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The Revolt Begins 66 CE The Jewish War is Josephus’s superbly evocative account of the Jewish revolt against Rome, which was crushed in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. Martin Goodman describes the life of this book, from its composition in Greek for a Roman readership to the myriad ways it touched the lives of Jews and Christians over the span of two millennia. The scion of a priestly Jewish family, Josephus became a rebel general at the start of the war. Captured by the enemy general Vespasian, Josephus predicted correctly that Vespasian would be the future emperor of Rome and thus witnessed the final stages of the siege of Jerusalem from the safety of the Roman camp and wrote his history of these cataclysmic events from a comfortable exile in Rome. Princeton University Press The Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. It's cultural, political, and theological impact is either unknown or underappreciated by the general public but for certain scholars/theologians and history enthusiasts who focus their attention on this monumental clash of civilizations between the Roman and Judean worlds and its ramifications. Time and Place. This explosive conflict and dynamic mixing of cultures had a profound impact on the 3 Abrahamic faiths that still influence much of human civilization in our present era. The Roman Jewish wars created a bottleneck where only certain cultural, political, and theological memories could survive and thrive in the following years. Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations A magisterial history of the titanic struggle between the Roman and Jewish worlds that led to the destruction of Jerusalem. Martin Goodman—equally renowned in Jewish and in Roman studies—examines this conflict, its causes, and its consequences with unprecedented authority and thoroughness. He delineates the incompatibility between the cultural, political, and religious beliefs and practices of the two peoples and explains how Rome's interests were served by a policy of brutality against the Jews. At the same time, Christians began to distance themselves from their origins, becoming increasingly hostile toward Jews as Christian influence spread within the empire. This is the authoritative work of how these two great civilizations collided and how the reverberations are felt to this day. The Roman period (63 BCE–135 CE) New parties and sects Palestine during the time of Herod the Great and his sons. Under Roman rule a number of new groups, largely political, emerged in Palestine. Their common aim was to seek an independent Jewish state. They were also zealous for, and strict in their observance of, the Torah. Destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE After the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the Jews of the Kingdom of Judea went into exile. In 538 BCE during the reign of Cyrus the Great, the Jews returned to Jerusalem and were able to build the Second Temple on the site of the original one that had been destroyed. Secular accounts place the completion of the Second Temple in approximately 516 BCE but some Jewish sources date the completion much later in 350 BCE. Herod the Great rebuilt the Temple in 20-18 BCE. The Jews led a revolt and occupied Jerusalem in 66 CE initiating the first Roman-Jewish war. In 70 CE the Romans reclaimed Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple with only a portion of the western wall remaining (though recent archeological discoveries date portions of the wall to later periods). The Western Wall remains a sacred site for Jews. In April 70 CE, about the time of Passover, the Roman general Titus besieged Jerusalem. Since that action coincided with Passover, the Romans allowed pilgrims to enter the city but refused to let them leave—thus strategically depleting food and water supplies within Jerusalem. Within the walls, the Zealots, a militant anti-Roman party, struggled with other Jewish factions that had emerged, which weakened the resistance even more. Josephus, a Jew who had commanded rebel forces but then defected to the Roman cause, attempted to negotiate a settlement, but, because he was not trusted by the Romans and was despised by the rebels, the talks went nowhere. The Romans encircled the city with a wall to cut off supplies to the city completely and thereby drive the Jews to starvation. “I have always thought of the historical Jesus as a homeland Jew within Judaism within the Roman Empire. For me, then, within Judaism within the Roman Empire has always been the absolutely necessary matrix rather than the annoyingly unnecessary background for any discussion of earliest Christianity. Whether you start or end with the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire is always there.“ John Dominic Crossan
