12
Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, A.D. 71-324
Selfishness, secret combinations, and, above all, the rejection of Jesus and his message brought about the First Jewish Revolt and sealed the fate of Jerusalem. Elder Marion G. Romney explained: "All of this destruction and the dispersion of the Jews would have been avoided had the people accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ and had their hearts changed by it." 1
The period after the revolt is one of the most complex in Jewish history. 2 Though Jerusalem remained in ruins for some sixty-one years after the devastation of A.D. 70, it was not unpopulated. Some of its former inhabitants returned and tried to rebuild their lives. Jews and some members of the early Christian community who had fled during the siege to Pella, in Jordan, resettled around the camp of the Roman Tenth Legion on the site of what had been Herod's Palace on the Western Hill of Jerusalem. 3 Today this area is in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City. The legion, which had helped conquer the city, was now given the task of guarding over it. Excavations in the area have uncovered clay pipes, roof tiles, and bricks, usually bearing the stamp of the legion's initials "Leg.X.F" (Legio X Fretensis) and its emblem, a wild boar or such maritime symbols as ships, dolphins, or the sea god Neptune. 4
Some authorities maintain that a large Jewish population remained in Jerusalem after A.D. 70 and continued to worship at the Temple site. 5 There was no Temple, however, no altar, no sacrifice, and no tangible symbol of the Lord's presence. Later sources report that the Jews had as many as seven synagogues in the area, implying that the population rose considerably between A.D. 71 and 130. 6 But archaeological excavations during the last three decades of the twentieth century show that caves and hovels provided much of the living space. That hardly compares to the magnificence of Jerusalem before A.D. 70. It does, however, provide significant witness to the fulfillment of prophetic utterance. Elder Erastus Snow observed:
It has become a matter of history that Jerusalem [became] heaps of ruins. . . . It is a matter of history that the very site of that wonderful Temple was ploughed as a field, and its destruction was rendered so complete that every foundation stone was [razed]; and that there might be no vestige of it left, around which the Jews might cling, the Roman Emperor caused that it should be ploughed up as a field, thus literally fulfilling the words of the Prophet [Micah] and the words of the Savior. This woe and destruction was predicted and overtook that people, and they were eventually scattered, because of their wickedness, and because of the corruption of their princes, judges and rulers. 7
Immediately after Jerusalem was destroyed, imperial attention was riveted briefly on Masada, Herod's former fortress-hideaway, where the followers of Menahem, son of Judas the Galilean, had escaped during the First Revolt. Because this band of Zealots took no further part in the war against Rome and posed no real military threat, the empire was in no hurry to move against them. Sometime after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Lucilius Bassus was appointed legate in Judaea, and he spent his energies conquering two of Herod's other fortresses, Herodium and Machaerus. Probably in the winter of 73, Bassus' successor, Flavius Silva, marched to the western base of Masada, on top of which the Zealot camp stood. There he began his siege. 8
To reach the wall on the summit of Masada, 150 yards above his camp, Silva built a huge ramp for an iron-covered siege tower that was equipped with ballistae on top and a battering ram below. The Zealots had time to prepare their defenses and even enjoyed a moment of hope when torches thrown against one of their walls flamed back against the tower. But their jubilation was short-lived when the wind changed and the wall began to burn.
