according to archaeology of the site, knowledge of the terrain and the Roman army, and basic realism. This naturally opens up the topic to a great deal of conjecture and this is definitely a case where there is more conjecture and romanticization than fact. And scholars LOVE to speculate as much as everybody else. It's not only an ego thing for them, it's also a cash thing. But I have no books to grind out for my bread and butter so I will do it for free, and since I'm neither Jewish nor Italian, unbiasedly. The first and most obvious question is what happened to the remains of all those almost thousand bodies killed on Masada? What would the Roman soldiers have done with them? It seems most likely from common ancient practice that they would have been burnt in a mass pyre and the bones dumped over the cliff. Naturally almost two thousand years of erosion from the cliffside would have covered them without a trace. As to skeletons found in a cave of the cliff, both male and female with some children, it is difficult without artifacts to identify their ethnicity and sometimes even these can be misleading. It is known that after the capture of the citadel a garrison of soldiers was reinstalled on the mountaintop detached from the Tenth Fretensis Legion and some of these could be their remains. It is certainly possible that there were some female and child survivors of the attack Josephus was unaware of who were adopted as the wives and children of the soldiers left to garrison the fortress and whose remains were found in the cave also.

 

Josephus also states that the Zealots in Masada raided and killed the inhabitants of the nearby settlement of En Gedi. This is not much of a mystery when it is considered that they needed food and supplies and because their fellow Jews refused to join them in rebellion. We know from Josephus that the sentiment was not universal among the Jews or many more would have joined both within and without Palestine and the Empire. And though many historians tend to think that King Herod had kept the long storagerooms adjoining his palace stocked full of food, anything other than wheat for bread, and dryable fruits such as figs, dates, and pomegranates or different nuts, would whither or rot if kept long. Meat, even if dried, was probably a rarity, and the biggest imports would have been olive oil from the groves of Jerusalem, wine from the vineyeards of En Gedi, and datenuts from the orchards of Jericho, not to mention plenty of wood or bitumen from the Dead Sea for use as fuel and of course loads of salt for preservative. Even kings did not live as luxuriously as they do now.

 

As for the crux issue of what really happened at Masada, the main questions here are: would the Romans have really been able to build a wood seige tower in the middle of the desert with no trees around for a suitable enough lumber supply? Would they then have pulled said seige tower up the ramp simply to leave it at the top unguarded and exposed to the torches of the Zealots after retiring to camp to rest for the night? Would they really have foolishly attacked in daylight? Would they have really sent at least one whole legion of six thousand troops up to attack a concentratedly defended narrow access? Is that sound military tactic for which the Romans are famous? Would the Zealot rebels really have bothered drawing a death lottery in the middle of the night? It seems obvious to me the answers are all "NO!" Even though Josephus claimed he derived his account from two women survivors, it is questionable just how observant they would have been in such unpleasantly adverse circumstances and how much Josephus embellished. There is good evidence to suggest he was basing his version of the event on his own witness of the events of the seige of Jerusalem and his previous participation in the suicide lottery situation of his companions when he was initially commander of rebel forces in Galilee just before he was captured. This last incident is itself a mysterious set of circumstances, though naturally not near as well known about as Masada. Since the answers to all these questions is reasonably a negative, it can be plausibly deduced what probably did happen during the Zealots' stay in the fortress. Josephus mentions a lottery for ten men to decide who would kill all the adult males and then another drawing to pick the one to kill the other nine and himself. During the excavation of the site in the late 1960's and early '70's eleven ostraca or pottery shards with the names of men written in Hebrew on each one was found near the ruins of the palace, including one with the name of the Zealot commander Elezar Ben Yair mentioned by Josephus. Why eleven? And why was Elezar conspicously among them? Did he have such a domineering personality that he felt confident to manipulate the drawing so that his name would be picked last of all to make sure everyone died as intended? And how would the women who were wives and mothers and served as the source of this testimony have even known about the lottery since according to the story they would have been in deep hiding from their husbands as they claimed they were when found by the soldiers; escapees from the PRE-suicide lottery slaughter by the men with wives and children! Rational conjecture would suggest that these were not signs of a suicide lottery but of a drawing for commanders over a disorganized mass of desperate rebel fanatics seeking refuge in the middle of the desert and conducted appropriately near the building that would be their headquarters, Herod's former palace; winner for the first pick of chief commander being Elezar and the other men his ten assistant commanders. Ten men for ten groups or companies of sixty men each thus making a Roman army sized cohort of six hundred warriors out of a total of 967 people, leaving 367 women and children and thus indicating half the males were married but only a quarter of those were fathers. This demographic makes perfect sense since rationally more men than women would be prone to defy the Imperial Roman army when all else was lost; half would according to Jewish Law and prevalent custom be married but not most men would bring their wives into such a desperate situation, and least of all those with children. And Josephus does state the rebels modeled themselves throughout the rebellion on Roman army organization and tactics in the hope of acheiving some degree of parity between opposing forces. It was not a suicide lottery for death and self-destruction in the midst of the last desperate night of their lives, but a hopeful choice of leadership in broad daylight with ALL present assembled (left through chance to God) for victory and success before the Romans even arrived; desperate if only in their pressing need to make a drastic raid for further provisions. Six hundred rebel warriors against two thousand times that number: twelve thousand troops of two legions, the Tenth Fretensis and the Sixth Ferrata with six thousand each. So whether only one legion attacked or both, they were outnumbered from one to two hundred times. Definitely odds in which God was needed!! So where does the story of the "mass suicide" come in? WAS there even a suicide event?? IF Josephus really did get this information from the female survivors, then it would definitely seem that they witnessed something at least horribly similar. For the answers to these questions we have to turn to considering the true nature of the Roman attack.

