Committed Critic

After Rome destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70, the city lay in ruins. In the 130’s, the Roman emperor Hadrian decided to rebuild Jerusalem, complete with a Roman temple to Jupiter. The Jews revolted. Historical details are murky, but we know that a warrior-prince named Simon bar Kosiba (bar means son of) led a band of rebels who recaptured much of Judea from Rome for about three years. Coins minted by Simon during the revolt proclaim “The Redemption of Israel.”

Popularly, Simon was known as “Bar Kokhba” (“Son of the Star”), an allusion to a messianic prophecy in Num 24:17. Many Judeans seem to have thought he was the Messiah under whom Israel would rule the world in eternal peace. In the meantime, there was little peace to be had, and the historian Dio Cassius, writing in the third century, claimed that 580,000 Jews were killed during the war. In the end, Rome leveled the city and banished all Jews from the region.

In studying early Christianity, understanding the revolt helps to put Jesus’ messiahship into perspective. The term “Messiah” (anointed one) can refer to any king or priest who is chosen by God for a task (see, e.g., Isa 45:1). Many Jews in Jesus’ day expected God’s deliverance, but this expectation didn’t always include a Messiah — many Jews expected an army of angels or God himself to show up and vindicate the righteous. Among the various Jewish uprisings in the first century, none of the leaders seems to have thought of himself as a unique end-time Messiah, as the Christians believed Jesus was. But by the second century, the tradition had developed into the expectation of a unique Messiah who would deliver Israel permanently, and Bar Kokhba seemed to fill this role.

Since A.D. 134, Jews have viewed Bar Kokhba usually either as a tragic hero or as a reckless revolutionary who brought ruin upon Israel. Either way, he remains the only Jew to have ruled the state of Israel as a Messiah in this strong sense.

Reading suggestions: The best place to get a more detailed overview of the Bar Kokba revolt is either the Anchor Bible Dictionary’s article on it (vol. 1, pages 598-601) or Peter Schäfer’s book History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World, published in 2003. If you’re interested in Archaeology, Yigael Yadin published a book in 1971 called Bar Kokhba: The rediscovery of the legendary hero of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome; it’s written in engaging prose for a popular audience, and it has lots of great color photos.

NOTE: From time to time, I hope to do one-page introductions to topics related to the Bible and Christianity that people may not know about. (Since I’m long-winded, for each one I’m limiting myself to one double-spaced page in Word.) You can see my previous one-page take on biblical theology here.

Beginning in 1947, fragments of hundreds of scrolls were found in 11 caves near the Dead Sea in Israel, apparently hidden there by a group that lived nearby at Qumran. Some of the scrolls are Old Testament manuscripts, but others are sectarian texts revealing a group of “Covenanters,” a pre-Christian Jewish reform movement who obeyed Torah as interpreted by their “Teacher of Righteousness,” and who believed (much like early Christians) that their community fulfilled OT prophecy.

Above all, the Qumran Covenanters were Jews, and their concerns were those of second temple Judaism. The Temple was all-important, but God’s presence there (Deut 12:5-7) depended on the Temple’s holiness –– requiring ritual purity, a correct sacrificial calendar, and a proper priesthood. The Covenanters saw the Jerusalem priesthood as (ritually) corrupt, so they moved to the Dead Sea, where their Community functioned as if it were the Temple. Righteousness (i.e., strict obedience to Torah) replaced animal sacrifices to make atonement for the land. Much like Paul, the Covenanters believed that humans were incapable of righteousness on their own, but that God, in his righteousness, forgave them and led them to righteous conduct.

The covenanters were harshly apocalyptic. God had predestined humanity into two groups: Sons of Light (themselves) and Sons of Darkness (everyone else). At the end of days (which they expected imminently), the Sons of Light would march forth and conquer the world, destroying everyone from the “dominion of Belial.”

The scrolls have a twofold significance for Christians: (1) the OT manuscripts are a thousand years older than what we had before; and (2) many of the ideas are startlingly similar to later Christian teachings. Against the common tendency to contrast Christianity with Judaism, the scrolls show just how Jewish the New Testament really is.

Feel free to ask me any questions, factual or otherwise.