by
Damien F. Mackey
“… the coins bearing the inscription, “In Commemoration of the
Liberation of Jerusalem,” are unreliable because they may have originated with
Simon the Hasmonean”.
Jewish Encyclopedia
Introduction
In my previous attempts at historically revising the
supposedly two major Jewish revolts against Rome (60’s and 130’s AD), I had
been working along what I thought were the likely lines that the First Revolt and
the so-called Second Revolt were one and the same event - meaning that the Roman
era of Vespasian-Titus now had to be blended with that of the emperor Hadrian. I
briefly recalled this former view in my recent article:
Simon Bar Kochba in Temple Period. Part One: Correcting
my former views
as follows:
In previous articles I had noted that the
First and Second Jewish Revolts were similarly, e.g.:
- of about 3 years’ duration;
- had a prominent military leader named Simon
Bar ….;
- and had a religious leader named Eleazer.
But the most compelling argument in favour of
a necessary (as I had thought) synchronisation of the activities of Simon Bar
Giora and Simon Bar Kochba was that the destruction in Israel was so complete
in the first case, at the hands of Vespasian and Titus, with the entire land
devastated, the great City (Jerusalem) and its Temple completely burned to the
ground, and the people slaughtered wholesale, or sent into slavery, that I did
not consider it reasonable to suggest that, some 60-70 years later … Simon Bar
Kochba was able to command armies of 400,000 men in Israel against a
Hadrian-led Rome and to have several of the most famous of all the Roman
legions on the verge of annihilation - only afterwards to see some 580,000
Jewish men die, almost 1000 fortified villages in Israel completely devastated,
once again, and the people, once again, slaughtered or taken into captivity en masse.
The “Son of the Star” was now being called,
contemptuously, Bar Kozeba, “Son of Deception”, or “Son of the Lie”.
Now here was what I had thought was the
clincher:
The nail in the coffin of the textbook
history for these times, I had written, was that Simon Bar Kochba issued coins
depicting “The Redemption of Israel” - oh, yes, and so did Simon Bar Giora do
the exact same thing. And, guess what was depicted on Bar Kochba’s coins?: THE
TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM, which I believe he was so desperately defending, with the
Ark of the Covenant inside it, and a star, his own star, depicted over the
Temple. ….
[End of quote]
But, more recently, owing to the following
surprising discovery:
Antiochus 'Epiphanes' and Emperor Hadrian. Part One:
"… a mirror image"
it has occurred to me that, instead of attempting
to ‘fold’ a most dubious C2nd AD Jewish Revolt against Rome with the established
C1st AD revolt of Simon Giora - as I had previously thought to do - the proper way
of ‘folding’ was of the dubious C2nd AD Revolt with that of Simon ‘Thassi’ the
Maccabean (or Hasmonean) during the Seleucid era.
Whilst I do not know if anyone else may have
suggested a revision along such lines - which must play absolute havoc with
conventional Greco-Roman history - I do find that some have argued for problematic
coinage, forgeries, and that, in the case of the following piece from the Jewish Encyclopedia, later Revolt coins
may actually “have originated with Simon the Hasmonean”:
….
It is
uncertain whether the [Bar Kochba] insurgents acquired possession of Jerusalem:
the Jewish sources contain no mention of it; and the coins bearing the
inscription, “In Commemoration of the Liberation of Jerusalem,” are unreliable
because they may have originated with Simon the Hasmonean. Among the
historians, Graetz is almost the only one that accepts the supposition of a
conquest of Jerusalem. But if this had been the case, the insurgents would not
have made Bethar, but Jerusalem, their center of operations. Moreover, Bethar,
according to Eusebius, was situated in the vicinity of Jerusalem, a statement
which may apply equally to a place north or south of the Holy City. However
this may be, a city of the size ascribed to Bethar in Jewish sources could never
have arisen in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem. ….
“Certain silver coins of “Eleazar the Priest,” marked (by the alphabetic
characters used) as being of the Hasmonaean age, have been rashly attributed to
Eleazar, who defended the Temple in 70 a.d. In at least one instance the coin
is regarded as a forgery by both de Vogue and de Saulcy, and this appears to
apply to all the so-called “coins of the revolts”.”
Claude Reignier Conder
Claude Reignier Conder is remembered fondly by the
author as one who had, against the academic trend, recognised the story of the
Jewish heroine, Judith, as being based on fact, and who had plausibly
identified her home town of Bethulia.
I wrote of this as follows in my article:
Bethulia itself, which J. Simons identified
with sheih shibil, I shall identify, following lieutenant Claude
Reignier Conder, with “Mithilia” (or Meselieh), south of Jenin.
