Governments-in-Exile

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That the Judean wilderness was long a place of refuge for Jewish rebels has been well established. I believe it was more than that, however. As history and archaeology will show, these barren cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea have also served as a redoubt for forces attacking the central highlands. At times, they may even have functioned as a kind of Jewish mini-state, especially during the two Jewish revolts against Rome in the first and second centuries A.D.

The tradition dates back at least to the early days of the Israelite monarchy (c. 1000 B.C.), when David fled to the Judean wilderness to escape the wrath of King Saul (1 Samuel 23:14–29, 24). One of David’s desert strongholds (mesadot), or the “rocky region” where he hid, may even have been Masada, at the southern edge of the Judean wilderness (1 Samuel 23:14, 25).

On at least three other occasions in later history, Jewish independence fighters also fled to the region to regroup their men and to renew military operations. When Herod the Great overthrew the Hasmonean dynasty in 37 B.C., the last of the Hasmoneans fled to the Judean wilderness and held out there for another five or six years. A century later, the destruction of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple supposedly ended the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 70 A.D. In fact, the struggle continued in the Judean wilderness for another three or four years, with the Jewish rebels headquartered at Masada. The Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, the so-called Bar-Kokhba Revolt, lasted from 132 to 135 A.D., according to the official story. It supposedly ended when the rebels were defeated at Bethar, west of Bethlehem. 048But in fact, this revolt also continued for about half a year in the desert.^a These facts become apparent as we look closely at each of these events.

The Hasmonean dynasty was founded in 166 B.C., when the Hasmonean family—led by Mattathias and his five sons, including Judas Maccabeus—defeated the Seleucid monarch Antiochus IV during the Maccabean Revolt. Their victory is still celebrated with the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. After Rome conquered Judea in 63 B.C., the Hasmoneans functioned as puppet-rulers for Rome; their independence was nominal.

At the same time, the procurator Antipater and his sons, particularly Herod, were rising in influence. Herod was the governor of Galilee in 40 B.C. when the Hasmonean Mattathias Antigonus, with the help of the Parthians, Rome’s rivals, forced the Romans out of Judea and Jerusalem and declared himself king of Judea. Herod fled to Rome, where he managed to convince Antony and the Roman Senate that only he could restore Roman rule to Judea. He returned to Judea and led the Roman forces that reconquered Jerusalem in 37 B.C. Thus the Herodian dynasty, which would rule Judea for more than 60 years, was founded.

The history books say that the Hasmonean dynasty ended in 37 B.C. with the execution of the last Hasmonean king, Mattathias Antigonus, by the Romans. The history books are wrong. Antigonus was not the last Hasmonean ruler, and his dynasty did not end in 37 B.C. The Hasmonean dynasty—led by Antigonus’s sister, whose name has not survived—lasted another five or six years in the Judean Desert.

A laconic passage by the first-century A.D. Jewish historian Josephus provides a key to the real story. In describing the 31 B.C. naval battle of Actium, in which Octavian (later Augustus) defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra and established himself as the supreme ruler of the Roman Empire, Josephus mentions that Herod was able to come to Mark Antony’s aid because he had just suppressed the last of the Hasmoneans. Josephus writes, “When the war that ended at Actium broke out, Herod prepared to take the field with Antony, having settled all disturbances in Judea and captured Hyrcania, a fortress till then in the hands of Antigonus’s sister.”¹ The rather clear implication of this passage is that Antigonus’s sister held Hyrcania for five or six years—from the 37 B.C. execution of Antigonus until shortly before the 31 B.C. battle of Actium.

The ruins of the Hasmonean fortress of Hyrcania, now known as Khirbet Mird, occupy an imposing hilltop 9 miles southeast of Jerusalem. The site was partly excavated by G.R.H. Wright in 1960, after being surveyed a few times, but it wasn’t until 1967 that I discovered and surveyed a siege system surrounding the fortress. Built to support an attack on Hyrcania, the fortifications include a siege wall encircling the hill, an observation tower and at least one camp. Beside the camp and above the remains of its walls, my survey discovered some later graves, dating to Herod’s reign. In my judgment, the wall, tower and camp were built by Herod to enforce his siege of Hyrcania and must date earlier than 31 B.C., by which time we know Herod had traveled to Actium, having settled disputes on the homefront.

It therefore appears that Hyrcania was the last Hasmonean stronghold against Herod. After Herod’s victories in Galilee, Judea and Jerusalem, the surviving Hasmonean forces regrouped and carried on the war for five or six years from the Judean Desert. With new headquarters at Hyrcania, they constantly harassed the Roman troops with hit-and-run attacks, taking refuge in the desert’s deep ravines and caves when necessary. 049Herod had to completely wipe out this band of guerrilla warriors to ensure his rule, and eventually he succeeded in doing so.

