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Dr. Guy Maclean Rogers

Appearances

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1007.443

brought in a different culture with different practices and traditions. And by the time we get to the middle of the first century CE,

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1019.124

These peoples are living side by side in places like Caesarea on the coast, which was probably originally what they call a Phoenician foundation, but had been kind of refounded by Herod the Great as a place that had synagogues in it, but also Greco-Roman public buildings and games being celebrated.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1047.106

Yes, everything. All the sort of typical things you would find in a Greek city of the first century. And there developed a conflict and a rivalry over who was going to be kind of in charge of places like Caesarea. Was it going to be the Hellenes, the Greeks, or people who Josephus called Syrians, who were probably non-ethnically Greek, but culturally Greek people, or the Jews.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1078.226

And actually, that's kind of the exact starting point for the war itself. According to Josephus, that rivalry in Caesarea, it led to a riot over a sacrifice that a Greek guy decided he would make next to a synagogue owned by the Jews. And that was the start of it.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1124.668

Right. So the background to the spark which lit off the revolt was this conflict over who was going to be able to say that they were in charge of Caesarea. And essentially, both sides were provoking the other, but it got ratcheted up by this attempted sacrifice of birds outside of the synagogue. We don't know exactly what the purpose of the sacrifice was.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1155.874

But of course, it would have been presumably to or for some gods or goddesses and would have been seen by the Jews as an abomination. And they attempted to get the governor, the procurator, this guy, Gessius Florus, to intervene. And instead of doing that, he sort of took off and

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

116.021

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, I tell my students all the time that most of the ancient history that I teach is fascinating and interesting, especially to ancient historians, but it's kind of all over.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1181.849

went to Jerusalem because at the time, apparently, the Jews of Judea were in arrears in the payment of the tribute to the Romans. He decided that what he would do is he would go to the temple treasury and withdraw 17 talents worth of silver, which was an enormous sum of money from the treasury, which was not the procedure that he was supposed to follow.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1216.933

And when the civilian population of Jerusalem protested against that, he unleashed upon them the auxiliary troops that were under his command, and they massacred something like 3,600 civilians. And as I tell my students, in these situations of ethnic conflict, They tend to be resolvable until large amounts of blood are shed.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1252.018

And it's really at that point in the spring of 66 that ethnic conflict turns into a war in Judea centered in Jerusalem.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1297.103

Exactly. There were among the Jews leaders who tried to convince the population of Jerusalem to not react to what happened and escalate the situation.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

130.504

It doesn't really matter to most of my students who won the Peloponnesian War, but the revolt against Rome in 66 and its outcome with the destruction of the temple and then kind of the progressive... deterioration in relations between Romans and Jews and Jews and Christians unfortunately has resonances right down to the present and

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1312.355

But I think you're exactly right that the news of what had happened, and I really think for your audience that it's worth thinking about how it is that people would react to having their sisters, their brothers, their grandparents killed really without very much provocation. And at that point, I think a lot of people who were kind of sitting on the fence were

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1341.158

were kind of pushed over to the side of thinking that they really couldn't live with this particular governor. And when the Romans showed no inclination to punish this guy or replace him, I think that that's when the people who were in favor of a national liberation movement movement in Judea, gained the upper hand. And that's really the start of the war.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1372.973

Again, Josephus focuses on this episode where after this happens, the guy who was the head of security in the temple, a man named Eleazar, convinces the priest that to no longer accept sacrifices on behalf of Rome, the Romans, and Caesar or the emperor. He says that that's really the point at which the war begins. But I see that as essentially symbolic.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1407.777

they are no longer willing to ask their god to intervene on behalf of the welfare. So this is kind of a separation point, and then the fighting begins shortly afterward.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1458.382

It's not clear that during the early days, so spring, early summer of 66, that they had an absolutely coherent strategy. But as soon as the dust settles and they realize there's going to be a Roman reaction, They do put together an army. Of course, the Romans, in reaction to what had happened in Jerusalem, send the governor of Syria down to first the Galilee and then to Jerusalem.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1497.338

led by this guy, Cestius Gallus, with a fairly large army, a substantial army of about 30,000. I don't think that he thought that he was going to have to besiege Jerusalem. I think he thought that he was going to go and intimidate them into acquiescence. But that's not the way it worked out.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1518.505

And his army got mauled on the way into Jerusalem and on the way out of Jerusalem, losing more than 5,300 infantrymen and a cohort worth of cavalrymen. And that really with the cat among the pigeons, because at that point, it was clear that the Jews who were in revolt were going to fight, and they were not intimidated by Roman legions, and they could do damage to them. And that was a shock.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1552.242

to the Romans.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

157.859

Actually, although I wrote the book back in 2020, 21, the events of the last year to year and a half have only kind of heightened that sense that this is history that isn't over. It's living history. So yeah, it's still present in the minds of tens of millions of people.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1590.336

