§ 38. The Jewish War and the Destruction of Jerusalem. a.d. 70.

"And as He went forth out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto Him, Master, behold, what manner of stones and what manner of buildings! And Jesus said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down."—Mark 13:1,2.

Sources.

Josephus: Bell. Jud., in 7 books; and Vita, c. 4–74. The history of the Jewish war was written by him as eye-witness about a.d. 75. English translations by W. Whiston, in Works of Jos., and by Rob. Traill, ed. by Isaac Taylor, new ed., Lond., 1862. German translations by Gfrsörer and W. Hoffmann, Stuttgart, 1836; and Paret, Stuttg., 1855; French translations by Arnauld d’andilly, 1667, Joachim Gillet, 1756, and Abbé Glaire, 1846.

Rabbinical traditions in Derenbourg: Histoire de la Palestine depuis Cyrus jusqu’à Adrien. Paris, 1867 (first part of his L’Histoire et la géographie de la Palestine d’après les Thalmuds et les autres sources rabbiniques), pp. 255–295.

Tacitus: Hist., II. 4; V. 1–13. A mere fragment, full of errors and insults towards the vanquished Jews. The fifth book, except this fragment, is lost. While Josephus, the Jew, is filled with admiration for the power and greatness of Rome, Tacitus, the heathen, treats Jews and Christians with scorn and contempt, and prefers to derive his information from hostile Egyptians and popular prejudice rather than from the Scriptures, and Philo, and Josephus.

Sulpicius Severus: Chronicon, II. 30 (p. 84, ed. Halm). Short.

Literature.

Milman: The History of the Jews, Books XIV.-XVII. (New York ed., vol. II., 219 sqq.).

Ewald: Geschichte des Folkes Israel, VI. 705–753 (second ed.).

Grätz:Geschichte der Juden, III. 336–414.

Hitzig: Geschichte des Volkes Israel, II. 594–629.

Lewin: The Siege of Jerusalem by Titus. With the Journal of a recent Visit in the Holy City, and a general Sketch of the Topography of Jerusalem from the Earliest Times down to the Siege. London, 1863.

Count de Champagny: Rome et la Judie au temps de la chute de Néron (ans 66–72 après Jésus-Christ), 2. éd., Paris, 1865. T. I., pp. 195–254; T. II., pp. 55–200.

Charles Merivale: History of the Romans under the Empire, ch. LIX. (vol. VI., 415 sqq., 4th ed., New York, 1866).

De Saulcy: Les derniers jours de Jérusalem. Paris, 1866.

E. Renan: L’Antechrist (ch. X.-XX., pp. 226–551). Paris, second ed., 1873.

Emil Schürer: Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte (Leipzig, 1874), pp. 323–350. He also gives the literature.

A. Hausrath: Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, Part III., second ed., Heidelberg, 1875, pp. 424 487.

Alfred J. Church: The Story of the Last Days of Jerusalem, from Josephus. With illustrations. London, 1880.

There is scarcely another period in history so full of vice, corruption, and disaster as the six years between the Neronian persecution and the destruction of Jerusalem. The prophetic description of the last days by our Lord began to be fulfilled before the generation to which he spoke had passed away, and the day of judgment seemed to be close at hand. So the Christians believed and had good reason to believe. Even to earnest heathen minds that period looked as dark as midnight. We have elsewhere quoted Seneca’s picture of the frightful moral depravity and decay under the reign of Nero, his pupil and murderer. Tacitus begins his history of Rome after the death of Nero with these words: "I proceed to a work rich in disasters, full of atrocious battles, of discord and rebellion, yea, horrible even in peace. Four princes [Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian] killed by the sword; three civil wars, several foreign wars; and mostly raging at the same time. Favorable events in the East [the subjugation of the Jews], unfortunate ones in the West. Illyria disturbed, Gaul uneasy; Britain conquered and soon relinquished; the nations of Sarmatia and Suevia rising against us; the Parthians excited by the deception of a pseudo-Nero. Italy also weighed down by Dew or oft-repeated calamities; cities swallowed up or buried in ruins; Rome laid waste by conflagrations, the old temples burned up, even the capitol set on fire by citizens; sanctuaries desecrated; adultery rampant in high places. The sea filled with exiles; the rocky islands contaminated with murder. Still more horrible the fury in the city. Nobility, riches, places of honor, whether declined or occupied, counted as crimes, and virtue sure of destruction.⁵⁴¹⁵⁴¹    Hist. I. c. 2.

