Between
the two wars fought in Judaea against the Roman government - the 'Great
War' and that of Bar Kochba - the uprisings of Diaspora Jews toward the
end of Trajan's reign constitute a unique event in the history of the
Second Jewish Commonwealth. It marks the first and only episode of
Jewish violence on a grand scale to take place outside Judaea, and at
the same time the only instance of simultaneous outbursts in different
geographical places - Libya, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia, and
apparently Judaea as well. What happened exactly? Where did the Jews get
their arms from and for how long did they succeed in resisting the
impact of the Roman legions? Generations of scholars accepted the
statement of Eusebius that the uprisings started in 115 CE, but the
possibility has been recently put forward that the revolt broke out,
instead, only in 116. Moreover, what was the order in which the
upheavals took place: the traditional one - Libya, Egypt, Cyprus and
Mesopotamia - as most scholars believe following the testimony of
Eusebius, or, rather, is the correct order the opposite? If, in fact,
the Jews of Mesopotamia were the first to take up arms, the events that
took place in the East would have been determinant in fomenting the
uprisings in the western Mediterranean region. An assessment of the new
theories is a must and involves a reconsideration both of the literary
accounts and their own sources and of other kinds of information
available, including the ostraca found in Egypt and a number of papyri
either recently discovered or only now ascribed to the events of these
upheavals. The first part of this work presents here, for the first
time, a full collection of the epigraphical, papyrological, and
historical sources of pagan, Christian and Jewish origin dealing with
these events, in their original language and in English translation. In
the second part, a fresh reading, both of the sources and of scholarly
views, leads Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev to new interpretations of events in
Egypt, Mesopotamia and Judaea and to a new chronology, which enables her
to reach surprising conclusions concerning a possible interrelationship
between the upheavals in the different countries.
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