The Jewish Diaspora: 135 to the Fall of Rome¹
BAR KOKHBA’S REBELLION (132-135 AD)
The last agonized moans of the crucified on Jerusalem’s walls fell still, drowned out by the steady tramp of a heavy military occupation that followed the failed Great Jewish Revolt (70-73 AD). The Second Temple was destroyed by the Roman siege on August 4, 70 AD. This date is the 9th of Av on the Jewish calendar. As prophesied, no stone was left upon stone and the site was salted as a further special insult so that no blade of grass could grow.
After two generations, Judea seemingly was sufficiently pacified so that Emperor Hadrian paid a personal visit promising to rebuild (130 AD). This hopeful promise quickly revealed its dark character, for Hadrian’s vision was that on the ruins would rise a model city renamed Aelia Capitolina, not a Jewish capital. Exercising the arrogance which was characteristic of this period, this name would commemorate his own name, Aelianus Hadrianus, which was to be placed first, and Capitolina after the cult name Jupiter Capitolina (Jupiter being the chief deity of the Roman Pantheon).
The Roman sacred plough roughly bit through the salt-deadened rubble of the temple mount. It was guided by the steady hand of the Roman religious officer Titus Aniosrufus (131 AD), in an act of pagan ceremonial dedication to mark the boundary of what would be the new Roman temple. This new temple would house images of both the emperor Hadrian and Jupiter. Hadrian’s magnificent temple was to be located directly over the ruins of the once magnificent temple of the Lord.
While the ceremonial features of the law ceased with the destruction of Herod’s temple, a Sanhedrin now solely of Pharisaic derivation was reconstituted, this time with no Sadducees. This reconstituted Sanhedrin carried on business from the Judean coastal town of Yavne (Jamnia). Rabbi Akiva, president of the Sanhedrin, convinced this body to support the impending revolt, proclaiming the chosen commander Simon as the Jewish Messiah. Taking the prophecy from Numbers 24:17, “There shall come a star out of Jacob,” Simon was surnamed “Bar Kokhba” which means “son of a star” in the Aramaic language. The Jewish leaders carefully planned the second revolt to avoid numerous mistakes that had plagued the first Great Jewish Revolt sixty years earlier. “Ploughing the field” galvanized even the most accommodating of the Jews dwelling near Jerusalem’s ruins, and the second revolt quickly spread across the country in 132 AD, overwhelming the occupation forces. A sovereign Jewish state was restored for the two and a half years where religious rituals were observed and sacrifices were resumed on the Altar.
The outbreak took the Romans by surprise, but Rome also had learned the lessons of the first revolt. Hadrian recalled the entire army from Britain and also called in forces from the volatile border near the Danube River so that the empire could meet the rebellion with a more massive force than in the earlier campaign. Even so, Roman losses – including an entire legion – were so heavy that Hadrian’s report to the Roman Senate omitted the customary salutation, “I and the legions are well.”
The struggle lasted for three years before the revolt was brutally crushed in the summer of 135 AD. After losing Jerusalem, Bar Kokhba and the remnants of his army withdrew to the fortress of Betar, 12 kilometers southwest of Jerusalem. Betar then came under siege resulting in the death of Bar Kokhba, Rabbi Akiva, and many other important sages of the Mishnah on August 5, 135 AD. This date was the 9th of Av on the Jewish calendar, the day of national mourning marking both the destruction of the first temple by Nebuchadnezzar, and the second temple by Titus.2 Before the conqueror’s taste for blood was sated in the pillaging that followed, perhaps 580,000 died, and no burials of the fallen at Betar were permitted for 17 years. What had been known as Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina after Israel’s intractable enemies, the Syrians and the Philistines. This is the origin of the present name Palestine.
In the aftermath of the second rebellion’s collapse, near Hebron, four human beings spared from death were sold for one seah of barley (about 14 liters volume). Hadrian now built a wall around Jerusalem and allowed no Jews to enter the city. It was only at a later period that they were permitted to go to the surrounding mountains, probably the Mount of Olives, to cast a mournful, sorrowing look towards the seat of their ancient glory. Later yet, they purchased from the Greek and Roman garrison the permission to enter its precincts once a year, on the day of its destruction, the 9th of Av, in order to weep there for their mournful fate, and the fall and dispersion of Israel.
The land was nearly depopulated of Jews, and their second epic defeat marked the beginning of the Great Diaspora of the Jews. This term “diaspora” is from the Greek Otcwrcopc, “scattering” (John 7:35, James 1:1, 1 Peter 1:1). It appears in Greek apocryphal literature (2 Maccabees 1:27, Judith 5:19), and the writings of Josephus (Antiquities 12:13), as a general epithet for this prophetic period of disfavor.
