HISTORICAL NOTE
The war that engulfed Esther’s life and altered it forever was a world-changing event that overwhelmed tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives, transformed Judaism permanently and contributed to Christianity’s eventual emergence as a world religion. The war is conventionally called the Jewish War because from the Roman perspective, that is what it was: the Jews who lived in Judea and the Galilee, an area roughly the size of the modern state of Israel (without the extreme southern portions), rose up in rebellion against the Roman Empire, under whose rule they had lived uneasily for more than a century. The Jews would have called it the Roman War; today it is commonly called the Great Revolt.
In the first century CE, the Romans ruled a vast empire of conquered lands, stretching from Britain to Mesopotamia, from Germany to North Africa. The Romans dominated all lands and peoples around the Mediterranean Sea. In Rome, they called the Mediterranean “Our Sea.” Their power was based on the most efficient and successful army the world had ever seen. Unimaginable wealth poured into Rome from the many provinces into which this empire was organized. Roman power and influence extended far beyond the most distant provinces of their realm. Roman merchants traded along regular routes extending all the way to China.
Within their enormous realm, the Romans ruled over hundreds of different peoples and religions. Unlike other empires in history, the Romans generally did not impose their religion or social norms on their subjects, and they presented themselves as tolerant and accepting rulers. In many but not all cases, this was true.
The Jews living in Judea were among the Romans’ least cooperative subjects. The Romans conquered the region in 63 BCE, using the conflict within the family of Jewish kings known as the Hasmoneans as a pretext for intervening in the region. The Hasmoneans were allowed to continue ruling for a while, under Roman supervision, and after their demise the Romans continued to control the area, either by proxy or direct rule. The Jews never regained full political independence or full control of their lives—until the rebellion.
Roman rule brought certain benefits, such as peacekeeping forces within each province and across the empire; a thriving economy; good roads; security on land and sea; urban amenities such as water and sewage systems, and entertainment complexes; and relative freedom in local politics and religion. These benefits were touted by the Romans themselves as the results of universal peace and enlightened governance. Yet many subjects, including the Jews, chafed under the frequent abuses and financial burdens of Roman rule, which were added to heavy financial demands of the Jews’ religion, such as agricultural tithes and obligations to the Temple in Jerusalem. Roman taxes and other interference in people’s lives by the provincial administration also served as constant, irritating reminders that foreigners, not God’s appointed rulers, ruled over land promised to Jewish sovereignty. Moreover, during the sixty years leading up to the war, Rome, contrary to its policy in other parts of its empire, installed in Judea a series of governors who, with malice or through ignorance, offended Jewish sensibilities and in some instances directly provoked the population. As Josephus, the main historian of the war, wrote about Florus, the last Roman procurator, or local governor, of Judea: “Fleecing individuals seemed a small matter to him: he stripped whole cities, brought ruin on entire populations, and nearly went so far as to proclaim throughout the country that all were permitted to rob and pillage, on condition that he himself got part of the take.”*1
The sixty years before the rebellion were, moreover, a time of spreading messianic fervor, an expectation, based in Scripture, that according to God’s plan the last world empire—Rome—would soon fall and be replaced by the sovereignty of the Children of Israel, who would preside over a world of everlasting peace and justice. The leader to emerge would be God’s anointed one, or the Messiah. This was proven through a variety of biblical verses, and the visions of the End of Time differed in other ways as well, but almost all included a cataclysmic battle between the forces of Good and Evil, with the eventual triumph of the Good (i.e., Israel), or the favored faction within Israel. An important conceptual difference was the question of whether the Jews should begin the final battle, which God would join, or wait for God himself to begin it. In the decades before the Jewish rebellion, many messianic figures arose in Judea, claiming to be the anointed one or announcing his imminent arrival. Some attracted very large groups of believers. Some but not all were militant and preached armed uprising. One of these militant groups, which was also messianic, was called Sicarii, or “knife-men.” They specialized in assassinating their perceived enemies in the Jewish leadership. Another group called itself the Zealots, who were mostly priests inspired by the biblical figure Pinchas; they claimed that they would submit to no ruler but God. The followers of Jesus of Nazareth were a relatively small group that few people at that time would have predicted would be the founders of a great world religion.
It was this unshakable faith in God’s plan and purpose that the Jews, people of a tiny nation, took into battle against the mighty Roman Empire. They were emboldened further by a selective historical memory. They recalled the recent victories of the Maccabees (aka the Hasmoneans, the heroes of the Hanukkah story), whose revolt against the powerful Syrian-Greek empire in the second century BCE was astonishingly successful. They also saw a sign of God’s favor in the retreat of Sennacherib, the powerful and megalomaniacal Assyrian king who failed in his siege of Jerusalem in the eighth century BCE; that distant victory was vividly recalled as if recent and immediately relevant.
The question of war with Rome in the first century CE and how to interpret God’s purpose bitterly divided the Jewish population in Judea. This conflict played out not only between rival revolutionary groups but also along class lines, since the wealthy Jewish upper class, consisting of high priests, wealthy priests, and other aristocrats, earned protection of their personal interests by cooperating with Roman rule. Yet even they lost patience as the abuses by Roman governors worsened, and many of them joined the rebellion. It should not be forgotten that educated Jewish aristocrats could be as pious and devoted to God’s promises as the simplest peasants.
