New Zion
Yavneh
Before the siege of Jerusalem commenced, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai escaped from the city by posing as a dead man. His two most trusted disciples, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and Rabbi Yehoshua, carried him out of the city. He surrendered to General Vespasian and offered him a prophecy. He predicted Vespasian's ascent to the highest imperial office. When it came to pass as he had said it would, Vespasian rewarded the elderly rabbi with a request. Ben Zakkai said, "Give me Yavneh (Jamnia), its sages, the descendants of Rabban Gamliel, and physicians to heal Rabbi Tzadok."
Vespasian granted the requests, and Yochanan ben Zakkai established an academy for the sages at Yavneh. Josephus affirms that Vespasian settled Jewish defectors in Yavneh prior to the siege of Jerusalem.
In the days following the destruction of Jerusalem, Yochanan ben Zakkai traveled to the Roman camp to press his claims with Titus. He demanded the liberation of the captives that Vespasian had promised him. Titus complied, and he sent officers to sort through the thousands of captives that the Romans had crammed together in the burned-out Court of the Women.
Yochanan ben Zakkai brought Rabbi Tzadok and Gamliel ben Shim'on back with him to the academy he had established in Yavneh.
Yavneh quickly became the new spiritual center of Judaism. People with questions of Torah traveled to Yavneh just as they had once gone to Jerusalem to seek the sages. Rabbi Yochanan organized the sages of Yavneh into a Sanhedrin, and they began to sort through the legal ramifications of living without a Temple. Their first task involved sorting through the legislation that pertained directly to the Temple and the priesthood. Ben Zakkai gathered the surviving priests to Yavneh and taught them to keep themselves Levitically pure. He told them to always be prepared for the rebuilding of the new Temple. Ben Zakkai taught the people to continue to pay tithes to the priesthood and the Levites as they had done when the Temple was standing.
Yochanan ben Zakkai wanted to establish the custom of pilgrimages to Yavneh to take the place of pilgrimages to Jerusalem. He only partly succeeded in this effort. Some people did come to keep the festivals in Yavneh, but many pilgrims continued to go up to observe the festivals among the desolate stones of Jerusalem.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Maran Etha
The Jerusalem community of disciples waited out the war at Pella under the leadership of Simeon son of Clopas. The hazards and upheavals of the war essentially cut them off from contact with other believing communities outside the land of Israel. They heard reports of terrible massacres in all the cities of Syria. Whole communities of disciples had vanished. The believers in places like Damascus and Antioch were gone. They could make only sporadic contact with the communities in Anatolia, Greece, and Achaia. The massacres and troubles in Alexandria and Cyrene struck the Jewish believers in those large population centers. The believing community in Rome had gone underground, so to speak, after the Neronian persecutions began.
Prior to the war, the apostolic community in Jerusalem had been the nerve center for the growing worldwide Yeshua movement. Now, they felt isolated. Occasionally, they received a visitor with news from abroad, but the news was never good. Paul was dead. Timothy arrested. Andrew crucified. One by one, the apostles died in various places and ways. By the end of the war, John the son of Zebedee and James the Less seemed to be the only two survivors of the original twelve.
During the war years, the believers at Pella watched the unfolding events closely. The death of Nero and the dramatic Roman civil wars that followed seemed like a certain harbinger of the end of days. The whole world was thrown into turmoil at the same time that Roman armies advanced on Jerusalem.
The fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple broke their hearts, but those tragic events also fulfilled the Master's prophecies and warnings. In that respect, the fall of Jerusalem vindicated the disciples' claims about Yeshua. Had not everything happened just as He had predicted? Did He not declare, "There will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people; and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" (Luke 21:23-24). As Eusebius says, "If anyone compares the words of our Savior with the accounts of the historian [Josephus] concerning the whole war, he cannot fail to be amazed and to admit that the foreknowledge and the prophecy of our Savior were truly divine and remarkably uncanny" (Ecclesiastical History 3.7.6). In the midst of mourning the loss of their holy city, the disciples at Pella found hope in the expectation of their Master's imminent return. Had He not said that He would come "immediately after the tribulation of those days" (Matthew 24:29)? They remembered how Yeshua told them, "When these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near" (Luke 21:28).
