Barry Strauss' "Jews vs Rome" and Palestine 1936, Book Notes

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Hi, this is Paul. Um, I've been talking a lot about foolishness to the Greeks, but I'm usually reading too many books at one time, and one of the books that I'm just finishing now is Barry Strauss's Jews versus Rome. And you can get it on audiobook from Audible, and you can get it in Kindle, and it's just recently published. I didn't know anything about Barry Strauss, so if you sort of go out and do a little uh little AI research, Barry Strauss is a leading American classicist, military historian, and prolific author specializing in the ancient Mediterranean world. He's highly regarded for his ability to bridge the gap between the rigorous academic research and engaging accessible narrative history for the general public. So, sounds, you know, similar to the kind of uh area that Tom Holland is in. Um, I am really looking forward to a new Amazon Kindle app for PC. I am so tired of this one, and they're sending all these messages about, "Oh, new one's coming soon. This one will won't work after June 30th, but it's like you better have the new one out before you disable this one, please." Or yeah, what am I going to do? I'm, you know, at Amazon's I'm at Amazon's mercy.

[00:01:11]Um, this covers um, it's it's it's a different book than Pax, than Tom Holland's Pax, but it covers some of the same material, which is kind of nice because it covers it obviously from a different perspective. Pax is looking at the broader Roman world, and the Jews versus Rome is looking specifically at the relationship between the Jewish population, particularly in Judea, Galilee to a degree, but also a little bit over in Alexandria, Antioch, and basically in the Eastern Mediterranean.

[00:01:49]Um, Tom Holland is a author who writes in his own way. Uh, Barry Strauss writes in his own way, of course. I didn't like the Audible reader very much for Jews versus Rome.

[00:02:04]Um After after getting through Jews versus Rome, I'm probably going to go back and re-look at some of the parts in in Pax and just be to to get a fuller to get a fuller sense of it.

[00:02:24]What's nice about this? Now, Josephus has been around forever.

[00:02:31]And it was said that at a point in the Christian in the time of the Christian reformed church before there were a lot of books and before we were terribly wealthy and you would find a Bible and a copy of Josephus in many Christian reformed homes. Josephus, of course, is a really important historian, former priest, former rebel, switches sides, becomes friends with the Flavian household, and and so is is an important voice, but is not a obviously a neutral voice. He has his own axe to grind and so it's it's And if you read basically a historical treatment of the period, especially with respect to the Jewish revolt that will lead to the destruction of the temple, um historians will usually weigh in on, you know, what they think about Josephus and where they think he's accurate, and where he's embellishing, and where he's hiding something. Strauss would bring in other um a lot of other Jewish sources, too.

[00:03:39]Uh not sort of academically in terms of having quotes and arguments between them. This, like Tom Holland's work, is sort of meant to be an accessible narrative of the um of really the three major revolts that took place.

[00:03:58]Um I was the most of us are most familiar with the first one. Of course, he's got to go back over some history.

[00:04:07]How did the Romans get into Judea? What was their relationship like with Judea?

[00:04:13]Who was Herod and his family?

[00:04:17]What was his relationship like? Who were some of the other characters? And then most of the world most of the world most of the book focuses on sort of the the the the what led to the war and then the war itself and then the destruction.

[00:04:36]Titus's obviously his conquest of Jerusalem, the destruction of the walls and the temple, the survivors, what happened to them.

[00:04:49]And then a nice chapter on Masada, which was which was helpful.

[00:04:54]The the Diaspora Revolt was one that I was less that I was that that I didn't know as much about. And so it was really nice.

[00:05:06]Obviously sort of basically chapter one, you've got history.

[00:05:11]Um you've got some early wars and then really the main chapter three was is about Josephus himself.

[00:05:20]And then you know, chapters four through nine are really the the major revolt and then chapter 10, the Diaspora Revolt and then chapter 11, the Bar Kokhba.

[00:05:34]Actually, chapter 11 was my favorite chapter of the book. I thought and I'm going to use some of it for my rough for my my Sunday sermon this week. You say, "How on earth can I integrate this into Pentecost?" just wait.

