Rethinking the Bar Kokhba Revolt

Challenging the History of the Bar Kokhba Revolt

Modern historians appear to be in universal agreement that the Bar Kokhba Revolt against the Roman Empire can be dated within the range 130-135 CE, with minor adjustments. But the only ancient source for these dates is Eusebius, a Christian theologian and historian from Caesarea who lived roughly two centuries after the events he describes.

While historians are generally cautious when using Eusebius as an authoritative source due to his explicit biases, a single line in his Ecclesiastical Histories, “The war raged most fiercely in the eighteenth year of Adrian [135 CE], at the city of Bithara, which was a very secure fortress, situated not far from Jerusalem,” has been accepted without reservation.

While the reliance on Eusebius can be partially attributed to a lack of other Roman and Christian sources, since the more contemporary Cassius Dio and the later Historia Augusta mention no dates in their accounts of the war, it is worth noting that historians largely ignore the Jewish literature, that presents a different timeline.

The earliest source for an alternative chronology is Midrash Seder Olam Rabbah, attributed to Rabbi Yossi ben Ḥalafta – which is also notable for being a central source of the Hebrew dating system that marks this year as 5785 since Creation.

For this reason, that dating system will be centered here, with some benchmarks denoted in the Christian year in parentheses.

In that work, at the end of the final chapter, Rabbi Yossi describes the Jewish wars against the Romans, writing, “From the struggle of Vespasian to the struggle of Titus – 24 years. From the Struggle of Titus to the War of Ben Koziba – 16 years.”

Considering that Vespasian was sent to suppress the Judean Great Revolt, it’s clear that we can match his “struggle” with 3826-28 (66-68 CE), which places the struggle of Titus around 3850 (90 CE) and the Bar Kokhba Revolt around 3866 (106 CE). But the following passage places the Bar Kokhba Revolt “twenty two years after the destruction of the Temple,” which would more accurately correspond to the aforementioned struggle of Titus in the previous passage, in 3850. 

Beyond this apparent internal contradiction, Roman historians place the death of Titus in 3841 (81 CE), almost a decade before the struggle of Titus mentioned by Rabbi Yossi. But if we reckon that the reference to Titus is actually meant to refer to his brother and successor, Domitian, known in ancient Christian sources for persecuting Jews and banning circumcision in Judea, a Jewish uprising during his reign – 3841-3856 – is far more reasonable.

We’re still left with a major issue – if the struggle of Titus is concurrent with the Bar Kokhba revolt in 3850, what happened in 3866, and how does that work out with Rabbi Yossi’s statement that the war only lasted two and a half years?

For answers, we need to jump forward nearly a millennium to Rabbi Avraham ibn-Daud, the Raavad in his Sefer haKabbala. In addition to being the earliest source for many details about Bar Kokhba and his revolt, the Raavad is best known as the earliest source for the story of the Four Captives, which explains the spread of Rabbinic knowledge from Babylon across the Mediterranean at the end of the Gaonic period.

In his book, the Raavad writes:
“In those days, [the generation of Rabbi Akiva], a man arose named Koziba, who claimed to be the Davidic Messiah. He attacked Domitian the king of Rome, and killed his second-in-command who was in the land of Israel while Domitian the king of Rome was still in his youth and insufficiently strong to face him. Koziba reigned in Betar 52 years after the destruction of the Temple, and died on the throne. After him his son Rufus reigned – his name meaning red-haired – and he also died on the throne. His son Romulus reigned after him, and a great host of Israelites who returned from their places [in the Diaspora] assembled around Koziba and his offspring. And in the days of Romulus the son of Rufus, Hadrian Caesar gained strength and marched on Israel and captured Betar on the Ninth of Av, 73 years after the Destruction of the Temple, and killed Romulus and struck a terrible blow against Israel, the likes of which had never been seen or heard of, not even in the days of Nebuzaradan or Titus.”

In short, the novel information presented by the Raavad can be summed up in three points:
1) Bar Kokhba founded a dynasty lasting three generations.
2) That dynasty reigned as kings for 21 years, from 3880 to 3901 (120-141 CE).
3) The beginning of the revolt was a strike against emperor Domitian, who reigned from 3841-3856. We can assume that this strike against Domitian can be identified with the beginning of the War of Koziba and the struggle of Titus mentioned in Seder Olam in 3850. 

This is further supported by the famed Medieval Jewish scholar, Rashi, who records that the text in Seder Olam according to his manuscripts should read, “From the struggle of Vespasian to the struggle of Titus – 52 years” rather than “24 years.”

