Category Archives: History

The history behind the story.

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History behind story: Bar Kokhba Revolt AD 132 – 135

Cassius Dio’s history points out that the Bar Kokhba revolt was a violent and catastrophic event for the population of Iudaea.  It had a lasting effect on the Jewish people and was a major contributor of the Jewish Diaspora as those who survived fled to other lands or became enslaved.  While historians for many years mentioned little about the revolt and gave more attention to the uprising in AD 70 that was documented in detail by Jewish general turned historian, Josephus, modern archaeology has shed new light on the significance of Bar Kokhba and his establishment of the state of Israel in spite of Roman resistance.

While Iudaea takes artistic license with Sextus Julius Severus’s journey to Iudaea from Britannia, history clearly states that Emperor Hadrian summoned this skillful general from the far side of the empire to put down the uprising.  The story also attempts to stay true to the circumstances of the war and the nature of the conflict.  Unlike the war of AD 70, the historical and archaeological evidence suggests the Jewish rebels spent a considerable amount of time planning the revolt.  The rebels had learned the lessons of previous generations.  They stockpiled weapons and avoided getting trapped in the major cities where Rome had the patience and resources to lay a prolonged siege.  They constructed elaborate cave networks under the cities and along the major routes where they could store their supplies and send out strategic attacks against the legions.  They also avoided much of the infighting that occurred during the previous revolt but there were still many among the high priests who questioned Bar Kokhba and his right to rule as Nasi Israel, “Prince of Israel”.  The prominent Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva backed Bar Kokhba and entertained the notion that he was the Jewish Messiah partly based on the meaning of his name, “son of star”.  His legacy though would be more complicated with some in the rabbinical tradition calling him Ben-Kusiba, a term implying he was a false messiah.

Regardless of his religious significance, he had a major impact on the military and political history of the region.  For a period of time, he created an independent Jewish state that minted its own coins and was able to keep Roman legions at bay, but it wasn’t to last.  Hadrian inflicted the full force of Rome against the rebels.  With over 12 legions and a policy of genocide against the Jewish people, there was little hope Bar Kokhba’s Israel would last.  After the final battle of Bethar, where it is believed Bar Kokhba died of disease days before the walls of the fortress were breached, Hadrian had Jerusalem plowed under and rebuilt as the pagan city Aelia Capitolina.  He banned Jewish rites like the reading of the Torah and the practice of circumcision.   And finally he renamed Iudaea, Syria Palestine.  The region was referred to as Palestine until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

To learn more about Bar Kokhba and the revolt check out these resources:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/revolt1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt

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Bar Kokhba Revolt from Cassius Dio

This is an excerpt from Roman History by Cassius Dio (c. AD 155-229). It is one of the few historical references to the Bar Kokhba Revolt and only hints at the violence inflicted on the Jewish people of Iudaea.

Book LXIX
12 At Jerusalem he (Hadrian) founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there. So long, indeed, as Hadrian was close by in Egypt and again in Syria, they remained quiet, save in so far as they purposely made of poor quality such weapons as they were called upon to furnish, in order that the Romans might reject them and they themselves might thus have the use of them; but when he went farther away, they openly revolted. To be sure, they did not dare try conclusions with the Romans in the open field, but they occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet together unobserved under ground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light.
13 At first the Romans took no account of them. Soon, however, all Judaea had been stirred up, and the Jews everywhere were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by overt acts; many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter. Then, indeed, Hadrian sent against them his best generals. First of these was Julius Severus, who was dispatched from Britain, where he was governor, against the Jews. Severus did not venture to attack his opponents in the open at any one point, in view of their numbers and their desperation, but by intercepting small groups, thanks to the number of his soldiers and his under-officers, and by depriving them of food and shutting them up, he was able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to crush, exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived.
14 Fifty of their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate, a result of which the people had had forewarning before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, which the Jews regard as an object of veneration, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed, and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into their cities. Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war. Therefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, “If you and our children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health.”
Read more of Cassius Dio’s Roman History at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/home.html