Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Passover Massacre

Here's the story from Josephus that I told you about last night.

Now while the Jewish affairs were under the administration of Cureanus, there happened a great tumult at the city of Jerusalem, and many of the Jews perished therein. But I shall first explain the occasion whence it was derived. When that feast which is called the passover was at hand, at which time our custom is to use unleavened bread, and a great multitude was gathered together from all parts to that feast, Cumanus was afraid …; so he ordered that one regiment of the army should take their arms, and stand in the temple cloisters…. [T]his was no more than what the former procurators of Judea did at such festivals. But on the fourth day of the feast, a certain soldier let down his breeches, and exposed his privy members to the multitude, which put those that saw him into a furious rage…. [Cumanus] did he exhort them … not to raise a tumult at the festival. But when he could not induce them to be quiet…, he gave order that the whole army should take their entire armor, and come to Antonia, which was a fortress, as we have said already, which overlooked the temple; but when the multitude saw the soldiers there, they were affrighted at them, and ran away hastily; but as the passages out were but narrow, and as they thought their enemies followed them, they were crowded together in their flight, and a great number were pressed to death in those narrow passages; nor indeed was the number fewer than twenty thousand that perished in this tumult.

Cited from an online version of Josephus' Antiquities, Book XX

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