THE SIEGE AND DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY THE ROMAN LEGIONS OF TITUS

The ancient city of Jerusalem had a security system consisting of an external set of three protectively surrounding walls, all replete with defensive gates and numerous towers where archers kept watch, so it was not a city easily conquered. After a string of these incidents, such as the merciless slaughters of Roman soldiers at Fortresses Masada and Antonia, the Roman general (soon-to-be Emperor) Titus and his legions eventually came to the walls of Jerusalem. General Titus sent into the walled city a small group of emissaries to ask nicely if the rebel leaders would care to surrender the city, and thus protect the life of its people. Of course, as it has been ‘par for the course’ so far in our quick tour through a thousand years of Jewish history, the rebel leadership controlling the city chose the most fatal and WRONG decision that they could possibly make under the obvious circumstances by which they were surrounded – They MURDERED the Roman emissaries and threw their bodies from the city walls. At this point, in the minds of General Titus, his officers, and men, the final fate of these ungovernable people of Jerusalem was sealed, and the siege of Jerusalem by Titus began.

Just as was satirically, yet accurately, portrayed by the Monty Pythons in their film “Life of Brian,” the three separate Jewish rebel groups operating in Jerusalem in the 1st century actually did hate each other as much as they hated the Romans. Thus, during the long Roman siege of Jerusalem, these three rebel groups began fighting against each other. This, of course, gave the Roman legions the chance to finally take the city, because Jerusalem’s rebel defense forces had turned away from fighting them, and instead, fought each other during street riots, and through the assassinations of the members of each other’s leadership. Thus in 70 CE, after the common people of Jerusalem had suffered under this long siege – again, suffering as the result of bad decisions made by their militant leadership – the city gates finally broke down, the walls were scaled, and the very angry legions of the Roman Empire poured into the city. Jerusalem was burned to the ground, the Second Temple of Yahweh was almost completely destroyed, and a million Jews in the city were either killed or sold into slavery.(21) An eyewitness to these events, the Jewish historian Josephus, in “The Jewish War,” blames the entire war and its disastrous aftermath on the nationalist militant groups who were a minority among the Jewish people during the entire Roman period.