March 29, 2010 • 14 mins
Born Simon ben Kosiba, Simon bar Kokhba led the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman empire. The revolt succeeded momentarily, and the Romans were expelled from Judea -- but the conflict was far from over. Tune in and learn what happened next.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and we've been
focusing a lot lately on charismatic rebel leaders and specifically
(00:21):
guerrilla warfare. We've talked about Garibaldi, and we've talked about
Tussaint Louverture, and we have another one for you today, Unti.
His name is Bar Kochba, and we had talked a
bit about some Jewish revolts in our podcast on King
Herod's Tomb. We talked a little bit about Massada, but this,
the Bar Cook Bar Revolt or the Second Jewish Revolt,
(00:44):
is an incredibly important event in Jewish history and one
that's Sarah and I had missed in history. So that's
what we're going to talk about today. And to give
you a very short summary, it's the Jews versus the
Romans in Judea one two, A D and spoiler alert,
the Romans win. But there's a lot more to it
than that, so things weren't always that bad between the
(01:06):
Jews and the Romans. We have Pompy subduing Judea in
sixty three b c. And between that we have Herod
and the mask of the innocence and that bit of
history that most people probably do know. Um. But there's
a policy of tolerance in this early Roman rule. They
didn't interfere much with Jewish religious practices, even though they
(01:29):
thought they were a bit strange, and they didn't understand
why Jews didn't eat pork or you know, have the
images of their God around, or why they circumcised babies.
But there wasn't a lot of animosity. It was more
just so look at your strange, quaint customs. But there
were some big differences, fundamental differences between the Jews and Romans.
(01:49):
I was reading a little bit from Martin Goodman's Rome
and Jerusalem, The Clash of Ancient Civilizations, and he was
saying basically that Rome was all about political and military power,
while Jerusalem was completely centered around religion, and this was
something that was bound to cause a clash at some
point or another. Yeah. It results in different ideas about
(02:09):
government and about people and about morality. Yeah. One example,
the Jews didn't celebrate birthdays with any kind of ritual. Um. Well,
that is a huge deal for Romans, especially celebrating the
Emperor's birthday. And to give you an idea of how
things usually went. The people the Romans conquered generally assimilated
fairly well into Roman culture. Local beliefs and local customs
(02:33):
were absorbed, and things usually went fairly smoothly. From there
by be trade offs. But things were different with the
Jews because their culture was so different and so specific,
especially when it came to religion, you know, being Monothy
monotheistic versus polytheistic. And while the Romans forced their other
(02:54):
conquered people into certain religious obligations, they didn't make the
Jews do that. They didn't make and worship the Roman gods,
for example. They let them stay with their one God,
and in return, the Jewish people prayed for the emperor
at the temple and offered sacrifices in his honor. Yeah,
so we've got a small amount of compromise at least
early on here. But in sixty six Eliezer, who was
(03:16):
a priest in Jerusalem, put his foot down basically and said,
you know, let's stop offering these sacrifices in honor of
the emperor. It's not appropriate. And this starts a showdown
which starts a huge revolt, which is the first Jewish Revolt.
It goes from sixty six to seventy and this is
not a little skirmish. It's a really really big deal,
(03:37):
you know. It's also known as the Great Revolt. And
during this time a lot of Jewish Christians fled Judea.
And in seventy the Romans won and destroyed the Second Temple,
which was an absolutely devastating loss to religious life and
to Jewish culture, and a million Jews died in this revolt.
(03:57):
So the revolt obviously results in some ages in attitude,
and the Romans start acting differently to the Jews in Jerusalem.
