A murderous civil war event in the synagogue of Tiberias?

[FransJVermeiren]

In the recent thread ‘It’s all yours (Was about a non-Nazareth indicator)’ the story of the unclean spirit in the synagogue (Mark 1:21-28) has been quoted. This has encouraged me on to take a closer look at this fragment. Maybe my political/chronological focus can offer a fresh view on this synagogue meeting.

The story goes like this (Nestle-Aland translation):
21 And they went into Capernaum; and immediately on the sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught. 22 And they were amazed at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. 23 And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; 24 and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27 And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching! With authority he even commands the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28 And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.

At first sight Jesus seems to be confronted with a person with a disturbed mind, and the combination with ‘convulsing’ in verse 26 could suggest an epileptic person with a psychological or behavioral problem. Jesus’ intervention then would be something like an healing or exorcism.

In my opinion this story can be read in an entirely different way. My analysis goes as follows:
• The ‘unclean spirit’ speaks in plural (twice ‘us’), so he seems to be the member of a group.
• A psychiatric/demonic connotation of ‘unclean spirit’ is not obvious. The Greek ἀκαθάρτος (impure, unclean) is especially connected with polytheism (BDAG p. 34), so it may point to the description a non-Jewish (Syrian/Greek) man.
• The question ‘Have you come to destroy us?’ simply means ‘Have you come to kill us?’. This Syrian man seems to be mortally afraid of Jesus and his adherents (and rightly so, as we will see).
• The phrase ‘I know who you are’ sounds like ‘I know what kind of man you are’ in the sense of ‘I know what you are up to’. It is unlikely that this phrase was followed by a sincere ‘the holy one of God ‒ ὁ ἅγιος του θεοῦ’. On the contrary, this seems to be a sarcastic designation of Jesus. As ‘the holy ones’ was the favorite self-designation of the Essenes, we can see this phrase as the sarcastic designation of Jesus as an Essene priest.
• The ‘convulsing’ in verse 26 is also a translation with a medical bias. BAGD translates σπαρἀσσω as ‘to shake to and fro’, so this verb could describe agitated gestures or body movements without medical or demonic connotation.
• BDAG explains the silencing of the unclean spirit in verse 25 as a case of exorcism, but if the unclean spirit is simply the designation of a Syrian, something else might be happening.
• In my opinion verse 25-26 can be read as the order to and the execution of the lynching of this rightly terrified Syrian opponent. The shaking to and fro describes the resistance he offers the moment he is overpowered, and his ‘crying with a loud voice’ is his cry of agony.
• That this lynching is a new lesson Jesus and his followers teach their opponents may indicate that this story describes the first ethnic murder in Tiberias during the civil war.
• This beginning of a new, bloody phase in the civil war explains the amazement in verse 27. The rumor of this ferocious deed went around throughout Galilee (v. 28). It is improbable that verbally silencing a Syrian during a discussion in the synagogue established Jesus’ fame in the whole region.

During the first years of the rebellion against the Romans a civil war was going on in Palestine, and in this civil war the ethnic element was important. Jews and Syrians were diametrically opposed in cities with a mixed population in Palestine and in the neighboring regions. Ethnic cleansing in both directions was widespread. Besides the ethnic element this conflict was also religious (monotheistic versus polytheistic) and political (in favor of versus opposed to rebellion against Rome). Josephus has extensively described the ethnic element of the civil war in the last part of book II of The Jewish War.

In my interpretation this story of the unclean spirit parallels with passages from Josephus’s Life, in which Jesus son of Saphat (or Sapphias), at that time the leader of the messianic war party of the Jews of Tiberias, is the protagonist.

1. Ethnic cleansing in Tiberias
Life 67: Jesus and his followers then massacred all of the Greek residents in Tiberias and any others who, before the outbreak of hostilities, had been their enemies.

2. Jesus as the leader of the Jews, a rebel and a priest
Life 134: The principal instigator of the mob was Jesus, son of Sapphias, at that time chief magistrate of Tiberias, a knave with an instinct for introducing disorder into grave matters, and unrivalled in fomenting sedition and revolution. With a copy of the laws of Moses in his hands, he stepped forward…

3. An turbulent people’s meeting in the synagogue on the Sabbath
Life 277-279a: The next day there was a general assembly in the prayer-house, a huge building, capable of accommodating a large crowd. Jonathan, who entered with the rest, while not venturing to speak openly of defection, said that their city required a better general. Jesus, the magistrate, however, had no such scruple and said bluntly, “Citizens, it is better for us to take our orders from four men than from one, men, too, of illustrious birth and intellectual distinction,” indicating Jonathan and his colleagues. Justus next came forward, and, by his approval of the previous speaker, aided in converting some of the people to his views. The majority, however, were not convicted by these speeches, and a riot would inevitably have ensued, had not the arrival of the sixth hour, at which it is our custom on the Sabbath to take our midday meal, broken off the meeting.
(my underlining)

We see the tense atmosphere in Tiberias, ending in the massacre of its Syrian inhabitants by the fanatic priest and rebel leader Jesus and his messianic followers. This happened between end 66 CE and mid-67 CE. The synagogue murder is part of this.

[iskander]

It provided the model for the KKK !