The Myth of Masada
March 13, 2013 at 3:58 am
(This post was last modified: March 13, 2013 at 4:03 am by EGross.)
I posted this on a different forum, but since the Christian community, for some reason, also loves Masada (fomr some reason that escapes me) I thought I'd post it here as well:
I live about an 1 hour drive from Masada (Matzada). It makes for a nice dawn picnic. But I prefer a mid-day view during the winter. In the wee hours the IDF usually trains it's new recuits by having them march up the mountain at dawn and telling them the myth as though it were history. I prefer taking the cable car! It has also become far too Christian-ized in the past few years for my tastes, with a video speaking of John the Baptist and other foreign customsm, and christian statues and medallions sold in the gift shop. I prefer a less tacky version.
10 years or so ago, Dr. ben Yehuda explained in his book "The Masada Myth" (available on amazon), how the myth deveoped, which, until 50 or so years ago, nobody even gave it any thought. I add this because just as those go "How could anyone create a Jesus myth. It must be true!", this is a modern day example using Josephus as a source.
The lack of a single body (excluding about a half dozen roman solders found in a cave) from this mass suicide, the description of the palace that does not match the current ruins in size, number of columns, or design, the speech that he could never have witnessed, and the fact that the Rabbinical writers never wrote a single word of it throughout history, makes it like the Jesus story - you have a few history bits inserted with some fiction that not only cannot be confirmed, but do not make a lot of rational sense.
The story itself was fairly dead until Israel needed some sort of symbol to rally behind, and the soldiers and student are still indoctrinated, but more and more are seeing it as a ruin without any suicide ending. Josephus seems to have loved suicide, considering it pops up in several places. It was amazing that there were any Jews left by his accounts.
Think of it, the Jews have poetic dirges of the atrocities and the deaths of that period, but not one poem that mentions Masada. Nada. A story that has the husbands slash up their wives and children, then each other, and then the bodies go "poof" and the memory of it goes "poof", except by someone who was obviously never there - relying on details he did not know, and a speech he had not heard, and most likely, a battle that never took place.
Nachman ben Yehuda, a professor of Anthropology, did a presentation concerning the Masada Myth, to the American Socialogical Association a number of years ago, as the story, at least here in Israel, took on a more metaphoric rather than a literal historic event, having then been classified by the UN as a historic site. You might be interested in reading his excellent presentation here.
On the other hand, it is a big money making business in Israel, with millions of dollars coming from tourists who like a good horror story. One of the best Israeli tour guides that I have seen doing a 5-minute presentation to summarize the Josephus myth of Masada can be seen below. Well worth watching for it's entertainment value! (Recently, the tour guides have been injecting truth by inserting the word "Myth" into their presentations.
The guy is so typically Israeli! Sometimes, the 5 minutes doesn't work well in the forum software, so if it stops right away, just cut and paste >>http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9EsVm6v6Mqw <<-this link in your browser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...EsVm6v6Mqw
I live about an 1 hour drive from Masada (Matzada). It makes for a nice dawn picnic. But I prefer a mid-day view during the winter. In the wee hours the IDF usually trains it's new recuits by having them march up the mountain at dawn and telling them the myth as though it were history. I prefer taking the cable car! It has also become far too Christian-ized in the past few years for my tastes, with a video speaking of John the Baptist and other foreign customsm, and christian statues and medallions sold in the gift shop. I prefer a less tacky version.
10 years or so ago, Dr. ben Yehuda explained in his book "The Masada Myth" (available on amazon), how the myth deveoped, which, until 50 or so years ago, nobody even gave it any thought. I add this because just as those go "How could anyone create a Jesus myth. It must be true!", this is a modern day example using Josephus as a source.
The lack of a single body (excluding about a half dozen roman solders found in a cave) from this mass suicide, the description of the palace that does not match the current ruins in size, number of columns, or design, the speech that he could never have witnessed, and the fact that the Rabbinical writers never wrote a single word of it throughout history, makes it like the Jesus story - you have a few history bits inserted with some fiction that not only cannot be confirmed, but do not make a lot of rational sense.
The story itself was fairly dead until Israel needed some sort of symbol to rally behind, and the soldiers and student are still indoctrinated, but more and more are seeing it as a ruin without any suicide ending. Josephus seems to have loved suicide, considering it pops up in several places. It was amazing that there were any Jews left by his accounts.
Think of it, the Jews have poetic dirges of the atrocities and the deaths of that period, but not one poem that mentions Masada. Nada. A story that has the husbands slash up their wives and children, then each other, and then the bodies go "poof" and the memory of it goes "poof", except by someone who was obviously never there - relying on details he did not know, and a speech he had not heard, and most likely, a battle that never took place.
Nachman ben Yehuda, a professor of Anthropology, did a presentation concerning the Masada Myth, to the American Socialogical Association a number of years ago, as the story, at least here in Israel, took on a more metaphoric rather than a literal historic event, having then been classified by the UN as a historic site. You might be interested in reading his excellent presentation here.
On the other hand, it is a big money making business in Israel, with millions of dollars coming from tourists who like a good horror story. One of the best Israeli tour guides that I have seen doing a 5-minute presentation to summarize the Josephus myth of Masada can be seen below. Well worth watching for it's entertainment value! (Recently, the tour guides have been injecting truth by inserting the word "Myth" into their presentations.
The guy is so typically Israeli! Sometimes, the 5 minutes doesn't work well in the forum software, so if it stops right away, just cut and paste >>http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9EsVm6v6Mqw <<-this link in your browser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...EsVm6v6Mqw
“I've done everything the Bible says — even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff!"— Ned Flanders