Original subtitles

In 63 BC

the Roman general Pompeii led his legions into the land of Judea.

For 100 years, Judea had been an independent nation

and many Jews believed that as the Chosen People of the one true God,

they would remain free forever.

But it soon became clear

that the world's greatest empire could not be resisted.

The triumph of the Romans produced a crisis of faith among the Jews.

For some, the only explanation was that the final battle between good and evil,

the End of Days, was at hand.

They would soon see evidence of their belief,

for the years ahead in Judea

would be one of the most bloody and chaotic periods in human history.

This is a story of terrorists and political assassination,

of brutal overlords who crucified thousands

and of the siege of Jerusalem,

with over 100,000 people trapped inside.

But it is also the story of how, amid the chaos,

two new religions began to flower.

Religions that would change mankind's ideas

about justice, mercy and God.

(MIDDLE-EASTERN MUSIC)

When Roman troops rushed into Jerusalem, the capital of Judea,

they were unaware that they were about to meet

the most extraordinary people they had ever tried to conquer.

The defenders of the city retreated not to a fortress,

but to the temple of their unique god to make their last stand.

According to the historian Josephus,

when the Romans attacked the Temple

their commander Pompeii was amazed by the behaviour of the Jewish priests.

"Pompeii could not but admire

"that they did not at all intermit their religious services,

"even when the temple was being attacked on all sides.

"Nor indeed, even when the temple was actually being taken

"did they leave off the divine worship appointed by their law. "

(GONG RINGS)

For the temple priests, performing the rituals that honoured their god

was more important than life itself.

For centuries

reports that the Jews believed there was only one god in the universe

had fascinated the other peoples of the ancient world.

And the Jews' Temple in Jerusalem was famous far and wide

for the amazing rituals the priests performed to worship their god.

The Roman general Pompeii was among those who was intrigued

by the Jews' unusual religion.

(DRUMBEAT)

He was particularly curious

to see what their mysterious god looked like.

According to Josephus,

as soon as the Roman general gained control of the city

he went inside the Temple in search of its most sacred sanctum,

the Holy of Holies, where the god of the Jews was reputed to live.

"There was nothing that affected the nation,

"in all the calamities that they were under,

"as that their holy place, which had hitherto been seen by none,

"should be laid open to strangers.

"For Pompeii went whither it was not lawful any to enter

"but the high priest himself. "

Instead of the great statue of marble or bronze that he expected,

Pompeii saw... nothing.

According to the Jews, their god was so great

he could not be captured by an idol

or any other man-made image.

He was without form, timeless,

and present everywhere.

To Romans like Pompeii, it was incomprehensible

that the Jews would be so dedicated to the worship of a single god.

Like the rest of the ancient world,

the Romans had a huge pantheon of gods

but their most deeply-held belief was that might made right.

That conviction had won the Romans control of an enormous empire.

To them, Judea was only a tiny piece in a great strategic puzzle.

They needed to conquer Judea

in order to gain easy access to Egypt.

But to the Jews, Judea was the Promised Land

given to them by God to be theirs alone.

This clash of cultures between the Romans and the Jews

would lead to a vicious and bloody conflict

that would last 200 years.

Even worse for the Jewish people,

it was a conflict that would pit Jew against Jew as never before.

The Romans come into power

and it stimulates an immediate debate among the Jews

about whether to revolt against them or not to revolt

and effectively from the very beginning

there were Jewish groups that basically wanted to revolt

and others which cautioned, and said "We really don't need to go so far. "

So these groups are vying with one another constantly

in the period of Roman rule.

Before long, the fierce disagreements between different groups of Jews

over how to deal with the Romans

would trigger a Jewish civil war.

The physical violence between the different factions

grew from the depth of their spiritual conflict.

Each group believed that it alone understood the true will of God

as revealed in the Bible.

And each had nothing but contempt for all who disagreed.

The Temple high priest and his allies

formed the most wealthy and influential of the Jewish groups.

The rituals that the priests had been performing for centuries

had become so important to their fellow Jews

that the Temple was the political and economic heart of Jerusalem.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims

flooded the city's markets to buy sheep, wheat, wine and oil

to bring as offerings to the Temple.

