Chapter XIII: The Revolt Under Hadrian

=1. Conquered Jews in the West.=――The first few years after the fall of Jerusalem, by contrast with what had gone before, were not, strange as it may seem, an altogether unhappy time for the Jews in Palestine. The worst had come, and the worst proved hardly so terrible as the waiting for it. The Romans were stern masters, but not vindictive ones. So long as the Jews accepted the new conditions, these were not cruelly enforced, nor were any of the private religious arrangements of the dispossessed people interfered with. The slaves, in many cases, bought their liberty. Their schools supplied an interest to the conquered Jews, and a link between them; and dispersed as they were, and despised to some extent as they were, the Jews did not become degraded. The existence of their Sanhedrin with its dignified literary labourers, chosen from their own ranks, kept up their sense of self-respect. Deep was the loyalty felt towards the president of the Sanhedrin. He became in some sort an uncrowned king of this fallen people. They called him their נָשִׂיא ‘prince’; and, without one inch of territory, a very wide and a very real dominion this spiritual potentate grew to have over the hearts and minds of his brethren. The internal government of the different Jewish communities in the Roman Empire varied. In Alexandria a head and chief, whom the Greeks called ethnarch, presided over a council of seventy elders. In Rome, each of the many synagogues had its own separate administration and its own separate name. Almost every place where Jews congregated had its own little council, a sort of miniature Sanhedrin, which looked after local Jewish matters. But all the various communities of the Western world, widely separated as they were, had one thing in common: they all acknowledged as supreme the authority of the נָשִׂיא or president for the time being of the Sanhedrin in Palestine. He came to be called the patriarch, and his head-quarters were first at Jamnia, then at Sepphoris, and afterwards at Tiberias.

=2. Contemporary Jews in the East.=――The exiles and captives in Babylonia and Mesopotamia had led a quiet life for centuries. They, like their brethren, were a captive race, but the Parthian kings, like the Persian kings, were milder masters than the Romans, and perhaps the Babylonian Jews themselves were more patient than the Palestinian Jews. It was, at any rate, an easier thing to be subject in exile than to be subject on native soil. The scattered communities settled between the Tigris and Euphrates had gradually established schools and seats of learning in the Babylonian country. Besides the heads of these schools (רֵישֵׁי כַלֵי), there was a political head or chief whom the Eastern Jews invested with a good deal of general authority, and whom they called רֵישׁ נְּלוּתָא, Head or Prince of the Captivity.

=3. Under Trajan.=――The quiet time for the Jews ended in the reign of Trajan, who was Emperor of Rome from 98 to 117. He made a campaign against Parthia, and this roused all the Jewish subjects of Parthia to revolt, partly in help of their Parthian masters, and partly, perhaps, in dread of Rome and of the fate of their Western brethren. Trajan conquered Parthia in 114, but his death ended the Jewish fear of Roman rule in the East, for Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, gave up this latest conquest.

=4. The Policy of Hadrian.=――Hadrian, when he became Emperor in 117, restored Parthia to the Parthians. He found he had enough to do to keep what he had got. But the Jewish readiness to revolt against Roman supremacy was not lost upon him. He did not forget how quick the Jews had been to fight. East or west, it seemed to him that if but a breath of freedom were in the air, it was fanned among this Jewish race into a perfect whirlwind. Why should they not submit to Rome, and sink their own nationality? Greater nations than they had passed more or less peacefully under the Roman yoke, whilst to subdue this tiny troublesome dependency had tasked a Titus! To conquer Jews was not enough; they wanted crushing. That was this new Emperor’s view of the case, and he proceeded to set about it. He was keen enough to see that there was religion at the root of this dogged Jewish resistance; that the Jews had fought for their convictions as much as for their country; that they were the people of the Book as well as the people of the Land. And reasoning thus, the Emperor Hadrian determined that he would pluck up this Jewish religion by the roots, and not be content to lop away at the branches as his predecessors had done. He would pass the ploughshare over Jerusalem, he would build a new city with a new name on its site, and where the Temple had stood he would erect a shrine to Jupiter. And he did all this, and yet he failed. The heathen Emperor did not know that Judaism was quite beyond the power of his legions. He had never heard ‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.’ If he had heard, he probably would not have heeded. But he certainly did his best, according to his lights, to effect his object.

=5. The Jews in Revolt: their Leader.=――No Josephus has left a minute record of the last struggle between the Jews and Rome, and a great many details are altogether absent. We know generally that the Jewish resistance to Hadrian lasted three years, from 132 till 135; and that Julius Severus had to be summoned from Britain before the Roman success could be assured. The Jews fought against Hadrian as, fifty years before, they had fought against Titus, with the obstinate courage of men who valued their own lives less than the life of the nation. They were led by a man who, at the beginning of the revolt, they called, in their enthusiasm, Barcochba, son of a star; and at the end, in their despair, Barcosba, son of a lie. His real name we do not know. He fought and he died fighting, and in defence of the truth as he believed it; and so far, and although he failed, he takes his place among the heroes of history, and earns a right to the title first bestowed upon him. His claim to the second is, happily, less clear. Tradition tells of tricks he played to incline the people to believe that his powers were supernatural; and there are tales, too, told to his discredit, which, if true, might make ‘impostor’ a free translation of Barcosba. But the only facts of which we are sure are that he led the Palestinian Jews in their second revolt against Rome, from the year 132 till 135; that for a little while the forlorn hope of the people seemed possible of realisation, and that Barcochba took possession of the ruins of Jerusalem; that he and his followers were dislodged from thence, and that the last stand against the Roman enemy was made at a fortified place called Bither, which fell on the same sad anniversary, the 9th of Ab, which was already so full of fatal memories to the Jews.

