The history of the Jews: From the war with Rome to the present time

by H. C. Adams

The destruction of the Temple, though it was the death-knell of the Jewish people, did not at once put an end to the siege. The Upper City, into which Simon and John had retreated, still held out, and was to all appearance stronger and more difficult to assault than what had been already captured. But the spirit of the Jewish leaders, fierce as it was, had been broken by the failure of their cherished hope—the direct interference of Heaven in behalf of the Temple. They demanded a parley, which was granted them, and Titus would have spared their lives, on condition of absolute surrender. But they required terms which he refused to grant, and hostilities were renewed. After incessant labour, occupying nearly three weeks, Titus raised his works to a sufficient height to enable him to attack the walls by which the Upper City was guarded, and an assault was made. It was almost instantly successful. The determined obstinacy of the defenders had sunk into sullen despair. They gave way on all sides; their leaders took refuge in the vaults beneath the city, soon afterwards surrendering to the mercy of Titus; and the whole city fell into the hands of the besiegers.

But even this did not put a period to the war. Three strong fortresses, Herodion, Machærus, and Masada, garrisoned by men as fierce and resolute as the defenders of Jerusalem itself, still remained unconquered. The first of these, indeed, surrendered as soon as summoned; and the second, after some fierce conflicts with the Romans, was induced to do the same. But the third, Masada, the favourite stronghold of Herod the Great, offered a long and desperate resistance. It stood on a lofty rock, on the south-west border of the Dead Sea, and was only accessible by two narrow paths on the east and west, winding up lofty precipices, where the slightest slip of the foot would be inevitable death. When these tracks, which were three or four miles in length, were surmounted, the fortress of Masada appeared, standing in the centre of a broad plateau, and surrounded by a wall twenty-two feet high, defended by massive towers. It was strongly garrisoned, and supplied with provisions sufficient for a siege of almost any duration. Silva, as the Roman general sent against it was called, blockaded the place, and then erected a mound of enormous height, on the top of which he planted his battering rams. A breach was made, to which the besieged opposed an inner wall of timber. But this the Romans set on fire and reduced to ashes; upon which the besieged, finding it impossible to offer further resistance, and resolved not to surrender, took the desperate resolution of perishing by their own deed. They first slew their wives and children. Then, appointing ten executioners for the work, they all submitted their own breasts to the sword: the ten then fell, each by his neighbour’s hand, and finally the surviving one drove the weapon into his own heart! This terrible catastrophe forms a fitting conclusion to the long catalogue of horrors which the Jewish wars record.

Judæa being now completely subdued, it remained for Titus to determine how the vanquished were to be dealt with. Further severities could hardly be required, even if they were possible. The numbers which had already perished are very variously stated. Those given by Josephus may certainly be regarded as an exaggeration, while the estimate of some later writers clearly fall short of the fact.[26] It is enough to say, that the whole of Galilee and Judæa had become one vast wreck—the fields and vineyards wasted, the woods cut down, the cities heaps of ruins, the land a graveyard. The very soldiers were weary of the work of carnage. Yet even of the miserable remnant of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, such as were old and weakly, and would not therefore realize a price in the auction mart, were put to death. Of those that remained, the tallest and best looking were reserved to grace the triumph of the conqueror at Rome. The rest were sent to labour in the Egyptian mines, or despatched in batches to distant provinces—to work as slaves, or be exhibited in the amphitheatres, as gladiators or combatants with wild beasts. A large proportion of the captives is said to have died of hunger.

As regards the leaders, the life of John was spared, though of all men who took part in the defence of Jerusalem he least deserved mercy. Simon was carried to Rome, and walked in the triumphal procession which Vespasian and Titus led up to the Capitol. This is said to have exceeded in splendour all previous pageants. Among the spoils displayed were the golden table, the silver trumpets, the seven-branched candlestick, and the book of the law; and these, the sole surviving monuments of the glories of the Latter House, still remain sculptured on the entablature of the Arch of Titus, to attest to posterity this terrible tale of crime and suffering.

With the fall of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Temple, as has been already observed, the national existence of the Jews terminated. Thenceforth, though they were to be found in large numbers in almost every country in the world, they were strangers and sojourners among other nations, no longer themselves a people. It must not, however, be supposed, though the mistake is a common one, that their dispersion dates from the conquest of Judæa by Titus. They had spread into distant lands long before that time, and had formed large and powerful communities. It was only a portion of the Jews that returned from Babylon after the captivity. A large number had remained behind, occupying the homes which they had made for themselves, and enjoying prosperity and peace. In Egypt and Cyrene they were almost as numerous; in Rome, and in other great Italian cities, they constituted no small section of the inhabitants. How widely they were scattered may be gathered from the catalogue given by St. Luke, in his narrative of the doings of the Day of Pentecost.