Confident that the battle was all but over, the Romans withdrew for the night. This lull gave Eleazar, the leader of the Zealots on Masada, a chance to make a long speech in which he exhorted his fellows not to receive their punishment at the hands of the Romans but rather from God himself as they determined their own fate. His followers resolved to kill themselves, even though such an action went against Jewish law. Each father killed his immediate family, and then ten men were selected by lot to execute those who remained; one, again chosen by lot, then slew the other nine and finally stabbed himself. Josephus records that 960 perished that night. It was Passover, A.D. 74. When the Roman troops burst into the fortress the next morning, an awful silence greeted them. Two women and five children who had survived the carnage by hiding in a cistern recounted to the troops all that had happened. Although Josephus was not at Masada, he had access to the official reports from the field and may even have consulted Flavius Silva, who was in Rome in A.D. 81 when Josephus wrote his account. 9
Surprisingly, Roman dealings with the Jews in Judaea after the First Revolt were restrained and measured. There was no attempt to reduce the size of the province or to change its name. That happened later, after the Bar Kokhba, or Second Jewish Revolt, in A.D. 135, when Judaea became Syria-Palestina. Between A.D. 71 and 130, Roman authorities corrected certain abuses in the system of administration that had contributed to the unrest before A.D. 66. Recognizing that the earlier praefects and procurators were drawn from the equestrian class and had shown little talent for dealing with the local inhabitants, Rome now determined that the governors of Judaea would come from the senatorial class. Along with this official was appointed a procurator in charge of finances—a move undertaken to ensure that the procurator did not use his office to increase his personal wealth. A new tax (the fiscus Judaicus) was imposed on all Jews in place of the annual contribution they had formerly given to their Temple. This tax added insult to injury because this money was donated to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome. Other than this tax, however, no collective punishment was meted out to the Jews. 10
Another important development after A.D. 70 was the widening of the breach between Judaism and Christianity. The destruction of the Temple ended once and for all any possibility for the early Jewish Christians to remain an integral part of the Jewish community. 11 It reassured some Christians about the correctness and eventual triumph of their cause. Some saw the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple as just retribution for the crucifixion of Jesus. They believed the Christian church was the branch of Israel that God now favored: a new system had replaced the old. With the fall of Jerusalem, Christians cast their lot with the world that lay outside Judaism, the Holy City, and the Temple.
Even before A.D. 70, Christianity had cut many of its Jewish ties, as its missionaries turned more toward Gentile towns and less toward Jerusalem. Yet wrenching apostasy, predicted by both Jesus and his apostles, began to afflict and finally to devastate the Church. After 70, Jerusalem was no longer the exclusive capital of the Christian faith; ironically, as its center of affairs gravitated increasingly toward Rome, Christianity became increasingly persecuted by the Roman Empire. By then the Christian faith was no longer the receptacle of pure doctrine as taught by Christ. Apostles and prophets had died or were killed, and "grievous wolves" entered the church, "not sparing the flock"; self-appointed leaders arose, "speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20:29-30).
Hadrian, A.D. 117-138
In A.D. 117, almost half a century after Jerusalem was destroyed, Hadrian ascended the imperial throne in Rome. Roman historians generally portrayed him as a somewhat benevolent ruler who benefited his country. At first, the Jews entertained rather high hopes for the new emperor. He was hailed by an Alexandrian Jew as a second Cyrus—the tolerant Persian monarch who had permitted the reconstruction of Jerusalem and the Temple nearly seven centuries earlier. 12
To the Jews, the circumstances of A.D. 70 and the years immediately following bore a striking resemblance to the catastrophe of 586 B.C. when the First Temple was destroyed. The Jews had returned then to Jerusalem after not quite fifty years and restored the Temple, ultimately to a condition of splendor under Herod. That memory was both comforting and encouraging. If Cyrus had been moved upon to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, could not Hadrian do likewise? In fact, there is a strong Jewish tradition that Hadrian actually authorized such a move; that is, he ordered the removal of the Emperor Trajan's statue from the Temple site and the rebuilding of the Temple itself. But tradition adds that when Samaritan opposition arose, the emperor broke his promise and forbade the revival of the Temple. 13 From the Jewish perspective, Hadrian then acted even more unsympathetically towards the Jews than had any other emperor. And the Jews responded with hatred.
