Nadene Goldfoot
A Jewish community has existed in Rome as one of the oldest in the world and certainly the oldest in Europe. The first reliable record of Jews there dates back to 139 BCE. The denomination 139 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Year 139 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar
This civilization of multiple gods had come to occupy Jerusalem and try to force their religion upon the Jews. The had intermittent wars, written about by Josephus, a captured Judean ALUF (General) who wound up writing for the invaders. The aftermath of their fighting led to taking Jewish slaves to Rome which later reinforced the growing Jewish community.
If one searches in the Roman catacombs, history of the Jews is found.
Josephus Flavius was his given Roman name. His Hebrew name was Yoseph ben Mattityahu ha-Cohen and he was born about 38 CE and died 100 CE. He was from a priestly family and had a fair general education. He was a politician, soldier and historian. In the year of 64 he went to Rome on a semi-public mission. He called himself Flavius Josephus and claimed that he was from the royal family through his mother. This was because the family was derived through the children of Asmoneus who had both the office of the high priesthood and the dignity of a king for a long time together.
His grandfather's father was Simon Psellus. He lived at the same time with that son of Simon the high priest, who first of all the high priests were named Hyrcanus. This Simon Psellus had 9 sons, one of whom was Matthias Ephlias. "Simon Psellus (Greek: Σίμων ὁ Ψελλός, his epithet Ψελλός was his nickname meaning in Greek: the stutter, flourished 2nd century BC) was an ethnic Jew living in Jerusalem.
He married the daughter of Jonathan the high priest of which Jonathan was the 1st of the sons of Asmoneus , who was high priest and was the brother of Simon the high priest as well. This Matthias had a son called Matthias Curtus and that in the 1st year of the government of Hyrcanus, his son's name was Joseph who was born in the 9th year of the reign of Alexandra. His son Matthias was born in the 10th year of the reign of Archelaus and Flavius Josephus was born to Matthias in the 1st year of the reign of:
Caius Caesar 37-41. Caius or Gaius Julius Caesar(known to us as Caligula) gave Agrippa I(10 BCE -44CE) , grandson of Herod, the tetrachy of NE Judah and the title of king. He insisted on being worshipped as a god which caused a problem among the Jews. Do you think?
Josephus said he had 3 sons; Hyreanus, the eldest, born in the 4th year of the reign of Vespasian. Justus was born in the 7th year and Agrippa was born in the 9th. With this he said he had written down his genealogy of his family as he had found it described in the public records, and continued to tell more about his father.
Matthias was eminent because of his nobility, but had a higher commendation because of his righteousness, and had a great reputation in Jerusalem, the greatest city they had. He was brought up with his brother by both his father and mother. He made great grades in the improvements of his learning and appeared to have a great memory and understanding. When he was a child at 14, he was commended by all for the love he had to learn. "The high priests and principal men of the city came frequently to me in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of points of the law."
When he was about 16, he held a mock trial of the Pharisees and then the Sadducees and also the Essenes so that he could choose the best of the 3. To do this he contented himself with hard fare and underwent great difficulties. When he was informed that one, Banus, lived in the desert and use no other clothing than what grew upon trees and had no other food than what grew of its own accord and bathed himself in cold water frequently, both night and day in order to preserve his chastity, Josephus imitated him in these very things and continued living with him for 3 years.
When Josephus had accomplished what he had set out to do, he returned back to the city now at 19 and began to conduct himself according to the rules of the sect of the Pharisees, which is kin to the sect of the Stoics, as the Greeks called them.
The Jews of Judea had revolted against the occupation of the Roman soldiers and they regained their independence temporarily in 66. Josephus was sent to to Galilee as a representative of the Revolutionary Government where he assumed the supreme military command. He quarreled violently with the patriotic extremists who accused him of temporizing tendencies.
The Romans attacked Galilee in 67. Josephus directed the resistance and was besieged in Jotapata. On the capture of the city, Josephus went over to the Roman side, probably instead of being killed. From then on he called himself Flavius, the family name of Vespasian.
It took more than one legion of 4,800 men to take over Jerusalem and then destroy it. "As the legions charged in, neither persuasion nor threat could check their impetuosity: passion alone was in command. Crowded together around the entrances many were trampled by their friends, many fell among the still hot and smoking ruins of the colonnades and died as miserably as the defeated. As they neared the Sanctuary they pretended not even to hear Caesar's commands and urged the men in front to throw in more firebrands. The partisans were no longer in a position to help; everywhere was slaughter and flight. Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Round the Altar the heaps of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom."
