Judea Comes under Direct Roman Rule

Archelaus had ruled Judea, Samaria and Idumea since the death of his father, Herod. Josephus reports that the leading men of Judea and Samaria, together with his own brothers, accused him before Augustus of cruelty. The emperor summoned him to Rome, heard the case, banished him to Vienne in Gaul and confiscated his property (Josephus, Antiquities 17.342–344) (Josephus, Jewish War 2.111). Cassius Dio records the same sentence in a single line of his history of the year (Cassius Dio, Roman History 55.25.1, 55.27.6).

Augustus did not appoint another member of the family. Josephus writes in one place that the ethnarchy was made into a province and in another that it was attached to the province of Syria (Josephus, Jewish War 2.117–118) (Josephus, Antiquities 17.355). A governor of equestrian rank, Coponius, was sent out with the power to inflict the death penalty (Josephus, Jewish War 2.117–118). At the same time Quirinius, a senator and former consul, came to Syria as the emperor’s legate with orders to assess property there, and he entered Judea to register what people owned and to sell off the estate of Archelaus (Josephus, Antiquities 18.1–4). Tacitus calls Caesarea, on the coast, the capital of Judea, as Antioch was of Syria (Tacitus, Histories 2.78); the book of Acts shows the governor holding court there (Acts 23:33–35).

The registration meant tax paid directly to Rome. Josephus says that the high priest Joazar persuaded most people to declare their property (Josephus, Antiquities 18.1–4). A man named Judas, from Gamala in Gaulanitis, whom Josephus elsewhere calls Judas the Galilean, joined with a Pharisee named Zadok to urge revolt. They called the census the beginning of slavery and taught that God alone should be their ruler (Josephus, Antiquities 18.4–11, 23–25) (Josephus, Jewish War 2.117–118). These passages do not say how Judas ended. In the book of Acts the Pharisee Gamaliel recalls that Judas of Galilee “rose up in the days of the enrollment”, that he perished, and that his followers were scattered (Acts 5:37).

Josephus treats this as the beginning of the movement that led to the war of AD 66. He calls it a fourth school of thought beside the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, and blames it for the destruction that followed (Josephus, Antiquities 18.4–11, 23–25). Two sons of Judas were crucified by a later governor (Josephus, Antiquities 20.102), and another, Menahem, was among the leaders of the revolt in Jerusalem (Josephus, Jewish War 2.433–434).

Judea was now governed by Roman officials. The fifth of them was Pontius Pilate (Josephus, Antiquities 18.29–35). Galilee stayed under Herod Antipas (Josephus, Jewish War 2.167–168). The question put to Jesus in Jerusalem, whether it was lawful to pay tax to Caesar, belongs to the situation the census created (Mark 12:13–17).