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The Jews remained firmly under the domination of Rome, during the 1^st cent CE, in spite of all the efforts made from time to time by 'might-have-been messiahs' to re-assert Israel's political independence. Popular religious ideas also supported the general restlessness, as some apocalyptic teachers forecast the imminent arrival of God's intervention on Israel's behalf in the person of the coming, heavenly, 'Son of Man', and others looked forward, more pragmatically, to an earthly Messiah-king who would rule as a second King David, of old. Every 'might-have-been' messiah- figure, many of them from Galilee in the north, and including the prophet, John, and also Jesus of Nazareth, was done to death one way or another. The Romans remained in control, but Jewish opposition was turning to hate as the decades passed. The guerrillas, known as the Zealots, became more and more actively a problem for the Romans.

Matters nearly came to a head when the Roman Emperor, Caligula, insensitively ordered a huge statue of himself as a god to be made and erected in the Temple at Jerusalem. He died, just in time, but his successor, the Emperor Claudius, was aware of the simmering unrest, and once more put Judea under his own direct rule, while sending Herod Agrippa I home to become Ruler over Galilee. Claudius's procurator arrived to find another Jewish uprising beginning in support of the 'messiah', Theudas. This was suppressed with usual Roman efficiency, but only made the general atmosphere worse. In 49 CE, there was another riot at Passover time, and 20,000 Jews were subsequently killed in reprisal attacks as the Romans stormed through the rural villages in revenge. When war broke out between the Jews and Samaritans, the Procurator was recalled to Rome in disgrace. The next one was Felix. Felix captured the Jewish battle leader who had beaten the Samaritans, dispatched him to Rome, and crucified many of his supporters. Thereafter he was only interested in acquiring a personal fortune from those in his control. Jewish hysteria was growing, and spreading now out to Jews in the Dispora, encouraging some of them to come to help the Jews in Judea.

The Christian apostle, Saul/Paul was mistaken for one of these foreign agitators when he returned to Jerusalem after his third long missionary journey. (The story is in Acts 21.15 - 24.27). Paul was identified not only as a Pharisaic Jew from the Diaspora, but also as a Citizen of Rome, so was treated with due respect from Felix. Felix waited for a big bribe from Paul, but two years later Paul was still in prison, and Felix was recalled. The Jewish High Priest made use of the 'gap', in 61 CE, and murdered the leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem, James, the brother of Jesus, so rupturing all remnants of good will between the Jews and the Christian communities in Judea. When Festus arrived from Rome, he heard Paul's claim, (every Citizen's right), to be heard in Rome itself, so sent him on his way, - in chains.

The situation deteriorated rapidly under the last two procurators, Albinus, and then Florus, when the Jewish mafia began to make significant headway, with disturbances breaking out all over the place. In 66 CE, the Zealots captured the fortress of Masada, near the Dead Sea, and made it their headquarters. A priestly zealot persuaded the Temple authorities to accept no gifts or sacrifices from aliens, meaning, on behalf of the Emperor. This was tantamount to open rebellion, and declaration of war! Immediately a 'Peace Party' arose, led by the High Priest and the wealthy Pharisees, all of whom were men of property and not wanting trouble in Jerusalem. They appealed to the Zealots to withdraw, but the Zealots had nothing to lose. Both sides began to fight each other! The zealot, Menahem went to Masada, and returned like a king, having found, and brought back with him, all the weapons and armoury previously stored in the fortress by Herod the Great. They murdered the Roman garrison in Jerusalem .......and suffered the consequences. More Roman soldiers arrived. The High Priest was murdered; the big palaces were confiscated; Menahem and his followers were killed. Only Eleazer escaped and went to Masada, to become the heroic leader there. Fighting broke out everywhere! The Roman Governor of Syria came south with reinforcements, but when he went into Jerusalem - on the Sabbath day - the furious people fought as never before, and over 5,000 Roman soldiers were killed. The Roman 12^th legion was defeated and in disgrace. The die was cast.

The remaining moderates, including the Christian community in Jerusalem, left while they could. The young Josephus also left, for Galilee, where he became the successful leader of the Jewish rebels. The Emperor, Nero, took decisive action, and sent the veteran general, Vespasian, who had successfully led the Romans in their conquest of Britain in the time of Claudius, to take charge and restore order in Judea. Vespasian arrived with two Legions, the 5^th, and the 10^th, - more than had ever been in Judea before, and summoned his son, Titus, to join him with the 15^th Legion as well. The might of Rome was invincible, and the Jews did not stand a chance of success. They fought bravely, nonetheless, and first in Galilee..