The Roman legions quickly crushed the remaining Jewish resistance. Some of the remaining Jews escaped through hidden underground tunnels and sewers, while others made a final stand in the Upper City. This defense halted the Roman advance as they had to construct siege towers to assail the remaining Jews. Herod's Palace fell on 7 September, and the city was completely under Roman control by 8 September 70. The Romans continued to pursue those who had fled the city."
Perhaps the Romans used ships from Jerusalem to Rome. In the Jewish revolt, from 66 to 70, the Romans were forced to fight Jewish ships, operating from a harbour in the area of modern Tel Aviv, on Israel's Mediterranean coast. In the meantime several flotilla engagements on the Sea of Galilee took place. Though it would be more logical by distance, the Romans were a land people. They didn't fare that well on the water.
The Romans took Jerusalem in 70. Josephus went with Vespasian and Titus during the siege of Jerusalem and tried to persuade the Jews to abandon their resistance. They wouldn't and the Romans crushed their revolt. Josephus was given a reward of confiscated estates in Judea, but decided to live in Rome.
In his writings, he tries to present himself as a patriotic leader and his devotion to the Roman cause. These are the only records we have. He wrote about The Jewish War toward the end of Emperor Vespasian's reign(69-79), and also wrote in Aramaic one called The Antiquities of the Jews, giving the history of the Jews from the beginning to the outbreak of the War with Rome. This was written in 93. He wrote his own autobiography, defending himself against the allegations of a rival historian, Justus of Tiberias in that he had been responsible for the Jewish War in his part of the events from 66 to 70 as this differs in many respects from that of the 1ate named work, Against Apion which defends the Jewish people against the accusations of the Alexandrian sophist, Apion.
"Flavius Josephus fully defected to the Roman side and was granted Roman citizenship. He became an advisor and friend of Vespasian's son Titus, serving as his translator when Titus led the Siege of Jerusalem. Since the siege proved ineffective at stopping the Jewish revolt, the city's destruction and the looting and destruction of Herod's Temple (Second Temple) soon followed."
"Despite possible efforts of then-general, later-emperor, Titus, to spare the Temple itself, his troops set fire to the most holy site in Judaism and it was utterly destroyed."
"After Jewish allies killed a number of Roman soldiers, Titus sent Josephus, the Jewish historian, to negotiate with the defenders; this ended with Jews wounding the negotiator with an arrow, and another sally was launched shortly after. Titus was almost captured during this sudden attack, but escaped."
I doubt if this was true. The destruction was after starving the city into submission, and it was horrible as written by Josephus himself. People would not have had the energy to continue any revolt. To think that Josephus was said to have had some responsibility in this destruction should have driven him to madness. To be the son of royalty and of priests, and to see the destruction of the 2nd Temple and know all about the history of his people is just too much for anyone to bear. How could he have remained so cold-hearted?
"The siege ended on 30 August 70 CE with the burning and destruction of its Second Temple, and the Romans entered and sacked the Lower City. The destruction of both the first and second temples is still mourned annually as the Jewish fast Tisha B'Av. The Arch of Titus, celebrating the Roman sack of Jerusalem and the Temple, still stands in Rome. The conquest of the city was complete on 8 September 70 CE."
"Josephus claims that 1.1 million (1,000,100) people were killed during the siege, of which a majority were Jewish. Josephus attributes this to the celebration of Passover (in April) which he uses as rationale for the vast number of people present among the death toll. Armed rebels, as well as the frail citizens, were put to death. All of Jerusalem's remaining citizens became Roman prisoners. After the Romans killed the armed and elder people, 97,000 were still enslaved, including Simon bar Giora and John of Giscala. Simon bar Giora was executed, and John of Giscala was sentenced to life imprisonment. Of the 97,000, thousands were forced to become gladiators and eventually expired in the arena. Many others were forced to assist in the building of the Forum of Peace and the Colosseum. Those under 17 years of age were sold into servitude. Josephus' death toll assumptions are rejected as impossible by modern scholarship, since around the time about a million people lived in Palestine, about half of them were Jews, and sizable Jewish populations remained in the area after the war was over, even in the hard-hit region of Judea.
Titus and his soldiers celebrated victory upon their return to Rome by parading the Menorah and Table of the Bread of God's Presence through the streets. Up until this parading, these items had only ever been seen by the high priest of the Temple. This event was memorialized in the Arch of Titus."
