THE FALL OF JERUSALEM

     The Death of Jesus Christ, His resurrection and the birth of the Church during Pentecost at 33AD. During this period, the Nation of Israel is under the reign of Herod Agrippa II, and Felix as the governor of Rome in Judea. King Agrippa is fond of aestheticism, thus one of his renovation is the second temple which he embodied with roman architectures. 

      Although Herod's Temple was actually the third temple in Jerusalem, it is identified as the Second Temple, since it was a remodeling of the temple built by the returning exiles in the latter part of the sixth century B.C. Although during the first millennium B.C. Palestine was often occupied by a foreign power, the Jews stubbornly resisted such occupation, 54-66 AD, The Romans found Palestine very difficult to control, shifting the status of the province from senatorial to imperial and sending officers of various ranks to administer the territory. The zealots are in the front line of this revolution.z ealots, under the leadership of Menachem, after capturing Masada, entered Jerusalem in early A.D. 66, and gained control of the Temple Area. Rome responded quickly. 

     Nero sent Vespasian to the Middle East and he was joined by his son Titus with a legion from Egypt. Josephus gives us conflicting information about the beginning of the construction of the temple. Titus Flavius Josephus was a first century Romano Jewish scholar, historian and hagiographer, who was born in Jerusalem then part of Roman Judea to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry. 

      The Zealots under Simon and John held out for one more month in Herod's citadel and the upper City. In the Spring of A.D. 70 Titus besieged the city where conditions were already critical. Titus’ army consisted of about 80,000 men Jews had about 25,000 men in the city. Titus strategy was to attack from the northwest through the Third Wall into the New City.

      The indignity of the Fall of Jerusalem was heightened by the captives being thrown to wild animals in Caesarea, Antioch, and Rome, by young Jews taken in chains to Rome to march in the triumphal procession of Vespasian and Titus, including Simon ben Giora with a rope around his neck, by the display of the Temple vessels in the triumph, and by the issuance of the Judaea Capta coins. Joan Camay concludes with these words: In this fashion the world's greatest power boasted of the crushing of a little freedom-loving nation, and the wiping out of an historic city and a sacred shine.