The purpose of Living History is to provide parents a history text in story form (the method used by the Savior in His teachings) from which to teach their children, blending the secular and religious together, and putting God back into history. Students are bored with history if all they learn about are facts and figures. But our faith in God is the main motivating factor why we do much of anything. That is the “why” we study history, and that is what makes it more interesting. Jesus Christ had predicted the fall of the city of Jerusalem as a consequence of the Jews' rejection of the gospel of Christ. The Jews were valiant in their efforts to gain their freedom from the Romans, but the sad tale of their failure, and their defense at the fortress called Masada, are all stories that need to be known and understood.

         During the years in which Paul was traveling about the Mediterranean world seeking converts to Christianity, the Jews in Palestine were coming closer to the breaking point under Roman oppression. Most of the Roman procurators (governors) who governed the country were interested only in making fortunes, in squeezing what wealth they could from their subjects before their terms of office expired. Riots broke out often in several Jewish cities over the years, but they were quickly suppressed. Taking advantage of the unrest, gentiles in Palestine tried to deprive the Jews of their rights to practice their faith under Roman law and to usurp their power in the land by trying to not allow them the right to own land. Roman soldiers were more interested in plundering the Jews than in protecting them, and whenever any Jews showed signs of discontent, the Romans threw them into prison.

          No portion of their world empire was more troublesome to the Romans than Judea. Even in times of apparent peace, underground revolt seethed continuously among the Jews, threatening to erupt into open conflict with their conquerors. Following the death in 44 A.D. of the Judean king Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, tensions rose steadily throughout the region. Each Roman procurator, subsequently sent to rule the province, seemed more corrupt, oppressive, and contemptuous of Jewish religious practices than the last. Extremists known as Zealots preached a holy war against Roman oppression with growing boldness. In the city of Jerusalem, a group of patriots, the Sicarii, (ci car' ee) or "dagger men," roamed through the streets, assassinating Romans and any Jews they suspected of being friendly to the Roman cause. Their members, pledged to kill any disloyal Jew, mingled in street gatherings, stabbed their appointed victims from behind, and then disappeared in the chaos of the crowd. The Romans captured and imprisoned many of them, but the procurator, Festus, the man who had ordered Paul to Rome to stand trial, was so greedy for money that he allowed some Sicarii to be ransomed by their relatives. In order to pay Festus, other Sicarii attacked and robbed the rich. They handed the money over to Festus, and the imprisoned assassins were set free to continue their crimes until they were caught again.

There sprang up another sort of robbers in Jerusalem, which were called Sicarii, who slew men in the daytime, and in the midst of the city; this they did chiefly at the festivals, when they mingled themselves among the multitude, and concealed daggers under their garments, with which they stabbed those that were their enemies; and when any fell down dead, the murderers became a part of those that had indignation against them [the Sicarii pretending to be upset with fellow Sicarii members]; by which means they [the Sicarii] appeared persons of such reputation, that they could by no means be discovered. The first man who was slain by them was Jonathan the high priest, after whose death many were slain every day, while the fear men were in of being so served was more afflicting than the calamity itself; and while everybody expected death every hour, as men do in war, so men were obliged to look before them, and to take notice of their enemies at a great distance; nor, if their friends were coming to them, durst they trust them any longer; but, in the midst of their suspicions and guarding of themselves, they were slain. Such was the celerity [swiftness] of the plotters against them, and so cunning was their contrivance. (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book II, chapter XIII, verse 3)

Over the years, Roman disregard of Jewish religious feelings had become more open, Roman taxes had become more burdensome, and the poverty of the people had become more acute. In the year 64 A.D., the Temple which Herod had begun rebuilding a century earlier in 20 B.C., was finally completed down to the last bit of carving on the marble facade. It was a beautiful and noble building of which the Jews were extremely proud, but its completion caused thousands of men to be out of work, and the government had to set up work projects for the unemployed. In order to keep the jobless from starving, the authorities put them to work repaving all the streets of Jerusalem with marble left over from the Temple construction. These jobs reduced the starving situation for some, but throughout the country thousands continued to go hungry. It seemed evident now that rebellion, which had been seething for decades, would soon break out in the Holy Land.

