was executed by beheading. Before their martyrdom, Peter and Paul had worked to strengthen the Christian community in the imperial capital and mentored elders to lead the flock after their deaths. As a result, the bishop of Rome, Linus (67–76), became the successor to Saint Peter and the universal pastor of the Christian community.
The Jewish Revolt
A few years after Nero’s persecution of Christians in Rome, a devastating event occurred in the Holy Land that would forever shape the history and worship of the Jewish people, and also influence the early Church.
Gessius Florus, the Roman Procurator of Judea, was a wicked man. He disliked the Jewish people and wanted to goad them into rebellion against Rome. Florus provoked the people by commandeering money from the Temple treasury in the name of the emperor. The people, incensed, rioted in the streets of Jerusalem. Florus demanded that the Jews hand over the leaders of the demonstrations. When the people refused, he ordered Roman troops to restore order. The army killed thousands of Jews in Jerusalem, even crucifying Roman citizens, which was against imperial law. This was the tipping point for the Jews, and more men joined the rebellion. The rebels quickly overwhelmed the small Roman garrison in Jerusalem. Word reached the Roman legate in Syria that the situation in Judea was out of control, so he ordered the Twelfth Legion, augmented by mercenaries and auxiliary troops, to quell the Jewish rebellion. On the march to Judea, Jewish rebels at the pass of Beth-Horon ambushed and slaughtered the legion.13 News of the massacre of the Roman legion spread throughout Judea, encouraging more people to join the rebellion, which now became a full-scale war.
Rome never allowed those who defeated a legion to remain unpunished. When word of the Twelfth’s defeat reached the capitol, Nero ordered General Titus Flavius Vespasian to Judea. Vespasian was “a no-nonsense sort of man, tough, shrewd, and efficient, with a caustic wit, a soldier’s soldier who always led from the front and had been wounded several times.”14 Vespasian was a confident and experienced combat commander, a veteran of thirty battles fought in Germania and Britain against some of Rome’s fiercest foes. He took command of several legions and ordered his son, Titus, to lead the Fifteenth Legion from Egypt to Judea. Nearly sixty thousand Roman troops were dispatched to Judea to put down the Jewish revolt. Vespasian embarked on a systematic campaign, initially refusing to attack the main rebel stronghold of Jerusalem and focusing instead on controlling the surrounding areas and strategic towns on the approach to the great city.
The main source of information for the Great Jewish Revolt is from the writings of Josephus (A.D. 37–100), a Levite and a Jewish nobleman (a descendant of the famous Maccabee kings on his mother’s side), whose many books include The Wars of the Jews.15 Josephus had lived in Rome in the years before the Jewish rebellion, so he was intimately aware of the power of the Empire. He returned to his homeland and tried in vain to convince his countrymen that war against Rome was futile. But Josephus believed it was his duty to defend his nation, so he joined the rebellion and took command of the city of Jotapata (also known as Yodfat), which the Romans besieged for forty-seven days. Eventually, Roman soldiers broke into the city and killed most of the city’s population. Josephus survived and was taken prisoner. He soon gained favor with Vespasian for his knowledge, respect for Rome, and clever mind. The Romans used Josephus to convince other Jewish towns to surrender, so most Jews saw him as a traitor. At the end of the war, Josephus settled in Rome, became an imperial citizen, and took as his own the imperial family name, Flavius, in honor of their patronage.
The Holy City Destroyed
After three years of fighting, Vespasian’s systematic campaign in Judea came to its culmination with the siege of Jerusalem. The situation in the city at the arrival of the Roman legions was desperate. Zealots inside the city had unleashed ferocious class warfare, breaking into rival factions so that the Jews in the city were fighting not only the Romans, but also each other. As Vespasian’s army prepared for siege, word reached the general that Nero had committed suicide, triggering a year of civil war among rival claimants to the throne. Vespasian left the Judean campaign and placed his son Titus in command of the siege. Eventually, Vespasian emerged victorious from the civil war and became emperor in the summer of A.D. 69. Titus embarked on the biggest siege to date in Roman history. He placed the Tenth Legion, “Caesar’s Own,” on the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives. The soldiers used wood from the Garden of Gethsemane to build siege engines.
Conditions in the city went from desperate to horrific. A large number of people had come to the city for the Passover feast when the Romans began the siege. As months passed, starvation reigned. People ate leather and hay, and even sifted through cow dung looking for scraps of food — for “what had once revolted them now became their normal diet.”16 There was even a ghastly account of a mother, delirious from hunger, who ate her infant child.17 The death toll climbed until the Jewish soldiers were forced to walk over corpses to sally forth from the city. After six months of siege, the Romans prepared their final assault. Titus personally led the way and ordered that the Temple was not to be destroyed. Unfortunately, those orders were not obeyed, and the Roman troops rampaged through the city. The destruction of the Temple, which had been only recently completed in A.D. 64, was a watershed moment in the life of the children of Israel, although it was not the first time the Temple had been destroyed. In fact, the Babylonians destroyed the first Temple on August 10, 587 B.C. The second Temple was destroyed 657 years later on the same day. The loss of the Temple fundamentally changed the practice of Judaism from a worship that required animal sacrifice to an observance of the Law as the defining characteristic of Jewish faith. Titus triumphantly marched back to Rome in A.D. 71 and carried with him the great menorah from the Temple.18
Although Jerusalem had fallen to the Roman legions, a group of Jews led by Eleazar ben Ya’ir took refuge in the isolated rock plateau fortress of Masada for three years. The Romans, under the command of Lucius Flavius Silva, built an impressive 400-foot ramp in order to enter the fortress. Knowing the final Roman assault was near, Eleazar ordered his troops to commit suicide with their families to avoid capture. When the Romans broke into Masada in the morning, a ghastly sight greeted them.
After years of continued clashes, another Jewish revolt commenced in A.D. 132 under the leadership of Simon bar Kokhba. Once more, the Romans violently put down the rebellion, this time leveling the entire city of Jerusalem. It was replaced by a new city, founded by Emperor Hadrian, and renamed Aelia Capitolina.
Over one million Jews died in the Great Jewish Revolt, and tens of thousands were sold into slavery. Christian inhabitants of Jerusalem, remembering Jesus’ prophetic words, fled to the countryside before the siege and were not deeply impacted by the war. The destruction of the Temple and the subsequent change in Judaism helped solidify the distinction between Jews and Christians. Originally viewed as a Jewish phenomenon, the Christian faith became a permanent separate entity as a result of the Jewish war with Rome.
The Didache
The early Church produced an interesting document known as the Didache, or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.19 The Didache outlines the choice each person faces — the way of life and the way of death. The way of life involves living out the Ten Commandments, whereas the way of death involves living by the sins of pride, lust, lying, stealing, murder, adultery, sodomy, and abortion. From the earliest days of the Faith, as the Didache illuminates, Christian living was focused on morality, on living in accordance with the example of Christ and the teachings of the Church. The Didache also provides information on the worship and sacramental life of the early Church. The document exhorts Christians to pray every day — especially the Lord’s Prayer, which should be recited three times a day. The Sacrament of Baptism and its application is mentioned in the Didache. The candidate was required to fast before reception of the sacrament and was baptized in the Trinitarian formula with water. Prayers for the celebration of the Eucharist on the Lord’s Day are found in the Didache, along with the admonition that only those
