Jewish-Roman War: Nero & the Year of the 4 Emperors

Transcript
0:00 and so they go marching in with their weapons into the temple treasury and
0:05 just take out money and it's very clear that everybody is outraged
0:13 we really really have a problem with this guy guess he has flores can can you
0:18 get rid of him so vespasian wraps up galilee very quickly then in 68 he moves
0:25 down to caesarea and that's when nero dies nero dies in june of 68. so
0:33 vespasian has already garrisoned judea without any real resistance
0:38 galba he manages to take over he doesn't reach rome until like october and he finally realizes
0:45 he's got to name somebody as his heir and he chooses this guy lucinianos piso
0:51 they're both murdered on january 15th otto who thought that he should be
0:56 the natural heir italius also had arisen so when his men acclaimed him imperator
1:04 as conqueror they wanted him this patient to lead them
1:09 against the right they assumed that he would be their commander in the field because he
1:16 was their commander in judea but what he did was he worked out a deal with mukianos
1:23 the governor of syria who would actually lead the flavian forces to italy to fight against
1:30 vitellius's force he's a very cautious very clever and and self-protecting
1:38 and he waltzes into rome when it's all been completely settled and calmed down
1:44 and all the the bloodletting is over and he can just take control
1:51 [Music] welcome back to the gnostic informant
1:58 and you are about to attain true gnosis today i'm with dr steve mason
2:03 and um if you haven't watched the previous episode then we we talked about josephus
2:09 uh we kind of were all you know just talked talking about the book jewish antiquities and started off with like
2:15 talking about noah and then we got into like you know caesar socialist pompey the
2:20 great sacking the temple and we were just having a you know just doing an overview on the book we covered
2:26 a lot of ground in that episode and this one i want to focus in on some
2:32 certain time period which is the roman jewish war
2:37 and so to to tie into the last one
2:42 i think we ended up talking about how things started to actually look look good i mean augustus and caesar
2:49 they put their their friends with herod and they're allowing the jews to basically you know keep their keep their their
2:55 laws and their sabbitical year where they can have a whole year they're not paying taxes and life seems good and so
3:03 i guess my first question is how does this get messed up what happens or
3:09 what what exactly happens between it seems like everyone's letting each other be and then all of a sudden
3:15 there's a war breaking out yeah well that's that's the big question
3:20 neil um i mean in scholarship i have to say right at
3:25 the beginning there's a kind of fork in the road uh in terms of method as well as results so
3:32 the different method you use brings different results how you approach this thing so basically there are two main
3:39 directions one of them is huge in scholarship one of them is small
3:46 i belong to the small group uh so i'm gonna describe first how i understand
3:52 the common view the common view is that jews were never happy under foreign
3:58 rule ever so what you describe as the the kind of happy days under augustus
4:05 and herod and all of that this this school would say that was never going to be okay
4:12 from the time that the romans arrived in 63 bc under pompey the great
4:19 from then on misery uh if not before and the reason is according to this school
4:26 that for a few decades before that the jews had had a more or less independent state it was
4:34 small but this was the hasmonean or maccabean uh kind of kingdom
4:41 so once they lost that once they lost that independence it was kind of mitigated independence but still
4:48 it was a kind of independence once they lost that this way of thinking goes uh
4:53 they were not going to be happy and they were chafing constantly under what is presented as oppressive roman
5:01 rule whether directly or through king herod and his sons as roman puppets
5:08 and in this view in fact i was just reading today again a book that i know well but i was looking
5:14 at it again for a project i'm working on um by martin hengel the great late
5:21 scholar who wrote a book called the zealots and his whole
5:27 it's a big fat book and his whole picture is to create this idea uh well
5:32 he finds it in his view in history that there were the there was this immense freedom
5:39 movement as he calls it right from uh day one but it was reactivated in uh
5:46 6 ce 6ad when judas the galilean revolted against
5:53 the census that took place it's mentioned in the gospel of luke as well the census
5:59 when judea was put back under direct roman rule so this
6:05 really uh very very common view in scholarship is that the war that broke out in 66 was really
6:14 only the the popping of the cork of uh constantly building
6:20 tension and restlessness and chafing under roman rule so that's
6:26 you know people should be aware that that view is still extremely common in scholarship and very
6:33 respectable dignified scholarship is not a fringe view at all
6:39 nevertheless i think it's mistaken um and why do i think that well it's
6:45 because of method produces different results right what's your method
6:51 this method the the method that produces that picture i would say comes with a set of assumptions
6:58 and a kind of a theological view right there is uh this idea
7:04 that jews cannot tolerate foreign rule and flavius josephus mentions a couple
7:11 of people who he claims had this view and scholars joined the dots
7:17 uh and say okay this goes way back to the bible it goes back to the beginning
7:23 back to to to you know the the election of israel that they could not tolerate
7:29 foreign rule and then you can draw a line a kind of theological line all the way through
7:35 in my view these studies tend to conform the evidence
7:42 to this thought to this idea if you do it the other way around which
7:48 is my preference let's just begin with the evidence begin with what we have
7:55 and see what we need to think happened in order to explain that evidence
8:02 i think you end up with a much more minimalist view of any tension so what do i mean by
8:09 that well it seems to me and to i'd say a relatively small other
8:16 group of scholars that um things were actually pretty good for judea
8:22 um for the reasons you began to say augustus and king herod were if not as
8:31 buddy buddy friends as josephus claims still clearly the
8:37 herod was in place for a long time for more than three decades as king and that means
8:43 that augustus was pretty happy with him and then wanted to put one of his sons now herod
8:50 made it difficult because he killed a few of his sons so like you know uh the
8:56 the older and more eligible ones were already gone but even still augustus said well he's got three young sons left
9:03 in their early twenties and he says okay well let's divide up herod's kingdom among these three and give the the
9:10 choice area to archelaus and see how he goes and if he goes well he's only like
9:16 23 or something but if he doesn't make a complete hash of it maybe he can be king
9:21 like his his dad was um so augustus is is really willing to
9:27 ride this this train and what it means for jerusalem and and judea is
9:33 that they dominate the entire southern syria like if you think of
9:40 syria as the greater syria as the entire east coast of the mediterranean right
9:46 the the entire eastern strip the literal of the mediterranean the southern half of that from lebanon
9:54 down from south of lebanon downward southward is is under jerusalem's
10:01 control right right uh and this is i mean if you're from jerusalem if you were a jew judean
10:08 your what used to be your little territory the hinterland of jerusalem has expanded
10:15 right to include this entire region the army is based in jerusalem you have a
10:21 judean jewish king right so jewish law
10:26 jewish customs are extended now herod unlike the hasmoneans
10:32 before him the hasmoneans also conquered the southern uh part of syria
10:38 but they forced everybody who stayed there who would remain to follow jewish
10:44 law so if you're male that meant undergo circumcision uh in any case keep the
10:50 sabbath uh keep the dietary laws more or less in some way but generally follow
10:56 the jewish calendar jewish laws if you're going to stay in the region king herod didn't herod didn't do that
11:02 he said uh okay i recognize that you all are not jews um
11:07 so you will live under my kingship but hey i'm a generous guy i uh
11:14 i recognize all your customs and your ways so i'll give you money you know
11:19 i'll build uh help you build temples uh in fact outside of judea i myself will
11:25 build a temple to to rome and augustus one in sebastian one in caesarea um so he's he's very
11:33 flexible you know he's a very kind of worldly guy in jerusalem itself
11:39 he makes a big deal of the you know he rebuilds the jewish temple and uh makes
11:45 the city a monument of the east like this most spectacular city as pliny
11:51 uh says in in his natural history it was like the jewel of the of the east right um anyway so so
11:59 my my basic point is that it looks to me like jerusalem was in fact uh riding
12:05 high uh under roman rule yeah and i was gonna i was gonna add to what you're saying real quick just to sort of jump in
12:13 if you read josephus jewish war the first couple books i think maybe maybe a
12:18 book or two is sort of like highlighting how great herrod's doing he's in all these battles
12:25 he's like a hero yeah yeah we only get the impression because of the gospels that he was some sort of
12:32 evil dictator who wanted to kill everybody but when you read josephus you're like
12:38 this guy is like a a hero he's like a war hero he's he's really doing his thing like there's no
12:44 it's almost hard to believe that people would not like this guy based on what he's doing well a couple of qualifications
12:50 basically yes i agree in war in josephus war that's the picture of herod
12:57 but two qualifications one is that within war itself when herod dies
13:04 and when he's about to die it's very clear that there's a lot of opposition to him yeah and that opposition sends a
13:12 delegation to rome saying please augustus don't put us under a son of
13:18 herod these guys are tyrants now that that's not in josephus's voice
13:24 that's he's describing a delegation going but still he writes the story so
13:30 he makes it clear that there was a significant opposition to herod second
13:35 thing qualification is when he later writes the antiquities 15
13:40 18 years later he uh he himself as a narrator takes a
13:46 more critical uh even harsh view of herod
13:52 he introduces him there in the antiquities as a tyrant
13:58 and and sort of bent on tyranny and personal power he still keeps because he
14:04 he writes a lot more about herod in antiquities he writes like nearly four volumes uh there so he has much more
14:11 space to elaborate and that works themes are different from the themes of the war
14:17 so in war he's trying to show how good the roman jewish relations were
14:24 until the war in antiquities that's not his theme his theme there is that those who follow the