The rules get harder and stricter. And then there's another
event that changes things even further. Around the year one fourteen,
the Emperor Trajan starts a fight against the Parthians the
(04:17):
Persian Empire, and the Parthian Jews fought with their neighbors,
the Persians against the Romans, and meanwhile, Jews elsewhere in
the empire began to revolt, and in response for these
betrayals in their eyes, the Romans wiped out Jewish communities
in Cyprus, Libya, Alexandria, and Mesopotamian. So according to some people,
(04:38):
the Jewish diaspora had actually started before the Second Revolt,
but we'll talk about that a little more later. The
next event comes in one thirty when Emperor Hadrian first
shows up in Jerusalem, and he actually starts out with
a pretty lenient reign in regard to the Jews. He
even talks about letting them rebuild the temple. But he
(04:59):
later goes back on all of this and becomes a
very strict and harsh emperor, goes in the complete opposite direction.
The Jews of an accorded enemy status. He started deporting them,
and then he began to oppress their religious practices. He
banned circumcision. For example, he announced plans to build a
(05:21):
Roman temple on top of where the Temple of Jerusalem
used to be, which of course is a very sacred spot.
This is more than a slap in the face. This
is a desecration. When it's it's taking places of power
and trying to assume them, which is always an interesting
thing in history, at least for me. And there's also
a really terrible governor of Judea at the time, to
(05:42):
Nius Rufus, who was said to take advantage of Jewish
women and um just generally bad guy to have in charge.
So if you're living as a Jew in Jerusalem at
this time, you can't practice your religion the way that
you want. You're being governed by a terrible emperor and
possibly an even more terrible governor. And in this climate,
(06:02):
during some construction, the tomb of Solomon collapsed, which just
just maybe be the last. So Judea is stirred up.
People are angry. All they need is a compelling leader.
And now we enter Simon bar Kociba, also known as
Bar Kokba, who will lead the revolt. And like some
(06:24):
of the other men we've talked about, Simon bar Kokba
was a born leader. He's really good at the uniting Peah,
that kind of stuff he does. And we even have
some of his letters in which he refers to himself
as print. So he thinks quite highly of himself as well,
and so did other people, some like Rabbi Occupa. At
the time, I thought he was the Messiah. He got
(06:46):
his name Barkokba, which means son of Star from a
verse in the Book of Numbers, which says there shall
come a star out of Jacob and he starts assembling
a guerrilla army of a hundred thousand people, and Jews
meanwhile are hiding out in caves and minting their own coins,
and they think that this revolt might actually be the apocalypse,
(07:07):
and we found archaeological evidence of them being in caves
preparing for the which is pretty interesting. They managed to
take over Judea, throwing the Romans out and briefly establishing
a Jewish state. Some say they never captured Jerusalem, while
others disagree, but they achieved great, great successes. And the
(07:29):
timeframe on how long this this Jewish state lasts is
a little shaky, some people a little up in the air. Yeah,
some people are saying just a few months. Some put
it as long as a couple of years. But just
the fact that it exists is important in itself. So
half the Roman army ends up in Judea to quell
the rebellion. And just think about that, because we all
(07:51):
know how powerful the Roman army was, it takes half
of it to come and fight one thousand Jews. Julius
Severus is a charge of the army. And if you
want to picture this a little bit more, don't picture
two armies coming at each other in a battlefield, you know,
marching toward one another. It ends up being a lot
of skirmishes between small groups. And some say that's because
(08:14):
the Romans didn't want open battle. They were afraid that
the Jews were willing to die for their faith and
therefore it would be much bloodier than they were willing
to get into. And others say it was Barkokba who
wouldn't fight them in open battle. But either way, that's
how it played out. Yeah, and for a while the
Jews are actually winning and then the resistance starts to
fall apart, and um again disagreement over why this happens.
(08:38):
Some people think it's arrogance on the part of bar Kokba,
who starts acting like a messiah instead of a rebel leader. Yeah,
and according to one of the mid drash Is, he
actually killed the priest Elise Or which would um suggest,
I don't know. Power craze lost the support of God,
(08:58):
I don't know. Also, on the side of the Romans,
we have some natural events like famine, disease, and fire
that were quickly running through the ranks of the Jewish
people and proved to be a much more powerful force
than Julius Severus. So Jerusalem falls in one and Barkok
retreats to Baitar, which is a fortress on the coast
(09:21):
after losing Jerusalem, and that's where his last stand is.