The Approaching Doom.

The most unfortunate country in that period was Palestine, where an ancient and venerable nation brought upon itself unspeakable suffering and destruction. The tragedy of Jerusalem prefigures in miniature the final judgment, and in this light it is represented in the eschatological discourses of Christ, who foresaw the end from the beginning.

The forbearance of God with his covenant people, who had crucified their own Saviour, reached at last its limit. As many as could be saved in the usual way, were rescued. The mass of the people had obstinately set themselves against all improvement. James the Just, the man who was fitted, if any could be, to reconcile the Jews to the Christian religion, had been stoned by his hardened brethren, for whom he daily interceded in the temple; and with him the Christian community in Jerusalem had lost its importance for that city. The hour of the "great tribulation" and fearful judgment drew near. The prophecy of the Lord approached its literal fulfilment: Jerusalem was razed to the ground, the temple burned, and not one stone was left upon another.⁵⁴²⁵⁴²    Matt. 24:1,2; Mark 13:1; Luke 19:43, 44; 21:6.

Not long before the outbreak of the Jewish war, seven years before the siege of Jerusalem (a.d. 63), a peasant by the name of Joshua, or Jesus, appeared in the city at the Feast of Tabernacles, and in a tone of prophetic ecstasy cried day and night on the street among the people:, A voice from the morning, a voice from the evening! A voice from the four winds! A voice of rain against Jerusalem and the Temple! A voice against the bridegrooms and the brides! A voice against the whole people! Woe, woe to Jerusalem! "The magistrates, terrified by this woe, had the prophet of evil taken up and scourged. He offered no resistance, and continued to cry his "Woe." Being brought before the procurator, Albinus, he was scourged till his bones could be seen, but interposed not a word for himself; uttered no curse on his enemies; simply exclaimed at every blow in a mournful tone: "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" To the governor’s question, who and whence he was, He answered nothing. Finally they let him go, as a madman. But he continued for seven years and five months, till the outbreak of the war, especially at the three great feasts, to proclaim the approaching fall of Jerusalem. During the siege he was singing his dirge, for the last time, from the wall. Suddenly he added: "Woe, woe also to me!"—and a stone of the Romans hurled at his head put an end to his prophetic lamentation.⁵⁴³⁵⁴³    Jos, B. Jud., VI. 5, 3 sqq

The Jewish Rebellion.

Under the last governors, Felix, Festus, Albinus, and Florus, moral corruption and the dissolution of all social ties, but at the same time the oppressiveness of the Roman yoke, increased every year. After the accession of Felix, assassins, called "Sicarians" (from sica, a dagger), armed with daggers and purchasable for any crime, endangering safety in city and country, roamed over Palestine. Besides this, the party spirit among the Jews themselves, and their hatred of their heathen oppressors, rose to the most insolent political and religious fanaticism, and was continually inflamed by false prophets and Messiahs, one of whom, for example, according to Josephus, drew after him thirty thousand men. Thus came to pass what our Lord had predicted: "There shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall lead many astray."

At last, in the month of May, a.d. 66, under the last procurator, Gessius Florus (from 65 onward), a wicked and cruel tyrant who, as Josephus says, was placed as a hangman over evil-doers, an organized rebellion broke out against the Romans, but it the same time a terrible civil war also between different parties of the revolters themselves, especially between the Zealots, and the Moderates, or the Radicals and Conservatives. The ferocious party of the Zealots had all the fire and energy which religious and patriotic fanaticism could inspire; they have been justly compared with the Montagnards of the French Revolution. They gained the ascendancy in the progress of the war, took forcible possession of the city and the temple and introduced a reign of terror. They kept up the Messianic expectations of the people and hailed every step towards destruction as a step towards deliverance. Reports of comets, meteors, and all sorts of fearful omens and prodigies were interpreted as signs of the common of the Messiah and his reign over the heathen. The Romans recognized the Messiah in Vespasian and Titus.

To defy Rome in that age, without a single ally, was to defy the world in arms; but religious fanaticism, inspired by the recollection of the heroic achievements of the Maccabees, blinded the Jews against the inevitable failure of this mad and desperate revolt.