14:32 laws of god prosper and those who violate them suffer and he uses herod in that work
14:39 as an example of somebody who often violated the laws of god and therefore met a really miserable end
14:47 yeah so he's using the same character in two different ways as you often do in
14:53 ancient history writing yeah so anyway that's a qualification of
14:58 of what you said but i think still in war yes you're exactly right yeah i'm not mistaken sebastian is a
15:05 greek word that means augustus gastoria or like a feminine form yeah
15:10 the masculine is augustus and sebasti likes caesarea
15:16 yeah they mean this they mean the same thing right yeah so he got he's dedicating all these cities and
15:22 buildings to you know to the king i guess i don't know if you call him he's the emperor yeah the
15:28 emperor yeah yeah yeah to augustus yeah yeah so yeah yeah so okay so that's
15:34 that makes a lot of sense you get he he's he's he's very successful but he also has some
15:41 opposition and then after that so okay so let's let's let's
15:46 let's let's take the next chapter after that after he dies what what what exactly is the situation in judea yeah
15:54 so basically what happens then is uh so herod dies probably in 4 bc
16:01 uh it's some there's some debate about that recently some scholars have argued it's
16:06 a bit later or maybe as late as one but the common view and the view i hold to as the
16:12 most plausible is 4 bc so archelaus's son
16:19 is appointed by augustus as i mentioned before on a kind of probationary basis
16:24 he's not called king he's called a ruler of the people ethnic
16:30 and the idea is see how he get on with ruling just judea and samaria and
16:36 irumia and a couple of other places around but not the whole territory that your father had
16:42 because two of your brothers will get big chunks of that in the north and the east you get the heartland and see how
16:48 you make out with that as it happens the two brothers seem to have done spectacularly well
16:55 with their territories that that's a herod antipas who has galilee
17:01 and perea the region east of the jordan river a strip of judean territory east
17:07 of the jordan and galilee and philip who has the area east of the
17:13 sea of galilee uh so like trichonitus
17:18 and these areas that are now in the golan heights and then and then into western syria today
17:27 so those territories remain stable for more than another three decades so those
17:33 two sons seem to do quite brilliantly well i mean we don't know much about them but
17:38 they seem to have done well because they lasted a long time into the 30s ce
17:43 after the death of jesus so would you would you say that tiberius is
17:49 tiberius is reign he's sort of just it's business as usual just like augustus
17:54 uh yeah pretty much i mean tiberia is a really interesting character he uh
17:59 you know he he seems to have been a reluctant emperor he was a very uh accomplished
18:07 commander in the field and he seems to have been a very smart guy but he was also alive to many well
18:14 he seems to have been rather cynical there is a pretty bad press about him and tacitus uh
18:21 all kinds of lurid stories circulated also in suetonius about his personal
18:27 life and deficiencies and it seems that he left rome he just left rome uh
18:33 he couldn't really take it after a while and left others in charge and really bad things happened for the last 10 years or
18:40 so where do you go alexandra uh no the island of capri
18:45 oh wow he was yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but he just according to dio he so
18:52 when i for my correct me if i'm wrong i might be a mistake in this but according to dio augustus who was so successful in
18:59 his career had a lot of problems in dakia i think it's dakia and tiberius
19:05 was like the savior he's like i'm going in the savior he got the legions back yeah he lost a bunch of legions so
19:11 that's a big deal that's that's like worthy of like a triumph basically yeah that's what i mean he was an
19:16 accomplished field commander he was very yeah very good at what he did uh he was
19:21 sort of roped in augustus was looking for heirs and they kept dying and that and that
19:27 particular event is like that's the gap yeah that's the guy and so he ends up
19:32 with tiberius maybe a little bit reluctantly his wife's son um and uh
19:39 anyway uh tiberius had his trials and difficulties
19:44 but he seems to have been when he put his mind to it you know if uh he wanted definitely to continue
19:50 augustus's uh you know success because augustus would become
19:57 for everybody even though he had a brutal and bloody accession to power he would become in in memory
20:04 the best emperor ever son of god too uh yeah but who who wasn't um
20:12 [Laughter] julius caesar had been i mean they
20:18 that was pretty much part of the job being being a divine descendant but not divine i mean you it
20:26 was not cool in rome to declare yourself for god um a living god that happened after you
20:33 died that was an honor that you were given so when a ruler is called devos
20:40 divine that means he's dead that means after he died the senate saw him ascend
20:46 to heaven somebody saw a bird go up into the sky must have been carrying the spirit okay so and in particular this
20:54 taste there was the comet venus that should have been a bad omen but you know the astrologers were like
21:00 we can we can twist this interpretation and make it good yeah yeah yeah yeah everything was possible right right
21:07 but you know what i will say this i want to get i really want to get your opinion on this because a lot of these emperors are are deified
21:14 and then really it's like why like like our claudius it's like who cares about claudius but caesar
21:21 i think there's something i think there's a reason why i think people bought into this more because
21:26 all of his conspirators all the ides of march guys are pretty much avenged from by augustus
21:35 who adopts the name of julius he literally was called julius caesar he he takes the name on well he was adopted i
21:42 mean it was caesar who adopted him as right there yeah so in his will he he said he wants uh octavian octavius
21:51 thoranus whatever his name is yeah his name julius caesar guy is julius caesar he has the full name taken over and then
21:57 when that happens he avenges his father from the grave and you've got to think from the roman people's perspective
22:03 that's pretty that's great that's a cool that's like a really fascinating thing like oh caesar even from the grave he's
22:09 getting everybody back oh look brutus is dead now okay oh look oh look augustus
22:15 is now the sole emperor this must be divine this must be providence i mean yeah well well that's i mean mark
22:21 anthony did it also before uh before he got himself into
22:27 that book so i mean you know he was also avenging uh caesar left right and center
22:33 and was very effective at it but yeah it all depends on the circumstances right so he gets himself into hot water with
22:40 octavian and um and uh you have the battle of actium so
22:46 and then yeah but once once augustus is in place you know there's a very interesting uh
22:52 uh text on clemency by seneca the philosopher
22:57 when he's advising nero and he's talking about how an emperor should be you know
23:03 merciful and kind and this is the way to rule and he he points out
23:10 about augustus he says you know augustus had this great reputation for being merciful and all that of course that was
23:17 after he turned the water red with blood at actium and after he killed all his
23:23 enemies then you know he was peaceful and he's saying why don't you just skip that part and just go straight to
23:30 peaceful and and merciful you don't need to do all the violent stuff have you
23:35 ever read from philo it's called on the on the embassy to gaius
23:40 yeah of course yeah so you know what i'm talking about where he's comparing caligula this monster he's
23:47 caligula is like worship me don't worship your god worship me but he's based but and then he says
23:55 this is caesar who calmed the storms that were raising in every raging in every direction who brought peace and
24:02 brought and and free the slaves which is like no way i think he took i think slaves that ran away he had him all
24:08 killed or something like that so really that wasn't true but anyways philo's pain files comparing caligula to
24:14 augustus and he's like talking about augustus like he's the greatest thing in the world like right right like he's a
24:20 godlike yeah that's exactly what i mean the augustus became
24:25 uh the you know the perfect emperor in retrospect and rhetorically that works
24:31 very well for philo right um but even philos says even philo admits
24:37 or proposes that guys started off okay you know he was an all he was a normal
24:43 fellow but he became sick early on in his uh
24:48 his term as ruler and this made him sick in the head somehow and he completely changed
24:55 and became a megalo maniac right after that yeah
25:01 yeah so gaius is is the exception as would the mission be and nero to
25:07 something so so gaius nero and domitian would all be guys um either murdered or
25:14 in the first and last case or in nero's case commit suicide once he's declared
25:19 an enemy of the state enemy of the people um because they all become bad
25:26 uh as far as as far as the roman elite is concerned uh they all go off the
25:32 rails and become crazy people uh demanding some kind of worship demanding you know
25:39 uh becoming tyrants essentially yeah yeah so do you think that has something to do with
25:45 what happens in judea as well right um so let's get back to that then judea it
25:50 seems to me i mean even uh even tacitus says that judea was quiet uh under tiberius
25:58 and that's a long time that's from 14 to 37 see that everything's quiet same thing with
26:06 claudius claudius you kind of suggested he was a non-entity i think uh in some way um
26:14 and that that may be certainly if you've seen the tv series i claudius um he
26:20 looks like a kind of dithering fool but but he
26:26 uh for all that i mean he seems to have been at least conservative and
26:31 fairly wise and from the judean perspective the jewish perspective
26:38 he was great um that is to say he intervened regularly
26:44 to help the judeans when they when they had problems uh so agrippa was a grip of the first so
26:52 herod's grandson had helped claudius come to power believe it or not because
26:58 he happened to be in rome at the time when guys caligula was assassinated and
27:05 the story is in it's in more than one place but it's in josephus as well that
27:10 he didn't want to be emperor at all uh he hid you know because he feared for his own
27:17 life but it was the praetorian guard that sort of elevated him and said we we
27:23 want a ruler and we want you and he uh exceeded even while the senate
27:29 was rebelling against this idea of having another i mean they thought they'd they thought this experiment in in
27:36 having emperors was really bad and they wanted to return to the old republic
27:41 in some form or fashion how that would work is not clear uh but they wanted the
27:46 consoles the two consoles to have more power again in the senate as a deliberative body to have more