Right. You're right. There is an analogy with what went on in Teutoburg. Although the Romans lost a lot more guys in that vault in 9 CE, on the other hand, the Jews had been cooperating with the Romans for a long time, actually arguably since even before the time of Julius Caesar. So I'm sure this was a huge shock for them. And as a result of that,

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1622.066

Nero, the reigning Roman emperor, felt compelled to give the portfolio the job of quelling what was clearly at this point a nationalist revolt over to another general, this guy Vespasian, who was a very experienced general. And it took Vespasian about a year or so. So into the winter of 67 AD,

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1648.749

to put together a much larger army, an army which ultimately comprised about 60,000 soldiers, again, divided up into legionaries, allies, and auxiliaries. But just so that people can get an idea of the scale of this, although there are differences among the ancient historians, Most ancient historians believe that Alexander the Great went over to Asia Minor in 334 with like 40 or 45,000 soldiers.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1682.111

So this was a massive army that Vespasian then brought down into the Galilee in the spring of 67. with the intention of ultimately taking it down to Jerusalem.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1723.868

Right. He was actually with Nero, who was on a concert tour in Achaea. So he didn't have that far to go. He was in Greece. He was an interesting character. His reputation, both at the time and among modern ancient historians, has always been as a competent, if somewhat intellectually dull, officer.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1749.365

But in fact, I think that reputation masks a more complex character, including a character of some degree of sort of ruthlessness and cruelty as well, as he would prove pretty rapidly once he led the invasion force into the Galilee. And so there's a war in the North in 67, in the spring of 67.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1775.919

And the two big sort of flashpoints were Geotopoda, which we talked about a little bit before, where Josephus was the commander conquered by the Romans after a siege, which lasted somewhere between 38 to 47 days. And then up on the Golan Heights at Gamla, another siege. And just to link this up a little bit with what I had to say about the Spasians. So Gamla is one of these

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1807.867

places that's built up on a ridge with a high point where the ultimate defense of the Jews took place. And when the Romans finally pushed their way up there and conquered it, they just massacred everybody there, including the women and children. And Josephus, who's often accused of being a kind of

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1828.191

you know, a front man for his Roman masters, takes the time to point out that the Romans chucked over the side of the cliff all the babies that they found and everything. So there are some details in Josephus' accounts of the war, which shows that Josephus, despite those issues that we have to think about when we use him as a source, didn't just whitewash what happened in this war.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1858.497

He's critical of Roman leadership in different times in the war.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1903.824

Right. From the very beginning, even before the outbreak of the revolt within Jerusalem, there were very deep divisions among the population. Once the revolt broke out, There definitely were strong opinions held by people about the wisdom of continuing the war or negotiating with the Romans.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1926.776

But as I said, after the shedding of so much civilian blood, the groups people often focus upon, the Sicarii, the so-called the dagger men. The Sicarii. And the zealots really kind of gained the upper hand, especially the zealots in Jerusalem. Interestingly, they were kind of undeterred by what happened in the Galilee. They were committed.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1955.016

And we have some evidence, which is a little bit difficult to interpret, but is still, I think, vital for understanding attitudes at the time within Jerusalem. So as soon as these rebel groups got in charge in Jerusalem in 66, they started minting coins, which have on them sort of slogans about their goals.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

1980.909

And in the third and fourth year of the war, when it's obvious what's going to happen, which is it's either going to be Vespasian or after the suicide of Nero and Vespasian decides to pursue his future back in Rome, it turns out to be Titus. The groups in Jerusalem are having inscribed on those coins for the freedom of Zion, freedom of Zion.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

200.279

So obviously, the main source for the war itself is a narrative written by a very interesting and brilliant writer called Josephus, Labius Josephus, after he acquired Roman citizenship. His works are a little bit tricky because...