"Arch of Titus: c. 82 CE, Roman Emperor Domitian constructed the Arch of Titus on Via Sacra, Rome, to commemorate the capture and siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which effectively ended the Great Jewish Revolt, although the Romans did not achieve complete victory until the fall of Masada in 73 CE."
"Judaea Capta coinage: Judaea Capta coins were a series of commemorative coins originally issued by the Roman Emperor Vespasian to celebrate the capture of Judaea and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by his son Titus in 70 CE during the First Jewish Revolt."
Josephus's book of the Wars of the Jews is 605 pages. At the end he states he tried to write truthfully. Indeed, he gave a lot of information that otherwise would have been lost.
****Resource: https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2016/07/horrors-of-2nd-temple-and-jerusalem.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_navy
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
JOSEPHUS, from Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, translated by William Whiston, AM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)
https://www.quora.com/How-far-could-a-Roman-soldier-march-while-wearing-armor
https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-happened-to-the-jerusalem-temples-menorah
http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/romans/soldiers.html#intro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_navy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)#Commemoration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Psellus
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/08/jezebel-and-fatal-royal-houses-of.html
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2016/02/roman-destruction-of-2nd-temple-and.html
 |
| Rome's Arch of Titus
The famous Arch of Titus in Rome depicts Roman legionaries carrying the
Temple of Jerusalem's treasuries, including the Menorah, during Titus' triumphal procession in Rome. The Arch also shows us that some Legionaires rode in chariots pulled
by horses.
With the fall of Jerusalem, some insurrection still continued in isolated locations in Judea, lasting as long as to the year, 73.
The Jews had been almost starved to death while the soldiers were well fed.
How the Jews could have marched constantly at such a pace surely would have
killed many along the way.
Jerusalem fell to the Romans in July 70.
The Second Temple (the renovated Herod's Temple), one of the last fortified bastions of the rebellion, was destroyed on Tisha B'Av (29 or 30 July 70).
No one knows what happened to the items taken. According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, the menorah was placed in Vespasian’s newly built Temple of Peace, not far from the Arch. It seems to have resided there at least until the third century, if not until the Ostrogoth Sack of Rome in the fifth. "It’s possible that the Vandals melted down the menorah after they sacked the city in 455 C.E."
The Jews are marched to Rome carrying the artifacts from the Temple
that were priceless, and ancient, going back to the days of Moses. The above map shows it would be 2,243 miles away. Though as the crow flies the distance is 2,302.731 miles, by land transport would be 4,010.099 miles. This road journey by car will take 2 Days, 7 Hours, 41 Minutes. With my driving, it would take a week. By foot? These Romans and Jews could have walked 96 miles in 24 hours. The Roman legion would have walked about 20 miles per day, dressed in armor. The Jewish slaves had to do the carrying. It should have taken them about 200 days to arrive in Rome. If they started out in September 70, they would have arrived in about 7 months or by April 71, walking 20 miles per day.
A standard post-Marian Roman legion contained 4,800 regular soldiers, divided into 10 cohorts of 480 soldiers. Each cohort was divided into 8 centuries of 80 soldiers which was further divided into 10 tents of 8 soldiers each. Additionally, the army would have auxiliary troops, scouts, generals bodyguards, a huge baggage train, etc....How many did it take to march the Judeans to Rome? During the first three centuries of the empire the Roman army contained between 25 and 34 legions. |
A Jewish community has existed in Rome as one of the oldest in the world and certainly the oldest in Europe. The first reliable record of Jews there dates back to 139 BCE. The denomination 139 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Year 139 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar
- The Lusitanian War ended when the rebellion collapsed after the assassination of Viriathus by a Roman agent.
- The Achaean League was reestablished.
-
- At the time, the pharaoh was Ptolemy VIII Physcon of Egypt.
- The first Jews likely arrived as messengers sent by Judah Maccabee in the second century B.C.E. He was the son of Mattathias, military leader (Aluf) of the revolt against Syria in 168 BCE.
This civilization of multiple gods had come to occupy Jerusalem and try to force their religion upon the Jews. The had intermittent wars, written about by Josephus, a captured Judean ALUF (General) who wound up writing for the invaders. The aftermath of their fighting led to taking Jewish slaves to Rome which later reinforced the growing Jewish community.
If one searches in the Roman catacombs, history of the Jews is found.
 |
| Royalty through his mother : to King David The Priesthood through his father: to Aaron, brother of Moses |
Josephus Flavius was his given Roman name. His Hebrew name was Yoseph ben Mattityahu ha-Cohen and he was born about 38 CE and died 100 CE. He was from a priestly family and had a fair general education. He was a politician, soldier and historian. In the year of 64 he went to Rome on a semi-public mission. He called himself Flavius Josephus and claimed that he was from the royal family through his mother. This was because the family was derived through the children of Asmoneus who had both the office of the high priesthood and the dignity of a king for a long time together.