The Upper City of Jerusalem fell to the Romans on Elul 7, just over three weeks before the Festival of Rosh HaShanah. As the high holy days drew near, anticipation must have been running high among the believers. On Rosh HaShanah, the community gathered to hear the sound of the shofar, but their ears waited to hear the voice of a heavenly shofar split the sky. Surely, the time had come for the Son of Man to rend the heavens and avenge His people. Rosh HaShanah came and went. So did Yom Kippur-the first without a Temple. The Messiah did not come.
In the months that followed, Simeon son of Clopas pondered trying to return to the holy city. There was nothing to return to. Their homes were gone. The people of Jerusalem were all dead or in exile. The hills and valleys on which the city once stood now looked like overgrown fields and ridges heaped with scattered stones. Wild animals made their dens where men and women once lived and worshiped. Jews came to visit the ruins and mourn over the tragedy, but they did not stay there. The Romans forbade Jews from resettling the city. No one lived in Jerusalem except a garrison of the Tenth Legion. The soldiers made their home on the Western Hill that had once been the Upper City. Some type of Roman shrine stood on top of the Temple Mount—an abomination stood where it should not be.
Return to Jerusalem seemed impossible. It also seemed unnecessary. Soon enough, the Son of Man would appear, snatch them up in the air, and bring them to the holy city. Together, they would drive out the Gentiles, purify the Temple, and rebuild the ruins. They said, “Maran Etha (“Our Master is coming, מרן אתא”).
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
The Remnant
During those days, the Romans were trying to round up the house of David and put them to death. For two years, Simeon son of Clopas and the Desposyni from the Master's family kept a low profile. Simon and his community of refugees stayed in Pella. He and the other elders of the community continued to pray about the possibility of returning to Jerusalem. It seemed inappropriate for the steward of the house of David to live outside the holy city-even if it was in ruins.
The apostles carefully read the prophecies of Isaiah and believed those prophecies were directly relevant to their community. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Isaiah's prophecies seemed even more pregnant with meaning. The words of Isaiah beckoned them to return to the holy city. The prophecies said that after the LORD "purged the bloodshed of Jerusalem from her midst by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning," then "it will come about that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy—everyone who is recorded for life in Jerusalem" (Isaiah 4:3-4).
Isaiah often speaks of a "remnant" of Israel that will survive the calamitous day of the LORD and time of judgment. The believers in Pella could rightfully identify themselves as a surviving remnant of the population of Jerusalem. They took note of the words that said, "On that day that the LORD will again recover the second time with His hand the remnant of His people, who will remain" (Isaiah 11:11). The "second time" in this verse could be interpreted as restoration after the second destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.
In the following passage, the LORD beckons the remnant to return after the destruction of the whole land, and He encourages them not to fear the attacks of the enemy. Consider how this passage might have been interpreted from the perspective of the disciples in Pella:
A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people, O Israel, may be like the sand of the sea, only a remnant within them will return; a destruction is determined ... a complete destruction... in the midst of the whole land. Therefore thus says the Lord GOD of hosts, "O My people who dwell in Zion, do not fear the Assyrian [i.e., Roman] who strikes you with the rod and lifts up his staff against you, the way Egypt did. For in a very little while My indignation against you will be spent and My anger will be directed to their destruction." (Isaiah 10:21-25)
An even more potent prophecy promised that "the surviving remnant of the house of Judah" would be replanted in Zion "in the third year" (Isaiah 37:30-31). Therefore, it may not be coincidental that the community at Pella elected to return to Jerusalem in the third year after the fall of Jerusalem. The same prophecy continues with an important messianic promise: "For out of Jerusalem will go forth a remnant and out of Mount Zion survivors. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this" (Isaiah 37:32).
