20

The Destruction of the Temple

“And they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.”

DANIEL, XI, 31

THE ZEALOTS REMAINED undismayed when on 17 July, ten days after the loss of the Antonia, the daily sacrifice at the Temple was discontinued. Despite the famine, and at the cost of heroic self-denial, sufficient sheep and oxen remained for the offerings, but there were not enough priests loyal to John who could perform them properly. The sacrifice had been taking place here each morning and evening for hundreds of years, ever since the Jews had returned from their Babylonian captivity. Many who were not committed Zealots must have seen its cessation as proof that God had abandoned Israel.

Titus tried to exploit the mood of depression, with a message he gave Josephus to shout at John of Gischala. If John was so bloodthirsty that he wanted to go on fighting for its own sake, then why didn’t he march out with his men and settle his quarrel with the Romans in the open, without putting the city and the Sanctuary in danger? Whatever happened, he must stop polluting the Holy Places and insulting God. Surely he had sufficient priests to resume the sacrifice? But the Zealot hold was too strong for the appeal to have any effect.¹

After delivering Titus’s message, Josephus made another of his speeches. He says he spoke in Hebrew and not Aramaic, which presumably he considered more impressive. The speech was designed to highlight the difference between John and the remaining moderates. He begged the people of Jerusalem to save their city and stop the flames from reaching the Temple, to resume the sacrifice. “At his words a great sadness and silence spread among the people.” Just as he intended, John of Gischala—whom here Josephus calls “the tyrant”—lost his temper, cursing him and shouting that the city could never be captured because it belonged to God.

“How wonderfully pure you have kept this city on God’s behalf, with the Temple quite unpolluted,” Josephus yelled back at the Zealot leader.

No one can say you’ve been guilty of any impiety towards Him from whom you hope for help, can they? Of course, he still gets his usual Sacrifice! But if someone stopped your daily meals, you filthy brute, wouldn’t you start seeing him as an enemy? Are you really expecting God to be your ally in this war when you take away his everlasting worship? And why blame your own crimes on the Romans, who respect our laws and want to restore the Sacrifice to God that you have stopped? Who would not feel sorry for a city plunged into such an upheaval, when foreigners and foes have to try and undo your blasphemies, when you, despite being a Jew bred up in our laws, are its worst enemy?

All the same, John, there is nothing wrong with repenting and putting things right at the last moment. If you really want to save the city, then you have been set an excellent precedent by King Jechoniah of the Jews who, when the King of Babylon arrived outside with an army, surrendered with his whole family rather than see it destroyed and see the House of God go up in flames—as a result, he is still remembered by the Jews, famous in history, while his story is more admired each time it is told and will be handed on forever. He is the right model for you, John, if somewhat difficult to follow, although I guarantee it will earn you a pardon from the Romans. Remember, I’m asking you to do this as one of your own nation, that I’m making these promises as a Jew myself, and that it might be wise for you to reflect on just who is advising you and to what nation he belongs. Because for as long as I live, I should never be such a poor creature as to disown my own people or forget the laws of my forefathers.

Then Josephus reverted to his role as prophet:

Are you growing wrathful at me again, John, is that why you curse me so horribly? Well, I dare say I deserve much worse for flying in the face of fate by giving you good advice and trying to save men who have been damned by God. Everybody here knows what is in the writings of the old prophets and that their forecast about this miserable city is about to come true. Because they foretold it would be captured when somebody began slaughtering his fellow countrymen. And are not the city and the entire Temple heaped with the bodies of your fellow countrymen? So, it is God then, God himself, who is using the Romans to bring his purifying fire down on the place, and about to sweep away a city that has been almost drowned by your pollution.²

Despite his jibes at John, Josephus says he groaned and wept throughout his entire speech and that the Romans were full of pity, even if they had to guess what he was saying. In contrast, John and his friends were beside themselves with rage.

