Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

EGYPTIAN, THE

One of the popular prophets in Palestine whose movements were crushed by Rome in the tense period leading up to the Jewish War (cf. Theudas). According to Josephus, “the Egyptian false prophet” led 30 thousand followers from the desert to the Mount of Olives. Claiming that the walls of Jerusalem would fall at his command, he planned to overpower the Roman garrison. The Roman procurator Felix (52-60 c.e.) struck preemptively; the Egyptian escaped while most of his followers were killed or taken prisoner (BJ 2.261-63; Ant. 20.169-72). In Acts 21:38 a Roman tribune mistakes Paul for the Egyptian, who here is credited with 4000 followers and is called a leader of the revolutionary terrorists known as the Sicarii.

The Egyptian’s symbolic actions recall scriptural images of the freedom and power of Israel and its God. The desert symbolized spiritual purity and exodus from oppression, the prediction concerning the walls alluded to the conquest of Jericho (Josh. 6:20), and the Mount of Olives was understood as the place where the Lord himself would come to fight against the nations attacking Jerusalem (Zech. 14).

Bibliography. M. Hengel, The Zealots (Edinburgh, 1989); R. A. Horsley and J. S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs (Minneapolis, 1985).

Martin C. Albl

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

EGYPTIAN, THE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)