A.D. 72-131.
THE JEWS UNDER THE EMPERORS TRAJAN AND ADRIAN.
The destruction of the Temple, though it was the death-knell of the
Jewish people, did not at once put an end to the siege. The Upper
City, into which Simon and John had retreated, still held out, and
was to all appearance stronger and more difficult to assault than
what had been already captured. But the spirit of the Jewish leaders,
fierce as it was, had been broken by the failure of their cherished
hope—the direct interference of Heaven in behalf of the Temple.
They demanded a parley, which was granted them, and Titus would
have spared their lives, on condition of absolute surrender. But
they required terms which he refused to grant, and hostilities were
renewed. After incessant labour, occupying nearly three weeks, Titus
raised his works to a sufficient height to enable him to attack the
walls by which the Upper City was guarded, and an assault was made.
It was almost instantly successful. The determined obstinacy of the
defenders had sunk into sullen despair. They gave way on all sides;
their leaders took refuge in the vaults beneath the city, soon
afterwards surrendering to the mercy of Titus; and the whole city
fell into the hands of the besiegers.
But even this did not put a period to the war. Three strong
fortresses, Herodion, Machærus, and Masada, garrisoned by men as
fierce and resolute as the defenders of Jerusalem itself, still
remained unconquered. The first of these, indeed, surrendered as
soon as summoned; and the second, after some fierce conflicts with
the Romans, was induced to do the same. But the third, Masada, the
favourite stronghold of Herod the Great, offered a long and desperate
resistance. It stood on a lofty rock, on the south-west border of
the Dead Sea, and was only accessible by two narrow paths on the
east and west, winding up lofty precipices, where the slightest slip
of the foot would be inevitable death. When these tracks, which
were three or four miles in length, were surmounted, the fortress
of Masada appeared, standing in the centre of a broad plateau, and
surrounded by a wall twenty-two feet high, defended by massive
towers. It was strongly garrisoned, and supplied with provisions
sufficient for a siege of almost any duration. Silva, as the Roman
general sent against it was called, blockaded the place, and then
erected a mound of enormous height, on the top of which he planted
his battering rams. A breach was made, to which the besieged opposed
an inner wall of timber. But this the Romans set on fire and reduced
to ashes; upon which the besieged, finding it impossible to offer
further resistance, and resolved not to surrender, took the desperate
resolution of perishing by their own deed. They first slew their
wives and children. Then, appointing ten executioners for the work,
they all submitted their own breasts to the sword: the ten then fell,
each by his neighbour’s hand, and finally the surviving one drove the
weapon into his own heart! This terrible catastrophe forms a fitting
conclusion to the long catalogue of horrors which the Jewish wars
record.
Judæa being now completely subdued, it remained for Titus to
determine how the vanquished were to be dealt with. Further
severities could hardly be required, even if they were possible. The
numbers which had already perished are very variously stated. Those
given by Josephus may certainly be regarded as an exaggeration,
while the estimate of some later writers clearly fall short of the
fact.[26] It is enough to say, that the whole of Galilee and Judæa
had become one vast wreck—the fields and vineyards wasted, the woods
cut down, the cities heaps of ruins, the land a graveyard. The very
soldiers were weary of the work of carnage. Yet even of the miserable
remnant of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, such as were old and weakly,
and would not therefore realize a price in the auction mart, were
put to death. Of those that remained, the tallest and best looking
were reserved to grace the triumph of the conqueror at Rome. The rest
were sent to labour in the Egyptian mines, or despatched in batches
to distant provinces—to work as slaves, or be exhibited in the
amphitheatres, as gladiators or combatants with wild beasts. A large
proportion of the captives is said to have died of hunger.
As regards the leaders, the life of John was spared, though of all
men who took part in the defence of Jerusalem he least deserved
mercy. Simon was carried to Rome, and walked in the triumphal
procession which Vespasian and Titus led up to the Capitol. This is
said to have exceeded in splendour all previous pageants. Among the
spoils displayed were the golden table, the silver trumpets, the
seven-branched candlestick, and the book of the law; and these, the
sole surviving monuments of the glories of the Latter House, still
remain sculptured on the entablature of the Arch of Titus, to attest
to posterity this terrible tale of crime and suffering.
With the fall of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Temple, as has
been already observed, the national existence of the Jews terminated.
