Jewish Conflicts With the Dr. Malka Simkovich ASBI; December 16, 2015

1. Cicero, 59 BCE1 It was the practice each year to send gold to on the Jews’ account from Italy and all our provinces, but Flaccus issued an edict forbidding its export from Asia. Who is there, gentlemen, who cannot genuinely applaud this measure? The Senate strictly forbade the export of gold on a considerable number of previous occasions, notably during my consulship. To oppose this outlandish superstitition was an act of firmness, and to defy in the public interest the crowd of Jews that on occasion sets our public meetings ablaze was the height of responsibility. Pro Flacco 66–67 in C. Macdonald, trans., Cicero: In Catilinam 1–4; Pro Murena; Pro Sulla; Pro Flacco (LCL 324; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976) 514–517.

2. Gaius Caligula, 37 CE Philo, Flaccus, 33-35 For the lazy and unoccupied mob in the city, a multitude well practiced in idle talk, who devote their leisure to slandering and evil speaking, was permitted by him to vilify the king, whether the abuse was actually begun by himself or caused by his incitement and provocation addressed to those who were his regular ministers in such matters. Thus started on their course they spent their days in the gymnasium jeering at the king and bringing out a succession of gibes against him. In fact they took the authors of farces and jests for their instructors and thereby showed their natural ability in things of shame, slow to be schooled in anything good but exceedingly quick and ready in learning the opposite. Why did Flaccus show no indignation? Why did he not arrest them? 53–55: When then his attack against our laws by seizing the meeting-houses without even leaving them their name appeared to be successful, he proceeded to another scheme, namely, the destruction of our citizenship, so that when our ancestral customs and our participation in political rights, the sole mooring on which our life was secured, had been cut away, we might undergo the worst misfortunes with no cable to cling to for safety. For a few days afterwards he issued a proclamation in which he denounced us as foreigners and aliens and gave us no right of pleading our case but condemned us unjudged. What stronger profession of tyranny could we have than this? He became everything himself, accuser, enemy, witness, judge and the agent of punishment, and then to the two first wrongs he added a third by permitting those who wished to pillage the Jews as at the sacking of a city. Having secured this immunity what did they do? The city has five quarters named after the first letters of the alphabet, two of these are called Jewish because most of the Jews inhabit them, though in the rest also there are not a few Jews scattered about. So then what did they do? From the four letters they ejected the Jews and drove them to herd in a very small part of one. The Jews were so numerous that they poured out over beaches, dunghills and tombs, robbed of all their belongings. Their enemies overran the houses now left empty and turned to pillaging them…

1 Translations of Roman sources: Loeb Classical Library; Translations of Talmudic sources: Soncino Talmud; Translations of : Whiston; Translations of Philo: de Jonge.

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Jewish Conflicts With the Roman Empire Dr. Malka Simkovich ASBI; December 16, 2015

62–64 After the pillaging and eviction and violent expulsion from most parts of the city the Jews were like beleaguered men with their enemies all round them. They were pressed by want and dire lack of necessities; they saw their infant children and women perishing before their eyes through a famine artificially created, since elsewhere all else was teeming with plenty and abundance, the fields richly flooded by the overflow of the river and the wheat-bearing parts of the lowlands producing through their fertility the harvest of grain in unstinted profusion. Unable any longer to endure their privation, some of them contrary to their former habits went to the houses of their kinsmen and friends to ask for the mere necessities as a charity, while those whose high-born spirit led them to avoid the beggar’s lot as fitter for slaves than for the free went forth into the market solely to buy sustenance for their families and themselves. 68 Indeed, whole families, husbands with their wives, infant children with their parents, were burnt in the heart of the city by these supremely ruthless men who showed no pity for old age nor youth, nor the innocent years of childhood. And when they lacked wood for fire they would collect brushwood and dispatch them with smoke rather than fire, thus contriving a more pitiable and lingering death for the miserable victims whose bodies lay promiscuously half-burnt… [Cf. Philo, Embassy to Gaius, 352–353]

3. Edict of Claudius (41–54 CE) As for the question, which party was responsible for the riots and feud (or rather, if the truth be told, the war) with the Jews, although in confrontation with their opponents your ambassadors, and particularly Dionysios the son of Theon, contended with great zeal, nevertheless I was unwilling to make a strict inquiry, though guarding within me a store of immutable indignation against whichever party renews the conflict. And I tell you once and for all that unless you put a stop to this ruinous and obstinate enmity against each other, I shall be driven to show what a benevolent Prince can be when turned to righteous indignation.2

4. 48 CE: The War of Simon and Judas: Josephus, Jewish War, 2.118: The territory of Archelaus was now reduced.to a province, and Coponius, a Roman of the equestrian order, was sent out as procurator, entrusted by Augustus with full powers, including the infliction of capital punishment. Under his administration, a Galilaean, named Judas, incited his countrymen to revolt, upbraiding them as cowards for consenting to pay tribute to the Romans and tolerating mortal masters, after having God for their lord. This man was a sophist who founded a sect of his own, having nothing in common with the others.

