The Ancient History of Israel and the Holy Land - Historian Barry Strauss

28:15He does make a hash of it, absolutely. And, you know, his fear of his own sons is the undoing of his dynasty. Because after he goes, he is replaced by a troika, three of his sons. Augustus isn't really all that impressed by any of them. One rules over the central part of the kingdom, the main part of the kingdom. One rules over Galilee and part of the Golan, and another rules over part of the Golan and parts that are in Lebanon and Syria. So the kingdom is divided up among the three of them. And immediately when Herod dies, this is the signal for a Jewish rebellion against Rome. And they're very unimpressed by the main son who's going to replace him.

29:02And the governor of Syria, who is a young, vigorous, very good soldier, immediately comes down to Judea and suppresses the rebellion quite brutally, ending up the last act as he crucifies 2 ,000 people around the walls of Jerusalem. That makes the point. But Augustus gets the picture that the guy who he's appointed to replace Herod just isn't all that impressive. And after about a decade, he fires him. You're out and sends him to exile in the south of France. Not too bad, but not like being the ruler of Judea. And now Judea, the main part of it, becomes a Roman province in the year six, which is a signal for another revolt, which is also repressed quite handily.

29:51And I think it's worth mentioning at this point, because one of the things that I read in the book, actually, was how this society, so the Jewish society, the elites weren't the military. They weren't people you would normally associate with being the people making the decisions. Right. They were the religious people. They were the priests. Yes. So, I mean, there are Jews who are in the military. Herod has an army which consists of, has many different peoples, but there's a large Jewish contingent in it. But this is a society that's quite different than some of the societies that the Romans conquer.

30:28So when the Romans conquer the Greeks, they conquer people who are pretty similar to them in their religion, in their militarism, in their desire to build public buildings and to hold public office and succeed in that way. The Jews are different. I mean, this is a society in which exactly as you say, Francis, it's a priestly society that has a different attitude towards what they want to get ahead. Now, that being said, there are Jews who assimilate and there are Jews who want to be like the Romans, succeed in Roman society. There's still two Jewish rulers in the northern part of the country. They collaborate with Rome.

31:10Herod sends his sons to Rome to be educated. So, and many of the wealthy are quite content to work with Rome. But ordinary people are different.

31:22Francis Foster:So, Herod dies. His sons, the less useful of them, take over. Eventually, Rome goes, let's not do any of this. You're going to be controlled by us. What time period are we up to at this point? What year? So, we're up to the year 6 AD, 6 CE. Quite an important event is approaching, if my history doesn't… Yes. I think you're referring to the mission of Jesus Christ. Yes. Yes. So, Jesus, we think, was born in the year 4 BC, the last year of Herod's rule. And we think his mission comes to a culmination around the year 30 AD. um and um jesus is there are this is a period it's the golden age of apocalyptic vision and the golden age of messianism in jewish culture that is by apocalypse the idea that um the world as we know it is going to come to an end and that an age of redemption is going to begin and that the kingdom of god is going to begin and what does that mean what's the kingdom of what's the kingdom Well, it means, first of all, that the house of David will be restored, and that a descendant of King David will become the King Messiah, and that He will bring in redemption, that God will rule, that everyone will recognize the validity of the one God, that the Jewish people will be free and independent and able to practice their religion without rule by Romans or anyone else.

32:59and there are various figures who claim to be the Messiah. Now, the Messiah was thought to be a human being, a descendant of the house of David, not a figure who is more than human, not a divine figure, certainly of divine inspiration, but a human being. And there are many people who believe this at the time. Jesus is in some ways very similar to these figures. I mean, he is someone who says that the kingdom of God is at hand, that the redemption is at hand, and he is going to usher it in. But unlike some of these figures, he is not an advocate of armed rebellion against Rome. Far from it. He's an advocate of spiritual resistance, spiritual rebellion, if you will.

33:54Jesus is like and different than other figures from this period. So one thing about the Jews, the Jews in the first century of our era are different than modern Jews in some ways, but in other ways, they're just like modern Jews. And one of the things about them is that they dispute with each other. They disagree about the right thing. And there's already been for well over a century, there's been a group of Jews who said, We don't recognize the legitimacy of the ruling dynasty, the descendants of the Maccabees, who also appointed themselves high priests. These people are totally illegitimate.

34:29They're not descended from the house of David. We quit. And they moved to the desert, to a place called Qumran, which is in the Judean desert near the Dead Sea. And there they had a community. They live in other places as well. They're called the Essenes. And they're the people who've left us the Dead Sea Scrolls, these fantastic documents that open a window into Jewish sectarian belief in this period. There are other sects within Judaism. And Jesus and his followers, like those people, have real problems with the temple in Jerusalem and what's going on there. Jesus preaches that your sins can be forgiven by following him.

35:14You don't have to sacrifice at the temple anymore. and that the temple will be destroyed and rebuilt in the time of the redemption. These are heretical doctrines from the point of view of the priests. And Jesus also, after his mission in the Galilee, well, his mission in the Galilee, Jesus is Galilean. He comes from Nazareth. He may have been born in Bethlehem. Believers would say he was. He gets in trouble with the king who rules, the prince who rules the Galilee. But he goes to Jerusalem, famously, the culmination of his mission. And he goes to Jerusalem, not at any old time. He goes during Passover.

