200 texts · Page 5 of 5
When Rome imposed a census on Judea in 6 CE, most Jews grudgingly complied. One man declared that paying taxes to Caesar was slavery, and slavery was a sin against God. According t...
Pontius Pilate moved his troops into Jerusalem at night and brought Roman military standards bearing Caesar's image into the holy city. Every previous governor had known better. Ac...
Agrippa went from debtor, to exile, to suicidal fugitive, to prisoner in chains, to king of all Judea. His life reads like the plot of a novel that an editor would reject as too im...
Caligula declared himself a god and ordered a colossal statue of himself installed inside the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. The Jews told the Roman general they would rather die, ev...
Agrippa did something no Jewish king had done in a generation: he made the people feel like they had a ruler who was actually one of them. According to Josephus in Antiquities XIX,...
A queen from Mesopotamia converted to Judaism, moved to Jerusalem, and saved the city from famine. Her name was Helena of Adiabene, and she was one of the most remarkable converts ...
In the decades before the Great Revolt, Judea descended into a spiral of bandits, assassins, false prophets, and Roman brutality that made the final catastrophe feel inevitable. Ac...
Josephus ends his twenty-volume history of the Jewish people with a list, a boast, and a confession. The list is of every high priest from Aaron to the destruction of the Temple. T...