Discord was almost inevitable, given Hadrian's belief that his empire was composed of regions proud to be unified under the great commonwealth of Rome. Not only that, Hadrian was an enthusiastic Hellenist who was convinced that every province must be fully integrated into the Greek culture that formed the backbone of his Graeco-Roman civilization. Dissent or separatism was out of the question. To the Jews this was all too reminiscent of the Hellenization undertaken by Antiochus IV Epiphanes—who, not incidentally, was immortalized by Hadrian himself when the emperor completed a temple dedicated to Antiochus at Athens in A.D. 128. 14
The situation became very grave when Hadrian banned the practice of circumcision. The Jews regarded the ban as a deliberate repression of them and their religion. In fact, the prohibition was at first intended as an extension of the long-standing Roman ban of bodily mutilation. But Hadrian also meant the ban to eradicate the separateness that he regarded as his sworn duty to overcome throughout the empire.
In A.D. 130 Hadrian visited Jerusalem and determined to rebuild it as a Roman city. He planned to construct on the Temple Mount a temple to the Roman god Jupiter and restore the ravaged city to glory as an eastern center of the commonwealth. In addition, Jerusalem was henceforth to be called Aelia Capitolina after Hadrian himself, who belonged to the family Aelii (his full name was Publius Aelius Hadrianus) and also after Jupiter Capitolinus, patron deity of the rebuilt city. But Hadrian's plan was doomed from the start: "Throughout its history, Jerusalem has known many periods of florescence, but only when it was a spiritual center for the country's inhabitants." 15
According to the Roman historian Dio Cassius in his early third-century work History of Rome, news of Hadrian's intention to found a new colony on top of Jerusalem—thus ending all hope of reconstructing the Temple—rekindled the flames of full-fledged revolution against Rome. 16 Antagonism had been smoldering for a long time, and Hadrian's decrees banning circumcision and announcing plans for Aelia Capitolina precipitated the outbreak of new hostilities. Eusebius, fourth-century bishop of Caesarea, suggests that the Second Revolt was not simply a sudden eruption of Jewish nationalism and religious fervor but rather the culmination of several decades of unrest following the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. 17
The Bar Kokhba Revolt
Only sparse and fragmentary data exist on this next war against Rome. Dio Cassius tells us that while Hadrian was in Judaea and Egypt (A.D. 130-131), the Jews planned their tactics, accumulated stores of arms and supplies, and sent emissaries throughout the Diaspora to gather support for the coming struggle as they waited for a suitable opportunity. 18 During this period a charismatic Jewish military leader named Simeon ben Kosiba became prominent. He remains one of Jewish history's most controversial figures. The appellation Bar Kokhba ("son of a star") was apparently given to him during the revolt and was based on the messianic interpretation of Numbers 24:17: "There shall come a Star [Hebrew, kokhab] out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel." 19 Disillusionment in the wake of defeat led the people to turn his original name, ben Kosiba, into a pun on the Hebrew word "to lie" (kazab), that is, Bar Koziba ("son of a liar"). To them he turned out to be the great false messiah. 20
Among those who hailed Bar Kokhba as the Messiah was Rabbi Akiva (ca. A.D. 50-135), the foremost Jewish scholar and sage of the era. The great medieval Jewish scholar Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) stated, "Rabbi Akiva, the greatest of the sages of the Mishnah, was a supporter of King Ben Koziva, saying of him that he was the king messiah. He and all the contemporary sages regarded him as the king messiah." 21 In fact, not every sage regarded him as the Messiah. But Akiva became the spiritual leader of the revolt; he even traveled abroad to gather support for the revolution among the Jews of the Diaspora. He went as far west as Gaul (France) and as far east as Babylonia.
