Talk:Bar Kokhba revolt

Bar Kokhba and the Jewish students of Jesus

I removed the following unsourced dubious claim from the article. It requires clarification, citation, and discussion.

"At the time, Jewish Christians were still a minor sect of Judaism, and most historians believe that it was this messianic claim in favor of Bar Kokhba that alienated many of them, who believed that the true Messiah was Jesus, and sharply deepened the schism between Jews and messianic Jews.[dubious]"

The main problem is, the claim fails to distinguish between the Jewish students of Jesus via the Twelve Apostles (who Jesus commanded to obey the Pharisees) versus the Nonjewish students of Paul who styled himself as “the Apostle to the Nonjews”. These Jewish and Nonjewish movements remained separate movements, albeit seemed to have formally allied with each other at the socalled “Council of Jerusalem” (see Galatians). The Jewish students of Jesus remained full members of the Jewish community, in good standing.

The Bar Kokhba Revolt appears to have ended with the virtual extinction of the Jewish students of Jesus. The implication is these Jewish students supported the Bar Kokhba Revolt. At the very least, the Roman armies made no distinction and genocided the Jewish students of Jesus along with the rest of the Jews of Jerusalem.

After the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the Romans tried to make Jerusalem “Jew free”, enforcing the earlier attempt to redefine Jerusalem as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina. At this point, the Jewish “bishops” in Jerusalem since the days of James the Just, ceased to exist. In their place, the Romans installed a Nonjewish bishop, in other words, a Nonjewish student of Paul.

The Nonjewish students of Paul never became Jews. The Jewish students of the Twelve Apostles never ceased to be Jews. And there never was a conflict between these two spiritual traditions.

When the Rabbinate declared the “Notsrim” a heresy, literally a different “kind” of spiritual tradition, they refer specifically to the Nonjewish students of Paul, who are, by definition, Nonjewish. Jews were forbidden to become Nonjewish students of Paul. This verdict has no impact on Jewish students who follow the Twelve Apostles - but this distinction becomes moot after the Bar Kokhba disaster when any surviving Jewish students seem to merge back into the wider Rabbinic Jewish community.

While ignoring any special personal status of Jesus, Rabbinic tradition defacto incorporates almost every halakhic position that Jesus himself taught. Including: leniencies to save life on Shabat, the “greatest” commandment being love God thus love neighbor, do whatever the Pharisees say, and so on.

In sum, the period between the Crucifixion and the Genocide of Jerusalem became an opportunity to introduce biblical spirituality to Nonjews in a new way, however the biblical tradition as Jews understand it continues to remain intact.

Hadrian anti-semitic?

(moved from Talk:History of anti-Semitism) (moved from Talk:Hadrian)

Hadrian [...] raises a new temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the Second Temple.

This is standard operating procedure in the Roman religion: you tear down opposing holy sites and build your own temple on top of their ruins. No evidence this was motivated by anti-Semitism, that I can see. Indeed, the whole section seems only partially related to anti-Semitism, falling into the more general category of "history of nasty stuff done to Jews". I'm less sure about this, but wasn't collective punishment such as decimation a standard Roman technique too? Our article on Hadrian doesn't suggest that he was anti-Semitic. Perhaps it should, if we're going to be making that accusation here. Martin 23:05, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The only thing that suggests Hadrian was anti-Semitic is his ban on circumcision, enacted (I think) before the revolt, and its truth is debatable -- the only source that reports the ban is rather dubious. His actions after the revolt were unquestionably hostile towards Jews, but he had reasons other than a hatred of Jews qua Jews. (For reading on this, and ancient anti-Semitism in general, I recommend the essay "Anti-Semitism" in Antiquity: The Problem of Definition, by Shaye J. D. Cohen, in History and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism (ed. David Berger).)

Err, and attacking Judaism as a religion could be seen as anti-Semitic, I suppose, but again the issue is cloudy; the Romans made conquered barbarians worship Roman gods as a standard practice of Romanization, and the vast majority of said barbarians, being polytheists, didn't object too loudly. --MIRV 23:58, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

