A.D. 131-135.
THE REVOLT OF BARCHOCHEBAS.
Rabbi Akiba was a proselyte of Canaanitish descent, a herdsman in
the employ of a wealthy man named Kalba-Sabua. His master’s daughter
fell in love with him, and they were married, though without the
father’s knowledge. When he learned the fact, he drove them from
his house; and Akiba, at the age of forty, began the study of the
law. He obtained great reputation in it, being accounted one of
the chief authorities of that Rabbinical school of interpretation
which upholds the absolute integrity of the received text, and
teaches that every word, nay every letter of it, has its special and
mystical meaning. After twelve years of study, when he had risen
to considerable eminence, he paid a visit to Kalba-Sabua, followed
by 12,000 disciples, who attended on his teaching. The old man
continuing inflexible, Akiba returned to his studies for twelve years
more, when he again appeared at his father-in-law’s house, this time
accompanied by 24,000 scholars. This evidence of the honour in which
his son-in-law was held overcame Kalba-Sabua’s resentment, and he
bestowed a large portion of his riches upon him. At the time of the
revolt from Adrian, Akiba was nearly 120 years old.[29] He had been
recently travelling in Northern Africa and Mesopotamia, where he had
witnessed the zeal of his countrymen for the Hope of Israel; and he
was resolved that he and his should not fall behind them in courage
and devotion.
His feelings must have been very warmly awakened to allow of his
accepting Barchochebas, as he called himself, as the true Messiah
that was to come. Who Barchochebas really was, has always been a
problem with historians. By some he is said to have been a captain
of banditti, notorious for his robberies and murders. But this may,
not impossibly, be a calumny. He may have been the leader of one of
the bands of wild warriors, who in those lawless times lived, like
the more modern Bedouins, after a predatory manner, but are hardly
to be regarded as mere robbers. Though undoubtedly an impostor, and
conscious of his own imposture,[30] he was nevertheless a man of
courage and ability, who might, under more favourable circumstances,
have succeeded in establishing the independence of his country.
His first step, as we have seen, was to march with such forces as he
could raise to Jerusalem; where he put a stop to the sacrilegious
work which had been already commenced by Adrian’s order. He then
proceeded to the strong city of Bithor, or Bethor, which lay at no
great distance from Jerusalem. Here he was publicly acknowledged by
Akiba as the Messiah, and large numbers of Jews, not from Judæa only,
but from other neighbouring countries, flocked in to his standard.
The levies at his command are said to have amounted at one time
to 200,000 men; a force with which the Roman troops in Judæa were
wholly unable to cope. The whole country fell under his dominion,
and the utmost zeal and loyalty were displayed in his service. The
only persons throughout the whole of Palestine who stood aloof
were the Christians; who, knowing that Jesus Christ was the true
Deliverer of the Jewish people, could not acknowledge any other to be
such. Barchochebas is said to have punished their defection, as he
considered it, with the most savage cruelty, regarding them as rebels
and traitors, more criminal than the Romans themselves.
Adrian, who could not for a long time be induced to believe that
the Jews, after the terrible lesson which their fathers had learned
of the consequences of rebellion against Rome, would again provoke
a mortal quarrel, treated the outbreak as a matter of but small
importance. But the tales that reached him, of large military stores
being in the possession of the Jews, who had for a long time past
been secretly collecting them; of their countrymen from Egypt and the
East thronging to their standard; and even of multitudes of strangers
to their faith and nation nevertheless joining them, in the hope of
obtaining plunder, roused him at length to vigorous action. He sent
a reinforcement of troops to Ticinius, or Tinnius, by some called
Turnus Rufus,[31] who commanded in Judæa, and recalled from Britain
Julius Severus, the ablest officer of his time, to put down, what—it
was now impossible to disguise—had become a dangerous rebellion.
Severus, on his arrival, found the condition of things so
unfavourable to the Roman arms that he did not venture to meet
Barchochebas in the field. The latter was in possession of fifty
fortified places, and nearly a thousand villages and towns. Rufus
had done little but exercise the most merciless severities on all,
even women and children, who had fallen into his power; thus,
without really diminishing the strength of his enemies, increasing
tenfold their exasperation. If he had continued in command, it is
far from improbable that the yoke of Rome would, for a time at all
events, have been cast off. But Severus had learned the art of war
in his campaigns in Britain; and the consequences of the change of
the general in command soon became evident. Avoiding, as has been
already intimated, any decisive engagement, he harassed the Jews by
an endless succession of petty conflicts, in nearly all of which they
were worsted, driving them into their strongholds, which he then
besieged and captured,[32] until nearly all that had revolted were
reduced to submission.[33] By the end of the third year of the war,
the rebels were driven into the strong city of Bithor, or Bethor, the
situation of which is uncertain, but is generally believed to have
been somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bethhoron. Here Barchochebas
and Akiba sustained, we are told, a long and terrible siege, ‘the
rebels being driven,’ says Eusebius, ‘to the last extremities
by famine.’ But there is no historian of this war to record its
particulars with the minuteness and accuracy of a Josephus. The
Rabbins have indeed given many details; but it is impossible to rely
on their statements. Thus, they relate, that when the prospects of
the besieged became gloomy and threatening, one of the most zealous
of their body, Rabbi Eliezer, the son of Hamadai, following the
example of Moses at Rephidim, remained on his knees in prayer during
the whole time that the fighting was going on; and the result of his
prayers was, that the Jews fought with signal success, everywhere
driving the besiegers back. To avert the disaster which seemed likely
to result to the Roman arms, a treacherous Samaritan pretended to
be discovered in carrying treasonable communications between the
Rabbi and the Romans. Barchochebas, without inquiry, ordered the
Rabbi to be slain; and from that moment, it is said, the courage
of the besieged gave way. Bithor was at length taken by storm.
