Wasn’t it John and his band of bandits that were robbing and killing people and not a civil war?
>>>Wasn’t it John and his band of bandits that were robbing and killing people and not a civil war?<<<
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
This was the initial parting into two factions:
IV.7.1. BY this time John was beginning to tyrannize, and thought it beneath him to accept of barely the same honors that others had; and joining to himself by degrees a party of the wickedest of them all, he broke off from the rest of the faction . . . the sedition was divided into two parts, and John reigned in opposition to his adversaries over one of them...
This is where it parted into three factions:
V.1,1. . . while [Titus] was assisting his father at Alexandria, in settling that government which had been newly conferred upon them by God, it so happened that the sedition at Jerusalem was revived, and parted into three factions, and that one faction fought against the other; which partition in such evil cases may be said to be a good thing, and the effect of Divine justice.
This section refers to the destruction of the food supplies:
V.1.4. And now there were three treacherous factions in the city, the one parted from the other... Accordingly, it so came to pass, that all the places that were about the temple were burnt down, and were become an intermediate desert space, ready for fighting on both sides of it; and that almost all that corn was burnt, which would have been sufficient for a siege of many years. So they were taken by the means of the famine. . .
Note that Titus has not yet arrived on the scene.
Philip