AFAIK, circumcision (brit-milah) has utmost religious importance in Judaism. Hadrian loathed it, and forbade this mutilation (as he called it) on pain of death. I'm not sure how far his projects of pagan temple advanced _before_ the uprising, but that's secondary. For what he did before and for his inadequate response to the uprising, he well deserves a place in the roaster. Humus sapiens 08:09, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

brit milah is indeed an important Jewish ritual. However, one cannot presume that every person who dislikes circumcision is anti-Semitic. It may be that Hadrian loathed circumcision because it was a Jewish ritual because he loathed the Jews. However, he may have loathed circumcision for other reasons. Further, note that we're not even sure that Hadrian did ban circumcision, as MIRV states. Martin 19:27, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hadrian's dislike of circumcision (assuming that the Augustan History can be trusted -- Antoninus Pius did rescind a ban on the practice, but it's not clear that said ban was originally Hadrian's) may have been based on anti-Semitism, or it could have been part of a general Greco-Roman dislike for mutilation of the body (especially the male body) -- the ancient Greeks detested such mutilations, and Hadrian was strongly influenced by Greek thought and culture. --MIRV 19:44, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've moved the content from history of A-S here, and left a stub to point to this article. Feel free to improve it radically. I wasn't sure about the title - perhaps "Hadrian in Judea" would be better? Martin 23:55, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 25 January 2024

As per MOS:LEAD, the article's lead is oversized and incorrectly formatted. I would remove the out-of-place bold headers and revise it myself in accordance with the accepted summary format, but for ECP reasons this will have to be done by another user. TheGlaswegian (talk) 02:22, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I disagree. I do agree that the lead is very large, but considering that

1. the revolt is the single-most important historic event that lead to the massive increase of the Jewish Diaspora and the final demise of the 2nd Jewish Commonwralth, and
2. the lead/introduction is well-structured and sums up the revolt's main, very diverse aspects and consequences, allowing the hurried users to get all they want w/o going through the very large article body,

I added the pseudo-headings to make it more user-friendly.

It's not a standard Wiki format, but so what? Thinking outside the box is considered as a quality in real life; bureaucratic, rigurous standards cannot be applied to everything while staying user-friendly.

The code writers at Wiki can add this option. In academia, having introductions structured into subsets is nothing new. As an option for massive topics, not for anything else - and yes, life as well as encyclopaedic work can be complex and require flexibility. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 13:40, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

"Jewish Commonwralth" What the heck is a commonwralth? Dimadick (talk) 15:13, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

It's a Jewish commonwealth + a tgpo. Arminden (talk) 15:35, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not disputing the importance of the article, but the format of the lead. Yes, it's important, but that doesn't change that the purpose of the lead is essentially to function as a brief summary of what the article will subsequently describe in detail.

In this case, the "bureaucratic, rigorous standards" exist exactly to keep things "user-friendly". To be terribly blunt, the lead as it stands is not user-friendly, effective, or even very pleasing aesthetically. It is awkward and out of place, and for an article as significant as you pointed this out to be it is below the desired standard. TheGlaswegian (talk) 20:45, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

@TheGlaswegian: I believe you are completely wrong. You are just playing with words.

There is a one-paragraph "lead" exactly to your taste. And then there are SEPARATE summaries to the main sections, easy to discern (headings, one-paragraph form), which anyone can either read or ignore. These offer the user the option to get the main info w/o reading through the entire, long article.

Theoretically one could either

1. place these 5 summaries at the head of each article section. But that would make it a) harder for the user to quickly check the info, and b) it would still not be Wiki standard and not to your liking;
2. Split the article into 4 or 5 articles, one each for background, revolt, consequences of several nature - a nonsensical move, I believe.

So this is a VERY reasonable and user-friendly solution, where the user can

1. read just the one-paragraph lead (fastest option),
2. also read the 5 short following summaries of the main related sub-topics and get all the major info incl. analysis in a nutshell; or
3. go read it all, or look up the details they came here for, in the detailed sections.

It can't get more user-friendly than this - not with such a massive topic. That's why Britannica has a Micropædia and a Macropædia; we only have one format for both. Arminden (talk) 09:16, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Firstly, I am not "playing with words", and the hostility and condescension in your tone is not helpful.

Secondly, I am proposing that this article follow the same style and format as the MOS:LEAD that is used for many thousands, perhaps millions of articles across the site. You may believe you know better than the accepted format, but that does not mean your changes improve the article. Instead they are, as I said, not user-friendly, and are inconsistent with the rest of the site.

I know this is a "massive topic", but it is far from the largest on the site. However, larger pages than this have made accessable leads meeting the accepted style without issue. TheGlaswegian (talk) 16:29, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I haven't written the lead; I've only added the pseudo-headings. I can't imagine you think they make life harder, rather than easier.

So I'm the wrong address. Continue if you wish with the editors who've actually written the text. I've made my point, from now on it's just about "talking words". Arminden (talk) 22:29, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Spelling should be Bar Kokhva and not Bar Kokhva

In the name בר כוכבא the ב/b letter is translated to a V Weralldust (talk) 11:00, 21 August 2024 (UTC)