Thenceforth, though they were to be found in large numbers in almost
every country in the world, they were strangers and sojourners
among other nations, no longer themselves a people. It must not,
however, be supposed, though the mistake is a common one, that their
dispersion dates from the conquest of Judæa by Titus. They had spread
into distant lands long before that time, and had formed large and
powerful communities. It was only a portion of the Jews that returned
from Babylon after the captivity. A large number had remained
behind, occupying the homes which they had made for themselves,
and enjoying prosperity and peace. In Egypt and Cyrene they were
almost as numerous; in Rome, and in other great Italian cities, they
constituted no small section of the inhabitants. How widely they were
scattered may be gathered from the catalogue given by St. Luke, in
his narrative of the doings of the Day of Pentecost.
The real change which now took place consisted in the destruction of
their great centre of life and unity. It was like cutting off the
main fountain in some system of artificial irrigation. The waters
still remained in a hundred reservoirs, but the system itself existed
no longer. With any other nation in the world, the result, in the
course of a few generations, would have been the disappearance of
all the peculiar and distinctive features of the people. They would
have become fused with, and incorporated in, the nations among whom
they were dwelling, as was the case with the Danes and Saxons among
ourselves. But though they have resided among alien races for two
thousand years, they have ever dwelt, and still dwell, apart from
them. They obey the laws and comply with the customs of the land
in which they reside; they converse in its language and respect
its religious observances. But they cling to the Jewish laws and
customs, so far as it is possible for them to do so. The Hebrew is
still their national language; the ancient worship of Israel the
only one they will render. Like the stream of the Rhone at Chalons,
which mingles with that of the Saone, yet continues to retain the
peculiarity of its colour, they are dwellers among many nations, but
Jews after all, and Jews only.
It was this distinctive feature that enabled them, before the
lapse of many years, to resume something of the organization which
had been, to all appearance, destroyed by the heavy blow they had
sustained. The Sanhedrin, which they had always acknowledged as the
chief authority of Palestine, had escaped, it was said, the general
wreck, and was presently re-established at Jamnia. How far this may
have been the case is a moot point in history. But it is certain that
a school of theology, commanding very wide and general respect, grew
up in that city; and its presidents exercised considerable influence
over their countrymen. The Eastern Jews were under the authority of
a chief, known as ‘the Prince of Captivity,’ while those lying more
to the west acknowledged a similar ruler, who assumed the title of
‘the Patriarch of the West.’ The synagogues also, which had in later
generations been set up in every Jewish city, though they could not
supply the void caused by the destruction of the Temple, afforded,
nevertheless, something of a centre of religious unity. In this
manner, before the lapse of two generations, the Jews, with the
amazing vitality that has ever distinguished them, had recovered in
a great measure their numbers, their wealth, and their unconquerable
spirit.
Throughout the reigns of Titus, Domitian, and Nerva, little is heard
of them. It is said indeed that Vespasian ordered search to be made
for any blood-relations of Jesus, the Son of David, whom he purposed
to put to death, as possible aspirants to the crown of Judæa; and
Hegesippus affirms that two grandsons of St. Jude were cited before
Domitian for the same reason. But we learn that they were at once
dismissed as unworthy of notice. Nor, throughout Nerva’s reign, was
any burden laid upon them, beyond the didrachma imposed by Vespasian.
But during Trajan’s Parthian wars, which necessitated the absence
of the Roman troops from the garrison towns of Africa, the Jews in
Egypt and Cyrene broke out into insurrection, and terrible bloodshed
ensued. It began with the massacre of the entire Jewish population
at Alexandria by the Greeks, who had taken up arms to oppose them.
Maddened by the tidings of this disaster, the Cyrenian Jews are
said to have committed unheard-of atrocities; sawing in twain the
bodies of their prisoners, or compelling them to fight in the
amphitheatres—it was even alleged, feasting on their flesh. They are
thought to have slaughtered more than 200,000, some say 600,000 men.
The revolt had hardly attained its height, when it was followed by
two others, one in Cyprus, and the other in Mesopotamia. They were
put down after a little while, with frightful carnage, by the Romans
and more particularly by Lucius Quietus, one of the ablest generals
of the day. Trajan’s anger seems to have been greatly roused by the
outbreak, for which he felt that his mild and equitable government
had given no adequate cause. He required their total expulsion from
Mesopotamia; and it is likely that his death in the ensuing year
alone prevented the accomplishment of his purpose.
The Jews, however, fared little better under his successor, Adrian.
This emperor had been a witness of the atrocities perpetrated by
the Jews during the insurrection in Cyprus; and he had probably
some reason for anticipating a similar demonstration in Palestine.