27:53 power so so the texts tell us but it was uh it was agrippa who
28:00 happened to be there and have friends on both sides who mediated and assisted
28:06 a safe elevation of of claudius and claudius didn't forget
28:12 it i mean he remained tight with agrippa and with herodian other herodian
28:18 descendants who were in rome and this this helped the judeans
28:24 immensely also in alexandria you know we have claudius's
28:29 letter we have a couple that's not a full copy it's a sort of crib uh in in greek uh made by a scribe
28:37 uh in alexandria or near alexandria of the letter he sent in 41 ce
28:44 to calm the uh the conflict between the alexandrians and the judeans and it's
28:50 really a supportive letter i mean he he lambasts the the greeks of the city and blames
28:58 them for taking the lead in the hostilities against the judeans
29:03 and he he warns them you've got to lay off them the judeans have a right to be here
29:10 they've been here for generations they have you know this is they they they can move around
29:16 the city freely what they can't then he turns against the judeans only to caution them to say look
29:23 you have every good thing in this city but it doesn't belong to you it's not your city right it's not a judean city
29:30 it has its own culture and laws and traditions but you have a secure place
29:35 here just don't push it right you just don't don't try to get into things you're not allowed because you're not
29:41 citizens of alexandria so you shouldn't be trying to visit you know the gymnasium or the the citizen
29:49 institutions and you shouldn't be bringing relatives in from syria
29:56 uh where judea is or from other parts of egypt to live here and expand you know
30:02 the judean community don't be doing that but you have a good situation here just
30:08 don't blow it but he's really angry with the others who were acting against the
30:14 judaeans in the riots of 38 um and 38-39
30:20 so he uh and he executes he actually executes
30:25 some of the alexandrian uh leaders uh of of the conflict and
30:31 this gives rise by the way to uh a whole literature called the acts of the
30:36 alexandrians which is anti-jewish wow and anti-roman because these people see
30:45 the jews of alexandria as getting too much favor from the romans
30:51 so all of these things suggest uh that
30:56 um that judea and its main representatives king agrippa
31:03 and his son agrippa ii who grows up in rome
31:08 all had a pretty good connection with the roman rulers and judea was was
31:14 relatively favored i mean if you look at if you look at southern syria right you
31:20 look at all the coastal cities gaza ascalon azoltas all the way up caesarea
31:26 to you know ptolemaeus to tyre and then you look inland at the so-called decapolis cities gather uh guerras uh
31:34 hippos and so on skitopoulos and then you look
31:40 at the major populations the sumerians north of judea
31:46 in no case did the romans ever choose one of them
31:51 to be the regional kind of power which is the regional base they only
31:56 chose jerusalem and only promoted judea so for all these reasons to come back to
32:04 the beginning of our discussion it seems to me clear that judea
32:10 prospered relatively speaking under roman rule
32:15 until the early 60s and to come back to your question then
32:21 initially you know what what went wrong then but i was just trying to fill in the gap between augustus and uh yeah no
32:28 that was great right yeah so yeah so okay that makes a lot of sense we sort
32:33 of have a picture now of what's going on the political scene and uh is the is this office of praetorian you
32:40 mentioned the praetorian guard if i'm not mistaken isn't there a praetorian prefect that's centered in
32:46 alexandria egypt uh no um but
32:52 i'm trying to think of what you might be thinking of the praetorian guard is a collection of cohorts
33:00 in in rome that are set up by augustus as a
33:06 kind of personal bodyguard um right okay uh so there are
33:12 uh i think nine uh nine cohorts something like that um it changes it
33:17 changes over time and there are two praetorian guard uh two priatorium prefects pardon me who are the
33:24 equestrian rank people at the top of this organization and this is a very
33:30 high ranking position uh so um most of the time there are two but at
33:36 times there's only one and that person becomes very powerful when there's only one uh the idea of having two of course
33:43 is like having two consoles right so that yeah you don't have a tyrant running things yeah but um yes cyanus
33:52 saginas is uh is the guy under tiberius who he eventually executes because he runs or
34:00 he he goes crazy with his power in in rome in the late 20s um
34:07 uh yeah yeah the reason why i asked that i'm i'm thinking of a character who was with
34:13 titus and now maybe i'm jumping ahead a little bit we can get to this and we can set up this sort of story but tiberius
34:20 julius alexander is his name right yeah so this character is really so
34:26 fascinating to me because i don't know it just seems like he's like involved in a lot of
34:31 crazy stuff that's happening in this time period well it's it's possible depends how you read uh
34:37 there's a fragmentary um inscription
34:42 uh that may mention him and may describe him as praetorian prefect
34:49 uh but that would be in that would be in the 70s so after this pageant and titus come to
34:56 power and titus takes the role of praetorian prefect
35:02 um in the 70s which is amazing
35:08 yeah so if if tiberius julius alexander
35:13 is the prietorian prefect uh that would be extraordinary and he would be titus's
35:19 uh companion in that role yeah they fought wars together so that's like
35:24 yeah because he is close to vespasian's age he's close to the age of titus dad
35:31 and when uh vespasian leaves the siege of jerusalem to titus in the year 70 he
35:39 sends tiberius julius alexander to be his mentor to be like his executive
35:45 officer over the armies uh but tiberius julius alexander is way more experienced than titus is titus is
35:52 only 30 years old at that time and tiberius julius alexander is probably late 50s um and he's
35:59 so who is he he's he's the nephew of philo of alexandria he's the son of that's what i'm saying it's just yeah
36:06 character is just so interesting but yeah sorry yeah he he's jewish he's a judean right so he is some he's part of
36:12 this uh what we're talking about this connection of this network of very
36:18 influential uh judeans his his father alexander
36:23 was the financial agent of claudius's mother
36:30 so i mean they're very well connected and there's this whole there's this whole eastern
36:36 um kind of um aristocracy uh in the eastern mediterranean that is is all connected
36:44 with uh alexander the financial guy
36:49 uh vespasian a young vespasian is part of this circle and the herodian royalty are all part of
36:56 it as well and and they're connected with claudius's mother so this is all again
37:03 evidence of good roman judean relations uh during this time so
37:09 tiberius julius alexander is sent by uh claudius
37:14 to be uh governor of judea uh so he's in he has equestrian rank and
37:21 he is sent in the years 46 to 48 to be a governor of judea and this
37:28 presumably because agrippa the first has recently died right he died in 44
37:35 and this caused all kinds of upheaval in the land
37:40 because the people who had been under jerusalem's thumbs under jerusalem's rule
37:47 while like while agrippa was king from jerusalem as his base
37:52 especially the sumerians and the people of caesarea where the auxiliary army
37:59 was based during this period the army had to be under the judean king so like when
38:05 there's a judean king herod or archelaus or agrippa the first
38:10 all the army is under his power even though they are not judeans right they are under the command and
38:17 control of a judean monarch so when agrippa dies in 44 ce
38:24 according to josephus all hell breaks loose with the army and their relatives
38:31 in samaria it's celebrations right because he's only like 53 or so he was
38:36 not expected to die he just suddenly you know collapsed and and died
38:42 and they unleashed celebrations wild celebrations
38:47 rude celebrations throughout this street parties in caesarea
38:53 and in uh samaria because they were no longer under the
38:58 control of this this judean so here's where the tensions begin to
39:04 rise it's not between jerusalem and rome it's between jerusalem and the
39:12 the neighboring peoples who have been under jerusalem's control for so long right
39:20 and the the judeans turn to rome for help against them and protection against them so for example
39:27 in the early 50s uh you have a conflict between the sumerians and the judeans breaks out and
39:36 they appeal to quirinius are not queerness quadratus pardon me who is the uh
39:43 the regi the the main governor the high ranking governor in syria and he comes down and sorts out the
39:50 problem and sends their delegates to claudius in rome and claudius decides in favor of
39:57 the judeans uh again so it's so judeans are appealing to rome
40:04 for protection against the local auxiliary army especially
40:10 because these are not roman soldiers right this is an important point for your viewers that
40:16 you know uh judea is often presented like in the life of brian uh film if
40:22 anybody's seen that like there are roman soldiers around everywhere like legionary soldiers famously you know in that film uh trying
40:30 to teach latin lessons to the uh to the judean revolutionaries
40:36 but in reality there were no roman soldiers around anywhere roman legionaries they were three weeks march
40:42 away way way way far in the north the soldiers based around judea
40:49 which kept the garrison in jerusalem were locally raised
40:54 samarian and caesarean soldiers they were auxiliary forces they
40:59 were not roman citizens they were greek speaking they would get roman citizenship after 20 odd years of
41:07 service if they survived their their service in the army they would be rewarded with uh roman citizenship
41:14 afterwards right as a as as a benefit of doing all of this but they were not roman citizens
41:20 and they were greek speaking and their sympathies were with the local people
41:26 because that's where they were recruited right so they were they they tended to hate the jews
41:32 because jerusalem had always been their enemy had always been um you know the
41:37 con even in the gospels you see this conflict between samaria and
41:43 jerusalem the jews and the samaritans and the gospel of john and in the good samaritan story in luke correct
41:50 and are these like descendants of the solutions maybe you said they're greek people are they are they just or is that
41:56 just like maybe it's just everyone speaks greek is that how yeah everyone everyone speaks greek that's what i meant they're greek speakers yeah
42:02 they're they're uh kind of dna i i don't know it's too complicated that's a good question i guess
42:09 which is like i always try to figure those things out but they're like impossible to figure out but anyway so yeah so now we have a really so it
42:15 seems like i don't know how you describe it is this more like a civil war between people
42:21 that are under a roman world like this is more like bickering