There's a midrash on lamentations and this is a quote.
They slew the inhabitants until the horses waded in blood
up to the nostrils, and the blood rolled along the stones.
And this is referring, of course to the Romans killing
the Jews. And the fall of Batar happened on Tissha Bab,
(09:44):
what's known as the saddest day in Jewish history. That's
when the First and Second Temples both fell. And according
to these accounts, this was a very very bloody end
to Baitar and bar Cochas people. He was killed and
his head was brought to Hadrian. But other accounts have
more Jews at Bitar dying of hunger and thirst than
(10:04):
being actually killed, and that's why the city fell. So
once again we just have this uncertainty about certain aspects
of this account. But according to the Talma, the Romans
wouldn't bury the Jews who died at Batar, regardless of
how they died. They left them out for years, but
the bodies didn't rot. And other accounts of this war
(10:24):
have Jewish children being wrapped in Torah scrolls and burned alive,
which Sarah and I decided we wouldn't entirely put past
the Roman army. So after the revolt, Jerusalem is destroyed,
Baitar is destroyed, and five hundred thousand Jews are killed.
Even more that's just in battle. Yeah, because even more
(10:45):
of them die from starvation or disease, but because a
lot of Romans die too, they get pretty fed up
with the remaining Jewish people and try to crush them.
They sell Jews as slaves for the price of horse
and um. The city was rebuilt as a Roman colony,
complete with the Temple to Jupiter, Colonia Ayalia, capitalina Um,
(11:08):
and Judea is renamed to Palestina. Pagan statues and such
were put on holy sites. Rabbis were killed, including Rabbi Occupa,
who we mentioned earlier. Jews were forbidden to observe the Sabbath,
meet in synagogues, study the Torah, and perhaps most terrible
of all, Jews were banned from the city of Jerusalem
(11:28):
until the fourth century Um except on Ti Shabov where
they came to the portion of the Western Wall that
was left standing. And this was just like rubbing salt
in the wound. Yeah, when when you mentioned that earlier,
it made more sense to me because I was having
trouble imagining why if you're going to kick a whole
people out of a city while you bother to let
(11:50):
them come back for a day, but because you invite
them back in to remember the saddest date, the worst
day of their religions history. Later on, the emperor after
Hadria is a little more lenient. He allows for circumcision, again,
allows for the burying of the dead. Um. But things
are never the same. When we should talk a little
bit about why this is so important, Some say that
(12:13):
the Bar Kokbar Revolt, also known as the Second Jewish Revolt,
is when the Jewish diasporas started, because of course, so
many Jews were killed, many were enslave, the religion was oppressed,
and people ended up, you know, in all parts of
the globe. And after this the Jewish state in general
was gone for century upon century, and Bar Kochba's reputation
(12:37):
changed too for some people. Um, some considered him now
the son of lies or the Son of the Disappointment
instead of the Messiah, and in general people got a
lot more skeptical of Messianic claims, which that's an interesting
turning point. I guess we've talked about that a bit today,
(12:57):
but we like to know more about what you think.
If you'd like to email us at History podcast at
how stuff works dot com. If there are any nuances
we're missing or things you'd like to add, please let
us know and we'll be happy to mention them in
a later podcast. So we've covered a few points now
on the Jewish Roman Wars, first on our episode about
Herod and now our COCBA, but we're really interested in
(13:20):
doing some more podcasts in Jewish history. We put out
a call on Twitter, which is missed in history, and
we've gotten a few suggestions through there. But if you
want to email us too, that would be great. And
if you'd like to learn more about Messiah's false and otherwise,
you can check out an article I wrote on how
Jerusalem syndrome works if you look on our homepage at
(13:41):
www dot how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. And be sure to check out the stuff
you missed in History Glass Blog on the how stuff
Works dot com home page. E
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and we've been
focusing a lot lately on charismatic rebel leaders and specifically
(00:21):
guerrilla warfare. We've talked about Garibaldi, and we've talked about
Tussaint Louverture, and we have another one for you today, Unti.