The war broke out in 66 CE, after Florus’s most grotesque offense, a series of attacks on the population in Jerusalem, drove many Jews, including priests and lay aristocrats, to desperation, and a group of radical priests in the Temple stopped the sacrifices on behalf of the Roman emperor, Nero. Nero sent his governor of Syria, Cestius Gallus, to crush the incipient revolt. After a successful sweep through the Galilee and along the coast, Cestius laid siege to Jerusalem, but for reasons not fully understood, he suddenly fled from the city, his forces being trapped and cut to pieces in the Beth Horon pass, near the city. That incident indicated that war was on: the Romans would return in full force to avenge Cestius and crush the rebellion in their ruthless, methodical manner.
After Cestius’s stunning defeat, the elated Jews founded an independent government in Jerusalem and organized the defense of their new state. They proclaimed “Jerusalem the Holy” and “The Freedom of Zion” on their new coins. The first government was led by members of the old ruling class, priests and wealthy lay leaders. Joseph ben Mattitiyahu, who would become the historian Josephus, was appointed governor and military commander of the Galilee. That meant that Joseph would be the first to confront the Roman army, for the Romans mustered forces and planned the invasion from Syria, in the north. By his own account, Joseph did the best he could in spring 67 CE, when the large Roman force, commanded by the general Vespasian, attacked Galilee, as expected. But God’s intervention did not come, and without that, no one, including a small Jewish army armed with faith and impromptu weapons, could hold out against the Roman military machine. Galilee fell, Joseph was captured, and the Roman army continued to roll over all areas of Jewish habitation and resistance, eventually occupying the entire province and drawing a ring around Jerusalem.
The failure of Jewish defense, growing messianic expectations, class resentment, and a power struggle led to a coup d’état in Jerusalem in the winter of 67 to 68 CE. The leaders were forcefully removed from power, many were executed, and a new, more radical regime was installed. This new government was an uneasy coalition of militant groups and individuals who cooperated in seizing power but soon fell into conflict with each other. For nearly three years, the Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere wore themselves out with constant civil war. Many were killed, and in the unceasing turf wars in Jerusalem, most of the food hoarded in anticipation of the Roman siege was burned. This internal conflict continued even as the Romans abandoned the war against the Jewish rebels for nearly two years as their own civil war over the emperorship raged throughout the empire, ending in Vespasian’s proclamation as the new emperor in 69 CE. Four Roman legions, under command of the general Titus, the son of Vespasian, arrived in Jerusalem in the spring of 70 CE and laid siege to a city already exhausted by famine and civil conflict, beginning on the first day of Passover.
The siege of Jerusalem was unusually long and bitter, owing to the city’s strong defenses—the Romans had to break through three walls—and the fierce tenacity of the Jewish defenders, which impressed even the Romans. The Romans overpowered the Jewish defenses with superior technology and superior numbers: against each wall, they built, at great expense, ramps and mounds, upon which they rolled up battering rams, catapults, and towers filled with slingers and archers. Inside the city, great suffering prevailed: people died not only from Roman missiles and swords and the ongoing Jewish civil war, which resumed during every pause in the Roman assault, but also from a cruel famine, a result of the destruction of the hoarded food. The famine became especially intense when a Roman siege wall built around the city cut off all chances to smuggle in food.
The city’s defenses finally collapsed when the Romans, who had gained a foothold in the porticoes on the Temple Mount, were able to set fire to the Temple itself, in the hot month of August, traditionally on the date of 9 Av in the Hebrew calendar. We can only imagine the emotions of the Jewish defenders as they watched their holy Temple go up in flames. Josephus, an eyewitness to the calamity, wrote that “one would have thought that the Temple Mount was boiling over from its roots, since it was on all sides one mass of flame, but the river of blood was more abundant than the flames.”*2 Many killed themselves. The Romans systematically destroyed the Temple Mount and burned much of the city. Thousands—including Esther—were taken into captivity and sold throughout the empire. Many of the captives perished in the violent Roman games in amphitheaters in provinces and cities far from home.
There were scattered mopping-up operations, including one in Masada, the holdout fortress in the Judean Desert, but with the fall and destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, the rebellion was effectively crushed. The year after the Destruction, the Romans celebrated their triumph in Rome, as depicted on the Arch of Titus, still standing in the Roman Forum. Judaism was forever changed. From a Temple-based religion, it became a religion based in the synagogue and study-house, where prayer and study replaced sacrifice as the main ritual focus. For many, messianic expectation did not die, but was encouraged by the Temple’s destruction. Just sixty years after the Destruction, another religious-political leader who many thought was the Messiah, named Bar Kochba, led another rebellion against Rome, which ended in another crushing, massively bloody defeat. After that, most Jews did not lose their faith in the truth of Scripture, but revised their calculation of God’s purpose and their expected role in it. Being barred from Jerusalem, a substantial Jewish population under a new rabbinic leadership established itself in the Galilee. Much of Jewish life in the following centuries, centered on the synagogue, was lived in creative tension with non-Jewish culture in cities and settlements throughout the Roman Empire and beyond.
Jonathan J. Price,
Fred and Helen Lessing Professor of Ancient History
Departments of History and Classics
Tel Aviv University