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Property for Sale
After the fall of Jerusalem, the Romans probably did not allow Jews to return to the city unless they were directly connected with servicing the garrison of the tenth legion, which was stationed there. Even if the disciples from Pella had returned to Jerusalem immediately after the war, the Roman soldiers occupying the site would have chased them away. A development in late 72 CE may have helped to change that. Josephus reports that Vespasian, who was always seeking new sources of revenue for the imperial treasuries, began to lease out and even sell conquered land in Judea:
Caesar sent a letter to Bassus, and to Liberius Maximus, who was the procurator of Judea, and gave orders that all Judea should be sold; for he founded no city there, but reserved the country for himself. (Josephus, Jewish War 7:216-217/vi.6)
This new development raised the possibility of purchasing property near Jerusalem, perhaps even among the ruins of Jerusalem. For example, according to rabbinic sources, Rabbi Eleazar the son of Rabbi Tzadok bought the ruins of the Synagogue of the Alexandrians (i.e., the Synagogue of the Freedmen) and used them for his own purposes after the destruction of Jerusalem.
A tenth-century church patriarch of Alexandria named Euthycius wrote a history of the church based on all the ancient sources that were available to him in the extensive library at Alexandria. According to Euthycius, the Judeo-Christians who fled to Pella to escape the destruction of Jerusalem "returned to Jerusalem in the fourth year of the emperor Vespasian, and built there their church." The fourth year of Vespasian is 73 CE, the same year that Masada fell and that Vespasian began to sell land in Judea. The disciples living at Pella heard about the fall of Masada and the final Roman declaration of victory.
The war was over. Epiphanius, the fourth-century bishop of Salamis most famous for his catalog of church heresies, confirms that the refugees did return to Jerusalem after the war, but he does not provide a date:
When the city was about to be taken and destroyed by the Romans, it was revealed in advance to all the disciples by an angel of God that they should remove from the city, as it was going to be completely destroyed. They sojourned as emigrants in Pella... in Transjordania. And this city is said to be of the Decapolis. But after the destruction of Jerusalem ... they had returned to Jerusalem. (Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures 15)
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
The Notzrim of Pella
At its height, the Jerusalem community of disciples numbered around ten thousand. Several thousand of these spent the war years in Pella. Their migration back to Jerusalem probably did not happen all at once. The refugees had spent the last seven years in the vicinity of Pella. Many had established new lives there. Even if the Romans had allowed them all to return to Jerusalem, the prospect of moving to an uninhabited ruin occupied only by the despicable soldiers of the Tenth Legion might not have appealed to all the refugees. Many, if not most, stayed behind in Perea.
Jewish disciples of our Master continued to live in Pella and the surrounding area at least into the fourth century. In his fourth-century treatise against heresies, Epiphanius complains about the Nazarene "heresy," which he describes as Jewish believers in Yeshua "who remain wholly Jewish and nothing else." Apparently, the "heresy" still flourished in the vicinity of Pella:
This heresy of the Nazarenes exists in Beroea [i.e., Pereal in the neighborhood of Coele Syria and the Decapolis in the region of Pella and in Basanitis [i.e., Bashan] in the so-called Kokabe (Chochabe in Hebrew). It took its beginning there after the exodus from Jerusalem when all the disciples went to live in Pella because Christ had told them to leave Jerusalem and to go away since it would undergo a siege. Because of this advice they lived in Perea after having moved to that place, as I said. There the Nazarene heresy had its beginning. (Panarion [Adversus haereses; Against Heresies] 7-7-8)
Epiphanius describes the Nazarenes of Perea as Jews in every respect, differing from other Jews only in their faith in Yeshua: "They live according to the preaching of the Law as Jews. There is no fault [for other Jews] to find with them apart from the fact that they have come to believe in Christ." Epiphanius observed that the Nazarene Jews educated themselves in Torah. They practiced circumcision, the Sabbath, and other Jewish customs. He regarded them all as "under the curse of the Law."
The evidence from Epiphanius illustrates that the seven-year sojourn in Pella had an enduring impact on the local Jewish population, one that lasted for several centuries.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Negotiating for the Western Hill
In the year that the refugees from Pella returned to Jerusalem, Silva and the Tenth Legion celebrated their final victory over the Jewish Revolt. After the fall of Masada, they erected a triumphal arch on top of the Temple Mount to commemorate the victory.