35:58Passover is the festival of freedom. And it's traditional time for rebels to show themselves. It's when the Romans have extra troops in Jerusalem because they're expecting trouble. And from their point of view and from the point of view of the high priest, Jesus is trouble. And that, of course, leads to the trial and to the crucifixion, and believers would say, to the resurrection. So all of this is going on at the same time. And afterwards, Jesus' followers, heartbroken, regroup and decide, well, what does this mean? We thought that Jesus was the Messiah and was going to bring in the kingdom of God.

36:38But now, something different is going on. And they believe that Jesus comes back and speaks to them and sets them on a mission to continue his mission. So it's the beginning of what becomes Christianity. In the earlier period, scholars would refer to them as followers of Christ or followers of Jesus. In the beginning, they thought of themselves as Jews. But then things changed later on.

37:03Francis Foster:And this is kind of going back a little bit. but you mentioned this thing about Jews being similar to the way some are now. You know, this thing, three Jews, five opinions, that kind of thing. The rebellious nature of that area and that province, was that because everybody was constantly trying to free themselves of the shackles of Rome or other major powers in the region? Or is this group of people very particularly rebellious? Yes and no. First of all, there are lots of rebellious groups in the Roman Empire. So, the Jews are not unusual in that way. But they are unusual for a couple of reasons.

37:41So, first of all, um, put yourself in their shoes. You've been under the thumb of foreign rulers for centuries. And then, suddenly, you win your independence. And then, about a century later, it's snatched away. That must have been devastating and humiliating for them under those circumstances. Secondly, you have this kind of engine of apocalypticism, saying the kingdom of God is at hand, redemption is at hand, everything that you see here is going to be swept away and the golden age is coming. So they have that. But they also have something else, and that is the diaspora. And the diaspora makes them, they're not the only people in the ancient world to have a diaspora, but what's unusual about their diaspora is that one of its feet is in the Parthian Empire.

38:32And there are still Jews in Judea who say, you know, we were better off under the Iranians. Ironically, ironically today, you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran is Israel's greatest enemy. But in antiquity, and actually through most of history, Iran has had very good relations with the Jewish people and with the state of Israel when there's been a Jewish state there. So there's still plenty of people in Judea who are saying, the Romans, you know, we have an alternative. That alternative is Parthia. And Parthia is Rome's chief rival. It's the only empire left standing in the ancient world who drives the Romans crazy.

39:13And the Romans fight the Parthians and I should say the Iranians because eventually there's another empire that replaces the Parthians. They fight the Iranians for centuries. They're still fighting the Iranians when the Roman Empire is gone, and it's the Byzantine Empire. So the fact that the Jews have what they might see as the Iranian safety valve, that's also one of the reasons they rebel and why they're constantly trying to get help from the Parthian Empire. We get asked this all the time. Which VPN do you use at trigonometry? The answer is simply CyberGhost VPN. CyberGhost isn't some fringe tool.

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41:11Look, I'm not a Roman apologist. I don't even think that's a thing. Anyway. It will be a thing. It will be a thing. I'm sure someone will clip it and point me at the place and say he's a Roman apologist and that'll mean someone tries to cancel me somewhere. But genuinely, generally speaking, if you think about all the empires, particularly at that time, a little bit before, a little bit after, was it that bad being a Roman citizen? No, it wasn't that bad being a Roman citizen. but it depends what you want. If you want to be independent and you can't be independent anymore, that's not so great.

41:48And also, if your country has been Romanized in ways that you don't like, that's also not so great. So, you know, before the Romans, you think, hey, this is the Holy Land. And now you've got the Romans and, oops, there's a pagan city here, there's a pagan city there, there's a pagan city there. You don't like that either. You also don't like paying taxes. And there are Roman troops. I mean, you had to pay taxes before, but now you're paying taxes to the Romans. There are Roman troops, and there are incidents that happen. There are Roman troops who will tear up Torah scrolls. There's a famous or infamous, almost funny incident where a Roman soldier moons some Jewish people, and that drives them crazy.

42:34So there's this stuff going on. Still, nonetheless, it's not that bad until, if we jump ahead a bit, we get...

42:44Francis Foster:Wait, before we jump ahead a bit, one more other question on this. Prior to the emergence of Jesus of Nazareth and later, obviously, Christianity, are the Jews the only people in this part of the world who are monotheistic who believe there is one God? Yes. Is that a big dividing line that causes friction? I don't think so. Okay, so I'm not the only, other scholars would disagree.

43:11But, and also it should be said that the Iranians, as Zoroastrians, they're leaning towards a kind of monotheism, but it's not as monotheistic as the Jews. The Romans make fun of the Jews. Look at those people. They don't have a decent statue of their god. Some of them will complain. They call the Jews atheists because the Jews don't believe in the gods. But honestly, the Romans are among the great pragmatists of history. They don't really care who you worship, as long as you're not a political problem. And one of the great signs of this, and one of the really clever things that Herod did, was he knew that he couldn't have a temple of Augustus in Jerusalem.

