‘The Zealots’ (1908) by Karl Kautsky from Foundations of Christianity; a Study in Christian Origins. International Publishers, New York. 1925.

The Pharisees represented the mass of the people as opposed to the clerical aristocracy. But this mass, more or less like the Third Estate in France before the great revolution, was made up of very disparate elements with very different interests, different degrees of willingness and ability to fight.

That was true also for the Jews outside of Palestine. They were an exclusively urban population, that got its living principally from trade and banking operations, tax-farming and so forth; but it would be a great mistake to think it consisted exclusively of rich merchants and bankers. We have already pointed out how much more capricious trade is than farming or craftsmanship. That was even more applicable then than now; navigation was more primitive and piracy rife. And how many livelihoods were ruined by the civil wars!

But although there must have been many Jews who had been rich and became poor, there must have been many more who never managed to get rich. Trade may have been the field in which they had the best opportunities, under the given circumstances; that did not mean that everybody had the capital for large-scale commerce. The trade of most of them must have been small shopkeeping or peddling.

They could also engage in such crafts as did not require great artistic ability or taste. Where Jews congregated in numbers, the special nature of their manners and customs must have created the need for many craftsmen of their own faith. When we read that a million out of the eight million inhabitants of Egypt were Jews, they could not all have made a living in trade. Actually, Jewish industries in Alexandria are mentioned as well. Jewish artisans are reported in other cities too.

In many cities, especially in Rome, there must have been a good number of Jewish slaves and hence freedmen. Their continual unsuccessful wars and insurrection kept furnishing new prisoners, who were sold into slavery. Out of these groups grew a layer of lumpenproletarians who must have been very numerous in some regions. For example the Jewish beggars were a notable part of the proletarians of Rome. At one point Martial describes the street life of the capital. Among the artisans working out in the street, the procession of priests, the jugglers and peddlers, he mentions also the Jewish boy sent out to beg by his mother. Juvenal speaks in his third satire of the grove of Egeria, which “is leased to the Jews now, whose entire household effects consist of a basket and a bundle of hay; for every tree must bring us profit now. The beggars have the woods, the Muses are driven out.”

This is testimony stemming from the era after the destruction of Jerusalem, from the reign of Domitian, who had driven the Jews out of Rome and allowed them to stay in the grove on payment of a poll tax. It proves at least the presence of a great number of Jewish beggars in Rome.

The principal goal of the wandering of the Jewish beggars must certainly have been Jerusalem. There they felt at home and need not fear being ridiculed or mistreated by a hostile or uncomprehending populace. There too were assembled prosperous pilgrims from all the corners of the earth, in great numbers and with their religious feelings and charitableness at their height.

There was no great city in Christ’s time that did not have a numerous lumpenproletariat. After Rome, Jerusalem must have had the largest number of such proletarians, at least relatively; for both these cities drew on the whole Empire. The artisans were very close to this proletariat, as we have seen; they were as a rule nothing more than home workers, and these people even today count as proletarians. They easily came to make common cause with beggars and porters.

Where such propertyless strata of the people come together in large numbers, they turn out to be especially combative. They have nothing to lose; their social position is unendurable and they have nothing to gain by being patient. Awareness of their great numbers makes them bold. In addition, it was hard for the army to make its superiority count in the narrow, tortuous streets of that time. The city proletarians were not worth much in military service in open battle, but were excellent in street-fighting. This was shown by events in Alexandria and in Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem this proletariat had a lust for battle that was lacking in the propertied people and intellectuals who went to make up the ranks of the Pharisees. In normal times, it is true, the proletarians let themselves be led by the Pharisees; but as the opposition between Jerusalem and Rome came to a head and the time of decision came closer, the Pharisees became increasingly cautious and timid, and increasingly in conflict with the proletariat which was pushing forward.

The latter got powerful support from the peasant population of Galilee, where the peasants with their tiny holdings and the herdsmen had been bled white by taxes and usury, and driven into debt slavery or expropriated, as throughout the Roman Empire. Some of them must have come to Jerusalem, increasing the city’s proletariat. But the most energetic of the desperate expropriated peasants must have taken to insurrection and banditry, as elsewhere in the empire. The proximity of the deserts, that kept Bedouin habits alive, made their fight easier, furnishing many hiding places that nobody but a native would know. Galilee, with its broken terrain, full of caves, was itself an aid in the trade of banditry. The flag under which the bandits fought was the expectation of the Messiah. Robber chiefs declared themselves to be the Messiah, or at least his forerunners, and fanatics who felt themselves called to be prophets or the Messiah became robber chiefs.