The believers from Pella must have negotiated with Flavius Silva for permission to enter the ruins of the city. He would have been reluctant to sell property in Jerusalem to Jews. Caesar had left the Tenth Legion at Jerusalem to make sure that Jews did not occupy that city again. Titus wanted the complete Roman destruction of Jerusalem to eliminate the possibility of Jewish resettlement at the location. The Romans wanted to suppress any future displays of nationalism.
Before they could settle in Jerusalem, the believers had to convince Silva that they were not radicals or revolutionaries and that they had not played any part in the Jewish Revolt. They may have had the magistrates of Pella testify on their behalf. The fact that they were an old and well-established Jerusalem community that had intentionally left the city prior to the outbreak of the war weighed heavily in their favor. It made them appear to be loyalists.
Silva apparently allowed them to buy property on Jerusalem's Western Hill, the area that was once the Upper City. The garrison occupying Herod's towers could keep the settlers on the Western Hill under a watchful eye.
Silva probably did not allow a mass migration of the believers to return. He could not very well keep Jews out of the city while allowing several thousand Jews to buy property and settle there, but, for the right price, he might have been able to allow a limited number to return.
Other returnees from the Pella community might have settled in villages and locations near Jerusalem, while the small handful of leadership—a token community-established themselves on the city's Western Hill in cooperation with the Roman army.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
The Tomb of the Master
Silva probably did not grant the disciples of Yeshua any access to the Temple Mount, but the apostolic community had several other holy places around the ruins of the city that he did not know about. First, they would have sought out Golgotha and the tomb of the Master. The tomb had originally been outside the city walls, but King Herod Agrippa's expansion brought the rocky scarp of Golgotha inside the line of the new walls. To relocate the tomb after their seven-year absence, the believers needed to sift through the ruins of the New City, the first part of Jerusalem to fall to the Romans. They would have had little difhiculty finding the familiar location. The empty tomb offered them a note of consolation and hope in the midst of the desolate rubble of the city.
Sixty years later, when Emperor Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a Roman city called Aelia Capitolina, he intentionally buried the tomb of the Master beneath a large platform that he constructed for a temple to Aphrodite. At the same time, he built a temple to Zeus on the Temple Mount overtop the location of the Sanctuary. The two idolatrous temples, both built overtop sacred places, ensured a suppression of Jewish veneration at those sites. Hadrian intended to send a message to the Jews: Jerusalem is no longer your sacred city.
The fact that he chose to build one of the temples overtop the tomb of the Master indicates that, prior to 135 CE, the tomb continued to be an important place of pilgrimage and veneration. This is evidence of the presence of a Jewish community in Jerusalem during that era that could receive the pilgrims and direct them to the tomb's location. If there was no local community maintaining the empty tomb and its memory, why did Hadrian feel the need to defile that location? Ultimately, Hadrian's efforts to erase the location of the tomb of the Master failed because the location of the temple of Aphrodite marked the spot.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
The Seven Synagogues
The apostles seem to have established another commemorative, holy place in Jerusalem. While sifting through the ruins, the returnees from Pella apparently found the location of the house that had once been the home where the Twelve kept the Last Seder with the Master. Apparently, they purchased this location from Silva and obtained permission to build a synagogue on the site. The Cenacle in Jerusalem, now called King David's Tomb, might preserve the location of that synagogue.
Today, the so-called "Tomb of David" functions as a sort of synagogue, beit midrash ("house of study"), and holy place all at once. People go there to pray and study. In Christian tradition, the location marks the place of the Last Supper and the upper room. In the eleventh century, the Crusaders built much of the currently existing structure, but they also spuriously identified the location with King David. They installed a large stone sarcophagus for David, and that is why the place is today considered to be the tomb of King David.