43:51But he does the next best thing. He has daily sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem on behalf of the Roman emperor. And those sacrifices are paid for by Augustus and his successors. it shows that, you know, they're shaking hands. These two sides are getting along. It's really a brilliant solution.

44:11Francis Foster:Well, the reason I ask is, obviously, we live in a world in which it's sort of almost uniformly accepted that monotheism is, you know, superior. Right. But the Jews didn't, at this point, think, well, we're better than the Romans because we've got one God. Oh, of course they did. Oh, they did. And the Romans thought they were better than the Jews because they had the gods. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So absolutely, I just don't think this is a religious conflict. There are only two times, there are only two people in the ancient world who the Romans go after for quote-unquote religious reasons, the Jews and the Druids in Britain.

44:45They go after the Druids, not because they really care what the Druids believe, but because they believe, rightly, that the Druids are the engine of opposition to the Roman conquest of Britannia. That's their problem with the Druids. Their problem with the Jews is that, um, the jews are first of all playing footsie with the parthians they don't like secondly the jews don't they're the only people who get a free um in the eastern part of the empire the only people get a free pass they don't have to worship the emperor but as long as they're making daily sacrifices in in the temple on behalf of the emperor it's okay caligula has a problem with that um and he tries to force them to set up a statue of the emperor in the temple which would have caused a revolt Fortunately, he's assassinated before it can be carried out.

45:31But in general, the Romans just don't care, as long as you're not a political problem for them or a military problem.

45:41Francis Foster:Okay, so come back to the chronology of the story. Jesus is crucified, dies on the cross. Believers will say resurrected. And what happens to Judea after this? So, briefly, between the years 41 and 44, the Romans restore the monarchy of Herod. And Herod's grandson, Agrippa, a man named Agrippa, is appointed king. Why do they appoint him king? Because Agrippa has been raised in Rome. By the way, Agrippa's a Roman name. He's named after Augustus' right-hand man. He's been raised in Rome, and he is the kingmaker who helps to make Claudius the emperor after Caligula is assassinated. So they think he's a very safe guy and should be rewarded, and they make him king of Judea.

46:34He rules only for three years, and then he dies young, either of a stroke, let us say, or some disease, or poison. There's some reason to think he was poisoned by his enemies. And at that point, the Romans say, nah, forget it. It's back to being a Roman province. So Judea becomes a Roman province. You know, Augustus was an emperor who not only was Herod very clever in balancing things with Rome, Augustus was very clever in balancing things with the provinces. He knew when to push and when to step back. And he's quite content with having a ruler like Herod who he can cooperate with. Augustus' successors are not always as clever as Augustus.

47:19We get Caligula, who almost starts a rebellion in Judea because he wants to have a statue of him put up in the temple. And then we get Nero after Claudius. And Nero, as you know, is not the world's nicest guy. And Nero loves the Greeks, not real fond of the Jews. And he appoints a Greek to be a governor of Judea. and basically after the Great Fire in Rome, Nero needs money. He needs it really bad because he wants to rebuild Rome as Nero City, Neuropolis is going to be and it's expensive to rebuild the city and he gives the governor basically carte blanche to squeeze the provincials until the pips squeak.

48:02So the governor who is a Greek sides with the Greeks in Judea in ethnic conflict with the Jews and he mistreats the Jews in various ways. He takes money from the temple. And when there's a protest, a peaceful protest in Jerusalem, he sends in the troops to massacre the civilians in Jerusalem. And as a Roman historian who writes about it says, at that point, the Jews had had enough. So you've got an emperor who's making life more difficult for the Jews, But you also have movements in Jewish society that are less tolerant of the Romans. You have one group called the Daggermen, the Sicarii. They are assassins, and they carry daggers under their cloaks.

48:52Of course, being Jews, their favorite group to kill or people to kill are other Jews, who are considered to be collaborators against the Romans. But they're very anti-Roman. And then you get priests, a new generation of young priests, who, as often happens in history, the young want to rebel against their fathers. They say, our fathers were wimps. They just went along with the Romans. But, you know, we don't have to do this anymore. We can rebel against the Romans, and we can get away with it. And so they're called enthusiasts, this young group. The Greek for enthusiast is zealot. That's where we get our word zealot from.

49:27They model themselves on a figure in the Torah who is extremely zealous in rooting out what he sees as paganism and does not show away from violence to do it. And that's their attitude as well. The signal for the revolt in the year 66 is they say, you know what, you can't sacrifice in the temple if you're a foreigner anymore. What that means is that you can't have sacrifices on behalf of the emperor anymore since it's sponsored by the Romans. That is, in effect, a declaration of independence, which the Romans are not going to tolerate. And then, when the Romans start making a fuss about this, they then massacre the garrison in Jerusalem, which is more than a signal of independence.

50:17It's an act of outright rebellion. For good measure, there are Jews who are killing each other. There are dagger men who are killing zealots. And then the dagger men are the leader of the dagger men is killed and the rest of them flee from Jerusalem. And they spend the rest of the revolt in a fortress near the Dead Sea called Masada, a fairly famous place later on. But now we've got to the point in the year 66 when Judea is in revolt. So Judea is in revolt. Right. And I'm not, again, a Herod apologist, but doesn't that kind of mean that, look, Herod was brutal, he was awful. He wasn't Stalin. Yeah, yeah, Stalin, let's bring him back.