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2015.351

So there's a lot of talk to go back to your original question about the resonances of this war. A lot of people talk these days and comment on the origins of Zionism. But, you know, Zion and Zionism go back, in fact, to this time period and even before it was a hill in Jerusalem. But Zion is also an idea of the people.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2045.678

So the short answer to your question is that these people in 68 and 69 were fighting among themselves in Jerusalem, but there was a huge level of commitment to actually achieving independence from Rome, no matter what the cost was. That's why, even though they realized that Vespasian was coming for them, they were undeterred.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2106.75

Right. So within Rome, of course, there were massive problems. Nero's reign really changed dramatically after the fire in Rome in 64, which just thoroughly destroyed three districts of Rome and seven others, and was one of the reasons why Nero put the squeeze on people to get their tribute monies in on time in the provinces. In some sense, Nero never recovered from that.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2139.687

And with the outbreak of the revolt, which didn't go well for the Romans in the very beginning, his popularity was deteriorating. And there were plenty of influential Romans around after 66 who had thoughts of trying to get rid of Nero. And so eventually, after rebellions by some of the governors up in the Rhine-Danube border areas of the Roman Empire.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2178.655

Nero committed suicide, and that led to a struggle, a succession struggle in 68, 69, famously called the Year of the Four Emperors. Nero's replacements. And Vespasian, as it were, turned out to be the last man standing, in part because the Syrian legions and the legions in Egypt threw their weight behind him.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2204.043

And so instead of pursuing a risky siege of Jerusalem, Vespasian decided to kind of hold off and eventually make his way to Rome. And he delegated finishing the Judean War to his son Titus. So it was left to Titus in the second half of 69 and then the beginning of 70 to go to Jerusalem and to conduct that scene.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

221.678

He, in fact, wrote an original version of it, apparently in Aramaic, which was kind of the sister language of Hebrew, and sent that version to his countrymen across the Euphrates River relatively soon after the war was completed in 73 or 74. We don't have that. When Josephus went to Rome with Titus, he wrote a Greek version of it, which was finished around 79 CE.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2271.01

Right, so in a sense, this was kind of a replay of what had happened earlier in the war when the governor, Kestis Gallas, came down to try to intimidate the Jews into quitting. The difference was that Titus knew that this was a siege operation, which was going to require siege equipment, and also, even more importantly,

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2297.466

planning for supply for logistics because he had to feed the Roman army there over months. He knew that to be the case. So the Romans had to break through the three sets of walls and It turned out to be an incredibly difficult task. And nowhere in Josephus's multiple accounts of this does he give us Roman casualty figures.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2331.462

And I've always suspected that the reason for that was that they were quite high. Interestingly, descriptions of the combat, it often turns out to be the case that the rebels kind of outfight the Romans. But the Romans did what the Romans always did, which was to use their superior organization and their technical abilities.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2358.256

The siege machinery to kind of batter their way through the walls, clear the defenders from them, establish camps, and then move on. Eventually, it became kind of a numbers game and then a supply game within the city itself. And essentially, the defenders were running out of food. Unfortunately, from the point of view of the rebels, in some sense, the siege and conquest of Jerusalem

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2396.022

and the destruction of the temple by the end of August was kind of the denouement or the inevitable outcome of the strategy which the rebels had adopted from the very beginning of the war, which was knowing that the Romans were coming to sort of back themselves into strongly defended places.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2422.952

In my book, I argue, easy for me to say, and I say this humbly, easy for me to say, but I think that that was probably not a wise strategy because it kind of guaranteed that they would draw the Romans to these fortified places. And the most fortified place, of course, was Jerusalem.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2446.121

So in the end, it wasn't an accident that the war ended with the siege and then the burning down of the temple itself at the end of August.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2521.286

It's the end of the temple and the defense of the temple. But in fact, it's not the end of the siege of Jerusalem. It's a horrible scene. I mean, reading Josephus' description of it, it's a terrible thing. But there were rebels who survived. even the destruction of the temple, and continued to fight in Jerusalem itself, both above ground and actually below ground as well.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2548.938

So they did keep on fighting. So the siege went on in Jerusalem, and Titus... unleashed his soldiers against their surviving civilian population of Jerusalem, and there were several more massacres within the city itself. You raised the issue of the analogy with Carthage before. I think it's a pretty good analogy.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

257.889

And that's the basic narrative account. Like a lot of people who have engagement with major historical events, Josephus decided afterward that he needed to write a a much longer book about his people. And so in the 80s and early 90s, he wrote this monstrously large history of the Jewish people, which is usually called the Antiquities, but in fact was called in Greek the Archaeologica.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2574.984

I think that we do have to imagine something like that at the end with a war, as it were, against the civilian population, many of whom would not have wanted to be there in the first place.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2597.936

massively important. This was the destruction of the center of the sacrificial cult of the Jews. In fact, there were other temples, but they weren't recognized by the priestly authorities. And there's a huge amount of controversy among ancient historians about whether the Romans intentionally burned down the temple or not.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2631.987

But one thing that I think people should keep in mind is that after the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, when Vespasian found out that there were Sicarii who were fomenting resistance in Egypt as well, he ordered