The Roman Invasion.

The emperor Nero, informed of the rebellion, sent his most famous general, Vespasian, with a large force to Palestine Vespasian opened the campaign in the year 67 from the Syrian port-town, Ptolemais (Acco), and against a stout resistance overran Galilee with an army of sixty thousand men. But events in Rome hindered him from completing the victory, and required him to return thither. Nero had killed himself. The emperors, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius followed one another in rapid succession. The latter was taken out of a dog’s kennel in Rome while drunk, dragged through the streets, and shamefully put to death. Vespasian, in the year 69, was universally proclaimed emperor, and restored order and prosperity.

His son, Titus, who himself ten years after became emperor, and highly distinguished himself by his mildness and philanthropy,⁵⁴⁴⁵⁴⁴    The people called him Amor et Deliciae generis humani. He was born December 30, a.d. 40, and died September 13, 81. He ascended the throne 79, in the year when the towns of Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Pompeii were destroyed. His reign was marked by a series of terrible calamities, among which was a conflagration in Rome which lasted three days, and. a plague which destroyed thousands of victims daily. He made earnest efforts to repair the injuries, and used to say, when a day passed without an act of philanthropy, "Amici, diem perdidi." See Suetonius, Titus. then undertook the prosecution of the Jewish war, and became the instrument in the hand of God of destroying the holy city and the temple. He had an army of not less than eighty thousand trained soldiers, and planted his camp on Mount Scopus and the adjoining Mount Olivet, in full view of the city and the temple, which from this height show to the best advantage. The valley of the Kedron divided the besiegers from the besieged.

In April, a.d. 70, immediately after the Passover, when Jerusalem was filled with strangers, the siege began. The zealots rejected, with sneering defiance, the repeated proposals of Titus and the prayers of Josephus, who accompanied him as interpreter and mediator; and they struck down every one who spoke of surrender. They made sorties down the valley of the Kedron and tip the mountain, and inflicted great loss oil the Romans. As the difficulties multiplied their courage increased. The crucifixion of hundreds of prisoners (as many as five hundred a day) only enraged them the more. Even the famine which began to rage and sweep away thousands daily, and forced a woman to roast her own child,⁵⁴⁵⁵⁴⁵    Josephus, VI. 3, 4, gives a full account of this horrible and most unnatural incident. the cries of mothers and babes, the most pitiable scenes of misery around them, could not move the crazy fanatics. History records no other instance of such obstinate resistance, such desperate bravery and contempt of death. The Jews fought, not only for civil liberty, life, and their native land, but for that which constituted their national pride and glory, and gave their whole history its significance—for their religion, which, even in this state of horrible degeneracy, infused into them an almost superhuman power of endurance.

The Destruction of the City and the Temple.

At last, in July, the castle of Antonia was surprised and taken by night. This prepared the way for the destruction of the Temple in which the tragedy culminated. The daily sacrifices ceased July 17th, because the hands were all needed for defence. The last and the bloodiest sacrifice at the altar of burnt offerings was the slaughter of thousands of Jews who had crowded around it.

