Part 2: The Last Outpost In part one, we left off as the Roman army under the leadership of Vespasian and his son Titus mopped up their operations in the Galilee region and returned to their camps in Caesarea and Scythopolis. John of Gischala escaped the siege in Galilee and headed for Jerusalem. John was a persuasive and dynamic leader and took many other people with him as he escaped to Jerusalem only to abandon most of them on the way. When John arrived in Jerusalem, the civil war was in full swing with many factions among the Jews all fighting each other for control of the city. The Zealots had taken control of the Temple mount and elected their own High Priest. Still enraged by jealousy and coveting a leadership role denied him by Josephus in the Galilee, John deliberately misled the Zealot leaders by telling them that the deposed High Priest Ananus and his faction were about to turn over the city to the Romans. Taking this report as truth, the Zealots realized they needed help and called for an army from Idumada, a land to the south, to come to Jerusalem and assist in preventing this betrayal of the city to the Romans. The army from Idumada was well known for their brutality and once they entered the city, went on a rampage. The Temple itself and the surrounding area as well as the entire city became a blood bath. Ananus was killed and denied burial. The ordinary people were caught in the crossfire between the warring factions and just struggled to stay alive. The Idumada army soon realized that the reports that the city was about to be turned over to the Romans was an elaborate hoax so most of them left the city in disgust. John of Gischala, judging the moment to be right, broke off his alliance with the Zealots, forming his own faction with several thousands of followers. The events leading up to and surrounding this battle among the various factions in Jerusalem took place in the late spring of 68 AD. At the same time, Vespasian was busy subduing towns and villages around Jerusalem. In Rome, Emperor Nero had been declared a public enemy by the Roman Senate and committed suicide. Word of Nero s death reached Vespasian on June 9 th and he suspended his campaign to await instructions from a new Emperor. During the follow year, Rome was in turmoil with four Emperors succeeding Nero all of whom were destined to die by assassination or suicide.
With Jerusalem in the midst of a massive civil war and Rome in turmoil, the believers of Yeshua as Messiah, a movement among the Jews called The Way at the time, saw this massive unrest as a sign of the end of the age. They remembered the words of Yeshua as recorded by the disciple Matthew in chapter 24: Matthew 24:12-22 NKJV 12 "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. 13 "But he who endures to the end shall be saved. 14 "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. 15 "Therefore when you see the 'abomination of desolation,' spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place" (whoever reads, let him understand), 16 "then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 "Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. 18 "And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. 19 "But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! 20 "And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 "For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22 "And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened. This was indeed a time of great tribulation in and around Jerusalem. The common people were just trying to get by and stay alive with all the battles raging in the city. They were actively looking for the promised Messiah to come, and the believers in Yeshua were certain that this was the time for his return. Many of the believers began to flee the city rather than take sides in the civil war or fight beside the rebels against Rome. After the death of Vitellius, the last of the four short-lived Roman Emperors, the pro-vespasian forces, led by one of Vespasian s other sons, Mucianus, lobbied the senate to declare Vespaisian as Emperor on December 21 st 69AD. Vespasian was so impressed that one of Josephus prophecies had come true, that Vespasian freed Josephus. He then left for Rome to take up his duties as Emperor leaving his son Titus in command in the province of Judea. The Roman historian Suetonius who was most likely in the company of Titus at some point in this conflict in Judea or later in Rome recorded many details about Titus. Suetonius records that Titus was a skilled horseman and archer. In the final assault on Jerusalem, Titus killed twelve defenders with successive arrows. Other historians report that Titus was a Soldier s General. He was known to gain
absolute allegiance from the troops in his command by mingling with his men during marching or work details. In preparation for the final assault on Jerusalem, Titus army was dispersed around the city with three legions on the West and one on the East on the Mount of Olives. During this year of unrest while the situation in Rome was sorted out and Vespasian was crowned Emperor, the civil war in Jerusalem intensified. A rebel leader by the name of Simon Bar-Giora entered the city forming a another major faction in what settled into a three-way all out civil war with John of Gischala and Eleazar of the Zealots leading the other major groups. This year of inactivity by the Romans had not cost the Romans anything. The Jews were very busy destroying themselves. Finally realizing that the only way to defeat the Romans was to cooperate, the three major factions among the Jewish rebels reached an uneasy and precarious truce. The rebels decided to attack the Roman legion camped on the Mount of Olives. The rebels caught the Romans by surprise, inflicted heavy casualties until Titus arrived with other forces from the West. Before taking the offensive, Titus sent Josephus, who was working for Titus as interpreter, to ask the people of Jerusalem to discuss terms of surrender. Josephus was met with nothing but angry refusals. This was almost an exact repeat of history from the time of King Hezekiah when the Rabshakah asked the people of Jerusalem to surrender to the Assyrian army as recorded in 2 Kings 18:17-37 The day after their angry response to Josephus plea for them to surrender, a number of Jews, pretending to be Roman sympathizers, came out of the city and mixed with several of the Roman soldiers away from their posts toward the city gates. This group of Jewish rebels then attacked the soldiers, killing many of them with the rest escaping back to their garrison. This small victory, among others, served to encourage the rebels, especially after Titus had the surviving soldiers executed for cowardice. In spite of this regained confidence, the uneasy truce between the various rebel factions began to break down and the infighting resumed. Titus was growing very impatient with the situation and decided to put an end to the fighting in the city. He and some of his officers, along with Josephus once again as interpreter, approached the city to discuss a peace proposal. Once again they were met with an attack during which one of Titus men was struck with an arrow in the shoulder.