Upon
Judith’s request (command?), the elders “ordered the young men to open the gate
for her” (10:9). Judith and her maid then went out of the town and headed for
the camp of the Assyrians. “The men of the town watched her until she had gone
down the mountain and passed through the valley, where they lost sight of her”
(v.10).
Conder
will refer back to this topographical description of Judith’s descent into the
valley in his proposed identification of Bethulia with Mithilia (Meselieh).
I simply give Conder’s account, which is the one that impresses me most:
?Meselieh?
A small village, with a detached portion to the north, and placed on a slope,
with a hill to the south, and surrounded by good olive-groves, with an open
valley called Wιy el Melek (“the King’s Valley’)
on the north. The water-supply is from wells, some of which have an ancient
appearance. They are mainly supplied with rain-water. In 1876 I proposed to
identify the village of Meselieh, or Mithilia, south of Jenin, with the
Bethulia of the Book of Judith, supposing the substitution of M for B, of which
there are occasional instances in Syrian nomenclature. The indications of the
site given in the Apocrypha are tolerably distinct. Bethulia stood on a hill,
but not apparently on the top, which is mentioned separately (Judith vi. 12)
There were springs or wells beneath the town (verse 11), and the houses were
above these (verse 13). The city stood in the hill-country not far from the
plain (verse 11), and apparently near Dothan (Judith iv. 6). The army of
Holofernes was visible when encamped near Dothan (Judith vii. 3, 4), by the
spring in the valley near Bethulia (verses 3-7).’The site usually supposed to
represent Bethulia – namely, the strong village of Sanur – does not fulfill
these various requisites; but the topography of the Book of Judith, as a whole,
is so consistent and easily understood, that it seems that Bethulia was an
actual site. Visiting Mithilia on our way to Shechem ? we found a small ruinous
village on the slope of the hill. Beneath it are ancient wells, and above it a
rounded hill-top, commanding a tolerably extensive view. The north-east part of
the great plain, Gilboa, Tabor … and Nazareth, are clearly seen. West of these
are neighbouring hillsides Jenin and Wady Bel’ameh (the Belmaim, probably of
the narrative); but further west Carmel appears behind the ridge of Sheikh
Iskander … and part of the plain of ‘Arrabeh, close to Dothan, is seen.
A broad
corn-vale, called “The King’s Valley”, extends north-west from Meselieh toward
Dothan, a distance of only 3 miles. There is a low shed formed by rising ground
between two hills, separating this valley from the Dothain plain; and at the
latter site is the spring beside which, probably, the Assyrian army is supposed
by the old Jewish novelist [sic] to have encamped. In imagination one might see
the stately Judith walking through the down-trodden corn-fields and shady
olive-groves, while on the rugged hillside above the men of the city “looked
after her until she was gone down the mountain, and till she had passed the
valley, and could see her no more'”. (Judith x 10) – C. R. C., ‘Quarterly
Statement’, July, 1881.
[End of quote]
So, I
would respect what Conder has had to say.
But what to make of these views that he expressed
in The City of Jerusalem (1909) about Jewish “coins of the
revolts”? Some of this could turn a part of Jewish-Roman history right on its
head:
….
The
leaders of the revolt were Bar Cocheba {Kokeba), “the Son of the Star,” and
Rabbi ‘Akibah, who believed this pretender to be the true Messiah, in spite of
the warning of Rabbi Jehohanan, “‘Akibah, the grass will be growing between thy
jaws before the Son of David comes.”- The rabbinical accounts of the Bether war
are late and legendary, and the “Son of the Star” is called in the Talmudic
allusions “the son of falsehood” — Bar Koziba — probably as a term of contempt.
The theory according to which he struck coins in Jerusalem demands notice, in
connection with the history of the city, but it appears to be one of those
learned fallacies which are very long in dying…..
Certain
silver coins of “Eleazar the Priest,” marked (by the alphabetic characters
used) as being of the Hasmonaean age, have been rashly attributed to Eleazar,
who defended the Temple in 70 a.d. In at least one instance the coin is
regarded as a forgery by both de Vogue and de Saulcy, and this appears to apply
to all the so-called ” coins of the revolts.”
The
copper ones bear blundered imitations of genuine inscriptions from coins of
Simon the Hasmonaean.
They have
been struck on much defaced Roman coins of Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and
Trajan, but more probably in the nineteenth century than in the second century.