His words had a profound effect on many of the remaining magnates and their families—far more of whom still survived than one might expect from the massacres he describes so luridly. Most were too frightened of the guards to try and escape, although they were convinced that they and the city were doomed. However, some risked it. Among those who managed to flee to the Romans were the high priests Joseph and Jesus with several men whose fathers had been high priests. Three of these were the sons of Ishmael who was beheaded in Cyrene, four were the sons of Matthias, and one was the son of the Matthias murdered by Simon bar Giora—somehow he had evaded his brethren’s fate. They were accompanied by other members of the Jewish nobility.

Titus gave them an especially kind welcome, we are told in The Jewish War. Aware that they would feel polluted if they had to live with Romans in the Roman way, he sent them en masse to Gophna where they could live according to Jewish custom, telling them to stay there until the war was over and promising to restore their property. With the indispensable Josephus beside him, he was able to identify them as members of the old upper class who had once collaborated with Rome and whose cooperation might be of considerable value in reconstructing Judea when the war was over—and also in ensuring its prosperity as a source of taxes.

When these well-known figures disappeared from Jerusalem, the defenders, concerned that others might run away as well, spread a rumor that they had been butchered by the Romans. In response, Titus brought back the fugitives from Gophna and made them walk all around the city walls, led by Josephus who must have told them how to behave. Standing in mournful little groups below the ramparts, weeping, they begged the Zealots to let the Romans into the city and save their birthplace or, at the very least, evacuate the Temple and save the Sanctuary. At the same time they assured everybody that the besiegers were most reluctant to set fire to it. The demonstration infuriated the defenders on the walls, who yelled curses and insults at the deserters and trained scorpions and stone-projectors on them.

The Zealots had mounted their artillery on top of the gates of the Temple, which by now had the appearance of an overcrowded morgue because of all the corpses that littered it, while the Sanctuary was full of heavily armed men and looked like a gilded bunker. Traditionalist Jews were appalled at such an intrusion by ritually unclean soldiers, many of them bloodstained and with more than a few murders on their conscience. It was a profanation that shocked even the Romans.

According to Josephus, Titus himself was horrified. “You miserable men, didn’t your own people build that portico in front of your Sanctuary?” he shouted up at John and his followers, using Josephus as his interpreter.

Wasn’t it your people who set up all those tablets in Greek and Latin, forbidding anybody to go in. Didn’t we give you leave to execute anyone who did? So why, you unclean creatures, are you trampling over dead bodies inside it? Why are you polluting your Holy House with the blood of foreigners and even of Jews? I call upon the gods of my fathers, and on any other gods who once watched over this place—although I doubt if any of them is still doing so now—to bear witness, as I do on my army and on the Jews standing beside me, that it was not I who forced you to defile your Sanctuary. If only you would change the battle-ground, no Roman would go near the Holy Places, let alone profane them. Whether you like it or not, I’m going to save the Sanctuary.³

The Jewish War tells us that the Zealots reacted with contempt. Under the delusion that they could never be defeated, they were genuinely convinced that the Roman general was speaking from cowardice, because he realized that he would never succeed in taking Jerusalem.

Titus had always known they were unlikely to listen to reason, so in the meantime, in order to attack the Temple on as broad a front as possible, he had ordered the Antonia to be razed to the ground. Although the fortress was very strongly built, it took his troops only a week. Once the area had been leveled, he ordered each of the four legions to construct yet another siege ramp. Unfortunately for the Romans, the Temple was guarded by the thickest walls in Jerusalem, and its inner forecourt was protected by its own massive ramparts, making a fortress inside a fortress, so there was not enough room to use all their troops, as “the place was so narrow.”⁴ Titus’s solution was to pick thirty of the best men in every century, which he grouped in storm troops of a thousand under a tribune. The commander of this crack force was Sextus Cerealis, legate of the Fifth Legion, who had already distinguished himself by his ruthless efficiency.

Although the ramps were far from ready, Titus had given orders to launch an attack on the Temple outposts, at an hour before sunrise. He had to be restrained from leading it himself.