[00:05:50]Um, so I I I really enjoyed chapter 11.

[00:05:53]It was I thought a really nice treatment of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Um, not a very long treatment. Ooh, it's got photographs here and you know, when you do the audible book, you don't usually see.

[00:06:06]Um, oh, it looks like the photographs aren't that aren't that hot.

[00:06:12]Um, anyway, really enjoyed the book. Uh, like I said, the audible reader, I wasn't enamored with, but at the same time, um, it's better than an AI reading, which I use sometimes for some books, just because you can just get through books quicker if I'm driving or doing the dishes or uh, doing a whole variety of things around the house and I like having the Kindle book to go back and forth. So, it was it was good. What else did I want to say about this book?

[00:06:45]Oh, why? Um, I think for I was just actually talking to Kimo about our men's Bible study and we're we're almost done with Second Kings and I'm going to have to figure out how I want to sort of lead them through the rest of the Old Testament. So, I I'm just thinking about maybe doing a video or two about some of these chronological Bibles that I'm playing with to see if that might help.

[00:07:14]Because it's been it's been fun just sort of reading through the Old Testament just serially. I mean, we started in Genesis and we're to Second Kings, but I know from experience that once you get into the writings and especially once you get into the prophets, it's just a lot of tough sledding for a lot of normie Americans to kind of figure out why are we going to why is there so much material in Isaiah?

[00:07:38]Why is Jeremiah so long? What was this about again? I mean Jonah and Daniel, those books will hold your interest, but um Psalms is a song book and Proverbs is Proverbs and you know, can't can't have just everywhere for the book of Job.

[00:07:55]Ecclesiastes is always a fun ride.

[00:07:58]So, but the the book the book itself is, I think, just good education for probably the kinds of people who would be in the corner um thinking about wanting to know just more background material on this really important piece.

[00:08:22]Doesn't really go into Jesus, doesn't go into any Christian history. It's kind of a straightforward secular telling of the story and there wasn't anything that I think Christians would, you know, sort of kick up. It could be that, >> [snorts] >> you know, looking at all the success that Tom Holland had, someone thought, "Yeah, this would be a good uh this would be a good thing to sort of put out there now." And it was it was a it was a very enjoyable book.

[00:08:51]I almost got detoured into Palestine 1936, which I've also started and which I am enjoying because I'm sort of reading this along with the making of the Arab world and a bunch of the other Middle Eastern things that I've been studying. Part of this, of course, is my fascination with, let's say, Iran, revolutionary Islam, resurgent Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood, history of Egypt. Um this guy, the author, was on uh Coleman.

[00:09:26]I didn't even listen to the whole thing.

[00:09:28]I figured that I'd rather read the book.

[00:09:32]And the book has been interesting so far. It's because I've been doing doing so much reading about 19th century, early 20th century, First World War, Paris 1919.

[00:09:45]This book fits right in because it gets into the transition that happens as a result of let's say the increasing wealth instability um surrounding the Jewish question in Europe in the early 20th century. Now, of course, this will lead to the Second World War and the Holocaust.

[00:10:15]But, this obviously predates the Holocaust. And it's, you know, part of my interest in revolutionary Islam, Christian fundamentalism Zionism is how these things fit together with respect to the modern world.

[00:10:36]And I don't know a lot about Zionism, but um this is kind of an interesting place to start because people moving. Now, you when you end the the Strauss book Jews versus Rome, it ends with the Bar Kokhba revolt where the Romans have basically by this point they've had enough.

[00:11:02]And they you know, keep Jews out. They rename Jerusalem.

[00:11:09]Um I mean, it's a it's a brutal takedown.

[00:11:13]This was after the destruction of the temple. Not far away, the emperor Vespasian erected the so-called Temple of Peace, a project completed in 75. The temple was a complex that contained looted objects from Jerusalem along with a cornucopia of statuary from around the empire, especially from Greece. Many of the works a fruit of earlier many works the fruit of earlier wars of conquest. A statue of the goddess of peace pox stood in a central hall. This is one of the truly great collections of sculpture in the Roman world. A marble plan of the city of Rome was also put into view. In addition the building complex included gardens with plants from all over the empire. It was as if the whole world was on display in Rome. Now again, this isn't a temple.