The real change which now took place consisted in the destruction of their great centre of life and unity. It was like cutting off the main fountain in some system of artificial irrigation. The waters still remained in a hundred reservoirs, but the system itself existed no longer. With any other nation in the world, the result, in the course of a few generations, would have been the disappearance of all the peculiar and distinctive features of the people. They would have become fused with, and incorporated in, the nations among whom they were dwelling, as was the case with the Danes and Saxons among ourselves. But though they have resided among alien races for two thousand years, they have ever dwelt, and still dwell, apart from them. They obey the laws and comply with the customs of the land in which they reside; they converse in its language and respect its religious observances. But they cling to the Jewish laws and customs, so far as it is possible for them to do so. The Hebrew is still their national language; the ancient worship of Israel the only one they will render. Like the stream of the Rhone at Chalons, which mingles with that of the Saone, yet continues to retain the peculiarity of its colour, they are dwellers among many nations, but Jews after all, and Jews only.

It was this distinctive feature that enabled them, before the lapse of many years, to resume something of the organization which had been, to all appearance, destroyed by the heavy blow they had sustained. The Sanhedrin, which they had always acknowledged as the chief authority of Palestine, had escaped, it was said, the general wreck, and was presently re-established at Jamnia. How far this may have been the case is a moot point in history. But it is certain that a school of theology, commanding very wide and general respect, grew up in that city; and its presidents exercised considerable influence over their countrymen. The Eastern Jews were under the authority of a chief, known as ‘the Prince of Captivity,’ while those lying more to the west acknowledged a similar ruler, who assumed the title of ‘the Patriarch of the West.’ The synagogues also, which had in later generations been set up in every Jewish city, though they could not supply the void caused by the destruction of the Temple, afforded, nevertheless, something of a centre of religious unity. In this manner, before the lapse of two generations, the Jews, with the amazing vitality that has ever distinguished them, had recovered in a great measure their numbers, their wealth, and their unconquerable spirit.

Throughout the reigns of Titus, Domitian, and Nerva, little is heard of them. It is said indeed that Vespasian ordered search to be made for any blood-relations of Jesus, the Son of David, whom he purposed to put to death, as possible aspirants to the crown of Judæa; and Hegesippus affirms that two grandsons of St. Jude were cited before Domitian for the same reason. But we learn that they were at once dismissed as unworthy of notice. Nor, throughout Nerva’s reign, was any burden laid upon them, beyond the didrachma imposed by Vespasian. But during Trajan’s Parthian wars, which necessitated the absence of the Roman troops from the garrison towns of Africa, the Jews in Egypt and Cyrene broke out into insurrection, and terrible bloodshed ensued. It began with the massacre of the entire Jewish population at Alexandria by the Greeks, who had taken up arms to oppose them. Maddened by the tidings of this disaster, the Cyrenian Jews are said to have committed unheard-of atrocities; sawing in twain the bodies of their prisoners, or compelling them to fight in the amphitheatres—it was even alleged, feasting on their flesh. They are thought to have slaughtered more than 200,000, some say 600,000 men. The revolt had hardly attained its height, when it was followed by two others, one in Cyprus, and the other in Mesopotamia. They were put down after a little while, with frightful carnage, by the Romans and more particularly by Lucius Quietus, one of the ablest generals of the day. Trajan’s anger seems to have been greatly roused by the outbreak, for which he felt that his mild and equitable government had given no adequate cause. He required their total expulsion from Mesopotamia; and it is likely that his death in the ensuing year alone prevented the accomplishment of his purpose.

The Jews, however, fared little better under his successor, Adrian. This emperor had been a witness of the atrocities perpetrated by the Jews during the insurrection in Cyprus; and he had probably some reason for anticipating a similar demonstration in Palestine. Scarcely fifty years had elapsed since that land had been reduced to the condition of a desert.[27] But so irrepressible was the vigour of the Hebrew race, that the fields had been recultivated, the forests replanted, most of the cities rebuilt, and tenanted by large and thriving populations. It was obvious, if Jerusalem should rise from its ruins, and a new temple crown Mount Moriah, that a repetition of the war, which had cost Rome so much blood and treasure, would inevitably ensue. It is not known with any certainty what was the condition of Jerusalem at this time. When the city fell entirely into the hands of Titus, he ordered the whole of it to be destroyed, with the exception of the three stately towers of Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Psephinus, together with part of the western wall,—which was left as a shelter to the Roman camp, where about eight hundred legionaries were stationed, as a garrison, to preserve order in the neighbouring country. How long they remained there is uncertain. But no one seems to have interfered with such persons as chose to return to the deserted spot, and erect new homes out of the heaps of ruin that lay scattered round. What numbers may by this time have assembled on the site of the Holy City we are not told. But Adrian resolved to put a stop to the fancies which, not improbably, really were current among the Jews, by establishing a Roman colony on the spot, and building on Mount Moriah a temple of Jupiter.[28]

It is probable that the emperor did not understand—indeed, no heathen could understand—the horror and despair which the publication of the design caused among the unhappy Jews. It was in their eyes the most fearful impiety—the most horrible profanation. Their only hope lay in the advent of the long-promised Messiah; who now surely, if ever, might be expected to appear on earth, and redeem His people from the depth of degradation and misery to which they had sunk. In the midst of these alternations of despondency and reassurance, a rumour suddenly reached them, that the long-expected deliverer had at last made his appearance, and was even then, on his way, at the head of an armed force, to take possession of the ruins of Jerusalem, and prevent the perpetration of the intended impiety. His name, they were told, was Barchochebas, ‘the son,’ that is to say, ‘of the star,’—the star predicted by Balaam, ‘which was to come out of Jacob, and smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.’