The pilgrims spent freely,

for according to biblical law, offering sacrifices at the Temple

was the only way Jews were permitted to worship God.

(PERCUSSlVE MIDDLE-EASTERN MUSIC)

Once inside the Temple

the pilgrims turned their offerings over to the priests,

for they were the only ones allowed to mediate between God and mankind.

If you walked into the Temple,

what you would see is priests who had been designated as priests

simply because their fathers were priests, only men.

You would also see Levites, people whose fathers were Levites,

who were assisting these priests.

There would be animal sacrifices, blood, guts...

all of the unpleasant smells of animals being slaughtered

and you would have a real sense of life and death there.

One of the most important rituals the priests conducted each year

was Passover.

While in Jerusalem, the historian Josephus attended the festival.

"It is a memorial of their delivery from slavery in Egypt

"and they offer more sacrifices than at any other festival.

"A group of at least ten come with every sacrifice

"for it is not lawful for them to feast singly by themselves.

"And many of us are twenty in a company.

"An innumerable multitude come there from the land,

"and even from beyond its borders, to worship God. "

For the high priest and his allies,

temple rituals like Passover were not only a spiritual outlet

but were the source of great wealth and power.

So long as the Romans did not interfere with the Temple,

they were willing to help the Romans rule Jerusalem.

But there were other Jews who believed that the high priest was a traitor.

From the day the Romans took over Jerusalem,

Jewish rebels began launching raids against them

from mountain and desert hideouts.

They believed that if they fought bravely enough

God would grant them a miraculous victory

as in the Bible stories of old.

To deal with the rebels, the Romans chose a commander

known both for his boundless ambition and extreme cruelty.

An Arab prince named Herod.

SCHIFFMAN: Herod is perhaps one of the most amazing characters in history.

What was the guy, really?

First of all, they debate, was he Jewish, or not Jewish?

His mother was actually an Arab princess,

so he wasn't Jewish.

Now, Herod had worked under his father in the government

because Herod's father was a kind of...

almost secretary of state, but it means head of everything.

As a result of this, Herod was involved in what we might call police actions.

And eventually he built up enough of a power base

that he was able to make himself king of the Jews.

To many Jews,

the crowning of a king who was not a descendant of David was blasphemy.

And so the rebels decided to come down from the mountains

and lead the people of Judea in an all-out revolt.

But Herod had Rome behind him,

and according to Josephus,

he decided to make an example of the rebels.

"Whole masses were slaughtered.

"In alleys, crowded in their houses,

"and even taking refuge in the Temple.

"There was no mercy for either young or old,

"nor were the weakest women spared.

"Like madmen, they took vengeance on all ages. "

The last of the rebels fled to caves dug into cliffs,

where they were convinced Herod would not be able to reach them.

SCHIFFMAN: Herod was really a ruthless guy.

He would bring his soldiers to these caves

where these rebels were hiding.

What he used to do is, he'd build these scaffolds, lower soldiers down...

When the soldiers got down there,

they'd throw a sort of smoke bomb, or smoke grenades, into these caves.

And when the women and children came to the edge of the cave,

they'd yank them with hooks and throw them to their death.

Once he'd tightened his grip on the throne,

Herod did the unexpected.

Sensing the Temple's essential role

in the nation's cultural and economic life,

he decided to make it into the most impressive monument on earth

through a rebuilding project

that required mountains of stone and gold.

MAN: The Temple in Jerusalem,

firstly, was one of the great wonders of the world.

Tourists came to see it.

Maybe for our taste it was a little bit glitzy

but it was golden, it shimmered.

People thought it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Gentiles came to bring sacrifices, to offer gifts,

because they thought it was a place with power,

that it represented something to them, God's seat on earth.

And for Jewish people, of course, it was quite literally that.

It was God enthroned on earth in a place.

But no T emple beautification plan

could make the Jewish rebels accept Herod as king of the Jews.

The rebels continued to fight

and Herod continued to kill them.

The endless violence was no surprise to another group of Jews

who believed that God did not want them to fight the Romans.

He wanted them to prepare for the End of Days.

(WlND BLOWS)

On the lifeless, heat-scorched shores of the Dead Sea

Iived a group of Jews called the Essenes.

