On the 20th day of Ab (mid-late August) Titus ordered his army to raise the banks further against the upper city, on the west side of the city over against the royal palace. It was at this time that the Idumean commanders who had allied themselves with Simon ben-Gioras throughout the war conspired to surrender…
The lower city had been largely taken earlier. The Temple Mount was now in Roman hands, and the Temple itself had been burned to the ground. All throughout the Temple precincts there were over 10,000 Jewish bodies littering the ground, and the entire day had been filled with a cacophony of Roman cries of victory…
Every day the zealots, although holed up within the inner court of the Temple, fought off the Roman soldiers who were at the gates and on the banks. Then, on the 27th day of Tamuz (mid-July), the zealots hatched yet another plot. They filled the western cloister with dried material, and then in sight of…
By the first day of Tamuz (mid-July), the stench of death and pestilence filled the city. It was then that the zealots fully came to realize that there was no hope of victory, and so instead of surrendering, they resolved to inflict as much brutality on the Jews trapped within Jerusalem’s walls as they held…
Although the Roman siege continued to take its toll on those inside Jerusalem, Titus began to look for ways to hasten its end. And so, he decided to tighten the screws further on the Jews by setting up soldiers to ambush any Jews, be they zealot or civilian, who ventured out of the city to…
The ever-present creation/evolution debate, along with the intense debate regarding the proper interpretation of Genesis 1-11, is not going away anytime soon. Over the past three years, I’ve written my share of blog posts analyzing and criticizing Ken Ham and his YECist organization Answers in Genesis, and even have written a book entitled The Heresy…
After taking the second wall and pushing the zealots back deeper into the upper city and the temple complex, Titus relaxed the siege for a short time, to see if the zealots were willing to finally surrender. Surely, they had to see their days were numbered. And, in order to demoralize the zealots even more,…
When Titus had come to Jerusalem, he encountered a city that had been effectively under siege by the two remaining zealot leaders long before he had arrived. Simon ben-Gioras maintained control over the upper city and led 10,000 fighters and fifty commanders, along with 8,000 Idumeans and eight of their own commanders, among whom were…
Last month, I took part in an online debate regarding Noah’s flood: was it a worldwide flood, a local flood, or should Genesis 6-9 be understood as an example of ancient Near Eastern (ANE) mythological literature? My take, as it has been for the past twenty years, long before I knew anything about the creation-evolution…
The State of Jerusalem in the Spring of AD 70 During the winter of AD 69-70, the three factions of zealots in Jerusalem terrorized both each other and the civilian population as a whole. Eleazar ben-Simon and his group of zealots held the temple itself and the court of the priests—he was helped by Judas…