2 P. London 1912, CPJ I 151; Select Papyri, Volume II, ed. A. S. Hunt and G. C. Edgar (LCL [fill in]; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934) 78–79 2

Jewish Conflicts With the Roman Empire Dr. Malka Simkovich ASBI; December 16, 2015

4. Tension During ’s Reign (54–68 CE) Josephus, , 2.487 On one occasion, when the Alexandrians were holding a public meeting on the subject of an embassy which they proposed to send to Nero, a large number of Jews flocked into the amphitheatre along with the Greeks; their adversaries, the instant they caught sight of them, raised shouts of “enemies” and “spies,” and then rushed forward to lay hands on them. The majority of the Jews took flight and scattered, but three of them were caught by the Alexandrians and dragged off to be burnt alive. Thereupon the whole Jewish colony rose to the rescue; first they hurled stones at the Greeks, and then snatching up torches rushed to the amphitheatre, threatening to consume the assembled citizens in the flames to the last man. And this they would actually have done, had not Tiberius Alexander, the governor of the city, curbed their fury. The troops, thereupon, rushed to the quarter of the city called “Delta,” where the Jews were concentrated, and executed their orders, but not without bloodshed on their own side; for the Jews closing their ranks and putting the best armed among their number in the front offered a prolonged resistance, but when once they gave way, wholesale carnage ensued. Death in every form was theirs; some were caught in the plain, others driven into their houses, to which the Romans set fire after stripping them of their contents; there was no pity for infancy, no respect for years: all ages fell before their murderous career, until the whole district was deluged with blood and the heaps of corpses numbered fifty thousand; even the remnant would not have escaped, had they not sued for quarter. Alexander, now moved to compassion, ordered the Romans to retire. They, broken to obedience, ceased massacring at the first signal; but the Alexandrian populace in the intensity of their hate were not so easily called off and were with difficulty torn from the corpses.

5. 66-72: The “Jewish War” Gessius Florus (Roman Procurator of , 64–66) Josephus, Jewish War, 2.14: On the following day, which was a sabbath, when the Jews assembled at the synagogue, they found that one of the Caesarean mischief-makers had placed beside the entrance a pot, turned bottom upwards, upon which he was sacrificing birds. This spectacle of what they considered an outrage upon their laws and a desecration of the spot enraged the Jews beyond endurance. The steady-going and peaceable members of the congregation were in favour of immediate recourse to the authorities; but the factious folk and the passionate youth were burning for a fight. The Caesarean party, on their side, stood prepared for action, for they had, by a concerted plan, sent the man on to the mock sacrifice; and so they soon came to blows. Jucundus, the cavalry commander commissioned to intervene, came up, removed the pot and endeavored to quell the riot, but was unable to cope with the violence of the Caesareans. The Jews, thereupon, snatched up their copy of the Law and withdrew to Narbata, a Jewish district sixty furlongs distant from Caesarea. Their leading men, twelve in number, with John at their head, waited upon Florus at Sebaste, bitterly complained of these proceedings and besought his assistance, delicately reminding him of the matter of the eight talents. Florus actually had them arrested and put in irons on the charge of having carried off the copy of the Law from Caesarea.

(6) This news roused indignation at Jerusalem, though the citizens still restrained their feelings. But Florus, as if he had contracted to fan the flames of war, sent to the temple treasury and extracted seventeen talents, making the requirements of the imperial service his pretext. Instantly fired by this outrage, the people rushed 3

Jewish Conflicts With the Roman Empire Dr. Malka Simkovich ASBI; December 16, 2015 in a body to the temple and with piercing cries invoked the name of Caesar, imploring him to liberate them from the tyranny of Florus. Some of the malcontents railed on the procurator in the most opprobrious terms and carrying round a basket begged coppers for him as for an unfortunate destitute. These proceedings, however, far from checking his avarice, only provoked him to further peculation. Accordingly, instead of betaking himself, as he should have done, to Caesarea, to extinguish the flames of war, there already breaking out, and to root out the cause of these disorders—a task for which he had been paid—he marched with an army of cavalry and infantry upon Jerusalem, in order to attain his object with the aid of the Roman arms, and by means of intimidation and menaces to fleece the city.