Bar Kokhba's seemingly contradictory personality—tremendous charisma manifested alongside extreme harshness—fascinated later rabbis. According to the Talmud, he required all his soldiers to cut off a finger to demonstrate their loyalty and valor. 22 But some of the Jewish sages of Bar Kokhba's time were more disgusted than fascinated. They wondered how long he would continue to turn all Israel into maimed men. His reliance on his own powers rather than on help from heaven caused great conflict between him and some of the rabbis, who regarded his attitude as the epitome of haughtiness. 23 Bundles of letters and related documents found in the Judaean desert not far from the Dead Sea Scroll community at Qumran depict Bar Kokhba as a stern military commander who sought to rule Judaea with authoritarian power. These Judaean sources, especially letters to subordinates, reveal a leader who insisted on his views and ruled both the people and his officers with an iron fist. 24
When Hadrian left the region in late A.D. 131 or early 132, the Jews seized their opportunity and openly rebelled, first near Modi'in. 25 They seized small towns and fortified them with walls and underground tunnels. Rather than fight pitched battles, the rebels inflicted heavy losses on the Romans with guerrilla maneuvers. Caught off guard, the Roman governor, Tinius Rufus, ordered the evacuation of Jerusalem. The Tenth Legion abandoned its encampment in the city and headed for Caesarea. Under Bar Kokhba's leadership, the rebels established a provincial government in their former capital city, made plans to rebuild the Temple, and in the interim resumed ritual sacrifices at a temporary altar on the Temple site. A new calendar was proclaimed, and new coins were struck. One side of such a coin reads, "Shimon [Bar Kokhba] prince [Hebrew, nasi] of Israel," and on the reverse side, "Year one of the redemption of Israel." 26 In the minds of the rebels an independent Jewish state had once again been reestablished with Bar Kokhba as "King-Messiah" or redeemer—a notion also confirmed in the Judaean desert documents. Rabbi Akiva explicitly linked the title nasi with the idea of "King-Messiah." 27
In point of fact, an important contrast between the First Jewish Revolt in A.D. 70 and the situation in A.D. 132 was that the Jews of the Second Revolt were united under a single commander-in-chief. Bar Kokhba saw his government as the only legal rule in the Holy Land, and those who opposed him, Christians of Jewish ancestry, for example, who did not believe Bar Kokhba to be the Messiah, were persecuted. 28
Dio Cassius states that the insurrectionists of 132 were well prepared, and the uprising spread until all of Judaea was in revolt. The Jews throughout the world supported the uprising, as did many non-Jews, and it was "as though the whole world raged." 29 The Gentiles who supported the Jewish revolutionaries came mainly from the oppressed classes of the local inhabitants. Apparently even some Samaritans joined the Bar Kokhba rebels. Isolated evidence shows that the revolt spread north to Beth-Shean and the Galilee, 30 but the main conflict took place in Judaea, the Shephelah, the mountain region, and finally in the Judaean desert.
Absolutely critical to those waging the Bar Kokhba rebellion, symbolically as well as strategically, was Jerusalem. It represented every Jew's yearning for freedom and was the political rallying point for the rebels. In fact, one Judaean desert document is dated "the third year of the freedom of Jerusalem." This source also tells us that Jerusalem was still in the hands of Bar Kokhba and his followers in the third year of the revolt (A.D. 134).
Hadrian sent for reinforcements under the command of one of his ablest generals, Sextus Julius Severus, governor of Britain. Because of the great number of insurrectionists and the intensity of their fury, Severus refrained from engaging in open battles, preferring instead to surround the Jews in their fortress towns and blockade them so that they ran out of supplies. One of his armies dared to advance rashly against rebel forces and was completely wiped out—a tragic but valuable lesson to the Romans. 31
Pressure put on the Bar Kokhba revolutionaries was intense. The emperor himself joined Severus in Judaea. Besides the Sixth and the Tenth legions already stationed there, components of other legions were brought in from Syria, Arabia, Egypt, the Danube region of Europe, and elsewhere. Roman armies surrounded Jerusalem on every side. The city was inadequately fortified to withstand another Roman siege, and the rebels abandoned it near the end of the third year of the revolt. In the spring of 135, Bar Kokhba and his army took refuge in the fortress of Bethar, in the Judaean hills southwest of Jerusalem, where the final siege began. 32
Situated on a hill overlooking a deep canyon, Bethar seemed a stronghold for the rebels, but it lacked a secure water supply. By the end of the summer of 135, the Romans breached the rebels' wall. The surviving defenders were slaughtered, and Bar Kokhba himself was slain. 33
When word reached the remnants of Bar Kokhba's army that total defeat was imminent, they fled to caves in the Judaean desert near the Dead Sea. There, in places now called the "Cave of the Pool," "Cave of Letters," and "Cave of Horror," the last participants in the Bar Kokhba or Second Jewish Revolt met their deaths. Remains of Roman military camps found above the caves show that the Romans could not directly assault the fugitives, so they waited for hunger and thirst to do their work. 34
The Romans destroyed 985 villages and killed more than a million people—not including those who died of disease and hunger. Roman losses too were extremely heavy; in fact, when Hadrian informed the Senate of his eventual victory in Judaea, he did not begin his speech with the usual formula, "I and my army are well." 35 His army was not well at all; it was decimated.