Just as our version of Seder Olam places the struggle of Titus and the War of Bar Kokhba at the same time, 22-24 years after Vespasian (c. 3850), Rashi’s date for the struggle of Titus, and the Raavad’s date for the beginning of Bar Kokhba’s reign are identical, 52 years after the destruction of the Second Temple, in 3880.

The Jerusalem Talmud in Tractate Taanit 4:5, and chapter 2 of Midrash Eikha Rabbah similarly confirm that “Betar stood 52 years after the destruction of the Temple.“

The Raavad’s approach was widely accepted to the extent that, over a century later, the Meiri records the same story in his introduction to Pirkei Avot in his commentary on the Talmud, Beit haBeḥira. It is also recorded by later generations, such as in Rav Yeḥiel Halperin’s Seder HaDorot, over 500 years after Sefer haKabbala. 

In his commentary on Seder Olam, the Vilna Gaon proposes minor corrections to the extant manuscripts in accordance with the rabbinic tradition that he received.

First, he suggests that the gap between the struggle of Vespasian and the struggle of Titus be two years, and not 24, bringing both in line with the Great Revolt, starting with Vespasian’s attempt to quell the revolt in 3826 (66 CE) and continuing with Titus’s more successful campaign in 3828 (68 CE).

Next, the Gaon suggests removing the passage “From the Struggle of Titus to the War of Ben Koziba – 16 years,” which both clears up the internal contradiction between the two dates given for Bar Kokhba’s revolt, and removes the 3866 date that found no explanations in the Raavad’s more detailed history.

Finally, the Gaon writes that the war lasted 50 years, and not two, as reported in the manuscript and various other sources. This timeline solidly confirms the Raavad’s narrative, retaining Seder Olam’s outbreak of the war in 3850, 22 years after the destruction of the temple, and its ultimate end around 3900 (140 CE, much closer to Eusebius’s dating).

On the basis of all these sources, we can thus propose the following chronology:

1. 3850: 22 years after the destruction of the Second Temple, Shimon ben Koziba launches a guerrilla campaign against the Roman occupation of Eretz Yisrael, eliminating a high-ranking Roman governor under emperor Domitian (Seder Olam and Raavad).
2. 3866: During the reign of Trajan, minor skirmishes become an all-out revolt against the Roman empire (Seder Olam).
3. 3880: After thirty years, Shimon ben Koziba successfully establishes Jewish sovereignty in the area of Betar and is crowned king (Jerusalem Talmud, Eikha Rabbah, Rashi, Raavad).
4. 3901: After the 21 year reign of the Bar Kokhba dynasty, Hadrian consolidates power in the eastern Mediterranean and marches on Judea, eventually capturing Betar and ending the Bar Kokhba dynasty (Raavad, Vilna Gaon).

The Gentile Historians

While there are no clear records of the first two events in the gentile sources, there are hints of continued tensions between the empire and the Jews.

For example, regarding Domitian’s treatment of the Jews and Jewish responses circa 3850, only a single line in Xiphilinus’s epitome (summary) of Cassius Dio explicitly mentions Jews, noting that many Roman notables were executed on charges of atheism – which was broadly understood to be code for Jewish sympathies.

Beyond this, a single reference to general unrest in the empire may provide a glimpse into our Jewish uprising. Xiphilinus writes, “Many of the peoples tributary to the Romans revolted when contributions of money were forcibly extorted from them,” mentioning a tribe in the province of Libya in particular.

Roman historian Suetonius is slightly more explicit, writing that Domitian strictly enforced taxation of the Jews and persecuted them in other ways – including an eyewitness account of an elderly man being stripped before a court to see if he was circumcised. Eusebius writes that Domitian, like his father Vespasian, sought to wipe out all remnants of the Davidic line. 

These historical tidbits make it plausible that a surviving member of the Davidic line capitalized on public anger over taxation and cultural repression to gain support for a limited campaign against the representatives of Roman rule in Judea. The complete lack of information regarding Roman governors of the province in the period that corresponds to 3846-3853 make it impossible to confirm or deny such a narrative according to gentile historians.

The next period receives far more attention, both in Jewish and gentile sources. After the brief reign of Nerva, one of Domitian’s generals and governors, Trajan, ascended to the throne in 3858 (98 CE).