When the people of Galilee were finally defeated, and their leaders captured, Josephus escaped his inevitable crucifixion by prophesying that Vespasian would soon become Emperor of Rome. He was instead thrown into prison. In 68 CE, as Vespasian marched south, news arrived that Nero had committed suicide, leaving a chaotic vacuum of the throne. Vespasian went to Rome, and did become the new Emperor, while his son, Titus, began the Roman assault on Jerusalem.

The Jews in Jerusalem quickly forgot their differences, and together repelled Titus's first attack. He, however, was a master of the waiting game, and began to build a siege wall, nearly 5 miles long all around the city, using up all the timber from the Garden of Gethsemane in the process, and waited. By 70 CE the besieged people were suffering horrifically, and their resistance was broken. The Romans broke in and took possession of the Antonia Fortress first. From there they managed to gain entry over the Temple wall into its courtyard, and set fire to the northern gates. They hadn't expected the very high north winds to blow so hard that week, but the wind carried the fire to engulf the whole city, the Temple, the Upper and the Lower city, and many of its citizens too. Hardly anything was left. A few portable treasures had been taken from the Temple, but the Temple itself was no more! It has never since been rebuilt.

Titus left the 10^th Legion to guard the ruins, and took the leading prisoners, including Josephus, to Rome, to share a joint Triumphal Procession with his father. The Titus arch still stands, showing the Temple treasures on one of its carved panels. Vespasian pardoned Josephus who gratefully accepted his 'punishment', to live in Rome for the rest of his life. He subsequently used his pen instead of a sword, for which all modern day scholars are grateful too. But the 'story' after 70 CE is less well-documented.

The Romans still in Judea continued 'mopping up' any remaining opposition, capturing the fortresses of Herodion and Machaerus with little difficulty, but no so Masada, the last Zealot stronghold. The population of Masada had increased when the remnants of the Qumran community arrived after their defeat, (though they had managed to hide their library in the Dead Sea caves just in time), and also with wanted refugees on the run. The Roman general, Silva, prepared for a final battle. The cliffs were impregnable, so his soldiers spent 3-4 years gradually building a ramp from the Dead Sea plain up to the top of the cliff. It is still there today! When the Romans finally marched up, and in, however, they found only two women and five children, whom the leader, Eleazer, had ordered to remain alive to tell the tale, while everyone else had committed mass suicide. The site of this brave stand was excavated by the archaeologist, Yigael Yadin, in the 1960s.

After 70 CE, the Jews were both defeated and demoralised. Jerusalem was a mass of charred ruins. The Temple was no more. The priests and most of the Sadducees were dead. Their books were destroyed. For the survivors, there was disillusionment, in that the chaos had not witnessed divine intervention, nor the End of the World as they had expected. They had to go on living, but how?

The farmers carried on as usual, but in the absence of the Temple, the synagogues grew rapidly in importance, as the only point of reference 'for Jews'. The Rabbis of the synagogues, and the Pharisees, now constituted the main official 'voice' of Judaism, and their books, - the Torah, their collections of prophetic books, and various other documents, of Wisdom, poetry and stories, - became Judaism's main source of reference. As the Christian communities were actively engaged in re-interpreting many of these texts according to their beliefs developing about the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Rabbis closed ranks against them, and expelled all such 'perverters of the Law' from the synagogues, on pain of death.

The Jews then gathered their scholars together at Yavneh, or Jamnia, during the next 20 years or so, to study and define

1. which of the books were to be authenticated as 'Scripture', and
2. the minutiae of detail associated with correct observance of the Law.

Prophecy continued in the accustomed apocalyptic style, of heavenly visions and symbolic beasts, but it now had little impact at Yavneh. The books of 2 Baruch, and 2 Esdras are survivors of this period, the latter in our Apochrypha. In chs 11 - 14, the visions speak of the lion (messiah), arising to defeat the eagle, (Rome), and eventually of the restoration of Zion. This book is dated in the 90s of the 1^st century..

Gradually the prophetic and zealot ideas began to resurface, in the hope that after 70 years, God would do again, what He had done 70 years after the Temple had been destroyed by Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon in the 6^th cent BCE. Little information is available, but in 132 CE, another would-be messiah arose, in a zealot, bar Kokhba. and gained a large following. At first they had some success, and even declared independence again, but to no avail. By 135 it was all over again, bar Kokhba was dead, and the Emperor Hadrian expelled all Jews from the area, for ever. What had been Jerusalem, now became the Roman city (more a village), of Aelia Capitolina, with a temple of three statues, of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.

After Constantine's time it became 'Christian', until the Muslims took it in 637 CE.