By the first day of Tamuz (mid-July), the stench of death and pestilence filled the city. It was then that the zealots fully came to realize that there was no hope of victory, and so instead of surrendering, they resolved to inflict as much brutality on the Jews trapped within Jerusalem’s walls as they held…
Although the Roman siege continued to take its toll on those inside Jerusalem, Titus began to look for ways to hasten its end. And so, he decided to tighten the screws further on the Jews by setting up soldiers to ambush any Jews, be they zealot or civilian, who ventured out of the city to…
The ever-present creation/evolution debate, along with the intense debate regarding the proper interpretation of Genesis 1-11, is not going away anytime soon. Over the past three years, I’ve written my share of blog posts analyzing and criticizing Ken Ham and his YECist organization Answers in Genesis, and even have written a book entitled The Heresy…
After taking the second wall and pushing the zealots back deeper into the upper city and the temple complex, Titus relaxed the siege for a short time, to see if the zealots were willing to finally surrender. Surely, they had to see their days were numbered. And, in order to demoralize the zealots even more,…
When Titus had come to Jerusalem, he encountered a city that had been effectively under siege by the two remaining zealot leaders long before he had arrived. Simon ben-Gioras maintained control over the upper city and led 10,000 fighters and fifty commanders, along with 8,000 Idumeans and eight of their own commanders, among whom were…
Last month, I took part in an online debate regarding Noah’s flood: was it a worldwide flood, a local flood, or should Genesis 6-9 be understood as an example of ancient Near Eastern (ANE) mythological literature? My take, as it has been for the past twenty years, long before I knew anything about the creation-evolution…
The State of Jerusalem in the Spring of AD 70 During the winter of AD 69-70, the three factions of zealots in Jerusalem terrorized both each other and the civilian population as a whole. Eleazar ben-Simon and his group of zealots held the temple itself and the court of the priests—he was helped by Judas…
As Vespasian bided his time in Caesarea, things were playing out just as he had expected in Jerusalem—the zealots were tearing each other apart, and in the process, plunging the city further and further into bloody chaos and desolation. John of Gischala, began to act more and more like a tyrant among the zealots and…
We now come to my final post in my extended book analysis of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God. In this post I will cover Ehrman’s last two chapters, as well as the epilogue. Chapter 8 is entitled, “After the New Testament: Christological Dead Ends of the Second and Third Centuries,” Chapter 9 is entitled,…
We are now in the home stretch of my extended book analysis of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God. In this post, I will be covering chapter 7, entitled, “Jesus as God on Earth (Early Incarnation Christologies).” In a nutshell, what Ehrman argues in this chapter is the following: A few of Jesus’ followers had…