As he was putting on his armor and getting ready to accompany his soldiers, his friends stopped him, saying it was too dangerous. The generals insisted, “he would be of far more use if he remained in a command-post in the Antonia directing troop movements than if he came down and risked his life leading the attack—when they knew he was able to watch them, the men would fight better.” Reluctantly, Titus agreed, commenting that “the only reason for his staying behind was to see how gallantly they fought, so that no act of bravery should go undecorated and no cowardly behavior escape punishment—as a spectator he would know how to reward or punish the troops.”⁵

It sounds very much as if Tiberius Alexander was among the generals who insisted that this time Titus had to be cautious. It also sounds as though Josephus was among the friends at his side—presumably his staff—when, by the dim light of minute oil lamps, he was putting on his armor in his big leather tent.

In the event, it was lucky for Titus that he had decided to remain in the Antonia. He would have been risking his life to no purpose. When the legionaries reached the enemy guard posts, the Zealot sentries were far from being asleep as they had hoped and immediately sounded the alarm, whereupon more Jews ran to their help at the double. In the darkness, the confusion and din were so overwhelming that some Romans began to fight each other. However, they were crack troops, highly trained and experienced, who soon recovered their wits, locking shields together and charging in compact groups. Although not so disciplined as their opponents, the Zealots did not budge an inch, urged on by their “tyrant” John with threats or encouragement. The Romans were cheered on from the Antonia by their commander. The battle raged on from the small hours until midday when Titus finally called off the assault, neither side having gained any ground.

Many of the Romans had fought superbly, Josephus tells us, but so had the defenders. “Among the Jews, heroes [in this engagement] were Judes ben Mareotes and Simon ben Hosias from Simon bar Giora’s party; James and Simon—the latter being Acatelas’s son—from the Idumeans; and Gyphthaeus and Alexas, and also another Zealot Simon ben Ari.” He means that Simon ben Ari had been one of Eleazar’s men since he cannot bring himself to extend the name of Zealot, much as he dislikes it, to the others, whom he simply calls “robbers” when he is not calling them heroes, as he does here.⁶

In the meantime, the legionaries who were not in the storming parties had almost completed the new ramps. One of these was opposite the northwestern corner of the inner Temple, the second was opposite a spot between its two outer gates, the third was opposite the western colonnade of the outer court, and the fourth was opposite the northern colonnade. Building these latest assault platforms beneath the summer sun of Judea meant grinding fatigue for all troops involved, since the enormous amounts of timber needed for their construction had to be brought from at least twelve miles away. They were harried by Jews who stole their horses when the animals were left to graze, until Titus made them more careful by executing a man who lost his mount in this way.

On the day after the abortive assault, the Zealots, starving but undaunted, launched yet another of the formidable sorties that the legionaries had learned to dread. They attacked the Roman outposts on the Mount of Olives at a time of day when they expected to find the legionaries eating and off their guard, so that they could smash their way through the wooden wall. However, the lookouts saw them coming, and reinforcements were rushed over from the other camps. Another savage hand-to-hand combat took place, until the Jews were pushed back down the ravine at the bottom of the hill.

A cavalryman from one of the legions called Pedanius, a member of a squadron of horse whom the Jews had driven off, performed a remarkable feat of strength. Galloping back and into the Jews from the flank, he bent down from the saddle and seized a retreating Zealot by the ankle, a sizeable young man in armor, whom he carried back like a parcel and dropped at Titus’s feet. After warmly congratulating Pedanius on his strength, the commander gave orders for the prisoner’s immediate execution, presumably by crucifixion. Then he told his troops to get on with finishing the mounds.

Aware that another—and this time full-scale—assault might come at any moment, the Zealots made drastic preparations for it, burning down the northwestern colonnade that joined the Temple to the Antonia and demolishing a stretch about thirty feet long. Thus began the destruction of the Holy Place of Israel—by Jews. Two days later, the adjoining colonnade was set on fire by the Romans, and when the flames destroyed another twenty feet, the defenders pulled down the roof so as to destroy any remaining communication with the Antonia. Josephus observes sadly that they might have tried to stop the enemy, but “when the fire caught hold they calmly looked on, since they thought it was to their advantage.”⁷ All they could think of now was a last-ditch defense.