The Jewish population of Judaea was largely exterminated or exiled after the fall of Bethar. Massacres, the sale of Jews into slavery, and the uprooting of people from the soil were all part of the Roman program. The failure of Bar Kokhba brought to a brutal end Jewish self-government, along with all of the material attributes of nationhood. 36 A free and independent Jewish state would not be seen again for more than eighteen hundred years.
Maimonides believed that Bar Kokhba's messianic pretenses were nothing less than unmitigated wickedness and the source of tremendous misery. 37 Eusebius states that Bar Kokhba regarded himself as the savior who had come down to the Jews like a star from heaven. But, says the church historian, he was really a bloodthirsty bandit who used the strength of his name to get what he wanted. 38 It is significant and arresting that the true Savior prophesied of false messiahs who would arise after great tribulation overtook the Jews and the inhabitants of Jerusalem:
For then, in those days, shall be great tribulation on the Jews, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, such as was not before sent upon Israel, of God. . . .
All things which have befallen them are only the beginning of the sorrows which shall come upon them. . . .
Behold, these things I have spoken unto you concerning the Jews; and again, after the tribulation of those days which shall come upon Jerusalem, if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe him not;
For in those days there shall also arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch, that, if possible, they shall deceive the very elect, who are the elect according to the covenant. (JS-M 1:18-22)
If one ascribes the destructions of A.D. 70 (Jerusalem, the Temple, and 1.1 million people) to be the fulfillment of the Savior's prophetic view of Jerusalem's unprecedented tribulations ("tribulation . . . upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, such as was not before sent upon Israel"), then Bar Kokhba becomes an uncontestable fulfillment of Christ's prophetic vision of the rise of false Christs or messiahs. Note that the Savior says "again, after the tribulation of those days which shall come upon Jerusalem . . . there shall also arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders" (emphasis added). Bar Kokhba came after the First Revolt to bring again another revolt and more misery. For a time he and his followers did amazing things—they established a government run by the posterity of the Abrahamic covenant (that is, the Jews), achieved astounding victories over Roman might, and stirred a sense of final redemption as indicated by inscriptions on their coins. But Bar Kokhba was a false messiah, and he deceived no less a figure than the great Rabbi Akiva—one of Israel's elect, in their view. Bar Kokhba's claims to messiahship proved the decisive break between Judaism and Christianity, because Christians, who already knew who the true Messiah was, refused to follow another.
It is inspiring to realize that the destiny of Jerusalem was foretold by many, including the very Son of God. It is sobering to contemplate the as yet unfulfilled part of his prophecy:
And again, this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world, . . . and then shall the end come, or the destruction of the wicked;
And again shall the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet [concerning the destruction of Jerusalem], be fulfilled (JS-M 1: 31-32).
Aelia Capitolina
After they suppressed the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the Romans erected the pagan center of Aelia Capitolina on the site of the city. No Jews remained in Jerusalem after the revolt because Hadrian banned them from even entering the city upon penalty of death. A yearly exception was made on the ninth of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple, when Jews were allowed to come and weep by the Kotel, or western wall. 39 This ban remained in effect for at least a century, at which time (A.D. 235) the empire began to experience difficulties of its own.