The Essenes had withdrawn from civilisation

into an apocalyptic landscape

that reminded them at every moment that the end was near.

To them, that was the only possible explanation

for why God had allowed the Romans to conquer Judea.

MAN: There are here deep echoes from the biblical times,

reminding them that this had been a land which God had given to Israel

and he had purged it of foreigners.

And now here were the foreigners ruling once again.

So, what was to be done about this?

This required some drastic new thing.

So the notion arose that there must be some final act

introduced by God himself through his chosen messengers or community

that would make things right again.

There must be an End of Days,

there must be a last time when all would be made right.

The Essenes followed the cleanliness rituals of the priesthood

and rejected both sex and personal possessions.

They were determined to live as perfectly as humanly possible

until the end came.

"There are about 4000 men who live in this way

"and never marry wives.

"They teach the immortality of souls

"and esteem that the rewards of righteousness

"are to be earnestly striven for. "

The Essenes spent much of their time

making new copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible and other sacred texts

so that their eternal wisdom

would survive the final battle between good and evil.

They were especially drawn to the Book of Daniel

which spoke of the reward

that the righteous would receive after the End of Days.

"It will be a time of trouble

"the like of which has never been since the nation came into being.

"At that time, your people will be rescued,

"all who are found inscribed in the Book.

"And those who lead the many to righteousness

"will be like the stars, forever. "

WOMAN: They believed that everything was pre-ordained by God.

And that when the End of Days arrived, there would be a 40-year-long war

between the forces of good and the forces of evil.

They were the forces of good, they called themselves the Sons of Light.

Everybody else, including the other Jews,

were the forces of evil, the Sons of Darkness.

And they believed that the outcome of this 40-year war was pre-ordained

and that at the end of it, they would be the victors.

The Essenes stored their writings

in caves they found in the cliffs above the Dead Sea.

It was a plan that showed remarkable foresight,

for two of their premonitions would come true.

A time of trouble more terrible than any the nation had seen was coming.

And their Dead Sea Scrolls would survive it.

In 4 BC, Jerusalem erupted in celebration.

After 40 years on the throne, King Herod was dead.

Now all those determined to throw off Roman rule saw their chance.

More and more armed groups began roaming the countryside,

attacking isolated Roman garrisons

and looting the caravans of merchants bound for Egypt.

But the rebels did most of their fighting

not with the Romans, but with their fellow Jews.

(HEAVY DOOR IS BOLTED)

For nothing enraged the rebels more

than a Jew who had abandoned Jewish traditions for Roman ones.

(DESOLATE MUSIC)

To the rebels, the worst culprits were wealthy Jews

who broke the law God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai,

restricting the enslavement of fellow Jews.

The mistreated slaves offered the rebels

a perfect opportunity to add to their ranks.

(DOOR UNBOLTS)

And so they began attacking the estate

of one wealthy Jew after another,

freeing the slaves and inviting them to join the rebellion.

(DRUMBEAT)

"They have an unconquerable love of freedom.

"For them, God is the only lord and master.

"They think it little to submit to torturous forms of death

"and punishment of their family and friends

"if only they can call no man master. "

In the eyes of the Romans,

these Jewish freedom fighters were brigands and bandits

and that's how they're described in the ancient sources.

In their own eyes, and in the eyes of Jewish history,

they were not bandits at all, they were like Robin Hood

or, if you will, Che Guevara.

They were revolutionary figures

and heroes of a resistance against a foreign oppressor.

But the rebels, too weak to overthrow Rome,

only succeeded in plunging Judea into chaos.

For decades the region remained trapped

in a vicious cycle of Roman repression,

rebel uprisings and civil war between Jews.

You've got Jewish groups,

some pro-revolutionary, some anti-revolutionary,

fighting within themselves.

And you have, at the same time, Roman procurators that are rapacious,

taking as much tax as they can

and not maintaining law and order.

At the same time, you have Roman soldiers all over the place

with no respect for the Jews and their religion.

So the whole thing is careening towards an ultimate explosion.

But even as most Jews fell into despair

about the disaster towards which they seemed to be headed,

others were proposing a very different vision of the future.

In the centuries since the stories of Abraham, Moses,

and the other heroes of the Bible had been collected,

scholars throughout Judea had been studying

in search of lessons on how to live.

