the jewish roman wars and their impact on subsequent history

The First Jewish-Roman war of 66-73 AD, and the Bar Kokhba Revolt of of 132-135 AD present a series of immensely important events to the development of the Jewish diaspora, and religion.  Due to internal Judean political and religious conflicts, and terrible mismanagement on the part of  Rome, this small province would twice rise up against the empire and twice be put down.  This was at no small cost to the Romans, but had enormous costs to the Jews, turning them from a major population in the near east to a scattered and hated minority throughout the empire, and drastically altered the face of the Jewish religion.  This diaspora would continue long after the fall of the Western, and indeed the Eastern, Roman Empire well into the modern era with the establishment of the modern state of Israel.  Its effects in Jewish religion, culture, and world affairs can still be clearly seen today.
	The two uprisings against Rome were as much the product of rising religious extremism within Jewish society, as they were a reaction to Rome's heavy hand.  Therefore it is important to first understand the background from which the revolts emerged.  Roman rule over the people of Judea began in 63 BC when Pompey arrived with his legions at the gates of Jerusalem.  Rome was on the rise in the region, picking up the pieces being dropped by the declining Hellenistic kingdoms, and Judea would be no different.  Rome had actually been drawn in at the request of one of the claimants in a fratricidal civil war within the ruling Hasmonean dynasty.  A new dynasty was installed under Herod I, who ruled Judea as a client king of Rome.  While Herod himself would prove to be a very successful leader, many cracks emerged in the foundations of his kingdom that would grow in time.
	For centuries, many in Judea resented Hellenistic culture as an insulting imposition, and actively resisted cultural integration.  This was due in large part to the unique religious beliefs of the Jewish people, who saw any polytheistic faith or form of idolatry as totally unacceptable.  This continued under Alexander's successors, and under Roman rule this resistance towards integration into Greco-Roman culture only intensified, despite Rome's utter dominance of the eastern Mediterranean.
	A major cause for this surprising stubbornness was the rise of a messianic movement within Judaism.  The fall of the Hasmoneans, who traced their founding to the Maccabean revolution, and the loss of national independence was a devastating blow to the Jews.  This caused a deep spiritual crisis to erupt.  Jewish tradition taught that the fall of the first temple was divine justice for Solomon's idolatry, however in the years prior to Roman conquest the Hasmonean state had been obsessive in ensuring that the observances of its subjects remained in line.  Since a wrathful god was clearly not the cause, many began to believe that it was a sign that the messianic age was drawing near.  The suffering and disgrace of the Jewish people was merely a forerunner to the day of judgment, and the current political situation would not last.
	However, not all Jews ascribed to this interpretation of events, and some sought a pragmatic approach to Roman rule.  A number of factions emerged within Judean society in regards to what degree of cooperation and assimilation was appropriate.  Herod's court, its supporters, and the priestly elite favored a slow assimilation into Roman society as much as could be allowed while still retaining their religious identity.  Confrontation with Rome was to be avoided at all costs, as it could only end in disaster.
	In opposition to this view were the Sadducees who were largely made up of members of the former Hasmonean elite.  These were the people to whom Roman rule was such a deep and personal shock, and they made up the core of the zealots who sought a violent overthrow of Roman rule.  Herod was a particularly adept ruler at keeping this group in check, but his successors were far less so and their support grew over time.  In the end the majority of the population would be brought over to their messianic vision. 1
	In 6AD the client kingdoms of Judea were abolished, and the province came directly under Roman rule.  Minor revolts quickly flared up, and were just as quickly suppressed, guerrilla skirmishes by the zealots became the norm.  The province of Judea did have some importance as a land bridge between Roman centers in Syria and Egypt, and the Roman government did not wish to needlessly antagonize the significant Jewish communities living in Egypt and Asia Minor.  However this did not lead to the Roman authorities placing any of their most competent officers to govern it.  Jews were granted some special religious privileges, but bristled under the heavy hand of a serious of rapacious procurators.  Additionally, ethnic clashes with new immigrants to the province were becoming a serious problem.  Needlessly adding fuel to this growing powderkeg was Caligula's plan to erect a colossal statue of himself inside the Jerusalem Temple.  Though this plan was ultimately abandoned it gave a huge boost to the zealots who argued that it was only a matter of time before another Caligula actually did go through with something similar.
