Zealots

The Zealots formed a Jewish caste alongside the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes. Because they radically adhere to the principle that God alone must be recognized as Lord and King, they revolted against the Roman occupiers. Their name denotes the ardent zeal with which they pursue their ideals. In The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me, one of the apostles of Jesus, Simon, was commonly called "the Zealot."

In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"

• I was called "Zealot" because of the caste to which I belonged.
• The mistake of the Zealots: having taken the Messiah for an earthly king.

In other sources:

• Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XVIII, 1.6:

“Judas was the author of the fourth sect. It agrees in all things with that of the Pharisees, except that those who profess it maintain that there is only God alone whom one must recognize as Lord and King. They have such a passionate love of freedom that the most extraordinary kinds of death, the most atrocious tortures, whether they suffer them themselves or allow them to be inflicted on those closest to them, leave them indifferent provided they do not have to give any man the name of Lord and Master. As many people have witnessed the unshakable firmness with which they endure all these evils, I will say no more, not for fear of not being believed, but rather fearing that my words might give too weak an idea of the contempt with which they endure pain.”

• Zealots in the "Dictionary of the Bible":

Jewish sect of the 1st century, nourished by Pharisaic tradition, but whose members, “zealous” for the strict observance of Mosaic Law and fidelity to the ancestral customs that modulated its use, were often formidable fanatics, ultranationalists since the people of Israel could only obey their God. They naturally rebelled against Roman domination and also targeted notables or officials suspected of collaboration with the occupiers. When, at the end of his reign, Herod the Great crowned the Temple with a golden eagle, it was Zealots who already climbed onto the roof to remove this pagan symbol whose presence desecrated the holy place. Whether grouped or not, activists of this tendency animated the uprising led by Judas the Galilean after the deposition of the ethnarch Archelaus (in the year 6 AD), when Judea, Samaria, and Idumea fell back under Rome's direct administration. But it was especially after the death of Herod Agrippa (44 AD) that their virulence manifested throughout the country, and especially in Jerusalem itself, torn apart by their factions. Infiltrated by their "sicarii," extremists inclined to use the dagger (in Latin sica) and denounced as "brigands" by their opponents, they were the instigators of the disastrous Jewish Revolt of 66-73 AD that led to the sack of the Holy City and the holocaust of Masada. It is possible that Barabbas, freed by Pilate during the Trial of Jesus, as well as the two "brigands" between whom he was crucified, were among these sicarii who often confused brigandage with political action in the service of the Zealots.

Extracts from the "Dictionary of the Bible" – Andrew the Apostle-Marie Gérard and Andrew the Apostle Nordon-Gérard – Editions Robert Laffont 1989