Diaspora uprising
The Diaspora Rebellion was a Jewish rebellion during the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan from 115 to 117 AD. It was the second of the three great Jewish rebellions against the Romans in the first and second centuries AD - the first was the Jewish War , the third the Bar Kochba uprising (or the Second Jewish War) - which ultimately led to the destruction of the last remnants of a larger closed Jewish settlement area in the Roman province of Judea and to the centuries- old diaspora situation of Judaism . In contrast to the two Jewish Wars around 70 and around 135, Judea, the actual heartland of the Jews, does not seem to have been directly affected by the battles around 116.
designation
The term "Babylonian uprising" is not very satisfactory, since it describes only one of several almost simultaneous uprisings from the Jewish diaspora during the last years of Trajan's reign. The uprisings in question took place
- in Cyrenaica ,
- in Egypt ,
- in Cyprus and
- in Mesopotamia .
Alternatively, the conflict is also referred to as the diaspora uprising , the uprising of the Jews against Trajan or the 2nd Jewish-Roman War .
Although the lack of a generally accepted historical term for these uprisings seems to suggest that they are minor events, the consequences for the Jewish people and their culture have been devastating. All of the areas mentioned had very populous communities, one can assume that the number of people in each case was in the hundreds of thousands - and all of them were almost completely destroyed. The primarily culturally important community in Alexandria never recovered from this blow. Therefore, these little-known events, if not in their psychological impact, at least in their material consequences, can be compared with the Jewish war . And the uprisings were momentous for Rome too; The unrest contributed significantly to the failure of the large-scale war of conquest that Emperor Trajan was waging against the mighty Parthian Empire at that time .
outbreak
The uprising broke out in 115 in the Roman province of Cyrene in North Africa in what is now eastern Libya . The leader was a Jew named Andreas or Lukas; presumably he had both a Hebrew and a Greek name. Since he is referred to as king in the sources, he will be regarded as a messianic pretender , comparable to Simon bar Kochba , the leader in the last great uprising of the Jews.
Nothing is known precisely about the cause of the outbreak of the uprising. First, the Jews of Kyrenes attacked their Roman and Greek neighbors. About a hundred years later, the historian Cassius Dio mentions downright atrocities:
“In the meantime the Jews of Cyrenaica had made a certain Andrew their leader and annihilated both Romans and Greeks. They ate the flesh of their victims, made girdles of entrails, smeared themselves with blood, and clothed themselves in the skins; many saw them from top to bottom, others threw them before wild animals, and still others forced them to fight as gladiators. A total of 220,000 people died. "
It may be doubted that believing Jews could bring themselves to the consumption of human flesh, and the number of sacrifices may be considered excessive. In any case, there is evidence that the Cyrenaica was so depopulated after the suppression of the rebellion that Trajan settled veterans there.
There is no doubt about the destruction caused: In Cyrene, the Greek temples in particular seem to have been the target of destruction. The temples of Apollo , Zeus , Dioscuri , Demeter , Artemis and Isis , but also the symbols of Roman rule and culture such as the Caesareum , the basilica and the thermal baths were destroyed or badly damaged. Newly erected buildings and milestones give the Jewish uprising ( tumultus Iudaicus ) as the reason for the renovation .
In any case, the impression is formed of unrestrained cruelty and destructiveness fueled by religious mass madness, which precluded any return to peaceful coexistence for the foreseeable future.
Expansion
The Greeks of Cyrenaica fled to Alexandria, where they killed the Jews who lived there. Soon afterwards, however, Andreas / Lukas advanced with the multitudes of his holy warriors. The prefect of Egypt, Marcus Rutilius Lupus , withdrew from the advancing crowds, the Jews occupied the city and burned it down. On this occasion, the tomb was destroyed in the Caesar to Pompey had buried. But the devastation was not limited to Alexandria and the Nile Delta . Even in the area of Thebes , 600 km upstream of the Nile, there was looting by the insurgents. The historian Appian reports how he narrowly escaped the insurgents in the Pelusion area .