In the spring of 66, the new procurator, Florus, made the mistake of taking a large quantity of gold belonging to the Temple, seventeen talents, or approximately $61,200, under the pretense that Caesar needed the money. The revolt finally erupted. The Jews were outraged at this violation of their religious center. Some of the Jews were so scornful of Roman greed that a group of young men paraded about the streets of Jerusalem with baskets, pretending to be taking up a collection to help poor Florus. The procurator was so enraged by their insolence that he marched a Roman army up to Jerusalem from his capital at Caesarea. The troops seized and slaughtered, many by scourging and crucifying as many as 3,600 rebellious Jews. The old or well-to-do Hebrews counseled patience, arguing that revolt against so powerful an empire would be national suicide, but the young and poor accused them of conspiring with the enemy, and with cowardice. Thus were the beginnings of what has become known as The Great Jewish War.

Roman oppression had at last gone too far and the angry people of Jerusalem stormed through the streets, burning the house of the High Priest, who favored Roman rule, and some of the palaces that Herod had constructed in the city. They sacked the official archives, and as cheering crowds looked on, burned all records of indebtedness to the rich, thus freeing the poor from financial oppression. A contingent of rebels were sent across the desert twenty-five miles to Masada, captured the fortress, then raided the armory and seized spears, shields, and arrows. Returning to Jerusalem, they broke into the Temple and killed the High Priest. The rebels were complete masters of the city led by the Zealots, the extreme branch of the Pharisees that had long advocated open rebellion against the foreign oppressors. They were resolved to expel the Romans from the Holy Land and re-establish an independent Jewish nation ruled by God alone and governed in accordance with Jewish religious law.

By September of 66 A.D., the revolution had taken Jerusalem and nearly all of Palestine. For four years the Jerusalem rebels succeeded in holding their own against the best armies Rome could muster. Rome feared that if she should lose Palestine, she would soon lose other important parts of her empire also. Rome decided to send in her most famous general, the future emperor Vespasian, (ves pa' sean, 69-79 A.D.) who had distinguished himself as commander of the Second Legion in the conquest of Britain in 44 A.D.

With the success of the rebels, the peace party was discredited, and most of its members now joined in the revolt. Among them was a priest named Josephus, (the future Jewish historian) then a young man of thirty. Commissioned by the rebels to fortify Galilee, he defended its stronghold, Jotopata, against the 80,000 men of General Vespasian's siege, until only forty Jewish soldiers remained alive, hiding with him in a cave. Josephus wished to surrender, but his men threatened to kill him if he tried it. Since they preferred death to capture, he persuaded them to draw lots to fix the order in which each should die by the hand of the next. When all were dead but himself and one other, Josephus convinced him to join him in surrender. They were about to be sent to Rome in chains when Josephus prophesied that Vespasian would be emperor. Vespasian released him, and gradually accepted him as a useful adviser in the war against the Jews. When Vespasian left the war to become emperor at the death of Nero in 68, Josephus accompanied Titus, the son of Vespasian and another future emperor (79-81), to the siege of Jerusalem. Josephus, from the Roman lines, called upon the besieged to surrender, but they branded him as a traitor and he was looked upon as a traitor for the rest of his life.

The Romans had to fight for every inch of ground, and it took them five years to subdue the country. Roman strategy was slow and deliberate, preferring to wait and build up their forces, bottle up the Jewish armies in various cities, and then besiege them until they surrendered. In battle after battle, in siege after siege, the relentless Roman war machine slowly regained control of the country. During these years, while war raged throughout the rest of the country, the Holy City had remained free, its strong fortifications defying every attempt by the Romans to conquer it. As the outlying districts were slowly brought again under Roman control, refugees fled into the city. Some were fierce Zealots prepared to fight to the finish, others only desired peace after having seen their farms and estates burned by the mass of Romans. The small community of Jerusalem Christians fled to the city of Pella under the direction of the Apostles, which was about twenty miles south of the Sea of Galilee. It is estimated that the population of the city had grown to 600,000.

The rebel government in Jerusalem lacked unity, there being three factions fighting one another for control of the city and the government. Simon Bar Giora and his men held the upper city; John of Gischala, the leader of the Zealots, occupied the Temple court, while the Temple itself was under the command of the priest, Eleazar, whose group cried, "No king but God". (see map 17 in the pre-1999 editions of the LDS publication of the Bible, and map 12 and photos 9 & 10 in the post-1999 editions) In 68 A.D., a battle was fought between these groups, killing 12,000 Jews, including nearly all the rich. Also on that day the gentiles of Caesarea, the Palestinian capital, rose up and slew 20,000 Jews. Other thousands were sold into slavery. In one day the gentiles of Damascus cut the throats of 10,000 Jews. The enraged revolutionists destroyed many Greek cities in Palestine and Syria, burned some of them to the ground, and killed and were killed in great numbers.

