Bar Kokhba Revolt

Between 132 and 136 CE the Jews of Judaea rose for the third and last time against the Roman Empire. Led by Simon ben Kosiba, remembered as Bar Kokhba, the rebels held an independent state in the Judaean hills for more than three years before Roman armies under the emperor Hadrian crushed them. The war left Judea largely emptied of its Jewish population, and it shifted the centre of Jewish life to Galilee and the diaspora for centuries.

Judaea remained restless after the First Jewish Revolt, which had ended with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 CE. Around 130 Hadrian decided to refound Jerusalem as a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, dedicated to Jupiter, which ended hopes that the Temple would be rebuilt. A ban on circumcision may also have been imposed, although scholars disagree whether it came before the revolt or as a punishment afterwards. Learning from the unplanned rising of the first revolt, the rebels prepared carefully, holding back until Hadrian had left the area and digging networks of hiding places beneath their villages. Archaeologists had recorded 439 such complexes at 252 sites by 2022.

The revolt probably broke out in the summer of 132. Simon took the title nasi, or prince, of Israel. Christian writers called him Bar Kokhba, "son of the star", probably a messianic name drawn from the prophecy of a star rising out of Jacob; rabbinic tradition holds that Rabbi Akiva hailed him as the messiah, though other sages disagreed. His administration overstruck Roman coins with Hebrew slogans such as "Year One of the Redemption of Israel" and images of the Temple, issued official weights and kept strict discipline, as letters found in desert caves reveal. The rebels held Judea proper, an area of roughly 40 by 80 kilometres, with headquarters at Betar. Whether they ever took Jerusalem is uncertain, and very few of their coins have been found there.

The governor of Judaea, Quintus Tineius Rufus, failed to put down the rising, and troops were brought in from Syria. Hadrian then transferred his ablest general, Sextus Julius Severus, from Britain; he probably arrived in 133. At least nine legions took part in whole or in part, and Rome took the unusual step of conscripting soldiers in Italy. Because the rebels avoided pitched battles, the Romans worked through the country systematically, laying waste town after town.

In the summer of 135 Bar Kokhba and his remaining fighters were besieged in Betar, a ridge-top town near Jerusalem. The Romans surrounded the town with a siege wall and stormed it, and Bar Kokhba was killed. Jewish tradition holds that Betar fell on Tisha B'Av, the day of mourning for the Temple. Refugees fled to caves in the cliffs above the Dead Sea, where Roman troops besieged them for months; some died of hunger. Historians differ on when the war ended, with dates from late 135 to early 136 proposed.

Cassius Dio, writing decades later, reported 50 fortified places and 985 villages destroyed and 580,000 men killed in fighting, besides countless deaths from hunger and disease. Some scholars think these figures inflated; others consider them plausible. One modern estimate puts the number enslaved at over 100,000. Archaeology shows widespread destruction and abandonment across Judea. Jews were barred from Jerusalem and its district, Hadrian banned Torah study and executed leading sages, and the province was renamed Syria Palaestina. Most of the religious bans were relaxed after Hadrian died in 138. Rabbinic Judaism turned away from armed revolt, and Babylonia's Jewish community grew in importance.

Our 100 and 200 maps show Judaea as a province of the Roman Empire; the region lies in today's Israel and Palestine.