51:05But in some of those types of countries or provinces, particularly in that time, the only real option to have any kind of sustained peace was a Herod-like figure. Yes. And of course, as you know, there are Stalin, the Stalin nostalgia in Russia today. Yeah. But yeah, and they were definitely, so, you know, at the time of the American Revolution, or excuse me, the American War of Independence against the rightful king, John Adams said, look, there were three groups. There were three groups in the revolution, he says afterwards. One group wanted independence, one group wanted to be under the king, and one group just wanted to keep their heads down.

51:42And the place was divided one third, one-third, one-third. We don't have any statistics like that from antiquity, but it's a pretty good guess that it was pretty similar. And we know that there were collaborators with the Romans, and that the ruling, there are still descendants, members of the dynasty of Herod, they're ruling in the north. They also have a lot of say in authority in Jerusalem. They go to Jerusalem, they plead with the rebels, don't do this, it's insane, it's suicide. You can't defeat the Romans. It's not going to happen. And don't think the Parthian king or our brethren in the Parthian empire are going to come to our aid.

52:18It's just not going to work. Stop this insanity before it's too late. But they are practically killed for what they say. The rebels aren't going to hear it. They send soldiers who help the Romans to put down the rebellion. So there are Jews who basically say Stalin was great, Herod was great. You know, forget this nonsense. Also, there is an element of the revolt that's a social revolution. Not all of it, but there are people among the rebels who want to help the poor, who want to take wealth away from the rich. Even some would talk about freeing slaves. So that's very disturbing to the wealthy as well.

52:59Francis Foster:And I imagine once you've slaughtered the Roman garrison, forgive my French, you're kind of fucked, right? You're kind of, yeah. You're kind of effed. Once you've forgiven, this is a family show, so I'll just say ask. But yes, once you've slaughtered the Roman garrison, that's it. So the governor of Syria, so the Romans don't have a legion in Judea. They basically controlled Judea with local troops, non-Jewish troops. A lot of them are Samaritans who don't get along with the Jews. But now you've got to bring in the legions. The governor of Syria, the neighboring province, comes south with about 30 ,000 men.

53:36and he goes to Jerusalem and basically says, cut it out. But it doesn't work. And in fact, he's an older guy, probably past his prime. His troops are harassed on the way to Jerusalem. And then when he leaves Jerusalem, it's now the rainy season. It's October. And he's heading back to the coast to go back to Syria in a narrow valley. He's ambushed. And the rebels managed to destroy the better part of a legion. That is, you know, a forlorn fire as far as Nero is concerned. And it's time to get serious. So after this, he chooses one of his best generals. He doesn't have many left because he's had his best generals killed.

54:20Because like Herod, he's afraid of rebellion with good reason. There had already been an uprising against him and there would soon be another one. But he's got one good general left, a man named Vespasian. He says, I choose you. You've got to put down the revolt. He's not worried about Vespasian. Vespasian doesn't come from the Roman nobility. In fact, he is a descendant of what the Romans would look down on as a middle class family from the Sabine country north of Rome. But he's a good general. He's fought in Britain. He's beat up some Brits. and, you know. And now, as far as the Romans were concerned, like the two worst places were Britain and Judea.

55:01These are really bad people. They're just giving us trouble all the time. There's a lot of people on the internet who would agree with that. So he comes with a new army. Now we're closer to 60 ,000 men, and it's now the year 67.

55:16Francis Foster:Wow. And what happens then? By the way, maybe, sorry about it. sorry to interrupt my own question that's a extra level for me but maybe it's worth you describing Jerusalem at this point because I actually in preparation for this interview watched some stuff on YouTube showing what the city was like and it's mightily impressive it's not an easy place to know no not at all so I mean it was chosen very intelligently as a capital so Jerusalem sits it's in the And Israel is almost like a topographical map. Do we still have topographical maps? I don't know. I hope so. But there's the coastal plain, and then there's the rolling hills, and then you get up to what are almost mountains.

56:03They call them mountains by American standards. They're not really mountains. But they're pretty high hills. That's where Jerusalem is. On three sides, it's surrounded by valleys. So it's really impossible to take or very hard to take. It's only on the fourth side, the northern side, where it's relatively flat and it's relatively vulnerable. One of the Jewish kings wanted to fortify, so the city is really well fortified by Herod, but it needed to be ultra fortified on the northern side. And when King Agrippa I tried to do that, the Romans stopped him because they knew that was dangerous. But really hard to take, impressive place, a little bit smaller than the old city of Jerusalem today, but super highly fortified.

56:49And the temple sits on a hill above the city, so that's even more fortified. In addition, it's got a spring. It's got a natural source of water. And people have laid up large supplies of food so it can feed itself for a very long time. So you're not going to lightly lay siege to Jerusalem. You really don't want to have to do that.