42:26 within rather than a nation of judea against rome well
42:31 in my view yes largely i wouldn't call it a civil war because the communities
42:36 were all separate right so sure um there will be a kind of civil war within
42:42 judea too but this uh this kind of war among the neighboring populations
42:49 is is a real problem well tensions let's not call it war yet but uh tensions among them which break out erupt into
42:56 deadly of force sometimes so for example what kicked off that sumerian
43:03 jewish problem in the early 50s was uh jews traveling from galilee
43:10 through samaria to come to jerusalem for a festival were attacked and and murdered
43:17 um but this was a common common thing right um
43:22 from josephus that there were two ways to get from galilee down to to to judea you could
43:29 either go straight the quick way was straight through samaria or the long way was to go out to the jordan valley
43:36 and go down the jordan valley and then come up via jericho
43:41 so you get down to jericho and come up into the hills and it's long and it's their bandits in the hills and it's
43:48 dangerous but people still chose to do that rather than to take the
43:53 quick route through samaria because that was that was particularly dangerous
44:00 yeah so these are these robbers that josephus alludes to pretty often yeah yeah yeah yeah and the new testament as
44:07 well the gospels yeah yeah and so there's also this fire this famous fire
44:13 in rome that breaks out that the christians are blamed for yeah 64. yeah before so is this do you think this sort
44:20 of like fuels the fire that ends up creating this war i guess you'd call it
44:26 i think it's a little bit earlier than that um but that exacerbates the problem
44:32 so the problem is essentially i think this and now i get to i think what's the crux of what
44:38 you're asking about what changes essentially the question is what changes with nero
44:45 right because the war breaks out under nero so what changes with nero well
44:50 it's of course tempting to to be simplistic about this to be to reduce it
44:55 to too simple um life is always complicated there are always many many many factors that enter
45:02 into things but it seems to me that some of the factors are are as follows first of all
45:08 uh nero comes to power at the age of 16
45:13 yeah right in 54 ce by the apparently by the machinations of his
45:20 mother right who is claudius's most recent wife
45:25 um and of course the story is that she even poisoned claudius
45:31 poisoned mushrooms somehow to get her son into office
45:37 maybe maybe not um i think uh yeah i mean it could be but
45:42 those are the kind of stories that circulated when people had no idea uh in the ancient world so let's not put too
45:49 much weight on that but nevertheless whatever however it happened nero comes to power
45:54 at just 16. for the first five years and this is kind of very famous and ancient
46:01 writing about him the first five years were fine uh why because his mother was still
46:06 around and she had put him in power basically and had arranged kind of
46:12 tutors and protectors for him seneca and burris who looked after him
46:18 and advised him counseled him and he as a young guy doesn't know anything um
46:25 basically just has to follow in the pattern that claudius had set so he
46:30 doesn't really change very much but there's there's a noticeable change in
46:36 59 ce so when he's around 21 um
46:41 he just starts to act differently and uh he kills his mother
46:47 he has his mother killed he has many advisors killed or exiled um
46:54 there's a lot of really strange stuff written about him a lot of strange stuff yeah yeah yeah now there's also there
47:00 have been efforts to kind of uh rehabilitate him in a way um
47:06 uh booked by champlin on nero is really really very good trying to make the best
47:12 possible case for understanding the guy historically you know what he was really
47:17 what he was really about but from a roman point of view he's an odd duck right he's uh very much interested in
47:25 the arts uh and athletics and wants to be somehow it seems like he had a
47:31 frustrated you know ambition to be a great entertainer artist performer athlete
47:38 um so anyway he after five years he gets rid of many of his advisors and
47:45 and really pushes out on his own in a fairly marked manner so to speak and at the
47:52 same time he begins to have a financial crisis
47:57 around the year 59 to 60. so this is well before the great fire of rome
48:03 almost five years before and you know the the big revolt in britain is caused in part by his recalling of
48:13 uh what he now considers loans which the british thought were gifts
48:19 right because he has been close to uh uh different british tribal leaders is this
48:25 boudicca yeah wow it's a lot of it's been happening in such a short period of time
48:30 big events but yeah sorry exactly exactly and he tells people senior people to call in
48:37 there to recall the money they'd given as uh gifts uh now and said no they were loans
48:43 and now they're due right so so the british tribes are like
48:48 well we don't have the money now this is not fair and that's part of i mean it's a complex story there's also other
48:54 things going on but part of the story about the revolt under boudicca is the
49:00 the humiliation right that these roman collect money collectors inflicted on
49:06 these these these british royals as it were the heads of these tribes and
49:11 which may have extended even to rape according to some accounts but anyway uh
49:18 um there's a conflict that develops because nero is in financial trouble and
49:24 according to other sources not josephus he begins to even tell his financial men
49:32 procurators financial agents to raid temples
49:38 and these are temples everywhere even in in italy itself right go around and take
49:44 whatever you can get from the temples we need money recall all the loans recall
49:50 every resource you can get now it looks like it was a result of bad
49:56 financial you know management on his part we can't really say now for sure but it
50:02 looks that way so he's trying to get all this money and in in the year 64 or so
50:09 when the great fire breaks out he dispatches to judea
50:15 of a friend well a guy whose wife was a friend of his wife so
50:22 i mean part of the sordid story of nero is that he uh he had a wife and then he fell in
50:28 love with the wife of a friend of his name otto who would become emperor later but he
50:35 dispatched him off as far as he could get rid of him out to the west and uh
50:40 and it took his wife as a as a lover first of all named papia popia sabina
50:47 uh and then married her in 62 he married her so there are all kinds of lurid stories
50:53 in the roman literature about her evil influence on him as well
50:58 and that she had him bump off various people
51:04 so he marries her in 1662. he will eventually kill her in 65.
51:12 um but when when josephus visits rome they are a couple and he says that it
51:19 was she josephus claims she was a god fuhrer she was uh very supportive of the
51:24 jews wow and she she helped him when he went to nero's court to free
51:31 some jewish friends of his who were priests who uh nero had had kept as as
51:37 prisoners and uh papia his wife was crucial in getting them released to go
51:44 back with josephus uh in the year 64 to 65 somewhere in there
51:50 so all of this is going on at this time and it's a very uh tense period and
51:57 and after this so after the great fire uh of rome of course nero wants to
52:03 rebuild rome and so he has um like his financial needs go through the
52:10 roof right this skyrocket he really needs to rebuild the city and he's really pressing everybody to
52:16 get him money resources and that's the time well 6465
52:22 is when he sends this guy gesius flores as the procurator to judea
52:30 and tells him basically gives him carte blanche and says just take money get money from the
52:37 temple you know the temple in jerusalem is known to be
52:42 one of the wealthiest maybe the wealthiest temple in in the roman empire wow
52:48 why can can you if you don't mind my asking you as if you were in one of my classes yeah
52:53 can you imagine why the jerusalem temple would probably be wealthier than most other temples
53:01 like the thousands of temples throughout the empire because they raised taxes
53:06 yeah from from the people and the jews in the eastern side of the empire right exactly
53:13 and not only in the in the roman empire but even jews in the parthian empire
53:18 right to the east they all of them and they get its seventh year where they can just bank and just collect and stack for
53:25 that whole can you explain that real quick what the sabbatical year is well actually i'm not
53:32 i'm a bit reluctant to because it's not clear how it played out in practice
53:37 um you have it's just not clear how it worked in practice because according to biblical
53:43 law of course in the seventh year you should let the field's life fallow and you shouldn't
53:48 grow and so on uh and then you have rabbinic laws about tithing and and the
53:54 seventh year but what actually happened on the ground in the first century it's not so clear
54:00 what accommodations were made for for this sabbath so i'm a bit i'm a bit reluctant sure to to go there and say it
54:07 was like this i don't know but what is clear is that judeans everywhere
54:13 in alexandria in the cities of the eastern empire a roman empire and
54:20 all the jews of the parthian world and there were you know uh at least hundreds
54:26 of thousands probably millions of jews living in you know iraq iran and those in jordan and
54:33 those areas and they not in the roman empire but they still sent delegates
54:39 every year with the mass of money to the temple in jerusalem
54:45 because they that was their only temple so whereas other people you know worshipers of
54:51 apollo or or or athena yeah they they had a temple in
54:57 their own city and they would store their money there but that was relatively small especially when you you
55:04 read posinaes and you notice that every city might have two temples of
55:09 dionysus or oh yeah all over the place yeah they might have dozens of temples to different gods yeah
55:15 yeah yeah exactly so if you have one temple in principle i mean there was a temple
55:21 also in egypt for jews which is a peculiar place and we don't know much
55:26 about it vespasian shut it down in 73-74 but aside from that
55:33 which is which is a peculiar thing uh josephus is clear and philo is clear and
55:39 other sources are clear that the temple in jerusalem was the temple for jews
55:45 everywhere so when uh nero of course thought about it he's seeing
55:51 well not dollar signs but you know sister sisters signs um
55:58 in his eyes of money right and he tells guess he has floors look just go
56:04 and you've got to take some money out of there and talents you know tap the talent was like size of you know in the
56:11 gym some some big uh you know plate like a 45 pound plate or something like that
56:16 i mean they they varied according to different scales but that was one talent and he has him go and take eight talents
56:23 of gold or uh you know so many talents and of course
56:29 who's his muscle to do this he doesn't waltz in there himself and
