Event · AD 135 · Judaea · Jerusalem
Bar Kokhba crushed; Aelia Capitolina, AD 135
Bar Kokhba revolt crushed — Aelia Capitolina; end of the Hebrew bishops of Jerusalem
**The event that severs the church from its birthplace**, and the archive records it for a consequence rather than for the fighting.
Hadrian’s refoundation of Jerusalem as the colony **Aelia Capitolina**, with a temple to Jupiter on the Temple site, provoked a revolt under **Simon bar Kokhba** that took the Romans three years to crush. Dio reports the devastation in figures that are certainly rhetorical and certainly enormous. Afterwards Jews were barred from the city, and the province was renamed **Syria Palaestina**.
## Why it matters to this archive
**The Jewish-Christian church of Jerusalem does not survive it.** Eusebius’s list of Jerusalem bishops changes character at exactly this point: the fifteen bishops “of the circumcision” down to AD 135 give way to a Gentile succession beginning with Marcus. **A community that had been continuous from Pentecost ends, and the archive can see the break in its own succession list.**
**And there is a first-hand Christian witness to the revolt itself.** **Justin Martyr**, writing within about twenty years, reports that Bar Kokhba had Christians tortured **if they would not deny and blaspheme Jesus Christ** — which tells us two things: that there were Christians in the rebel-held territory, and that by AD 132 the two communities were distinct enough for one to persecute the other. Justin is a hostile witness to Bar Kokhba and a contemporary one.
**The name is itself evidence of the split.** “Bar Kokhba” means son of the star, from Numbers 24:17 — the messianic claim Rabbi Akiba is said to have endorsed. Christians could not accept it, and Justin’s notice is what that refusal cost them.
The sources for this event
Every source the record rests on, with what it says and what it cannot carry.
Justin Martyr, First Apology 31
c. AD 155[Justin reports that in the Jewish war just past, **Bar Kokhba, the leader of the revolt, had Christians subjected to grievous punishments if they would not deny and blaspheme Jesus Christ.** A contemporary Christian witness, hostile to the rebel leader, and it establishes two things at once: **there were Christians in the rebel-held territory**, and by AD 132 the two communities were distinct enough that one could persecute the other. The name Bar Kokhba — son of the star, from Numbers 24:17 — is a messianic claim Christians could not accept, and this notice is what the refusal cost.]
Justin Martyr, *First Apology* — held in this library. English: Ante-Nicene Fathers 1, public domain. Written c. AD 155, within about twenty years of the revolt.
Read the source text →Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History IV.5–6
c. AD 325[Eusebius gives the fifteen bishops of Jerusalem **“of the circumcision”** from James down to the war, and then a Gentile succession beginning with **Marcus** — the break falling exactly at AD 135. He reports the siege of Beththera, the barring of Jews from the district of Jerusalem, and the refoundation as **Aelia Capitolina**. **The archive can see the discontinuity in its own succession list**: a community continuous from Pentecost ends here, and the church of Jerusalem begins again as a Gentile one.]
Eusebius of Caesarea, *Ecclesiastical History* — held in this library. English: A. C. McGiffert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2nd series 1 (1890), public domain.
Read the source text →Figures in this event (4)
Scholarship
- The Bar Kokhba War ReconsideredPeter Schäfer (ed.), 2003On the revolt, its causes and the state of the evidence.