One such coin bears the name Simon, and is struck on a silver tetradrachm of
Antioch attributed to Vespasian. It does not seem to have occurred to the
scholars who suppose it to have been struck by Simon, son of Gioras, in 70
a.d., that as Vespasian had then only been emperor a few months, and as
Jerusalem was besieged, it is quite impossible that an old coin of his reign
could have been found in the city in the year of its fall.
The
forgery of Jewish coins is still common in Palestine, and the forgers did not
foresee that the remains of the original legend on a coin would be read by the
trained eye of some European specialist, while they thought that the worn
surface of the coin would show its antiquity, but that its value would be much
higher if it was regarded as being Jewish. The same observation applies to all
the restruck copper coins, which have been variously attributed to Simon son of
Gioras, to Simon son of Gamaliel, and to Bar Cocheba, who has been conjectured
to have been also named Simon — of which there is no proof at all. The latter
assumption was necessitated by the fact that some of the coins used by the
forgers were as late as the reigns of Domitian and Trajan. It may, however, be
remarked that if the Jews, in 135 a.d., struck any coins at all, the lettering
is not likely to have been in the same characters used about 139 b.c, but would
have been in those used at the time, that is to say, practically in square
Hebrew. We may regard these coins, therefore, as forged imitations of those of
Simon the Hasmonaean, and they have no bearing on the question whether
Jerusalem had been rebuilt before 135 A.D. Appian was a contemporary historian,
but says nothing about any siege of Jerusalem, which city he tells us was
“razed to the ground by Vespasian.” ….
“The fact that nearly every living Jew in
Judea must have had relatives who had been killed in the earlier revolt added
fuel to the revolutionary fire, as did the Roman policy of insisting that pagan
sacrifice be offered in the holy city. Although Bar Kokhba himself is not yet
heard from, it is likely that he was already one of the organizers of this
movement”.
The New World Enyclopedia
Simon Bar Kochba is, unlike Simon the Hasmonean, a
very poorly known figure.
The latter figures as the great high priest, Simon
II, in my article:
Maccabean Dynasty of Priests
According to this article, Simon the Hasmonean is
the one eulogised by Sirach as “the greatest of his brothers” - no small praise
(Ecclesiasticus 50:1-21):
The greatest of his brothers and the pride of his people[a] was the
High Priest Simon son of Onias, who repaired the Temple and laid the foundation for the high double wall and the
fortifications of the Temple. The reservoir, as big as the
bronze tank, was dug[c] while he
was in office. He made plans to protect his people from
attack and fortified the city so that it could withstand a siege.
How glorious
he was when he came out of the Most Holy Place! He was like the morning star
shining through the clouds, like the full moon, like
the sun shining on the Temple of the Most High, like the rainbow gleaming in
glory against the clouds, like roses in springtime, like
lilies beside a stream, like the cedars of Lebanon in summer, like burning incense, like a cup made of hammered gold and decorated
with all kinds of jewels, like an olive tree loaded
with fruit, like a cypress tree towering into the clouds.
When Simon put on his magnificent robe and
went up to the holy altar dressed in perfect splendor, he made the Temple
courtyard a majestic sight. When the priests handed
him the portions of the sacrifice as he stood beside the altar with his
assistants circling him like a wreath, he was like a young cedar of Lebanon
surrounded by palm trees. Those were the descendants of
Aaron in their splendid garments, standing before the whole assembly of Israel,
holding in their hands the offering made to the Lord. When
he had finished the service at the altar and had arranged the sacrifice to the
Most High, the Almighty, he reached for a cup and
poured out sweet-smelling wine at the foot of the altar as an offering to the
Most High, the universal King. Then the priests shouted
and blew their trumpets of hammered silver. They made a loud noise that the
Most High would hear. All the people immediately bowed
down with their faces to the ground to worship their Lord, the Almighty, the
Most High. Then the choir began to sing his praises,
and the beautiful music rang out. The people kept
praying to the merciful Lord Most High until the service of worship had come to
a close. Then Simon came down from the altar, raised
his hands over the whole assembly of Israel, and reverently pronounced the
blessing from the Lord, while the people bowed a second
time in worship to receive that blessing from the Most High.
Cf. I Maccabees 14:4-15.
This Simon had a long floruit. Already selected by the father, Mattathias, as “wise …
father” (I Maccabees 2:65-66): ‘Here is your brother Simeon who, I
know, is wise in counsel; always listen to him; he shall be your father. Judas
Maccabeus has been a mighty warrior from his youth; he shall command the army
for you and fight the battle against the peoples’, Simon would survive the
resplendent military career, firstly of Judas, and then that of Jonathan, the
priest-statesman, to become the leader of the Jews and their high priest.
