Is That Legal?

Ummm...

You do realize that the current historical theory is that Masada didn't happen the way the Israelites recorded it, right?

The credibility of Josephus

Michael,
I see it differently. The Warsaw Ghetto fight was to death. This is what Eric post is about. Furthermore, for Jews Masada is an ethos as well as history, no matter what historians claim. Eric poses one ethos against another and it is valid the way he does it. By the way, why do you believe the historians? They are no more correct than any of us is.

[ELM: Note, shmuel, that the post to which you're responding was by guest-blogger Shertaugh, not by Eric Muller]

Actually, I do think the zealots were wrong, but their mistakes long pre-dated the siege at Masada, which was only the culmination of their earlier dogmatism. They were fundamentalist extremists who provoked a suicidal rebellion against Roman rule in the name of their fundamentalism. Call me a liberal and an incrementalist, but I think revolutionary violence is a very, very last resort and that its results in first century Palestine were very predictable: a near 2000 year diaspora.

noting the suicidalism of the revolt should, but rarely does, be in the same breath as noting the utter intolerability of Roman rule. Economically, culturally, and politically...these people suffered to a point where death was not an entirely unreasonable option.

there is no incrementalism in a situation like this. what i think doesn't get realized here is that colonized people are socially dead, with out recognition or status. There's no legitimate way for a modern Saudi or a 1st Century Jewish Zealot to press for change. The structure of power, both on a local level (Herod or the House of Saud) and a global one (as defined by the economic/military/political hyperpower of the day (Rome/America) simply does not read challenges to authority from their position. It kills them.

The impossible cannot be an imperative, as Kant would teach us. What think we're gaining by placing people in such situations becomes the real question.

Sly civilian:

The utter intolerability of Roman rule? Funny, but the Jews were among the only peoples within the Roman Empire who couldn't find an accomodation. I think you're confusing the repression provoked by the zealots' fundamentalism with what could have been absent that fundamentalism.

There may have been no way for a 1st Century Zealot to achieve the change he wanted, but there were certainly choices preferable by far to suicidal revolt.

Not true in the least. Unrest in Gallic territories was well documented. The Greeks are under constant surveilance after attempted revolts, and Phillipi is founded as a military retirement colony to help stabilize the region. British areas revolut under Bodica. The Carthaginians fight tooth and nail, practically to the last man. Varus' legions anhillated at Teutoburg Forest by indepentdent minded Germanic tribes... People in the ancient world actively resisted Roman authority because it meant an end to any real self-rule. It was cultural and political subjegation.

If the Canadians came tomorrow by force, promising free health care and 50% taxation, how many of us would welcome our New Northern Overlords? When the promise of Rome is intense taxation, military devestation, and cultural submission... How attractive is that?

You mistake the military irresitability of Rome for it's political attractiveness.