The Apostles and the Maccabees
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names are transformed into the sons of Matthias who desert to the Romans. Just as Jesus had been transformed into Titus, the leaders of the Jewish rebellion are turned into twelve turncoats. It's another example of the "name-switching" technique that was used to create the Apostles Simon and John. The complex confusion about identity is a spoof on how the Romans created the Apostles and inserted them into the temple (Judaism) by transforming the history of the Maccabees into the "history" of Christianity. ... for the great confused noise that was made on both sides hindered them from distinguishing one another's voices, as did the darkness of the night hinder them from the like distinction by the sight. . . However, this ignorance did less harm to the Romans than to the Jews, because . . each of them remembered their watch-word; while the Jews . . . frequently seem to one another to be enemies; for every one of them received those of their own men that 243 came back in the dark as Roman . . .
This interpretation is strengthened by Josephus' inclusion of a Malachias as one of the twelve Jews who "signalized" themselves. The name Malachi is Hebrew for "my messenger" and was a synonym for the prophet Elijah. This meaning comes from the Book of Elijah, in which God states, "Behold, I send my messenger (Malachi) who shall prepare the way before me." Elijah (Malachi) was believed by the messianic Jews rif the first century C.E. to be about to return to earth as a forerunner of the Messiah. 244 The authors of the New Testament created John the Baptist to be Christianity's Elijah, that is, the messenger who heralded the Messiah's "coming." "Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" Jesus answered and said to them, "Indeed, Elijah is coming first" Matt. 17:11
Like Elijah, John is said to have worn a leather girdle and a "cloak of hair."245 Like Elijah, John also lived by the banks of the Jordan near Jericho.246 The last of the Books of the Prophets is the