=6. Akiba: the Romance of his Youth.=――There was one good and famous man who believed in Barcochba, and who stood by him to the end. This was Akiba, one of the greatest of the Rabbis, who left his books and his home to share the dangers of the campaign, and to carry the standard by the side of the Jewish leader. And books, and home, meant more to Akiba than to most men, for he had not inherited these happinesses, but had had to work and to wait for them. His was a romantic story. He, like Moses, had been a shepherd. By craggy torrents and by grassy plains he had wandered with his flocks, until one day he had met a fair maiden, and they had walked and talked together, and then the long sweet summer day had seemed unaccountably to shorten. He and the maiden had straightway fallen in love with each other. But she was a rich man’s daughter, and her father, when he heard about it, was extremely angry. He declared she should not marry ‘that beggar,’ which was calling names, and not quite true ones, for Akiba was no beggar. Then the father threatened. He said she should have no fortune if she persisted in her ‘folly.’ The girl was much too much in love to care about money, and Akiba, who might have hesitated, and not thought it honourable to marry a rich girl, gladly took her now that she was to be poor and friendless. So they married, and for a while they were most unreasonably happy. But of course it was not a prudent marriage. They were very poor, they had to sleep upon straw, and to go out into the fields to gather that. Akiba’s wife was a sensible woman as well as a loving one; the sort of woman who would do her husband good and not evil all the days of his life. She saw this could not go on. She knew her husband had talent; she advised him to go away and get admitted to one of the schools, where his talents would be recognised, and he would have the opportunity to study. She would not go with him, she said, to be a drag on him: he must labour, and she would wait. So he went, and the years went on, slowly and sadly for her, for her father was unforgiving; slowly and successfully for him, for strangers were kind. He had not only talent, but perseverance, and when at last he was chosen head of the college which he had entered as a poor student, he travelled back to his native place for his reward. He was a famous Rabbi by this time, and crowds flocked round him in eager welcome. One shabby, large-eyed woman hung back a little, but Akiba saw her and knew her at once, though all the girlishness and half the beauty were gone. He drew her to the front and held her close, and proudly told the story of her patience and of her trust in him to the sympathising onlookers. And as they listened a message came from the rich man, who had not joined in the common crowd of welcome. He desired to consult the famous Rabbi, whose visit was an event and an honour to the place. This rich man must have been one of those Jews who call themselves Jews in their heart; he evidently was not a Jew in his actions or his interests, or he would have surely heard that Akiba was something more than a distinguished stranger. However, Akiba went to him, and found that his advice was wanted. The rich man told the Rabbi of the vow which he had made never to see or help his daughter; he was getting old now――was there any way the Rabbi could suggest in which the vow could be conscientiously broken? ‘Would you have minded your daughter marrying a distinguished scholar, even had he been poor?’ asked the Rabbi. ‘No,’ said the father, puzzled; ‘but she married a stupid beggar.’ ‘Well,’ said Akiba, smiling, ‘I know not if I be the distinguished scholar that men call me, but I do know I am that Akiba who married your daughter.’ So it all ended happily, and the good, patient wife regained her husband and her father at the same time.

=7. Akiba: the Romance of his Age.=――That was the home side of Akiba’s life story. In the schools he won a distinguished place, and all his life he was as loyal to his duties as to his affections, and faithful to both even unto death. In the revolt against Rome the scholar turned soldier, and the husband was patriot. Akiba stood by Barcochba to the last, and when Bither fell, he was taken prisoner by the Romans, and by them most cruelly put to death. But his beautiful enthusiasm did not desert him even under torture. There is a Talmudic legend that he smiled at his executioners, and that one of them tauntingly exclaimed to the poor old man slowly dying under their hands, ‘Why, you look as if you rejoice!’ ‘And I do,’ came the unflinching answer. ‘Every day of my life I have repeated the שְׁמַע. To-day, for the first time, I _feel_ what it is to love the Lord my God with all my heart, and all my soul, and all my strength. How should I not rejoice?’

=8. Hadrian’s Resolve accomplished.=――Akiba’s death was the last act in this war, which the Talmud calls ‘the war of extermination.’ Hadrian did what he had proposed to himself to do. A ploughshare was passed over what had been Jerusalem, and the foundations of a new city were laid, and it was called Ælia Capitolina――Ælia in honour of the Emperor, Capitolina in honour of Jupiter. ‘One hundred and fifty years later Jerusalem was a term of ancient geography.’[5] The Jews of Palestine were massacred by thousands. Numbers were sold as slaves at the same price as horses at the annual fair held near Hebron. Judea was left, practically, a desert. Wolves and hyenas prowled about the ruined city, and such of the people as were not sold or slaughtered lived a banished, frightened existence in the caves among the mountains. One right the Roman Emperor conceded to the Jews he had ‘crushed.’ Once a year they were given the opportunity of ‘buying their own tears,’ as the Church historian, St. Jerome, expresses it. Throughout all the long months they were forbidden, on pain of death, to approach the city. But on each anniversary of the sacking of Jerusalem all Jews who wished might come near and look upon what had been ‘the joy of the whole earth.’ The outcasts might come and lean against the bit of broken wall which was all that was left to them of all that had been theirs. They might weep and pray; but if they asked to wait and weep a little longer than the limited time by law permitted, then the Roman guard who watched could fix his own price for the privilege. He could make them ‘buy their tears.’