It was then common to see cities filled with dead bodies, still lying unburied, and those of old men mixed with infants all dead and scattered about together; women also lay amongst them, without any covering for their nakedness: you might then see the whole province full of inexpressible calamities, while the dread of still more barbarous practices which were threatened, was everywhere greater than what had been already perpetrated. (Ibid., Book II, chapter XVIII, verse 2)

These conflicts within the city weakened the parties and exhausted their reserves. It was dangerous to walk about at night in Jerusalem for the Sicarii still made a practice of assassinating anyone whom they suspected of wanting to make peace. To add to this menace, a fierce civil war raged among the three bands of Zealots who were all determined to win the war but disagreed on how to do it. The Zealots were so full of hatred for one another that they seemed to have lost their senses. Members of the three groups even burned one another's food supplies.

There were, besides, disorders and civil wars in every city; and all those that were at quiet from the Romans turned their hands one against another. There was also a bitter contest between those that were fond of war, and those that were desirous of peace. At the first this quarrelsome temper caught hold of private families, who could not agree among themselves; after which those people that were the dearest to one another brake through all restraints with regard to each other, and every one associated with those of his own opinion, and began already to stand in opposition one to another; so that seditions arose everywhere, while those that were for innovations, and were desirous of war, by their youth and boldness, were too hard [radical] for the aged and the prudent men; and, in the first place, all the people of every place betook themselves to rapine [pillage, plunder]; after which they got together in bodies, in order to rob the people of the country, insomuch that for barbarity and iniquity those of the same nation did no way differ from the Romans; nay, it seemed to be a much lighter thing to be ruined by the Romans than by themselves. (Ibid., Book IV, chapter III, verse 2)

Soon there was complete chaos, man against man and continual bloodshed. It reminds one of the prophecy which Jesus stated when he said, "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many will wax cold." (Matt. 24:12)

 And now, as the city was engaged in a war on all sides, from these treacherous crowds of wicked men, the people of the city, between them, were like a great body torn in pieces. The aged men and women were in such distress by their internal calamities, that they wished for the Romans, and earnestly hoped for an external war, in order to [gain] their delivery from their domestic miseries. The citizens themselves were under a terrible consternation and fear; nor had they any opportunity of taking counsel, and of changing their conduct; nor were there any hope of coming to an agreement with their enemies; nor could such as had a mind flee away; for guards were set at all places, and the heads of the robbers, although they were seditious one against another in other respects, yet did they agree in killing those that were for peace with the Romans, or were suspected of an inclination to desert them, as their common enemies. They agreed in nothing but this, to kill those that were innocent. The noise also of those that were fighting was incessant, both by day and by night; but the lamentations of those that mourned exceeded the other; nor was there ever any occasion for them to leave off their lamentations, because their calamities came perpetually one upon another, although the deep consternation they were in prevented their outward wailing; but being constrained by their fear to conceal their inward passions, they were inwardly tormented, without daring to open their lips in groans. Nor was any regard paid to those that were still alive, by their relations; nor was there any care taken of burial for those that were dead; the occasion of both which was this, that every one despaired of himself; for those that were not among the seditious, had no great desire of anything, as expecting for certain that they should very soon be destroyed; but for the seditious themselves, they fought against each other, while they trod upon the dead bodies as they lay heaped one upon another. (Ibid., Book V, chapter I, verse 5)

Society was fast falling apart. The starvation and depravity became so severe that citizens killed or tortured each other to take away what little food they had.

 It was now a miserable case, and a sight that would justly bring tears into our eyes, how men stood as to their food, while the more powerful had more than enough, and the weaker were lamenting [for want of it]. But the famine was too hard for all other passions, and it is destructive to nothing so much as to modesty; for what was otherwise worthy of reverence, was in this case despised; insomuch that children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating, out of their very mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants: and when those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last drops that might preserve their lives; and while they ate after this manner, yet were they not concealed in so doing; but the seditious everywhere came upon them immediately, and snatched away from them what they had gotten from others; for when they saw any house shut up, this was to them a signal that the people within had gotten some food; whereupon they broke open the doors, and ran in, and took pieces of what they were eating, almost up out of their very throats and this by force; the old men, who held their food fast, were beaten; and if the women hid what they had within their hands, their hair was torn for so doing; nor was there any commiseration [consideration] shewn either to the aged or to infants. (Ibid., Book V, chapter X, verse 3)

 When the Romans received reports of this internal strife, they thought that the Jews in Jerusalem would be easy to conquer. The city was in this state of anarchy when Titus began his siege. Titus faced a formidable task. Jerusalem was the most heavily fortified city of that time. (See map 12 in the post-1999 LDS edition of the Bible) Steep-sided valleys made its walls impregnable to assault on three sides; only from the north could an attacking army approach. A series of walls and towers provided three successive lines of defense. Only with great difficulty were the battering rams put into place. Volleys of missiles were exchanged, with the Jews making use of the catapults captured from earlier victories against the Romans. Casualties were high on both sides.