Despite the association with King David, Christian tradition still remembers the location as the place of the Last Supper and the upper room in which the early apostles assembled. Some of the stonework in the lower courses of the structure can be identified as Herodian-era stones in secondary use. Some archaeologists have concluded that the original structure must have been a synagogue built after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
Epiphanius describes Jerusalem as it appeared shortly before Hadrian started the construction of Aelia Capitolina (Circa 130 CE). By then, seven synagogues and a cluster of houses had sprouted up on the Western Hill:
The temple of God [was] trodden down and the whole city was devastated save for a few houses and the church of God, which was small, where the disciples, when they had returned after the Savior had ascended from the Mount of Olives, went to the upper room. For there it had been built, that is, in that portion of Zion which escaped destruction, together with blocks of houses in the neighborhood of Zion and the seven synagogues which alone remained standing in Zion, like solitary huts. (Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures I4)
Epiphanius alludes to Isaiah I:8 when he compares the synagogues to "solitary huts." He goes on to explain that, out of the seven synagogues that stood among the ruins of Jerusalem, only one of them survived until the Byzantine Era, "like a booth in a vineyard." He identified it as the same "Church of the Apostles." Perhaps the local community applied Isaiah I:8 to their lonely synagogue in Jerusalem, "the daughter of Zion is left like a sukkah in a vineyard, like a watchman's hut in a cucumber field, like a besieged city." Several centuries later, the Bordeaux Pilgrim seems to make the same allusion to Isaiah I:8 when he reports: "Of seven synagogues which once were there, one alone remains; the rest are ploughed over and sown upon, as said Isaiah the prophet."
Epiphanius says that seven synagogues stood on the Western Hill, and a small neighborhood of houses stood around them. This indicates that the Romans did allow some limited settlement and rebuilding on the Western Hill. Archaeologists have found ceramic roof tiles stamped with the insignia of the Tenth Legion. Some of those might have once been part of the roofs on those houses.
Perhaps all seven synagogues belonged to the Jewish believers. More likely, other sects of first-century Jews followed the precedent set by the believers and obtained permission to erect their own synagogues as pilgrimage centers for Jews visiting the ruins of Jerusalem.
Only the so-called "Church of the Apostles" survived. When the Bordeaux Pilgrim visited Jerusalem in 333 CE, he reported that a single synagogue still stood on Zion. This suggests that the Byzantine Christians of Jerusalem maintained the original synagogue of the apostles as a holy place. The Byzantines incorporated it into a much larger church (including the location of the modern Dormition Abbey [Hagia Maria]). Centuries later, the Crusaders rebuilt the location into the Tomb of David and Cenacle, which stands today. This explains why this synagogue alone survives, in one form or another, from the days of the apostles to the current day.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
New Zion
Epiphanius says that the seven synagogues all stood on Mount Zion. By "Zion" he means the Western Hill. Prior to the destruction of the Temple, no one referred to the Western Hill as "Mount Zion." During the Second Temple Era, Zion meant the Temple Mount. How did the name shift from the Temple Mount to the Western Hill?
The returnees from Pella may have been responsible for the shift. They saw themselves and their community as fulfilling the prophecies of Isaiah, and those prophecies often speak of the restoration of Zion. The prophecies in Isaiah's book of consolation (Isaiah 40-66) repeatedly personify Jerusalem as a woman named "Zion."
Like the woman on Vespasian's Judea Capta coins, the wrath of God leaves Zion devastated, broken, ruined, and bereaved of children. She is dejected, thrown down, trampled, and abandoned. Then, the redemption brings back her exiles, and God restores her to her place of glory and prominence. She rises above all cities and nations and becomes the capital of the Messianic Kingdom. Isaiah closely connects the prophecies about the restoration of Zion with his prophecies of the Servant of the LORD. That makes the passages about the restoration of Zion central to apostolic theology and expectation.
Isaiah promises that the one who is "left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem" after its destruction "will be called holy" (Isaiah 4:3). The believers returning from Pella identified themselves as the ones "left in Zion." They believed that they were the "remnant" and the "survivors" spoken of in the passage that says, "For out of Jerusalem will go forth a remnant and out of Mount Zion survivors" (Isaiah 37:32). They saw themselves and the construction of their small community as something similar to the return from Babylon in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. They did not despise the day of small beginnings. They probably considered their little community as the "tested stone" and the "costly cornerstone" that God was laying in Zion for the foundation of Messianic Jerusalem (Isaiah 28:16). Isaiah predicted that, in the Messianic Era, Jerusalem will be called "The Zion of the Holy One of Israel" (Isaiah 60:14). Naturally, they named their community "Zion."