Barchochebas, according to some, was killed in action, according
to others, put to death with cruel tortures by the conquerors. The
slaughter that ensued is described as exceeding anything on record.
The streams of blood were so great as to carry heavy stones the whole
way from the city to the sea, and the ground for eighteen miles
round is said to have been covered with corpses! These flights of
Rabbinical imagination may be dismissed as worthless; but the more
sober historian, Dion Cassius, reports that more than half a million
perished by the sword, independently of vast numbers who died by
disease and famine. Judæa once more became a barren waste. The cities
were reduced to heaps of ruin, and the wild beasts tenanted the
streets. The inhabitants who escaped the sword were sold as slaves,
and transported to foreign lands.
The fate of the stern old Rabbi Akiba should not be passed over. He
was treated with the utmost barbarity by Rufus, who seems to have
been in command at the capture of the city. While under examination
before the Roman tribunal, the hour of prayer came round, and Akiba,
wholly disregarding the presence of his judge, and his own mortal
peril, fell on his knees and calmly went through his usual devotions.
Only a scanty pittance of water was allowed him in his dungeon;
but though he was consumed with thirst, he applied the water to
the customary ceremonial ablutions. He was sentenced to death, and
executed with the most barbarous cruelty, some writers affirming that
he was flayed alive, and afterwards slain, others that he was torn
to pieces with iron combs.[34]
Adrian now carried out his design, the commencement of which had
been the immediate cause of the war, and built a heathen city on
the site of ancient Jerusalem. This he called Ælia Capitolina—Ælia
after his own name Ælius, and Capitolina, because it was dedicated
to the Capitoline Jupiter. It was built in the style prevalent among
the Romans of that day; and was enclosed by a wall, which included
Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, but did not take in Mount Zion.
In the execution of his plan he was careful to show all possible
dishonour to the localities which the Jews and also the Christians
regarded with veneration. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was
erected on the site of the Temple itself; over the gate which looked
towards Bethlehem, the city of David, a marble figure of a hog was
set up; on Mount Calvary was placed a statue of Venus, the foulest
of the heathen deities; and in the grotto at Bethlehem, where the
Saviour was born, the worship of Adonis was established. Why Adrian
should have been thus studious to profane these latter places,
which, though they possessed special sanctity in the eyes of the
Christians, had little or none in those of the Jews, does not appear.
We can only suppose that the confusion between the Jews and the
Christians, who for many generations were regarded as being merely
a schismatical Jewish sect, misled the Roman emperor, even at this
date and that he regarded Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre as
spots especially venerated by Jews. It is certain that no part of his
anger was levelled against the Christians. He suffered them to settle
within his newly erected city, and carry on their worship there
without interruption. Ælia became, not long afterwards, the seat of a
Christian bishopric.
But to the Jews he extended no such grace. He issued two edicts; one
renewing the order which forbade the circumcision of their children;
the other interdicting them, on pain of instant death, from entering
the newly-built city, or even approaching so near to it as to be able
to discern with their eyes the sacred precincts. It would seem that
this prohibition was subsequently relaxed, so far as one day in the
year was concerned, the anniversary, namely, of the capture of the
city in the war with Titus, and again, in that with Barchochebas; for
it is a singular fact that the two events occurred in the same month
and on the same day.[35] On the recurrence of that day of misery
and despair, they were allowed to pass the Roman sentinels, and
gaze once more on the ruins of the past. Jerome has given a moving
account of the scene, which, it would appear, he himself witnessed,
two centuries afterwards—the crowd of dejected exiles, the sobs of
the women, the agonized despair of the men, the jeers and scoffs of
the bystanders, and the rude demands of the Roman soldiers for bribes
of money, as the only condition on which they could be allowed to
indulge their sorrow.[36]
FOOTNOTES:
[29] So, at least, say the Jewish biographers. But as they labour to
assimilate him in all things to Moses, it is not unlikely that they
have accommodated his age to their theories.
[30] He is said to have resorted to the expedient, already practised
by pretenders before him, of filling his mouth with lighted tow, and
so appearing to vomit flame.
[31] The Jews often confounded this man, who is the object of their
special enmity, with the Terentius Rufus to whom Titus entrusted the
final demolition of Jerusalem, and who is almost equally detested by
them.
[32] It is a doubtful point whether Jerusalem was one of the places
so taken. It appears most probable that it was; and that the work of
demolition, which had been begun by Titus, was completed by Adrian,
and every trace of old Jerusalem destroyed.
[33] There is evidence, however, that these successes were not
obtained without severe reverses. The language of Adrian in his
despatches to the Senate, in which he omits his usual assurance, that
all is well with the army, is significant of this fact.
[34] The Talmud affirms that his cheerful demeanour, while subjected
to the most agonizing tortures, amazed his executioners, and that he
told them, that having the love of God in his heart, he could not but
rejoice.
[35] August 9th. This was also the day of the taking of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar. One cannot but entertain suspicion of the accuracy of
these statements.
[36] Their exclusion from Jerusalem is mentioned by many writers
earlier than Jerome—Justin Martyr, Eusebius, and Tertullian, amongst
others.