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

by H. C. Adams

Rabbi Akiba was a proselyte of Canaanitish descent, a herdsman in the employ of a wealthy man named Kalba-Sabua. His master’s daughter fell in love with him, and they were married, though without the father’s knowledge. When he learned the fact, he drove them from his house; and Akiba, at the age of forty, began the study of the law. He obtained great reputation in it, being accounted one of the chief authorities of that Rabbinical school of interpretation which upholds the absolute integrity of the received text, and teaches that every word, nay every letter of it, has its special and mystical meaning. After twelve years of study, when he had risen to considerable eminence, he paid a visit to Kalba-Sabua, followed by 12,000 disciples, who attended on his teaching. The old man continuing inflexible, Akiba returned to his studies for twelve years more, when he again appeared at his father-in-law’s house, this time accompanied by 24,000 scholars. This evidence of the honour in which his son-in-law was held overcame Kalba-Sabua’s resentment, and he bestowed a large portion of his riches upon him. At the time of the revolt from Adrian, Akiba was nearly 120 years old.[29] He had been recently travelling in Northern Africa and Mesopotamia, where he had witnessed the zeal of his countrymen for the Hope of Israel; and he was resolved that he and his should not fall behind them in courage and devotion.

His feelings must have been very warmly awakened to allow of his accepting Barchochebas, as he called himself, as the true Messiah that was to come. Who Barchochebas really was, has always been a problem with historians. By some he is said to have been a captain of banditti, notorious for his robberies and murders. But this may, not impossibly, be a calumny. He may have been the leader of one of the bands of wild warriors, who in those lawless times lived, like the more modern Bedouins, after a predatory manner, but are hardly to be regarded as mere robbers. Though undoubtedly an impostor, and conscious of his own imposture,[30] he was nevertheless a man of courage and ability, who might, under more favourable circumstances, have succeeded in establishing the independence of his country.

His first step, as we have seen, was to march with such forces as he could raise to Jerusalem; where he put a stop to the sacrilegious work which had been already commenced by Adrian’s order. He then proceeded to the strong city of Bithor, or Bethor, which lay at no great distance from Jerusalem. Here he was publicly acknowledged by Akiba as the Messiah, and large numbers of Jews, not from Judæa only, but from other neighbouring countries, flocked in to his standard. The levies at his command are said to have amounted at one time to 200,000 men; a force with which the Roman troops in Judæa were wholly unable to cope. The whole country fell under his dominion, and the utmost zeal and loyalty were displayed in his service. The only persons throughout the whole of Palestine who stood aloof were the Christians; who, knowing that Jesus Christ was the true Deliverer of the Jewish people, could not acknowledge any other to be such. Barchochebas is said to have punished their defection, as he considered it, with the most savage cruelty, regarding them as rebels and traitors, more criminal than the Romans themselves.

Adrian, who could not for a long time be induced to believe that the Jews, after the terrible lesson which their fathers had learned of the consequences of rebellion against Rome, would again provoke a mortal quarrel, treated the outbreak as a matter of but small importance. But the tales that reached him, of large military stores being in the possession of the Jews, who had for a long time past been secretly collecting them; of their countrymen from Egypt and the East thronging to their standard; and even of multitudes of strangers to their faith and nation nevertheless joining them, in the hope of obtaining plunder, roused him at length to vigorous action. He sent a reinforcement of troops to Ticinius, or Tinnius, by some called Turnus Rufus,[31] who commanded in Judæa, and recalled from Britain Julius Severus, the ablest officer of his time, to put down, what—it was now impossible to disguise—had become a dangerous rebellion.

