The
defeat of Judea and destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 by the Roman general Titus are well known in history because of the detailed eyewitness account of Josephus. There was another far more calamitous defeat of Judea sixty‑five years later, but the war under Bar Kochba is not as well known because there are no eyewitness accounts of it. His defeat, however, was the final utter destruction of the Judean nation. Most of the survivors were exiled into slavery by the Roman authorities, and other peoples were brought into Judea to replace them. So effective was this final exile that even as late as 1856 there were only about 10,500 Jews in their entire ancestral homeland.
The first mention of Bar Kochba in history is around A.D. 128 when he became leader of the Judean resistance against Rome. He recruited an army of 400,000 fighting men gathered from the many individual groups of resistance fighters. He organized them into a well-disciplined army that defeated three Roman legions and liberated all of Palestine. While Bar Kochba was consolidating the affairs of the newly independent State of Israel, the Roman Emperor was weighing the consequences of allowing the Judeans to remain independent. To prevent this, he recalled his most renowned general, Julius Severus, from the frontiers of Germany. Severus had successfully subdued a widespread German revolt by destroying all the villages used by the German tribesmen to launch their attacks.
Severus marched from the north and swept through Galilee, the valley of Jezreel, through Ephraim, and the Judean hills and finally arrived in the environs of Jerusalem late in 133 or early in 134. Bar Kochba retreated to Ein Gedi, twenty‑four miles southeast of Jerusalem, where he had already set up his seat of government. By summer of 134, Roman pressure on Ein Gedi forced Bar Kochba to retreat to the smaller but better fortified city of Bethar. When the Romans stormed Bethar, they massacred practically the entire population of the city. By the time the fighting ended, 985 Judean towns and villages and 50 fortifications had been leveled, and 580,000 Judeans had been killed. Out of a prewar total Judean population of 1,500,000, only about 800,000 survived. Many survivors were sold into slavery to disperse them into other lands. Of those who remained, many voluntarily migrated to other lands. Rome then encouraged foreign peoples to move into the area so that the remaining Judeans would become a small minority. The Judeans remained a small minority until about one hundred years ago when their descendants began the return to the ancestral homeland to rebuild the modern state of Israel.
Recently, Yigael Yadin’s excavations have unearthed some letters and documents of the Bar Kochba era. They reveal that Bar Kochba issued brief and direct orders; that he expected absolute discipline; and that he was ruthless with those who dared to disobey him. One letter from Shimeon ben Kosiba (Bar Kochba''''s real name) to Yeshua ben Galgoua (who was military chief at Ein Gedi) threatens Galgoua with imprisonment if he does not mobilize all of the Galileans who are in his area. It’s a pity so little historical records survived about Bar Kochba. Rome’s crushing of his rebellion was far more serious that the Judean defeat when Titus destroyed Jerusalem and The Temple in A.D. 70.
More summaries about the Bar Kochba: Last Judean Prince Before the Longest Exile in History