JEWISH MIGRATION
At the time of Bar Kokhba’s defeat, a large portion of the Jewish population still lived beyond the Roman Empire’s borders in Persia, Mesopotamia, Oman, Yemen, Aden, and even as far distant as India and China where they had migrated since the Babylonian captivity. The scholars in these communities continued to influence Judaism throughout the world. Within the Roman empire significant and prosperous Jewish communities were to be found in Alexandria, Carthage and the major cities on the coast of North Africa. Large communities continued in Asia Minor and Greece. Within Italy itself, most of the major urban areas from Genoa, Rome and down to Sicily supported Jewish communities, as did southern Spain and most of Gaul.
The Jewish communities were equally active as agriculturists and occupied in urban professions.3 By 312 AD the Jews had settled every part of the Roman Empire but Britain. They were guaranteed freedom of religion and were allowed to practice Jewish law in disputes with fellow Jews. There were probably at least 3 million Jews in 312 AD, one million of whom lived west of Macedonia.
THE EMERGENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
Christian Jews had held themselves separate from the Messianic appeal of the Bar Kokhba rebellion. At the same time, the growth of an actively proselytizing Christianity from the pagan converts to the faith challenged the Roman system in a way that Judaism never had. Roman law had made accommodations for Jewish religion, and drew a clear distinction between Jewish religion and Jewish inspired politics. Christianity made no compromise to accommodate Roman emperor worship. Christianity’s radical message of a “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” who was not the Roman emperor continued to attract imperial attention and periods of brutal persecution. Observing that no early New Testament collections of Gospels and Epistles contains the Revelation, it has been suggested that this powerful indictment of the present world order was circulated secretly. Thus far, the Jewish communities under pagan Rome were occasional, but rare, objects of persecution.
Coin from the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
Obverse – Temple facade with a rising star
Reverse – “Year one of the redemption of lsrael’
After a tolerant reign of nearly twenty years, Emperor Diocletian issued a series of edicts in 303 AD that sought nothing less than to reestablish the old imperial values of Rome and exterminate Christianity. His sullied name forever is linked to some of the severest and most inhuman of the persecutions devised by fallen human imagination. Failing health forced Diocletian, the “Augustus” Caesar, to retire in 306 AD, but his policies continued in force and were zealously pursued by Galerius and Maximian, two other co-rulers in the College of Emperors who encouraged the adoption of the persecuting measures. In the struggle for succession to supreme power, an able military commander, Constantine, became the leading contender for the throne.
One of history’s most startling reversals of state policy then ensued. Constantine was not a Christian himself officially, but he claimed to have had two visions setting a course for the emergence of Christianity as the new religion of Rome. His first vision was of the sun in its glory emblazoned with the formerly despised Christian cross and reading in Greek, “By this sign shall you conquer” (Touto nika); this reportedly was followed by a vision the following night of Christ himself. On this dubious authority, the armies of Constantine now marched into battle with the cross insignia represented by a stylized cross-shaped “Chi-Rho,” a Greek anagram for Christ emblazoned on their shields.
This army and its new insignia were victorious on October 28, 312 AD, and the ascension of Constantine heralded an era of new challenge for Christianity. With this victory came unprecedented woes for the Jews of the Diaspora. Unofficially, Jews were now the object of scorn. Constantine stopped the Roman policy of persecuting Christians by issuing an “edict of toleration” (313 AD), which closed ten years of unspeakable cruelty. This edict said that it was no longer a crime to be a Christian.
Constantine recognized that the future of the Roman Empire did not rest in defending an increasingly troubled European frontier that could not feed itself and was already under pressure from raids and frontier wars caused by the massive migrations of peoples such as the Vandals and Goths. Constantine also recognized that the future did not lay with fortunes of the decadent city of Rome (which was not his, but Maximian’s, power base), nor should a diverse multi-cultural empire insist on observations of Rome’s traditional pagan religion which was losing adherents to not only Christianity but to other emerging religions such as Mithraism and Manichaeism.
Papyrus containing Bar Kokhba’s orders found in the Judean desert by Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin.
Christianity was seen as an emerging unifying force. Constantine wanted to establish a truly Christian empire untainted by paganism and he founded a new Christian capital at Byzantium and called it “Constantinople” (May 11, 330), on the border between Asia and Europe and also where his political power was strongest, thus ushering in an era of new challenge for Christianity and unprecedented woes for the Jews. While localities such as Alexandria had experienced sporadic anti-Jewish riots inspired by Christian mobs since the 200s, Constantine’s rise meant that Jews were now the object of scorn throughout the empire.