56:35 try to carry out this money the the the the muscle is the auxiliary
56:42 garrison uh so not roman citizen not roman legionary soldiers but these
56:48 people who have weapons uh i say weapons not like a machine gun
56:54 but you know the weapons of the time swords and clubs
57:00 and they hate the jews um that's just by now clear
57:06 right in even in josephus account mainly in the antiquities he fills in the backstory to
57:11 this not so much in the war but in antiquities 19 it becomes very clear that the animosity
57:18 between these these uh between the jews and their protectors
57:24 the auxiliary army is fierce and so they go marching in with their
57:29 weapons into the temple treasury and just take out money
57:34 so what happens now well of course you have the problem of how did the jews
57:40 respond to this and it's very clear that everybody is outraged right but
57:48 that doesn't mean that this was part of a his you know what i said at the beginning like there
57:54 was some anti-roman zealot feeling dispersed throughout the
58:00 population quite the opposite when the jews experienced this under
58:06 yesterday's floors nero's agent who's just arrived they are furious
58:13 because it's never happened before this is not what you expect of the romans and
58:18 their their immediate instinctual response is to appeal
58:24 to kestia's gallus who is the the top roman
58:29 commander in syria right he's he's the senatorial ranked
58:34 uh governor uh legatus and they appeal to him for help and he he comes down and
58:42 visits at passover in the year 66 right um and
58:49 and the the jews flock around him and he says is everything cool you know it's
58:55 everything good because his job is to maintain good relations with the local populations and they say
59:02 everything is great we have no problem with rome but we really really have a problem with
59:08 this guy um there's this uh guestius flores can can you get rid of him
59:14 now in the in the past the guy in that position the position of
59:19 kestia's gallows has been able to get rid of the lower ranked guy
59:25 uh the the equestrian governor so for example pontius pilate was sent packing
59:30 back to rome by the the the guy who was in charge in uh
59:36 syria right uh vitellius at the time so normally he could do that
59:42 normally he could use his much higher rank to say right you go back to the emperor
59:49 and you give an account to him but in this case it didn't work in this case
59:55 the problem is that by this time exactly in 65 ce
1:00:01 there are conspiracies among the senators in rome
1:00:08 that are taking shape against nero they're actually trying to kill him because they see
1:00:14 they see him as degenerate uh he he undertakes in this year a uh famous uh tour of greece
1:00:22 where he begins to act on the stage perform in shows participate in athletic
1:00:29 contests which he always wins by the way uh amazingly uh-huh is this the same
1:00:35 time period where vespasian supposedly falls asleep yeah nero is yeah so yeah
1:00:43 so vespasian is with nero on this greek tour uh of of 6566
1:00:51 um yeah exactly he's he's with him as part of his entourage and he has to watch all
1:00:56 this stuff like you know he's a very accomplished you know tough guy and he has to just kind of sit in the
1:01:03 audience and smile and so you know he starts to doze and the uh one story is that he just walks out of a
1:01:10 performance uh that's the situation in which
1:01:15 uh nero will send him to judea he sends him from greece actually uh not from
1:01:22 rome so does he doesn't banish him or like make him like like i think it's tacitus one one of the
1:01:28 writers was like nero was so angry that he could have killed vespasian but people convinced him not to so yeah yeah
1:01:34 yeah i mean these are the kind of uh gossip gossipy stories that did it yeah we we
1:01:40 don't really know um most emperors took this kind of stuff
1:01:46 in their stride you know they they had a sense of humor about it everybody's outraged at the
1:01:53 thieving of uh money from the temple treasury of course they are but then the question is how do
1:02:00 you respond you know like use your noggin you know how what's the safest way
1:02:07 forward now and here you have a whole spectrum of responses right so on on one side the
1:02:14 impulsive response is look these are not romans these are these schmucks that
1:02:21 have hated us for so long these auxiliary fighters right we can take them on
1:02:27 uh you know they're not such great stuff we'll go arm ourselves
1:02:32 and so you have a split of factions led by different people but one of them goes
1:02:38 goes down to masada where king herod had stored a bunch of weapons weapons
1:02:44 again being swords and clubs and state you know staffs and just stuff
1:02:52 that's made to to fight with um is is that masada so according to josephus they go down and grab a bunch
1:02:59 of these weapons load them up on a wagon and take them back to jerusalem to arm themselves against the auxiliary
1:03:07 garrison which is only well only it's a few hundred guys right it's usually around 500 480 500 guys who are now
1:03:15 that's that's a lot of armed fighters but if if you can get together a few
1:03:20 hundred others and arm them it's it's it's at least a conceivable
1:03:27 conflict a contest right you might be able to chase them out and these guys
1:03:32 are really brutal i mean they're following nero's orders and josephus even says at one point when the jews
1:03:39 accused yesius flores of you know being a bastard for taking all this money he
1:03:46 said look i'm just doing what the emperor told me to do
1:03:51 in josephus he comes across as a really bad guy but he does allow him to say that and
1:03:58 that seems to be true he was just doing what nero told him do and because of the
1:04:04 to come back to a point i began to make before because of the conspiracy of the senators against nero at this time
1:04:11 in 65-66 he's very suspicious of of senators
1:04:17 and some of them are governing provinces right and like the two guy two brothers
1:04:23 who are governing in upper and lower germany he he invites them to kill themselves
1:04:29 like okay you're like your life is over please uh please die right now um wow uh this was
1:04:37 the honorable way to die right instead of being executed just i'll let you guys kill yourselves but i want you to know
1:04:44 you know you you have to do it and and from the east a very senior
1:04:49 guy probably late 60s by now named corbulo who had won a great victory for
1:04:57 nero against the parthians and enabled him to have a magnificent
1:05:02 celebration in rome in 66 ce of his uh
1:05:08 um agreement with parthia like a big diplomatic agreement that was all won by
1:05:14 corbulo then corp then then nero invites corbulo
1:05:19 to uh to to greece and tells him to kill himself
1:05:24 as well because he's he fears that he's involved
1:05:29 in these senatorial conspiracies and he's a very powerful guy he's got a lot of support as a great commander whereas
1:05:37 nero is still nero's still not even 30 yet after like 14 years
1:05:43 in power he's still very very young and
1:05:48 he knows that the generals and the real you know the real men the real fighters the real experienced leaders looked down
1:05:55 on him as as a goof you know um because because he doesn't
1:06:00 have any he doesn't have any substance to him right he's just a flake
1:06:06 so he knows that and he's very sensitive to it and so he's ordering all these
1:06:12 guys in their 60s to to to you know end themselves um so what that means for
1:06:18 judea is that castius gallus we've got to keep these names straight castius gallus is
1:06:25 the the senatorial legate in charge of all of syria including judea
1:06:32 whereas geseus flores whose name sounds a little bit similar he's a much lower ranked equestrian guy who is nero's
1:06:40 agent to collect the money now as i said ordinarily the senior guy
1:06:46 would be able to boot the younger guy the junior guy out and say you go back to rome and explain yourself to the
1:06:52 emperor that would have been the case under augustus tiberius claudius but under nero
1:06:59 no way there's no way that this senator is going to confront
1:07:06 the man that nero sent out even though he's officially of much lower rank
1:07:12 because nero is is using these guys his these equestrian financial guys
1:07:18 to undermine the senators also uh galba who's a who's a senior senator in the
1:07:25 west in spain he according to the stories we have is very
1:07:30 upset that nero's men are coming and taking money from his province there's not a thing he can do about it he just
1:07:38 has to zip it and that seems to be the same situation in judea so to come back to your
1:07:44 question neil the big question of today um how did the war break out it seems to
1:07:49 me that it's not so complicated but it's in much more at a much more
1:07:56 human level than this kind of idea this theological ideas i would put it
1:08:03 that the jews were were you know zealots they were
1:08:08 resistant to roman rule they just couldn't stand the oppression of rome i
1:08:14 can't see it i mean i think that things were going very well for jerusalem all the way until
1:08:21 the mid 60s when when particular events in nero's
1:08:26 uh reign and from nero's ambitions and nero's wishes and needs financial needs
1:08:34 drove him to uh aggravate the situation in judea
1:08:39 in a new way that had not happened before and all the normal ways the jews would have
1:08:45 for redress the ways they would normally appeal to the to the legate in the north
1:08:50 they would normally appeal to the emperor for relief from whatever is
1:08:56 going on in judea those doors were closed now and now they realized that the emperor
1:09:02 was their enemy he'd suddenly become their their enemy not because of any
1:09:07 fundamental conflict with rome but because nero was behaving in such a
1:09:13 nasty way and they they couldn't get any help from kestia's galas because he was he was handcuffed
1:09:20 um he he could not act in a disloyal way uh
1:09:26 to to nero right he just had to zip it and accept the the junior guy
1:09:31 so now things just went from bad to worse and and i mentioned before there was a spectrum of responses
1:09:39 some people armed themselves and and they went as far
1:09:44 as to besiege the the auxiliary garrison in jerusalem and in to hole it up first
1:09:51 of all in the antonia fortress uh where which was its main kind of base and then
1:09:56 they kicked them out and they drove them out of there into king herod's old palace
1:10:03 which was also kind of had thick walls and and the auxiliary is hiding in there
1:10:08 and trying to stay safe and finally they they promised them according to josephus
1:10:15 it's the only story we have right they promised them safe passage if they
1:10:21 will put down their weapons so they come out and put down their weapons and then they massacre them
1:10:27 uh so this is like okay things are really getting out of hand
1:10:33 now and at the same time according to josephus over in caesarea
1:10:39 where there's always been anti-judean sentiment building up right that's where they celebrated agrippa the first death
1:10:46 he says that at the same time the caesarean majority population
