Daniel Lesson 48

Maccabees to Masada – 11:32-35

I attended a luncheon for Christians to develop some sort of approach to Christians in governmental services and the elective process. At this meeting the issue came forward that we have seen so often in the book of Daniel, and that was all this is very fine, to talk about Christians becoming politically involved, the problem is what does it mean? We already have some Christians who are (quote) “politically involved” and it means nothing simply because many who are called Christians and who are indeed are Christians know nothing about political wisdom and faced with a choice between a Christian who has no political wisdom and an atheist who did have political and knew what he was doing, I’d vote for the atheist. The reason is that when you deal with the divine institution’s you’ve got to deal with wisdom. This is what Daniel has been teaching all along. Without trained Christians, Christians knowledgeable in wisdom, you can make all the plans you want and nothing will come to pass. There is no substitute for day in, day out repetitious training. And because by and large the Church has not done this we have a generation of idiots who are leading the Christian camp; this goes from many clergymen on down to many of the so-called lay activities. Many of the Bible classes are led by people who don’t know Genesis from Revelation and it all comes together to share someone’s ignorant opinion to someone else’s ignorant opinion. Time and time again people neglect the day in day out, day in day out, day in day out habitual training which is necessary to live for Christ effectively.

Daniel is a wisdom book that deals with this problem of day in day out effectiveness. Again we come to the divine institutions and remember that to function in any one of these institutions or spheres of life requires a pretty good background in Scriptural principles. We also understand from Daniel that unbelievers, non-Christian can have a lot of wisdom they simply picked up through the college of hard knocks. You can’t live in God’s creation for too many years without at least learning something about cause/effect in His creation.

So Daniel has been dealing with wisdom but in these two areas: the fourth divine institution, the area of government, and the fifth divine institution, the area of international relations. Daniel gives us certain very good principles to function with. One of the things that we have studied in Daniel is the principle of separation. This was seen in the earlier chapters of the book when the conditions and principles of a believer separating from the authority of government, phrased a different way, civil disobedience. What are the Biblical teachings on civil disobedience? Daniel was civilly disobedient over only a very small area and so we have some principles on civil disobedience. One is that the only acceptable issue for direct civil disobedience on the part of a Christian is when the state begins to dictate the terms of worship. When that happens Christians are authorized to violate Romans 13 and they are no longer under the civil law at that point. This is why the state does not have ultimate authority outside of its own legitimate sphere. Translated in terms of our chart on divine institutions, the state has limited authority. When the state comes over into the sphere of the Church, then the state has exceeded its legitimate authority and Christians are no longer bound by Christ to observe or to be obedient to civil authorities.

Some examples of when this happened; in Daniel we found out that we have Daniel’s forced participation at idolatrous cultic feasts. When that occurred, then Daniel was able to civilly disobey. When the government made a decree prohibiting prayer in Jehovah’s name then believers were given the green light to disobey. When it was prohibited to worship God and in His place was put a state sponsored idol or religion, then believers were authorized to disobey. So those are selected areas of civil disobedience, but Daniel cushions that teaching with a balance and he says even if that kind of an issue comes forward, then even then the believer ought to be gracious and to seek a way out to avoid the conflict if possible. Paul says live peaceably with all men in so far as it is possible, and Daniel recommends that we try to sell our platform to the authorities on a pragmatic basis. If they will not accept the authority of the Word of God then try to show them that the Christian position works out better than their position on a pragmatic basis.

In essence the second teaching of Daniel in the area of civil disobedience is a lesson you will now see in Daniel 11 all over again, and that is avoid false and unnecessary conflicts that are simply the result of the pride of the old sin nature. There’s an appeal even to believer’s pride to civilly disobey when there are other options available. It caters to the willful part of man to have a cause that makes him a rebel, even on a small scale. So the Christian, when he thinks about civil disobedience ought to remember that he can be sucked into a satanic trap based on the lust of his own sin nature for rebellion and it can be a manufactured conflict, a conflict where there need not have been one. And this is going to be the principle of Daniel 11.

