In his historical account of the Roman siege of Jerusalem, Josephus describes how the Jews slowly succumbed to starvation.

At the beginning of the siege, the Jewish faction known as the Zealots burned the grain reserves that had been stored to feed the people, hoping to force them into fighting the Romans. What little food remained in the city was often stolen by the Zealots to feed themselves. The Zealots, of course, are the clear villains of the account by Josephus, who writes sympathetically of the Romans. Though it is the Romans who will eventually destroy the Temple, in his account it is the Zealots’ barbarous cruelty that dooms the Jews.

One poor woman, Mary, finds herself unable to feed her young infant, and when finally pushed to her limit, she does the unthinkable. Rather than allow her child to die of starvation or grow up to become a Roman slave, she kills him, roasts him and eats half. When the Zealots return to steal her food, she shows them what remains of the child and says, “Come, eat of this food: for I have eaten of it myself.” Shocked by what they had witnessed, they staggered out of her home. As word spread across the city, all Jews trembled.

The Zealots depicted by........

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