One group of scholars was called the Pharisees.

The most influential of the Pharisees was Hillel.

Unlike the rebels, Hillel thought the issue of who was ruling Judea

was of little importance.

What was important was to live one's own life honestly and ethically

and treat one's fellow human beings with mercy and compassion.

Hillel's philosophy was summed up in three simple questions.

"If I am not for myself, who shall be for me?

"If I am only for myself, who am I?

"If not now, when? "

What Hillel teaches

is that each and every human being is created in the image of God.

And the imperative to me is to understand first my own image

and then to be able to recognise the image in everybody else.

And when we've built a society

that recognises the image of God in every human being,

then we have a society which is just, which is moral,

which is compassionate and kind.

According to the stories handed down about him,

Hillel was born to a wealthy family

but as a young man took a vow of poverty.

For half of each day, Hillel chopped wood to support himself.

For the other half, he studied the Bible.

Unlike the priests, Hillel and his fellow Pharisees

believed that one did not have to be a member of the priesthood

to communicate with God.

They had the revolutionary idea

that anyone could communicate with God

simply by studying His word in the Bible.

NETTER: The way to access God through Pharisaic Judaism

is through study.

To be a priest, one had to be born into it.

To be a king, one had to be born into it.

To be a scholar, one had to study.

And anybody could study.

Unlike the Essenes,

the Pharisees did not believe in withdrawing from the world.

But how to live ethically

in the 'might makes right' world of the Romans

was the subject of intense debate

between Hillel and his great rival Shammai.

According to one story,

a passerby one day mocked the two Pharisees

by asking them to explain the Torah while standing on one foot.

Shammai angrily told the man to go away.

NETTER: When the man comes to Hillel,

he says "Teach me the Torah while standing on one foot. "

Hillel says "What is hateful unto you, do not do unto others.

"All the rest is commentary.

"Now go study. "

What Hillel did was to successfully reduce all the tradition

to a single sound bite.

That sound bite is that if you want to serve God

there's a way that you have to treat people.

You cannot demonstrate that you love God

if you hate people.

Hillel's vision of Judaism

would influence many others in the years to come,

including a young carpenter from Nazareth.

By 30 AD,

numerous preachers were responding to the apocalyptic mood in Judea.

Some claimed to be messiahs,

come to lead a rebellion against the Romans.

Others taught their followers how to live amid the violence, like Hillel.

One preacher influenced by Hillel's school of Judaism

was Jesus of Nazareth.

Hillel's admonition to treat others as he would like to be treated

became, for Jesus, being willing to turn the other cheek to your enemies.

Most of the ethics of Jesus, the beautiful ideas you read about

in the Sermon on the Mount, or on the plain, depending on what version you take,

these are the types of ethics that the Pharisaic rabbis

Iike Hillel and Shammai were talking about.

And this is something common to Judaism and Christianity

and to our civilisation as a whole.

In his most famous sermon,

on a hilltop overlooking the Sea of Galilee,

Jesus told his disciples

how they should respond to the chaos that surrounded them.

"Blessed are the gentle,

"they shall have the earth as inheritance.

"Blessed are the merciful,

"they shall have mercy shown them.

"Blessed are the pure in heart,

"they shall see God.

"Blessed are the peacemakers,

"they shall be recognised as children of God. "

Jesus' conviction that each human being needed to strive

to make the world a better place, was part of a Jewish tradition

that reached back to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible.

MEEKS: The more we learn about Judaism in the 1 st century,

especially about the variety of ways of being Jewish,

the more Jewish Jesus looks.

The thought that this is a world in which God will reign alone and supreme

is supremely Jewish.

The telling of parables in order to clarify, make his points,

the very form of Jesus' rhetoric is Jewish.

Like the Essenes, Jesus was deeply influenced

by the prophecies in the Bible,

that during a period of incredible upheaval

God would redeem the world once and for all.

He began to preach that the time had come.

MEEKS: He goes around preaching

that the kingdom of God is about to begin

and everyone must be ready for this kingdom of God.

So he clearly is one of those...

eschatological prophets, those people expecting the End of Days,

that we learn about from the Dead Sea Scrolls,

that Josephus tells us about.