[00:11:59]Today we might put it in a museum and all of these subtleties are very interesting because of course the Romans were thoroughly religious.

[00:12:10]The Roman Senate was in a sense everyone in the Roman Senate was priests. They were all intermediaries in a sense between the gods and the earth. They stood in between. And so you have you have the goddess you have the goddess peace. But peace sounds like an Orwellian name for a for a monument filled largely with war booty.

[00:12:34]But peace meant something different in Rome from what it means today.

[00:12:38]Romans believed that conflict was natural.

[00:12:41]Peace requires hard work to establish either by diplomacy or war.

[00:12:47]Think of the templem as the temple of pacification and one gets a clearer notion of its original meaning.

[00:12:56]"The war is over." was the building's message. "We have peace because a new dynasty fought for it." It was the peace of Vespasian and his sons.

[00:13:05]Treasures from the Jerusalem Temple had notable place in the structure and rightly so. In Vespasian's eyes he was ex- he he expected the Jews to recognize Rome and not Jerusalem as the object of their veneration.

[00:13:20]But there was another more sinister meaning. Visitors to the Temple of Peace received the message that the Roman peace required the defeat of the Jews.

[00:13:28]Not a happy message for Jews in the in the empire, but their reputation was collateral damage in the making of a new imperial dynasty and a restoration of the Pax Romana. Vespasian and Titus had conquered the Jews and thereby had brought peace to the Roman world. That was the overarching theme.

[00:13:48]This section will likely make the sermon.

[00:13:50]Back to the Bar Kokhba revolt. The war was a duel between two men, Bar Kokhba and Hadrian.

[00:13:57]Bar Kokhba took the title of Nasi or prince of Israel. Hadrian was the emperor, imperator Caesar.

[00:14:04]Both men were hard, violent, and driven by a vision of what each thought was right. Bar Kokhba was a warrior, Hadrian a man of peace, but peace Roman style, that is peace enforced by armies of occupation, financed by humiliating taxes, and presided over by foreign deities. Bar Kokhba was a Messiah, Hadrian the son of a god. Bar Kokhba observed the commandments of Judaism.

[00:14:31]Judaism again, I mean Tom Holland wouldn't have put that in there.

[00:14:35]Hadrian was a pagan. Bar Kokhba honored tradition. Hadrian founded a new religious cult. Although married, Hadrian found found the love of his life in a Greek teenage boy named um Antinous. When Antinous drowned in the Nile in the year 130, Hadrian had him proclaimed one of Rome's many gods. Bar Kokhba worshipped the one god of Israel.

[00:15:00]Hadrian built a new city in Egypt dedicated to Antinous.

[00:15:05]Bar Kokhba dreamed of restoring the temple in Jerusalem. Hadrian built the Pantheon in Rome, a shrine for all the gods. Bar Kokhba considered Hadrian an idolater. Hadrian considered Bar Kokhba a savage.

[00:15:19]No war did more than the Bar Kokhba revolt to shape the destiny of the Jewish people and few wars are so poorly documented. The only historical narrative from antiquity antiquity is a sketchy account in Cassius Dio, less than two dozen lines long.

[00:15:35]As with the history of the diaspora revolt, the surviving version of this text is an 11th century Byzantine abridgement. Fortunately, that text that brief text offers a good overview of the events from the Roman point of view.

[00:15:49]Ancient Jewish sources in the Talmud and Midrash offer a mix of fact and legend.

[00:15:54]Midrash was a type of Jewish interpretation of scripture texts, often used to support a legal ruling or undergird a sermon. The revolt was mentioned briefly as well in a few late antique antique Christian works. In contrast, there's a great deal of material evidence and here where the search for the past gets exciting. It's not just the light It's not just the light from Latin inscriptions nor nor shining images and proud legends on rebel coins. Archaeology has uncovered hidden underground places used by rebel fighters in caves that served the refugees um the refuges for those fleeing the Romans. It's a great chapter. I really enjoyed this chapter.