After two weeks of repeated assaults the Romans finally made a breach in the northern wall. Titus and his troops entered and occupied the northern suburb of Bezetha. However, after fifteen days of desperate fighting, the Jews drove the Romans back outside the surrounding walls. Jerusalem was so well protected by her solid fortresses that Titus gave up trying to take the city by assault. He therefore decided to exhaust the contending Jews by starvation and patiently constructed an earthwork all around the city. It was impossible for the besieged to go out without being captured. In the spring of 70 A.D., Titus ordered his forces up to the city and began to surround it. He set up his headquarters on Mount Scopus, northeast of Jerusalem, and built camps for his troops around the city walls. Whoever was caught in the act of scaling the earthen wall surrounding the city was crucified on top of the wall for the benefit of the besieged. It was not unusual to see as many as five hundred nailed to crosses in this way in a single day. The air was foul with the stench of rotting flesh and rent by the agonized cries of the crucified. Despite this, the Jews held out for another year, to the great shame of Titus. The Jews had dealt a severe blow to the reputation of the Roman soldiers and only carnage could soothe their wounded pride.

On the north side of the city there is a plain, and overlooking it a range of higher hills and it was from there that any attack would come. To guard this one vulnerable approach, the city was fortified with three walls. The outer wall was thirty feet high and fifteen feet thick, and was surmounted by ninety towers spaced at 300 foot intervals. The middle wall had forty towers, the inner, sixty. One of the outside towers stood 105 feet, about as high as a ten-story building.

From the top of these towers, a person could see 35 miles away to the Mediterranean Sea. These walls divided Jerusalem into sections and made it possible for the defenders to hold out in one part of the city long after another part was captured. Moreover, Jerusalem itself was a mass of narrow alleys in which guerrilla warfare could cut an invading enemy to pieces.

From his camp on Mount Scopus, overlooking the vulnerable side of Jerusalem, Titus made his plans for the capture of the Holy City. Titus ordered his men to sweep through the outskirts of the city, destroying whatever they could. He ordered all trees to be cut down to make war engines. Soon a wide and desolate no man's land surrounded the city. Catapults began to bombard the defenders with stones, the one war material that was plentiful in the region, for the Judean hills are covered with rocks. The Jews attempted to set fire to the Roman equipment by throwing firebrands from their defensive positions, and some even leaped down to dismantle the siege engines. Still the Romans managed to win most of these battles. By the fifteenth day of the siege, the battering rams had done their job. A break appeared in the outer wall once again, and the Romans poured through the gap. The Jews were forced to withdraw into the heart of the city, behind the second wall.

Five days later, the Romans succeeded in breaching the second wall. Led by Titus, the legionaries rushed into the narrow streets and alleys. The Romans were quickly separated from each other. They had failed to widen the break in the wall behind them, and when the Jews attacked, the Romans had difficulty retreating. Many of Titus' men were surrounded and killed. The Jews quickly repaired the breach in the wall. Four days later, however, Titus completed his destruction of the second wall. The Jews now had only their innermost defense line. At this point Titus decided that the best thing to do was to destroy the morale of the Jews rather than continue his costly assaults. The Jews within their defenses grew uneasy at the silence, wondering what new strategy the Romans were planning. They soon saw the answer.

Within full view of the defenders of the city, but just outside the range of Jewish arrows, Titus' men placed two great piles of silver and gold coins on the ground. The people within the city had never seen anything like it. Thousands of them rushed to the walls to see what would happen. With great pomp, the Roman army marched in review past its commander, possibly as many as 30,000 men. As each man marched by, he was paid his salary from the great heaps of silver and gold at Titus' side. The parade took four full days. Seeing the enormous and perfectly trained army assembled against them, the Jews were filled with foreboding. In the first weeks of the siege, several thousand Jews had managed to flee past the Roman lines. Starving Jews made desperate attempts to forage for food, but thousands of them were captured by the Romans and were crucified. In the later stages of the five-month siege the streets of the city were clogged with corpses. The hungry wandered about foraging for food and stabbing the dead. 116,000 bodies were thrown over the walls. Some Jews swallowed gold pieces and slipped out from Jerusalem. The Romans would capture them, slit open their bellies, and find the coins.