1:10:52 massacred its judean minority
1:10:57 so you have the jews massacring the auxiliary garrison which is from caesarea
1:11:04 and would be due to go back home there and the people of caesarea massacring
1:11:09 their judean minority now it's natural to suspect one was a a response to the
1:11:16 other uh josephus doesn't say that he says they happened at exactly the same time
1:11:21 by some mysterious uh coincidence which is you know hard to believe
1:11:26 historically but anyway they both happened and the result was
1:11:33 that uh the whole region lights up now and on in terms of the spectrum of
1:11:40 responses however it's clear that you have a lot of people especially the more senior
1:11:46 uh priests in the temple saying okay okay okay we've got to calm this down we've
1:11:53 got to de-escalate this somehow yes this is terrible yes it's atrocious
1:11:59 but there's no point just fighting i mean that's not we're not going to survive that um we've got
1:12:07 to try to calm things down and so agrippa the second is brought in to try to help and the
1:12:14 senior priests try to calm things down but long story short it doesn't work
1:12:21 would you say this is like the franz ferdinand moment the or uh was that is that what his name
1:12:27 frankfurt and the franz ferdinand uh yes the the uh the heir apparent in uh
1:12:33 austria-hungary who was yes so this is comparable to that this is the shot heard around the world
1:12:38 sparks up this uh well yes and no yes and no the the difference is that with franz ferdinand
1:12:45 and the austro-hungarian empire of course i think it's very clear now
1:12:50 that that the situation in europe from you know the late 19th century to
1:12:57 1914 was extremely tense with these major powers
1:13:04 arming themselves uh and preparing for a massive conflict
1:13:10 and so that was the that was the you know the spark that ignited that conflict
1:13:17 uh so in that sense this was a spark yes but i don't this much build up yeah i
1:13:24 don't think there was this there were not you know armies ready to fight each other
1:13:30 and so when this happens is vespasian still in greece with nero or is he getting sent out already yeah so so now
1:13:37 what happens is in a very short space of time this guy kestius gallus who's
1:13:43 the governor of all syria and is responsible for keeping the peace in judea he's really between a rock and
1:13:50 a hard place um and so he decides reluctantly very reluctantly it seems
1:13:57 in in autumn when the weather's already turning you know in the highlands of judea it's
1:14:05 already turning wet and uh it's gonna likely snow and it's i lived through you know a modern winter
1:14:13 once in jerusalem it's amazingly cold yeah yeah um because there's no
1:14:20 generally no really good or there was when i was there no really good central heating and so you kind of went to bed
1:14:26 with all your clothes on and you know um and it can often snow and it certainly
1:14:32 rains a lot from october november through to like february
1:14:37 march the rest of the year you can go with not a cloud in the sky from you know march
1:14:43 to october or so hardly ever see a cloud in the sky but through through the
1:14:48 winter it's it's not a good time to be there so kessius gallus
1:14:53 decides very reluctantly to take a legion south
1:14:59 to sort this all out and he takes a grip of the second the judean king
1:15:05 with him thinking okay well you know they'll let him into the city and he can
1:15:11 you know we'll find out who the troublemakers are we'll sort this out right i don't want to do this but
1:15:17 but here's the problem first of all the legion he takes the 12th legion is a rebuilding legion it was almost
1:15:24 destroyed under corbulo um because of corbilos i can't get into all the details but korbila's
1:15:30 predecessor really screwed up and and that's why corbula came in to save the
1:15:36 day with parthia the 12th legion had been almost destroyed
1:15:41 by the parthians in 63. so that's right
1:15:46 so uh um kessius gallus in choosing that legion
1:15:53 to bring south he's it clearly doesn't think it's going to be a big problem he doesn't take his
1:15:59 best legion the tenth uh for tenses he doesn't take that legion he leaves it up
1:16:04 on the you know near the um uh near the euphrates river which is the frontier with arthea he leaves the those
1:16:12 legions in place but he comes down quickly and picks up from rafa naya which is on the way south the rebuilding
1:16:19 12th legion apparently to kind of give it some some some some experience
1:16:25 some an easy kind of you know minor expedition policing expedition so
1:16:32 what happens is when he gets to jerusalem with agrippa
1:16:37 uh as they're nearing jerusalem agrippa sends a couple of his spokesman ahead to say okay we're coming can you please
1:16:44 open the gates we we want to talk this through and those two guys are are
1:16:50 are one is killed and one is beaten within an inch of his life and they escape back and say no they
1:16:57 they don't want us uh to to come we're gonna be in trouble so now kesty's he's got this legion with
1:17:04 him he says well we got to press on so he arrives outside the gates of jerusalem and assumes they're going to
1:17:10 let him in he's got a legion with him after all and he's he was just in the city in the spring and had a very warm
1:17:17 reception and people have been coming and going out of the city so he's sure he can get
1:17:22 in but he can't they you know it's it's a walled city and it only has a few gates and half a dozen gates so when
1:17:29 those gates are bolted shut and the walls are thick and high you can't get in unless i mean even
1:17:36 titus when he arrives years later with uh with four legions
1:17:41 for the siege he can't just waltz in right yeah you're stuck outside so kestia's fines
1:17:47 he can't get into the city and so yes he hasn't got any supply lines he hasn't
1:17:54 he hasn't prepared for his seeds nothing like that so he has his men forage around for food for a few days and then
1:18:01 he decides well to hell with it you know we better go home back up north
1:18:06 and we'll come back in the spring when it's ready for you know fighting season and i'll bring a couple of
1:18:13 legions with me and we'll really sort this thing out but when he's retreating he has to go
1:18:20 through a steep pass down these stone cut steps where the army has to go single
1:18:27 file at a place called bet harang which is where the landscape descends quickly from the
1:18:35 hills down to the plain down to the plain so you can head north so it's a very short
1:18:41 period where the army has to like a kilometer or so where they have to go very steeply down these rock cut steps
1:18:48 and the judean fighters are feeling very uh confident now because they they feel
1:18:55 like they've chased them away they they had to leave quickly so they because they know the terrain very well
1:19:01 they set themselves up uh at uh near beth
1:19:06 and as the army is descending they start to hurl projectiles down on their own and
1:19:12 they they manage to kill josephus says like 5 000 uh 300 of them
1:19:18 i think that could be you know joseph's numbers are almost always multiples of 10 or even 100 um
1:19:27 bigger than like 500 you think it could be 500 it could be still 100 it's a lot
1:19:33 of people anyway and it's enough so the reason i go into all that explanation is
1:19:38 to say the garrison massacre was
1:19:43 was one thing but this thing now the assault on the legion
1:19:49 that's really i mean there's there's no way that rome can
1:19:56 sitting down there's absolutely no way and there's going to be there you know as the name of that film
1:20:02 with daniel day lewis was there will be blood especially after this yeah and
1:20:07 there will be that so that you just explained to me how this war broke out really well that makes a lot of sense now now you know
1:20:14 now you know how it escalates and so i guess that since we have a few minutes left i guess
1:20:20 the things that i want to tie in now just to end this story off is like
1:20:25 and this might be you might have to like speed through it i don't know how you want to do this but like how do you how do we get from nero sending legions
1:20:34 to to quell this rebellion or whatever you want to call it this little scuffle whatever you want to call it to
1:20:39 the the gaius windex thing and and uh what's his name galba
1:20:45 becoming like literally like could spear conspiracy against nero all the way in the in the in the west in
1:20:52 spain this is nothing to do with judea so it's really moved a lot of moving parts happening and then
1:20:58 you're the four emperors yeah so very quickly um
1:21:03 uh nero's off on his greek tour having the time of his life
1:21:08 completely forgets about politics or tries to in rome but that has his year and a half which he
1:21:16 probably would have liked to extend even longer um falls apart because he gets news from
1:21:22 rome that there are all these senatorial conspiracies and so he feels he has to go back
1:21:28 he goes back and um but he's a busted flush you know by this point
1:21:34 there's lots of movement uh against him so in the west yeah you have
1:21:40 you have the problem of julius windex uh their wonderful name sounds like window
1:21:45 cleaner yeah but but it's of course vindex oh vindex we say it we say it
1:21:51 windex yeah i said that because i have i have a patreon member who is his name is guys julius windex yes
1:21:58 so i literally slipped up and said his name instead but yeah it's me no no it's true we normally pronounce uh the v as a
1:22:05 w right but it does sound like window cleaner to us anyhow this guy um
1:22:12 leads a a little bit of a revolt and there are all kinds of personal reasons for these conflicts out in the western
1:22:20 provinces and uh that that revolt doesn't last very long because it's put down by a
1:22:27 more loyal roman temporarily loyal roman
1:22:34 but but uh windex has written to all the regional
1:22:40 governors asking who will join him and most of them write back and say no no no
1:22:46 way it's too dangerous um that's right move right
1:22:53 galba says hmm well let's see and now he's already an old guy he's uh he's a
1:22:59 blue blood who was brought out you know he's got a noble kind of ancestry
1:23:06 galba um and he's you know he's well respected as a military guy but he's pushing 70
1:23:13 and he's finding it even difficult to ride a horse you know so his big deal is he has to get a
1:23:19 successor uh in place if he's gonna last because part of the problem is that nero was so
1:23:25 young he was not an experienced commander he didn't have you know the whole julio claudian succession line was really not working
1:23:34 and was you know people adopted and fictional heirs and all of that so really you want
1:23:41 a a military man a trusted you know true roman guy
1:23:47 who's got a proper son uh or two um and you don't have to go through all
1:23:53 the usual shenanigans um so anyway what what basically happens is galba
1:23:59 take it manages to take over he doesn't reach rome until like october of 60th so so nero kills
1:24:07 himself in june 9th or 11th uh depending uh on on your calculations um and galba is
