Vespasian, the emperor who was reigning in A.D. 70, died in A.D. 79, and was followed by his son Titus, the general who had destroyed Jerusalem. Titus was succeeded by the younger son of Vespasian, Flavius Domitianus (Domitian), a tyrant whose despotic attitude soon made its influence felt throughout the empire, and particularly in the subjugated land of Judea. Jewish antipathy towards Roman rule remained undisguised and deep—rooted, for all that they had cherished and held dear had been wantonly crushed before their eyes.
Persecution by the Flavians
The distress of the Jews was compounded by the fact that the Flavians, says Chaim Potok, “would not permit the official re-establishment of a controlling institution of Jewish life”. All Jewish activities were under close surveillance by the Roman administration, and they were made to pay heavy taxes to their Roman masters. Subject peoples in the mighty Roman Empire were expected to remain servile and show respect and awe for emperor—deification and Roman authority. This the Jewish people refused to do, their strong monotheistic beliefs and exclusiveness nurturing an intense abhorrence of what they considered to be a totally heathen system.
The Emperor Domitian met a violent death when assassinated by a palace servant under orders from his wife, who feared for her life because of his brutal inclinations and contemptuous regard for those around him. Such was his official disgrace that the Senate directed that his name be removed from all public monuments. Corruption at the highest levels seems to have been endemic in Roman government, and was instrumental in bringing the Flavian dynasty to an ignominious end.
Chaim Potok says that, during the many years of the Flavian dynasty, one of its great objectives was the final destruction of Jerusalem, and the quelling, by all means, of every sign of Jewish dissent. He has something very interesting to say about the manner in which the Jews adapted their worship at this time:
“. . . the sages of Yavneh reshaped the nature of the Jewish tradition, cutting it loose from dependence upon the Jerusalem temple and the sacrificial system. In the time of Rabban Gamaliel the text of obligatory and communal prayers was fixed . . . It was declared that Passover could be celebrated without the sacrifice of the paschal lamb. The order, Seder, of the Passover eve ritual was transformed; one could eat the unleavened bread and bitter herbs without the meat of the lamb — contrary to the clear stipulation of the Bible. A new text was developed to explain and accompany the Passover evening rituals. That text is called the Haggadah. The Passover molded at Yavneh out of the debris of the destroyed temple is still celebrated by Jews today”.1
Conflict with Hadrian
It so happened that the Sanhedrin of Yavneh was finally recognised by Nerva, successor to Domitian, as representing the official voice and leadership of the Jews; and Trajan, the next emperor, continued the same policy. Hadrian became emperor in AD. 117, and Potok writes that he sought “to strengthen the faltering empire by uniting all his subjects under a single dominant culture”, and decided that he would “solve the awkward problem posed by the constant otherness of the Jews through a forced assimilation”, and also by issuing “an edict against circumcision”. Hadrian, regarded by historians as one of the finest of Roman emperors, is said to have viewed the Shema Yisrael (“Hear, O Israel”) as an oath relating to a subversive brotherhood. Rome pursued its heathen practice of showing no reverence or respect for the God of the universe, and was relentless in its endeavours to obliterate those forms of Jewish worship that had made them the unique, exclusive people of God.
Potok describes how the heavy hand of Hadrian came down upon the Jews, for the public reading of the Torah was forbidden upon pain of death, and the observance of the sabbath and festivals was also banned, as were the teaching of the Law and the ordination of rabbis. Hadrian also set up a Roman colony at Jerusalem, and placed a statue of Jupiter upon the site where the revered Jewish temple had stood. All these oppressive, anti—Jewish measures were found to be intolerable by the Jews, who were appalled that they alone of the subject peoples of the empire should be singled out for such calculated discrimination. They led, inevitably, to an outbreak of violence in A.D. 132, the Jews having prepared an army under their valiant leader, Bar Kochba, which engaged the Roman forces in a struggle for their survival. The Jews were able to repel the Romans for a period of about two years, during which time the tenth legion had to retire to Caesarea, enabling the Jews to enter Jerusalem and to resuscitate sacrificial worship and the minting of coins in commemoration of their liberation. The Roman twenty—second legion appeared on the scene, and was exterminated as a result of the carefully devised strategy of Bar Kochba.
