Luke & the Revolutionaries
by Patrick Henry Reardon
During recent days when our worshiping congregations are obliged to deal with the ambient threat of violence and parish councils have added “security” as a line item in their agendas, it is comforting to recall former times when similar dangers forced Christians to meet in secret and to communicate in codes.
Indeed, cherished reader, next time you chance to look at a portrait of the event, remind yourself that even at the Last Supper security was tight. Two of those dining apostles were, in fact, armed: “Behold, Lord, here are two swords!” (Luke 22:38) One of them was Simon Johnson (“Bar-Jonah”), who later that evening found occasion to use his weapon—an incident recorded in each of the four Gospels. The other armed apostle? An intelligent and well-informed guess, I am confident, should identify him as the other Simon among the apostles. Luke the physician, the earliest Christian historian, calls this man “Simon the Zealot” (Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13).
Luke’s designation is instructive because we happen to know quite a bit about the Zealots. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian roughly contemporary with Luke, describes them. Distinguishing the Zealots from the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes, Josephus calls them Judaism’s “fourth philosophy” (tetrarte philosophia—Antiquities of the Jews 18.1.9). So, who were these people and what were they like?
In most respects, Josephus explains, this sect (haeresis) held to the teachings of the Pharisees, but in politics they were thoroughgoing theocratic revolutionaries, freedom-conscious (tes elevtherias antilepsei) Jewish patriots, uncommonly fierce in their adherence to “God alone as leader and ruler” (ibid. 18.1.4; 18.6.23).
As to the name of this group, the Greek zelotes expressed an underlying Hebrew (plural adjective) kana’im, both words conveying a sense of passionate dedication to a person or cause. (We note in passing that Mark and Matthew, when they mention this apostolic Simon, simply transliterate the Hebrew word: Simon ho Kananites—Mark 3:18; Matt. 10:4. Following the lead of St. Jerome, almost all later translations misconstrue this term as “Canaanite.”)
The origins of the Zealots go all the way back to the start of the first century, when Caesar Augustus, following the death of Herod the Great in A.D. 4, divided the latter’s kingdom into parts (“tetrarchies”) and made Judea a mere province of Syria, answerable to immediate imperial rule. These offenses were followed, two years later, by a universal census leading to new property taxes; the common sentiment, quoted by Josephus, was “this taxation is no improvement over slavery.” Nor did it help matters that these things happened during a time of economic misery, even famine (ibid. 18.1.1–8).
In revolutionary response to such affronts, a certain Judah of Galilee began the movement that became the “Zealots.” The latter were commonly armed, because violence and intimidation were among the means by which they hoped to drive out the Roman overlord. In due course the Zealots were to play a large role in the First Jewish Revolt, from 66 to 70. Eventually, Josephus tells us, all the revolutionaries against Rome became anarchists; they
proceeded to destroy whatever remained of political government. . . . In this respect the Zealots were foremost, whose deeds corresponded to their name. For they imitated every evil work. Nor if they remembered any dreadful deed from former times, did they fail to do it. nbsp;. . And although they gave themselves that name from their zeal for what was good, the name itself described them only by way of irony (The Jewish War 7.1.268–269).
The Christian historian Luke, more than any other apostolic writer, gives particular attention to this and other revolutionary and politically messianic movements of the period, normally by way of an implied contrast to the Spirit-filled activity of Jesus and the Church. Luke accomplishes this, not in his narrator’s voice, but through the discourse of the characters in his narrative (Luke 13:1–5 [cf. Josephus, Antiquities 18.4.1–2]; Acts 5:34–37; 21:38).
In a supreme irony, Luke places the birth of Jesus, not during the reign of Herod the Great (cf. Matt. 2:1), but at the time of the hated census that prompted the whole revolutionary movement in the Levant (Luke 2:1–2).
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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