His name is Bar Kochba, and we had talked a
bit about some Jewish revolts in our podcast on King
Herod's Tomb. We talked a little bit about Massada, but this,
the Bar Cook Bar Revolt or the Second Jewish Revolt,
(00:44):
is an incredibly important event in Jewish history and one
that's Sarah and I had missed in history. So that's
what we're going to talk about today. And to give
you a very short summary, it's the Jews versus the
Romans in Judea one two, A D and spoiler alert,
the Romans win. But there's a lot more to it
than that, so things weren't always that bad between the
(01:06):
Jews and the Romans. We have Pompy subduing Judea in
sixty three b c. And between that we have Herod
and the mask of the innocence and that bit of
history that most people probably do know. Um. But there's
a policy of tolerance in this early Roman rule. They
didn't interfere much with Jewish religious practices, even though they
(01:29):
thought they were a bit strange, and they didn't understand
why Jews didn't eat pork or you know, have the
images of their God around, or why they circumcised babies.
But there wasn't a lot of animosity. It was more
just so look at your strange, quaint customs. But there
were some big differences, fundamental differences between the Jews and Romans.
(01:49):
I was reading a little bit from Martin Goodman's Rome
and Jerusalem, The Clash of Ancient Civilizations, and he was
saying basically that Rome was all about political and military power,
while Jerusalem was completely centered around religion, and this was
something that was bound to cause a clash at some
point or another. Yeah. It results in different ideas about
(02:09):
government and about people and about morality. Yeah. One example,
the Jews didn't celebrate birthdays with any kind of ritual. Um. Well,
that is a huge deal for Romans, especially celebrating the
Emperor's birthday. And to give you an idea of how
things usually went. The people the Romans conquered generally assimilated
fairly well into Roman culture. Local beliefs and local customs
(02:33):
were absorbed, and things usually went fairly smoothly. From there
by be trade offs. But things were different with the
Jews because their culture was so different and so specific,
especially when it came to religion, you know, being Monothy
monotheistic versus polytheistic. And while the Romans forced their other
(02:54):
conquered people into certain religious obligations, they didn't make the
Jews do that. They didn't make and worship the Roman gods,
for example. They let them stay with their one God,
and in return, the Jewish people prayed for the emperor
at the temple and offered sacrifices in his honor. Yeah,
so we've got a small amount of compromise at least
early on here. But in sixty six Eliezer, who was
(03:16):
a priest in Jerusalem, put his foot down basically and said,
you know, let's stop offering these sacrifices in honor of
the emperor. It's not appropriate. And this starts a showdown
which starts a huge revolt, which is the first Jewish Revolt.
It goes from sixty six to seventy and this is
not a little skirmish. It's a really really big deal,
(03:37):
you know. It's also known as the Great Revolt. And
during this time a lot of Jewish Christians fled Judea.
And in seventy the Romans won and destroyed the Second Temple,
which was an absolutely devastating loss to religious life and
to Jewish culture, and a million Jews died in this revolt.
(03:57):
So the revolt obviously results in some ages in attitude,
and the Romans start acting differently to the Jews in Jerusalem.