Titus (according to Josephus) intended at first to save that magnificent work of architecture, as a trophy of victory, and perhaps from some superstitious fear; and when the flames threatened to reach the Holy of Holies he forced his way through flame and smoke, over the dead and dying, to arrest the fire.⁵⁴⁶⁵⁴⁶    Josephus is, however, not quite consistent; he says first that Titus, perceiving that his endeavors to spare a foreign temple turned to the damage of his soldiers, commanded the gates to be set on fire (VI. 4, 1); and then, that on the next day he gave orders to extinguish it (§ 3, 6, and 37). Sulpicius Severus (II. 30) makes Titus responsible for the destruction, who thought that it would make an end both to the Jewish and the Christian religion. This is defended by Stange, De Titi imperatoris vita, P. I., 1870, pp. 39-43, but doubted by Schürer, l.c. p. 346. Renan (511 sqq.), following Bernays, Ueber die Chronik des Sulpicius Sev., 1861, p. 48, believes that Sulpicius drew his account from the lost portion of the Histories of Tacitus, and that Titus neither ordered nor forbade the burning of the Temple, but left it to its fate, with a prudent reservation of his motives. So also Thiersch, p. 224. But the destruction was determined by a higher decree. His own soldiers, roused to madness by the stubborn resistance, and greedy of the golden treasures, could not be restrained from the work of destruction. At first the halls around the temple were set on fire. Then a firebrand was hurled through the golden gate. When the flames arose the Jews raised a hideous yell and tried to put out the fire; while others, clinging with a last convulsive grasp to their Messianic hopes, rested in the declaration of a false prophet, that God in the midst of the conflagration of the Temple would give a signal for the deliverance of his people. The legions vied with each other in feeding the flames, and made the unhappy people feel the full force of their unchained rage. Soon the whole prodigious structure was in a blaze and illuminated the skies. It was burned on the tenth of August, a.d. 70, the same day of the year on which, according to tradition, the first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. "No one," says Josephus, "can conceive a louder, more terrible shriek than arose from all sides during the burning of the temple. The shout of victory and the jubilee of the legions sounded through the wailings of the people, now surrounded with fire and sword, upon the mountain, and throughout the city. The echo from all the mountains around, even to Peraea (?), increased the deafening roar. Yet the misery itself was more terrible than this disorder. The hill on which the temple stood was seething hot, and seemed enveloped to its base in one sheet of flame. The blood was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain more in number than those that slew them. The ground was nowhere visible. All was covered with corpses; over these heaps the soldiers pursued the fugitives."⁵⁴⁷⁵⁴⁷    B. J., VI. 5, 1.

The Romans planted their eagles on the shapeless ruins, over against the eastern gate, offered their sacrifices to them, and proclaimed Titus Imperator with the greatest acclamations of joy. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy concerning the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place."⁵⁴⁸⁵⁴⁸    Daniel, 9:27; Matt. 24:15; comp. Luke 21:20; Josephus, B. Jud., VI.

Jerusalem was razed to the ground; only three towers of the palace of Herod—Hippicus (still standing), Phasael, and Mariamne—together with a portion of the western wall, were left as monuments of the strength of the conquered city, once the centre of the Jewish theocracy and the cradle of the Christian Church.

Even the heathen Titus is reported to have publicly declared that God, by a special providence, aided the Romans and drove the Jews from their impregnable strongholds.⁵⁴⁹⁵⁴⁹    B. Jud., VI. 9, 1. Titus is said to have approved such passages (Jos. Vita, 65). Josephus, who went through the war himself from beginning to end, at first as governor of Galilee and general of the Jewish army, then as a prisoner of Vespasian, finally as a companion of Titus and mediator between the Romans and Jews, recognized in this tragical event a divine judgment and admitted of his degenerate countrymen, to whom he was otherwise sincerely attached: "I will not hesitate to say what gives me pain: I believe that, had the Romans delayed their punishment of these villains, the city would have been swallowed up by the earth, or overwhelmed with a flood, or, like Sodom, consumed with fire from heaven. For the generation which was in it was far more ungodly than the men on whom these punishments had in former times fallen. By their madness the whole nation came to be ruined."⁵⁵⁰⁵⁵⁰    B. Jud., V. 13, 6.

Thus, therefore, must one of the best Roman emperors execute the long threatened judgment of God, and the most learned Jew of his time describe it, and thereby, without willing or knowing it, bear testimony to the truth of the prophecy and the divinity of the mission of Jesus Christ, the rejection of whom brought all this and the subsequent misfortune upon the apostate race.

The destruction of Jerusalem would be a worthy theme for the genius of a Christian Homer. It has been called "the most soul-stirring struggle of all ancient history."⁵⁵¹⁵⁵¹    Merivale, l.c., p. 445. But there was no Jeremiah to sing the funeral dirge of the city of David and Solomon. The Apocalypse was already written, and had predicted that the heathen "shall tread the holy city under foot forty and two months."⁵⁵²⁵⁵²    Apoc. 11:2; comp. Luke, 21:24. In Dan. 7:25; 9:27; 12:7, the duration of the oppression of the Jewish people is given as seven half-years (= 42 months). One of the master artists of modern times, Kaulbach, has made it the subject of one of his greatest paintings in the museum at Berlin. It represents the burning temple: in the foreground, the high-priest burying his sword in his breast; around him, the scenes of heart-rending suffering; above, the ancient prophets beholding the fulfilment of their oracles; beneath them, Titus with the Roman army as the unconscious executor of the Divine wrath; below, to the left, Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew of the mediaeval legend, driven by furies into the undying future; and to the right the group of Christians departing in peace from the scene of destruction, and Jewish children imploring their protection.