The next big rebellion against Roman rule, the First Jewish Revolt of 66 A.D., also known as the Great Jewish Revolt, is generally considered to have ended in 70 A.D., when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. But the saga of Masada tells us that the revolt continued for another three, possibly four, years in the Judean wilderness. In my opinion, the archaeological evidence and some comments by Josephus show that even after the burning of Jerusalem, no Roman would set foot in an area stretching from the fortress of Herodium, near Jerusalem, to the fortress of Machaerus, east of the Dead Sea.

When Jerusalem was about to fall to Titus’s armies, the Roman commander urged the city to surrender rather than suffer destruction. According to Josephus the Jerusalemites asked that Titus let them leave the city with their wives and children to “go into the desert.” Titus was furious that these men should make demands “as if they had defeated him.”² Why did Titus consider the request so insolent? Why didn’t he allow them to go? The answer seems clear: The Jerusalemites wanted to go into the desert, not to die there, but to join their fighting brethren and to maintain their independence.

A later passage in Josephus reflects the Roman knowledge of the Jerusalemite plans: He says that the Roman army, under a commander named Bassus, “marched hastily to the Garden of Jardes” (somewhere near Machaerus, which was then under siege), where “a great many who had fled from Jerusalem and Machaerus had gotten together.”³

Josephus also describes the desert rebels’ tactics as a kind of guerrilla warfare. They would plunder villages in the country and then quickly “vanish into the wilderness.” There, he writes, “they joined forces and organized themselves in companies, smaller than an army but bigger than an armed gang.”⁴

The archaeological evidence supports these accounts of desert resistance. For example, three coins from the First Jewish Revolt were found in a fort overlooking a steep pass above Ein Gedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, indicating that the rebels had placed 050lookouts at the top of passes providing access to the Judean Desert.

Even more telling is a letter of divorce found in a cave in Wadi Murabba‘at, near Ein Gedi. It is dated “in the sixth year at Masada.” The rebels introduced their own dating system at the beginning of the revolt in 66 A.D. Coins from the First Jewish Revolt are dated from years one to five, sometimes with the addition of a phrase such as “of the liberty of Zion”; one example is inscribed “year three of the redemption of Zion.” Revolt coins from years one to four are relatively common; coins from year five are extremely rare. The letter of divorce dates to year six, the equivalent of 71/72 A.D. The rebels in the Judean wilderness, therefore, must have continued to maintain their independence after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Apparently, Masada was their capital. Though it is unclear whether they had a central administration and organized institutions, the “official” divorce document certainly suggests that they did.

The rebels at Masada were led by the violently militant Sicarii, but the group apparently included people from other factions and classes. Archaeologists at Masada found copies of religious writings similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls (discovered in the Qumran caves 30 miles to the north). Perhaps, as the Romans marched into the Judean wilderness, the inhabitants of Qumran fled to Masada for safety.

In any event, the Romans must have realized that although they had captured Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, they had not completely quelled the revolt or snuffed out Judean independence. The revolt would continue until the Romans had swept the desert clean of rebels.

The Romans went to extraordinary lengths to conquer the rebel fortress at Masada. They sent their army into the desolate wilderness and built camps that are still visible today. They designed a siege system to prevent any rebels from escaping (and perhaps to keep anyone from joining the rebels). When the siege proved unsuccessful, the Romans built an enormous ramp to mount an attack on the fortress. This ramp has no parallel in the entire Roman Empire.

The fate of the rebels at Masada is still debated. According to Josephus, they committed suicide rather than surrender. Skeptics sometimes ask what happened to the 960 bodies, as if the failure to find them casts doubt not only on their suicide but on whether there was even a final battle at Masada. The failure to find the bodies is quite irrelevant, however. Were the bodies from Jerusalem ever found?

According to the speech that Josephus put in the mouth of the Jewish commander, Eleazar Ben Yair, the rebels’ obstinate, uncompromising stand was sustained by their obligation to worship only God and their aversion to serving the pagan Romans. I suggest there was an additional factor—their naive and daring belief that their actual physical existence, even in a remote part of Israel, embodied the independence of Judea. As long as they lived according to their beliefs, independent Judea existed and would continue to exist. What is amazing is that the Romans believed so also! That is what motivated the Romans to conquer Masada at any cost.