The robbers of Galilee and the proletarians of Jerusalem were in close contact and gave each other mutual support, and finally formed a party in common against the Pharisees, the party of the Zealots. The opposition between the two groups resembles in many ways the contrast between Girondins and Jacobins.

The link between the proletarians of Jerusalem and the armed bands of Galilee comes to the fore in the days of Christ.

During Herod’s last illness (4 B.C.) the people of Jerusalem rose in revolt against his innovations; above all the indignation was directed against a golden eagle that Herod had had put up over the Temple. The riot was put down by arms. But after Herod’s death the people rose again, at Passover, so violently that the troops of Archelaus, Herod’s son, had to spill much blood before the insurrection was quelled. Three thousand Jews were slain. Even that did not quiet the belligerency of the people of Jerusalem. When Archelaus went to Rome to be confirmed there as King, the people rose again. Now the Romans intervened. Varus, the same man who later fell fighting against the Cherusci in Germany, was governor of Syria at the time. He hurried to Jerusalem, suppressed the insurrection, and then returned to Antioch leaving a legion in Jerusalem under the procurator Sabinus. Sabinus had such full confidence in his military power that he pushed the Jews to the wall, plundering and robbing at will. That put the fat in the fire. At Pentecost many people assembled in Jerusalem, especially Galileans. They were strong enough to encircle and besiege the Roman legion together with the mercenaries that Herod had recruited and left as a heritage to his son. The Romans vainly made sorties in which they killed many Jews; the besiegers did not weaken. They succeeded in getting a part of Herod’s troops over to their side.

At the same time the insurrection spread to the country. The brigands of Galilee now got strong detachments of recruits, and made up whole armies. Their leaders had themselves called Kings of the Jews, that is Messiah. Especially prominent among them was Judas, whose father Hezekiah had been a famous bandit and executed as such (47 B.C.). In Peraea Simon, a former slave of Herod, got together a band; a third force was commanded by the shepherd Athronges.

The Romans suppressed the revolt with great difficulty, after Varus had come to the relief of the legion besieged in Jerusalem with two legions and many auxiliaries. There was an unspeakable slaughter and pillage; two thousand of the prisoners were crucified and many others sold into slavery.

This was about the time in which the birth of Christ is set.

There was quiet for several years, but not for long. In the year 6 A.D. Judea came under direct Roman rule. The first measure taken by the Romans was a census for tax-collecting purposes. In answer, there was a new attempt at insurrection by Judas the Galilean, the same who had been so prominent in the uprising ten years earlier. He got together with the Pharisee Sadduk, who was to incite the people of Jerusalem. The attempt failed, but it led to the break between masses of the common people and the rebellious Galileans on the one hand, and the Pharisees on the other. They had been together in the rebellion of 4 B.C. Now the Pharisees had had enough, and the party of the Zealots arose in opposition to them. From that time to the destruction of Jerusalem, the fires of insurrection were never completely extinguished in Galilee and Judea.

Josephus, from his Pharisaical standpoint, reports on this: “Thereafter Judas, a Gaulanite from the city of Gamala, with the aid of Sadduk, a Pharisee, incited the people to rebellion. They convinced the people they would be slaves if they submitted to having their property appraised, and they should protect their freedom. They pointed out that in this way they not only would keep their property, but achieve still greater happiness, for they would win great honor and fame by their boldness. God would not help them unless they took vigorous decisions and spared no pains to carry them into execution. The people willingly listened to this and were all heartened to bold deeds.