As the weeks went by, the famine in the besieged city grew worse and worse. The people became so hungry that they gnawed the leather of their belts and sandals. They even devoured their own dead. Whenever the Romans captured a Jewish soldier, they cut off one of his hands and sent him back into the city to urge the defenders to surrender. Without a hand, the soldier could no longer fight against the Romans, yet he would still consume a portion of the precious food supply. In the southern parts of the city, the inhabitants began to suffer from the stench of the dead bodies that had been thrown over the wall to rot in the ravine below. Within the city there seemed to be nothing but desolation and death; outside there seemed to be hope.

 So all hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine; and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged; the children also and the young men wandered about the market-places like shadows, all swelled with famine, and fell down dead wheresoever their misery seized them. As for burying them, those that were sick themselves were not able to do it; and those that were hearty and well were deterred from doing it by the great multitude of those dead bodies, and by the uncertainty there was how soon they should die themselves; for many died as they were burying others, and many went to their coffins before that fatal hour was come! Nor was there any lamentation made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful complaints; but the famine confounded all natural passions; for those who were just going to die, looked upon those that were gone to their rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths. A deep silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city. (Ibid., Book V, chapter XII, verse 3)

 The Romans began to build great mounds of earth and stone opposite Jerusalem's final wall of defense so that soldiers on top of the earthworks could assault the Jews from an equal or higher level. This was dangerous work, for the builders were constantly under a hail of arrows and stones from the Jewish defenses, but slowly the wall took shape. Finally, after several weeks, the Romans, from their newly constructed positions, were able to attack the wall. The attack was so fierce that the Jewish soldiers were forced to retreat to the Temple. The victors slew all Jews upon whom they could lay their hands, an additional 97,000 were caught and sold as slaves.

Finally, in late summer, five months after the siege of the city had begun, the Romans succeeded in breaching the outer Temple walls by setting fire to the gates. Josephus numbered the total killed in the entire siege and its aftermath at 1,197,000. When the Romans came through the Temple walls, the Jews there were too weakened by hunger to defend themselves. Wherever they lay they were mercilessly slaughtered. The Romans rushed eagerly into the Temple buildings to find the fabulous treasure they had heard was hidden there, but finding no treasure the men were furious. One of them threw a torch and the soldiers cheered as they saw the walls catch fire. Soon all parts of the Temple complex were in flames and then was torn down. The Wailing Wall, also called the Western Wall, is all that remains of the ancient Temple complex today. The Wailing Wall is part of the perimeter wall surrounding the Temple complex. No stone of the Temple itself remained in place as Jesus had earlier prophesied.

 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. (Matt. 24:1-2)

 Titus ordered the Roman soldiers to set fires all over Jerusalem, destroying the Holy City of the Jews as a warning to them never to rebel again. The war was at an end. A war that was the most terrible the world had ever known. No war before in history had been as fiercely contested or had cost so many lives.

 A rebellious disturbance among the Jews gave a semblance of excuse for a terrible chastisement to be visited upon them by their Roman master, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem. The city fell after a six months’ siege before the Roman arms led by Titus, son of the Emperor Vespasian. Josephus, the famous historian, to whom we owe most of our knowledge as to the details of the struggle, was himself a resident of Galilee and was carried to Rome among the captives. From his record we learn that nearly a million Jews lost their lives through the famine incident to the siege; many more were sold into slavery, and uncounted numbers were forced into exile. The city was utterly destroyed, and the site upon which the temple had stood was plowed up by the Romans in their search for treasure. Thus literally were the words of Christ fulfilled, “There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.” [Matt. 24:1-2; Luke 19:44]. (James E. Talmage, The Great Apostasy, page 63)

 To celebrate such a costly victory the Romans minted coins commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem with a woman personifying Judea weeping before the Roman trophy of victory. A spectacular triumph parade was organized at Rome. The victors marched past, laden with Temple furnishings saved from the flames, the seven-branched candlestick, and the sacred table for the shewbread.

The World After Christ, an LDS Perspective, volume 2, pages 6-13.