	The situation reached a breaking point in 66AD, when the Roman procurator demanded 17 talents be paid to him from the Jerusalem Temple treasury and was refused.  His response was to enter the city with his legionaries and began to sack it.  A mass riot erupted in the city, and the zealots were able to crush the Roman soldiers, destroying their garrison within the city.  All Roman administrative buildings, and homes of Roman aligned elites were burned.  The revolt spread quickly throughout the province, taking the form of ethnic cleansing on both sides.  Greek quarters within Judea, and Jewish quarters outside of it were annihilated with tens of thousands dead.
	Some of the priestly aristocracy joined in the revolt, and quickly took control from the zealots.  Although in hindsight it may seem like a doomed insurrection from the onset, there were a few factors that made the priests think it might actually work.  The hope was that the emperor Nero's mounting unpopularity in Rome and the provinces would paralyze Rome's leadership, and that Parthia could be counted on for military support.
	Initially things seemed to be going well, all the Roman garrisons within Judea had been destroyed, and the Syrian Legate invaded with an army of 30,000 men, yet was routed by zealots.  However, Rome would not accept this challenge unanswered, and in the spring of 67AD, Nero assigned the very capable general (and future emperor) Vespasian three full legions and numerous auxiliaries to recapture the province.  The Judeans did not have the strength to face such an army in the field, and retreated to a series of fortifications in Galilee and Jerusalem.  Siege warfare was a kind of fighting Rome excelled at, and one after another the Judean strongholds fell.
	When the news of Nero's suicide and the ensuing chaos reached the Roman armies in Judea, the entire province had already been recaptured with the exception of Jerusalem.  Shortly afterwards Vespasian was declared emperor by his troops, and left his son Titus to continue the war.  Despite the devastating civil war engulfing much of the Empire, the military situation in Judea was already too far gone in Rome's favor for it to make a difference.  The siege of Jerusalem ground on, attempts to break the siege were blunted by infighting among the splintering Jewish defenders.  Shortly after the food supply was burned by a group of zealots to encourage fighting to the bitter end the walls were breached and the city was captured.  Pockets of resistance remained, but once the upper city was captured the entirety of Jerusalem, and its temple complex, was burned to the ground.  Though they had managed to hold out for 4 years, the war had been an absolute disaster for the Jews.  More than a million civilians were killed, and over 900,000 were taken into slavery.2
	After the war Judea was devastated, more than half of its population was either dead, captured or had been dispossessed and fled.  Most of the priests had been killed during the war, and the physical religious center of Judaism had been razed.  Due to this the religion itself underwent major changes, with rabbis gaining in prominence.  The groups that had pushed for coexistence with Rome lost their standing entirely.  Despite the ruin brought about by fighting against Rome, support for the zealots was stronger than ever.  Just two generations after the first war with Rome, when the emperor Hadrian announced plans to build a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the Jerusalem Temple the Jews were ready to fight again.
	The second Jewish-Roman War, which began in 132 AD, was significantly different in character from the first.  It was not a riot that grew out of control, but rather a carefully planned and calculated millenialist revolution.  Led by Shimon bar-kokhba, who claimed to be the messiah, and the respected religious authority Rabbi Akiva it, like the first war, caught the Romans by surprise and enjoyed initial success.  The Legio X Fretensis garrisoned in the Jerusalem ruins suffered heavy casualties and was forced to withdraw.  Bar-kokhba declared Judea's independence, and took the title Prince of Israel.  He immediately set to work rebuilding Jeruslam and restoring the temple traditions.
	These successes were however short lived.  Bar-kokhba ruled an independent nation of Israel for over two years, but just as with Nero before him, the Emperor Hadrian refused to allow this rogue province its independence without a serious fight.  Nearly a third of the entire Roman army was utilized in the invasion of Israel.  Though heavy casualties were exacted on both sides, this was a force the Jews simply had no answer to.  Once again Judea's strongholds fell one after another, and the revolt was in quick order crushed.  Its leaders, including Bar-kokhba himself, were one by one captured and executed.
