swallowed gold coins to prevent their discovery by the Jewish revolutionaries and then, escaping to
the Romans, discharged their bowels.
When a rumor ran through the Roman camp that the
deserters had come full of gold, an Arab and Syrian rabble cut open no fewer than 2,000 deserters in
one night to search their intestines.
When the Romans entered the Temple court, “so glutted with plunder were the troops, one and all,
that throughout Syria the standard of gold was depreciated to half its former value.”
Moreover, according to Josephus, 97,000 Jews were taken prisoner during the war with the Romans
(this may be the source of the tradition, otherwise unattested, that Jews actually built the
Colosseum);
of those over 17 years of age many were sent to work in Egypt, while those under 17
were sold.
The amount thus raised must have been considerable, especially since we may assume
that Jews paid large sums of money to ransom their fellow Jews, inasmuch as ransoming of captives
is regarded by the rabbis of the Talmud as of paramount importance, so that even money that has
been set aside for charitable purposes or for building a synagogue may be used to ransom captives.
A Dead Sea Scroll discovered in 1952 in Qumran Cave 3, engraved on two copper sheets (the so-
called Copper Scroll), lists treasures of many tons of silver and gold, as well as other valuables,
amounting to approximately 4,500 talents (possibly as much as 100,000 kilograms) or perhaps the
equivalent of tens of millions of dollars.
Is this imaginary, or is there some basis to this account?