The returnees from Pella considered themselves heirs to the messianic teaching of the original apostolic community, and they felt responsible for disseminating that teaching just as they had done prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. They still considered themselves as the head assembly over all the assemblies of Messiah, the final authority over the Yeshua movement, and the authentic source for genuine apostolic teaching. They saw their work predicted in the passage that says, "For the Torah will go forth from Zion" (Isaiah 2:3). They believed the Torah would go forth from their community.
They did not deliberately move the name Mount Zion to the Western Hill. They believed that they were the first settlers of Messianic Zion, but they looked forward to that day when the Messiah would arrive and restore Zion. They anticipated that the Messiah would soon rebuild the House of the God of Jacob on top of Mount Zion, i.e., on top of the Temple Mount. That did not happen. The settlement never grew beyond the Western Hill. Over the ensuing sixty years, the name "Mount Zion" naturally began to evoke the hill on which the little community of Zion sat. Then Hadrian banned all Jews from the new city, Aelia Capitolina. Only Gentiles remained. The Gentile Christians who replaced the ousted Jewish believers did not know that the name Mount Zion ever referred to anything other than the Western Hill where the synagogue of the apostles stood. To this day, the Western Hill of Jerusalem still bears the name Mount Zion.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Yavneh and Yerushalayim
The Zion years span sixty-two years between 73 CE and 135 CE. Unfortunately, very few sources from the Zion years have survived. Members of the Zion community would have been primarily Aramaic-speaking; they did not generate Greek texts, so their literature never passed into the corpus of Western Christianity. Most of their literature, along with clues about their community and the details of their story, disappeared along with them. Only a few stray tales survive.
Ironically, during the six decades that the Zion community occupied the Western Hill, the disciples of Yeshua probably enjoyed greater influence, power, and prestige in the Jewish world than they ever had before or since. They had one of the only remaining voices of authority in Judaism. Their archenemies, the Sadducees, did not survive the war. Neither did the Zealots. When Vespasian's forces overran the Essene monastery at Qumran, the Essenes lost their central authority and quickly faded from history, too. Only two real contenders for spiritual authority remained: the Pharisees who gathered around Yochanan ben Zakkai at Yavneh and the Nazarenes who looked to Simeon son of Clopas in Jerusalem. That new reality soon pushed the Pharisees and the disciples of Yeshua into an acrimonious competition with one another, but in the early decades after the war with Rome, they seem to have mutually respected one another and, perhaps, even worked together in rebuilding Judaism from the ashes of the Temple.
The community in Jerusalem and the community in Yavneh shared much in common, and there may have been frequent traffic back and forth between them while Yochanan ben Zakkai presided. Yochanan ben Zakkai seems to have respected the believers and the teachings of Yeshua. Simeon son of Clopas seems to have assisted with the efforts of Yavneh. Some cross-fertilization occurred. During this period of time, the sages absorbed many of the sayings of our Master and the principles of His teachings. Echoes of those sayings and teachings still survive in rabbinic literature, divorced from their original teacher but potent nonetheless. In this way, the teaching and leadership of the Messiah of Israel helped to restore and rebuild Judaism after the fall of the Temple. The wisdom and ethics of Yeshua of Nazareth began to steer Judaism toward a more compassionate interpretation of Torah and a re-prioritization of ethical concerns. The Messiah of Israel continues to work and speak anonymously in the midst of Jewish teaching. Even when our holy Master's name and person are concealed, His voice still speaks.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Rise and Fall of Queen Bernikah
Titus left Bernice behind him in 71 CE with a promise that he would send for her later. He sailed for Rome; she went back to Caesarea Philippi. While the disciples established their Zion community among the ruins of Jerusalem, Bernice waited impatiently for a message from Rome. The summons finally came around 75 CE. Titus believed that the political opposition was over, and he urged her to hurry to his side.