The Fate of the Survivors, and the Triumph in Rome.

After a siege of five months the entire city was in the hands of the victors. The number of the Jews slain during the siege, including all those who had crowded into the city from the country, is stated by Josephus at the enormous and probably exaggerated figure of one million and one hundred thousand. Eleven thousand perished from starvation shortly after the close of the siege. Ninety-seven thousand were carried captive and sold into slavery, or sent to the mines, or sacrificed in the gladiatorial shows at Caesarea, Berytus, Antioch, and other cities. The strongest and handsomest men were selected for the triumphal procession in Rome, among them the chief defenders and leaders of the revolt, Simon Bar-Giora and John of Gischala.⁵⁵³⁵⁵³    B Jud. VI. 9, 2-4. Milman (II. 388) sums up the scattered statements of Josephus, and makes out the total number of killed, from the beginning to the close of the war, to be 1,356,460, and the total number of prisoners 101,700.

Vespasian and Titus celebrated the dearly bought victory together (71). No expense was spared for the pageant. Crowned with laurel, and clothed in purple garments, the two conquerors rode slowly in separate chariots, Domitian on a splendid charger, to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, amid the shouts of the people and the aristocracy. They were preceded by the soldiers in festive attire and seven hundred Jewish captives. The images of the gods, and the sacred furniture of the temple—the table of show-bread, the seven-armed candlestick, the trumpets which announced the year of jubilee, the vessel of incense, and the rolls of the Law—were borne along in the procession and deposited in the newly built Temple of Peace,⁵⁵⁴⁵⁵⁴    The Temple of Peace was afterwards burned under Commodus, and it is not known what became of the sacred furniture. except the Law and the purple veils of the holy place, which Vespasian reserved for his palace. Simon Bar-Giora was thrown down from the Tarpeian Rock; John of Gischala doomed to perpetual imprisonment. Coins were cast with the legend Judaea capta, Judaea devicta. But neither Vespasian nor Titus assumed the victorious epithet Judaeus; they despised a people which had lost its fatherland.

Josephus saw the pompous spectacle of the humiliation and wholesale crucifixion of his nation, and described it without a tear.⁵⁵⁵⁵⁵⁵    B. Jud., VII. 5, 5-7. Josephus was richly rewarded for his treachery. Vespasian gave him a house in Rome, an annual pension, the Roman citizenship, and large possessions in Judaea. Titus and Domitian continued the favors. But his countrymen embittered his life and cursed his memory. Jost and other Jewish historians speak of him with great contempt. King Agrippa, the last of the Idumaean sovereigns, lived and died an humble and contented vassal of Rome, in the third year of Trajan, a.d. 100. His licentious sister, Berenice, narrowly escaped the fate of a second Cleopatra. The conquering Titus was conquered by her sensual charms, and desired to raise her to the imperial throne, but the public dissatisfaction forced him to dismiss her, "invitus invitam." Suet., Tit. 7. Comp. Schürer, l .c. 321, 322. The thoughtful Christian, looking at the representation of the temple furniture borne by captive Jews on the triumphal arch of Titus, still standing between the Colosseum and the Forum, is filled with awe at the fulfilment of divine prophecy.

The conquest of Palestine involved the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth. Vespasian retained the land as his private property or distributed it among his veterans. The people were by the five years’ war reduced to extreme poverty, and left without a magistrate (in the Jewish sense), without a temple, without a country. The renewal of the revolt under the false Messiah, Bar-Cocheba, led only to a still more complete destruction of Jerusalem and devastation of Palestine by the army of Hadrian (132–135). But the Jews still had the law and the prophets and the sacred traditions, to which they cling to this day with indestructible tenacity and with the hope of a great future. Scattered over the earth, at home everywhere and nowhere; refusing to mingle their blood with any other race, dwelling in distinct communities, marked as a peculiar people in every feature of the countenance, in every rite of religion; patient, sober, and industrious; successful in every enterprise, prosperous in spite of oppression, ridiculed yet feared, robbed yet wealthy, massacred yet springing up again, they have outlived the persecution of centuries and are likely to continue to live to the end of time: the object of the mingled contempt, admiration, and wonder of the world.