His grandfather's father was Simon Psellus. He lived at the same time with that son of Simon the high priest, who first of all the high priests were named Hyrcanus. This Simon Psellus had 9 sons, one of whom was Matthias Ephlias. "Simon Psellus (Greek: Σίμων ὁ Ψελλός, his epithet Ψελλός was his nickname meaning in Greek: the stutter, flourished 2nd century BC) was an ethnic Jew living in Jerusalem.
Simon's ancestors were contemporary to the rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty and Seleucid dynasty over Judea. He was a wealthy man who served as a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem. Simon belonged to the priestly order of the Jehoiarib, the first of the twenty-four orders of Priests in the Temple in Jerusalem. Simon lived when the Hasmonean rulers Simon Thassi (reigned 142–135 BC) and his son John Hyrcanus I (reigned 134–104 BC) ruled over Judea.
Simon had nine children; among them was his son Matthias Ephlias. Through his son, Simon was an ancestor of the Roman Jewish Historian of the 1st century, Flavius Josephus. Josephus in his writings calls Simon the Patriarch of his family.
He married the daughter of Jonathan the high priest of which Jonathan was the 1st of the sons of Asmoneus , who was high priest and was the brother of Simon the high priest as well. This Matthias had a son called Matthias Curtus and that in the 1st year of the government of Hyrcanus, his son's name was Joseph who was born in the 9th year of the reign of Alexandra. His son Matthias was born in the 10th year of the reign of Archelaus and Flavius Josephus was born to Matthias in the 1st year of the reign of:
 |
| Thought of himself as a G0d Caligula was Roman emperor from AD 37 to AD 41. The son of the popular Roman general Germanicus and Augustus' granddaughter Agrippina the Elder, Caligula was born into the first ruling family of the Roman Empire, conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty. He is known to us for his " cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversion, presenting him as an insane tyrant. While the reliability of these sources is questionable, it is known that during his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor." |
Caius Caesar 37-41. Caius or Gaius Julius Caesar(known to us as Caligula) gave Agrippa I(10 BCE -44CE) , grandson of Herod, the tetrachy of NE Judah and the title of king. He insisted on being worshipped as a god which caused a problem among the Jews. Do you think?
 |
| HASMONEAN DYNASTY |
 |
| High Priests-descended from tribe of Levi's Aaron, brother of Moses As they might have looked in Solomon's Temple-961-920 BCE |
Matthias was eminent because of his nobility, but had a higher commendation because of his righteousness, and had a great reputation in Jerusalem, the greatest city they had. He was brought up with his brother by both his father and mother. He made great grades in the improvements of his learning and appeared to have a great memory and understanding. When he was a child at 14, he was commended by all for the love he had to learn. "The high priests and principal men of the city came frequently to me in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of points of the law."
 |
| Josephus, a portrait bust done in Rome in Danish museum today. |
When Josephus had accomplished what he had set out to do, he returned back to the city now at 19 and began to conduct himself according to the rules of the sect of the Pharisees, which is kin to the sect of the Stoics, as the Greeks called them.
 |
| Roman Centurion in command of 80 men It was men like this who had occupied Jerusalem before burning it down. |
The Romans attacked Galilee in 67. Josephus directed the resistance and was besieged in Jotapata. On the capture of the city, Josephus went over to the Roman side, probably instead of being killed. From then on he called himself Flavius, the family name of Vespasian.
It took more than one legion of 4,800 men to take over Jerusalem and then destroy it. "As the legions charged in, neither persuasion nor threat could check their impetuosity: passion alone was in command. Crowded together around the entrances many were trampled by their friends, many fell among the still hot and smoking ruins of the colonnades and died as miserably as the defeated. As they neared the Sanctuary they pretended not even to hear Caesar's commands and urged the men in front to throw in more firebrands. The partisans were no longer in a position to help; everywhere was slaughter and flight. Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Round the Altar the heaps of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom."
The Roman legions quickly crushed the remaining Jewish resistance. Some of the remaining Jews escaped through hidden underground tunnels and sewers, while others made a final stand in the Upper City. This defense halted the Roman advance as they had to construct siege towers to assail the remaining Jews. Herod's Palace fell on 7 September, and the city was completely under Roman control by 8 September 70. The Romans continued to pursue those who had fled the city."
