Judas the Galilean

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Judas of the Galileans (also called Judas Galilaeus or Judas of Gamala ) ( Hebrew יהודה בן חזקיה Jehuda ben Ezechias (Hezekiah) ) was a Jewish rebel against Roman supremacy at the time of Jesus . The beginning of his activities falls in the time of Coponius , who was the first Roman prefect in Judea and was responsible for this area from around 6 to 9 AD.

Live and act

According to the Jewish historian Flavius ​​Josephus ( Jewish War , II 8.1 and 8.6; Antiquities XVIII 1.1), Judas came from Gamala in the Gaulanitis (the Golan region). The trigger for his rebellion was the census and property appraisal carried out by the Romans with political pressure and military force at that time, which took place under Publius Sulpicius Quirinius and met with great resistance from the population. This process is also reported in the New Testament , Lk 2,1–3  EU , whereby the Roman governor in Syria is referred to in the Greek text as Κυρήνιος (Kyrenios). Jesus , who lived in Nazareth in Galilee , around 70 kilometers from Gamala, was around 10–12 years old at the time and must have learned about the activities of the rebels through stories from his environment.

Outraged by the Roman claims to rule, as demonstrated in Quirinius' appraisal of the land, Judas the Galileans incited the people to oppose the Romans by publicly declaring that "the appraisal entails nothing but apparent servitude." Together with the Pharisee Sadduk, he stirred up the uproar and called - as Josephus reports - on the people “to protect their freedom. Because now is the best opportunity to get calm, security and also fame. But God will only be ready to help them if they actively put their decisions into practice, and in particular, the more important they are and the more relentlessly they carry them out ”. According to Josephus, such speeches were "received with the greatest applause, and so the daring enterprise soon expanded into the monstrous".

Judas of the Galileans had two sons, Simon and James, who, like their father, dedicated their lives to the rebellion against the Roman rule. They were crucified by the Roman procurator Tiberius Alexander (46-48 AD) ( Antiquities XX 5.2).

According to Josephus, Judas the Galilean represented his own ideological direction, which he treats separately from the three traditional "philosophical schools" of the Jews (the Sadducees , the Pharisees and the Essenes ). He describes Judas the Galilean and Sadduk (also: Zadok) the Pharisee as the spiritual fathers of radical Phariseeism who paved the way for Jewish national extremism and fanaticism. According to Josephus, the followers of this tendency agreed with the Pharisees in all other respects, but “clung to freedom with great tenacity” and recognized God alone as their King and Lord: “They also submit to every possible kind of death and make themselves nothing from the murder of their relatives and friends, if only they do not need to recognize a person as master. "

The attacks by these so-called “ zealots ” (“zealots”) on prominent representatives of the Roman system of rule and their terrorist attacks fueled the unrest in the country until finally in 66 AD the uprising of the Jews and the fateful war with the Romans , which ended in AD 70 with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Jewish state.

Some historians assume a personal identity to Judas the son of Ezechias .

swell

  • Flavius ​​Josephus: The Jewish War . Goldmann, Munich 1964/1980.
  • Flavius ​​Josephus: Jewish antiquities . Fourier, Wiesbaden, undated

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews. From the oldest times to the present. Revised from the sources (11 volumes, Berlin 1853–1875) Vol. III., P. 260; 364.
  2. ^ Kaufmann Kohler, M. Seligsohn:  Judas the Galilean. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Volume 7, Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906, pp.  370-371 .
  3. ↑ Martin Hengel : The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish freedom movement in the time from Herod I to 70 AD. Vol. 1 Works on the history of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, Brill Archive, Leiden 1976, ISBN 978-9-0040- 4327-5 , p. 338 [1]
  4. ↑ Reza Aslan . Zealot: Jesus of Nazareth and his time. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-498-00083-7 , p. 292 [2]
  5. ↑ Friedrich Wilhelm Horn : Judas, the Galilean. In: Hans Dieter Betz (Ed.): Religion in past and present: Concise dictionary for theology and religious studies. Vol. 4. IK. 4., Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-16-146944-5 , p. 599
personal data
SURNAME Judas the Galilean
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Judas Galilaeus; Judas of Gamala
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish rebel against the Romans
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC Chr.
PLACE OF BIRTH Gamala in Gaulanitis
DATE OF DEATH 1st century