# The Sicarii · The Cult Dossier · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

Source: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/atlas/library/cults/010-the-sicarii/ · The Congregation of Tomorrow · the Atlas · language: en
The same words a person sees on this page, nothing more and nothing hidden.
Our own words are free to use under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), naming the Congregation of Tomorrow. Words of others keep their own terms.
Every page of the site, listed: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/ai/pages.json · the whole site in one file: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/llms-full.txt

← The Cult Dossier: all 182
The Cult Dossier · No. 010 · Political / Terror
The Sicarii
Dagger-men; radical wing of the Zealots
c.6 – 73 CE · Roman Judaea
I. ANTIQUITY — THE MYSTERY CULTS
Religiously-motivated political terror
### Who led it
### What it worshipped and taught
### Who was in it
### How it ended, or where it stands
### The dead
### Of note
### Its timeline
- 6 CE Census of Quirinius; Judas of Galilee leads a tax revolt.
- 50s–60s CE Sicarii assassinate opponents with concealed daggers (sicae) in festival crowds; the high priest Jonathan is murdered.
- 66 CE Great Revolt begins; Menahem seizes Masada and is killed by rivals in Jerusalem.
- 70 CE Jerusalem and the Second Temple destroyed by Titus.
- 73/74 CE Fall of Masada. Josephus records a mass suicide pact of 960 defenders, men drawing lots to kill each other, the last killing himself. He gives the date as 15 April 73 CE, and states that 960 of 967 died, with TWO WOMEN AND FIVE CHILDREN surviving to tell it.
- 1963–1965 THE ARCHAEOLOGY DOES NOT MATCH THE TEXT. YIGAL YADIN'S EXCAVATION RECOVERED THE REMAINS OF ONLY TWENTY-EIGHT PEOPLE — 25 in a cave near the top of the southern cliff and 3 in the Northern Palace — against Josephus's 960. Yadin did find an OSTRACON BEARING THE NAME ELEAZAR BEN YAIR, and the oddly specific casualty figures suggest Josephus was working from an official Roman report.
- 1980s–present SCHOLARS HAVE CHALLENGED THE ACCOUNT EVER SINCE, AND THE QUESTION CANNOT BE SETTLED: archaeological remains admit multiple readings, and the site can neither prove nor disprove the text. It has also been argued that Yadin's Zionist-nationalist commitments shaped his interpretation, though not the quality of his fieldwork. THIS FILE RECORDS THE DISPUTE RATHER THAN RESOLVING IT.
The Atlas The Door