Looks like the ramp WAS built on a natural feature that would make it much easier (and faster) to build.
Posted on 06/12/2006 10:48:30 AM PDT by robowombat
The traditional Jewish history of Masada is not 'romantic'. I may be unaware of what the socialist establishment of Israel has been teaching about Masada though.
The3 traditional telling of the Masada can be found at
http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/Crash_Course_in_Jewish_History_Part_35_-_Destruction_of_the_Temple.asp
but one might start at
http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/Crash_Course_in_Jewish_History_Part_33_-_The_Great_Revolt.asp
where the 'Zealots' in question are described:
"The Zealots. They were comprised of several different groups of nationalistic extremists. They were incensed at the Roman presence and were angry with other Jews whom they saw as actively or tacitly cooperating with the Romans."
"The Sicarii (meaning "dagger.") This was the criminal element often masquerading under the guise of nationalism. They sided with the Zealots."
ggg ping
ok THANKS.
Color me saddened by the Jewish reation to commit suicide rather than to be taken prisoner. I really thought it was against their religion. Was there mass suicides during the holocaust?
No kidding. At the very least life was quite uncomfortable. (ever wear raw wool?) At worse it was down right nasty.
There is some debate over whether the Jews at Masada fought the Romans to the death or committed a mass suicide. Could be some of both. It took 11,000 Roman soldiers three years to defeat the 900 Jews (including women and children) who were holed up in Masada. I have been at Masada before and it is fascinating. Apparently, some Jews were able to very carefully sneak down at night and bring back food and supplies. Water was stored in cisterns in the fort. Eventually the Romans built a siege tower and were able to overrun Masada.
Raw wool!! LOL!!!!! No WONDER they committed suicide if they had to wear raw wool!!!
What do you think about this author saying they don't know where the other 932 bodies are!! I cannot believe that...they would have to have counted the bodies hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Is this guy smoking weed?
But it keeps you warm and dry and that is what clothing is for.
Yes, there are cisterns up there. Originally the fortress was built by King Herod. There is also a Roman-style bath house there --- A building with tiled tubs built above a furnace room where wood was burned to heat up the water.
Looks like the ramp WAS built on a natural feature that would make it much easier (and faster) to build.
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A few years back the ramp was shown to be mostly a natural formation, which explains why its remains seem to persist. The Romans did build a structure on top of the natural formation.
Fortunately we don't face these decisions often. Suicide would probably be a legitimate option when confronted with the certainty of idolitry, forbidden sexual relations, or the commission of murder. In the Masada case, I'd guess the first two would be certainties, in the case of the Holocaust, none.
Well, pretty much the authoritative basis they have for the story of the whole Masada siege is Josephus. Finding evidence of bodies after 2000 years would be tough, but the desert does preserve things.
I think there is much archeology still to be done to uncover more clues confirming (or raising questions about) Josephus' account. Finding the 11 "markers" with names does seem to confirm a key component of the story, the final lottery of men to see who would kill the final survivors and then himself. Technically there was only one suicide at Masada ... the last swordsman standing.
I doubt it. Truth is stranger than fiction. Imagine all the incredible (and horrific and disturbing &c) things that have been hushed up over the millenia.
Exactly. The American left certainly fits the bill. They hate America!
Mass suicide could be understandable when you consider that the Romans would have raped the women, probably killed the men, and then enslaved the women and children, which would have been a death sentence, since the Romans basically worked their slaves to death (re-watch Spartacus). The defenders of Masada chose their own type of death.
"My guess is the real underlying purpose is to discredit Josephus because he substantiates Jesus."
Well, he substantiates Jesus a little bit, in the sense that he certainly describes the man as having lived and been executed, and continuing to have followers, yes.
The part of Josephus that reads of Jesus "He was the Messiah" and states that he was raised "on the third day" is almost certainly a gloss added by the later Christian scribes who preserved the text.
How can we be pretty sure about that?
Two things, one less persuasive, and the other more persuasive.
The less persuasive thing is that ancient manuscripts of Josephus preserved in Arab lands don't contain the Messiah and resurrection references, but do contain the rest of the stuff about Jesus having been lived, taught, done some marvels, executed, and still having followers. The key bits about Jesus having been the Messiah and raised "On The Third Day" (without any explanation of what "The Third Day" means) aren't there. But one could easily argue that Muslim scribes deleted that stuff.
