Nachman Ben-Yehuda

Who is Nachman Ben-Yehuda?

Nachman Ben-Yehuda is a professor and former dean of the department of sociology and anthropology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.

One of his notable subjects of research is the fall of the fort of Masada, the last refuge of a Jewish group, the Sicarii, to the Romans in 73 CE. The Sicarii committed mass suicide rather than surrender to slavery.

He views the story of Masada as a modern legend. According to his book Sacrificing Truth, the rendition of Josephus was embellished before and after the establishment of the State of Israel. Based on transcripts of the 1963-65 archaeological dig, he claims that the team, led by Yigael Yadin, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, fraudulently misrepresented findings and artifacts to fit within a pre-scripted narrative.

Ben-Yehuda compared the story as reported in the sole historical source, Flavius Josephus, to the myth that developed during the Zionist movement from the 1940s to the 1960s. He examined how archaeologists, notably Yigael Yadin, interpreted their findings to conform to the myth.

According to Ben-Yehuda, Josephus describes the Sicarii unflatteringly. They assassinated their Jewish opponents, and would not help the Jewish Zealots who were besieged in Jerusalem. They raided nearby villages, including Ein Gedi, where they murdered 700 Jewish women and children. They offered no resistance to the Romans, and their suicide was cowardly, unheroic and unwise.