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The Masada mystery – Mass suicide or twisted science for political ends?

Bytut editor

February 20, 2017

SOTT – In 73 or 74 CE, 960 Jewish zealots – men, women and children – committed suicide on top of the mountain of Masada by the Dead Sea in Israel rather than be captured by the Romans. The story, told by the Roman historian Josephus, is one of the most famous from antiquity. But did it actually happen? Yigael Yadin, the late Israeli archaeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who excavated the site in the mid-1960s, said that it did. Moreover, he also said that the objects found during his dig proved it. His subsequently published book, Masada: Herod’s Fortress and the Zealots’ Last Stand (1966), was a bestseller. CONTINUE READING

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One thought on “The Masada mystery – Mass suicide or twisted science for political ends?”

derek says:

February 21, 2017 at 3:12 am

Anybody with a healthy dose of cynicism knows full well.
Yadin found only three skeletons and the Israeli army buried 25 or so caskets i believe filled with pig bones?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ancient-battle-divides-israel-as-masada-myth-unravels-1275878.html
This sounds more realistic.
The only literary source is Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian who had himself taken part in the revolt before joining the Roman side. His account says that the defenders of Masada took no part in the war against Rome during the siege of Jerusalem, but instead plundered local villages including En Gedi on the Dead Sea, where “WOMEN AND CHILDREN, MORE THAN 700 IN NUMBER, were butchered”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/22/israel-masada-myth-doubts
also
The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Myth making in Israel. Nachman Ben-Yehuda.

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