This angered Titus, and he resolved to mount an all-out assault on the city. He ordered a survey of the city walls and defenses in preparation for the siege and assault. Titus gathered timbers and ordered the construction of earthen platforms for siege engines. A battering ram was constructed on a point on the Western portion of a newly constructed third wall. Two 75 foot siege towers were used to attack the Jewish rebels attempting to interfere with the battering ram. After fifteen days of non-stop pounding, the ram did its job and the wall was breached. The Rebel forces had retreated behind the second wall and the Romans found little to no resistance as they established new camps in the northern part of the city as they prepared to assault the second wall. By this time it was late in May of 70 AD and most of the members of The Way, reacting to the prophecies in Yeshua s own words, had abandoned the rebels and fled the city. Titus immediately went to work on the second wall, but the Temple and the Palace of Antonia still had walls of their own. The rebels mounted almost constant counterattacks using virtually every known method and then some, but they were always rebuffed by the Romans. For weeks both sides fought all day long and then remained in their armor overnight. They were always ready for battle, and thus, unable to sleep. It took only four days for Titus army to breach the second wall. Wanting to leave as much of the city intact as possible, Titus ordered that the remaining second wall be left standing. However this allowed the Rebels to attack the Romans in the narrow passage ways and streets, encircling many of them and inflicting heavy casualties. Several days later, the Romans breached the second wall again in another location and this time Titus ordered the wall to be completely destroyed. Titus relaxed the siege for several days parading his armies around in a display of Roman power to give the rebels a chance to reconsider their situation. Titus again had Josephus deliver many appeals to the rebels to surrender but to no avail. After allowing himself to be captured in the Galilee and now working for the Romans, the Jews regarded Josephus as a contemptible traitor and ignored him completely. The remaining Jewish rebels trusted in weapons rather than God and chose to fight on despite the overwhelming Roman forces. The rebels, by this time, had turned the Temple Mount into a fortress and spent as much effort fighting each other as they did the Romans who were at their gates. Despite the overwhelming odds of successfully repulsing the Romans, the rebels fought on showing tremendous resourcefulness and courage. The Romans spent the next seventeen days building four earthen platforms, two of them at the walls
surrounding the fortress of Antonia where the Rebels under the leadership of John of Gischala were holed up. John of Gischala came up with the ingenious plan of tunneling under the wall and the adjacent Roman siege platforms. They dug out large cavities under the siege platforms supporting the ceilings with wooden beams which, once completed, they set afire. When the burning beams collapsed, the earthen platforms along with the associated siege engines and towers collapsed into the pits and were destroyed. Concerned and infuriated with these setbacks, Titus called a council of war seeking advice from his officers. Food and other supplies in the city were already in short supply, and the warring factions among the Jewish rebels had long since burned the granaries in an effort to prevent them from falling into the hands of rival factions. People were sneaking in and out of the city through a series of tunnels, bringing in whatever supplies they could carry. These tunnels were also used to send out detachments to harass the Roman garrisons and steal their supplies. In order to cut off this smuggling of food and supplies, the Romans managed to build 4.5 miles of walls and 13 small forts to surround the city in a matter of just three days! The Romans also began the rebuilding of the siege platforms at the fortress of Antonia as a stepping stone to taking the Temple mount itself. The Romans rebuilt the platforms next to the walls of the Fortress of Antonia and began the process of using battering rams against its walls. The rams were making little progress against the massive walls of the fortress, but in the middle of the night, one of the tunnels dug by John of Gischala s men a few weeks earlier collapsed and took down a section of the wall with it. The rebels were able to hastily build a defensive replacement in its place, but just two days later the Roman soldiers were able to scale it in the middle of the night and kill the sentries. The two forces engaged in an intense battle which lasted well into the late hours of the next afternoon. Roman soldiers were now able to gain access to the Temple courts through the fortress of Antonia and fighting even took place in the inner courts of the Temple where no Gentiles had ever set foot. Titus sent Josephus to implore John of Gischala to abandon the Temple Mount and take the battle to the fields outside. Once again, Josephus got nowhere. With the intense battle resumed, the Romans were pushed back and unable to gain continued access to the Temple Mount through the Fortress of Antonia. For six days the battle ensued with no gain by the Romans. They tried to undermine the Temple mount walls and breach them by climbing over but to no avail. The Rebels were able to repel every attempt.
During this final battle for Jerusalem, many fires were set on the Temple mount by both the Rebels and the Romans. The Jews burned the colonnade on the northern perimeter of the outer court adjacent to the Fortress of Antonia and the Romans burned another colonnade. The Rebels lured Roman legionaries onto the roof of yet another colonnade and set it ablaze watching the Roman soldiers die in the flames. Finding the Temple impregnable, Titus ordered the gates to the Temple Mount burned and a road constructed to the gates. According to the account of this battle recorded by Josephus, Titus did not initially want to destroy or burn the Temple itself. However, during the intense battle for control of the Temple mount, some burning materials were thrown through the doors of the Temple and soon the building was in flames. The rebellion was ultimately crushed and the Temple utterly destroyed. The victors overran the lower city setting it on fire and eventually the upper city fell as well. Some rebels escaped and many others tried to hide in various places including the sewers. John of Gischala was captured and sentenced to life in prison. The Romans razed the once great city of Jerusalem and totally decimated the Temple mount. Just as Yeshua had prophesied some 40 years earlier as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Romans did not leave one stone upon another that was not thrown down. In the next issue we will continue the story of this first Jewish Revolt against Rome with the last holdout of the Rebels at the mountain fortress of Massada.