The Bar Kochba Revolt, 132–135

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521772488.006

4 - The Bar Kochba Revolt, 132–135

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Hanan Eshel

Edited by

Steven T. Katz

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Hanan Eshel: Affiliation:
Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan
Steven T. Katz: Affiliation:
Boston University

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The fourth decade of the second century CE witnessed the outbreak and apex of the final Jewish uprising against Roman rule in Palestine. Named the Bar Kochba Revolt for its leader, its details remain shrouded in mystery. With no historical treatise to provide a systematic account of the revolt and no lost work (Roman or Jewish) describing it, any scholarly attempt to reconstruct its course inevitably confronts the stumbling block of reliance on sources representing varying objectives, reliability, and dates, leaving many seminal issues unresolved. Continuing to be debated are the revolt’s direct causes, the geographical extent of Bar Kochba’s regime and whether it included Jerusalem, and the magnitude of the Roman reaction. Furthermore, the available literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and archaeological evidence reveals nothing of the revolt’s military confrontations.

So terse is the one extant historical account of the revolt, found in the abridged version of the third-century historian Cassius Dio’s Roman History (69.11–15), that it fails even to name the rebel leader. Archaeological findings from 1952 to the present, mainly papyrological, fill the gaps to a certain extent; however, they by no means create a coherent account of events in Palestine during the three-year revolt. Emerging is a partial picture of Bar Kochba’s leadership style and administration, his state’s borders, Jewish observance under wartime conditions, and the strong Roman reaction.

CAUSES

Briefly described, factors contributory to the revolt include administrative changes in Judaea following the First Revolt of 66–70; the unrest caused by the sizable Roman military presence in Judaea; a possible economic decline – a shift from landowning to sharecropping; the nationalistic agitation provoked by Jewish uprisings in Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Libya during the Trajanic Revolt (115–17); and Trajan’s war (“the War of Quietus”) against the Jews of Mesopotamia (116–17). For proximate causes, the sparse historical evidence focuses inconclusively on the foundation of the pagan city of Aelia Capitolina on the ruins of Jerusalem (Cassius Dio 69.12, 1–2), or on Hadrian’s ban on circumcision (Historia Augusta, Vita Hadriani 14.2). Although scholars are divided about these factors’ weight and historicity, the prevailing consensus ascribes a role to both.

Keywords

Bar Kochba's administrative system Jewish community Bar Kochba Revolt Jerusalem leadership Judaean desert documents Roman rule

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Judaism , pp. 105 - 127

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521772488.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2006

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4 - The Bar Kochba Revolt, 132–135

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