While all this was going on, minor engagements were taking place in front of the Temple, where small parties of Zealots and Romans fought each other with unremitting savagery. Josephus records yet another incident, typical of the siege, one that he must have seen with his own eyes.

“A Jew called Jonathan, a man of small size and despicable appearance, low born and low in every other way, too,” came out in front of the monument of John the High Priest where, after shouting a stream of abuse, he challenged the Romans to single combat. Despite his puny appearance, there was no response for some time as his readiness to die looked uncanny, so he went on taunting the legionaries. Eventually a cavalryman named Pudens ran forward, but to everybody’s surprise he was cut down by the little Jew. After finishing him off, Jonathan trampled on Pudens’s corpse, brandishing his bloodstained sword and yelling insults at the Romans, “insanely dancing up and down and waving his arms.” In the end a centurion called Priscus sent a well-aimed javelin through him.⁸

The Zealots never stopped trying to trap their opponents, exploiting their ignorance of the terrain. A few days later, on 27 July, they packed the crevices between the joists supporting the western colonnade and the ceiling below with tinder wood, bitumen, and pitch and then beat an ostentatious retreat as if they had lost hope of defending it. Some of the legionaries rushed after them, bringing ladders to climb the colonnade, although wiser men were suspicious and held back. As soon as the Romans crowded on top, the Jews set it alight, and the whole structure burst into flames. Many died in the fire or were hacked to pieces by the enemy after jumping off or were killed when they hit the ground, while some stabbed themselves. One can believe The Jewish War when it says the legionaries were deeply upset by the incident.

Cynical as always, Josephus was amused by the trick with which a certain Artorius managed to save himself after being cut off by the flames. He did so by shouting to a fellow soldier with whom he shared a tent, “Lucius, I’ll leave you all I have if you’ll catch me when I drop down.” Running forward eagerly to catch Artorius, who survived, Lucius was himself killed through being dashed to pieces onto the stone pavement by the sheer weight of his friend’s body.⁹

The western colonnade now burned down as far as the tower that had been built by John of Gischala as a defense against Simon bar Giora, on top of the gates opposite the Gymnasium, while the remainder was demolished by the Jews. The next day, the Romans fired the whole of the northern colonnade, right up to where it joined the eastern at the angle overlooking the Kedron valley where there was a fearsome drop down into the ravine. The scene had been set for the destruction of the entire Temple.

Meanwhile, there was even more dreadful suffering inside Jerusalem. The Jewish War tells us that an incalculable number were dying from famine, not even the brigands being exempt by now. “Gaping with hunger, stumbling and staggering along like maddened dogs, reeling against the house doors as if they were drunk, the robbers were in such a dazed state that they would burst into the same house several times a day,” says Josephus. “Their hunger was so terrible that they chewed anything, picking up and swallowing things rejected by the filthiest of animals. In the end they were gnawing at belts and shoes, even at leather torn off their shields.”¹⁰

Josephus then tells us the most appalling of all his grim stories. A woman of rich and distinguished family called Mary, the daughter of Eleazar, had fled from Perea on the other side of the Jordan to take refuge in Jerusalem. It looks as though she belonged to Josephus’s own class, which was an added reason for his finding her history so shocking. Just the sort to arouse their hostility, not only was she robbed of all the property she had brought with her by the “tyrants”—Simon and John—but their bodyguards made a point of stealing any food she was able to find, and although she shrieked curses at them at the top of her voice, they did not bother to kill her.

