The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered

The Second Jewish Revolt against the Roman dominion (132-135 CE) considerably changed the political and cultural landscape of Jewish Palestine. Judaea was almost completely devastated, and Jewish life shifted from Judaea to the Galilee. The Roman victory, however, was won at great cost.The last decade has seen some stunning developments in research on the Bar Kokhba War. In particular, recent archaeological findings provide new material for evaluation. This volume is based on a conference which took place in November 2001 at Princeton University and gathers a distinguished array of scholars working at the forefront of research on the Bar Kokhba period. It appraises the state of the subject in light of the present scholarly discussion and evaluates the historical importance of this major event and its repercussions for the subsequent history of the Jews in Roman Palestine. A concluding essay investigates the use of Bar Kokhba's image in modern Israeli culture.Survey of contentsPeter Schäfer: Preface - Peter Schäfer: Bar Kokhba and the Rabbis - Martin Goodman: Trajan and the Origins of the Bar Kokhba War - Yoram Tsafrir: Numismatics and the Foundation of Aelia Capitolina: A Critical Review - Benjamin Isaac: Roman Religious Policy and the Bar Kokhba War - Aharon Oppenheimer: The Ban of Circumcision as a Cause of the Revolt: A Reconsideration - Ra'anan Abusch: Negotiating Difference: Genital Mutilation in Roman Slave Law and the History of the Bar Kokhba Revolt - Hanan Eshel: The Dates Used during the Bar Kokhba Revolt - Menahem Mor: The Geographical Scope of the Bar Kokhba Revolt - Hannah M. Cotton: The Bar Kokhba Revolt and the Documents from the Judaean Desert: Nabataean Participation in the Revolt (P. Yadin 52) - Werner Eck: Hadrian, the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and the Epigraphic Transmission - Glen W. Bowersock: The Tel Shalem Arch and P. Nahal Hever/Seiyal 8 - Amos Kloner and Boaz Zissu: Hiding Complexes in Judaea: An Archaeological and Geographical Update on the Area of the Bar Kokhba Revolt - Yuval Shahar: The Underground Hideouts in Galilee and their Historical Meaning - Yaron Z. Eliav: The Urban Layout of Aelia Capitolina: A New View from the Perspective of the Temple Mount - Yael Zerubavel: Bar Kokhba's Image in Modern Israeli Culture.

Papers presented at a conference held at Princeton University in Nov., 2001.

The volume contains the 22 papers presented to Hanan Eshel before his death, covering topics in archaeology, history, and textual studies, with a particular emphasis on aspects relating to the Dead Sea Scrolls, spanning the late Iron Age through late Antiquity.

In The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132-136 C.E., Menahem Mor offers a detailed account on the Bar Kokhba Revolt in an attempt to understand the second revolt against the Romans.

In AD 132, Shim'on Ben Koseba, a rebel leader who assumed the messianic name Shim'on Bar Kokhba ('Son of a Star'), led the people of Judaea in open rebellion, aiming to establish their own independent Jewish state and to liberate Jerusalem from the Romans. During the ensuing 'Bar Kokhba War' (AKA the Second Jewish War), the insurgents held their own against the crack Roman troops sent by Emperor Hadrian for three-and-a-half years. The cost of this rebellion was catastrophic: hundreds of thousands of casualties, the destruction and enslavement of Jewish communities and a ban on Jews entering Jerusalem. Bar Kokhba remains important in Israel today because he was the last leader of a Jewish state before the rise of Zionism in modern times. This fully illustrated volume explores the gripping story of the uprising, profiling its rebel leader Bar Kokhba as well as the Emperor Hadrian and his generals, and assesses the impact that this violent rebellion had on the region and those that were displaced.

This study offers fresh insight into the place of (non)violence within Jesus' ministry, by examining it in the context of the eschatologically-motivated revolutionary violence of Second Temple Judaism. The book first explores the connection between violence and eschatology in key literary and historical sources from Second Temple Judaism. The heart of the study then focuses on demonstrating the thematic centrality of Jesus’ opposition to such “eschatological violence” within the Synoptic presentations of his ministry, arguing that a proper understanding of eschatology and violence together enables appreciation of the full significance of Jesus’ consistent disassociation of revolutionary violence from his words and deeds. The book thus articulates an understanding of Jesus’ nonviolence that is firmly rooted in the historical context of Second Temple Judaism, presenting a challenge to the "seditious Jesus hypothesis"—the claim that the historical Jesus was sympathetic to revolutionary ideals. Jesus’ rejection of violence ought to be understood as an integral component of his eschatological vision, embodying and enacting his understanding of (i) how God’s kingdom would come, and (ii) what would identify those who belonged to it.

This is the fourth and fi nal volume of Lester L. Grabbe's four-volume history of the Second Temple period, collecting all that is known about the Jews during the period in which they were ruled by the Roman Empire. Based directly on primary sources such as archaeology, inscriptions, Jewish literary sources and Greek, Roman and Christian sources, this study includes analysis of the Jewish diaspora, mystical and Gnosticism trends, and the developments in the Temple, the law, and contemporary attitudes towards Judaism. Spanning from the reign of Herod Archelaus to the war with Rome and Roman control up to 150 CE, this volume concludes with Grabbe's holistic perspective on the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period.