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2655.848

one of those kind of alternative satellite temples there in a place called Leontopolis, also to be destroyed, which is a sign that he wanted to eradicate the sacrificial cult of the Jews. He wanted to do it. So I think that this was a a massive event, obviously, in the history of the Jews.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2682.036

And I'm sure some of your audience members will know that after the destruction of the temple, Jewish scholars who had either escaped from Jerusalem or relocated to Yavna afterward on the coast, then spent literally hundreds of years debating what the significance of the destruction of the temple was.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2707.054

So it becomes incredibly important in Jewish history, but also the histories of Rome and Christianity. So in Rome, although Josephus in his works tries to argue that his friend Titus didn't want to destroy the temple,

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2727.341

We have several monuments and inscriptions in Rome in which Titus and Vespasian were quite happy to be bragging about the way that they had destroyed Jerusalem, which includes the temple, of course. So you can't have it both ways. So this becomes the support and the justification for the Flavian dynasty of Vespasian and Titus and Domitian changes the history of Rome.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2757.841

And then unfortunately, in the third and fourth centuries, Christian writers make the case that the destruction of the temple was kind of punishment for the, quote, Jews executing Jesus. And, you know, that very unfortunate, untrue and unfortunate slur goes on forever. literally hundreds and hundreds of years and poisons relations. We're still living with the consequences of that, alas.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2848.252

That's exactly right. Not only that, but some of the treasures taken from the temple were displayed by Vespasian in a kind of marble museum of things looted from peoples in the Roman Empire. And we know now that in the Flavian amphitheater, or actually outside of it, there was at least one inscription, probably more, which claimed that the amphitheater had been built from the spoils of this war.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2884.179

So as I say to my students, when you go to Rome and the amphitheater or Colosseum is the most visited archeological site in Italy, tens of millions of people every year, It is Rome. It's the metonym for Rome. Everyone that goes to Rome has a picture taken in front of that. It's a war memorial, but it's a triumphant memorial over the Jews. And I also, when I go there, which I do all the time,

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

291.794

And there's a section of it which deals a second time with the revolt. And toward the end of that, he decided that he needed to do what a lot of people, a lot of American generals do anyway, to write his life story, which was made as a kind of an addendum to the antiquities. And one of the tricky parts of reconstructing what really happened is that

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2918.129

I always think to myself, Rome had a large Jewish population at the time in the late first century. And every day they would be walking by this memorial to the eradication of their sanctuary and their defeat in war. And I asked my students to think about what the implications of that are historically.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

2946.673

And there was a third monument as well in the Circus Maximus, another place that had tens of millions of people pass through it from antiquity into the medieval period. in which Titus was celebrated for destroying Jerusalem and falsely claiming that he was the first one ever to capture it. So the Flavian dynasty used this war as its primary claim to fame and power.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

3020.97

That's exactly right. And there is no evidence that in any way the story and then the memory of what happened is going away. This is an inflection point, I believe, in human history. I think it's the most significant event of the first century and the one with the greatest historical consequences, the end of which... We have not yet seen.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

3059.123

And that's both kind of a challenge, but also a little bit humbling for all of us who are involved in it because people are invested in this story. and its significance in a way that they are not for any other event in antiquity that I know of. This story, as I say, is not over.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

3090.127

When you go to Jerusalem and you go to the so-called Western Wall, which is really part of the retaining wall for the Temple Mount that Herod had built, you're aware that you are at an active religious site. This is not like going to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus and seeing a column from that temple there, one lonely column. We are, in a sense, part of this story still.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

3122.469

And I think that that's why it has so much purchase and draws so much attention to this day.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

3145.838

Oh, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

319.321

There are some contradictions between his account of what went on, especially in the North during the war, in the life as compared to the war. And then finally, in the late 90s, He wrote another work, which was another defense of Judaism and Jews and their traditions, kind of against the slurs of this Greek intellectual called Appian.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

347.951

And again, there are kind of valuable pieces of information in that work as well. So we have to try to stitch everything together from those multiple sources written by Josephus. There also are accounts, shorter accounts in Greco-Roman sources like Suetonius and Tacitus and a third century Roman historian, Cassius Dio. And then there are coins and archaeological artifacts and inscriptions.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

383.185

And I just want to put a plug in for the epigraphical sources, which have been put together in an unbelievably... professional and useful corpus by a group of scholars in Israel and outside of Israel, which have English translations of all the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other language inscriptions throughout antiquity. So we have a lot of sources.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

412.579

The trick is always is making sense of them.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