He's part of this ferment that is... that feeds off the expectation

that some final act of God must set the world right again.

With the countryside in turmoil

and talk everywhere of messiahs who would lead the Jewish people to freedom,

the Roman authorities were constantly arresting and crucifying

those considered troublemakers.

In 33 AD,

Jesus of Nazareth was one of those singled out and crucified.

In the eyes of the Romans,

he was just one more would-be Messiah

who would not be leading a revolt.

But Jesus' followers among the Jews

believed that the kingdom of which he was speaking

was not of this world, but the next.

For the moment, these Jews, who would come to be called Christians,

were just another of the many groups of Jews

trying to understand the bloody and chaotic world of Judea

in the 1 st century AD.

According to Josephus, in 52 AD,

after years in which rebel attacks on the Romans and their Jewish collaborators

were limited to the countryside,

everything changed.

A new band of rebels arose

who were determined to carry the fight to Jerusalem.

"There sprang up another group, which were called the Sicarii,

"who murdered men in the daytime and in the heart of the city. "

To the Sicarii, anyone who wasn't fighting the Romans

was a collaborator and worthy of death.

They were called the Sicarii

for the long, thin daggers they used in their attacks.

The Sicarii's first victim was the most prominent Jew in Jerusalem,

the high priest of the Temple.

Then they embarked on a wave of assassinations,

killing wealthy merchants throughout the city.

"Many were slain every day

"and the fear men were in was worse than the calamity itself,

"for everybody expected death every hour,

"as men do in war. "

The willingness of the Sicarii and their fellow rebels

to use murder to achieve their aims

won them a name that would be given forever after to extremists.

They were called Zealots.

KIRSCH: The Zealots were one of several factions of freedom fighters

who took up arms against Roman occupation and authority.

One faction among them, the so-called Sicarii,

Iiterally invented the art of political assassination and terror

by adopting the practice of slipping into a crowd,

standing next to a Jew

who was assumed to be a collaborator with the Romans,

stabbing him secretly, then raising a cry of alarm.

In the panicked crowd, the assassin would slip away

and the bloody corpse would be left behind

as a reminder to any other Jew ready to collaborate with Rome

that death was the price of collaboration.

With the rebels determined to revolt,

and other Jews convinced that it would be insane to rebel against Rome,

the people of Jerusalem could hardly have been more divided.

Then the Roman governor

did the only thing that could possibly unite them.

He ordered an attack on the Temple.

In 67 AD, Roman soldiers burst through the gates of Herod's Temple,

bent on plundering it.

"The governor was eager to steal the vast treasures of God which it held

"and his soldiers killed all those they came upon

"as they forced their way in. "

Outraged at the attack on the seat of God on earth,

rebels and non-rebels alike united to repel the assault.

Then, in a fury,

they overwhelmed the small Roman garrison stationed in Jerusalem

and forced it to flee the city.

(STREET HUBBUB)

With Jerusalem suddenly free of Romans,

many in the city were seized by a giddy euphoria.

The Zealots' dream of an independent Judea

seemed tantalisingly within their grasp.

But others argued

that more fighting could only lead to catastrophe.

A follower of Hillel named Yohanan ben Zakkai

was one of the most passionate voices for peace.

At the risk of being targeted by the Zealots for assassination,

Yohanan told his students that it didn't matter who ruled Judea.

What mattered was who ruled in their hearts.

He argued that what truly pleased the Almighty

was not zealotry at all, but something far simpler...

the acts of mercy and compassion they showed to those around them.

SCHIFFMAN: It seems Yohanan ben Zakkai was part of the peace party.

Numerous Jews, either because of their own closeness to the Romans,

whether business or other reasons,

or simply because they were absolutely convinced there was no hope

to do such a crazy thing as revolt against Rome,

many Jews were really against the revolt.

Yohanan ben Zakkai was one of those Jews who felt that what needed to be done

was to get some form of accommodation from the Romans

that would guarantee Jewish religious freedom,

then leave things as they were, with Roman rulers.

But Jerusalem was not yet ready for Y ohanan's vision of Judaism.

From the steps of the Temple,

the Zealots made a public declaration of war against Rome.

Convinced they were mad,

many other Jews decided to take up arms to stop the Zealots.