(7) The citizens, anxious to forestall and make him ashamed of his intention, went to meet the troops with acclamations, and prepared to give Florus an obsequious reception. He, however, sent on ahead a centurion, Capito, with fifty horsemen, and ordered the Jews to retire and not to mock with this show of cordiality one whom they had so grossly abused; if they were courageous and outspoken persons (so ran his words) they ought to jeer at him in his very presence and to show their love of liberty not only in words but with arms in hand. Dismayed by this message and by Capito’s cavalrymen charging into their ranks, the crowd dispersed, before they had a chance of saluting Florus or giving the soldiers proof of their obedience. They retired to their homes and passed the night in terror and dejection.

(8) Florus lodged at the palace, and on the following day had a tribunal placed in front of the building and took his seat; the chief priests, the nobles, and the most eminent citizens then presented themselves before the tribunal. Florus ordered them to hand over the men who had insulted him, declaring that they themselves would feel his vengeance if they failed to produce the culprits. The leaders, in reply, declared that the people were peaceably disposed and implored pardon for the individuals who had spoken disrespectfully. It was not surprising, they said, that in so great a crowd there should be some reckless spirits and foolish youths; but to pick out the delinquents was impossible, as everyone was now penitent and would, from fear of the consequences, deny what he had done. If, then, Florus cared for the peace of the nation and wished to preserve the city for the Romans, he ought to pardon the few offenders for the sake of the many innocent, rather than, because of a few rascals, to bring trouble upon such a host of good citizens.

(9) This speech merely increased the exasperation of Florus, who now shouted to the soldiers to sack the agora known as the “upper market,” and to kill any whom they encountered. The troops, whose lust for booty was thus backed by their general’s order, not only plundered the quarter which they were sent to attack, but plunged into every house and slaughtered the inmates. There ensued a stampede through the narrow alleys, massacre of all who were caught, every variety of pillage; many of the peaceable citizens were arrested and brought before Florus, who had them first scourged and then crucified. The total number of that day’s victims, including women and children, for even infancy received no quarter, amounted to about three thousand six hundred. The calamity was aggravated by the unprecedented character of the Romans’ cruelty. For Florus ventured that day to do what none had ever done before, namely, to scourge before his tribunal and nail to the cross men of equestrian rank, men who, if Jews by birth, were at least invested with that Roman dignity.

(xv. 1) King Agrippa, at this moment, was absent, having gone to Alexandria to offer his congratulations to Alexander, recently sent to take over the government of Egypt, with which he had been entrusted by Nero. Agrippa’s sister Bernice, however, who was at Jerusalem, witnessed with the liveliest emotion the outrages of the soldiers, and constantly sent her cavalry-commanders and bodyguards to Florus to implore him to put a stop to the carnage. But he, regarding neither the number of the slain nor the exalted rank of his suppliant, but only the profit accruing from the plunder, turned a deaf ear to her prayers. The mad rage of the soldiers even vented itself upon the queen. Not only did they torture and put their captives to death under her eyes, but they would have killed her also, had she not hastened to seek refuge in the palace, where she passed the 4

Jewish Conflicts With the Roman Empire Dr. Malka Simkovich ASBI; December 16, 2015 night surrounded by guards, dreading an attack of the troops. She was visiting Jerusalem to discharge a vow to God; for it is customary for those suffering from illness or other affliction to make a vow to abstain from wine and to shave their heads during the thirty days preceding that on which they must offer sacrifices. These rites Bernice was then undergoing, and she would come barefoot before the tribunal and make supplication to Florus, without any respect being shown to her, and even at the peril of her life.

On the following day the multitude, overcome with distress, flocked to the upper agora, uttering terrific lamentations for the dead, but the shouts of imprecation upon Florus preponderated. Alarmed at this outburst, the leading men and the chief priests rent their clothes and, falling at the feet of one after another of the mob, implored them to desist, and not to provoke Florus, after all they had endured, to some new and irreparable outrage. The multitude promptly complied, alike out of respect for their petitioners, and in the hope that Florus would spare them further enormities.

