The Zealots were one of the four main groups in the Second Temple period of Israelite history. They held so strongly to the belief in the Torah that they resorted to violence against their oppressors. They were a libertarian group that wanted to serve no one but God alone. And one of them played an important part in Jesus’ ministry.
Understanding the history of the Zealots requires grasping how foundational zeal is to Judaism. Zeal is a characteristic of many people throughout the Old Testament. In the mind of the Israelites of that day, zeal was the outward expression of a believer’s devotion to God. One example frequently cited was Phinehas, whose story is told in Numbers 25. His zeal for God caused him to act violently against one of the Israelites sleeping with a Moabite woman. After he did this, he was rewarded with an eternal covenant with God. Psalm 106:30-31 says that Phinehas’ zeal was counted to him as righteousness. Scholars have discussed what was righteous about his zeal and the extent to which we can follow his example today.
Paul highlights the downsides of zeal (at least zeal without God’s direction) in some of his New Testament writings. He lists zeal as a reason for boasting in the flesh and recounts he had enough zeal to persecute the church (Philippians 3:6). Paul’s words show that Jews of his days still aspired to zeal.
The Zealots took zeal to a violent conclusion, fighting against their oppressors.
One person who was instrumental in the development of the zealots was Judas Maccabaeus. He fought with a hammer during the intertestamental period, leading the revolt that freed the Jews from Seleucid rule. The Zealots tried to be a new version of “Judah The Hammer” and drive out their Roman oppressors. The Zealots in Jesus’ day did this by attempting to assassinate key figures in Rome.
The founder of the Zealot movement is mentioned by name in the Bible (Acts 5:37). Judas the Galilean rebelled against the Roman authorities during the time of the census when Jesus was born. He led a rebellion that united two of the three main social groups: the Pharisees and the Sadducees banded together to drive out the Roman governor at the time.
Over time, the Zealots developed their own agenda and separated from other social groups. Josephus, the premier historian of the time, describes what separated them from the Pharisees:
“But of the fourth sect of Jewish philosophy, Judas the Galilean was the author. These men agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord. They also do not value dying any kinds of death, nor indeed do they heed the deaths of their relations and friends, nor can any such fear make them call any man lord.”
One fascinating splinter group of the Zealots is known as the Sicarii. Sicarii means “dagger-men” in Latin and refers to the fact that members of this group would attempt to assassinate prominent Roman figures. They were the instigators of a rebellion in 66 AD, which led to Rome sacking Jerusalem and destroying the temple.
In the quote above, Josephus mentions three other groups in Judean culture. These were the Essenes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees.
The Essenes believed the best way to serve God was by retreating from the world to live a communal lifestyle. According to Josephus, they didn’t get married but mentored other people’s children while they were still pliable and fit for learning, teaching them their ways. The Essenes had everything in common. They lived very simple lives focused on prayer and devotion to Yahweh. The Essenes made several contributions that have helped biblical studies and archeologists: they wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Pharisees had the largest layperson support. They argued for a literal and strict interpretation of the Torah. The Pharisees believed in an afterlife with two distinct destinations—similar to the Christian idea of heaven and hell. The Pharisees also believed in God’s providence over all things and human’s responsibility for their actions. They allowed for new doctrines, developed in the intertestamental period, that the Sadducees did not. The main differentiating factor between the Pharisees and the Sadducees was the Pharisees’ acceptance of the new doctrine. As stated by Josephus, the Zealots held most of the Pharisees’ beliefs.
The Sadducees were the most politically connected group of the day, with the high priest always belonging to their party. They cooperated more with Roman rule than the Pharisees but weren’t progressive in every way. They held a more conservative view of the Torah and did not believe in the final resurrection—that people would rise again at the world’s end. They held strictly to what the Torah said and did not allow for any doctrines that developed through the deuterocanonical books.
The list of Jesus’ disciples in Matthew mentions that the 12 men included Matthew, the tax collector, and Simon the Zealot (Matthew 10:2-4).
These two groups could not have been more different. Matthew the tax collector was a sellout to the Roman powers. Before following Jesus, his Jewish countrymen would have seen him as the most disloyal.
Meanwhile, Zealots wanted nothing to do with the Roman power structures. They sought only to follow Yahweh and have no earthly master over them. They were willing to seek this out to the point of violence. One of the main targets for that violence would have been a tax collector.
This shows Jesus’ great sway over his disciples: to make the two most different political parties within Judaism come under the same rabbi shows his power to reconcile everyone together. This idea would be expanded further after his death and resurrection when even Jews and Gentiles are reconciled in Christ Jesus. Simon and Matthew are a beautiful picture of that reconciliation.
Understanding why the Zealots were as popular as they were helps us to grasp the cultural milieu Jesus found himself. Tensions with Rome were high when Jesus started his ministry. Most people’s expectations of the Messiah were that he would conquer the oppressors and start a physical kingdom on earth. Understanding the Zealots helps us grasp how tense things were between the Jews and the Romans.
The Messiah conquered the greatest oppressor we humans face (Satan), and brought his kingdom. However, both of these were actions wildly different than anyone was expecting.
The Zealots’ time to shine came in 66 AD when they joined forces with the Sicarii and laid siege to Jerusalem. They raised a rebellion against the Romans and succeeded in kicking them out. Then, when Rome tried to get back in, the Sicarii and Zealots destroyed more of the city’s food so the citizenry would fight back. They took out several battalions of Roman soldiers.
The Sicarii, unlike the Zealots, did not have the morals set forth by the Pharisaic law. Because of this, they also massacred 700 women and children thought to be loyal to Rome. The Sicarii are the extremist sect of the Zealots and took their violence and doctrine to its logical end. Their brutality against the Romans eventually resulted in Rome’s retaliation in 70 AD, when Jerusalem was destroyed.
After failing in such a spectacular fashion to destroy Roman control, the Zealots faded into obscurity. There were still Jewish nationalists, but no large-scale rebellions succeeded after 70 AD.
We can learn several things from the Zealots. They show us that trying to do things on our way, not God’s, leads to destruction. They resorted to brutal violence against the Romans because they trusted in their own military prowess. We can do the same things when we trust in our abilities instead of trusting in God and his power.
Another thing we can learn from the Zealots is that the hope we have in politics will not satisfy us. We can labor for political change, but if God is absent from this desire, the goal will fail (Psalm 127:3). We place our final hope in God, not humans.
Photo Credit: Getty Images/DanielVilleneuve
Ben Reichert works with college students in New Zealand. He graduated from Iowa State in 2019 with degrees in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and agronomy. He is passionate about church history, theology, and having people walk with Jesus. When not working or writing you can find him running or hiking in the beautiful New Zealand Bush.