Scarcely fifty years had elapsed since that land had been reduced to
the condition of a desert.[27] But so irrepressible was the vigour of
the Hebrew race, that the fields had been recultivated, the forests
replanted, most of the cities rebuilt, and tenanted by large and
thriving populations. It was obvious, if Jerusalem should rise from
its ruins, and a new temple crown Mount Moriah, that a repetition
of the war, which had cost Rome so much blood and treasure, would
inevitably ensue. It is not known with any certainty what was the
condition of Jerusalem at this time. When the city fell entirely into
the hands of Titus, he ordered the whole of it to be destroyed, with
the exception of the three stately towers of Hippicus, Phasaelus, and
Psephinus, together with part of the western wall,—which was left as
a shelter to the Roman camp, where about eight hundred legionaries
were stationed, as a garrison, to preserve order in the neighbouring
country. How long they remained there is uncertain. But no one seems
to have interfered with such persons as chose to return to the
deserted spot, and erect new homes out of the heaps of ruin that lay
scattered round. What numbers may by this time have assembled on the
site of the Holy City we are not told. But Adrian resolved to put a
stop to the fancies which, not improbably, really were current among
the Jews, by establishing a Roman colony on the spot, and building on
Mount Moriah a temple of Jupiter.[28]
It is probable that the emperor did not understand—indeed, no heathen
could understand—the horror and despair which the publication of
the design caused among the unhappy Jews. It was in their eyes the
most fearful impiety—the most horrible profanation. Their only hope
lay in the advent of the long-promised Messiah; who now surely, if
ever, might be expected to appear on earth, and redeem His people
from the depth of degradation and misery to which they had sunk. In
the midst of these alternations of despondency and reassurance, a
rumour suddenly reached them, that the long-expected deliverer _had_
at last made his appearance, and was even then, on his way, at the
head of an armed force, to take possession of the ruins of Jerusalem,
and prevent the perpetration of the intended impiety. His name, they
were told, was Barchochebas, ‘the son,’ that is to say, ‘of the
star,’—the star predicted by Balaam, ‘which was to come out of Jacob,
and smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.’
It is likely that the faith of the Jewish people in the appearance
of a promised Messiah was by this time a good deal shaken. So many
impostors had appeared, and lured their thousands to destruction,
that even the deeply seated belief in his speedy advent was not
sufficient to induce them to admit the pretensions of any fresh
aspirant without careful inquiry. But in the present instance there
were two considerations, each of which had been enough by itself to
remove all doubt or hesitation. The first is, what has been already
mentioned, the flagrancy of the insult offered to Almighty God;
which, in the judgment of the Jews, was certain to bring down signal
and immediate judgment on its authors. The other was the fact that
Barchochebas had been accepted as the veritable Messiah by Akiba,
the greatest of their Rabbis, and chief of the schools at Bethor.
Something should be said of both these men, who played so conspicuous
a part at this crisis in Jewish history.
NOTE TO CHAPTER III. ON THE NUMBER SLAIN IN THE JEWISH WARS.
The numbers of those slain in the Jewish wars, as reported by
Josephus, are as under.
At Cæsarea 20,000 | At Mt. Gerizim 11,600
” Scythopolis 13,000 | ” Jotapata 40,000
” Alexandria 50,000 | ” Gamala 15,000
” Damascus 10,000 | ” Gadara 15,000
” Ascalon (3 massacres) 20,000 | ” Jerusalem 1,100,000
” Joppa 15,000 |
At other places there were smaller totals, amounting altogether to
upwards of 100,000, and making the entire sum of slain something
less than a million and a half. But, as is elsewhere intimated
(Appendix I.), Josephus’s statements must be received with caution.
The large population found in Palestine in Adrian’s reign is not
easily reconcilable with it. Lightfoot’s opinion seems the more
probable one. Notwithstanding the great carnage, he says, ‘Tantum
abfuit gens a totali et consummatâ deletione, ut undique adhuc
restaret innumera multitudo, quæ se pacate Romano nutui dedidisset,
et pace sedibus suis quiete frueretur. Ita ut Templum et Metropolim
quidem desiderares, verum terram habitatoribus repletam, compositum
Synedrii, Synagogarum, Populi statum illico cerneres.’—Lightfoot,
vol. xi. 468.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] According to Josephus’s account, 600,000 perished of hunger
during the siege; and the total of those who died during the
campaign amounted to little short of a million and half. But that he
exaggerates is beyond dispute. See Appendix I.
[27] See note at end of chapter.
[28] He is said at the same time to have issued a decree forbidding
the Jews to circumcise their children.