Constantine and his mother, Helena, caused churches and monasteries to be built everywhere; and officially sanctioned pilgrimage sites were established, including the Holy sepulcher and other sites in Jerusalem, and a site for Mount Sinai safely within Rome’s boundaries. Ultimately, an unholy union of church and state emerged with the following three parallel developments taking place:
- The Nicean Council setting the course for a formal endorsement of Trinitarian doctrine (325, 381 AD).
- Setting up the daily celebration of the mass as a magical recreation of Christ’s sacrifice, “the Abomination which maketh desolate” (400s).
- Setting up the Pope in place of Christ (539 AD) along with the setting up of a church organization that was parallel to the civil organization. So parallel were these organizations that 1600 years after the fall of Rome, long after the details of it’s civil administration have been forgotten, the basic Roman unit of political organization called the “diocese” still serves as the name for the basic unit of Catholic Church organization.
The prophet Daniel says much about the “Abomination which maketh Desolate,” and Jesus, in Matthew 24:15, admonishes us to take heed to these words of Daniel. In Revelation 2:13, the message to the church in Pergamos speaks of the spiritual ills of this period. These ills affected both houses of Israel, the spiritual seed, and the natural seed of Abraham, the Jews.
During Constantine’s reign a Roman Jew named Joseph converted to Christianity, and acquired Constantine’s confidence. After he obtained permission to proselytize his people, and to build churches and monasteries, he traveled in Palestine as a missionary focusing on Ccesarea, Tiberias, Nazara, and Kefr Tanchum.
All these towns were Jewish enclaves. He was unsuccessful and after reporting this to Constantine the emperor imposed heavy taxes and fines on Jews, and caused a great many of the leaders in these towns to be put to death. Constantine reigned till the year 342 AD, and his persecution may have driven the first Jews to Britain.
JULIAN THE APOSTATE
Not all Romans with a lust for power shared Constantine’s vision. A notable reactionary movement arose when Constantine’s nephew Julian, called the Apostate, assumed the government (361-363 AD). He was a great friend of the Jews and an ardent persecutor of the Christians.
In the second year of his reign, he gave the chief religious leader of Israel the order to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. Preparations were actually made to carry this out, when the sudden death of Julian frustrated the measure, and the work was left unaccomplished.
Julian repealed all the contributions, taxes, and laws with which Constantine had burdened and punished the Jews. Shortly afterwards, Valentinian ascended the throne in 368 AD and he was especially kind to the Jews.
In the twelfth year of his reign, 380 AD, he commanded the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem, and promised to make liberal expenditures for this purpose; but he died in the same year, and this project also was frustrated. The brevity of his reign frustrated these plans and the course set by Constantine resumed.
Emperor Theodosius I, with the influential Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (by Anthony van Dyck, 1600s).
LOSS OF RIGHTS AND THE FALL OF ROME
Theodosius I (379-395 AD) then established the empire as “Christian” and Jews as outcasts without full citizenship rights that would be further eroded over the centuries and not be enjoyed again anywhere until 1791. During his reign, the Second Ecumenical Church Council (381 AD) solidified Trinitarian “Orthodoxy,” further alienating Jews from Church dogma. The Jewish Paschal week had marked the holiest week on the Church’s calendar since Apostolic times. Now these times and seasons were changed to the still current method of predicting “Easter” deliberately so that it almost never coincides with the actual proper observance (Daniel 7:25).
Rome’s fall to Alaric the Vandal (410 AD) sent a shock through the civilized world and initiated a new period of isolation and persecution for the Jews. For the European portion of the empire in the west, Rome’s fall typically marks the beginning of the “Dark Ages” that were to last one thousand years. From this point forward the history of the Roman world must follow two tracks – the impoverished European portion and the Greek-speaking “Byzantium” in the East with its capital in Constantinople. The rise of Islam was to create new complications for the Jewish people in the unrelenting treading down of Jerusalem by the Gentiles, for which the worst lay yet in the future.
– Bro. Richard Doctor
(1) For some additional information about this period the following two web-sites should offer reasonable scholarship – en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Bar Kokhba%27s_revolt (and) www.ucalgary.ca/-elsegal/ TalmudMap/Mishnah.html
(2) Doctor, R., “The 9th of Av,” Beauties o/ the Truth (17, 4) Nov 2006.
(3) Gilbert, M., Atlas o/ Jewish History, Dorset Press (1984) p.16-17.