By far the most persuasive thing is Josephus himself. Josephus' Jewish Antiquities, in which the reference to Jesus and James and John the Baptist are included, is a MASSIVE work. Josephus himself was a priest of the Temple and had been a Jewish general in the Galilee fighting against the Romans in the revolt before his capture. He knew his Jewish history, and he knew all of the intimate rites of the Temple, and all of the legends and traditions of the Jews. And Josephus is extremely pedantic. He's well aware of being extremely well educated and brilliant, and he flaunts it. Every detail that he knows about everything, he gives...in extenso. When one considers that his Jewish Antiquities start with Adam and Eve, and give the priestly legends and midrash concerning the ENTIRETY of biblical history as well as contemporary history, one realizes just how pedantic and detail-oriented Josephus was. Lost in that sea of verbiage - it's an utterly massive work - is the reference to Jesus. There is simply no way at all, if Josephus ben Matthias, really thought that Jesus was THE MESSIAH, that he would give Jesus three sentences, and give Jesus' brother James about thrice the commentary. If Jesus were the Messiah, or even if Josephus believed he had been resurrected, we can only expect that Josephus would have gone on for pages and pages and pages, bleeding ink out of every pore, with every detail of the man's life...and the life of his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all the way back to Adam and Eve. That's the way Josephus treats every OTHER major figure in his Jewish Antiquities.
It's just not POSSIBLE that this priest of the Temple and pedant extraordinaire would flippantly devote three sentences to a man he said was RESURRECTED AND THE MESSIAH! That's not how Josephus wrote ANYTHING, and to MERELY bury three sentences about the echatological denoument of Jewish belief, AND a resurrection miracle to boot? No. That's impossible. That's just not Josephus. I've read most of the stuff he wrote. It's interesting, because it is like a time capsule of what the Jewish priests of the Temple, before the Talmud and the rabinnical tradition was established, believed and did. It gives us all those details that we know about the inner workings of the First Century in the Middle East and before. It's because of Josephus that we know more, in greater detail, about practically every aspect of 1st Century Judaea than we do about any other spot on the planet in the First Century, including Rome proper. He was that comprehensive and that pedantic.
It's IMPOSSIBLE that had Jesus existed and started a cult, that he wouldn't appear in Josephus. And sure enough, Jesus DOES appear in Josephus. So we know that the man really did live, and really had a following and really was executed. He wasn't a legend. But Josephus being Josephus, we can also tell that the bit in our translations of Josephus about Jesus being "The Messiah" and being raised from the dead "on the third day" were not written by Josephus. Read him, and you know that there is absolutely, positively no way at all that he would have let pass THE MESSIAH and a RESURRECTION with anything less than about three chapters. One sentence? Not possible. Not for Josephus. Further, the bit about "On The Third Day" is cryptic. Josephus was writing for a Greek and Roman audience who knew little about Judaism and nothing whatever about Christianity. "On the Third Day" is a Christian prayer formula, from the Nicene Creed, which dates from about 220 years after Josephus wrote. Beyond that, just sitting there along "On The Third Day" is opaque. On the third day after WHAT? Josephus never writes like that. He would tell us the third day after the crucifixion, describe the crucifixion, the second day and the third day, tell us what the weather was like, and tell us who Pontius Pilate had for dinner each night (I am only slightly exaggerating).
I guess it's not really fair to anybody for me to write all this without giving the entire "Testimonium Flavianus", the whole "Testimony of Josephus" about Jesus.
First I'll give what Josephus says about Jesus in the texts we have. Then I'll give what he probably really did say about Jesus, based on Josephus' style in the rest of his thousands of pages of history, and based on what's in the Arabic manuscript:
From Jewish Antiquities, at 18:3:3
"Now there arose about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Messiah. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again on the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
What Josephus probably wrote:
"Now there arose about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
Masada Ramp Was Not a Roman Engineering MiracleWe cannot use Josephus's description to reconstruct the layout and dimensions of the ramp. First, the heights given by him for the ramp (200 cubits, or 300 feet), the stone platform at the top of the ramp (50 cubits, or 75 feet) and the siege tower (60 cubits, or 90 feet) are wrong. Josephus's figures add up to 310 cubits (465 feet), while the actual difference in height between the top of Masada's defensive wall and the base of the spur is only 315 feet. Also, at the top of the spur there is not enough room for a 75-foot-wide platform, as Josephus claims, and no remains of large masonry blocks, of which the platform was allegedly built, can be found nearby. It is more reasonable to assume, as already suggested by Lammerer, that the installations on the spur included only a ramp and a tower, without a stone platform.
by Dan Gill
Biblical Archaeology ReviewMasada wheel may be from Roman towerArcheologists at Masada have uncovered a solid wooden wheel dating from the Great Jewish Revolt exactly at the spot where Roman war machines broke through nearly 2,000 years ago. Led by Hebrew University archeologist Prof. Ehud Netzer, the team at first uncovered Byzantine ruins. While officials were hesitant to say if the find was part of the ironclad Roman siege tower rolled up a ramp to breach the fortress wall, the discovery raised excitement among archeologists and park officials, who see it as rare piece of solid evidence that further confirms the story of the ancient mountaintop fortress. According to the historian Josephus, the Romans built a gigantic assault ramp up the side of the mountain. On top of this a siege tower, covered in iron, was erected from which the Romans planned to attack the Jews holding out on the mountaintop.
by Arieh O'Sullivan
Jerusalem Post
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