There is debate
about the meaning, or even construction, of his name, “Thassi” (var Thatis and
Matthes), which some think may pertain to “Wise”, or perhaps “Zealous”.
It is becoming more and more my consideration that
this great and highly praised Jewish leader, Simon, was the matrix for the
semi-legendary Simon Bar Kochba, “Son of the Star”, of whom we read (http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Bar_Kochba): “There is little historical information about the early stages of the revolt
…”. In fact, we know precious little about Simon Bar Kochba at all (https://bltnotjustasandwich.com/2012/05/10/bar-kokhba-false-messiah-and-national-hero/): “But Bar Kokhba remains veiled in mystery – we know very little about him –
although his actions (and their aftermath) helped cement the difference between
mainstream Judaism and the ethnic Jews belonging to the early Christian sect”.
Whilst the
reputation of Bar Kochba as a “Messiah” figure sits quite awkwardly with him (NWE):
In an ironic way, Bar Kokhba
could be seen as the most successful would-be Messiah in Jewish history.
Despite the folly and self-defeating outcome of a violence-based project, he can
be described as the only messianic claimant to have actually established an
independent Jewish nation (fleeting though it was) … [,]
it is perfectly apt in the case of Simon “Thassi” Maccabeus: (https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Simon%20Thassi)
He took a prominent part in the Jewish
revolt against the Seleucid Empire
led by his brothers, Judas Maccabaeus
and Jonathan Maccabaeus.
The successes of the Jews rendered it expedient for the pretenders to the
throne of Syria to show them special favor, and therefore Antiochus VI.
appointed Simon strategus, or military commander, of the coast region from the
Ladder of Tyre to Egypt. As strategus Simon conquered the cities of Beth-zur
and Joppa, garrisoning them with Jewish troops, and built the fortress of Adida
in the plain[4]
After the capture of Jonathan, Simon
was elected leader by the people, assembled at Jerusalem; he at once completed
the fortification of the capital, and made Joppa secure by expelling its
Gentile inhabitants and filling it with Jews (I Macc. xiii. 8, 10, 11;
"Ant." xiii. 6, § 4). At Hadid he blocked the advance of the
treacherous Trypho, who was attempting to enter the country and seize the
throne of Syria. Since Trypho could gain nothing by force, he demanded a ransom
for Jonathan and the surrender of Jonathan's sons as hostages. Although Simon
was fully aware that Trypho would deceive him, he acceded to both demands, so
that the people might see that he had done everything possible for his brother.
Jonathan was nevertheless treacherously assassinated, and the hostages were not
returned. Simon thus became the sole leader of the people.[4]
As the opponent of Trypho, Simon had
every reason to side with Demetrius II., to whom he sent a deputation
requesting freedom from taxation for the country. The fact that his request was
granted implied the recognition of the political independence of Judea.[4]
He became the first prince of the Hebrew
Hasmonean Dynasty. He reigned from 142 to 135 BCE.
The Hasmonean Dynasty was founded by
a resolution, adopted in 141 BCE, at a large assembly "of the priests and
the people and of the elders of the land, to the effect that Simon should be
their leader and high priest forever, until there should arise a faithful
prophet" (1 Maccabees 14:41).
[End of quote]
(NWE): According to Eusebius of Ceasaria
(c.260-c.340), Bar Kokhba claimed to have been sent to the Jews from heaven
(Church History 4.6.2). However, Simon’s own letters show him to be of a
pragmatic military and political mind.
The Revolt of Simon Bar Kochba is supposed to have been triggered
by the emperor Hadrian’s interference in Jewish religious practice (NEW): “The
situation came to a head when Hadrian forbade the circumcision of infants, which the Jews found intolerable”.
But that is the very same sort of reason that
had prompted the Maccabean Revolt.
And did we not read in:
Antiochus 'Epiphanes' and Emperor Hadrian. Part One:
"… a mirror image"
that the name “Hadrian” had been substituted
for Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ in a rabbinic account of the famous incident of the
pious mother and the martyrdom of her seven sons!
Ridiculous to think, I believe, that there
could have occurred another major Jewish Revolt against Rome after the one that
had seen the complete destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple under the regime
of Vespasian and Titus, causing such implauible comments as this one from NWE (emphasis added):
The fact that nearly every living Jew in Judea must have
had relatives who had been killed in the earlier revolt added fuel to the
revolutionary fire, as did the Roman policy of insisting that pagan sacrifice
be offered in the holy city. Although Bar Kokhba himself is not yet heard from,
it is likely that he was already one of the organizers of this movement. ….
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