	Rome's vengeance on the Jewish people was swift and devastating.  The roman army rampaged through the countryside, destroying whole towns, hundreds of thousands were killed or taken into slavery.  The vast majority of the Jewish population in Judea was either killed, enslaved, or fled.  Hadrian sought to eradicate future insurrection by destroying Jewish nationalism.  To this end he  banned Jews from visiting Jerusalem, instituted special taxes on jews, and redrew the map of the region removing the province of Judea entirely.
	Though brutal, and eventually loosened by his successor, Hadrian's measures did work.  Jewish nationalism was never again the cause of a major uprising against Rome.  While Jews had been living outside of Judea since the time of the Babylonian conquest, the end of the Bar-kokhba revolt was the start of the Jewish diaspora that would last until the creation of the modern state of Israel.
	The long term effects of the Jewish-Roman wars cannot be understated, and they continue to be felt to this day.  While relations between Jews and early Christians had been deteriorating for some time, there was still a sense that Christianity was fundamentally a part of Judaism, and not a separate religion.  The Bar-kokhba uprising was the point of no return for this line of thinking.  The messianic nature of the uprising was horrifying to Christians, who wanted no part of it.  From the Christian perspective Bar-kokhba couldn't possibly be the messiah, because there already was a messiah – Jesus Christ.3
	The destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and the annihilation of the priestly class left a tremendous void in Jewish ritual and law.  A great many of its rites centered around temple sacrifices or were to be conducted by priests.  To survive without that the religion would have to radically remake itself.  Rabbis, who had been a relatively small group of teachers rose to prominence as the new leadership of the faith after the end of the temple period.  Decades of debates between rabbis on the proper way to adapt Jewish law and ritual to this new reality were recorded in the Talmud which is still a central text of rabbinic Judaism to this day.  The kind of literal messianic movement that saw the rise of Bar-kokhba fell out of favor, replaced with an abstract spiritualist version of the messiah.  The name Bar-kokhba in fact does not appear in the Talmud, and he is instead referred to as Ben-Kusiba, a name which derisively labels him as a false prophet.
	Just as fundamental of a shift was caused by the death of the Jewish polity and the creation of a new forced diaspora.  The Jews no longer had a homeland, and would from this time forward be an alien body within whatever nation they inhabited.  This was, however, not without precedent and was a state of affairs the Jewish people took to relatively easily.  After all, Judaism had already mythologized exile and return twice in its history, the story of Exodus and the Babylonian captivity.  Over time as the scars faded, the fall of the second temple and the Roman expulsion would be mythologized as well.
	Jewish communities spread across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, often maintaining a high degree of insularity to resist integration into the majority communities.  This unwillingness to integrate, and canonized hostility to Jews within Christianity made these communities frequent targets of aggression and expulsion.  Through the ages though, the idea of a return to Palestine as a long term goal remained an enduring one.
	In the late 19th century this dream would be turned into a real political movement in the form of Zionism.  Zionists sought to end this ages long diaspora by establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine, and encouraging the global Jewish community to immigrate to it.4  In 1948 this goal would be achieved with the creation of the State of Israel, due in no small part to global horror at the suffering endured by the European Jewish population during the second world war, just another example of the powerlessness of a nation without a state.  Unfortunately, however, this was not the end of the fighting.  The people who had been living in Palestine for generations prior to Zionist migration were not particularly happy to be displaced from their land and many took up arms in the hopes of preventing it.  This was the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which rages to this day.
	The Jewish-Roman wars were quite traumatic events that exacted a heavy toll on both sides involved in the fighting, but were truly devastating to the Jews.  From the ashes of their defeat and exile the Jewish community drastically reshaped itself.  Without these events, painful as they were, Judaism as we know it certainly would not exist.  It's impossible to predict the what if's of history, but without the Jewish-Roman wars the world that we live in would certainly be a very different place.

References Used

	Avi-Yonah, Michael. The Jews under Roman and Byzantine rule: a political history of Palestine from the Bar Kokhba War to the Arab conquest. New York: Schocken , 1984.
	Keller, Werner. Diapora: the post-biblical history of the Jews. New York: Brace & World, 1969.
	Vital, David. The origins of Zionism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.
	PBS Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, the First Christians. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz3BLgCV-DQ>.