The rules get harder and stricter. And then there's another
event that changes things even further. Around the year one fourteen,
the Emperor Trajan starts a fight against the Parthians the
(04:17):
Persian Empire, and the Parthian Jews fought with their neighbors,
the Persians against the Romans, and meanwhile, Jews elsewhere in
the empire began to revolt, and in response for these
betrayals in their eyes, the Romans wiped out Jewish communities
in Cyprus, Libya, Alexandria, and Mesopotamian. So according to some people,
(04:38):
the Jewish diaspora had actually started before the Second Revolt,
but we'll talk about that a little more later. The
next event comes in one thirty when Emperor Hadrian first
shows up in Jerusalem, and he actually starts out with
a pretty lenient reign in regard to the Jews. He
even talks about letting them rebuild the temple. But he
(04:59):
later goes back on all of this and becomes a
very strict and harsh emperor, goes in the complete opposite direction.
The Jews of an accorded enemy status. He started deporting them,
and then he began to oppress their religious practices. He
banned circumcision. For example, he announced plans to build a
(05:21):
Roman temple on top of where the Temple of Jerusalem
used to be, which of course is a very sacred spot.
This is more than a slap in the face. This
is a desecration. When it's it's taking places of power
and trying to assume them, which is always an interesting
thing in history, at least for me. And there's also
a really terrible governor of Judea at the time, to
(05:42):
Nius Rufus, who was said to take advantage of Jewish
women and um just generally bad guy to have in charge.
So if you're living as a Jew in Jerusalem at
this time, you can't practice your religion the way that
you want. You're being governed by a terrible emperor and
possibly an even more terrible governor. And in this climate,
(06:02):
during some construction, the tomb of Solomon collapsed, which just
just maybe be the last. So Judea is stirred up.
People are angry. All they need is a compelling leader.
And now we enter Simon bar Kociba, also known as
Bar Kokba, who will lead the revolt. And like some
(06:24):
of the other men we've talked about, Simon bar Kokba
was a born leader. He's really good at the uniting Peah,
that kind of stuff he does. And we even have
some of his letters in which he refers to himself
as print. So he thinks quite highly of himself as well,
and so did other people, some like Rabbi Occupa. At
the time, I thought he was the Messiah. He got
(06:46):
his name Barkokba, which means son of Star from a
verse in the Book of Numbers, which says there shall
come a star out of Jacob and he starts assembling
a guerrilla army of a hundred thousand people, and Jews
meanwhile are hiding out in caves and minting their own coins,
and they think that this revolt might actually be the apocalypse,
(07:07):
and we found archaeological evidence of them being in caves
preparing for the which is pretty interesting. They managed to
take over Judea, throwing the Romans out and briefly establishing
a Jewish state. Some say they never captured Jerusalem, while
others disagree, but they achieved great, great successes. And the
(07:29):
timeframe on how long this this Jewish state lasts is
a little shaky, some people a little up in the air. Yeah,
some people are saying just a few months. Some put
it as long as a couple of years. But just
the fact that it exists is important in itself. So
half the Roman army ends up in Judea to quell
the rebellion. And just think about that, because we all
(07:51):
know how powerful the Roman army was, it takes half
of it to come and fight one thousand Jews. Julius
Severus is a charge of the army. And if you
want to picture this a little bit more, don't picture
two armies coming at each other in a battlefield, you know,
marching toward one another. It ends up being a lot
of skirmishes between small groups. And some say that's because
(08:14):
the Romans didn't want open battle. They were afraid that
the Jews were willing to die for their faith and
therefore it would be much bloodier than they were willing
to get into. And others say it was Barkokba who
wouldn't fight them in open battle. But either way, that's
how it played out. Yeah, and for a while the
Jews are actually winning and then the resistance starts to
fall apart, and um again disagreement over why this happens.
(08:38):
Some people think it's arrogance on the part of bar Kokba,
who starts acting like a messiah instead of a rebel leader. Yeah,
and according to one of the mid drash Is, he
actually killed the priest Elise Or which would um suggest,
I don't know. Power craze lost the support of God,
(08:58):
I don't know. Also, on the side of the Romans,
we have some natural events like famine, disease, and fire
that were quickly running through the ranks of the Jewish
people and proved to be a much more powerful force
than Julius Severus. So Jerusalem falls in one and Barkok
retreats to Baitar, which is a fortress on the coast
(09:21):
after losing Jerusalem, and that's where his last stand is.
