10. Judaism without a Temple
The destruction of Jerusalem by Roman troops in 70 ce demanded a
religious explanation. If God, the supreme ruler of the universe, had
allowed such a disaster to be visited on his people, it must be as part of
a divine plan. The author of an apocalyptic text which purports to
describe the prophetic visions of Ezra, the priest and scribe of the fifth
century bce, but which must in fact have been composed in the last
decades of the first century ce, envisaged divine vengeance on the
Roman empire. He pictured Rome as a three- headed eagle destined for
destruction during the last days which had now come upon the earth:
The Most High has looked at his times; now they have ended, and his ages
have reached completion. Therefore you, eagle, will surely disappear, you
and your terrifying wings, your most evil little wings, your malicious
heads, your most evil talons, and your whole worthless body, so that the
whole earth, freed from your violence, may be refreshed and relieved, and
may hope for the judgement and mercy of him who made it.But we have no idea how many other Jews shared in this eschatological
hope. IV Ezra is preserved only through copies and translations made
by Christians, among whom the text proved immensely popular, pre-
sumably in part because of their strong interest in the imminent end
times, but it is not known whether the text held similar appeal for non-
Christian Jews.^1
For ordinary Jews, such as Josephus, the obvious explanation for dis-
aster was already predicted in biblical texts about the curses which
awaited Israel for failing to keep to the covenant with God, and in the
numerous promises of redemption when Israel repents of her sins. The
current abyss of misery was simply part of a regular cycle of sin, pun-
ishment, repentance, forgiveness and restoration traced through
numerous generations in the biblical books of Kings. By implication, a