Sources: Josephus, War 2–7; Antiquities 18.1.6; Acts 5:37; Mark 3:18 (Simon the Zealot).

The Zealots and Sicarii were the armed resistance movements of 1st-century Jewish Palestine, theologically rooted in the Fourth Philosophy’s claim that Roman rule was incompatible with Jewish covenant faithfulness. Zealots (from zelos — zeal, as in Phinehas’s zeal in Num 25): a coalition of resistance groups that came together during the revolt of 66–70 AD, controlling the Temple precincts during the siege of Jerusalem. Sicarii (from Latin sica, dagger): an earlier, more targeted assassin movement led initially by Menachem ben Judas, using concealed daggers to assassinate collaborators in crowds. The distinction between them is blurred in Josephus’s polemical accounts. One of Jesus’s twelve disciples, Simon, is identified as “the Zealot” (Mark 3:18) — raising the perennial question of how much political diversity existed among the Twelve. The fall of Masada (73 AD), where ~960 Sicarii under Eleazar ben Ya’ir chose collective suicide over surrender, is the defining final act. Josephus’s account (War 7.320–388) presents Eleazar’s suicide speeches as noble Stoic reasoning about the soul’s freedom — though the historicity of the suicide story is debated by archaeologists.