We’ve also found out from Daniel various principles of the believers function as a citizen. We’ve summarized these under three separate points. We said first that the Christian citizen following the wisdom of Daniel must exercise the faith technique over the long range, that is he must have hope and that means when he faces a crisis it doesn’t make an Armageddon out of every crisis that comes. He doesn’t make the tribulation out of every trial that comes along. He takes the long-range perspective and is patient.

The second principle as far as the Christian citizen functioning as a king-priest is that we follow sort of an apprenticeship in both the areas of being kings and in the areas of being priests. In the area of being kings we apply wisdom principles as so far as our own authority reaches; translated into political terms the Christian today does have the power to vote and he ought to make sure that he is voting according to the norms of Biblical wisdom. As a priest the citizen functions as an intercessor, 1 Timothy 2:1-4, and activates angelic forces as we have seen in Daniel so far.

A third principle is that Christians acting as citizens also ought to avoid impatient millennial efforts at revolution, at bringing about the perfect social order. We learned from Daniel 11:14, at the end of that verse it says they “shall exalt themselves to establish the vision, but they shall fall.” “The vision” is the vision of the perfect social order and that vision was attempted by some radicals in the state of Israel, the pro-Syrian anti-Egyptian party that so weakened the Egyptians that they lost the battle at 200 BC at Panias, the Syrian, the king of the north, took over and that led to Antiochus IV or Antiochus Epiphanes, the antichrist of the ancient world. So what did believers do by trying to bring in the perfect social order? They brought in the antichrist. We have two modern illustrations where precisely the same thing happened. In the French Revolution people fought for liberty, equality and fraternity, and they brought about dictatorship, new classes and factionalism. The French Revolution was a failure. The Russian Revolution was also the same thing. We revolt to bring in a workers paradise and we resulted in bringing in a workers nightmare. Every attempt, as Daniel 11:14 underscores, every attempt to bring in the millennial kingdom apart from the return of Christ, will result in destruction of freedom, not perfection.

Last week we left off at the end of verse 32 with the Maccabean Wars. Today we are going to study Daniel 11:33-35 winding up in a presentation on Masada and what that was in history. In verse 32, Jesus Christ appearing to Daniel said “the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.” This refers to the great Maccabean brothers; we read you the story, how the apocalyptic literature of the post-canon period, the heroics of the Maccabees, Judas Maccabees, Jonathan Maccabees, these brothers in the great valiant wars for freedom, all to undo the damage of verse 14 where believers had tried to bring in freedom and lost it.

Daniel 11:33 leaves the Maccabees and goes into the post-Maccabean period. It says: “And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days. [34] Now when they shall fall, they shall be helped with a little help: but many shall cleave to them with flatteries. [35] And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed.”

Since verse 36 starts a prophetic section of Daniel 11, we know that verses 33-35 deal with the historical period from the Maccabees down to the return of Christ. Today we’ll just study a select portion of that history to show you once again some of the great wisdom principles that control history. This period of history began with the Maccabees and the Hasmonean rule in 142 BC. It’s said to be 142 BC because Simon, the last son of Mattathias secured tax exemption from Rome for the state of Israel, and so 142 BC is called the beginning of the Hasmonean rule. This is the time when the Jewish state was relatively free from foreign domination, not absolutely because since 586 BC it will be impossible for Israel ever to have true freedom apart from Gentile support, until Jesus returns. But Simon, the son of Mattathias, gained through revolution and through guerilla raids and through diplomatic maneuvering tax exemption for the Israel state. That started the rule of the Hasmoneans.

He was succeeded by his son, John Hyrcanus who was a military genius. John Hyrcanus took over and with John Hyrcanus during the Hasmonean rule you begin to have even this effect in Israel, this movement, begins to go astray doctrinally, for with John Hyrcanus elements of cruelty are not introduced by the Jews; whereas before the Jews were forced to be Hellenized, John Hyrcanus forcibly Judaizes the people around Israel. He conquers Idumea, and makes them Jews by compulsory circumcision. Therefore we have a cruelty now on the part of those who were in turn being treated cruelly, and at this point there’s a split in the Jewish movement, and a split that foreshadows the New Testament. Understanding the Hasmonean period will set us up to understand better the Gospels; the political forces active at this time are the political forces that will one day crucify Christ.