In the end, “the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow,” sending Mary out of her mind. She killed the baby that was sucking at her breast, roasted the body, and devoured half of it. Attracted by the smell of cooking, some troops rushed into her house, so she showed them the remains. “This is my child and that’s what I have done,” she told them. “Eat as much as you like since I have had enough already. You men can’t possibly be more fastidious than a woman or more tender-hearted than a mother. But if you don’t want to eat from religious scruples and won’t accept my sacrifice, then you can leave what’s left to me.” The troops ran from the house in horror, leaving Mary to her meal. The story spread throughout the city, everyone shuddering as though he or she had committed the crime. All longed for death, envying anyone who had died before hearing so horrible a tale.¹¹

The news of this ghastly incident reached the Romans, brought either by deserters or by Josephus’s spies, the result being that most of them hated the Jews more than ever. Titus swore before the Gods that he was not responsible. He also declared that he was going to bury the abomination of a mother eating her own child beneath the ruins of Judea, and that he would not leave standing on the face of the earth a city in which mothers fed in such a way.

And that is precisely what Titus Caesar and his men were about to do.

Well aware that by taking the Antonia Fortress the Romans had seized the key to Jerusalem, the Zealots never had any thought of surrender. Nothing could shake their courage, although the sacrifice was no longer offered. They still held the Temple, which was a citadel in itself. Should the city fall, then it would be God’s will, and they were ready to fall with it. Whatever happened, they would never yield to the pagan Khittim.

On 8 August two of the assault platforms were completed, so on the same day Titus gave orders for new battering rams to set to work on the western side of the outer Temple. For the last week, the great ram inside the largest of the siege towers had been doing its best to smash down the wall here but without any effect, and when the rams that replaced it went into action they also found they could make no impression—the stones were too big, too neatly put together. Some of the troops tried undermining the foundations of the northern gate, and although after enormous labor they succeeded in prizing out one or two of the stones at the front, the inner ones on which the gate rested stood firm. The Romans then decided that battering rams and crowbars were of no further use and put their trust in scaling ladders.

The Zealots made no attempt to stop the ladders being put in place, but as soon as the legionaries tried to climb up, they attacked them ferociously. Some were shaken off and hurled to the ground, and many were cut down as they stepped off, before they could cover themselves with their shields. Several ladders laden with armed men were pushed over with poles, throwing the climbers headlong down, while the Jews remained undaunted despite suffering heavy casualties themselves. The Romans tried bringing their eagles up the ladders, in the belief that any legionary would die rather than suffer the indelible disgrace of their loss, but to general astonishment the eagles were captured by the defenders, who succeeded in killing everybody who tried to scale the wall. Disheartened, the besiegers abandoned the assault. Although almost every Roman soldier who died had taken an enemy with him, the Zealots had fought even more effectively, one of their champions being Eleazar, a nephew of Simon bar Giora. Furious at having made no progress whatever, Titus ordered his men to pile wood against the Temple gates and set fire to them.

A few important deserters continued to drift over to the Romans. Among them was Ananus of Ammaus, a notoriously bloodstained member of Simon’s bodyguard, and Archelaus ben Maggadatus. They chose a moment when the Jews were doing well, hoping that it might earn them a pardon, but Titus was strongly inclined to put these men to death, as he had heard how cruelly they had behaved in Jerusalem. He told the pair they were deserting to save their skins, not from conviction. “People who are in such a hurry to leave their native city when it’s in flames through their own fault do not deserve mercy,” he commented. Since he had given his word, he allowed the two to go free, but he would not let them be as well treated as other refugees.¹²

Meanwhile, the fire had quickly taken hold of the Temple gates, melting the silver ornaments, which set the doors alight, and soon the blaze reached the wooden galleries. After their recent victory this was a terrible shock to the Jews, who watched in horror as flames and smoke spread around them along the passages. The fire burned through the day and the following night, but it destroyed only parts of the galleries. What was left was quickly reoccupied by the defenders.

The next morning, that of 9 August, after detailing troops to put out the flames and clear the ground in front of the Temple gates in readiness for a general assault, Titus held a council of war with his generals. Among those whom Josephus lists as being present at the meeting were Tiberius Alexander, second in command; Sextus Cerealis, Larcius Lepidus, and Titus Frigius, the commanders of the Fifth, Tenth, and Fifteenth Legions; Aeternius Fronto, commander of the two legions from Alexandria; and Marcus Antonius Julianus, who was the new procurator of Judea. The council was also attended by all the tribunes—next in rank below the legates or legion commanders.