[00:16:34]He also nicely just briefly covers some of the differing opinion from the different Jewish voices of the time in terms of whether or not this should have happened because it winds up being a just complete disaster.

[00:16:48]Ancient historians didn't mind a tale or two and Roman generals thought nothing of inflating their body counts.

[00:16:53]Nonetheless, archaeological surveys of sites in Israel suggest that Dio's horrendous figures are roughly accurate.

[00:17:01]The slaughter.

[00:17:02]The picture fits the famous description of Rome's extreme pacification policy.

[00:17:07]They make a desert and call it peace.

[00:17:09]Tacitus puts these words in the mouth of a Caledonian Scottish rebel, but many other people in the legions long path of destruction would have nodded in agreement. Rome preferred as we might say nowadays to win hearts and minds of the conquered nations or at least of their elites.

[00:17:26]Rome didn't pay much attention to ordinary folk.

[00:17:29]But made no mistake of make no mistake about it. Repeat offenders would be ground into the dust.

[00:17:34]So much for counterinsurgency as public diplomacy to refer to a contemporary concept.

[00:17:40]When pushed to the wall, the Romans were ready to pile up skulls in the manner of the Assyrians.

[00:17:46]In addition to the massive number of deaths, very many Jews survived survivors were enslaved. A Christian source says that there are so many captives that the price of a slave dropped to the mere cost of a day's feed for a horse.

[00:18:02]So Palace of course Palestine is the name given by the Romans to basically try to erase the Jewish nation.

[00:18:13]Aelia Capitolina which rose above the ruins of Jerusalem was closed to the Jews. If Christian sources are accurate, Jews were forbidden to enter the city much less worship or live there except for one day of the year, the ninth month of Av. Only on this day that marked the destruction of the temple were Jews allowed to enter the former Jerusalem and mourn at the Western Wall.

[00:18:34]After the revolt, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Judea to Syria Palaestina from which the name Palestine comes. Rome changed the name of other provinces but never to but never to punish a rebellion.

[00:18:49]This is the only known case as one scholar puts it, Judea was airbrushed out of the map of Roman provinces.

[00:18:59]So Palestine 1936 sort of picks up with the you know, the the the Ottoman Empire sort of coming apart but there had been sort of a a mixture of groups that were there um that had a degree of control and power in Jerusalem, but as as Zionism in Europe sort of picks up steam, more and more people start coming and they're bringing their money and they're buying up land and it's very interesting listening to that narrative in the light of all kinds of current narratives about immigration and migration. But of course this was there are you know, this this is the this is their land, the land of the Bible, the land of Abraham. I mean, you have all of these stories um getting into it.

[00:19:52]Zionist is from Palestine 1936. Zionism in the early 20th century was the preserve of a small idealistic minority of jewelry.

[00:20:01]Um once while mayor Faidi Al-Alami met with a visiting Zionist leader from Berlin.

[00:20:08]"It's not that we oppose the Jews coming here," Alami says. "On the contrary, the Jews are wanted.

[00:20:14]They're a stimulating, fermenting, progressive force.

[00:20:18]The question is one of numbers.

[00:20:20]We are um they're like salt and bread. A small amount is vital, but a large amount is even worse than none at all."

[00:20:28]"You're wrong," the visitor told him.

[00:20:30]"We don't want to be salt, we want to be the bread."

[00:20:35]Wow, that's that's quite a quite a quote. We don't want to be salt. We want to be the bread.

[00:20:42]So, anyway, so yeah, very much enjoyed Jews versus Rome. If you want to um just have a have a light coming to summer, nice nice light summertime read of just background of that whole thing.

[00:21:00]Simple, accessible, well-written, interesting.

[00:21:05]And um and now that I'm pretty much done with that I'm going to keep going on Palestine 1936 and I'll probably keep reading that all sort of alongside with the you know once I get through that that'll sort of bring me up to the 1940s and 50s and the making of of the Arab world with all those other themes that I've been talking about before. So I don't know how this video fits into anything but there it is.