Never heard of the third, but ChatGPT was limited to Rackam’s list. Josephus lists 7 Jewish messianic claimants in the first century alone. No surprise, they all sought a political “kingdom of God.” From something I wrote long ago:
Following Herod’s death, protests demanding lower taxes and the removal of the high priest broke out with such vigor during Passover that Archelaus, Herod’s primary heir in his final will, unleashed his cavalry against the unarmed crowds. Three thousand were slain before order was restored. Archelaus canceled the rest of the festival and sent the pilgrims home.
Since Augustus had not approved Herod’s latest succession plan (which gave Judea, Samaria, and Idumea to the 19-year-old Archelaus and divided the remaining lands between his younger brother Antipas and half-brother Philip), the royal family sailed for Rome. A delegation of 50 unhappy aristocrats followed hot on their heels to request that Augustus abolish the monarchy and place Judea under the governor of Syria. As many as 8,000 Jews living in Rome demonstrated in support of their petition. (Remember Jesus’ parable of the king whose subjects hated him in Luke 19?)
With its rulers absent, Palestine again erupted in violence. Varus, the governor of Syria, had sent his treasurer, Sabinus, to Jerusalem to take charge of Herod’s estate pending the emperor’s decision. Huge crowds of pilgrims descended on the city for the Festival of Weeks (First Fruits, or Pentecost), and coming just seven weeks after the bloodbath at Passover, both sides were on edge. Sabinus blinked. Panicked at the first sign of trouble, he ordered Herod’s royal guard to drive back the crowds while the Roman garrison of 500 men secured the temple treasury. This time, however, the crowds fought back, aided by many of Herod’s Jewish soldiers who switched sides. Beaten and besieged, Sabinus and the surviving Romans barricaded themselves in Herod’s palace and appealed to Varus for rescue.
In Sepphoris, less than four miles from Nazareth, Judah ben Hezekiah responded to the news from Jerusalem by leading a mob to loot the royal arsenal and palace in Galilee’s largest city. After arming the populace, Judah proclaimed himself King of the Jews and headed for the hills with his followers, styling himself in the mold of David, who had roamed the countryside with his warriors before ascending to the throne. Simultaneously, two others were competing with Judah for the title. Simon of Perea, a freed slave in Herod’s household service, also proclaimed himself King of the Jews. He and his supporters plundered and burned Herod’s palace in Jericho (as well as many more homes belonging to the wealthy) before eventually being defeated by Herodian troops. A Judean shepherd, Athronges, likewise declared himself king and, aided by his four brothers, organized a guerilla army that was active for years before finally surrendering to Archelaus’s generals.
At the head of three legions, Varus marched south from Antioch to Jerusalem. Along the way, he sent one detachment under his son’s command to deal with Judah ben Hezekiah, who disappeared before the soldiers could arrive. Sepphoris, ironically the most pro-Roman city in the region, was burned to the ground and its citizens sold into slavery. By the time Varus reached Jerusalem, the rebellion likewise had vanished. Herod’s nephew and an envoy of Jewish nobles met the Syrian governor and explained that it was all a horrible mistake. No one had intended to rebel. They blamed Sabinus, who had absconded with the temple treasury as soon as Varus arrived, for instigating the crowd to riot. With a large army and no one to fight, Varus rounded up 2,000 “leaders” of the non-rebellion and crucified them. Then, he sent a glowing report to Rome of his brilliant victories against the rebel forces.
Antipas would rebuild Sepphoris and make it his capital until A.D. 19, when he constructed Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee and moved his capital there to honor the emperor. Despite the obvious proximity of both cities to Nazareth and Capernaum, the gospels do not record Jesus visiting either of Antipas’s pro-Roman capitals.
Archelaus had inherited the bulk of his father’s kingdom, but complaints about him continued to flow to Rome, and 10 years later, Augustus reversed himself. He deposed Archelaus and banished him to Gaul. Judea would become a province governed directly by Rome.
Previously, taxes had been funneled through Jewish intermediaries – Herod the Great and his sons. Now, taxes would be collected by the governor as the representative of the emperor. This new arrangement also required payment in Roman coin, the denarius, which meant it would enter circulation in Judea. Respecting the Second Commandment’s prohibition against idols, Jewish coinage under the Hasmoneans had featured only inanimate symbols, such as anchors and stars. In contrast, the denarius of the Roman Empire usually depicted pagan gods, and as an early form of propaganda, the denarius always bore the emperor’s image and an assertion of his divinity. Augustus issued many versions of the silver coin, but a typical example would bear his image and DIVIF, which stood for Divi Filius, “Son of the God,” a claim based upon the Senate’s deification of Julius Caesar after his death.
Once again, Galilee stood at the epicenter of trouble. Where previous messianic claimants had failed, however, Judas the Galilean (Acts 5:37) and a Pharisee named Zadok succeeded: They garnered enough popular support to launch not just an uprising, but a movement. In the next few decades, their followers, the Zealots, grew numerous enough to be termed by the historian Josephus “the fourth philosophy” of Judaism (after the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes).
(The scholars Emil Schurer, Sean Freyne, and Martin Hengel have concluded that Judas the Galilean and Judah ben Hezekiah, who fled the uprising in Sepphoris and dropped from view 10 years earlier, were the same man.)
Judas and Zadok argued that God was the only rightful king of Israel, and paying taxes to the emperor was a form of slavery. They preached that the kingdom of God would be established only after all traces of paganism and Roman tyranny were rooted out of Israel, and that God would certainly help if they actively fought for their liberty. We do not know how Judas died, but his family pushed his agenda to the end. Two of his sons were crucified for fomenting rebellion in 47, and his grandson, Menahem, led a force of Zealots to capture the fortress of Antonia and Herod’s old palace at the outbreak of hostilities with Rome in 66. Menahem donned a purple royal robe and proclaimed himself “the Messiah,” after which he promptly was assassinated in the temple by a rival faction of rebels. He was the fifth of seven messianic pretenders listed by Josephus.
Sorry for the wall of text. The upshot is that Israel was in the grip of “messianic fever” in the first century, but every pretender was a tax protestor who sought political deliverance from Rome. That’s exactly why the spies sent by the Sanhedrin question Jesus about paying taxes to Rome in Luke 20:20ff. They can’t comprehend that a potential Messiah wasn’t also a tax protestor.
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