The main problem raised by Titus was how they ought to deal with the Sanctuary. Some officers wanted to destroy the shrine under the rules of war, arguing that the Jews would never stop rebelling while it remained as a rallying point. Others advised that it should be spared, so long as the Jews did not try to use it for military purposes; if they did, then it would turn into a fortress instead of a shrine and should be torched. Titus took a different view. Even if the Jews used it as a strong point, the troops should not try to revenge themselves on objects instead of men or burn down such a magnificent structure. Its destruction would be a loss to the whole empire. Tiberius Alexander, Cerealis, and Fronto, the three most senior officers, agreed with him.

Before dismissing the meeting, Titus told the generals to tell the men to get some rest and recover their strength so that they would be ready for what was going to be an unusually grueling action. At the same time he gave orders for the thousand-strong storm troop—organized earlier—to make preparations for a final assault on the Temple.

On the following day, having recovered from the shock of the fire set by the Romans, the Jews made a fierce sortie through the eastern gate of the Temple at about eight o’clock in the morning, attacking a large Roman guard post in the outer court. Although the legionaries closed ranks to form a wall with their shields and fought back gallantly, the Zealots charged them with such fury that it was obvious they would soon be overwhelmed. Titus galloped to their rescue with his bodyguard, driving away the Jews. They retreated very slowly and reluctantly, turning around to beat off their pursuers again and again, until finally they were forced back into the Temple’s inner court.

This was the day, 10 August, when Titus started to assemble his entire army on the area where the Antonia Fortress had stood, with the intention of attacking the Temple from all sides with every single man available. The grand assault was planned to take place the next day. Portentously, Josephus observes that 10 August was the anniversary of the date when, centuries earlier, the Temple had been burned down by the King of Babylon. Uncowed by these menacing preparations and the vast force that was massing outside, the Zealots made another sortie. At the same time, quite independently of the sortie, fighting broke out between the Jewish guards around the Sanctuary and a small detachment of Roman troops, who, in trying to put out the fires, had somehow penetrated unobserved into the inner court. Routing the guards, they ran after them toward the Sanctuary. Then the ultimate disaster took place.

Without any orders, but “moved by a supernatural impulse,” an unknown legionary picked up a piece of burning wood that had fallen down from a gallery.¹³ Approaching the Sanctuary and climbing on the back of a comrade, he threw it through a “golden window” that opened into the cedar-lined chambers around the Holy of Holies, setting the curtains alight. As the blaze took hold, the Jews raised an anguished cry, hurling themselves in desperation at the fire.

Titus was resting in his tent when someone burst in with the news. Rushing to the Temple with his staff, he shouted orders to save the shrine, as the legionaries ran up in large numbers. Unfortunately, the crowd was by now so big that they could not hear him. Not only did they begin fighting the Jews instead of helping them, but they threw flaming torches to stoke the fire, which spread swiftly. Before it reached the Holy of Holies, Titus went in to marvel at the beauty of its furnishings and to order the removal of its treasures, such as the great gold table of the shewbread, which weighed several hundred-weight, and the seven-branched gold lamp—the menorah. Going back outside, if Josephus is to be believed, he did his utmost to save the building, telling a centurion to have the legionaries beaten off with clubs. They were out of control, however, in a frenzy of excitement, and took no notice. One lunatic put a light to the hinges of the door to the shrine, which was burned to the ground in a very short space of time.