What were those political forces? John Hyrcanus’ movement was largely that of the aristocrats. John Hyrcanus, the high priests and the aristocrats formed what later became known in the New Testament as the Sanhedrin party. These were the upper, wealthy classes; they were somewhat liberal in their theology, they denied the reality of the resurrection, and that figures in one of Paul’s trials in the book of Acts. The Sanhedrin are direct political descendants of the Maccabean Revolution. And out from this movement, out from the Sanhedrin and the Sadducees that accompanied this movement we have the splitting off of the Pharisees. It was during the Hasmonean period that the Pharisees began to protest the state of Israel.

Today if you go into Miasherim, in the city of Jerusalem you will still find the Pharisees protesting the modern state of Israel. They require that on the Sabbath at sundown that all cars cease, and if you drive your car into Miasherim you’d better have a good windshield because they’ll throw rocks at you. They still adopt the old Biblical principle of killing with stones. Some women recently had to be rescued from Miasherim because they walked in with the wrong kind of clothes on and they didn’t like it and started stoning them. In other words, the Pharisees are still alive and well, and they are still against the Jewish faith; they still irritate in the modern state of Israel because they consider it an apostate state, and in a way they’re right. They refuse to use the currency of Israel because it’s apostate currency. They refuse to recognize the state of Israel because it has not been set up by Messiah. All that movement that existed over the centuries, by the way Paul of the New Testament was a Pharisee, that entire movement started back under the reign of the Hasmoneans when John Hyrcanus began, for political reasons, to subjugate people to Judaism and the Pharisees objected and said these people were only being subjugated by external force and not an internal willingness to abide by Scripture.

A second problem with John Hyrcanus in the Hasmonean period was that the picture began to be phrased in political terms only, not spiritual and doctrinal terms. And so you have a subtle transition to politics by works instead of politics by grace. John Hyrcanus was succeeded by one of his sons, Aristabolus I, still under the Hasmonean rule. He was even more cruel than his father; his mother was supposed to take over one sphere of the government and her son, Aristabolus I another; Aristabolus made a deal with the police, had his mother arrested, put her in prison and starved her to death, so that’s how Aristabolus I gained ascendancy in Israel. Aristabolus freed Galilee and for the first time since 722 BC Galilee was now (quote) “free.” But at the same time Aristabolus set free Galilee he set in motion the wheels that were to figure in Christ’s trial because Galilee now became the hideaway of what was called the zealot movement, the ultra patriot movement always originated in Galilee and it was this problem that Jesus had being a Galilean to disassociate Himself with the zealots throughout the pages of the New Testament. Aristabolus I was the man who freed Galilee.

He was succeeded by his son, Alexander Janneus or Jonathan, the man who first fortified Masada, as you’ll see in a few moments. Alexander Janneus married his older brother’s wife in a Levirate marriage and he built the kingdom of Israel out to almost the boundaries of David, a fantastic time, a large expansion of the free state of Israel. But Alexander Janneus was again political and not spiritual and he was again very cruel and unmerciful. When several rebels tried to thwart him he had 800 men crucified while he had a party with his harem girlfriends on the top of the palace roof. So this is how Jonathan went down in history.

And there were various intrigues and palace goings on until the year 63 BC when Pompeii came in to take it over for Rome. The Romans had enough fiddling around with Syria, the Parthians were developing in the east and so Rome had to secure the eastern frontier and so we have Pompeii taking over. Roman intrigues and their political deals went on for a time, Julius Caesar assassinated and so on, the Battle of Actium in 331 BC when finally Mark Antony was taken care of, put in his place, and out of all this business came a man who is very prominent in the New Testament and very prominent in the Masada episode, Herod the Great. Herod the Great was the first man, he married Jewess and he always had problems being accepted by the Jewish people because he came from the south Idumea, he wasn’t really a Jew in his family line, he married into the Hebrew nation. He was always perched on a limb between being knocked off by Cleopatra in Egypt and being taken over by the Jewish nationalists. But Herod was able to do some of the most magnificent architecture in the entire history of Israel.

