When Adam met Eve, did they turn over a new leaf?

The Star of Bethlehem 3

The Star Prophecy
Bar Kosiba

Abstract

From Jesus’s birth, Jewish rebels were leading armed struggles against the Romans and claiming to be the Messiah, a king. Yet in the midst of all this, God chose to send Jesus as the Messiah, a king. God might have intended to sacrifice himself as His son but he chose a strange time to do it, a time when Jesus the true Messiah could not be distinguished from deluded men who suffered the same fate—crucifixion. Jesus looks to be one of many messianic pretenders to the throne of Israel. If he was, then someone has deceived us. If he was not, God looks incompetent, for if He wanted to save mankind why did he do it in a way that leaves deception, or simply error, a large possibility? Nor did the Jewish War end these messianic claims, several more arose, until bar Kosiba, the Son of the Star, another messiah, led a four year rebellion with disastrous results for all Jews. Notes on the meaning of the Star of Bethlehem

The Star Prophecy

From several Qumran sources, it seems another name for the messiah was ”The Star”. Thus the Damascus Rule gives a pesher on Amos 9:11 which does not obviously relate to the scriptural quotation but is an arcane confirmation of the prophecy of the star in Numbers 24:17:

There shall come a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.

This text in Numbers is one that the community was particularly fond of and is the true source of the Star of Bethlehem in Matthew. Confirmation is that the messiah is also referred to as a star in Revelations 2:28 and the Second Epistle of Peter 1:19. The Star prophecy of Numbers has an astrological origin and there was an astronomical sign close to the birth of Jesus sure enough but the “Star of Bethlehem” has nothing to do with comets, planetary conjunctions or supernovas. The “Star of Bethlehem” simply means “The Messiah”.

Following a quotation of this star prophecy in the War Scroll, the author explains what then would happen, referring to the sectaries by their name of the poor:

by the hand of the Poor whom you have redeemed by Your Power and the peace of Your Mighty Wonders… by the hand of the Poor and those bent in the dust, You will deliver the enemies of all the lands and humble the mighty of the peoples to bring upon their heads the reward of the Wicked and justify the Judgement of Your Truth on all the sons of men.

The poor were to conquer all the enemies of Israel. The Essenes were preparing for a holy war. Note that, if son of man was a messianic title as the theologians believe, the judgement here would be of lots of messiahs! It means nothing more than man, and sons of men simply means men.

The thrust of the War Scroll like many of the Qumran fragments is markedly apocalyptic. It anticipates a battle between the Kittim, the ”Sons of Darkness” and the ”Sons of Light”. We have the familiar expression, ”Sons of Light”, from Persian religion for the members of the Community but who are their enemies, the Kittim? At first, the Kittim were the people of Cyprus, but came to mean people from across the Mediterranean sea. They appear in Daniel:

For the ships of the Kittim shall come against him, and he shall lose heart and withdraw.
Daniel 11:30

In this passage, it must mean the Romans coming against Antiochus IV Epiphanes when he tried to take Egypt. So, in the scrolls, it must be the Romans. But are the scrolls referring to the Romans of Pompey’s invading armies of Republican Rome in 63 BC or the Romans of the time of Christ, soldiers of Imperial Rome?

The War Scroll says the Kittim invaders had a king, which seems to count out the invasion of Pompey because Rome was a republic—unless they regarded Pompey as a king. The Habakkuk Commentary says that the Kittim offered sacrifices to their standards. Professor G R Driver of Oxford University tells us this was a practice of Imperial Roman soldiers but not Republican ones. They could not have been Pompey’s troops but must have been those occupying the country from 6 AD till the destruction of 70 AD. And these scrolls must have been written or edited during or after this period in the first century.

Elsewhere appears the ”slain of the Kittim” and the ”falling of the Cedars of Lebanon”. The Cedars of Lebanon mean the Priesthood or the Temple because the Hebrew root of Lebanon means white signifying the white linen of the priests (the same imagery is used of the Community itself who also wore white). These passages seem to be referring to the Jewish War and the destruction of the Temple.

