Judean campaign to become emperor in 69 CE(Josephus,B.J.7.63–74)
came the spectacle of Titus’s triumphal march, with Judean rebel leaders
being led through the streets to their execution; the sudden influx of Judean
slaves; the issue of a commemorative (Judea Capta) coin series; and the
erection of the monumental Arch of Titus in the city centre. These displays
can only have made life uncomfortable for Roman Judeans and sympa-
thizers. We do not know whether there were reprisals against Judeans in
Rome itself during or after the war, but it should not surprise us if there
were, for Josephus claims that “hatred of the Judeans was everywhere at
its height” when the war began, and in other major centres this hatred
had resulted in massacres (B.J.7.51, 57, 367–368).
Our clearest evidence for anti-Judean sentiments in Rome is the sim-
ple fact that Josephus devoted so much energy, immediately after his arrival
there, to writing an account of the revolt that would refute current anti-
Judean stories. Josephus claims that, before his own history, the only
accounts in circulation were written by people who either flattered the
Romans or hated the Judeans (B.J.1.2), which meant in either case an
anti-Judean bias. Josephus writes because he considers it “monstrous”
(B.J.1.6) that the truth should be lost to these writers, who were doing out-
rage to the truth (B.J.1.4). Josephus elaborates: “They desire to represent
the Romans as a great nation, and yet they continually depreciate and dis-
parage the actions of the Judeans. But I fail to see how the conquerors of
a puny people deserve to be accounted great” (B.J.1.7–8).
To find out more about these other accounts, which are all lost, perhaps
the best we can do is to read Bellum judaicumin a mirror, so to speak. This
is a dangerous practice for particulars, but it should work for the main
themes. It turns out that Josephus is greatly concerned (a) to dissociate the
revolt from the national character, by blaming it on a small handful of
aberrant rebels who have now been punished, and (b) to show that it was
the Judeans’ own God who punished the nation for the rebels’ impiety.
We might reasonably suppose, therefore, that the Roman authors in ques-
tion had argued the reverse: the revolt was symptomatic of the national
character, and the outcome was a victory of the Roman gods.
In fact, these very themes appear in later Roman authors who deal
with the revolt. Tacitus disparages the Judean character as the context for
his story of the revolt (Hist.5.1–13). Philostratus’s Euphrates likewise com-
plains, in relation to the war, that, “The Judeans have long been in revolt,
not only against the Romans, but against humanity” (Vit. Apoll.5.33). Cel-
sus, in the footsteps of Cicero (Flac.28.69) long before him, appeals to the
Judean defeat in refutation of Judaism’s claims to know a uniquely pow-
nora
(Nora)
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