 

It has already been explained it would have been ridiculous for the Romans to have called off the attack for the night to retire to their camp and resume it in the morning and leave the wooden ramming tower exposed to the torches of the Zealots just above it. All the soldiers would have found in the morning when they got back up there was a huge heap of ashes! So another question is, would they have had and used such a tower? Unless they hauled one with them through the desert from Jerusalem, they could not have made one in the desolate area without trees! This is an obviously simple fact. But it would have been much easier to carry scaling ladders with them that had been used in the Jerusalem seige, and more likely Josephus embellished these into a tower for dramatic effect; as he did the postponement of the attack itself so that Elezar could deliver the long dramatic sermon on the nature of the soul and the afterlife as justification for the "heroic mass suicide" during the night of the deadly lottery. One almost wonders why Josephus did not schedule this whole event for the date of Purim, the Jewish Feast of Lots mentioned in the Old Testament book of Esther cast by the Jews enemies of the time, officials of the Persian Empire. Here it is written by Josephus almost as if to say Rome was so much greater an empire than Persia or its then contemporary version Parthia, that the Jews were forced by God or Fate to cast lots to destroy themselves before the Romans did them in. However, looked at through the lens of realism and seeing that they did not use such a tower, it can be theorized that they did not wait uselessly until the next morning but deliberately planned a night attack with scaling ladders using a select division to spearhead the assault while some of the rest of one legion secured the citadel afterward. Climbing as silently as possible over the bulwark Josephus claims the rebels blockaded the entrance with, they instantly overwhelmed the guards and proceeded to fight the onslaught of defenders alerted to the danger; probably which were all the unmarried childless men. The rest were left in their quarters to protect their families as best they could. Some no doubt chose to kill them themselves rather than let the sex-starved soldiers heated by brutality and months of the desert sun burning out whatever little discipline they had do the job, or even worse, enslave them and rape the women. Some of those men probably killed themselves to join their loved ones in death, their inevitable fate anyway. It happened fast and furious in a hellacious night of fire and fear and screaming bloody death made worse by the shocking surprise of it all. And in the commotion a few women managed to spare themselves and their children, most likely with their husbands' assistance who went on to fight the invaders and not return. This means that the dramatic story of the "firefight" at the entrance bulwark probably never happened, with the "miraculously" sudden change of wind in favor of the invaders sounding suspiciously similar to the episode recounted during the seige of Jerusalem of a mysterious wind rushing out of the Temple at night announcing the prescence of God "leaving this place" for destruction. A subtle Josephus technique of cautioning future Jews against rebellion by showing God was leaving the Zealots to their doomed fate and condoning their destruction as punishment for unlawful war aginst Rome. It was so good a story even the Roman historian Tacitus repeated it in his historical account of the war, though with a more pagan perspective. The only correct connection between the Josephan account and reality is that by morning Masada would have been full of dead bodies; except some were Roman. Thus ended the true seige and fall of the fortress.

 

As a historical footnote, the destruction of the compound's buildings was not accommplished until history inevitably repeated itself and partisans of the Bar Kochba revolt during Hadrian's reign recaptured the fortress and slaughtered the garrison only to be killed themselves when the Romans reconquered it. This time however they did not regarrison it, but destroyed the buildings to prevent their future possible use as a rebel nest. Masada was abandoned all the time afterward until Byzantine monks built a monastery church there made from the ruins. Yet in a way, Masada then flourished as it had originally with the monks cultivating their own crops on it, but amidst the debris of faded glory and dead dreams.

[Kosmo]

You are right in what you say about the wild story of Josephus, but by refuting the only source you are left to speculate with no evidence. It is logical that things happened as you say, but logical it's not good enough.

[Antiochus of Seleucia]

As for the crux issue of what really happened at Masada, the main questions here are: would the Romans have really been able to build a wood seige tower in the middle of the desert with no trees around for a suitable enough lumber supply?

They got the wood just as they got all the food and water they needed. The zealots had wood too, to build the inner wall. Wood is not the issue here. Remember, this is Rome we are talking about... many things are possible.

 

Would they then have pulled said seige tower up the ramp simply to leave it at the top unguarded and exposed to the torches of the Zealots after retiring to camp to rest for the night?

 

They already destroyed the stone wall, all that was left was the wood wall that couldn't be rammed down.

 

Like Kosmo said, you can't deny your only source. A lot of content is questionable, but most of the figurative language has already been picked apart. Archeology is our best friend.

 

Buy this and watch it: History Channel

 

You need more details on how they handle Josephus. Check archeological books/articles, for some evidence supports his work while some does not. This topic truly is a mess.

 

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4469

I am currently working on a documentary about this very topic! Check it out.

Edited August 14, 2006 by Antiochus of Seleucia

[caldrail]

Wood was more available 2000 years ago.