460.017

Yeah, no, that's actually exactly right. In the case of the analogy between Thucydides and Josephus, it's probably not quite as strong because Thucydides failed to relieve a city that was under siege for the Athenians, whereas Josephus, after the siege and conquest of Jotapeta, where he was kind of the presiding general on the Jewish side,

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

487.12

He surrendered and he went over to the Roman side and actually accompanied Titus to the siege of Jerusalem in seven days. So you're 100% correct. There are problems with working with Josephus' text, which are, I think, almost unique in antiquity.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

511.073

And on that, also a colleague of mine, a very good Josephus scholar named Steve Mason has kind of brought out some of the rhetorical issues in Josephus' text. And then finally, very quickly, you know, Josephus has a sort of Deuteronomic view of history, which is essentially that God determines how everything is going to come out.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

536.249

And when the Jewish people are faithful to his commands, everything works out well. And when they don't, there's disaster. And that's sort of the frame that he puts all of this in for his readers. So we have to take all of those things into account.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

579.887

Right. So I think the starting point for understanding what happened and what went wrong really is just after the assassination of Julius Caesar. After Caesar was killed on the Ides of March in 44, his right-hand man, Mark Anthony, who had had some experience in this region, decided that

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

604.898

the point man for Roman policy should be this guy, Antipater II, who was an Edomian, and his sons, Herod, eventually Herod the Great, and his brother, Phacael, who originally were made tetrarchs, or rulers of a quarter of territory. But after a couple of years,

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

629.288

Anthony decided that he would push the Roman Senate to make Herod into the king of Judea, the Galilee, the so-called Pariah, which is the region to the east of the Jordan River, and then also South Syria. So in 40, Herod becomes king.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

651.321

And basically, from a strategic point of view, Hera's role was going to be kind of Rome's man to hold down this very valuable real estate, which was in between the Roman enemies, the Parthians to the east, and then, of course, the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. So it took Herod a few years to consolidate his role. But by 37, he was kind of in charge there.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

687.751

Right. So he's in charge from 37 until he dies in four. And in my book, I sort of argue that Probably the reason why Herod was successful was that he figured out that on the one hand, it would be important for him to keep order, which was always a kind of Roman requirement of their client kings.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

711.917

But he wasn't really that interested in policing the beliefs and the cultural practices of the people living in his kingdom, as long as they didn't cross the line into public actions. So that's kind of how he did it. Unfortunately, after he died, his heir, his son and heir, Archelaus, wasn't as successful.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

740.037

And after a relatively brief reign as Ethnarch, not king, Augustus kind of had enough of his incompetence and rusticated him to southern Gaul. And at that point, he decided that he would start sending out governors, handpicked governors who are called prefects to Judea to keep on top of things.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

786.86

Yeah, exactly. I mean, Pontius Pilate, of course, is the most famous of the prefix because, of course, according to the Gospel of John 1916, he's the guy that gave the order for the execution of somebody your audience may have heard of, Yeshua Nazarene, otherwise known as Jesus Christ. But in fact... Pontius Pilate had a lot of problems apart from that.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

815.761

And although his prefecture lasted for 10 years, he definitely made some mistakes which caused unrest. Like, for instance, at one point, trying to sneak some Roman military standards into Jerusalem, which probably had representations of the Roman emperors on them. So the record of the prefects who were in charge from 6 to 41 was mixed at best.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

847.331

And I would say that the same goes for the guys who were running the show in Rome, like our friend Gaius Caligula, whose reign was from 37 to 41, who had the brilliant idea of introducing a statue of himself into the temple itself. which undoubtedly would have caused a major rebellion, a first big Jewish revolt at the time, except that he was assassinated.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

872.521

So, you know, the early period from 6 to 41, there were problems. In 41, the Emperor Claudius decided to return Judea to a client king rule under this guy, Agrippa I. And he sort of went back to the Herodian model of trying to leave people alone as long as they didn't cause riots and things like that. But he died suddenly in 44.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

909.105

And at that point, the Romans decided again to send out governors, this time called procurators. And

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

917.691

It's really in the period from 44 to 66 when the revolt broke out that you can see things begin to spiral out of control as a result in large part of not only Roman mismanagement, but also increasing tensions between the different ethnic groups that were living side by side in most of the towns and cities in the region.

The Ancients

The Great Jewish Revolt

980.814

In fact, our friend Alexander the Great, in many ways, was responsible for kind of laying the groundwork for all of this. Because until Alexander went through there in 332, basically there were only indigenous peoples living in this area, speaking these Near Eastern languages. In Alexander's wake, his successors, so Lucas in this area and his successors,