if we move forward about 40 45 years from the destruction of the temple and the fall of masada
we get to another period of violence called the ketos rebellion now it's a very mysterious
kind of rebellion we have scattered data points from different sources that all reveal something
about this rebellion but we're not really sure about much of the the most essential questions
but we should say one thing to begin with uh many scholars argue whether or not this is
really the second roman jewish war or something different it's basically a primarily diaspora
phenomenon it's something that you see primarily outside of israel in other words and not so much
in judea itself but let's try and understand at least some things about this ketosis rebellion
the kitos rebellion occurs at the very end of the rule of the emperor trajan the five decades
since the destruction of the temple have been absolutely terrible for the jews there is a
tremendous amount of post-destruction trauma that is definitely spiritual nature i mean
the the jews had invested all of their spiritual understanding of how they related to the infinite
through the temple and even when the temple was corrupted by a priesthood that was essentially
something that could be bought from the romans there was still this idea that somehow the temple
was the hinge upon which the entire universe turned and now with that temple gone what exactly
would judaism do what would judaism you know look like uh it was a period of phenomenal
demographic upheaval you have literally tens of thousands of jews taken off in slavery to rome
you have refugees who are scattered throughout the entire region on the eastern mediterranean uh the
iberian and greek peninsulas around the uh black sea littoral and further east through mesopotamia
and you don't have the same kind of like center in israel as you had before would the jewish people
even survive this tremendous trauma the romans for their part did many things to make things
worse for the jews they certainly want to stamp out any possibility of a future revolt and so
there were all kinds of measures put in place to try and demean the jews both spiritually
psychologically demographically and financially the fiskus judaicus was instituted and this was a
uh a replacement of the mandatory mahatsi sashekal the half shekel tax that jews had from biblical
times paid all over the world toward the upkeep of the temple in jerusalem the fiscal judaicas tax
took that money and made it mandatory but instead of devoting it to the upkeep of the temple in
jerusalem it was directed to rome and to the upkeep of a temple for jupiter i mean really
offensive kind of thing for the jews and at the same time the messianic ferment that we
saw with the birth of christianity was still continuing in fact it would take another couple
of decades before it would have its final uh you know defeat at least in the second century
under park aqua now trajan himself uh towards the end of his rule became involved in a very
heavy war with the parthian empire which was the persian empire that controlled the babylonia
the parthian empire would ultimately fall and in their successor empire the sasanians that's
when the main elements of the talmud would be put together but at any rate trajan waged war
against the parthians and he actually penetrated all the way to the very bottom of mesopotamia that
is this region here that you can see it's sort of like a yellowish color going right down to the
persian gulf this was briefly controlled by roman troops now what's interesting for our
purposes and connecting it to the quito's rebellion is that the jews in mesopotamia
apparently sided with the parthians against the roman invaders which is perhaps not surprising
jews had been living in babylonia since the 6th century before the common era meaning they've been
there for 800 years they certainly have roots sunk deep into that territory and when the romans came
in invading they they took up arms to defend their homeland alongside the parthians this obviously
was not taken very lightly by the romans and lucius quietus who was a commander in charge of
the region was put in charge of also devastating the jewish population and quashing any resistance
to roman rule so this is one element of the quitos rebellion is lucious quietus early participation
there will be another chapter to his story as well and maybe i should give it away that the
word ketos in the ketos rebellion is probably from his surname lucius quietus that's probably
how we get quito so it's named essentially after him perhaps because of his notorious activity
uh putting down the jewish rebels in mesopotamia or i shouldn't say the rebels the the jewish
defenders of mesopotamia but it could also have to do with his later activity in judea but as i
mentioned earlier this is a diaspora affair was certainly not limited to mesopotamia with the
the advance into parthian empire territory in the year 114. we begin to see it also develop
on the coast of north africa in particular let's have a look at this map here where you can see the
extent of the roman empire at the time of trajan's death in 117 117 first of all we have the activity
in mesopotamia which is related to the invasion of the parthian empire but then we have some
interesting things happening in what would be today libya the ketos rebellion had major
activity in this town the pronunciation i know some people are really sticklers for pronunciation
i've looked it up and i've heard it pronounced as cyrene in english in greek it would have
been something like kurenei so i'm probably going to say qurane and i'll probably be
wrong but you know this wouldn't be the first time at any rate this is one of the locations
of major rebel activity during this period and then we also have significant activity throughout
egypt and then finally in cyprus and once all of this diaspora activity is discussed we're going to
look very briefly at judea where of course there was the polomos quitos the quitos rebellion itself