1:24:15 quickly uh accepted as emperor in his place but he doesn't reach rome until october and
1:24:21 he finally realizes he's got to name somebody as his heir and he chooses this guy liekinianos piso
1:24:29 and announces him in january of uh of 69
1:24:34 and then he's they're both murdered um in on january 15th apparently uh
1:24:41 has something to do with with otto who thought that he should be because he'd
1:24:46 been a loyal supporter that he he's young he should be the natural heir
1:24:52 uh and so then you have this conflict between otto and vitalius because vitalius also
1:24:59 had arisen he just came out from gaul from winning a bunch of battles in golf i'm not mistaken
1:25:06 he's in he's in uh in in germany he's in germany's german provinces yeah
1:25:11 and what and he just arrived i mean he'd just been sent out as uh as a
1:25:18 as a general of galba but he's already found the german legions in
1:25:24 kind of a restive state so so anyway my point is that right from the beginning you have this conflict between
1:25:31 um otto and vitellius for like right from the time of galba's death they are at it at each other about
1:25:38 who will be the real successor otto takes over he's recognized by the senate
1:25:43 but vitalius is always at his heels and so it's a very short you know few months
1:25:49 that otto is in power and then vitellius in the first battle of cremona doesn't
1:25:54 vitellius help otho get they help him beat galba or no maybe i'm wrong about that
1:26:00 um uh well yes and no um i mean they're both opposed to galba
1:26:07 that appears but it's it's really their struggle between each other that will then then kick off
1:26:14 anyhow anyhow the the point is um that doesn't last for very long and and by
1:26:19 april uh vitellius is in power uh but then he still has to get to rome
1:26:26 uh uh yeah anyhow um that takes us far away from judea i did
1:26:33 want to finish the judean story yeah yeah sure because the the main point here
1:26:39 is that's also i think widely misunderstood is people then think that this this war that began as a result of
1:26:46 everything we discussed lasted for like eight years so even i was looking at a book that
1:26:53 just came out recently it's saying this was like one of the biggest wars of the roman empire because it lasted from 66
1:27:00 until 73 or 74 with the fall of masada so like eight years maybe
1:27:07 but here's the crucial point it didn't didn't last that long by any means first of all
1:27:13 the romans thought it was over by 70 with the fall of jerusalem because
1:27:18 they held their triumph the triumph of this pagan and titus in rome for the
1:27:24 fall of judea which is now in control calm subdued
1:27:29 they held that triumph in 71 in rome for jerusalem having fallen in 70. about
1:27:37 beginning of september of 70. that's first thing so it was only only
1:27:43 uh and the the flavians only arrived to take over so what happened to this guy kestius gallus he never did return so he
1:27:51 was he was rebuffed from jerusalem right he went back north his legion was attacked and he escaped and got home to
1:27:58 antioch and he was planning to return uh with more legions uh in uh fighting
1:28:06 season in the spring of 67. uh nero decided however
1:28:14 forget about it uh you old guy he's also pushing 70 years old by this point
1:28:20 you old guy are no good you're not gonna it's not going to happen with you i am sending this vigorous you know mid-50s
1:28:28 guy who's got lots of military experience he fought claudius's battles for him led the second legion in britain
1:28:35 back in you know 43 so and and gave claudius his triumph so this is a very
1:28:41 accomplished a military commander i'm sending him and he's not a threat to me because he's a
1:28:47 new senator he's not like old blue blood senator he's not a threat
1:28:52 to me so he sends uh vespasian out basically to take over from kestia's
1:28:59 gallus and put down all this unrest in jerusalem simply like that
1:29:05 but what i mainly want to point out is the war the so-called war
1:29:10 uh that followed was not much of a war uh i mean judea did not have an army
1:29:16 right unlike provincial revolts like the batavian revolt or the german revolts
1:29:22 where they had auxiliary forces that were in revolt in judea the auxiliary
1:29:27 forces were on the roman side there were no judean auxiliary forces so it's not like there was really a war
1:29:34 when vespasian arrived in ptolemaeus so this is echo today at the northwest
1:29:42 corner of galilee before he even entered judean territory all the cities of the region including
1:29:49 judean sephiroth the major judean city in galilee sent representatives to him saying
1:29:56 welcome welcome uh we are so glad to see you uh and and agrippa was with him as
1:30:02 an ally said please you know uh our place is your place you know mi casa su
1:30:08 casa um please send a a a a garrison
1:30:14 uh to sephiros of several thousand roman soldiers set up a garrison right in our
1:30:20 city perfect we'd love to have you and from that point on and tiberius also on the
1:30:25 coast the of the lake of galilee sent delegates as did all the diaspora the
1:30:31 decapolis uh cities sent delegates to welcome him so so vespasian basically had the run of
1:30:39 the place uh right from the beginning he only had uh the problem with yotapada or yodfat
1:30:46 where josephus was that lasted a few weeks and then he went to help king agrippa so he sent his men
1:30:54 to winter quarters after that in july of 67 already like it was over there was nothing to do
1:31:01 but agrippa his host said you know what i have a couple of cities that are
1:31:06 giving me agrippa a problem because they've just been given to me by nero
1:31:11 and they don't like this situation that's tiberius and uh on the on the shore of the lake
1:31:18 and tariqah uh they're giving me a hassle would you help me would you help intimidate them
1:31:25 into submission to me and and vespasian said well sure why not i
1:31:30 got a massive army here doing nothing uh so yeah so that's where the siege of uh
1:31:36 gamwa uh comes up because it's in agrippa's territory but it wasn't on
1:31:41 this bayesian's itinerary initially so vespasian wraps up galilee very quickly
1:31:48 in 67 right it's done almost when he arrives and then in 68 he moves down to
1:31:56 caesarea to launch his uh to tighten the noose around jerusalem and and restore you
1:32:03 know order there and that's when nero dies nero dies in june of 68. so this patient
1:32:11 has already garrisoned judea without any real resistance
1:32:16 in 68 and then nero dies so he puts his campaign on hold for two years while the
1:32:23 roman civil war plays out so my point neil is that
1:32:29 uh there's no like fighting war it's not like there's a fighting war for eight years
1:32:34 uh most of this is simply vespasian sitting around waiting waiting for the
1:32:39 year of the four emperors to end yeah exactly and then it ends with him you know making a bid for power himself
1:32:47 and then and then he decides to hand off the the siege of jerusalem
1:32:52 by the way i think it it shows that he really didn't think it was a big deal
1:32:58 because he gave it to his young son as 30 years old now to take care of
1:33:04 puts tiberius julius alexander in there to help him and vespasian doesn't go back to rome he
1:33:10 goes over to alexandria and sits there while the siege of jerusalem is going on
1:33:16 so he could have done it himself but he handed it to his son which suggests
1:33:22 i think to me at least that he he thought it would be a great way for titus to get some military credit and
1:33:30 credibility yeah as his heir right yeah yeah and so
1:33:35 when what the i was looking this up while you're telling this because i i thought of this and if you go to vespasian's wikipedia page there's this
1:33:42 map right here have you ever seen this before probably i don't remember so it's okay so i'm wondering what these dates mean
1:33:49 it's got gulba jun well that's that's what he's running uh that's when he's the emperor but if
1:33:55 you look look at the uh regions it has vespasian and it has him on the eastern
1:34:01 empire syria egypt but also macedonia and dalmatia are these
1:34:07 is this is this true like are these like the areas that proclaimed
1:34:12 each person as emperor like they supported them basically well it's more it's the thing is it's more dynamic
1:34:19 right so this so otto and vitellius had their
1:34:25 uh supporting areas right that's what they're saying but galba's out of the picture but right
1:34:32 so you can't really well it says because on the bottom 69 it's over with yeah as i said yeah he's murdered in the
1:34:41 forum on the 15th of january right of 69 so he's out of the picture right when
1:34:46 otto and vitelius are going at it sure so each of them has their own
1:34:53 uh sort of legionary support and they they fight it out in a battle in northern
1:35:00 italy at a place called cremona or between the town of cremona and
1:35:06 bedriakum which are you know i don't know days march apart between those two
1:35:11 towns so one each based in one of them they fight it out between those towns and
1:35:18 they like they have tens of thousands of roman soldiers fighting each other
1:35:24 right and so finally vitalius emerges uh from that in in in april
1:35:30 right um otto kills himself right because according to the story he
1:35:36 actually could have won it but he decides that the fighting has been too yes
1:35:42 too too fierce and there's too much roman the loss passes tells us that yeah yeah
1:35:49 so he uh he up and kills himself now and then so vitellius is now
1:35:54 he's now in power but uh he hasn't actually been
1:35:59 been fighting himself these are forces fighting on his behalf so he's now he's
1:36:05 now um emperor uh but the thing is that what i'm trying to say is that vespasian then is not has
1:36:13 not been part of that right right he he now launches his own in in other
1:36:18 words he launches a new civil war in rome because vitelius thinks he's
1:36:24 finally got it all sewn up right vitellius even issues some coins
1:36:31 showing victory in judea oh wow like because he's sure that
1:36:36 vespasian has it all tied up in in judea so he issues some coins with the palm
1:36:42 tree and victory fastening her shield on the palm tree
1:36:48 because he thinks vespasian has one judea for him right because he's emperor
1:36:54 and what he doesn't realize is true this persian's about to turn around and challenge him for
1:37:01 for imperial power yeah so the last thing i want to ask you then we'll never finish this this has
1:37:06 been amazing by the way um so is this would you say that it's accurate that the east
1:37:13 supported vespasian to return to rome as the emperor
1:37:18 wow yeah yeah basically so saying before that but like his his uh power base is
1:37:26 first of all the legions in in judea with him right so he's got three legions
1:37:33 at this point in judea then when he decides to make the bid for
1:37:38 power according to josephus he writes to tiberius julius alexander who is the
1:37:45 governor of egypt at this time and if you have a show on hbo he'd be one of the main characters but yeah yeah yeah
1:37:51 and he pledges uh support of his two legions uh now according to the here's an
