Read Online A Long Way to Shiloh by Lionel Davidson - Free Book Online Page B

had been declared a permitted religion, a privilege from which numerous auxiliary benefits flowed. No Jew had to participate in or pay for any of the pagan rites obligatory elsewhere in the empire. No Jew had to perform military service, since its exigencies might lead him to violate the permitted religion. And the established Jewish authority, because of the social nature of the religion, was allowed an unheard-of degree of autonomy. These rights – and this was the most singular privilege of all – applied not only to nationals of Judea, but to all their relations in every corner of the empire: a concept of nationality that baffled local military governors and enraged surrounding populations who thus vied to become history’s first anti-semites.
    These privileges had to be paid for, and the price was law and order in Judea. The Establishment did its best. Minority groups and apocalyptical enthusiasts were kept on a tight rein, and their various messiahs speedily attended to. But for years the situation remained tricky; and a succession of bloody-minded military governors hadn’t helped.
    Judea wasn’t an important province – a mere sub-province of Syria – and the kind of people sent out to govern it weren’t important people. Not over-endowed, mentally or financially, most set out to improve the latter situation at least almost on landing. Accepted practice was to set local communities at loggerheads and then accept bribes from each for intervening; or to wash the hands of important decisions, and then be persuaded to unwash them. Many ended their careers in disgrace; including that most celebrated handwasher of all, Pontius Pilate, who, recalled after nine years as a result of an incident involving the Jews’ detested neighbours the Samaritans, committed suicide.
    The Establishment’s difficulties were not eased one Passover when the military governor of the time thought it an idea to garrison Jerusalem with these same hated Samaritans and posted a detachment of them up on the roof of the Temple cloisters. The city was crowded at the time, some thousands of Galileans, those cup-tie Yorkshiremen of old Judea, having travelled up for the festival. Trouble was bound to come, and come it did, on the fourth day of the festival when, as Josephus recalls, ‘One of the soldiers pulled back his garment and, cowering down after an indecent manner, turned his breech to the Jews and delivered such an utterance as you might expect from such a posture.’
    Pandemonium followed. The cavalry were called out. Hundreds were killed in the crush in the narrow streets.
    The Jewish authorities, concerned with the well-being of their co-religionists throughout the empire, tried to take a long view. Rome must not be troubled: this was the basis of all policy. It was Rome they were dealing with and not its mischievous minions. God, undeniably, had given Rome the power to govern them. He had, also undeniably, promised that better times were around the corner. This was essentially a period to be lived through.
    Alas, the minority groups, kept so long under control, could be kept under control no longer. One group, the Zealots, formed a terrorist wing called the Dagger Men or Sicarii, with assassination as its political method. By the year 66, the daggers were found to be insufficient. Herod, a hundred years before, had stored arms for ten thousand men at his rock fortress at Massada on the Dead Sea. The terrorist wing made a surprise attack, slaughtered the Roman garrison and took the arms back to Jerusalem, where revolution had already broken out. The garrison was killed, public buildings burnt and the ecclesiastical authorities murdered.
    The Roman C.-in-C. in Syria acted quickly. With a strong force he raced through the country killing and destroying; but it was late autumn by the time he got to Jerusalem. Not desiring a winter campaign against armed irregulars in mountains, he decided to withdraw temporarily. But unwisely,