THE POST-‘SECOND TEMPLE’ WORLD, THE BAR-KOKBA REBELLION, AND “FINAL EXILE”

Over a period of nearly half a century after the Fall of Jerusalem to Titus, the Jews adjusted to the great loss of their Temple, but again came to live in peace within the empire and enjoyed the general prosperity of the era. During this time, with Roman permission, the Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai established an academy at Jabneh to preserve and teach the sacred texts of his people. With regards to this humble, hardly noticed historical event, Professor Abram Sachar comments, “The life-blood of the nation was the law and the traditions which had grown up about it. The truest defenders of the faith were now, not the desperate zealots who sacrificed themselves with sublime stupidity, but the scribes and sages who devoted their lives to teaching the masses the meaning of the ancient heritage.”(22) Sachar’s point here is also amplified by the Talmudic story of the “Guardians of the City” (“neturei karta” in Aramaic)(23) which describes an incident in which Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Nassi (Rabbi Judah the Prince) sent Rabbi Hiyya and Rabbi Ashi on a pastoral tour of inspection. In one town they asked to see the “guardians of the city” and the city guard was paraded before them. They said that these were not the guardians of the city but its destroyers, which prompted the citizens to ask who, then, could be considered the guardians. The rabbis answered, “The scribes and the scholars,” referring them to Tehillim (“Psalms”) Chap. 127.

Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain on it;
unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman keeps vigil in vain.(24)

In 115 CE, while the Roman emperor Trajan was occupied with fighting the Parthian king of Iran, the still smoldering Jewish underground took advantage of Rome’s military preoccupation with Parthia and began inciting uprisings and riots against their Roman overlords in Egypt, Cyrene, and Cyprus. After the Romans quelled these rebellions and burned the towns on the island of Cyprus to the ground, no Jew, by imperial edict, was permitted to settle on the island for the remainder of Roman history.(25)

In 117 CE Trajan died, the Jews partied, and Trajan’s nephew and protégé, Hadrian, took the throne. He immediately decided to build on the ruins of Jerusalem a new city called Aelia Capitolina, and he also decided to issue an edict against circumcision, a practice he considered barbaric. These two decisions by Emperor Hadrian set the match to the powder keg of the final historic Jewish rebellion against a superpower of the ancient world. These new recruits to the old militant cause, led by Rabbi Akiba and a young warrior and military strategist named Simon Bar-Kokba, believed this battle would be the last one before the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth. Many of Bar-Kokba’s followers believed him to be the moshiach (Messiah) who had returned for the “Final Liberation.” Between 132 and 135 CE the Bar-Kokba guerilla movement was successful and had cleared the Romans out of the country. It was also able to hold and control Jerusalem for three years. The campaigns of Bar-Kokba, the Messiah of the sword, were finally, and brutally, put down in 135 CE by Rome’s best general, Severus of Britain, who set upon a vengeful campaign of extermination after his experiencing four years of heavy casualties to his men in this fight. On these events, Abram Sachar writes, “It is not improbable that a half million lives were sacrificed in the hopeless cause. Those who escaped death were rushed to the slave markets of the East or to the gladiatorial arenas of the chief cities of the West.” Upon the ruins of the Second Temple, a sanctuary of Jupiter Capitolina was built, and the name of Judaea was replaced by a new designation for this land – It was now the Roman province of Syria-Palestine. Because of the Bar-Kokba rebellion, the Emperor Hadrian issued an edict that, on pain of death, no Jew shall be allowed to enter the city of Jerusalem. This edict held until the fall of Rome to the Visigoths in the year 410. (26)