(3) The procurator was vexed at the extinction of the tumult, and, with the object of relighting the flames, sent for the chief priests and leading citizens and told them that the people had but one way of proving that they intended to refrain from any further revolutionary proceedings, namely to go out and meet the troops coming up from Caesarea—two cohorts being at the time on their way. Then, while the leaders were still convening the people for the purpose, Florus sent word to the centurions of the cohorts to instruct their men not to return the salute of the Jews, and if they uttered a word in disparagement of himself, to make use of their arms. The chief priests, meanwhile, having assembled the multitude in the temple, exhorted them to meet the advancing Romans and to prevent any irremediable disaster by giving a courteous reception to the cohorts. To this advice the factious party refused to listen, and the crowd, influenced by their memory of the fallen, inclined to the bolder policy.

(4) Then it was that every priest and every minister of God, bearing in procession the holy vessels and wearing the robes in which they were wont to perform their priestly offices, the harpers also and the choristers with their instruments, fell on their knees and earnestly implored the people to preserve for them these sacred ornaments, and not to provoke the Romans to pillage the treasures of the house of God. Even the chief priests might then have been seen heaping dust upon their heads, their breasts bared, their vestments rent. They appealed by name to each of the notables individually and to the people as a whole not, by offending in so trifling a matter, to deliver up their country to those who were eager to sack it. “After all,” they asked, “what would the troops profit by receiving a salute from the Jews? What reparation for past events would they themselves obtain by now refusing to go out? If, on the contrary, they welcomed these new-comers with their customary courtesy, they would cut away from Florus all ground for hostilities and gain for themselves their country and freedom from further molestation. And then, above all, what utter feebleness it showed to be guided by a handful of rebels, when they ought instead with their numerous body to coerce even these malcontents to join in their own rational policy!”

(5) By these remonstrances they succeeded in soothing the multitude, while they quelled the rebels partly by menaces, partly by appealing to their feelings of respect. Then, taking the lead, they advanced in quiet and orderly fashion to meet the troops, and on the approach of the latter saluted them. The cohorts making no response, the rebels started clamoring against Florus. This was the given signal for falling upon the Jews. In an instant the troops were round them, striking out with their clubs, and on their taking flight the cavalry pursued and trampled them under their horses’ feet. Many fell beneath the blows of the Romans, a still larger number under the pressure of their own companions. Around the gates the crush was terrible; as each strove to pass in first, the flight of all was retarded, and dreadful was the fate of any who stumbled; suffocated and mangled by the crowds that trod them down, they were obliterated and their bodies so disfigured that their relatives could not recognize them to give them burial.

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Jewish Conflicts With the Roman Empire Dr. Malka Simkovich ASBI; December 16, 2015

6. 115–117: The War of Quietus (Emperor: Trajan) Eusebius, History of the Church, 4.2: The Emperor suspected that the Jews in Mesopotamia would also attack the inhabitants and ordered Lusius Quietus to clean them out of the province. He organized a force and murdered a great multitude of the Jews there, and for this reform was appointed governor of Judaea by the Emperor. Cassius Dio, Roman History, 68.32: Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put a certain Andreas at their head, and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would eat the flesh of their victims, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood and wear their skins for clothing; many they sawed in two, from the head downwards; others they gave to wild beasts, and still others they forced to fight as gladiators. In all two hundred and twenty thousand persons perished. In Egypt, too, they perpetrated many similar outrages, and in Cyprus, under the leadership of a certain Artemion. There, also, two hundred and forty thousand perished, and for this reason no Jew may set foot on that island, but even if one of them is driven upon its shores by a storm he is put to death. [In his History of the Pagans, the historian Paulus Orosius (375–c. 418; confirm) also reports that the damage wreaked by this rebellion was so great that Hadrian had to repopulate regions of North Africa because so many people living there had been killed.3] Ta'anit 18b. What is Trajan's [Day]? It was said: When Trajan was about to execute Lulianus and his brother Pappus in Laodicea [Lydia] he said to them, ‘If you are of the people of Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, let your God come and deliver you from my hands, in the same way as he delivered Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah from the hands of Nebuchadnezzar; and to this they replied: ‘Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were perfectly righteous men and they merited that a miracle should be wrought for them, and Nebuchadnezzar also was a king worthy for a miracle to be wrought through him, but as for you, you are a common and wicked man and are not worthy that a miracle be wrought through you; and as for us, we have deserved of the Omnipresent that we should die, and if you will not kill us, the Omnipresent has many other agents of death. The Omnipresent has in His world many bears and lions who can attack us and kill us; the only reason why the Holy One, blessed be He, has handed us over into your hand is that at some future time He may exact punishment of you for our blood’. Despite this he killed them. It is reported that hardly had they moved from there when two officials arrived from Rome and split his skull with clubs. 7. 135: The War of Bar Kokhba/Bar Kosiba/Bar Koseva (See Num 24:17) (Emperor: Hadrian) b. Sanhedrin 97b

3 [Paulus Orosius, History of the Pagans, 7.12.6, 8.12 - ?]