as described in the talmud let's look at kirene first the various sources that refer to this
assert that there may have been some kind of messianic issue to this because there is an
individual who is referred to as in one source and andreas in a different source it is possible that
this is the same person it was not at all uncommon in the ancient period especially in in greek and
roman areas for jews to have two names a hebrew name and a greek name or uh you know a local name
i myself have two names right i have a hebrew name that my friends know me by and i have henry which
i publish under and stuff like that so anyways but he referred to himself in one of these sources
as a king so that implies some kind of unusual political although some of the church historians
suggest it was sort of a false messianic reign uh and under this lucoa slash andreas
there was a report of jewish attacks on roman temples and public buildings in particular it's
an interesting aspect of this revolt is that it seems to be one that is definitely attacking rome
and again remember it's just a few decades since the destruction of the temple and there are a lot
of jews who are very angry and let us not forget there are a lot of jews who were originally rebels
in the first war who have fled to various cities in the diaspora and they could be influencing this
uprising again in about the year 115. now one of our most important historians that tells us
a little bit about the quitos rebellion is cassius dio he is a roman historian who was active at the
end of the second and the first half of the third century and uh he's great for a lot of things but
there are certain areas where you just don't know how seriously to take him so for example
when he describes this rebellion in kurenei he puts it like this and just listen to this language
meanwhile the jews in the region of kirene had put a certain andreas at their head
and were destroying both the romans and the greeks they would here we go they would eat the flesh
of their victims make belts uh for themselves of their entrails anoint themselves with their blood
and wear their skins for clothing but that's not all folks many they sawed in two from the
head downwards others they gave to wild b still others they forced to fight as gladiators i mean
it's hard to take this seriously it's just so bizarre and so jewish certainly jews have
gone to war and it's not impossible to imagine atrocities happening when jews like any people
go to war but these are over the top and in fact when you look at cassius dios's other treatments
of barbarian attacks on rome they also appear quite you know trey i wanted to read for you uh
the passage that he where he describes how the the britons uh deal with the attack from the romans
and oh my gosh i can't even look at that because it's it's actually pornographic in its nature so
just trust me cassius dios is liable to exaggerate for dramatic effect egypt also saw widespread
rebellions between the years 115 and 117 a widespread jewish rebellions who were apparently
the jews were taking advantage of the absence of roman forces who had gone off to fight against the
parthian empire in mesopotamia and once again it's simple similar kinds of targets uh temples shrines
for example the shrine of nemesis at memphis uh public works roadways things like that it seems
like the jews rebelling are really directing their attacks specifically at the roman empire seems
to have a very political motive uh the economic motive does not seem to rise to the surface and
other than those messianic references it seems to be something that is really an attempted uprising
it is fascinating to think though like why are the jews all over the diaspora do they really think
they're going to throw rome off but they obviously are somewhat coordinated in doing this there was
of course a harsh military response from trajan who came back with heavy forces and many killed
this is the period when the great synagogue of alexandria which the talmud says was so large that
in order to to know when to answer on main to the person leading this the prayers they had to wave
big flags you could see the flags and know that it was up to that part but this is the period when
the great synagogue of egypt of alexandria egypt was destroyed uh jewish property was seized and
and basically at this point by the time we get to the end of the parthian war the jewish community
in north africa goes into a steep decline and it will not rise again for several centuries we can
say the same thing about the island of cyprus as we saw earlier in cassius dio's discussion and no
jew may set foot on that island that is cyprus but even if one of them is driven upon its shores by a
storm he was put to death uh jews were banned from the island after a rebellion there and in fact
uh this statement is supported because there's no other evidence of jews ever landing on this island
until the fourth century so hundreds of years of jews gone from the region what happened in
judea proper this is where the talmud refers to this phrase pulmosquitos the quitos rebellion
we know that lucius quietus you remember him from mesopotamia right he was the person who put down
the jewish rebellion he is sent back by trajan and appointed as governor in judea we don't know
a lot about how he conducted himself in that area but we know that there was at least the talmud
refers to some acts of violence and we know that lucius quietus brought in a second roman legion to
support his activities there i wish we knew more about this particular rebellion it is fascinating
to see that it takes place across the diaspora it represents something we haven't talked about
in any detail yet but we will be coming back to it in a few lectures but we have to move on to a much
more powerful and significant rebellion that had a deep mark left big scars on the jewish psyche
and that is the barkakba rebellion next thank you very much for watching you