Inside BAR

Masada! The name is immortalized as a byword for courage. It stands for one of history’s great heroic tragedies, a desperate struggle against overwhelming odds that ended with an eternally defiant mass suicide. In a mountain fortress beside the Dead Sea, the last contingent of unsubdued Jewish resisters fought the final battle of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. For a year they withstood the Roman siege, but when their capture became inevitable, in 73 or 74 A.D., they chose to die by their own hands rather than be enslaved. An excavation of the site in the 1960s, conducted by the famous Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin, uncovered substantial remains from the conflict and supported some details in the first-century historian Josephus’ account of the events. Since Yadin’s death in 1984, additional work by Ehud Netzer has revealed remarkable new evidence that further supports Josephus’ narrative of how the Jews defended themselves in “The Last Days and Hours at Masada.”