Finally, the Roman legions attacked in great force, and the valiant fighters of Bar Kochba were overwhelmed, Bar Kochba himself losing his life in, the hostilities. Potok writes of the devastation and loss of life:
50 fortresses had been reduced, 985 villages had been leveled and 580,000 Jews had been killed in skirmishes and battles in addition to countless others who had perished of starvation, fire, disease. The legions had suffered such heavy casualties that Hadrian, in his report on the war to the Senate, omitted the traditional salutation, ‘I trust you and your children are well; I and my troops are well . . . “2
Continuing enmity
The war terminated in 135 AD., but the anti—Jewish enmity of the Romans continued unabated, and Jerusalem was made a Roman city dedicated to the god Jupiter. The surviving Jews were not allowed into the city except on the ninth day of Av. The name of Judea was changed to Syria Palestina, and two legions were stationed in the land. Hadrian died in A.D. 138, and his successor, Atoninus Pius, allowed more freedom to the Jews, who no longer constituted the largest population group. The rabbis, who had concealed themselves in underground caves and in isolated villages, made their way back again, and shed tears at the picture of utter devastation and desolation that they saw before them. Many members of the Sanhedrin had died, and Jews were conspicuously absent in a large area of Judea. The fields and vineyards of Judea, where some of the fiercest fighting had taken place, were burnt and destroyed, and many of the Jews had migrated to Babylonia.
Edward Gibbon, the celebrated historian, and author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was most impressed with the achievements of Roman administration, and so he writes:
“Domestic peace and union were the natural consequences of the moderate and comprehensive policy embraced by the Romans . . . the obedience of the Roman world was uniform, voluntary, and permanent. The vanquished nations, blended into one great people, resigned the hope, nay even the wish, of resuming their independence, and scarcely considered their own existence as distinct from the existence of Rome. The established authority of the emperors pervaded without an effort the wide extent of their dominions, and was exercised with the same facility on the banks of the Thames, or of the Nile, as on those of the Tiber”.3
The bland statements that “the vanquished nations . . . blended into one great people”, and that they “resigned the hope, nay even the wish, of resuming their independence”, were blatantly untrue in regard to the Jews, who had been consistently discriminated against and persecuted by their Roman overlords.
Clash of worship
Rome liked to present the image of an empire of peace and contentment, with everything attributable to the benevolence of an emperor-deity, who could do no wrong, and whose great desire was the promotion of the welfare of all the various peoples of the empire. As indicated already, and as other historians confirm, Rome liked to see servility in the peoples under Roman rule, and would not tolerate any form of firm public protest or dissent, nor any questioning of its authority; nor would it countenance any cavil at the heavy taxes imposed upon all peoples to pay for the maintenance of what had degenerated into a corrupt, luxury-loving system. Even Gibbon had to make an admission in this regard, saying:
“But it is no easy task to confine luxury within the limits of an empire. The most remote countries of the ancient world were ransacked to supply the pomp and delicacy of Rome”.4
It has been said that Greece represented theory and that Rome symbolised practice, but there is not the slightest doubt that the Jewish people much preferred life under Grecian rule, with its tolerance, refinements and cultural splendours. They found no such acceptance and respite under Roman administration, which often failed to accommodate the religious beliefs of a people whose God-ordained principles of worship made them a unique community among the nations. The crowning insult of desecration of their holy temple by the Roman forces, and the total destruction of their city, Jerusalem, was something that they could never forget; and Gibbon states in his history that Titus ordered that “a ploughshare be drawn over the consecrated ground as a sign of perpetual interdiction”, and points to the fact that “the holy places were polluted with monuments of idolatry”.
