Rome and Jerusalem: the Clash of Ancient Civilizations by Martin Goodman
London: Penguin, 2007 ISBN 9780140291278
What a book! This magisterial work is so much more than the title and prologue might suggest. Using the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 by the Roman Empire as a focal point, Martin Goodman has written a book that takes the reader through both Roman and Jewish society before and after the cataclysm of the destruction of the Temple during the Roman sack of Jerusalem.
With wide-ranging and deeply researched chapters on how both Rome and Jerusalem saw themselves (and others), how they governed, how family life was lived and more, this book is a compendium of what life was like in Rome and its Empire in the First Century AD. The amount of detail is staggering: this book is like a rich dessert after a big meal - delicious, but to be partaken of in small servings (it took me nearly two months to get through, which is about 4-5 times longer than I would usually take to read a book of this size).
Goodman makes a case that the destruction of Jerusalem was not initially due to any great Roman hatred of Jews, or the Jewish faith, but more an unfortunate by-product of Roman political maneuvering, especially Vespasian's rise to power after the death of Nero and the year of the four emperors.
In the first section of the book, where Goodman gives the reader the detail of both Roman and Jewish lives and activities, he makes it clear that both the Romans and the Jewish sides did not have a natural enmity. From the Roman side, the Jews and the Jewish faith were seen as exotic and quaint, perhaps more so than other conquered peoples, but not in a threatening way. In fact some Romans took up some of the Jewish ideas, including resting on the Sabbath. While there were wobbles in the relationship when Caligula ordered that a statue of himself be installed in the Jewish Temple, fortunately Caligula died before his order was implemented. While the Romans thought it odd that the Jewish people only had one God, they generally let them alone. From the Jewish side, they were happy to pray to their God for the health and good fortune of the Emperor, but not to worship him.
So how did the peace collapse? Like most revolutions, the core problem was taxation. This led to a raid on the Temple, which caused a more widespread uprising. Nero sent Vespasian to quell the province, initially avoiding Jerusalem. Vespasian was called back to Rome, which was in disarray after Nero's death, and he left his son Titus in Judea to continue the campaign. The Jewish side was in disarray after factional fighting, and Titus launched an assault on Jerusalem to provide a triumph for his father, as that was felt to be politically necessary after his accession to power. Titus assaulted the city, causing many casualties, but initially avoided destroying the Temple. There is a school of thought - one that Goodman is inclined to believe - that it was never the Roman's intention to destroy the Temple, and that its destruction was an accident. The fact that Roman troops rarely desecrated shrines of other peoples they fought lends weight to this theory.
However once the Temple was destroyed it was politic for Titus and Vespasian to tell the story that the destruction was always intended. Of course that also meant that the Jewish people in the Empire were under persecution, not necessarily for things they'd done (other groups rebelled from time-to-time under the Empire but weren't persecuted in the same way), but to assist in the projection of Imperial power. The end of the war in AD70 was not the end of Jewish suffering - they were forced to pay a yearly tax, and of course they were not allowed to rebuild. In fact Jerusalem was made free of Jews, another punishment. While the Jews for many years held out hope of rebuilding the Temple, to this day it remains a ruin.
Goodman shows us that it was the political shenanigans in Rome, from Vespasian all the way through to Constantine, that kept the Jews as a repressed and un-loved people. These political issues led to the Christians moving from seeing themselves as a sect of the Jewish faith, to something in opposition to Judaism. With the power of Rome directed against the Jews, early Christians did not want to be associated with them. Thus the birth of Antisemitism can be seen to have occurred through the need for Vespasian to have a triumph to cement his new-found imperial stature, and the Jews being the unfortunate victims at the time.
This book is an absolute treasure-trove of information and thinking on Rome, Jerusalem, the Jewish faith and early Christianity. It has been for me both eye-opening and mind-widening.
Highly recommended.
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