1:37:59 interesting thing there are two different stories the flavian story is that tiberius julius alexander did this
1:38:06 independently he saw where the where the sun was rising and he he made his calculation
1:38:14 and decided to throw his support behind this passion and he did it because
1:38:19 he had heard that the the uh legions up on the danube
1:38:25 so in the eastern part of the empire up on the danube would support vespasian
1:38:30 and we're inclined because vespasian is a successful guy now right he's he's got another military campaign under his belt
1:38:37 and they see him as a true leader a real a real commander so they will support
1:38:42 him so tibirus julius alexander independently supports him as well and
1:38:48 when you put all that together with vespasian's three legions he's got a solid base for making a bid for power uh
1:38:56 the the four legions in syria right because of mookianos who's now the governor there are supporting him
1:39:03 three legions in judea two legions in alexandria and several legions on the
1:39:08 danube so he's got a really solid support base so that's that's the flavian story joseph's story
1:39:17 is that vespasian actually has to once he makes his bid for power he
1:39:22 actually writes to tiberius julius alexander and says hey
1:39:27 i've got the support of syria four legions judea three legions would you
1:39:34 throw in your support behind me and tiberius sulis alexander agrees and he
1:39:39 also he also had nerva and domitian fighting in dakia there had i thought not mistake isn't
1:39:46 that where the mission was going to war or is that later that kind of later
1:39:51 yeah i'm just trying to get the picture okay that's later yeah yeah yeah that's that's like 20 years later yeah and i
1:39:56 just pulled up that uh it's just from wikipedia but just to get your opinion on it it says that there was a damaged
1:40:02 papyrus refers to alexander tiberius as holding praetorian prefect
1:40:09 which is open to two interpretation it could indicate his rank during titus campaign 70
1:40:15 which would mean that he held his own independent imperium commanding authority
1:40:21 another another would be he became the prefect praetorian guard at rome which
1:40:26 later became composition for predicts in egypt yeah this is what we were talking about
1:40:32 early on uh in our conversation yeah that that's what i mentioned that there was um
1:40:37 i may have called it an inscription it's it's a pirate yes yes yes um that uh
1:40:43 depends on how you read it um indicates that he
1:40:48 tiberius julius alexander became a praetorian prefect
1:40:54 with titus alongside him and that that that view has been uh so
1:41:00 in the 70s right so after he helped win after he helped titus
1:41:06 uh subdue jerusalem then he became a
1:41:11 co-praetorian prefect um but that's not clear it's not this is a
1:41:18 is a fragmentary papyrus and it has to be filled in yeah yeah one thing i think
1:41:24 we can say closes out is that vespasian really it was like sort of a genius in his own way
1:41:29 where he had the insight to know what to do what moves to make when to wait it out when
1:41:36 to be aggressive when to back off and sort of wade off the storm and then enter back with the big
1:41:43 triumphal like i'm the hero look i'm back everything's fine now yeah so oh yeah i
1:41:48 mean that that that comes through very clearly i've written a couple articles about this um what a what a cautious
1:41:55 and clever uh general and commander and politician
1:42:01 he was even in so when his men acclaimed him imperator
1:42:07 as you know conqueror they they wanted him
1:42:12 this patient to lead them against vitalius right they assumed that he would be
1:42:19 their commander in the field because he was their commander in judea but what he
1:42:24 did was he worked out a deal with mukianos the governor of syria
1:42:30 who would actually lead the flavian forces to to italy to fight against uh
1:42:36 vitellius's forces this pasion hung out in alexandria for almost a year
1:42:42 right but his mother didn't die as a result of that his brother died in that little skirmish
1:42:48 his older brother that's right that's sabines yeah yeah but that was probably
1:42:53 probably not his fault because that's that's when uh the flavian forces are you know
1:43:00 uh just outside of rome yeah and so vitalius's forces according to
1:43:05 most stories it wasn't vitellius himself but his forces who uh you know got got
1:43:11 furious and grabbed flavius sabinas but the amazing thing is that vitellius had had made him the city
1:43:19 prefect the spatian's brother right he he had no trouble with uh keeping him as uh
1:43:25 prefect of of rome so anyway yeah yeah yeah yeah he is he he's a very cautious
1:43:31 very clever and and self-protecting uh
1:43:37 commander so he gets it done but he also looks after himself very well so he he
1:43:42 wasn't anywhere near the fighting in italy and he waltzes into rome when it's
1:43:47 all been completely settled and calmed down and all the the bloodletting is over and he can just
1:43:54 take control yep yeah and then titus comes back later on with his uh with
1:44:00 simon and uh john there's two slaves and josephus yeah yeah and josephus yeah
1:44:06 so that's the end that's that's how it ends and it's really fascinating how you get from this julia claudian
1:44:11 it's like super godly dynasty and then it's just like
1:44:17 god and now you have this new era in rome it's a really fascinating story of how things change how people how
1:44:25 how just things change like nothing stays the same it's always been you know it's just it really is one of
1:44:30 those crazy they should make a show out of it they really should yeah yeah i agree what do you now last thing i want
1:44:35 to ask you where do you think the show would start and where do you think it would end yeah i guess
1:44:42 with with nero where you started yeah i think that's that would make a good
1:44:47 starting point so you know things looking uh all right with general you're becoming the emperor
1:44:53 yeah 16 year old and then ending on like the triumph of a species or something i don't know
1:44:59 yeah yeah that'd be good that'd be a really good series i think so yeah if hbo ever did a
1:45:05 series on this like game of thrones but like rome edition that would be a good scene right there
1:45:10 like you got the next coming hero vespasian and you have the bad guy and
1:45:16 they're like he's you know like this you could you could see this being an amazing drama you couldn't do it
1:45:23 you would have to have like a five-season show yeah but yeah i think so you know there
1:45:30 was this fantastic series uh called rome uh hbo series
1:45:35 about about julius caesar to uh i watched it i've seen the whole entire
1:45:40 thing and i found out from someone who's a friend of mine who's like obsessed with this show
1:45:46 that the same directors and writers of game of thrones they were supposed to have another like
1:45:51 two seasons of rome after that now if you remember from the show they introduced harrod as one of the
1:45:57 characters in the second season yeah well he that he was supposed to lead up till he was supposed to lead up to the
1:46:02 next season where augustus becomes becomes the real deal but the show got cancelled and replaced
1:46:09 by game of thrones so i heard that the i heard that the set which they had elaborately created
1:46:16 burned down oh wow i didn't know that either yeah and that's what i heard yeah but the set
1:46:22 was destroyed which which is what i heard was the reason why they you know they didn't try to
1:46:27 continue it but it was brilliant right i mean it was like the the the the um
1:46:33 production values i guess the term is very outstanding and the research was
1:46:39 hugely impressive yeah except that i don't know if you remember but they
1:46:46 always had not always but occasionally they had a judean pop into the show and
1:46:51 this person was a raging anti-roman zealot that one character the short guy who's like
1:46:57 he's struggling with his family and he's like yeah but yeah yeah yeah yeah but and that
1:47:02 fits in with this picture that goes all the way through to the life of brian goes all the way back to ben hur
1:47:08 from the 19th century this book that was made into a film a couple of times in the 20th and i think even early 21st
1:47:15 century was redone ben hur but there's always this you know this conflict between
1:47:22 jews and rome you know we've got to throw off the the power of rome i think it has more to
1:47:28 do with american um uh you know interpretation
1:47:34 freedom values like america america's founding founding story of breaking away
1:47:39 from british you know because if you notice the romans are always played by brits
1:47:44 like guys with english accents and british accents and and the rebels are always with american
1:47:50 accents wow that's a really good point yeah and if like the series um masada
1:47:57 with peter o'toole and peter strauss i think way back when around the 1980 or so was the same thing
1:48:04 right so you have uh you have elazar at masada who's an american uh fight well
1:48:10 american accented uh jew fighting for freedom against these old british
1:48:17 roman types um who are the colonial power interesting yeah yeah but so i think all
1:48:24 that gets mixed up into it you know um yeah well it's relative to what we're saying because we get this impression
1:48:30 that there's this like like black and white like the rebels and then the romans and like yeah yeah
1:48:37 well listen thank you so much for your time i can't express how much i appreciate you give me your time like
1:48:43 this because i know there's only so many times so many hours in a day and so many days in a year and i appreciate this i
1:48:48 hope we could do this again in a couple months or something and uh anything you else you want to say any books coming out or anything
1:48:56 uh i i do have a book that just appeared but it's one of the um so there's josephus's works and i edit a thing that
1:49:04 is a commentary on all the works of josephus so one of the volumes has just appeared which is my commentary on book
1:49:12 four of the judean war with the new translation that just came out but i
1:49:17 don't expect people to get it but since you asked uh yeah i do have a new book out yeah i'll put a link in the
1:49:22 description i'm sure somebody out there is gonna wanna take a look at that okay they're they're expensive they're from
1:49:27 this dutch publisher brill which is an academic publisher very nice hard hard
1:49:33 copy acid free paper you know sewn bindings they'll last forever but
1:49:38 they're library quality books and they don't you know they they don't uh intend to sell them to
1:49:45 [Music] ordinary folks um i wouldn't buy them myself well can people can people get
1:49:50 them at libraries uh yeah yeah yeah they can get them at libraries and uh you can get them online from brill you can
1:49:57 subscribe to their online josephus as well there you go guys that's how you find it out so um thank
1:50:04 you for your time and you have ascertained true gnosis you have just attained true gnosis
1:50:14 the demiurge has no power over you [Music]
1:50:26 come on [Music]
1:50:48 [Music]
1:51:04 you

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