It is a good thing you are already marriage. Chicks don’t dig guys with Zunes.

Here also is a commentary on Josephus which shows the The Campaign of Cestius Gallus and the Defeat of the Twelfth Legion.

What is significant to our discussion is that it shows a map of the attack and I was interested to find out that the Roman armies attached from the east. The disciples were commanded to flee to the hills of Judea, which are in the east.

Also significant is the following passage from Josephus:

On Heshvan 5 (or November 22, 66 A.D.) Cestius suddenly gives up and retreats from the city “without any reason in the world.” [2.19.7 540]

Josephus: “It was, I suppose, owing to the aversion God had already toward the city and the sanctuary that He delayed from putting an end to the war that very day.” [2.19.6 539]

Here is a map that shows Pella. If you find the Sea of Galilee and go south you will see it diagonally south east of Scythopolis.

One of the objections I’ve heard o this theory is that Jesus told the disciples to flee to the hills of Judea and this site is many mile north of that.

I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that they were to go in the direction of the hills of Judea. If they kept going east, they would have crossed the Jordan and since many of the disciples were originally from Galilee it would have been natural for them to go north to a place they knew where they could hide.

Eusebius says they were warned in a prophecy. This could have been Jesus’ prophecy (but Eusebius doesn’t say so) or more likely a further revelation.

But it is interesting that Eusebius relates the war to Daniel 9 and therefore the “abomination” passage in Mt. 24.

This is from what I am guessing is a Messianic (Jewish Christians) commentary on the Talmud at:

http://keiyah.com/id58.html

Read the whole thing at the above site, it’s interesting!

But here is an excerpt

Simon, son of Cleopas, who became the leader and heir of the Nazarene (Yerushalayim) Assembly after James the Just. Prior to the war, 66-67 AD, most of the Nazarene fled to Pella in the Decapolis, the northeast tip of Peraea and set up a government in exile under the leadership of Simeon, son of Cleophas. It appears that Nazara (Village of the Sprout) was in this region as Kochaba (Village of the Star) has been identified there also. Nazara and the modern translation of Nazareth would be references to a village identified with the Isa. 11:1 prophecy:

And a Rod shall come forth from the stump of Yishai, and a Sprout from his roots shall bear fruit. The Spirit of יהוה shall rest upon Him – the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of יהוה,

Both Eusebius and Epiphanius affirm that the migration to Paraea was a total one and that Nazarenes fled over the Jordan, not only from Yerushalayim but also from other cities and villages. Eusebius goes on to add that all of Palestine at that time was completely emptied of Nazarenes. If this can be taken literally, it means that a new wave of Christians must have come into the area from the Gentile church and totally replaced the Yerushalayim Assembly and all Jewish Nazarenes.

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Chapter 5. The Last Siege of the Jews after Christ.

1. After Nero had held the power thirteen years, and Galba and Otho had ruled a year and six months, Vespasian, who had become distinguished in the campaigns against the Jews, was proclaimed sovereign in Judea and received the title of Emperor from the armies there. Setting out immediately, therefore, for Rome, he entrusted the conduct of the war against the Jews to his son Titus.

2. For the Jews after the ascension of our Saviour, in addition to their crime against him, had been devising as many plots as they could against his apostles. First Stephen was stoned to death by them, and after him James, the son of Zebedee and the brother of John, was beheaded, and finally James, the first that had obtained the episcopal seat in Jerusalem after the ascension of our Saviour, died in the manner already described. But the rest of the apostles, who had been incessantly plotted against with a view to their destruction, and had been driven out of the land of Judea, went unto all nations to preach the Gospel, relying upon the power of Christ, who had said to them, Go and make disciples of all the nations in my name.

3. But the people of the church in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation, vouchsafed to approved men there before the war, to leave the city and to dwell in a certain town of Perea called Pella. And when those that believed in Christ had come there from Jerusalem, then, as if the royal city of the Jews and the whole land of Judea were entirely destitute of holy men, the judgment of God at length overtook those who had committed such outrages against Christ and his apostles, and totally destroyed that generation of impious men.

4. But the number of calamities which everywhere fell upon the nation at that time; the extreme misfortunes to which the inhabitants of Judea were especially subjected, the thousands of men, as well as women and children, that perished by the sword, by famine, and by other forms of death innumerable—all these things, as well as the many great sieges which were carried on against the cities of Judea, and the excessive sufferings endured by those that fled to Jerusalem itself, as to a city of perfect safety, and finally the general course of the whole war, as well as its particular occurrences in detail, and how at last the abomination of desolation, proclaimed by the prophets, Daniel 9:27 stood in the very temple of God, so celebrated of old, the temple which was now awaiting its total and final destruction by fire — all these things any one that wishes may find accurately described in the history written by Josephus.

5. But it is necessary to state that this writer records that the multitude of those who were assembled from all Judea at the time of the Passover, to the number of three million souls, were shut up in Jerusalem as in a prison, to use his own words.

6. For it was right that in the very days in which they had inflicted suffering upon the Saviour and the Benefactor of all, the Christ of God, that in those days, shut up as in a prison, they should meet with destruction at the hands of divine justice.

7. But passing by the particular calamities which they suffered from the attempts made upon them by the sword and by other means, I think it necessary to relate only the misfortunes which the famine caused, that those who read this work may have some means of knowing that God was not long in executing vengeance upon them for their wickedness against the Christ of God.

Posted Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:02am AEST

Escape from Romans: Professor Ronny Reich of Haifa University stands inside the tunnel under the Old City

Escape from Romans: Professor Ronny Reich of Haifa University stands inside the tunnel under the Old City (Reuters: Ammar Awad)

Israeli archaeologists say they have discovered an ancient drainage tunnel that Jews used to escape from Jerusalem’s Roman conquerors 2,000 years ago.

The tunnel is believed to have been Jerusalem’s main drainage channel at the time of the Roman conquest in 70 AD, stretching beneath the main road of the city and eventually reaching the Dead Sea, the Antiquities Authority said in a statement.

“According to the writings of Josephus Flavius, the residents of the city fled to this channel at the time of the revolt in order to hide from the Romans,” it said.

“The channel is built of ashlar stones and is covered with heavy stone slabs that are actually the paving stones of the street. In some places the channel reaches a height of about three metres (yards) and is one metre wide, so that it is possible to walk in it comfortably,” it said.

The excavation was led by Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the Antiquities Authority.

“There is evidence in the writings of Josephus Flavius, the historian who described the revolt, the conquest and the destruction of Jerusalem, that numerous people took shelter in the channel and even lived in it for a period until they succeeded to flee the city through its southern end,” the statement said.

- AFP