Another scroll fragment ends with an explanation of Jacob’s blessing on Judah:

The sceptre shall not pass from Judah, nor the staff from between his feet until the coming of Shiloh to whom the people will gather.
Gen 49:10

The scroll writer’s interpretation is that the sceptre is sovereignty and the staff is the covenant of the kingdom given to the branch of David in perpetuity because he kept the law with the men of the community! Shiloh is the messiah of righteousness and is the same as the branch of David. The sceptre and the star are embodied in the same man, the Nasi, the prince of the congregation who shall smite all the children of Seth, the enemies of Israel—Numbers 24:17 specifies them as Moabites and Edomites, signifying gentiles.

The staff is the law which has to be followed until he who pours out righteousness is resurrected at the end time. Thus the messiah of righteousness and he who pours out righteousness are the same—the branch of David. Nowhere in the scriptures is Shiloh used as a messianic name except here and modern scholars have sought other meanings, but for the Essenes its interpretation was plain. Though the messianic leader, the Nasi, will smite Israel’s enemies, here he seems not to be the messiah himself—though in Daniel 9:25 the messiah is identified as the Prince (nasi).

There are a plethora of fragments containing parts of Daniel which writings were among the most inspirational for messianic Jews at the time of Christ. Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews tells us that the Jews of the time considered Daniel as

one of the greatest prophets… for the books that he wrote are left and read by us still today… he did not only prophecy future events, like the other prophets but specified the time of their accomplishment.

Prophets were seen as diviners and soothsayers in the first century and the Essenes themselves had a reputation for reliable prophesy. They would certainly have been trying to divine the signs that the End was nigh.

Fragments of a letter in the Qumran caves explain the ”End of Days” which it mentions repeatedly, sometimes using the unusual description the ”End Time”. The letter also repeatedly mentions ”the Way”. It describes how at the ”End Time” a particular concatenation of events occurs by which it can be recognised. The people of Israel then had to return to the Law ”never to turn back” if they were to be judged as Righteous or Justified at the Day of Judgement.

At the start of the Jewish War readers of Daniel might have interpreted the 70 years of wrath (Dan 9:3) as beginning with the death of Herod (though hated enough himself, his building the Temple might have been seen as blessed compared with what followed) in 4 BC—the presumed date of the birth of Jesus—and lasting until 66 AD, the start of the ultimately failed rebellion. Furthermore the prediction in Daniel 12:7 of ”the time, two times and a half” which preceded the ”End Time” tied in with the three and a half years from the stoning of James the Just in 62 AD to the outbreak of the war. Thus the patriots had sufficient to convince them that the ”End Time” had arrived and the battle should commence.

But earlier, the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 BC might have been seen as the start of the 70 years of wrath and the uprising by Judas of Galilee against the Roman census been seen as their culmination. As each presumed sign failed, the revolutionaries returned to their scriptures to refine their dates.

Jesus’s mission according to John, lasted about three years and he had probably allowed the three and a half years of Daniel’s prophecy to build up to his revolution. We conjecture that Jesus considered the showing of Pilate’s standards in Jerusalem and possibly in the temple as the Abomination of Desolation—the prime sign of the times. If he timed his mission according to the prophecy of Daniel to correspond with the ”End of Days” or ”End Time” he got it wrong, but then so did the diviners at the time of the Jewish War, and at many other times.

In the scrolls, Moses, Aaron and David were to be paralleled by three messiahs, the prophet, the priest and the prince. The Essenes seemed to believe their founder, the righteous teacher, was the prophet—the priest and prince were still expected. The Cairo Damascus Document and the Community Rule seem to imply that there would be more than one messiah—a kingly messiah and a priestly messiah. The priestly messiah was higher in rank than their princely messiah. The righteous teacher was also a priest—all senior Essenes were priests anyway—and his enemy was the wicked priest.

But often the messiahs were considered to be embodied in one person as in Psalms 45:7 where the meaning of, anointed… above thy fellows, implies that the messiah had higher qualities than anyone else anointed—prophets, priests or princes—and so must have had the qualities of all. Interestingly the Cairo document indicates that the messiah had already come and later references to ”arising” and ”standing up” must therefore indicate resurrection. Daniel 12:13 uses the Hebrew for ”standing up” in just this sense.

The Qumran Damascus Document reads that there is one messiah ”of Aaron and David” and the Cairo version describes the messiah as ”the Root of Planting out of Aaron and Israel”. So, apparently there is one messiah out of the two lineages of Aaron and Israel, who is both priest and prince—the Melchizedek, the prince of righteousness, the name used for Jesus as the supreme priest in the Epistle to the Hebrews!

