Ancient Levant · Chronicle IX of IX
The Ancient Levant
Herod, the rise of Christianity, the fall of the Temple, and the diaspora.
Herodian KingdomPolitical
Rome installs Herod as king of Judea, a brilliant, ruthless builder who rules for thirty-three years.
Herod, of Idumean descent, won the throne with Roman backing and held it by cunning, terror, and grand ambition. He built the port of Caesarea, the desert fortresses of Masada and Herodium, and much else, keeping Judea loyal to Rome — even as his savagery within his own family became legendary.
Herodian KingdomReligious
Herod rebuilds the Second Temple on a magnificent scale, its great platform surviving as the Western Wall.
Herod doubled the Temple Mount and raised a Temple of dazzling white stone and gold, one of the wonders of the Roman east. Its enormous retaining walls still stand; the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism today, is a remnant of Herod's platform — all that survived the catastrophe soon to come.
Roman ProvincePolitical
Rome takes over direct rule of Judea, governing through prefects and a census that stokes unrest.
After Herod's kingdom was divided and mismanaged, Rome placed Judea under its own governors. A tax census provoked a revolt by Judas the Galilean and gave rise to the Zealots, who held that God alone should rule. Roman rule was efficient but resented, and the province simmered with messianic hope and rebellion.
Roman ProvinceReligious
A Jewish teacher from Galilee is crucified in Jerusalem; from his followers arises Christianity.
Jesus of Nazareth preached in Galilee and Judea and was executed by crucifixion under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. His followers proclaimed that he had risen, and their movement, at first a current within Judaism, spread through the Roman world to become Christianity — a faith that would grow from this Judean root into the largest religion on earth.
The Great RevoltMilitary
Judea rises against Rome, expelling the Romans from Jerusalem and igniting a devastating war.
Years of misrule and religious insult finally boiled over into open revolt. The rebels drove out the Roman garrison and defeated a relieving army, and for a time Judea was free. Rome answered with overwhelming force: the general Vespasian, soon emperor, and his son Titus methodically reconquered the country, closing in on Jerusalem.
The Great RevoltReligious
Titus storms Jerusalem and burns the Temple, a catastrophe that transforms Judaism forever.
After a brutal siege, the Romans took Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 70 CE; the spoils, including the golden menorah, were paraded in Rome and carved on the Arch of Titus. The loss of the Temple ended the sacrificial worship at the heart of ancient Judaism — and forced the faith to reinvent itself around the Torah and the synagogue.
The Great RevoltMilitary
The final rebels hold out on the desert fortress of Masada until the Romans breach its walls.
The last holdouts of the revolt seized Herod's clifftop fortress of Masada by the Dead Sea. The Romans built a vast siege ramp to reach it, and according to the historian Josephus, the defenders chose death over slavery when the walls finally fell. Masada became a lasting symbol of resistance and the terrible cost of the war.
After the TempleCultural
Sages gathering at Yavneh reshape Judaism around study and the Law after the Temple's loss.
With the Temple gone, a circle of sages, led by tradition's Johanan ben Zakkai, gathered at Yavneh to refound Judaism on the study and practice of the Law. Their work of interpretation began the rabbinic tradition that produced the Mishnah and Talmud — the form of Judaism that has endured, without Temple or sacrifice, ever since.
Bar Kokhba RevoltMilitary
A last great revolt under Simon bar Kokhba briefly frees Judea before Rome crushes it.
Provoked by the emperor Hadrian's plans for Jerusalem, the Jews rose a final time under Simon bar Kokhba, hailed by some as the messiah. For three years they held an independent state, but Rome poured in legions and crushed the revolt with terrible slaughter, laying waste to Judea and its villages.
Aelia CapitolinaPolitical
Rome rebuilds Jerusalem as a pagan city and bars Jews from it, deepening the long dispersion.
After the revolt, Hadrian refounded Jerusalem as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina, forbade Jews to enter, and renamed the province Syria Palaestina to erase the name of Judea. The centre of Jewish life shifted for good to Galilee and the diaspora — yet, carried in scripture and prayer, the memory of this land endured across the world for eighteen centuries.
2 more entries, to AD 135
