Jerusalem: The Biography

The fighting raged among the flames: dazed, starving Jerusalemites wandered lost and distressed through the burning portals. Thousands of civilians and rebels mustered on the steps of the altar, waiting to fight to the last or just die hopelessly. All had their throats cut by the exhilarated Romans as though it were a mass human sacrifice, until ‘around the altar lay dead bodies heaped one upon another’ with the blood running down the steps. Ten thousand Jews died in the burning Temple.

The cracking of vast stones and wooden beams made a sound like thunder. Josephus watched the death of the Temple:

The roar of the flames streaming far and wide mingled with the groans of the falling victims and owing to the height of the hill and the mass of the burning pile, one would have thought the whole city was ablaze. And then the din – nothing more deafening or appalling could be conceived than that. There were the war cries of the Roman legions sweeping onward, the howls of the rebels encircled by fire and swords, the rush of the people who, cut off above, fled panic-stricken only to fall into the arms of the foe, and their shrieks as they met their fate, blended with lamentations and wailing [of those in the city]. Transjordan and the surrounding mountains contributed their echoes, deepening the din. You would have thought the Temple hill was boiling over from its base, being everywhere one mass of flame.

Mount Moriah, one of the two mountains of Jerusalem, where King David had placed the Ark of the Covenant and where his son Solomon had built the first Temple, was ‘seething hot full of fire on every part of it’, while inside, dead bodies covered the floors. But the soldiers trampled on the corpses in their triumph. The priests fought back and some threw themselves into the blaze. Now the rampaging Romans, seeing that the inner Temple was destroyed, grabbed the gold and furniture, carrying out their swag, before they set fire to the rest of the complex.⁶

As the Inner Courtyard burned, and the next day dawned, the surviving rebels broke out through the Roman lines into the labyrinthine Outer Courtyards, some escaping into the city. The Romans counterattacked with cavalry, clearing the insurgents and then burning the Temple’s treasury chambers, which were filled with riches drawn from the Temple tax paid by all Jews, from Alexandria to Babylon. They found there 6,000 women and children huddled together in apocalyptic expectation. A ‘false prophet’ had earlier proclaimed that they could anticipate the ‘miraculous signs of their deliverance’ in the Temple. The legionaries simply set the passageways alight, burning all these people alive.

The Romans carried their eagles on to the Holy Mountain, sacrificed to their gods, and hailed Titus as their imperator

– commander-in-chief. Priests were still hiding out around the Holy of Holies. Two plunged into the flames, and one succeeded in bringing out the treasures of the Temple – the robes of the high priest, the two golden candelabra and heaps of cinnamon and cassia, spices that were burned every day in the Sanctuary. When the rest surrendered, Titus executed them as ‘it was fitting for priests to perish with their Temple’.

Jerusalem was – and still is – a city of tunnels. Now the rebels disappeared underground while retaining control of the Citadel and the Upper City to the west. It took Titus another month to conquer the rest of Jerusalem. When it fell, the Romans and their Syrian and Greek auxiliaries ‘poured into the alleys. Sword in hand; they massacred indiscriminately all whom they met and burned the houses with all who had taken refuge within.’ At night when the killing stopped, ‘the fire gained mastery of the streets’.

Titus parleyed with the two Jewish warlords across the bridge that spanned the valley between the Temple and the city, offering them their lives in return for surrender. But still they refused. He ordered the plundering and burning of the Lower City, in which virtually every house was filled with dead bodies. When the Jerusalemite warlords retreated to Herod’s Palace and Citadel, Titus built ramparts to undermine them and on 7th of Elul, in mid-August, the Romans stormed the fortifications. The insurgents fought on in the tunnels until one of their leaders John of Gishala surrendered (he was spared, though he faced lifelong imprisonment). The other chieftain Simon ben Giora emerged in a white robe out of a tunnel under the Temple, and was assigned a starring role in Titus’ Triumph, the celebration of the victory in Rome.