57:11Francis Foster:And Vespasian turns up with 60 ,000? Mespasian turns up, and he comes from the north, and he attacks the north first. He goes after the Galilee, and he wipes the floor with it. There are some cities that immediately said, we love Rome! And they become his base. And there's one city in central Galilee called Jodhapata, and the commander of it is Josephus. Josephus is our main source for the revolt because afterwards he wrote memoirs and he writes a memoir about the revolt. He is the general in charge of Galilee. He's a priest, a minor priest, and he's been to Rome. He speaks Greek. He has a view of the wider world.

57:59And depending on which story of his you believe, because he had different stories at different time, he was trying as hard as he could to defeat the Romans or he was trying as hard as he could to convince the rebels to stop this crazy rebellion. In any case, he's in charge of Jodhapata, and Vespasian lays siege to Jodhapata in June of the year 67. And for about six weeks, Josephus and his fellows withstand the Roman legions. Wow. And it's hot. You know, it's going to be like 90 degrees Fahrenheit there, really hot and miserable, and they don't have a natural spring. So they're running out of water.

58:36In the end, the Romans take the city, as the Romans usually do. They massacre the inhabitants. And Josephus and the other leaders of the revolt are in a cave. They're about, I think there are 42 of them. And they decide on a mass suicide pact. Josephus says, this is crazy. We should just surrender. No, no, no, no. I want to commit suicide. Suicide by a lottery. You know, or, you know, I'll kill you, you kill the next one, so on and so forth. Until there are only two men left. And one of them is Josephus. And Josephus is the last guy. Come on. So he survives. He surrenders to the Romans. And by the way, there are, in math, there's something called the Josephus problem, how you can use simple arithmetic to rig a lottery so that you win it.

59:25Josephus claims it was fair. But he goes to the Romans. He's brought before Vespasian. And he knows that he's in chains. He's going to be shipped off to Rome to the tender mercies of Nero, which would be awful. But he has a plan. And he says to Vespasian, look, I'm a priest. I see things that ordinary people don't see. And I want to tell you that you're going to become the emperor of Rome. And Vespasian says, hmm. Okay, you get to live and I'm not going to ship you off to Europe. So it's the year 67. Vespasian then goes to the capital of the Jewish king of the north, Agrippa II. And he helps Agrippa II to put down a revolt in another very impressive fortification, a place called Gamla, which means camel, because it looks like a camel's hump.

1:00:22And there, too, the Romans have to fight to take the place, a very dramatic place if you ever have a chance to visit it, And they do. They eventually take it and they massacre the people there, just as they did at Jodapata. They massacre the men. They enslave the women and children. And now it's the end of the fighting season, and Vespasian rests up for over the winter. And then the next year, he's now... What's happened in the north is that those who want to continue the rebellion try to escape, and they make their way to Jerusalem, which is under the control of the rebels and is this great fortress.

1:01:05Vespasian knocks off cities one by one around Judea, trying to isolate Jerusalem. And then, at the end of the spring, the word comes from Rome. Nero has been deposed. He's committed suicide. There is a new emperor, and Vespasian says, hmm what does this mean what are my orders now am I supposed to continue this suppression of the rebellion or what so he calls a halt and in effect for the next two years the war is at a pause and the rebels are in Jerusalem and they have the leisure to do what they want and what do they want to do kill

1:01:50Francis Foster:each other so devil makes work vital hands and they'll devil make works for And so there are various factions. There's the daggermen. There's the zealots. There's the rebels who've come from the north, led by a man named John. And there are the rebels who've come from the east, led by a man named Simon. John is a wealthy man, a man of property. He has no interest in the social revolution. Simon is a champion of the poor. They're both very good leaders, but Simon is especially charismatic. and Simon gets the Idumaeans to support him. And the Idumaeans have a very good army. So there is a bloodbath in Jerusalem.

1:02:32These people killing each other. There are three factions. There's Simon's faction, there's John's faction, there's the Zealots, and ultimately there's just two factions, John's factions and Simon's faction. As bad as this killing of each other is, even worse is the one thing they do that seems really crazy they burn the food supply that they burn each other's food supply so there's enough food left over for the soldiers to feed themselves but there's not enough food left over for the civilians of jerusalem to live political scientists refer to something called credible commitment we might say burning your bridges because then you have a credible commitment because you have nowhere else to go they have now given the ultimate credible commitment to, you know, if you're not part of this, we're not even going to feed you.

1:03:25But then ultimately they can't feed them. Can I be blunt? Please. They fucking deserve to lose. You might say it from the point, from the military point of view, this is insane. This is absolutely insane. Tax season is the one time of year you're forced to look at your full financial picture. What came in, what went out, and the uncomfortable question of where the rest went. I didn't just want to look back in horror. I wanted to actually do something with it. That's why I use Monarch. What I actually like about it is that it doesn't just track what you've spent and make you feel bad about it. It's built around planning ahead and hitting real goals.

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1:04:48Francis Foster:the way you describe this land at the time it just sounds like revolutionary fever is everywhere revolutionary fever is everywhere everyone is going wild everyone's going crazy everyone thinks that the kingdom of is about everything's about to change right and so people are behaving in these very irrational ways yes but at the same time they're not completely irrational I mean that's true there are people there are crazies um but they're also they're not completely irrational They're sending embassies to the Parthians to get help, and they do get some help. So one player who I've left out is Queen Helena.