The Romans took Jerusalem in 70. Josephus went with Vespasian and Titus during the siege of Jerusalem and tried to persuade the Jews to abandon their resistance. They wouldn't and the Romans crushed their revolt. Josephus was given a reward of confiscated estates in Judea, but decided to live in Rome.
In his writings, he tries to present himself as a patriotic leader and his devotion to the Roman cause. These are the only records we have. He wrote about The Jewish War toward the end of Emperor Vespasian's reign(69-79), and also wrote in Aramaic one called The Antiquities of the Jews, giving the history of the Jews from the beginning to the outbreak of the War with Rome. This was written in 93. He wrote his own autobiography, defending himself against the allegations of a rival historian, Justus of Tiberias in that he had been responsible for the Jewish War in his part of the events from 66 to 70 as this differs in many respects from that of the 1ate named work, Against Apion which defends the Jewish people against the accusations of the Alexandrian sophist, Apion.
"Flavius Josephus fully defected to the Roman side and was granted Roman citizenship. He became an advisor and friend of Vespasian's son Titus, serving as his translator when Titus led the Siege of Jerusalem. Since the siege proved ineffective at stopping the Jewish revolt, the city's destruction and the looting and destruction of Herod's Temple (Second Temple) soon followed."
"Despite possible efforts of then-general, later-emperor, Titus, to spare the Temple itself, his troops set fire to the most holy site in Judaism and it was utterly destroyed."
"After Jewish allies killed a number of Roman soldiers, Titus sent Josephus, the Jewish historian, to negotiate with the defenders; this ended with Jews wounding the negotiator with an arrow, and another sally was launched shortly after. Titus was almost captured during this sudden attack, but escaped."
I doubt if this was true. The destruction was after starving the city into submission, and it was horrible as written by Josephus himself. People would not have had the energy to continue any revolt. To think that Josephus was said to have had some responsibility in this destruction should have driven him to madness. To be the son of royalty and of priests, and to see the destruction of the 2nd Temple and know all about the history of his people is just too much for anyone to bear. How could he have remained so cold-hearted?
"Josephus claims that 1.1 million (1,000,100) people were killed during the siege, of which a majority were Jewish. Josephus attributes this to the celebration of Passover (in April) which he uses as rationale for the vast number of people present among the death toll. Armed rebels, as well as the frail citizens, were put to death. All of Jerusalem's remaining citizens became Roman prisoners. After the Romans killed the armed and elder people, 97,000 were still enslaved, including Simon bar Giora and John of Giscala. Simon bar Giora was executed, and John of Giscala was sentenced to life imprisonment. Of the 97,000, thousands were forced to become gladiators and eventually expired in the arena. Many others were forced to assist in the building of the Forum of Peace and the Colosseum. Those under 17 years of age were sold into servitude. Josephus' death toll assumptions are rejected as impossible by modern scholarship, since around the time about a million people lived in Palestine, about half of them were Jews, and sizable Jewish populations remained in the area after the war was over, even in the hard-hit region of Judea.
Titus and his soldiers celebrated victory upon their return to Rome by parading the Menorah and Table of the Bread of God's Presence through the streets. Up until this parading, these items had only ever been seen by the high priest of the Temple. This event was memorialized in the Arch of Titus."
"Arch of Titus: c. 82 CE, Roman Emperor Domitian constructed the Arch of Titus on Via Sacra, Rome, to commemorate the capture and siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which effectively ended the Great Jewish Revolt, although the Romans did not achieve complete victory until the fall of Masada in 73 CE."
"Judaea Capta coinage: Judaea Capta coins were a series of commemorative coins originally issued by the Roman Emperor Vespasian to celebrate the capture of Judaea and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by his son Titus in 70 CE during the First Jewish Revolt."
Josephus's book of the Wars of the Jews is 605 pages. At the end he states he tried to write truthfully. Indeed, he gave a lot of information that otherwise would have been lost.
****Resource: https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2016/07/horrors-of-2nd-temple-and-jerusalem.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_navy
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
JOSEPHUS, from Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, translated by William Whiston, AM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)
https://www.quora.com/How-far-could-a-Roman-soldier-march-while-wearing-armor
https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-happened-to-the-jerusalem-temples-menorah
http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/romans/soldiers.html#intro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_navy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)#Commemoration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Psellus
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/08/jezebel-and-fatal-royal-houses-of.html
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2016/02/roman-destruction-of-2nd-temple-and.html
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