Remember the temple episode when Jesus walked into the temple and he cleansed the temple and I showed a picture of the wailing wall and I said if you look at the modern wailing wall you can tell which stones came from Herod’s period because all of the Herodian masonry is shaped like this in the rock, it always has a frame, like a picture and wherever you see that kind of rock you know that it’s of the Herodian period. Herod built and built and built and built, and one of his most magnificent projects was the fortress of Masada, a fortress that was designed to protect him both from the Jews and from an invasion from the south and Cleopatra. There were several Cleopatras so don’t worry about the famous one with Mark Antony.

Herod was the man also known in the New Testament for his cruelty. In the Christmas story when every baby was slaughtered two years and under, that was Herod that did that; typical, when Herod got angry with someone he took it out on an entire class of people. And obviously he had a problem that he might be supplanted by the Jewish nationalist forces. There was this rumor that Messiah was born somewhere so Herod used genocide as a solution. There was no United Nations to appeal to for world conscience and therefore soldiers had his soldiers go into every midwife’s room, where she took care of her baby, and had them slaughtered, a horrible thing, the slaughter of the innocents of the New Testament. Christ came into this world incarnate under a very, very cruel tyrant, a man who figured very, very prominently in all this.

Now it says in Daniel 11:33, because again verses 33-35 apply to this period of history, and it says, “And they that understand among the people” those are believers with Bible doctrine, great people who trust the Word of God, “they that understand among the people shall instruct many,” they shall have Bible classes, and the Word of God shall be taught, and Jesus Christ predicts this will by typical of that era of history, when the political machines are going and there’s one intrigue after another, people are starved, people are beaten, people are assassinated and it with such great instability up above believers will be quietly teaching the Word, teaching the Word, teaching the Word. Yet, it says in verse 33, “yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame,” it will be a time when believers would be persecuted, it says, even “by captivity and by spoil, many days.” It will be a time of tremendous suffering and was during this early period. This is why Mary and Joseph hid the baby Jesus, they knew exactly…their grandfathers could tell them what happened during this period. Their grandfathers could remember when Pompeii came into the land and took over and they could remember the sufferings under Herod; they knew well the kind of cruelty that was typical of their day, so it’s no wonder that Mary and Joseph fled to where? To the place of Herod’s archenemy, Egypt. So a lot of the New Testament passages are explained if you know this history.

Daniel 11:34, “Now when they shall fall, they shall be helped with a little help,” there won’t be much help for believers, all during this period of time, and remember these verses extend through the Christian era on into just before the Second Advent; this explains why, verse 34, that believers are now dying behind the thousands behind the iron curtain, slaughtered and starved to death; there’s all sorts of protests over every suffering minority except the Christian minority; isn’t that interesting, and they go on rotting in Siberian camps, pastors go on being torn away from their families and once a man is arrested in Russia today for association with Christ and the evangelical cause, none of his family can get a job and that renders his family automatically a case to be supplied materially by other Christians; great suffering, and this is a prediction of it, they will be helped with only “a little help,” there won’t be much during this time of the rise of the kingdom of man. “…but many shall cleave to them with flatteries.” Originally this referred to the unbelieving Jews who would turn traitor against the believing remnant, and this happened in a very poignant way in the year 70 AD.

Daniel 11:35, here’s Jesus’ explanation of why we must go through an era of history when believers are helped with only a little help. “And some of them of understanding shall fall,” notice it says some, not all, but some of the doctrinal people, some of the people who have trusted in Christ and have grown, some “shall fall, to try them,” to test them, that means not fall spiritually, that means fall under physical affliction, some will be tortured, “to test them and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end,” which is Christ’s return, “because it is yet for a time appointed.” Deliverance is not yet in history.

I think we in America fail to realize as Christians that the lot of most believers over the 1900 years of church history has not been ours; our lot is not a suffering lot yet, and in our lack of suffering we have demeaned Bible doctrine and Bible teaching and perhaps we’re asking to be tested and to be tried so that we will get back into the Word.

It says it will be “for a time yet appointed.” God, later on, gave certain clarification to verses 33-35; turn to Luke 21:20, Jesus in His briefing of believers before he was crucified, prophesied of future events. This prophecy includes not only the ultimate Second Advent of Christ but events that would shortly come to pass outside the city walls where this was given. This is an instruction in Luke, more than in Matthew; in Luke this is part of His Olivet Discourse in which He warns the believing remnant, those spoken of in Daniel 11:33-35, this is where He provides them with an escape to minimize physical suffering. There is no glory in fighting for a lost cause. Remember our introductory principle; don’t start a confrontation if you can avoid it, it merely caters to the pride of the old sin nature that relishes conflict. And here Jesus gives a directive to avoid conflict under certain conditions.