Fragmentary material at Qumran tell us that the Melchizedek is the judge on the day of atonement, but elsewhere the judge is the archangel Michael, the heavenly prince of light, who would lead the heavenly hosts in a cosmic battle against the forces of darkness. In the Apocrypha, the judge is the Son of God, the messiah. The implication is that the messiah was conceived of as an aspect of the archangel Michael, and the earthly prince and the heavenly prince would unite when heaven united with earth in the kingdom yielding the judge—Melchizedek.

This is confirmed by Epiphanius writing about the Ebionites. They believed that the messiah was not begotten of God the Father, and therefore not a literal son of God in the Greek fashion like the Christian Jesus, but was created as one of the archangels. He rules over the angels and all the creatures of the Almighty, and that he came and declared:

I am come to do away with sacrifices, and if ye cease not from sacrificing, the wrath of God will not cease from you.

It was the Essenes who wanted to get rid of sacrifices, further proof that the Essenes and the later sect the Ebionites were the same. Revealingly, the archangel Michael is the prince of Israel in the apocalypse of Daniel (Dan 12:1) and he fights for Israel against the angels of Israel’s enemies (Dan 10:13;21). In Exodus 23:20;23 God sends an angel before the Israelites to help them defeat their enemies in Canaan and another friendly angel appears to Joshua, no less, before the city of Jericho. This latter, the prince of the army of Yehouah, was assumed to be the same angel and was identified with Michael. So Joshua (Jesus) and Michael had become associated to the Essenes, the entering of the kingdom of God being a re-enactment of the entry into the Promised Land. The non-canonical Gospel of the Hebrews has the archangel Michael appointed as the guardian of the messiah and he actually appears on earth as mary to give birth to Jesus!

The descriptions of the two figures in Revelation convince us that they are the same. In Revelation 10:1-4 an angel is described which descended from heaven with a rainbow on his head and clothed in a cloud. His face was like the sun and his feet were like pillars of fire. In Revelation 1:13-16 one like unto a son of man is described as clothed in a garment completely down to his feet, whose countenance was as the sun, whose eyes were as fire and whose feet were like fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace. His voice roared as the sound of many waters while the angel’s voice roared like a lion. These entities are so similar that they must be the same. For the early Christians, the one like unto the son of man was an angel—the archangel Michael, matching Essene beliefs.

Bar Kosiba

Besides Jesus, as noted above, several others were thought messiahs. The Star prophecy, supported by other messianic readings, was the key to the persistent troubles in Palestine in the intertestamental period. Josephus in the Jewish War says the prediction that a world ruler would come out of Palestine was the inspiration for the Jewish revolt. Suetonius and Tacitus, apparently following him, make the same assertion. Josephus cannily gained favour with Vespasian, the invading Roman general, by telling him the prophecy had been fulfilled in his victory—he was the sceptre and would rule the Empire, which later he did.

Rabbi Akiba of the Jamnia School in 132 AD renamed Simon bar Kosiba as bar Kochba, punning on the similarity of his name to “Son of the Star”, because he saw in him the fulfillment of the Star prophecy. Akiba was the noted rabbi who set the canon of the Hebrew Bible and succeeded in including the erotic verses, the Song of Solomon.Akiba proclaimed bar Kosiba “messiah of the Jews”, the fact that bar Kosiba was not of the house of David was of no consequence to Akiba, the most learned rabbi of his day. Interestingly, a papyrus, found at Murabba’at near Qumran, describes bar Kosiba as Prince of Israel—Nasi. So bar Kosiba, was both Nasi and messiah as in Daniel.

Bar Kosiba was the last Jewish rebel against Rome, fighting a second Jewish war from 132 to 135 AD. The Romans had had enough and responded brutally and finally, butchering Jews everywhere, evicting them from their land and destroying Jerusalem as a Jewish city. Any Jew found in the city of Jerusalem was automatically killed, a curious reversal of the earlier death sentence on gentiles found within the outer temple court, the Court of the Gentiles, which even the Romans were ready to honour to respect Jewish religious scruples. The date 135 AD was the beginning of the Diaspora, an exile declaimed by God in punishment.

The Jewish War of 66-70 AD was a spontaneous eruption of anti-Roman feeling after decades of simmering discontent. According to Josephus, the tactics of the Jews in the Jewish War were to shut themselves up in a network of fortifications all over the country and wait for the Romans to attack. If they had provided for adequate support of one beseiged fortress for another the Jews might have been more successful but by concentrating against each strongpoint the Romans were able to capture each one in succession.