Fighting at this point broke out

between those Jews and the rebellious Jews who had taken refuge among them

and it was house to house, at some point.

Different neighbourhoods would belong to one party or the other

and the streets ran with blood.

After a vicious week-long civil war, the Zealots were victorious.

(CROWD CRlES)

They celebrated their victory by setting the city on fire.

"The Zealots set fire to the high priest's home and the palaces.

"Then they carried the fire to the place where the records were kept

"and burned the contracts it held,

"thereby dissolving all of their debts.

"This was also done that they might persuade the multitude of the poor

"who were debtors, to join in their insurrection. "

News of the Zealots' uprising against Rome

soon reached the nearby city of Caesarea.

Outraged, Romans and Syrians in Caesarea

massacred thousands of their Jewish neighbours.

In revenge, Jews throughout Judea

began killing Syrians and Romans living among them.

"It was common to see cities filled with bodies,

"still lying unburied,

"and those of old men mixed with women and infants, all dead.

"The whole region was full of inexpressible calamities,

"while the fear was everywhere

"that there were even more barbarous times to come. "

(HORSES GALLOP)

The Romans were determined to crush the rebellion

before it inspired others in their far-flung empire

to challenge their rule.

They dispatched their greatest general, Vespasian, into Judea

to lead an army of over 60,000 men.

"Vespasian marched to the city of Gedara and quickly took it,

"for he found it destitute of any men fit for war.

"He then killed all the children,

"the Romans having no mercy on any age whatever,

"and this was done out of the hatred they bore the rebels. "

As news of Vespasian's atrocities swept through Judea,

Jews throughout the region

began fleeing before his army toward Jerusalem.

When the Roman army finally reached the city,

Josephus estimated that more than 1 00,000 people

were trapped inside its walls.

The Romans set up their camps in full view of the city

in the hope that the mere sight of their military might

would convince the people of Jerusalem to surrender.

Their force was composed of three battle-hardened legions

drawn from garrisons in Rome, Egypt and Syria.

They were armed with catapults, battering rams, siege engines-

the fearsome weapons of war that had helped them conquer the world

from England to Persia.

But conquering Jerusalem was still a daunting challenge.

The city was surrounded by not one, but three walls,

which together were nearly 60 feet thick.

And in the centre of the city,

the Temple with its own massive walls and towers,

Ioomed as one of the most formidable fortresses in the world.

But behind those walls there was chaos.

SCHIFFMAN: The city of Jerusalem during the revolt was under complete siege.

Food and water were not entering,

and inside, all normal governmental institutions had broken down.

They were maintaining Temple sacrifice

but outside of the Temple there were all these rebel armies,

actually, about six, controlling different quarters of the city,

whose commanders were fighting over what to do.

So you had really anarchy and fear

and, as Josephus describes it, tremendous starvation.

Inside the city,

the catastrophe foretold by Y ohanan ben Zakkai

was coming to pass.

The Zealots had begun fighting among themselves for control of Jerusalem.

When one band of Zealots broke into the territory of another,

they would inflict the worst damage they could think of-

burning their rivals' food supply.

"They set on fire those houses that were full of grain

"and all the other provisions.

"And as soon as they were forced into a retreat,

"the same thing was done to them by the others.

"Accordingly, it came to pass

"that almost all the grain in the city was burned,

"which would have been sufficient to survive a siege of many years. "

With the food supply decimated,

many decided their only hope was to flee Jerusalem.

But the Zealots believed

God wanted the entire nation to confront the Romans as one.

They issued an edict that anyone who tried to leave

would be considered a traitor and executed.

It's in many ways like the militarist within any society in our own time.

Those that are following a military mode in terms of the Islamic jihad

or in terms of... those that we saw in Bosnia.

In other words, those that decide

that the only way to work is through military means.

And that was a scary time for all Jews in Jerusalem at that time

because most were not Zealots.

As the siege wore on,

the situation inside Jerusalem grew more and more desperate.

"Of those who perished by famine, the number was great

"and the miseries they underwent were unspeakable,

"for if so much as the shadow of any kind of food did anywhere appear,

"a war began,

"and the dearest friends fell to fighting one with another about it. "

Soon, many people became so desperate

that they were willing to risk death at the hands of the Zealots.

