The Historical Framework

The contours of the era are reasonably clear. It begins with two generations of violent confrontations between Jews and the Roman Empire. Decades of unstable provincial rule in Judaea, accompanied by ethnic tensions between Jews and other national groups in the region (Samaritans, the inhabitants of the Phoenician-Greek coastal cities, and others), erupted in a local-national revolution, called the Great Rebellion, in 66 CE. Fighting broke out in Judaea and adjacent areas to the north and the east. The Romans, at the time preoccupied with their internal affairs - after Nero’s suicide in 68, the imperial throne bounced between four men in just 18 months - took close to four years to suppress the uprising. It was not until 70 ce that four legions under the command of the future emperor Titus conquered Jerusalem and burned the Jewish Temple.

We know almost nothing about the state of affairs related to the Jews or the substance of their lives in the Roman Empire during the generation and a half after the destruction of the Temple, beyond haphazard archaeological finds that merely testify to their existence here and there. But in 115, at the peak of the emperor Trajan’s campaign in Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq), a second Jewish rebellion broke out. This time it started in Egypt and Cyrenaica in North Africa, ignited by violent clashes between Jews ‘‘and their Greek fellow-citizens’’ (Euseb. Eccl. Hist. 4.2.2; Schtirer 1973-87: 1.529-34). The uprising quickly spread to other Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean region, and compelled the emperor Trajan to appoint one of his best generals, Marcius Turbo, to suppress it.

The last, most ferocious, and best-planned of the insurgencies broke out in 132, during the reign of Hadrian, and is known from the name of its leader as the Bar Kokhba rebellion. The few lines that the historian Cassius Dio devotes to documenting this clash convey the intensity and horror of the conflict (Dio 69.12.1-14.3). Tens if not hundreds of thousands died on both sides, entire villages were razed, and once densely-populated Jewish areas in Palestine were only sparsely inhabited for many generations thereafter (Isaac and Oppenheimer 1985).

These 60 years of bloody confrontation between Jews and the Roman Empire find no parallel anywhere else in the Roman world. Although the threat posed by the Germanic and Scythian tribes, for example, during the second century far exceeded the trouble caused by the Jews, and although the Romans also faced many other upheavals within the empire’s borders (including Boudicca’s rebellion in Britain and serious uprisings in Gaul), the Jewish uprisings were more persistent and extensive. Scores of Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean suffered from the conflicts, or encountered the suffering of fellow Jews, whether through the death of family members, their sale into slavery or prostitution, or the official confiscation of property and land. Imperial propaganda, especially of the Flavians but also of Hadrian, spread the word of Jewish defeat and hardship even further in the form of ‘‘Judaea Capta’’ coinage and by legislation; it was also advertised through triumphal art and architecture (the arch of Titus being the most famous example). The horrendous outcome of these conflicts became a fundamental component of the experience and consciousness of the generations that followed, shaping the Jewish historical heritage, collective memory, and sense of identity. In my view, it is impossible to understand the history of the Jews in the early centuries of the Common Era without reference to this context. Many historians who address the tension between early Christianity and the empire as expressed, for example, in the phenomenon of martyrdom, often forget that the discord between the Jews and the Romans was harsher and far bloodier.

Figure 28.2a Imperial celebration of the capture of Jerusalem is reflected in the issue of Judaea Capta coinage under Vespasian (RIC Vespasian 424; ANS 1947.2.430-rev) (Photo courtesy of the American Numismatic Society)

Figure 28.2b The imperial issues were echoed on local coinages in the reign of Titus. Coin of Caesarea with Titus on the obverse, and Nike holding a shield on the reverse with the legend lOUDAIAS ELAKOSUIAS [Judaea Capta] (editor’s collection)

The violent intensity that characterized the history of the Jews throughout the Mediterranean in the first century ce and the first half of the second century stands in stark contrast to the political tranquility of the next 200 years, persisting, to a large extent, although not absolutely, through the rest of late antiquity. The political and economic unrest throughout the empire, especially in its eastern portions, during the third century (see Potter, chapter 8, this volume), offered myriad opportunities to cast off the yoke of the central government and join in any of the frequent insurrections that surfaced during this time. The silence of the sources regarding any participation of the Jews in these upheavals is telling. Likewise, unlike the Samaritans, who rebelled on numerous occasions in the fifth and sixth centuries to contest restrictions imposed on them by the Byzantine authorities, the Jews remain quiescent. We can only speculate as to the reasons for this peculiar reconciliation, but the outcome is clear - serenity facilitates prosperity. The archaeological and epigraphical record from the period, in the form of many dozens of Jewish villages, both in northern Palestine and in numerous cities along the Mediterranean coast, testifies to a cultural and communal flowering of Judaism.