1:05:24Queen Helena, who is the queen of Adiabin, which is roughly today's Iraqi Kurdistan. She's active in the earlier part of the century, in the 30s and the 40s, and she and her sons convert to Judaism. They're pagans. And she, after she turns the throne over to one of her sons, her husband, who had been the king, dies. She moves to Jerusalem. And she spends a number of years there learning about Judaism, building a palace there. And in fact, her dynasty ends up building three separate palaces in Jerusalem, feeding the people there when there's a famine. So she's a beloved figure and arranging for her ultimately to be buried in Jerusalem.

1:06:03And indeed, her tomb still exists. You can visit it. Remarkable place in East Jerusalem. But what is she doing? What's this all about? I think on the one hand, it's conversion. She has a religious experience to convert. On the other hand, she's creating a foothold, a handhold, excuse me, in the West. Her kingdom, she's a vassal of the Parthian king, but she now has an opening to the West. And her sons, her grandsons, are educated in Jerusalem. And they're there at the time of the rebellion, and they and their followers join the rebellion and they support the rebels. So the rebels are getting some support from Parthia.

1:06:44but not the massive aid that they wanted. But Barry, as you look at it from the outside, you go, they're at each other's throats. And look, I get that. There's a spirit of revolution. People want power. They want money. All of these things. But wasn't there part of them going, hang on, look, lads, there's about 50 ,000 Roman soldiers over there. They've got one of their best generals. They're just sitting there. Eventually, they're going to come. Yeah. Yeah, they should have. Absolutely. And, you know, when the Talmud looks back on the revolts and the Talmud criticizes the revolts and condemns them, it says that Jerusalem and the temple were not destroyed because of the Romans.

1:07:24They were destroyed because of the Jews and what they call senseless hatred, senseless hatred of Jews against each other. That's why they were destroyed. So we've got to the point where they're at each other's throats. there's pretty much a civil war happening within Jerusalem. Yes. What happens at this point? Does one group become dominant? I mean, so there are really two groups, Simon and John. And the city's on different levels. It's actually on a hill. And so Simon controls one area and John controls another area. But neither one is fully in control of the city. But Simon has more power than John.

1:08:08Okay, so Simon has more power than John, but the city's effectively in a deadlock there. Yes. The city's in a deadlock. It's completely divided. It is therefore weakened. Yes. So what happens? What are the Romans doing at this point? It's been two years. The Romans are having a civil war of their own. Okay. It's civil war versus civil war. The year six, so Nero commits suicide in the year 68, and an old man named Galba, who's the governor of Spain, comes and becomes emperor in Rome. He's immediately deposed, or pretty soon deposed by a man named Otho, who is deposed by a man named Vitellius. And Vespasian's in the East.

1:08:45He's a general of the East. He sees all this going on. And he gets the support of a very important player, the governor of Egypt. The governor of Egypt happens to be a Jew named Tiberius Julius Alexander, who's also a great soldier, great military guy. And he throws his support behind Vespasian. He's got legions in Egypt. And Vespasian now is proclaimed as emperor in July of 69. So Romans called this the year of the four emperors, because there are four different emperors, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian. Vespasian leaves Judea, he goes to Egypt, and he organizes an army which goes to the west and ultimately conquers Rome and makes him emperor.

1:09:33The suppression of the rebellion is on pause. The Romans are doing nothing. The rebels are in Jerusalem. Life seems to be going on as usual in Jerusalem, although much of the country, it's cut off from much of the country. And there are people who think Jerusalem is this fantastic fortress. The Romans will never conquer us. We're safe here. I think John says something like, the Romans will conquer Jerusalem when they can fly. Um...

1:10:03Francis Foster:Turns out he was wrong. Turns out he was wrong. It turns out he was wrong. So in the year 70, Vespasian says, we've got to take care of business. He sends a new army under his son Titus with the help of the governor of Egypt, Tiberius Julius Alexander, who is his chief of staff, in effect. And they laid siege to Jerusalem. The Romans do not have an easy time of it. The Jews' forte from the military point of view is irregular warfare. raids, ambushes, guerrilla attacks. And they have water, which the Romans don't. So they give the Romans a run for their money. But there's only so far they can go, especially because people are dying and starving in the city, and anyone who can leave is trying to leave until the Romans cut that off.

1:10:52To make a long story short, there is a very, very hard-fought siege. It lasts five months, but in the end, the Romans thoroughly conquer the city and they destroy the temple and they basically destroy the city. The city is left in ruins. And by the autumn of 70, Jerusalem is a ruin and the revolt is all but over. So Jerusalem has fallen. Yes. Is that the end of the story now? No. There's still pockets of rebels and the Romans have dealt with this sort of thing before. They They put down rebellions, but there's still pockets of rebels, and they'll get around to it. And it's three or four years later when, and we're not actually sure whether it was the winter of 73 or the winter of 74, probably the winter of 74, when the Romans finally snuff out the last pocket of resistance at Masada, this famous fortress in the Judean desert.

