It seems that ever since the Jews were delivered from bondage out of Egypt, they have been exiled and persecuted ever since. They have been conquered and ruled by many leaders of other countries. Their attempts to overthrow these leaders have been with mixed results. Some resulted in success but the majority of their attempts failed.
This paper will discuss 66 CE Revolt in which the Jews attempted to overthrow the Roman Empire. In doing so, the paper will talk about where Judea was before the time of the revolt; the revolt against Antiochus the Syrian leader; the events that lead to the fall of Jerusalem; the Conquering of the Judean Empire and how the Judean civil war played a role in the outcome.
Return to Jerusalem.
After fifty years of exile in Babylon, a small group of devoted Jews, probably fewer than 50,000, returned to their holy city. They were allowed to do so by the Persian king, Cyrus. He authorized the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was completed in 515 BCE (Fisher, 2002).
The second Temple became the central symbol to a scattered Jewish nation, of which most did not return to Jerusalem from Babylon, which was now their home. A new emphasis on Temple rites developed, with a hereditary priesthood tracing its ancestry to Aaron (Fisher, 2002). .
The priestly class, under the leadership of Ezra, a priest and a scribe, also undertook to revise, or rewrite the stories of the people, editing the Pentateuch to reveal the hand of God. Some scholars think that it was these priestly editors who wrote the creation account in Genisis 1, glorifying the greatness and omnipotence of their God as creator of the universe (Fisher, 2002).
As the Jews lived under foreign rule such as Persian, Greek, Parthian, and then Roman, Judaism became somewhat open to cross-cultural religious borrowings. Concepts of Satan, the hierarchy of angels, reward or punishment in an afterlife, and the final resurrection of the body on the Day of Judgment are thought by some scholars to have made their way into Jewish belief from the Zoroastrianism of the Persian Empire, for these beliefs were absent from earlier Judaic religion (Fisher, 2002).
1 Let us go then, you and I, 2 When the evening is spread out against the sky 3 Like a patient etherized upon a table; 4 Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, 5 The muttering retreats 6 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels 7 And sawdust restauran...
