Masada Fortress: What Happened Here?

  / gnosticinformant   Please Consider joining my Patreon to help finding scholars to bring on. Any amount helps me. Thank you existing Patrons. Special Guest Speaker Ross K. Nichols: https://rossknichols.com/ My film from visiting Israel and Masada. Moses Course: Dr. Bart D. Ehrman https://gnosticinformant--ehrman.thri... ⬆⬆⬆LINK FOR COURSE ⬆⬆⬆ 💥💥💥💥🚨💥🚨💥🚨💥💥💥 (Click either one) ⬇⬇⬇LINK FOR COURSE ⬇⬇⬇ https://gnosticinformant--ehrman.thri... Mystery Cults Course: Dr. M David Litwa https://gnosticinformant--pursuit4kno... The Course for Mystery Cults by Professor Litwa is NOW AVAILABLE!!! Click the Link for more Details! (Link) https://gnosticinformant--pursuit4kno... In 73 CE, the Roman governor of Iudaea, Lucius Flavius Silva, headed the Roman legion X Fretensis and laid siege to Masada. Another source gives the year of the siege of Masada as 73 or 74 CE. The Roman legion surrounded Masada, building a circumvallation wall and then a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau. According to Dan Gill, geological investigations in the early 1990s confirmed earlier observations that the 114 m (375 ft) high assault ramp consisted mostly of a natural spur of bedrock. The ramp was complete in the spring of 73, after probably two to three months of siege, allowing the Romans to finally breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram on April 16. The Romans employed the X Legion and a number of auxiliary units and Jewish prisoners of war, totaling some 15,000 (of whom an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 were fighting men), in crushing Jewish resistance at Masada. A giant siege tower with a battering ram was constructed and moved laboriously up the completed ramp. According to Josephus, when Roman troops entered the fortress, they discovered that its defenders had set all the buildings but the food storerooms ablaze and committed mass suicide or killed each other, 960 men, women, and children in total. Josephus wrote of two stirring speeches that the Sicari leader had made to convince his men to kill themselves. Only two women and five children were found alive. Josephus presumably based his narration upon the field commentaries of the Roman commanders that were accessible to him. There are discrepancies between archaeological findings and Josephus' writings. Josephus mentions only one of the two palaces that have been excavated, refers only to one fire, though many buildings show fire damage, and claims that 960 people were killed, though the remains of at most 28 bodies have been found. Some of the other details that Josephus gives, were correct – for instance, he describes the baths that were built there, the fact that the floors in some of the buildings ‘were paved with stones of several colours’, and that many pits were cut into the living rock to serve as cisterns. Yadin found some partially intact mosaic floors which meet that description. #gnosticinformant #masada #ancienthistory