Jews Taking On the Strongest Army In The World

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

Pompey the Great was

in the Temple of Jerusalem following the Siege of Jerusalem (63 BCE) that occurred during his campaigns in the east, and shortly after his successful conclusion of the Third Mithridatic War.  Pompey had been asked to intervene in a dispute over inheritance to the throne which turned into a war between Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II for the throne of the Hasmonean Kingdom. His conquest of Jerusalem, however, spelled the end of Jewish independence and the incorporation of Judea as a client kingdom of the Roman Republic. 

- Image ID: W6RMN7.  He was the start of the War of the Jews and Romans.  

The Romans were a thorn in Judah's side since General Pompey entered Jerusalem in 63 BCE.  Jewish-Roman problems have festered with this prick.   100 years of Roman occupation of Judah caused the explosion.   Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem and its surroundings by 63 BCE. 

The Romans deposed the ruling Hasmonean dynasty of Judaea (in power from c. 140 BCE) and the Roman Senate declared Herod the Great(73 BCE-4 BCE) "King of the Jews" in c. 40 BCE. Judea proper, Samaria and Idumea became the Roman province of Iudaea in 6 CE.   Father was Antipater, the Idumean by his Nabatean wife, Cypros. He captured Jerusalem in 37 with the Roman army.  Herod taxed the Jews heavily.  Mark Antony demanded large sums from his protege.  

                                            

Under Roman rule a number of new groups, largely political, emerged in Judea. Their common aim was to seek an independent Jewish state. They were also zealous for, and strict in their observance of, the Torah.    After the death of King Herod, a political group known as the Herodians, who apparently regarded Herod as the messiah, sought to reestablish the rule of Herod’s descendants over an independent Palestine as a prerequisite for Jewish preservation. Unlike the Zealots, however, they did not refuse to pay taxes to the Romans.  Taxes would have been the least of their complaints, unless it had been a ridicuiously  outlandish expectation.  

                                                                

The Sicarii (Assassins), so-called because of the daggers (sica) they carried, arose about 54 CE, according to Josephus, as a group of bandits who kidnapped or murdered those who had found a modus vivendi with the Romans. It was they who made a stand at the fortress of Masada, near the Dead Sea, committing suicide rather than allowing themselves to be captured by the Romans (73).  They were not bandits, but family men.   Josephus wrote for the Romans.  

The Zealots, whose appearance was traditionally dated to 6 CE, were one of five groups that emerged at the outset of the first Jewish war against Rome (66–73 CE), which began when the Jews expelled the Romans from Jerusalem,.  The client king, Agrippa II, fled the city, and a revolutionary government was established. The Zealots were a mixture of bandits, insurgents from Jerusalem, and priests, who advocated egalitarianism and independence from Rome. 

In 68 the Zealots overthrew the government established by the original leaders of the revolt and took control of the Temple during the civil war that followed.  Many of them perished in the sack of Jerusalem by the Roman general (and later emperor) or in fighting after the city’s fall.   

                                                                     

 Titus (reigned 79–81) and burned down Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE.  The arch of Titus in Rome depicts his doing;  causing Jewish to carry the goods from the Temple all the way to Rome, where it has never been found again. 

       Rome burning in 64 CE under Emperor Nero's Rule

The Great Revolt began in the year 66 CE, during the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, said to be a mad-man, who fiddled while Rome burned.  The popular myth that "Nero fiddled while Rome burned" is not true—even in the first century CE, Rome was filled with poorly constructed slums that easily caught fire. On July 18, 64 CE, a fire started in the enormous Circus Maximus stadium in Rome, now the capital of Italy.                             

   The Great Jewish Revolt: The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under the Command of Titus, 70 CE, Oil on canvas. Painter: David Roberts, c. 1850 CE

Originating under Roman and Jewish religious tensions, the crisis escalated supposedly due to anti-taxation protests and attacks upon Roman citizens by the Jews.  The result of this revolt was in the destruction of Jewish towns, the displacement of its people and the appropriation of land for Roman military use, as well as the destruction of the Jewish Temple and polity.  Whatever made our ancestors think they could win against the Roman army, the strongest in the world?  

                                                  

This happened in Judea, called the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), sometimes called the Great Jewish Revolt (Hebrew: המרד הגדול‎ ha-Mered Ha-Gadol), or The Jewish War.  There were tensions going on between the occupying Romans and the religious Jews.  

The Jew, Jesus, who was said to be the king of the Jews, tried by the Sanhedrin, was crucified along with thousands of other Jews in 30-33 CE.  Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect (governor) of Judaea (26–36 CE) who presided at the trial of Jesus and gave the order for his crucifixion.    "Christ was crucified on the pretext that he instigated rebellion against Rome, on a par with zealots and other political activists," the authors wrote in the report.                                