He says in Luke 21:20, “And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is near.” So He says… [tape turns] …sign of the time when you look out across these walls and you see the city under siege, verse 21, “Then let them who are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them who are in the midst of it depart; and let not them that are in the countries enter into it. [22] For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. [23] But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! For there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. [24] And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”

In 66 AD we have the first Jewish revolt. Jesus dies, again notice your forty year distance that occurs again and again in Scripture, as 66 AD approaches the first Jewish revolt occurs. One Sabbath day there are spontaneous riots against the Jewish ghettos, all up and down the coast; nobody to this day knows how those riots all spontaneously started. Some suspect it was a Hellenistic plot but whatever it was, one day the Gentiles raided the Jewish ghettos, all up and down the Mediterranean coast. And this was the start of the Jewish revolt, they said we’ve had it, the Romans cannot give us protection. We want the protection of an independent state. And so in 66 AD the Jews revolted against the Romans. The Romans tried to quell it with a makeshift force that came in from the sea, that marched into Jerusalem from what is now Tel Aviv, and surrounded the city of Jerusalem. At that time in the city of Jerusalem there was a group of believing Jews under the leadership of a man by the name of Clopas, who is the cousin of the Lord Jesus Christ and cousin of his brother James. Jesus’ physical brother James was the head of the Jerusalem church, when he died, the cousin, Clopas, took over. And under Clopas’ leadership the believers gathered together in the city of Jerusalem as they watched the Roman armies encompass them in 66 AD. Clopas made the decisions, he said we know what our Lord told us; he told us that when we see the armies surrounding this city we are not to fight, we are to get out; now is not the time for a confrontation because we’re going to lose; God has ordained a failure at this point.

So we evacuate; that’s the prudent, wise thing to do here.

So for some strange reason the Roman commander broke the siege of Jerusalem, marched down the road to Beth-horon and back out to what is now Tel Aviv; no one to this day knows why except the fact that we know from Roman military reports he didn’t think that he had enough military equipment to continue the siege. When the Roman army broke camp and the siege was lifted from the city of Jerusalem, Clopas led the believers out of the walls of Jerusalem and over across the Jordan to a place called Pella, and while these believers are packing up their goods and walking out of the city wall, the unbelieving Jews watched them, and they muttered to themselves, so this is what faith in Jesus of Nazareth does, when the nation needs patriots the Christians are traitors. And from that point on the unbelieving Jew called forever the believing Jew a [Hebrew word, sound like: mishuman], or plural, mishumadim [sp?]; it comes from the Hebrew verb to destroy, and it means in this sense a traitor. And this is what Jewish people today call their fellow Jews who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the mishumadim. And their mind, if they are informed Jews, goes back to this event in 66 AD when following Christ’s mandate in Luke 21 Clopas led the believers outside the city of Jerusalem, they laid down their arms and fled. They fled, not because they were afraid to fight, the fled because God’s Word told them to flee; it was their submission to the Word of God that led to this situation.

Finally the Roman armies returned to the city of Jerusalem under a man by the name of Vespasian. He too conquered the city, laid it under siege; he was called back to become Caesar and his son, Titus continued the siege. Inside the city was a group of ultra patriots called the zealots. These were the people that manned the walls against the Roman siege. And finally when the siege broke through the zealots from Judea and those who lived through the siege of Jerusalem fled south to a place called Masada. Here’s the wilderness of Judea and down here is a tall mountain, and they went down there because Herod had a great fortress erected and there these people held out for two years. The Romans decided that they had to stop this kind of thing because the Romans were smart, they knew when you let some people violate the law then all people violate the law and the Roman commander realized that to allow any rebels, no matter how innocent they may be, a Masada would be a demonstration of Rome’s weakness. So the commander ordered the 10^th legion down to lay siege to Masada and there begins this epic that we will see.