Part of the reason for constructing Aelia Capitolina was to build up several cities to reinforce the eastern flank of the empire against invaders. Roads were laid in Judaea to connect Aelia Capitolina with Caesarea (Maratima), Legio (Megiddo), and other cities. The main entrance to Jerusalem all during this later Roman period was by way of the road that led through the northern gate—one of four main gates in the city wall at the cardinal points of the compass. Those gates were in the approximate location of today's Damascus Gate to the north, Jaffa Gate to the west, Lion's Gate to the east, and Zion Gate to the south. 40
The location of the wall around Aelia Capitolina is much debated and is inferred from the city wall depicted on a Byzantine mosaic map from Jordan known as the Madaba Map. Excavations under the present-day Damascus Gate, beginning in 1938, have revealed the splendid Roman triple-arched gate from which began the main road to Caesarea, the capital of the country at that time. Above the eastern entrance was an inscription reading: "The colony of Aelia Capitolina, [the inscription] was placed here by decree of the decurions [members of the city council]." 41 Large sections of the gate and its attendant tower were constructed with dressed stones apparently taken from Herodian structures demolished during the devastation of 70. Though a city council is mentioned in this inscription, it is still not clear how Aelia Capitolina was administered.
The city gates served as entrances to the paved streets of Aelia Capitolina. The two main thoroughfares were called the Cardo (Latin, "heart"). These two streets originated at a spacious square inside the northern gate where, according to the Madaba Map, a large column stood with a statue of the emperor. The large paving stones of the main streets still bear the typical Roman serrations carved into the slabs to help prevent passersby from slipping on their polished surfaces. 42
Another important feature of Jerusalem under imperial rule was its four monumental triumphal arches. Perhaps the most conspicuous was erected north of today's Damascus Gate, near the area of the Second Temple-period Third Wall. It bore at least two inscriptions from the reigns of Hadrian (117-138) and Antoninus Pius (138-161). It is believed to have been built by Hadrian to commemorate his victory over Bar Kokhba and was later embellished by Antoninus. The best known of the Roman arches is the Ecce Homo Arch, called thus because Christian tradition holds that it was there that Pontius Pilate brought Jesus before the masses and proclaimed "Behold the man!" (Latin, Ecce Homo). Nevertheless, this arch is generally considered by historians to have been built by Hadrian, owing to its three entrances, which resemble the other three-entrance arches constructed in Jerusalem during Hadrian's rule. 43
The paucity of literary sources for this period is frustrating, but some important data about Aelia Capitolina come from the large number of coins minted during this time. Soon after 135, a series of coins carried the inscription Colonia Aelia Capitolina condita ("the colony of Aelia Capitolina has been founded"). They also showed the image of the emperor plowing a furrow along the course of the new city walls about to be built. This was a fitting representation for the Jews because it was the material fulfillment of one of Micah's visions: "Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest" (Jer. 26:18). 44
Coins also depict the religious practices carried out in the city. The main activity centered on the cult worship of the three Capitoline gods whose images appear on coins of the period. From Hadrian's time, coins portray the temple he erected. Jupiter is shown sitting inside, facing the goddess Minerva, and the goddess Juno stands behind him. Jupiter and the two goddesses were the patron deities of the city and were called the Capitoline Trinity. Other sources confirm the existence of a temple to the Capitoline gods on the Temple Mount. The third-century historian Dio Cassius describes its establishment, as does the seventh-century Chronicon Pascale (Easter Chronicle). According to an early Christian pilgrim, the Bordeaux Traveler, the pagan temple was situated on the Temple Mount, and when Jews visited the site on the ninth of Av every year, they did so in its shadow. 45
Politically, Aelia Capitolina was a quiet little provincial city. The great events were imperial visits, such as the one by Septimius Severus in 201, which was commemorated by an inscription discovered near the Western Wall. 46 A coin struck in 176 memorializes a visit from Marcus Aurelius and his son, the future emperor Commodus. In 289 the Emperor Diocletian transferred the Tenth Legion from Aelia Capitolina to Elath (modern Eilat), after a sojourn in Jerusalem of almost two hundred years. That occurrence signaled the approaching end of the city's Roman period, for the Tenth Legion had destroyed Jerusalem, watched over it, destroyed it again, and finally maintained it.