This is how Tacitus, who can have heard only a very garbled version of the tragedy, describes the impression that the shrine’s destruction made on the Romans: “Suddenly the doors of the Sanctuary were flung open and a more than human voice was heard announcing that the gods were going forth, while at the same time there was a tremendous noise of people leaving.” Even men who did not understand the Jewish religion were aware that the Jews had suffered some appalling disaster.¹⁴

Yet Josephus accepted the loss with all the fatalism of the convinced Pharisee. “As for that holy house, long ago God had undoubtedly doomed it to the fire,” he writes.¹⁵ “We can comfort ourselves with the thought that there is no escape from fate.”¹⁶ Even so, he admits that he mourned deeply for the loss of not just the Holy of Holies but for that of the entire Temple, “the most marvelous building that was ever seen or heard of, with its amazing architecture and its vast size, and wonderfully rich ornamentation, not to mention the glory of its holy places.” He adds sadly, “from the second building of it, which was done by Haggai in the second year of Cyrus the King, till its destruction under Vespasian, there were six hundred and thirty-nine years and forty-five days.”¹⁷

His portrayal of Titus verges on idolatry. But for his protection, Josephus would almost certainly have been put to death as a Zealot spy. Moreover, Titus later enabled him to embark on a prosperous career as a writer in Rome. As a Jew who never forgot a kindness, Josephus wanted to repay him by showing his generalship in the best light possible. Unfortunately, he is often suspected of sycophancy, and over the centuries, a number of critics have dismissed The Jewish War’s account of the Roman general’s attempt to save the Holy of Holies as the purest flattery. Did he really try to save it, as Josephus claims so eloquently?

The first known critic is the Christian historian Sulpicius Severus, who wrote in the late fourth century and who insists that Titus gave orders for the shrine to be torched, as a blow against both Judaism and Christianity—an anachronistic suggestion that weakens Sulpicius’s credibility, even if Orosius in the fifth century seems to agree with him. Since the nineteenth century, numerous scholars have nonetheless accepted Sulpicius’s version, on the grounds that he may have had access to the account of the siege of Jerusalem in Tacitus’s lost Histories. A recent biographer of Vespasian has expressed doubts about Josephus’s account as well.¹⁸

There is also a passage in the Talmud that insists that Titus was determined to profane the Sanctuary. It claims that the Roman commander went into the Holy of Holies and copulated with a prostitute on an unrolled scroll of the Torah. Yet this is too crude and lurid a tale to carry conviction.¹⁹

However, one of the most authoritative modern historians of Josephus, Tessa Rajak, disagrees with the critics, arguing that the Temple was of such importance in Josephus’s life that he would never have forgiven even Titus had he been guilty of such a crime. She observes, rightly, that the story of the burning of the Sanctuary is a test of the author’s veracity as a whole; if we cannot accept his account of how the Holy of Holies perished, then we must question a lot more of what he tells us in The Jewish War and in his other books. In Rajak’s view, Josephus’s story is the best we have and, as it cannot be convincingly demolished, should be accepted.²⁰ Certainly, a wish to save the beautiful, mysterious shrine was not out of keeping with what we know of Titus’s imaginative and often—if not invariably—generous character.

In addition, there is a theory that Queen Berenice was living in the camp, and she begged Titus to save the Sanctuary. He had already begun his long affair with this fascinating Jewess, whom he may have first met at Ptolemais in early 67 when preparing for the Judean campaign.²¹ Tacitus thought that one reason why Titus failed to complete his journey to Rome during the dangerous year of 68 was because he wanted to go back to the seductive Berenice.²² If she really had been in the camp, he might conceivably have done his best to spare the Holy of Holies in order to please her. Yet Josephus makes no mention of Berenice’s presence, although this could be explained by a wish to say nothing that might damage his patron’s reputation. But it was unheard of for a Roman general to live with his mistress on campaign. However intriguing, the suggestion is rejected by every modern historian.

Josephus’s account of the burning of the Sanctuary is a testimony to his belief that everything that happens does so because it is the will of God. This explains the strange detachment with which he describes the burning of the Holy of Holies. He was convinced it was a divine punishment, because in his view, those who fought the Romans had betrayed the Law.²³ Even so, the sight of the Temple going up in flames must have horrified him, and he suffered with every other Jew. (Even today, the grief they felt is commemorated by an annual day of mourning, Tish B’av.) Yet he was sure that another Temple would arise, where his people would again worship God in the ancient way.