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Jewish Conflicts With the Roman Empire Dr. Malka Simkovich ASBI; December 16, 2015 It has been taught; R. Nathan said: This verse pierces and descends to the very abyss: For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though he tarry, wait for him; because it will surely come, it will not tarry (Habakkuk 2:3). Not as our Masters, who interpreted the verse, until a time and times and the dividing of time; (Daniel 7:25) nor as R. Simlai who expounded, Thou feedest them with the bread of tears; and givest them tears to drink a third time; (Psalms 80:6) nor as R. Akiba who expounded, Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth (Haggai 2:6) but the first dynasty [sc. the Hasmonean] shall last seventy years, the second [the Herodian], fifty two, and the reign of Bar Koziba two and a half years. The fall of Betar: Gittin 57a-b: ‘Through the shaft of a litter Bethar was destroyed.’ It was the custom when a boy was born to plant a cedar tree and when a girl was born to plant a pine tree, and when they married, the tree was cut down and a canopy made of the branches. One day the daughter of the Emperor was passing when the shaft of her litter broke, so they lopped some branches off a cedar tree and brought it to her. The Jews thereupon fell upon them and beat them. They reported to the Emperor that the Jews were rebelling, and he marched against them. He hath cut off in fierce anger all the horn of Israel. R. Zera said in the name of R. Abbahu who quoted R. Johanan: These are the eighty [thousand] battle trumpets which assembled in the city of Bethar when it was taken and men, women and children were slain in it until their blood ran into the great sea. Do you think this was near? It was a whole mil, away. It has been taught: R. Eleazar the Great said: There are two streams in the valley of Yadaim, one running in one direction and one in another, and the Sages estimated that [at that time] they ran with two parts water to one of blood. In a Baraitha it has been taught: For seven years the Gentiles fertilised their vineyards with the blood of Israel without using manure… The voice is the voice of Jacob and the hands are the hands of Esau: ‘the voice’ here refers to [the cry caused by] the Emperor Hadrian who killed in Alexandria of Egypt sixty myriads on sixty myriads, twice as many as went forth from Egypt. ‘The voice of Jacob’: this is the cry caused by the Emperor Vespasian who killed in the city of Bethar four hundred thousand myriads, or as some say, four thousand myriads. ‘The hands are the hands of Esau:’ this is the Government of Rome which has destroyed our House and burnt our Temple and driven us out of our land.

Cassius Dio, Roman History, 69.12.1–14.3 At Jerusalem, Hadrian founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the [Jewish] god, he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there. So long, indeed, as Hadrian was close by in Egypt and again in Syria, they remained quiet, save in so far as they purposedly made of poor quality such weapons as they were called upon to furnish, in order that the Romans might reject them and they themselves might thus have the use of them. But when Hadrian went farther away, they openly revolted. To be sure, they did not dare try conclusions with the Romans in the open field, but they occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet together unobserved underground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light.

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Jewish Conflicts With the Roman Empire Dr. Malka Simkovich ASBI; December 16, 2015 At first, the Romans took no account of them. Soon, however, all Judaea had been stirred up, and the Jews everywhere were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by overt acts. Many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter.

Then, indeed, Hadrian sent against them his best generals. First of these was Julius Severus, who was dispatched from Britain, where he was governor, against the Jews. Severus did not venture to attack his opponents in the open at any one point, in view of their numbers and their desperation, but by intercepting small groups, thanks to the number of his soldiers and his under-officers. By depriving them of food and shutting them up, he was able -rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger- to crush, exhaust and exterminate them.

Very few of them in fact survived. Fifty of their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty- five of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out.

Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate, a result of which the people had had forewarning before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, which the Jews regard as an object of veneration, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed, and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into their cities.

Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war. Therefore Hadrian, in writing to the Senate, did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, 'If you and your children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health.'

[Cf. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History]

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