JOSEPHUS AND HIS MASADA NARRATIVE are the subject of an essay at the Bible and Interpretation website:

"The Irony of Masada"

These last Judean rebels were either very brave to take their own lives or cowards in doing so. They acted irrationally or as those who carefully deliberated the best course of action. Their action was either a horrendous crime or a noble plan. Such effective use of irony allows Josephus to loudly proclaim at Masada that the Roman “victory” was after all not really their victory but God’s punishment upon the Judean stasis and that these Judeans have a nobility that even surpasses that of the Romans.

Essay based on The Sicarii in Josephus's Judean War (Society of Biblical Literature, 2008).

By Mark Andrew Brighton
School of Theology,
Concordia University at Irvine
August 2009