The siege of Masada is important for several reasons; I’ll demonstrate some of these reasons and give you some background on it before the slides and then afterwards we’ll read one Bible passage in conclusion. As the Romans laid siege to Masada, the mountain looks like this, on the north side one of Herod’s palaces, another one on the west side, a tall mountain sticking out of the plain with the Dead Sea off to the east. The Roman camp surrounded it, they had siege camps; you’ll see them in the slides. The Roman engineers designed their military camps so great that they lasted 2,000 years. The Romans broke up into 8 camps all around, and then from camp to camp they built a wall, up the cliffs and down the cliffs, through the valleys and everything because they said not one Jew was going to escape our clutches. So as the Jews watched with horror from the top of Masada, by the way who were they on Masada but 960 men, women and children, as they looked down below they saw the Romans patiently building a wall and then guards 24 hours a day would be walking the wall. No Jew was to escape this siege. The Romans were determined.

Finally, since they couldn’t do anything climbing up the cliff the Romans came up with the idea, we’ll make a ladder all the way to the top of the mountain and so they took 10,000 Jewish slaves; Jewish slaves because they knew that the Jews on top wouldn’t kill their own kind. So laboring under the Jewish slaves who personally dug the sand, they built a gigantic ramp against the side of Masada, large enough so that the Romans could bring their battering rams up this long inclined plain to the top and smash down the Jewish wall at the top. So day after day, month after month, the ramp got bigger and bigger until finally the battering ram began to smash against the wall the Jews constructed and break through. The Jewish commander realized that they were short so therefore they constructed a second wall behind the first one, a wall made of timbers and earth, cleverly constructed, so that as the Roman battering ram smashed against it it would only make it harder.

Well, the Romans were engineers and they realized there’s more than one way to skin a cat so they sat down and had a conference of their army engineers, how do we get through this one. And some of the army engineers said it’s very easy, all we do is throw pitch and fire down on the wood, knock the barrier down and then go right on through the earth. So they brought this big long ramp up, big siege tower, and they pushed it all the way up the ramp and then they dropped out flaming sticks with pitch on and burned down these logs; that happened one afternoon, and it was too hot to go through the wall that evening so the Romans had planned to go through that breach in the morning. And while they prepared the Jews were also prepared and Josephus has a passage of what happened that night as the Jews were faced with annihilation. A famous speech was given by the Jewish commander.

He said: “Since we long ago, my friends, resolved never to be servants to the Romans, nor to any other than to God Himself, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind, the time has now come that obliges us to make that resolution true in practice.” And it goes on how he recommended suicide and the story of the suicide is given in Josephus’ Wars of the Jews, chapter 8 and 9. Nine hundred and sixty men, women and children gathered together; each husband was assigned to kill his wife and kill his children. And then they drew lots and ten men were designed to go around and slice the throats of all the other Jewish soldiers, each one by the side of his wife and child. And then of those ten they again drew lots and one was designed to kill the other nine and then finally kill himself. How do we know all this happened if they were all dead? Because two husbands could not bring themselves to kill their wives and they hid them, and these women later escaped and told the gruesome story of the end of Masada. And before they died and before they killed themselves they knew the Romans would break through at this point and so what did they do? They gathered all their water and all their food out so the Romans, when they broke through the walls would see that you haven’t starved us out, and there’s no food here either, we have defied Rome until the last. And that was the end of Masada, 960 men, women and children, all zealots and all died by suicide. The Romans, needless to say, after this had a great deal of respect for Jewish resistance.

Now for our benefit as Christians as you watch some of these slides I want you to see some questions in your bulletin; those questions are designed to affirm your faith in Scripture. Josephus is a man who is giving you eyewitness historic evidence; there are always those critics who argue that the Bible is not reliable because it is eyewitness evidence and we as the scientific era have our own conclusions of what must and must not have happened. Josephus tells us intimate details of where the fortress is located, he tells us the entire story; he tells about the cisterns on the top of Masada, he tells us how they grew their own food on the top of Masada; he tells us about the vast storehouses of food, food that had been there for decades without perishing. And people laugh at Josephus like they laugh at the Scriptures, surely these ancient historians don’t know what they’re talking about. And then archeology in the 60s began to excavate Masada they found Joseph did, after all, know what he was talking about.