Book Review

Origins of a modern virus

Rome and Jerusalem: the clash of ancient civilizations

This is an important book, on a difficult subject: the reason why the Romans, who had so much in common with the Jews, sought to destroy the Jews and Judaism completely. Only one man could have written it. Martin Goodman is professor of Jewish studies at Oxford and has the unique distinction of having edited both the Journal of Roman Studies and the Journal of Jewish Studies. This polarity of expertise enables him to describe in a penetrating way the terrifying Jewish revolts against Rome of AD 66-70 and 132-5, as well as provide a fresh and convincing analysis of their origins and consequences.

The Jews were an important racial and cultural ingredient of the Roman Empire. Always "travellers and sojourners", as the Old Testament says, they had been spreading from Judaea and ancient Israel for a millennium, settling especially in the great cities such as Rome and Alexandria. It is possible that by the first century AD Jews and Judaic sects constituted 10 per cent of the entire empire.

The Romans respected them because they were industrious, peaceful and shared their own love of law and its rule. The Jewish diaspora respected Rome because it constituted a reliable framework of government especially in Greek-speaking cities in which they had been liable to suffer since at least 250 BC.

Unfortunately, in the Jewish Middle-Eastern heartland, and especially in its chief city, Jerusalem, Romans and Jews coexisted much less peaceably. Rome saw Judaea as a "poor" colony (as did the British in the period 1918-39) and it therefore had second-rate governors, Pontius Pilate being typical. Jerusalem, its giant temple built by Herod the Great, seethed with religious extremism, liable to come to the boil at certain times of the year, and was occasionally the home of violent sects, such as the Zealots and the terrorist movement called the siccarii. Roman taxes were regarded as heavy, tax collectors were unpopular social outcasts (as the New Testament, where they are called "publicans", makes clear, classing them with "sinners"), and a tactless governor, by a ceremonial order which conflicted with Jewish religious customs, could easily ignite a revolt.

The peacable diaspora Jews deplored the religious enragées of Jerusalem but there was nothing they could do to control them, even though they themselves suffered grievously from the excises of the Holy City. There are obvious parallels today with the Muslim world and its emigrant communities in the West, which should help us to understand the background of the first century AD. There were Jews in Jerusalem who understood the need for utilitarian common sense, such as Jesus of Nazareth. Hence his notable reply to a trick question: "Render therefore to Caesar things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's." But they were few.

Professor Goodman explains this background lucidly and shows how easy it was for the clash of AD 66 to occur. But he also puts his finger on the factor which turned it into a catastrophe for the Jews. In AD 68-69 Rome was convulsed by a series of dramatic events which kept the government of the empire in turmoil and the volatile citizens of the great city in emotional ferment. They, like the inhabitants of Jerusalem, were inflammable, but what made them take to the streets was not religious frenzy but the disposition of power and its spoils. In 68, Nero, overwhelmed by his crimes and rising unpopularity, killed himself. He was followed in quick succession by two transient emperors: Galba, killed by the Praetorian Guard, and Otho, another suicide. The eventual winner was Vespasian, another soldier. He had had a respectable but undramatic military career, and he felt badly in need of a consoling victory to raise his prestige among the Romans and legitimise his new rank as emperor. He seized on the Jewish revolt as his opportunity, and he and his son Titus turned the suppression into a large-scale military operation and an occasion for spectacular punishment of the people who made it necessary. The victory was duly secured, the temple was destroyed - itself an engineering event of memorable size - and the Jews were massacred, brought to Rome as pitiful prisoners, and dispersed.

Thus what we know as the Jewish diaspora began as a cynical device to confirm Vespasian's possession of the imperial throne. But its long-term consequences were enormous. Imperial propaganda having demonised the Palestinian Jews and made them the villains of an expensive war tended to turn on the diaspora Jews also, and encouraged the various communities of the empire to hold them in abhorrence. This deepened existing anti-Semitism, especially the Greek variety. But it also made the Christians, already objects of suspicion because of their origins in Judaism and their links to the diaspora communities from which they had originally emerged, anxious to distance themselves from the Jews.

This was the real starting point for Christian anti-Semitism, which gradually overlaid and replaced the Greek variety, and became the principal form of this destructive mental virus until modern times, when secular racism of the Hitler kind replaced it in turn. It is an interesting example of how long-term events of the greatest significance for mankind can be detonated by the timing of a local political crisis, and Goodman has written a splendid book about it.

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