1:11:52And the Romans are able to take Masada. But when they discover, to their shock, when they get to the top, that all but six people there have committed suicide or submitted to a mass execution, killing of each other. There's over 900 people there, men, women and children, and they're all dead, except for a few who have hidden in a drainpipe and survived. So the Judea has been completely conquered. Yes. Rome is dominant. Yes. What happens to the Jewish people now? So, I mean, most of them say, well, that was that and let's move on. But they're still rebels. Some of the rebels in Judea have fled to Egypt and to Libya.

1:12:37They start to try to incite revolts there, but the Romans are able to suppress them. But the Romans make some big mistakes. The first thing they do is that there was a second Jewish temple in Egypt, which had no and built before the Torah became the law of the land. The Romans tear that down as well. But the one biggest mistake the Romans make is they decide to punish the Jews of the empire by doing something unprecedented. They impose a tax on all of them. They've never done anything like this before to rebellious people. The Jewish tax, the so-called Jewish fund, Fiscus Eudiacus, and every Jew every year has to pay a tax to Rome.

1:13:18and not just to Rome. They have to pay a tax to the chief god of Rome, to Jupiter of the Capitoline Hill. It's as if to add insult to injury, you have a tax that's humiliating enough, but the tax says your god is nothing. Your god is gone. We've destroyed his temple. And now you have to pay a tax to the chief god of Rome. Earlier on, there was the expectation that every Jew would pay a tax to the temple in Jerusalem. And that was kind of a big deal in the diaspora. Now they have to pay a tax to the chief god of Rome. And this tax lasts for centuries.

1:13:53Francis Foster:And why do you say this was a big mistake? Because it's utterly humiliating. And it foments more rebellion. It foments more rebellion. I mean, if you think back to what Churchill said after the Second World War, in victory, magnanimity. This is the opposite of magnanimity. In victory, you humiliate them. It's not a good thing to do. And it foments more rebellion. And so you have this resentful population within the Roman Empire who keep rebelling, who are treated uniquely badly for rebellious people. And where do the Jewish people go from there? So, first of all, you know, there's still a very large Jewish population living in Judea.

1:14:35I mean, many of them have been killed and many of them have been enslaved and exiled, but there's still large numbers of them living all over the country. and they're trying to get by. They don't have the temple. They want to rebuild the temple. We have Jewish literature from this period in which they say they're talking about getting rid of the Romans and rebuilding the temple. But most of them are probably just trying to get by. There might not have been another rebellion except for the fact that the Romans decided to conquer Parthia. And in the year 115, the Roman emperor Trajan goes eastward and begins conquering the Parthian Empire.

1:15:10He's doing pretty well. First, he takes Armenia, a larger kingdom in antiquity today that's ruled by a member of the Parthian royal family. And then he conquers all of Iraq down to the Persian Gulf. The next year, in 116, there is a revolt in the Roman rear. There's an uprising. The Jews of Libya, Egypt, and Cyprus rise in rebellion. At the same time, there is an insurgency in Iraq. Sound familiar? And among the leaders of the insurgency are the Jewish population, the Jewish population of Iraq. Now, we don't have a smoking gun. We have no ancient sources to prove that there is collusion. But I will eat my hat if there wasn't collusion between these two groups, between the Parthians in the east and the Jews in the west.

1:16:03The Romans have to take a legion and send it to the west to put down this rebellion. It's no small thing. The rebels are doing quite well. They also have to deal with Jewish insurgents in the east. And to make a long story short, their conquest of Parthia is a total flop. They're driven out. They succeed in putting down the rebellion in the west. Unfortunately for the Jewish rebels, Jews, which had been a significant part of the population of Egypt, Libya, and Cyprus, are now all but wiped out. And they also send a very hardline governor, the guy who'd been the commander putting down the rebellion in insurgency in Mesopotamia, they send him to become the governor of Judea to make sure that any rebels there, and there may have been some riots there, make sure that's snuffed out as well.

1:16:55The way you paint the Jewish people in this story, You know, it's, they were constant thorn in the Roman side. Yes, but the Romans didn't handle them well, didn't play it well. And I'm not sure there would have been a second revolt if not for Parthia. I insist that Parthia, ancient Iran, is a big part of the story. And the fact that there's, the Jews have this unique diaspora that's there as well as in the Roman Empire is a big part of the story. And the fact that the Romans are obsessed with fighting Parthia. beat Parthia. That's kind of their thing.

1:17:32Francis Foster:And Barry, if we fast forward super a very short, very long period of time, almost to the present day, is it fair to say that Judea, which since has become Israel, for the rest of known history, basically, is just a part of the world that is controlled by some other bigger force, changes hands all the time until you get to 1948? Yes. I mean, there is a third major rebellion, the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 130s, and that too, I believe, has a Parthian connection. But that is defeated with great difficulty by the Romans. And then there are some other revolts later on, and another Iranian conquest of Judea, followed almost immediately by the Arab conquest.

1:18:17Yes, it is fair to say that there are different empires that control Judea, or what had been Judea, what was then the Romans renamed it as Palestine. And Palestine is controlled by one empire or another until the 20th century.