When Simon bar Kosiba revolted in 132-135 AD, the Jews had learned their lesson, and adopted a more flexible response, but ultimately the outcome was the same. The main Jewish forces were under the direct command of bar Kosiba and were deployed in the open according to operational needs until the penultimate phase of the war, when the Romans finally succeeded in forcing bar Kosiba into the fortress of Bethar. Independent were the regional or municipal defense forces. The supporters of bar Kosiba prepared for the conflict arming themselves cleverly. Jewish armourers purposely made weapons of poor quality for the Romans who were campaigning under Hadrian in Egypt. The Romans rejected the unworthy weapons. The smiths then secretly repaired the faulty weapons and supplied them to the rebels.

Their tactics were those of guerilla warfare, according to Dio Cassius. They did not attempt to meet Romans legionaries in field warfare but set up walled fortifications in favourable spots. These they linked, rather like the Vietnamese in their war against the Americans in the sixties, by digging extensive tunnels, even supplied with periodic air shafts. Thus the guerillas had places of refuge whenever they were hard-pressed, and places to meet in secret underground but were ready to abandon their permanent defenses and escape by stealth. They also gave access to sources of water.

Other caves and tunnels were better suited to surprise attacks against Roman bases, out-posts, and communications, and a rapid and mysterious method of retreating. Thus the bar Kosiba rebeles performed in the early stages of the war. Having different hidden entrances, they allowed anyone who discovered one to be trapped by men leaving by another exit and coming upon the unwary soldiers from behind. In these caves men and war materials could be assembled, undiscovered and unnoticed by the authorities.

The caves of Paran, which opened in the perpendicular rock face, had been a refuge for Jewish rebeles in the time of Hyrcanus II. The ambitious Herod had attacked these hideaways using ingenious methods to penetrate them, when making a name for himself as a maintainer of public order for the Romans. Josephus tells us in the Jewish War that Simon bar Giora elnlarged these caves to make them his base in 68 AD.

Eventually the Jews were forced into defence anyway. The caves were used as hideaways. Only after the Romans discovered these caves did it become clear how the rebels had achieved their objectives of surprising the Roman garrisons and cutting them off from the mountains.

Dio Cassius explains that the cause of bar Kosiba’s revolt was Hadrian’s desecration of the city of Jerusalem and the erection of a shrine to Jupiter in the temple of Yehouah. Jews thought it intolerable that the foreigners should settle in Jerusalem and godless gentile rites performed there. It was an Abomination of Desolation—a sign of the coming Messiah. When Hadrian departed from the region, they revolted but bar Kosiba did not specially try to defend the Holy City, preferring to keep his army mobile rather than embattled behind walls. Nevertheless he sought to revive nationalist fervour by issuing a coin commemorating the Jewish commander, Eleazar ben Jair and the heroes of Masada who had committed suicide rather than be captured by the Romans in 73 AD. Is it coincidence that the name Jair is the name of the president of the Council whose daughter Jesus putatively saved from death in Mark 5:22. Was he the forefather of Eleazar the Zealot?

Hadrian sent Julius Severus from Britain to take charge of the war. Severus also decided to refrain from open confrontation on the grounds that the Jews were dangerous fanatics fighting in their own country and might be hard even for the experienced Romans to handle in large numbers. Doubtless he was recognising the historical record. He contented himself with attacking small parties of rebels and mopping them up seige and pursuit. Slowly but effectively he was able to exhaust and exterminate them. Using roads for rapid troop movements, he cut off chunks of bar Kosiba’s territory, and sealed them off to giving the Romans a local numerical superiority. He then drove the Jews into defensive positions and starved them out. Severus razed to the ground fifty major strongpoints and nine hundred and eighty-five villages. The point however is that the Jewish network was so incredibly extensive.

About a million Jews were killed and nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate. The Romans also suffered severe casualties, despite their tactics as is shown by Hadrian deliberately not using the customary address when writing his victory letter back to the Senate that “I and the legions are well”.

Page Tags: Oppression of the Jews, Jesus, Christianity, Essenes, Qumran, Apocalypticism, Kingdom, God, Star Prophecy, Bar Kosiba, Bar Kocheba, Israel, Jewish, Jews, King, Messiah, Romans

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.