“One can hardly express how much evil these two men did among the people. There was no wickedness they did not cause. They aroused one war after another. Constant violence ruled among them; anyone who spoke up against them paid for it with his life. Bandits ran riot in the land. The noblest people were done away with on the pretext of saving freedom; actually the motive was greed and the desire to appropriate their property. There followed repeated disorders and general bloodshed; in part the people of the country raged against each other, and one party tried to put the other down; in part external enemies slaughtered them. Finally famine was added to everything else, breaking all bonds and driving the cities to the extreme of ruin, until finally the Temple of God was reduced to ashes by enemies. So the innovations and changes of old customs brought the mutineers themselves to ruin. In this way Judas and Sadduk, who introduced a fourth doctrine and won many supporters for themselves, not only disturbed the state in their own time, but also left the way open for all the subsequent evil by means of this new doctrine, which had been unknown up to that time…. The younger people who supported them brought us to destruction” (Antiquities, XVIII, 1, 1).

At the end of the same chapter, however, Josephus speaks with far more respect of the same Zealots whom he despises so at its beginning: “The fourth of these doctrines [along with those of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes] was introduced by Judas the Galilean. His supporters were with the Pharisees in everything except that they showed a stubborn love of liberty and declared that God alone should be recognized as lord and prince. They will much rather suffer the greatest tortures and let their friends and relations be tortured than call a man their lord. I will not go into details on this subject, since it is sufficiently well known how stubborn they have proved to be in these matters. I am not afraid that I will not be believed, but rather that I will not be able to find words enough to describe with what heroism and what firmness they suffer the greatest tortures. This madness attacked the whole people like an epidemic when the procurator Gessius Florus (64 to 66 A.D.) abused his power so against them that he drove them to desperation and revolt against the Romans.”

As the Roman yoke became more oppressive and the desperation of the Jewish masses more intense, the more they abandoned the Pharisees and took to Zealotism. At the same time the latter manifested strange by-products.

One of these was ecstatic enthusiasm. Knowledge was not a characteristic of the ancient proletariat, nor was the thirst for knowledge. Subject, more than any other class of people, to social forces they did not understand and which appeared to them as sinister; more than any other class desperate, in a situation in which men grasp at any straw; they were especially given to belief in miracles. Deeply affected by Messianic prophecies, they were more inclined than any other groups to complete misunderstanding of real conditions and to the expectation of the impossible.

Every fanatic who proclaimed himself a Messiah and promised to free the people by his miracles found supporters. One such was the prophet Theudas under the procurator Fadus (from 44 A.D. on), who led a throng of people to the River Jordan, where they were dispersed by the cavalry of Fadus. Theudas was captured and beheaded.

Under the procurator Felix (52 to 60 A.D.) fanaticism went still further:

“There was a band of rascals who did not indeed murder people but had godless ideas and kept the city [Jerusalem] restless and unsafe. For they were seductive deceivers who preached all sorts of innovations as divine revelations and moved the people to riot. They led the people out into the desert and pretended that God would let them see a sign of freedom. Since Felix assumed that this was the beginning of the uprising, he sent soldiers against them, cavalry as well as infantry, and a great number were killed.

“Still greater misfortune was brought upon the Jews by a false prophet from Egypt [that means an Egyptian Jew – K.K.]. He was a sorcerer and by his magic managed to get himself considered a prophet. He led astray some 30,000 people who supported him. He led them out of the desert to the so-called Mount of Olives in order to break into Jerusalem from there, overcome the Roman garrison and establish dominion over the people. As soon as Felix got wind of his project, he went against him with the Roman soldiers and all of the people who were willing to take steps for the common good, and gave battle to him. The Egyptian escaped with only a few of his mob. Most were taken, the rest hiding in the country.

“Hardly had this unrest been stilled than a new plague broke out, just as in a sick and infected body. Some sorcerers and murderers got together and won a great following. They called on everyone to demand freedom and threatened those with death who would be obedient subjects to the Roman authority from that time on, saying: Those must be freed against their will who voluntarily bow under the yoke of slavery.

“They went all through the Jewish land, plundered the houses of the rich, burned the villages, and behaved so abominably that because of them the whole Jewish people was oppressed. And from day to day this ruinous disease spread.”

Within Jerusalem itself open rebellion against the Roman army was not easy, and the most embittered enemies of the established order took to assassination. Under the procurator Felix, under whom the bandits and fanatics teemed, there also was organised a sect of terrorists. Explosives were unknown, and the favorite weapon of the terrorists was a curved dagger hidden under the cloak; they were called sicarii after this dagger (sica).

