Sicarii
Sicarii (Latin plural of
Sicarius 'dagger-' or later contract- killer) is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of
Jerusalem in
70 CE, to the
Jewish
Zealots, (or
insurgents) who attempted to expel the
Romans and their partisans from
Judea:
"When Albinus reached the city of Jerusalem, he bent every effort and made every provision to ensure peace in the land by exterminating most of the Sicarii." —
Josephus,
Jewish Antiquities (xx.208)
The sicarii even resorted to murder to obtain their objective. Under their cloaks they concealed
sicae, or small daggers, from which they received their name. At popular assemblies, particularly during the pilgrimage to the
Temple Mount, they stabbed their enemies (Romans or Roman sympathizers), lamenting ostentatiously after the deed to escape detection. Literally, Sicarii meant "dagger-men".
The victims of the Sicarii included
Jonathan the High Priest, though it is possible that his murder was orchestrated by the Roman governor
Felix. Some of their murders were met with severe retaliation by the Romans on the entire Jewish population of the country. On some occasions, they could be bribed to spare their intended victims. If the narrative of
Barabbas is not an invention to create a
parable, even convicted Sicarii were occasionally released on promising to spare their opponents, though there is no evidence for this practice outside the Gospels, which are largely in accord on this point. Once, Josephus relates, after kidnapping the secretary of Eleazar, governor of the Temple precincts, they agreed to release him in exchange for ten of their captured comrades.
At the beginning of the Jewish Revolt (
66), the Sicarii, with the help of other Zealots, gained access to Jerusalem and committed a series of atrocities, in order to force the population to war. In one account, given in the
Talmud, they destroyed the city's food supply, so that the people would be forced to fight against the Roman siege instead of negotiating peace. Their leaders, including Menahem ben Jair,
Eleazar ben Jair, and
Bar Giora, were important figures in the war, and Eleazar ben Jair eventually succeeded in escaping the Roman onslaught. Together with a small group of followers, he made his way to the abandoned fortress of
Masada, where he continued his resistance to the Romans until
73, when the Romans took the fortress and found that most of its defenders had committed suicide rather than surrender.
In Josephus'
Jewish War (vii), after the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, the
sicarii became the dominant revolutionary Jewish party, scattered abroad. Josephus particularly associates them with the mass suicide at
Masada in 73 and to the subsequent refusal "to submit to the taxation census when Cyrenius was sent to Judea to make one" (Josephus) as part of their religious and political scheme as resistance fighters::"Some of the faction of the
Sicarion...not content with having saved themselves, again embarked on new revolutionary scheming, persuading those that received them there to assert their freedom, to esteem the Romans as no better than themselves and to look upon God as their only Lord and Master" (quoted by Eisenman, p 180).
In the name of
Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, the
epithet "Iscariot" is read by the majority of scholars as a Hellenized transformation of
sicarius. The suffix "-ote" denotes membership or belonging to - in this case to the sicarii. This meaning is lost when the Gospels are translated into
modern Hebrew: Judas is rendered as "Ish-Kerayot," making him
a man from the townships. Robert Eisenman presents the general view of secular historians (Eisenman p 179) in identifying him instead as "Judas the
Sicarios". Most of the consonants and vowels tally—in Josephus,
Sicarioi/Sicariōn; in the New Testament
Iscariot. (Eisenman 1997 pp 179 etc)
Sicarii had obvious parallels to a far later phenomenon, the medieval
Hashshashin, Muslim fanatics whose talent for murders inspired the term
assassin. The assassins, like the Sicarii, were notoriously willing to butcher coreligionists who didn't back their policies, in the Assassins' view all
infidels to Islam. Like the fanatical Masada holdouts, the Assassins built mountain fortresses in desolate areas to defend themselves against military enemies. They also used the dagger almost exclusively to carry out assassinations.
A more overt reference to Sicarii occurred in
Colombia since the 1980s.
Sicarios, professional criminals adept at kidnapping, bombing, and theft, gradually became a class of their own in organized crime in Colombia. Described by
Mark Bowden in his investigative work
Killing Pablo, the sicarios played a key role in the wave of violence against police and authorities during the early 1990s campaign by the government to capture and extradite fugitive druglord
Pablo Escobar and other partners in the
Medellin cocaine cartel. Unlike their ancient namesake, sicarios have never had an ideological underpinning. Perhaps the only cause that they were attributed to was the opposition to extradition of Colombian criminals. Though Escobar employed sicarios to eliminate his enemies, these assassins were active more as independent individuals or gangs than loyal followers of a leader, and there were plenty of sicarios willing to serve the rival
Cali cartel. Nevertheless, many died in combat against police forces, indicating that they were not all inclined to bend to the wind. Indeed, long before Escobar's time, Colombia in particular had a long legacy of professional kidnappers (
secuestradores) and murderers, whom he emulated.
*
Jewish Encyclopedia: "Sicarii"
*
Robert Eisenman,
James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls,1997 (VikingPenguin)
*
Hashshashin*
Josephus*
Judas Iscariot