Also in Cyprus , where large Jewish communities have always existed, the Jews rose up under the leadership of a certain Artemion to slaughter the Greek inhabitants. The insurgents are said to have destroyed Salamis and killed 240,000 Greeks. Even if this number is exaggerated, the impression of this uprising on the Cypriot Greeks seems to have been so lasting that, according to Cassius Dio, a law forbade Jews from entering Cyprus at all times, even in the event of a shipwreck.
In order to end these uprisings and prevent further spread, Trajan sent the later Praetorian prefect Quintus Marcius Turbo to North Africa and the Legio VII Claudia to Cyprus, but the suppression of the uprisings in Egypt, Cyprus and Cyrenaica also proved to be for the superior Roman military power as a tedious endeavor. This was only achieved in 117. When Alexandria was taken, the synagogue , famous in antiquity, was destroyed. Just as the Greeks were slaughtered before, so now thousands of Jews were victims of revenge and terror.
Uprising in Mesopotamia
At the same time, but possibly under different conditions, the uprising in Mesopotamia can be seen. Initially victorious over the Parthians , Trajan had withdrawn to winter quarters in Antioch in the winter of 115/116 when an uprising broke out in the newly subjugated provinces, in which the Jews settling in Mesopotamia played a particularly prominent role. Together with Parthian troops, they took action against the Romans, which ultimately forced Trajan's successor Hadrian to give up the conquests.
Trajan conquered and destroyed Nisibis (today's Nusaybin in Turkey), Edessa and Seleukia on the Tigris - all cities with large Jewish communities. Nevertheless, the situation for Rome remained difficult. The emperor entrusted the general Lusius Quietus with the destruction of the remaining nests of resistance in the actual empire, who fulfilled his task in Cyprus and Syria so thoroughly that he was sent to Iudaea as governor .
The "War of Kitos"
There in Iudaea, after the death of Trajan and the accession of Hadrian to another small uprising, which (only) appears in the Talmudic sources as the "War of Kitos" ( polemos schel kitos ). The name probably goes back to (Lusius) Quietus. The leaders are said to have been two Alexandrian Jews named Julianus and Pappos. According to legend, the last minute recall of Quietus saved them from execution. In any case, the day, the 12th Adar, entered the Jewish festival calendar as a half- holiday under the name "Trajan Day", jom tirjanus . However, many scholars question the historicity of these events, which the Roman sources do not mention - it is more likely that things remained quiet in Iudaea for the time being.
swell
- Cassius Dio : Roman History ( English translation )
- Eusebius : Church History 4.2 ( German translation )
literature
- Gedaliah Alon: The Jews in their land in the Talmudic age ; Harvard 1980
- Timothy D. Barnes : Trajan and the Jews , in: Journal of Jewish Studies 40 (1989), pp. 145-162.
- Alexander Fuks: Aspects of the Jewish Revolt in AD 115-117 ; in: Journal of Roman Studies 51 (1961); Pp. 98-104.
- Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews , Volume 4, Chapter 6
- William Horbury: Jewish was under Trajan and Hadrian ; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014. ISBN 978-0-521-62296-7 .
- Marina Pucci: La rivolta Ebraica al tempo di Traiano ; Pisa 1981
- Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev: Diaspora Judaism in Turmoil, 116/117 CE. Ancient Sources and Modern Insights ; Peeters, Leuven 2005. ISBN 90-429-1605-2 .
- Christopher Weikert: From Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina. Roman politics from Vespasian to Hadrian . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2016. ISBN 978-3-525-20869-4 .
Web links
- Livy: Wars between the Jews and Romans: the revolt against Trajan
- Richard Gottheil, Samuel Krauss: Article Bar Kokba and the Bar Kokba War ; in: Jewish Encyclopedia