The desperate frenzy of all these champions of the popular cause was only the inevitable answer to the shameless brutality of the oppressors of the people. This is how Josephus, who witnessed all these events, describes the actions of the last two procurators who ruled Judea before the destruction of Jerusalem:

“Festus obtained the office of procurator (60 to 62 A.D.). He seriously combated the bandits who infested the Jewish land, and captured and killed many of them. His successor Albinus (62 to 64 A.D.) did not follow his example, unfortunately. There was no crime and no sin too great for him not to have done and practiced it. He not only embezzled public monies in the administration, but laid hold of the private property of the subjects and took it by force for himself. He loaded the people with huge and unjust taxes. For money he set free the robbers that the city authorities or his own predecessors in office had put in prison, and only those remained prisoners who could not pay. This increased the boldness of the revolutionaries in Jerusalem. The rich got so far with presents and gifts to Albinus that he winked at their having a suite following them. The masses, however, who do not love quiet, began to attach themselves to such people, because Albinus favored them. Accordingly every rascal surrounded himself with a band and let his mercenaries plunder and rob all the good citizens. Those who were robbed kept quiet, and those who had not been robbed yet flattered the rowdies for fear the like would happen to them. No one could complain, for the pressure was too great. Thus the seed of the destruction of our city was planted.

“Although Albinus acted so disgracefully and wickedly, his successor Gessius Florus (64-66) went far beyond him, so that in a comparison of the two Albinus would still seem the better. For Albinus committed his misdeeds in secret and was able to put a good face on everything. The other one did everything openly, as if he sought his glory in mistreating our people. He robbed, he plundered, he punished and conducted himself as if he had not been sent as procurator but as executioner, to torture the Jews. Where he should have used mercy, he used terror. He was shameless and false into the bargain, and there was nobody who could have found more ruses for deceiving people than he did. He was not satisfied with bleeding private individuals white and profiting by their ruin. He plundered whole cities and ruined the entire people. All that was lacking was for him to proclaim publicly: robbery and theft are allowed at will, so long as he gets his share. Thus it came about that the whole land was devastated, and many left their fatherland and went abroad.”

Under Florus the situation finally led to the great uprising in which the whole people rose with all its might against its tormentors. When Florus went so far as to try to rob the Temple, in May 66, Jerusalem went wild, or rather, the lower classes in Jerusalem went wild. The majority of those who owned property, Pharisees as well as Sadducees, feared the uprising and desired peace. With the rebellion against the Romans civil war began as well. The war party won. The peace party was defeated in streetfighting, but the Roman garrison in Jerusalem was forced to withdraw and was cut down on the way.

The combat morale of the insurgents was so great that they succeeded in routing a relief column of 30,000 men led by the Syrian legate Cestius Gallus.

The Jews all over Palestine rose in insurrection, and those outside of Palestine as well. The mutiny of the Jews in Alexandria required the dispatch of all the military forces of the Romans in Egypt.

There was, of course, no possibility that Rome could be overthrown by the Jews whose forces were too weak and too exclusively urban. It might however have compelled Rome to spare Judea a little longer, if the rebels had gone at once vigorously on the offensive, following up the successes they had won. Circumstances soon came to their aid. In the second year of the Jewish War the soldiers in the Western part of the Empire rose against Nero, and the battles of the legions against each other continued after his death (June 9, 68 A.D.); Vespasian, commander-in-chief of the army that was engaged in subduing Judea, gave more attention to the events in the West, where the throne was at stake, than to the little local war.

The one small chance the rebels had was passed by. It was to be sure the lower classes that had declared war on the Romans and put down the Jewish peace party, but the wealthy and educated still had enough influence to get the conduct of the war against the Romans into their hands. That meant that it was waged only with a faint heart, not with the purpose of wiping out the enemy but only to stand up to him. The rebels finally saw how lukewarm their leaders were in the fight, and the Zealots were then able to get the leadership into their own hands.

“In the fanatical popular party the unsuccessful course of events was ascribed – not without reason – to the lack of energy in the conduct of the war thus far. The men of the people bent all their efforts to getting control of the situation themselves and supplanting the previous leaders. Since the latter did not give up their control willingly, a fearfully bloody civil war resulted in Jerusalem in the winter of 67/68 A.D., with scenes of horror that are to be seen nowhere else except in the first French Revolution.”

