Sometime, someplace in the Judean Hills in the year 132 the storm broke. It had been a long time coming, but even so it shocked the Romans. It shocked them enough that it may have cost them a legion and possibly the life of the governor of the province of Judea. “May have” is necessary because the sources of evidence are scarce and because the detective work that has gone into reconstructing the war is as conjectural as it is ingenious. And yet, the story is as dramatic as any of the Jewish revolts against Rome and more decisive.
The war was the third of the three major Jewish revolts against Rome. Fifteen years had passed since the end of the Diaspora Revolt and sixty-two years since the destruction of Jerusalem. This third Jewish rebellion is known as the Bar Kokhba War, after the leading Jewish rebel. It lasted for three and a half years, during which the rebels not only created an army but administered an independent state. The revolt was centered in the traditional Jewish heartland, the region of Judah, but it spread into adjacent areas as far as the coastal plain, western Samaria and the Negev. Galilee played only a very small part, but the revolt probably spread into the province of Arabia Petraea and may have involved Arab as well as Jewish rebels against Rome.
The war was a duel between two men, Bar Kokhba and Hadrian. Bar Kokhba took the title of nasi, or “prince,” of Israel. Hadrian was the Emperor, Imperator Caesar. Both men were hard, violent, and driven by a vision of what each thought was right. Bar Kokhba was a warrior, Hadrian a man of peace—but peace, Roman-style, that is, a peace enforced by armies of occupation, financed by humiliating taxes and presided over by foreign deities. Bar Kokhba was a messiah, Hadrian the son of a god.
Bar Kokhba observed the commandments of Judaism; Hadrian was a pagan. Bar Kokhba honored tradition; Hadrian founded a new religious cult. Although married, Hadrian found the love of his life in a Greek teenage boy named Antinous. When Antinous drowned in the Nile in the year 130, Hadrian had him proclaimed one of Rome’s many gods. Bar Kokhba worshipped the one God of Israel. Hadrian built a new city in Egypt dedicated to Antinous. Bar Kokhba dreamed of restoring the Temple in Jerusalem. Hadrian built the Pantheon in Rome, a shrine for all the gods. Bar Kokhba considered Hadrian an idolater; Hadrian considered Bar Kokhba a savage.
No war did more than the Bar Kokhba Revolt to shape the destiny of the Jewish people, and few wars are so poorly documented. The only historical narrative from antiquity is a sketchy account in Cassius Dio, less than two dozen lines long. As with his history of the Diaspora Revolt, the surviving version of his text is an eleventh-century, Byzantine abridgement. Fortunately, that brief text offers a good overview of events from the Roman point of view. Ancient Jewish sources in the Talmud and Midrash offer a mix of fact and legend. Midrash is a type of Jewish interpretation of scriptural texts, often used to support a legal ruling or to undergird a sermon. The revolt is mentioned briefly as well in a few late-antique Christian works. In contrast, there is a great deal of material evidence, and here is where the search for the past gets exciting. It’s not just the light from Latin inscriptions nor the shining images and proud legends on the rebel coins.
Archaeology has uncovered underground hiding places used by rebel fighters and caves that served as refuges for those fleeing the Romans. The caves have yielded household objects brought by refugees who did not survive to retrieve them. But the most sensational discovery is various letters, found in several caves, and written by Bar Kokhba himself as well as by his fellow insurgents. These documents, in Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew, open a window into a Jewish world in crisis, a culture with one foot planted in its heroic past and another finding its way in a region of clashing cultures, a society whose single-minded war leader, Bar Kokhba, was trying to bend it to his steely will. Hadrian had no less unflinching a resolve, and he also had thirty legions.
Barry Strauss is the Corliss Page Dean Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire.
