The Jewish War: Last half of book 6

[cahn]

Last week:Lament for the destroyed trees and landscape around Jerusalem. A woman eats her own child. More discussion of Titus and whether he wanted to spare the Temple or not. The Carthage and Alexandria precedents for Romans treating defeated opponents. Torching a temple = REALLY BAD LUCK. The timetable of the siege of Jerusalem set by Vespasian's ascent as emperor.

This week: The aftermath of the burning of the temple, and the end of the siege of Jerusalem. Still some pretty awful stuff.

Next week: First half of book 7... isn't this the last book?! OK, selenak, give us a stopping point... :)

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Recap

[cahn]

The temple burns. As the temple burned anything found was looted and anyone caught was killed. A bunch of people die because of a false prophet, who on that very day had proclaimed to the people in the city that God commanded them to go up to the temple, where they would receie the signs of their deliverance. Instead the soldiers set fire to the colonnade of the outer court where all the people who listened to this guy were, and they all died. (I mention this partially because of our discussion of false prophets a couple of weeks ago... this does seem like the sort of thing that could have made it into the Gospels.) Josephus mentions a whole lot of portents which coretold the coming desolation, including the sword-shaped star which stayed fixed over the city, and a comet which remained for a whole year. This feels to me a lot like the star of Jesus' birth??

And as part of all this: what more than anything else incited them to go to war was an ambiguous oracle also found in their holy scriptures, which revealed that at that time someone from their country [Judaea] would become ruler of the world. Well, Josephus says, now we know this meant Vespasian, who was in Judaea when he was proclaimed emperor! Okay... so our footnotes don't give the source of this prophecy -- I immediately thought it meant Micah 5:2 ("But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times." (NIV)) although when I went to look it up to write it down here, it doesn't quite fit what Josephus says, so idk, maybe not. But in the case it is (or something similar), Micah 5:2 is, of course, definitely a Messianic prophecy from the Christian viewpoint, and presumably from the Jewish viewpoint too? So from this part it doesn't seem like nearly such a stretch to me that Feuchtwanger has Josephus proclaim him Messiah (as it did from some of the previous passages we read).

The rebels now want to parley. Titus speechifies. We have a footnote to revealed your true nature when a more serious illness broke out that says, "Titus seems to be asserting that the Jewish revolt began only after the death of Nero... the link is not chronologically justified, but it reflects the desire of the Flavian regime to connect the destruction of Jerusalem to Vespasian's rise to power in Rome." Anyway, he says to surrender and he won't kill them.

They say they have sworn not to accept any terms from him, but ask for a safe exit after which they'll move to the desert. I guess the difference between these is that in Titus' deal they would be subject to become the Romans' slaves? Anyway, Titus does not like their effrontery and now he's not going to spare anyone, and gives his troops permission to burn and sack the city.

The Romans flush the "terrorists" out of the Lower City and burn it. Josephus asks the insurgents to spare what is left of the city (presumably by surrendering, although Titus has already said he's not going to spare anyone any more, though later we learn he changes his mind...) but none of them are listening to him. The Upper City is high enough that ramps are needed to attack it. While the Romans are making those, a bunch of people desert (Simon tries to kill them before they desert, but only gets relatively few). Titus doesn't actually kill them.

The Romans break through part of the wall. The warlords, who were in the towers (the towers Herod had built that have been mentioned before), panic and come down from the (very strong) towers and the Romans conquer the towers and the walls. They then run wild in the city, killing more.

Josephus adds a note that many of the people who had been in the city had not been natives, but had been visiting for Passover. (I think I remember this from Feuctwanger too.) John is found starving in the sewers with his brothers and sentenced to life imprisonment; Simon gives himself up (apparently we will learn more about this in the next chapter) and kept for execution. So ended the siege of Jerusalem.