Gibbon further makes the comment that “Roman magistrates were frequently adored as provincial deities, with the pomp of altars and temples, of festivals and sacrifices”, and also says:
“Augustus permitted indeed some of the provincial cities to erect temples to his honour, on condition that they should associate the worship of Rome with that of the sovereign … he contented himself with being revered by the Senate and people in his human character and wisely left to his successor the care of his public deification”.5
It seems highly unlikely that such a corrupt, introverted system of administration could, in the nature of things, have been anything but prejudicial to the Jews, who sought only the right to worship and serve the one true God.
Readers of Gibbon will have noted the critical, unsympathetic way in which he perceives the Jewish way of life and religious practices, as evidenced in the statement,
“We have already described the religious harmony of the ancient world, and the facility with which the most different and even hostile nations embraced, or at least respected, each other’s superstitions. A single people refused to join in the common intercourse of mankind. The Jews, who, under the Assyrian and Persian monarchies, had languished for many ages the most despised portion of their slaves, emerged from obscurity under the successors of Alexander and they multiplied to a surprising degree in the East, and afterwards in the West . . . The sullen obstinacy with which they maintained their peculiar rites and unsocial manners seemed to mark them out a distinct species of men, who boldly professed, or who faintly disguised their implacable hatred to the rest of human kind”.6
We have an instance in the history of Gibbon where he gives the impression that he understands the Jewish position of uniqueness among the nations, for he says: “The divine promises were originally made, and the distinguishing rite of circumcision was enjoined to a single family. When the posterity of Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself the proper and, as it were, the national God of Israel; and, with the most jealous care, separated his favourite people from the rest of mankind”.7 But then we are brought face to face with this notable historian’s lack of a proper appreciation and objectivity, as he writes:
“From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius, the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome, which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections . . . and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of the legions against a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but of human kind . . .”.8
- H. Barrow indulges in the same kind of stigmatisation of Jewish separateness with the statement: “But the last thing the average Jew understood was universality . . . hence ceremonies were retained which made for exclusiveness and particularism. The Jews drew closer to one another, emphasising race and claiming exclusive possession of their own land. In Jehovah’s good time, if they were true to their faith they would be triumphant: for they still held to their belief that as Jehovah’s agents they would rule the world”.9
Constantine and beyond
Judd Teller tells us something of the traumatic Jewish experience during the reign of Constantine the Great:
“Constantine the Great (A.D. 280-337), the first Christian emperor of Rome, vacillated before yielding to the bishops’ demand for legislation against nonbelievers . . . He published in A.D. 315 his first anti-Jewish legislation. After that, for the next two centuries, a stream of synod rulings and royal edicts raised the walls against the Jews progressively higher. Intermarriage with the Jews, even feasting at their tables, was forbidden. Compelled to surrender their slaves, the basis of the agricultural economy in those days, the Jews had no choice but to also sell their lands. The inadmissibility of Jewish testimony against a Christian barred the courts to them … A total war, the strategy of which was to segregate a people historically accustomed to deal with many nations and cultures. The intent was to besiege the Jews and drive them stir-crazy until they surrendered their faith”.
The oppression and persecution of the Jews by Christian Rome of old still has its outworkings today. Although the Vatican has representatives in many countries, The Jerusalem Post (International Edition) of 22 June 1991 reveals that it remains reluctant to recognise the State of Israel. One thing is certain: the survival of the Jews as a people has been guaranteed by the Word of God, which declares:
“For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished” (Jer. 30:11).
The Jews, in spite of their backslidings, have never ceased to be the people of God’s choice, the people of the Covenant, and we see this vital principle emphasised in the words of Jeremiah 31:10:
“Hear the word of the LORD, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock”.
A new age will dawn for the Jewish people, a time when all their sad experiences will be forgotten; for they, the people of God’s choice, the people of the Covenant, a repented and blessed people, will receive from their God their rightful place among the nations of the world in the Kingdom of God:
“Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you” (Zech. 8:23).
3 Vol1, p. 43.
4 Ibid, p. 54.
5 Ibid, p. 69.
6 Vol 2, pp. 2-3.
7 Ibid, p. 5.
8 Ibid, p. 73.
9 The Romans, 179-80.
10 The Jews, 101-2.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One