The Roman historian Cassius Dio says, "Bernice was at the very height of her power and consequently came to Rome along with her brother." Queen Bernice and King Agrippa arrived in Rome. Both were eager to see the relationship with Titus resume. Everything went smashingly well. Agrippa received the rank of praetor as thanks for his service to the Flavian family. Bernice moved into the palace with Titus. Cassius Dio says, "She expected to marry him and was already behaving in every respect as if she were his wife." While living in the royal palace of the Caesars, she must have admired the wall hangings-curtains taken from the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Thanks to her relationship with Titus and her royal title, Bernice immediately occupied a place of social prowess, rank, prestige, and privilege far exceeding any Roman woman since Poppaea or Agrippina. She hosted banquets and attended state events. She exercised tremendous political power and even occupied a judicial office. Nevertheless, the royal wedding did not come. The people of Rome objected to the presence of the "Jewish Cleopatra." Political opponents of the Flavian family criticized the scandalous relationship. Jealousies abounded. Old rumors about Bernice's relationship with her brother began to circulate.
Bernice had been in Rome only a year or so when a Stoic philosopher named Diogenes had the brazen audacity to address a crowded theater with a long, abusive speech denouncing Bernice and her relationship with Titus. Titus had the man arrested and flogged. After that, a man named Heras took courage and did the same thing, publicly denouncing Titus for his illicit relationship with a Jew. He expected no harsher punishment than Diogenes had received, but Titus was not so forbearing the second time. He had Heras beheaded.
No matter how much Titus adored his Jewish Queen, he could not deny that her unpopularity with the Romans damaged him politically. Vespasian seems to have intervened. Titus caved in to the public, political pressure, and his father's wishes. Vespasian banished Bernice from the city of Rome. She did not go far. She waited for her chance to return. On June 23, 79 CE, Emperor Vespasian died. Titus took the throne of Rome, and Bernice came to him at once, but the people of Rome were not willing to have a Jewish empress. The public outcry forced Titus to banish her himself. Suetonius says, "He sent Bernice from Rome at once, against her will and against his own."
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
Volcano, Fire, and Plague
A few months later, on August 24, Mount Vesuvius erupted in Campania. The Roman author, naturalist, philosopher, and naval commander Pliny the Elder was an eyewitness, along with his nephew Pliny the Younger. They saw the volcano from their home in Misenum. Mount Vesuvius stood across the Bay of Naples, more than twenty miles away from them. In a letter to Tacitus, Pliny the Younger compared the enormous plume that rose up over the mountain to a pine tree of dark cloud and smoke.
Pliny the Elder, a famous naturalist, wanted to get closer to study the phenomenon. He launched a rescue operation to try to evacuate survivors from the coast near the mountain. He did not survive the effort.
The eruption was one of the most dramatic and catastrophic in recorded history. The volcano unleashed a deadly cloud of burning stones, ash, and toxic fumes that billowed to a height of twenty miles into the atmosphere. It spewed out molten rock and pumice and buried the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Twenty miles away from the mountain, Pliny the Younger described the rain of fire and brimstone that descended on the area and the blanket of ash that covered everything like snow. Mass panic ensued. The sky turned black, flashing with sheet lightening, as the fire fell from heaven. Josephus says that Agrippa, the son of Drusilla and Felix, died in the eruption.
Titus appointed commissioners from among the ex-consuls to supervise disaster relief efforts. He sold the surviving properties and villas of those who died in the eruption and used the funds for rebuilding. He left Rome to tour the damage caused by the eruption. While he was away, a fire broke out in Rome and burned for three days and three nights. During the blaze, the Capitoline temple of Jupiter (Zeus) burned to the ground. Vespasian had only recently completed the temple with funds from the Fiscus Judaicus. The Pantheon and Pompey's theater also burned. When Titus heard about the fire, he made no comment except to say, "1 am ruined." As Rome struggled to recover from the fire, a deadly plague struck the city. The dead filled the streets. Titus tried every type of medicine, sought after the gods, and offered every kind of sacrifice, but nothing diminished the force of the epidemic. Surely it can be no accident that these disasters, conflagrations, and sick-nesses, including the burning of the temple of Zeus, fell upon the Roman people during the short administration of Titus, who had dared to lift his hand against Jerusalem, the Jewish people, and the Holy Temple of God.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
At War with God
b.Gittin 56b
On top of these calamities, the Talmud says that Titus suffered an incurable headache as well. It started on his way to the triumph in Rome after the fall of Jerusalem. While he was still at sea, a storm sprang up and threatened to shipwreck him. He said to himself, "Apparently the power of the Jewish God is only over the water. He drowned Pharaoh in the water, he drowned Sisera in water, and now He is trying to drown me in the water. If He really is so powerful, let him face me on dry land and fight with me."