Severus, on his arrival, found the condition of things so unfavourable to the Roman arms that he did not venture to meet Barchochebas in the field. The latter was in possession of fifty fortified places, and nearly a thousand villages and towns. Rufus had done little but exercise the most merciless severities on all, even women and children, who had fallen into his power; thus, without really diminishing the strength of his enemies, increasing tenfold their exasperation. If he had continued in command, it is far from improbable that the yoke of Rome would, for a time at all events, have been cast off. But Severus had learned the art of war in his campaigns in Britain; and the consequences of the change of the general in command soon became evident. Avoiding, as has been already intimated, any decisive engagement, he harassed the Jews by an endless succession of petty conflicts, in nearly all of which they were worsted, driving them into their strongholds, which he then besieged and captured,[32] until nearly all that had revolted were reduced to submission.[33] By the end of the third year of the war, the rebels were driven into the strong city of Bithor, or Bethor, the situation of which is uncertain, but is generally believed to have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bethhoron. Here Barchochebas and Akiba sustained, we are told, a long and terrible siege, ‘the rebels being driven,’ says Eusebius, ‘to the last extremities by famine.’ But there is no historian of this war to record its particulars with the minuteness and accuracy of a Josephus. The Rabbins have indeed given many details; but it is impossible to rely on their statements. Thus, they relate, that when the prospects of the besieged became gloomy and threatening, one of the most zealous of their body, Rabbi Eliezer, the son of Hamadai, following the example of Moses at Rephidim, remained on his knees in prayer during the whole time that the fighting was going on; and the result of his prayers was, that the Jews fought with signal success, everywhere driving the besiegers back. To avert the disaster which seemed likely to result to the Roman arms, a treacherous Samaritan pretended to be discovered in carrying treasonable communications between the Rabbi and the Romans. Barchochebas, without inquiry, ordered the Rabbi to be slain; and from that moment, it is said, the courage of the besieged gave way. Bithor was at length taken by storm. Barchochebas, according to some, was killed in action, according to others, put to death with cruel tortures by the conquerors. The slaughter that ensued is described as exceeding anything on record. The streams of blood were so great as to carry heavy stones the whole way from the city to the sea, and the ground for eighteen miles round is said to have been covered with corpses! These flights of Rabbinical imagination may be dismissed as worthless; but the more sober historian, Dion Cassius, reports that more than half a million perished by the sword, independently of vast numbers who died by disease and famine. Judæa once more became a barren waste. The cities were reduced to heaps of ruin, and the wild beasts tenanted the streets. The inhabitants who escaped the sword were sold as slaves, and transported to foreign lands.

The fate of the stern old Rabbi Akiba should not be passed over. He was treated with the utmost barbarity by Rufus, who seems to have been in command at the capture of the city. While under examination before the Roman tribunal, the hour of prayer came round, and Akiba, wholly disregarding the presence of his judge, and his own mortal peril, fell on his knees and calmly went through his usual devotions. Only a scanty pittance of water was allowed him in his dungeon; but though he was consumed with thirst, he applied the water to the customary ceremonial ablutions. He was sentenced to death, and executed with the most barbarous cruelty, some writers affirming that he was flayed alive, and afterwards slain, others that he was torn to pieces with iron combs.[34]

Adrian now carried out his design, the commencement of which had been the immediate cause of the war, and built a heathen city on the site of ancient Jerusalem. This he called Ælia Capitolina—Ælia after his own name Ælius, and Capitolina, because it was dedicated to the Capitoline Jupiter. It was built in the style prevalent among the Romans of that day; and was enclosed by a wall, which included Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, but did not take in Mount Zion. In the execution of his plan he was careful to show all possible dishonour to the localities which the Jews and also the Christians regarded with veneration. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was erected on the site of the Temple itself; over the gate which looked towards Bethlehem, the city of David, a marble figure of a hog was set up; on Mount Calvary was placed a statue of Venus, the foulest of the heathen deities; and in the grotto at Bethlehem, where the Saviour was born, the worship of Adonis was established. Why Adrian should have been thus studious to profane these latter places, which, though they possessed special sanctity in the eyes of the Christians, had little or none in those of the Jews, does not appear. We can only suppose that the confusion between the Jews and the Christians, who for many generations were regarded as being merely a schismatical Jewish sect, misled the Roman emperor, even at this date and that he regarded Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre as spots especially venerated by Jews. It is certain that no part of his anger was levelled against the Christians. He suffered them to settle within his newly erected city, and carry on their worship there without interruption. Ælia became, not long afterwards, the seat of a Christian bishopric.

But to the Jews he extended no such grace. He issued two edicts; one renewing the order which forbade the circumcision of their children; the other interdicting them, on pain of instant death, from entering the newly-built city, or even approaching so near to it as to be able to discern with their eyes the sacred precincts. It would seem that this prohibition was subsequently relaxed, so far as one day in the year was concerned, the anniversary, namely, of the capture of the city in the war with Titus, and again, in that with Barchochebas; for it is a singular fact that the two events occurred in the same month and on the same day.[35] On the recurrence of that day of misery and despair, they were allowed to pass the Roman sentinels, and gaze once more on the ruins of the past. Jerome has given a moving account of the scene, which, it would appear, he himself witnessed, two centuries afterwards—the crowd of dejected exiles, the sobs of the women, the agonized despair of the men, the jeers and scoffs of the bystanders, and the rude demands of the Roman soldiers for bribes of money, as the only condition on which they could be allowed to indulge their sorrow.[36]

FOOTNOTES:

[29] So, at least, say the Jewish biographers. But as they labour to assimilate him in all things to Moses, it is not unlikely that they have accommodated his age to their theories.