Jerusalem's Roman period, ending in 324, was a watershed era in the history of the Eternal City. Jewish hopes were raised only to be brutally dashed. The Jews paid a heavy price for their first rebellion and a heavier price still for their second. Everything they treasured about Jerusalem was gone, even the opportunity to be inhabitants of the once glorious capital. All the horrifying prophecies of destruction were fulfilled completely. Hugh Nibley reminds us that the world-renowned Temple site even became the city dump during Jerusalem's Byzantine period. 47
The Roman period of Jerusalem's history changed the city religiously, politically, culturally, and architecturally. Even its name was changed. Moreover, Hadrian changed the name of the country in which Jerusalem was from Judaea to Palestine, calling it after the Philistines as a further embarrassment to the Jews. There is little doubt that the layout of Aelia Capitolina, established by the Romans, set the physical character of Jerusalem up to the present day. It might be argued, however, that God still oversaw its religious character.
Notes
^1. Romney, in Conference Report, 76-77.
^2. Shanks, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, 125.
^3. Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem, 205.
^4. See Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 58.
^5. Clarke, "Worship in the Jerusalem Temple," 269-80; see also Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Bible Atlas, Map 258.
^7. Erastus Snow, in Journal of Discourses, 16:202.
^8. All of our information comes from Josephus, Wars 7. For the exploits of Lucilius Bassus, see Wars 7.6.1. For the siege of Masada, see Wars 7.8.1-7.9.2. An excellent, readable summary is found in Murphy-O'Connor, Holy Land, 344-45.
^9. Murphy-O'Connor, Holy Land, 344-45.
^10. Shanks, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, 127-28.
^11. Shanks, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, 128-29.
^12. Grant, Jews in the Roman World, 244.
^13. For the source of the tradition see Genesis Rabba, lxxviii,1. It ends with a curse upon Hadrian: "Rot his bones!"
^14. Grant, Jews in the Roman World, 244-45.
^15. Ben-Dov, Shadow of the Temple, 189-90.
^16. Dio Cassius, History of Rome, 69.12.
^17. Eusebius, History of the Church, 6.4. See Shanks, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, 144-46.
^18. Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Bible Atlas, Map 259; Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:231, s.v. "Bar Kokhba." Both summarize Dio Cassius, History of Rome, 69.
^19. The terms bar (Aramaic) and ben (Hebrew) are used interchangeably during the period. Both mean "son of."
^20. Eban, Heritage, 99; Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:229-30, s.v. "Bar Kokhba"; see also Eusebius, History of the Church, 6.4.
^21. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (Yad Hazakah), Melakhim, 11:3, in Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:231, s.v. "Bar Kokhba." See also Eban, Heritage, 99; Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Bible Atlas, Map 259.
^22. Jerusalem Talmud, Tan'anit 4:8; Lamentations Rabbah 2:2.
^23. Jerusalem Talmud, Tan'anit 4:8; Lamentations Rabbah 2:2. ; see also Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:231, s.v. "Bar Kokhba."
^24. Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:231, s.v. "Bar Kokhba."
^25. Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:231, s.v. "Bar Kokhba."
^27. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (Yad Hazakah), Melakhim, 11:3. See also Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:230-31, s.v. "Bar Kokhba."
^28. Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Bible Atlas, Map 259.
^29. Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:233, s.v. "Bar Kokhba."
^30. The evidence consists of a tomb inscription and third-century Talmudic references (see, for example, Bava Kamma 80a). See also Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Bible Atlas, Map 259.
^31. Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Bible Atlas, Map 259.
^32. Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Bible Atlas, Maps 259, 260.
^33. Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Bible Atlas, Maps 260, 261.
^34. Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Bible Atlas, Map 262.
^35. Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:233, s.v. "Bar Kokhba."
^37. Encyclopedia Judaica, 4:231, s.v. "Bar Kokhba."
^38. Eusebius, History of the Church, 6.4.
^40. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 61.
^41. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 62.
^42. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 59, 61, 63.
^43. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 64-65.
^44. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 60.
^45. Bahat, Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem, 65-67.