With the capture of Masada, Judean independence was destroyed, for a time. A couple of generations later, however, the Jews tried again. The Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, led by the legendary Bar-Kokhba, began in 132 A.D. The details of this war are far more obscure than those of the First Jewish Revolt. There is no detailed account of it, and the ancient references to it are oblique, scant and often tendentious. Apparently, the rebels captured Jerusalem, but then lost it. Bar-Kokhba and his army withdrew to Bethar, 7 miles southwest of Jerusalem. The Romans surrounded the town with a siege wall during the summer of 135 A.D.

The end came, according to tradition, on the ninth of the month of Av, the same date in the Jewish calendar on which, again according to tradition, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 A.D. 052and the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple in 586 B.C.

Most modern accounts of the Second Jewish Revolt report that it ended with the Roman capture of Bethar. But I believe that this battle, too, continued in the Judean wilderness. Most of the supporting evidence for this comes from archaeology.

In 1952 certain finds appearing on the antiquities market were believed to be Bedouin discoveries made in caves in the Wadi Murabba‘at, about 12 miles south of Qumran near the Dead Sea. Among the finds were letters sent or signed by Bar-Kokhba, the first such letters ever to be found. A few years later, at Nahal Hever, south of Ein Gedi, an Israeli archaeological expedition found another cave containing a cache of letters: Some 053came from Bar-Kokhba himself; others mentioned him. These letters reveal that his name was actually Bar-Kosiba. One of the letters locates him “in the camp at Herodium.” Apparently Bar-Kosiba established his headquarters in the palace fortress built by Herod at this site, strategically located on the western border of the Judean Desert. Like the Hasmoneans and the rebels of the First Jewish Revolt, Bar-Kosiba recognized the advantages of operating out of the Judean Desert, which served as a place of refuge from which he could launch guerrilla attacks. His Herodium headquarters enabled him to keep one foot in the hill country and the other in the desert.

In my opinion, the rebels did not flee to the desert only to save themselves—or at least not all of them did. The Romans would not have gone to such trouble to kill only a few hundred, or even a few thousand, peaceful refugees. Their target was a hard-core band of guerrilla freedom fighters who fled to the desert as a temporary retreat. To wipe some of them out, the Romans established siege camps directly above caves on opposite sides of the canyon of Nahal Hever, in which the rebels and their families were hiding. (Documents and artifacts that once belonged to them—a copper hand mirror, bronze jugs, glass vessels, palm baskets, food remains, door keys, linen cloth, clothes, buttons, wool and beads—have been uncovered in the caves.) Most of those in the caves perished, probably from starvation. Some of their skeletons were found during excavations.

They were not the only ones to retreat to the desert. Letters from the caves refer to other settlements near the Judean Desert. Coins from the Second Jewish Revolt have been found in caves from the Wadi Daliyeh (near Jericho) in the north to Nahal Se’elim (near Masada) in the south. Perhaps the reason Hadrian, the Roman leader at the time of the Second Jewish 068Revolt, bivouacked one of his three garrisons in Bethlehem, on the fringe of the desert, was that he knew he was facing an attack from that direction by the Jewish rebel.

According to a talmudic account, Hadrian laid siege to Bethar for three and a half years. Yet according to the traditional chronology, the Second Jewish Revolt lasted only three years. Buried in the text may be a memory that it lasted longer in the desert. There can be little doubt that most of the activity in the desert occurred during the final stages of the revolt.

There is an ascent near Ein Gedi that is popularly known as the Ascent of the Essenes. Built by the Romans during the Second Jewish Revolt so that they could take water to the soldiers besieging the caves, it is a long, twisting path, which winds its way up to a high point on the plateau. There, at the highest part of the path, are the remains of a Roman lookout station established to protect the convoys bringing water from the springs of Nahal Arugot from rebel attacks.

Such guerrilla warfare characterized the last fighting stages of the Second Jewish Revolt, as it had during the First Jewish Revolt. The monumental determination behind the desperate actions of both the Jewish and Roman forces at Masada was not some novel, isolated or exaggerated clash over sovereignty, but the final climax of a pattern of conflict centuries old—fought on the stage of the Judean Desert.

That the Judean wilderness was long a place of refuge for Jewish rebels has been well established. I believe it was more than that, however. As history and archaeology will show, these barren cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea have also served as a redoubt for forces attacking the central highlands. At times, they may even have functioned as a kind of Jewish mini-state, especially during the two Jewish revolts against Rome in the first and second centuries A.D. The tradition dates back at least to the early days of the Israelite monarchy (c. 1000 B.C.), when David fled […]