At that moment, a decree went forth in heaven, saying, "Sinner, son of a sinner, descendant of Esau the sinner, I have a tiny creature in my world called a gnat. Go up on dry land and make war with it."
When Titus landed in Italy, a gnat flew up his nose. It picked at his brain for seven years, causing a terrible headache. Once, it happened that as Titus passed by a blacksmith, the gnat heard the noise of the hammer striking the iron and it ceased. Titus said, "So there is a remedy!" Every day thereafter, his physicians brought a blacksmith to hammer in front of him. If he was a Gentile smith, they paid him four zuz per day. If he was a Jew, they said, "Sufficient for you to see your enemy suffering." This cure lasted for only thirty days. After that, the gnat became accustomed to the hammering.
In 81 CE, Titus officially dedicated the newly completed Colosseum with a series of games. He and his father financed the construction of the huge amphitheater from the spoils Titus had taken from Jerusalem. He did not know that the dedication of the Colosseum was to be his last official act as emperor.
During the course of the ceremonies, bad omens beset him. One of the animals he was sacrificing escaped just as he was about to slaughter it. The sky suddenly rolled with thunder, although no clouds could be seen in the sky. At the conclusion of the games, Titus wept bitterly in the presence of all the people.
He set out on a journey to the Sabine territories but fell ill with a fever at the first station. As they carried him off from there in a litter, he pushed back the curtain, looked up to Heaven, and complained that his life was being taken away from him contrary to what he deserved. He cried out, "I have done nothing in my life for which I need to repent, except for one thing only!"
On September 13, 8I CE, Titus died at the same farmhouse in which his father had died two years earlier. He had been emperor for two troubled years. He was only forty-two.
Historians speculate about the cause of death.
According to the Talmud, the gnat in his head was to blame. Rabbi Pinchas bar Aruba said, "I was there among the noblemen of Rome when Titus died. They split open his skull and found something in it as large as a sparrow weighing two selas." The talmudic legend explains that the gnat had grown to this enormous size. Abaye claimed, "We have recorded that it had a beak made of brass and claws of iron." From a medical perspective, it sounds as if the conqueror of Jerusalem succumbed to a brain tumor.
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.
The Death of Yochanan Ben Zakkai
b.Berachot 28b
Around the same time that Titus died, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai became ill. He had lived a long and full life. Some report his age at one hundred and twenty years. His disciples went to his home to visit him. When he saw them, he began to weep. They said, "Lamp of Israel! Pillar of the right hand! Mighty hammer! Why are you weeping?"
He replied, "I would weep even if I were about to be taken before a king of flesh and blood, who is here today and dead tomorrow, whose anger, if he is angry with me, does not last forever, who, if he imprisons me, cannot imprison me forever, who if he puts me to death, cannot put me to everlasting death, and whom I can persuade with words and bribe with money. Today I am being taken before the most high, king of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, who lives and endures for all eternity, whose anger, if he is angry with me, is an everlasting anger; if He imprisons me, He imprisons me forever; if He puts me to death, He puts me to death forever, nor can I persuade Him with words or bribe Him with money. Two ways are before me, one leading to Gan Eden (Paradise) and the other to Gehinnom, and I do not know by which path 1 shall be taken. Shall I not weep?"
They said to him, "Master, bless us."
He said to them, "May it be His will that you attain to have as much fear of Heaven as you do fear of flesh and blood."
His disciples said to him, "Is that all? Should we not fear Heaven more than flesh and blood?"
He said to them, "If only you could attain to that level! When a man wants to commit a transgression, he says, '1 hope no man will see me. [He gives no thought of God who sees him.]"
At the moment of his departure, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai said to his disciples, "Remove the vessels from the house so that they do not become ritually defiled, and prepare a throne for Hezekiah the king of Judah who is coming."
When Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai died, the luster of wisdom ceased from the world. (b.Sotah 49a)
References
This lesson is adapted from Daniel Lancaster's teachings in The Sent Ones, as presented by First Fruits of Zion for the Torah Club.