So they would creep out little-known doorways and gates to the city

and gather weeds to eat.

But outside the city walls, they risked capture

and incredibly brutal treatment at the hands of the Roman legionnaires.

MILES: The Nazi Holocaust of the 20th century

has seemed to be an endless stream of ghastly stories,

fiendish stories of... cruelty that seems to defy the human imagination.

But there's an appalling stream of such stories from...

from this Holocaust as well.

For example,

as people began to attempt to leave the besieged city secretly,

when they were captured,

mercenaries working for Rome would disembowel them,

thinking that they might have swallowed gold or jewels

and that they were hoping then to, you know, recover these

after they'd defecated them later on.

This is not a strange or unusual practice

on the part of people fleeing during time of war.

Guessing that this might have happened,

they literally eviscerated these people,

Iooking for the occasional ruby or gold coin.

The Romans also took many of the men, women and children they captured

and crucified them.

MILES: At the time of the siege of Jerusalem, thousands were crucified.

The historian Josephus says

that the hills around the city were deforested

so many trees were chopped down

to make crosses on which to crucify Jews.

Josephus also describes what I would call terror crucifixions.

The city was still under siege, still holding out against the Romans,

but crosses were erected on the hillsides around it

so that the people inside could see what awaited them

if they continued their resistance.

(M I DDLE-EASTERN M USlC)

Forced to choose between torture at the hands of the Romans,

or starvation at the hands of the Zealots,

the people of Jerusalem were in complete despair.

"A deep silence

"and a kind of deadly night seized upon the city.

"Those that were distressed by the famine were desirous to die

"and those already dead were thought happy. "

It was the last chance for anyone hoping to escape alive.

And yet, it was only the decaying bodies of the dead

that the Zealots would allow to leave.

Then, late one night, a procession approached a city gate.

It was a group of students carrying the body of Yohanan ben Zakkai,

who had advocated peace instead of war.

According to the Jewish book of tradition and law, the Talmud,

the Zealots were suspicious.

"Some of the guards asked 'Who is this? '

"The disciples answered 'A dead body.

'Don't you know that dead bodies may not be kept in Jerusalem overnight? '

"Then one of the Zealots decided to drive a dagger through the body.

"But one of the disciples restrained him, by saying

'Do you want to be remembered

'as the man who pierced the body of the Master? '

"So they opened the gate for the bier and it left the city. "

The students' trick had worked.

Outside the gate, Y ohanan sprang up alive from the bier

on which he had been surrounded by rotting meat.

Then he hurried away from Jerusalem.

Yohanan was convinced

the starving rebels could no longer defend the city or the Temple.

And he had decided

that the very survival of Judaism was on his shoulders.

After a four-month siege,

Rome's legions finally broke through the first wall of the city.

The Zealots rushed to meet them and fought with tremendous bravery.

But they could not prevent the Romans

from fighting their way to the heart of the city, the Temple.

"The Romans proceeded as far as the holy house itself,

"then one of them set fire to it.

"Now the Jews suffered nothing to restrain their force,

"nor tried to save their lives,

"since their holy house was perishing. "

The T emple, the only place on earth, according to the Bible,

where God could be worshipped,

was laid to waste by the Romans.

"As for a great part of the people,

"they were weak and without arms...

"and had their throats cut wherever they were caught.

"In the Temple, around the altar,

"lay dead bodies heaped one upon another

"and at the steps going up to it ran a great quantity of their blood.

"In the history of the world,

"no nation has ever suffered such a calamity. "

The destruction of the Temple in the year 70

was the greatest catastrophe and trauma to happen to Jewish people,

I would argue, until our own time and the Holocaust.

It was the centre of their economic life,

as if the Federal Reserve was housed in the Temple.

It was the centre of judicial life.

The supreme court was housed in the Temple.

It was the centre of religious life,

as if the high priest was the chief rabbi, centred in that building.

And in a matter of hours, it was gone.

When the Temple was destroyed,

everything was gone.

There was no other branch of government

because it was all invested in the priesthood

and the high priest and the Temple.

With the seat of God on earth in ruins,

the religion of the priests and their rituals was lost forever.

How would Judaism and the Jews survive?