The comparison with the French Revolution will strike every observer of these events. However, for France the Reign of Terror was a means of saving the revolution and making it capable of advancing victoriously against all of Europe; for Jerusalem any such outcome was impossible in the very nature of the situation. The reign of terror of the lower classes came too late in fact even to win a short reprieve for the Jewish state, whose days were numbered; it would only prolong the battle, increase the suffering, make the rage of the eventual victor more atrocious. But it could also give the world a monument of fortitude, heroism and devotion that stands out all the more impressively against the filth of the general cowardice and self-seeking of that era.

It was not all the Jews of Jerusalem who continued the hopeless struggle against the overpowering enemy for another three years, until September 70 A.D. in the stoutest, most resolute and resourceful of defenses, covering every inch of ground with corpses before giving up, and finally, weakened by hunger and disease, finding their graves in the burning ruins. The priests, the scribes, the merchant princes had for the most part fled to places of safety at the beginning of the siege. It was the small artisans and shopkeepers and proletarians of Jerusalem that became the heroes of their nation, in conjunction with the proletarianized peasants of Galilee who had forced their way into Jerusalem.

Such was the atmosphere in which the Christian community came into being. It does not by any means offer the smiling picture of Christ’s surroundings drawn by Renan in his Life of Jesus; Renan based his conception, not on the social conditions of the time, but on the picturesque impressions the modern tourist in Galilee receives. Hence Renan is able to assure us in his romance about Jesus that in Jesus’ time this fair land “abounded in plenty, joy and well-being,” so that “every history of the origin of Christianity becomes a charming idyll.”

As charming as the lovely month of May 1871 in Paris.

Foundations of Christianity; a Study in Christian Origins by Karl Kautsky. International Publishers, New York. 1925.

Contents: Introduction, The Personality of Jesus, The Pagan Sources, The Christian Sources, The Struggle for the Image of Jesus, Roman Society in the Slave-holding Period, The Slave-Holding System, a. Property in Land; b. Domestic Slavery; c. Slavery in the Production of Commodities; d. The Technical Inferiority of the Slave-Holding System; e. The Economic Decline, The Life of the State, a. The State and Trade; b. Patricians and Plebeians; c. The Roman State; d. Usury; e. Absolutism, Currents of Thought in the Roman Imperial Period, a. Weakening of Social Ties; b. Credulity; c. The Resort to Lying; d. Humanitarianism ; e. Internationalism; f. The Tendency to Religion; g. Monotheism. The Jews, The People of Israel, a. Semitic Tribal Migrations; b. Palestine; c. The Conception of God in Ancient Israel; d. Trade and Philosophy; e. Trade and Nationality; f. Canaan a Thoroughfare of Nations; g. Class Struggles in Israel; h. The Downfall of Israel; i. The First Destruction of Jerusalem, The Jews After the Exile, a. Banishment; b. The Jewish Diaspora; c. The Jewish Propaganda; d. Hatred of the Jews; e. Jerusalem; f. The Sadducees; g. The Pharisees; h. The Zealots; i. The Essenes, The Beginnings of Christianity, The Primitive Christian Congregation a. The Proletarian Character of the Congregation; b. Class Hatred; c. Communism; d. The Objections to Communism; e. Contempt for Labor; f. The Destruction of the Family, The Christian Idea of the Messiah, a. The Coming of the Kingdom of God; b. The Ancestry of Jesus; c. Jesus as a Rebel; d. The Resurrection of the Crucified; e. The International Redeemer, Jewish Christians and Pagan Christians a. The Agitation among the Pagans; b. The Opposition between Jews and Christians, The Story of Christ’s Passion, The Evolution of the Organization of the Congregation a. Proletarians and Slaves; b. The Decline of Communism; c. Apostles, Prophets and Teachers; d. The Bishop; e. The Monastery. Christianity and Socialism, Index. 480 pages.

International Publishers was formed in 1923 for the purpose of translating and disseminating international Marxist texts and headed by Alexander Trachtenberg. It quickly outgrew that mission to be the main book publisher, while Workers Library continued to be the pamphlet publisher of the Communist Party.

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