There's a midrash on lamentations and this is a quote.
They slew the inhabitants until the horses waded in blood
up to the nostrils, and the blood rolled along the stones.
And this is referring, of course to the Romans killing
the Jews. And the fall of Batar happened on Tissha Bab,
(09:44):
what's known as the saddest day in Jewish history. That's
when the First and Second Temples both fell. And according
to these accounts, this was a very very bloody end
to Baitar and bar Cochas people. He was killed and
his head was brought to Hadrian. But other accounts have
more Jews at Bitar dying of hunger and thirst than
(10:04):
being actually killed, and that's why the city fell. So
once again we just have this uncertainty about certain aspects
of this account. But according to the Talma, the Romans
wouldn't bury the Jews who died at Batar, regardless of
how they died. They left them out for years, but
the bodies didn't rot. And other accounts of this war
(10:24):
have Jewish children being wrapped in Torah scrolls and burned alive,
which Sarah and I decided we wouldn't entirely put past
the Roman army. So after the revolt, Jerusalem is destroyed,
Baitar is destroyed, and five hundred thousand Jews are killed.
Even more that's just in battle. Yeah, because even more
(10:45):
of them die from starvation or disease, but because a
lot of Romans die too, they get pretty fed up
with the remaining Jewish people and try to crush them.
They sell Jews as slaves for the price of horse
and um. The city was rebuilt as a Roman colony,
complete with the Temple to Jupiter, Colonia Ayalia, capitalina Um,
(11:08):
and Judea is renamed to Palestina. Pagan statues and such
were put on holy sites. Rabbis were killed, including Rabbi Occupa,
who we mentioned earlier. Jews were forbidden to observe the Sabbath,
meet in synagogues, study the Torah, and perhaps most terrible
of all, Jews were banned from the city of Jerusalem
(11:28):
until the fourth century Um except on Ti Shabov where
they came to the portion of the Western Wall that
was left standing. And this was just like rubbing salt
in the wound. Yeah, when when you mentioned that earlier,
it made more sense to me because I was having
trouble imagining why if you're going to kick a whole
people out of a city while you bother to let
(11:50):
them come back for a day, but because you invite
them back in to remember the saddest date, the worst
day of their religions history. Later on, the emperor after
Hadria is a little more lenient. He allows for circumcision, again,
allows for the burying of the dead. Um. But things
are never the same. When we should talk a little
bit about why this is so important, Some say that
(12:13):
the Bar Kokbar Revolt, also known as the Second Jewish Revolt,
is when the Jewish diasporas started, because of course, so
many Jews were killed, many were enslave, the religion was oppressed,
and people ended up, you know, in all parts of
the globe. And after this the Jewish state in general
was gone for century upon century, and Bar Kochba's reputation
(12:37):
changed too for some people. Um, some considered him now
the son of lies or the Son of the Disappointment
instead of the Messiah, and in general people got a
lot more skeptical of Messianic claims, which that's an interesting
turning point. I guess we've talked about that a bit today,
(12:57):
but we like to know more about what you think.
If you'd like to email us at History podcast at
how stuff works dot com. If there are any nuances
we're missing or things you'd like to add, please let
us know and we'll be happy to mention them in
a later podcast. So we've covered a few points now
on the Jewish Roman Wars, first on our episode about
Herod and now our COCBA, but we're really interested in
(13:20):
doing some more podcasts in Jewish history. We put out
a call on Twitter, which is missed in history, and
we've gotten a few suggestions through there. But if you
want to email us too, that would be great. And
if you'd like to learn more about Messiah's false and otherwise,
you can check out an article I wrote on how
Jerusalem syndrome works if you look on our homepage at
(13:41):
www dot how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. And be sure to check out the stuff
you missed in History Glass Blog on the how stuff
Works dot com home page. E
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