1:18:35Francis Foster:And before we head to Substack, where our audience will ask you their question. Yes. Is there anything at all from the ancient history of this land that might be worth people knowing in relation to today's ongoing conflict? Sure. I mean, one thing is that the Jews are indigenous to Judea, to Palestine, to the land of Israel. It's not as if the Zionists threw a dart at the map and decided, we're going there. They went there because this was the Jewish ancestral land, Jewish prayers from antiquity to today, talk about Jerusalem and talk about the land of Israel. And Jewish pilgrims and Jewish settlers came back to Judea over the centuries again and again and again.

1:19:19It never stopped happening. They weren't the majority after, by the early Middle Ages, they're no longer the majority there, but there are a presence there.

1:19:30Francis Foster:Can I stress test this argument a little bit? Because I think Melanie Phillips made it the first time she was on the show, long before this latest outbreak of the conflict. Is that not a little bit like me turning up in Africa and going, well, my ancestors are from here. Give me some land. No, because, I mean, it's because they're always there. You know, there's always Jews living there. There are always Jewish pilgrims whose ambition in life is to settle in the Holy Land. And ancestors in Africa? I mean, no. I mean, that's a paleontological, anthropological, biological fact. I was being ridiculous.

1:20:08Francis Foster:But OK, I mean, maybe a different way of looking at it is, let's say, a bunch of Native Americans had fled North America at the time of Columbus. Right. And then they come back and carve out a state for themselves in the middle of the United States and say, actually, we've always lived here. This is our land. We deserve to be here. Look it up, holy scriptures, you know. But imagine that the United States, that's a good analogy, but imagine that the United States wasn't the United States. Imagine that the United States was the tool of empires over history, and they're just different people marching through.

1:20:44There's no independent country here. And Native Americans who are living elsewhere now want to come back and reestablish themselves in this new environment when new states are going to be created out of old states. They would have a point. I think they would have a point. They would have an argument about that. And of course, by treaty, Native Americans have rights in the United States that they're denied. In New York State, where I come from, New York State has ignored various treaties that it's signed earlier on in American history about Native American rights. So it's not a totally false analogy.

1:21:22Francis Foster:So first point, Jews are indigenous. Yes. Anything else? Yes. Yes, Jews are disputatious, and disunity is a problem in Israel today, but it's an ancient problem as well. And many people in Israel have looked back to this period and said, look what happened there with our disunity. There's only so far... Yes, we can disagree politically, but there's a danger of going too far today. I mean, another thing is, if you look at the geographical location of Israel, for better or worse, it's in the center of things. And, you know, obviously, the United States is the key ally of Israel today, but Israel cannot afford to only look west.

1:22:04It also has to look east. It has to pay attention to Iran. It has to pay attention to the Arab states around it. It has to pay attention to Turkey, who's becoming a very important player in this conflict. And it has also looked at its relationship with India is very important as well. And with China important, maybe not so solitary for Israel right now. but it looks in both directions. And as you tell the story, and I'm thinking about Israel, and I think about the story of Jerusalem and Judea, and particularly with the way the fall of Jerusalem, it makes me think about, you know, if you want to maintain Israel, the price of that is eternal vigilance.

1:22:47Absolutely, yeah. I mean, absolutely, the price of that is eternal vigilance. I mean, if you go to Israel today, you will see that it's a society in which the military and military life is infinitely more important than it is in your standard Western democracy. It's not a different. One other point that I want to make about that's important for today is the role of religion. Religion can play a very salutary role. And I personally think faith is an important part of people's lives, but it can also play a not-so-salutary role. And while there were rebels who were pragmatists and who were serious about getting help from Parthia, There are others who allowed their religious beliefs to get the better of them and who had ideas that simply were not practical and couldn't work.

1:23:31And we see that in the region today as well. We see pragmatists, but we also see people on both sides who are letting their religious ideas get the better of them. And maybe if Israel wants to be successful, it needs a Stalin. A Stalin? I hope not. No, I don't think it needs a Stalin. That's going to be a clip that in context, you idiot.

1:23:53Francis Foster:It's a metaphorical reference to something we discussed earlier in the episode. Barry, if people have watched this for the first time as an interview with you, they'll now know why we're such big fans of yours. You're a brilliant historian, fantastic writer. Of course, everyone should get Jews vs. Romans and read it. It's also available as an audiobook. Before we head over to Substack and ask you questions from our audience, which only they get to see, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Oh, what's the one thing we're not talking about? All my other books. You've written ten.

1:24:24Yeah, I mean how they are. If you want to know more about the Roman Empire, my book, Ten Caesars, I think is a great introduction to it, but also the war that made the Roman Empire. If you want to know about Cleopatra and Mark Antony and Octavian, that's the place to get the story. And I think it's fantastically relevant to warfare today. So read all my books, folks.

1:24:47Francis Foster:Of course. And if people haven't seen our episode with you about the fall of the Roman Empire, it's magnificent. Thank you. Barry, thanks for being here. Head on over to Substack, triggerpod.co.uk, where we're going to ask Barry your questions. Don't forget to click the link in the description of this episode to grab the special CyberGhost VPN discount. It's completely risk-free, so check it out today. It's a loaded question. He says, how is it that both Christianity and Islam recognize that Jews were given the land of Israel by God, but then deny the indigenous claims?