Back in Judea, the situation was becoming desperate. The whole country
was now subdued by the Romans except for Jerusalem. Division racked the
Jewish leadership as forces loyal to either John of Gischala, the priest
Eleazar and Simon bar Giora fought each other for control of the city,
committing rapes and murders. Titus tightened his grip, moving up his
legions for a full assault. The first attacks repulsed, Titus then determined
to build a wall of circumvallation around the city, just as Christ had
foretold. The siege would last five months. Catapults and battering rams
pounded the city walls. No one could escape. Starvation began to grip the
population of nearly a million people (a population swollen by Passover
pilgrims). Men were eating leather and hay, mothers even their babies. The
dead were piled up in rotting heaps and then thrown into the surrounding
ravines:
“The Jews, unable now to leave the city, were deprived of all hope
of survival. The famine became more intense and devoured whole
houses and families. The roofs were covered with women and
babes, the streets full of old men already dead. Young men and
boys, swollen with hunger, haunted the squares like ghosts and fell
wherever faintness overcame them. To bury their kinsfolk was
beyond the strength of the sick…many while burying others fell
dead themselves, and many set out for their graves before their
hour struck. In their misery no weeping or lamentation was heard;
hunger stifled emotion…Deep silence enfolded the city, and a
darkness burdened with death…Everyone as he breathed his last
fixed his eyes on the Temple, turning his back on the partisans he
was leaving alive…(the dead were thrown) from the walls into the
valleys. When in the course of his rounds Titus saw these choked
with dead, and a putrid stream tricking from under the
decomposing bodies, he groaned, and uplifting his hands called
God to witness that this was not his doing.”¹
Titus offered generous surrender terms, but the Zealots refused to consider.
On August 9, 70 AD, Titus personally led what would be the last assault.
Breaching the city walls, the Roman troops engaged the defenders in fierce
hand-to-hand combat through the streets. By the end of the day, most of
Jerusalem was in Roman hands, including the Outer Court of the Temple
Precinct. The next morning, the battle was resumed for the Inner Court.
Titus gave the specific order that the Temple was not to be destroyed,
1
Josephus, The Jewish War, Penguin Classics, 1959, pp. 297-298.
 |
 |
 |