Thousands of Jews were crucified by the Romans. Their reasons were petty;  anything to rid themselves of the Jews.   Romans had been occupying Jerusalem since 66 BCE.   Apian Way was lined with the crosses.                                       

In 4 B.C E., the Roman general Varus crucified 2,000 Jews, and there were mass crucifixions during the first century CE., according to the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus.  Varus had gone to govern Syria from 7/6 BCE until 4 BC E with four legions under his command, where he was known for his harsh rule and high taxes. Publius Quinctilius Varus (46 BCE – 9 CE) was a Roman general and politician under the first Roman emperor Augustus. Varus is generally remembered for having lost three Roman legions when ambushed by Germanic tribes led by Arminius in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, whereupon he took his own life.    Romans were still crucifying people in 71 BCE, like Spartacus, above.  This former gladiator was one of the escaped slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic, which took place just after General Pompey  had attacked Judea in 66 BCE; a time of rebelling against Rome. Crucifixion had been going on over 100 years practiced by the Romans at this point in time.                                                     

       Herod the Great (73 BCE-4 BCE)  selected as king by Romans

The Jewish historian Josephus mentions the swift action of Varus against a messianic revolt in Judaea after the death of the Roman client king, Herod the Great, in 4 BC.E.  After occupying Jerusalem, he crucified 2000 Jewish rebels and may have thus been one of the prime objects of popular anti-Roman sentiment in Judaea (Josephus, who made every effort to reconcile the Jewish people to Roman rule, felt it necessary to point out how lenient this judicial massacre had been). Ha! Massacring 2,000 innocents is not trivial to the people! 

                                             

 Indeed, at precisely this moment the Jews, nearly en masse, began a full-scale boycott of Roman pottery (Red Slip Ware). Thus, the archaeological record seems to verify mass popular protest against Rome because of Varus' cruelty.  Following the massacre in Judaea, Varus returned to Antioch. 

 Roman officials weren't aware of the practice until they encountered it while fighting Carthage during the Punic Wars in the third century BCE.

For the next 500 years, the Romans "perfected crucifixion" until Constantine I abolished it in the fourth century CE., co-authors Francois Retief and Louise Cilliers, professors in the Department of English and Classical Culture at the University of the Free State in South Africa, wrote in the SAMJ report. However, given that crucifixion was seen as an extremely shameful way to die, Rome tended not to crucify its own citizens. Instead, slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians, foreigners, and — in particular — political activists often lost their lives in this way, Retief and Cilliers reported.

Oh, the Jewish-Roman War had many reasons for starting and daring to fight Romans, and taxes were only one.  

In Rome, people condemned to crucifixion were scourged beforehand, with the exception of women, Roman senators and soldiers (unless they had deserted), Retief and Cilliers wrote. During scourging, a person was stripped naked, tied to a post, and then flogged across the back, buttocks and legs by Roman soldiers.

The next step varied with location. In Jerusalem, women would offer the condemned a pain-relieving drink, usually of wine and myrrh or incense. Then, the victim would be tied or nailed to the patibulum. After that, the patibulum was lifted and affixed to the upright post of the cross, and the feet would be tied or nailed to it. While the victim awaited death, soldiers would commonly divide up the victim's clothes among themselves. But death didn't always come quickly; it took anywhere from three hours to four days to expire, the professors wrote. Sometimes, the process was sped up by additional physical abuse from the Roman soldiers.  When the person died, family members could collect and bury the body, once they received permission from a Roman judge. Otherwise, the corpse was left on the cross, where predatory animals and birds would devour it.

The experienced and unassuming general Vespasian was given the task, by Nero, of crushing the rebellion in Judaea province. Vespasian's son Titus was appointed as second-in-command. Given four legions and assisted by forces of King Agrippa II, Vespasian invaded Galilee in 67.  They then occupied Judea for4 years before burning down Jerusalem and the Temple.             

Update: Many of the Jewish rebels were scattered or sold into slavery. Josephus claimed that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege, 97,000 were captured and enslaved and many others fled to areas around the Mediterranean. A significant portion of the deaths was due to illnesses and hunger brought about by the Romans. "A pestilential destruction upon them, and soon afterward such a famine, as destroyed them more suddenly."                   

To summarize why the Jewish Rebellion had started, I find that Pompey had started the ball rolling by attacking and entering Judea and then occupying the Jewish state by 63 BCE. Herod the Great did his part in interference with Jewish life.   The Romans continued occupying Judah for over 100 years, there under different Generals and emperors by 70 CE and burning down the Temple and city.  The Roman occupiers made life miserable, meddling in their religion, and crucifying thousands of the young men with their power over the land.  The population could not take it and turned into groups of fighters fighting back in the best ways they could, even boycotting Roman pottery, winding up no doubt being crucified.   It was a worse situation than Afghanistan of today has faced with the Taliban and ISIS and had gone on for so long.  So the Jewish-Roman revolt started in 66 CE, and in 70 CE the Temple and city were burned down,  ending in 135 CE with the Jewish General Bar Kokhba's death on the battlefield after holding Jerusalem for 3 years.

  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Jewish%E2%80%93Roman_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus

https://www.livescience.com/65283-crucifixion-history.html#:~:text=In%204%20B.C.%2C%20the%20Roman,the%20Roman%2DJewish%20historian%20Josephus.

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/jul18/great-fire-rome/#:~:text=%EF%BB%BFThe%20popular%20myth%20that,slums%20that%20easily%20caught%20fire.&text=On%20July%2018%2C%2064%20CE%2C%20a%20fire%20started%20in%20the,now%20the%20capital%20of%20Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publius_Quinctilius_Varus