Xiphilinus, in his epitome of Cassius Dio, writes at length that Trajan conducted a major military campaign in the east against the Parthians, joined by his general Lucius Quietus. Their campaign was disrupted by a terrible earthquake in Antioch, where their forces holed up for the winter. Yet, at the peak of his conquests, which he bragged were more extensive than even Alexander the Great, he met disaster, “For during the time that he was sailing down to the ocean and returning from there again all the conquered districts were thrown into turmoil and revolted, and the garrisons placed among the various peoples were either expelled or slain.”

In particular, he writes:
“Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene [Libya] had put a certain Andreas at their head, and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would eat the flesh of their victims, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood and wear their skins for clothing; many they sawed in two, from the head downwards; others they gave to wild beasts, and still others they forced to fight as gladiators. In all two hundred and twenty thousand persons perished. In Egypt, too, they perpetrated many similar outrages, and in Cyprus, under the leader­ship of a certain Artemion. There, also, two hundred and forty thousand perished, and for this reason no Jew may set foot on that island, but even if one of them is driven upon its shores by a storm he is put to death. Among others who subdued the Jews was Lusius [Quietus], who was sent by Trajan.”

Eusebius similarly recounts the uprisings in Cyrene and Egypt, adding that Trajan sent Quietus to subdue the Jews of Mesopotamia, and that for his service he was made governor of Judea. In an earlier passage, however, he notes that the disturbances reached Judea as well, stating that in the reign of Trajan, “a persecution was stirred up against us [the early Christians] in certain cities in consequence of a popular uprising. In this persecution we have understood that Symeon, the son of Clopas, who, as we have shown, was the second bishop of the church of Jerusalem, suffered martyrdom.”

That the Roman response spread to Jerusalem implies that this “popular uprising” of Jews across the Mediterranean reached the Jews of Judea as well.

While Eusebius presents the two events separately, Trajan’s occupation with his campaigns in Dacia early in his reign make it unlikely that any major crackdown in the east would have taken place before he turned his focus eastward in 3866.

If we accept the dates in the extant manuscripts of Seder Olam (3850, 3866), it’s possible that the second wave of Jewish unrest corresponds with the Roman annexation of Nabatea around this time, at the beginning of Trajan’s turn eastward, which is mentioned in the Epitome of Cassius Dio in a single line: “About this time, Palma, the governor of Syria, subdued the part of Arabia around Petra and made it subject to the Romans.”

Such a consolidation of Roman power in the vicinity of Judea may have led Judean rebels to step up their anti-imperial activities, bringing about the suppression that Eusebius mentions, and igniting what Seder Olam calls the “War of Ben Koziba.”

Alternatively, if we follow the dates recorded by Rashi, the Raavad, and the Vilna Gaon, such an uprising more clearly coincides with the end of Trajan’s Parthian campaign, which Roman historians place shortly before his death in 3877, but which continued under his successor Hadrian until at least 3878. This can easily be identified with the uprising that Jewish sources place 52 years after the destruction of the Temple, in 3880, known as the Diaspora Revolt or the Kitos War.

So, we can present the gentile historical record, in light of the rabbinic tradition as such:

1. 3850: 22 years after the destruction of the temple, a fugitive descendant of King David, Shimon ben Koziba eliminates a high-ranking Roman governor under emperor Domitian in response to taxation and cultural repression (Seder Olam and Raavad – Eusebius and Seutonius).
2. 3866: As Trajan turns east, Shimon ben Koziba steps up his guerrilla campaign in response to the consolidation of Roman power east of the Jordan River, and increased legionary presence in the vicinity of Judea (Seder Olam – Cassius Dio).
3. 3880: In the wake of Jewish uprisings across the eastern Mediterranean, Shimon ben Koziba takes advantage of the weakened position of the Romans in Judea, establishes Jewish sovereignty in the area of Betar and is crowned king (Jerusalem Talmud, Eikha Rabbah, Rashi, Raavad – Cassius Dio, Eusebius).
4. 3901: After the 21 year reign of the Bar Kokhba dynasty, Hadrian consolidates power in the eastern Mediterranean and marches on Judea, eventually capturing Betar and ending the Bar Kokhba dynasty (Raavad, Vilna Gaon).

Reexamining the Rabbinic Tradition

Despite the overwhelming evidence for the magnitude of the uprising in the years leading up to 3880, the connection to Bar Kokhba seems tenuous at best.

The silence of gentile sources on such a connection can easily be attributed to lack of information due to geographic or historical distance, or more perniciously to Christian censorship of a Jewish national revival with messianic overtones that would undermine their supersessionist narrative.

But rabbinic sources are no more explicit on this matter. The rabbis, following in the footsteps of Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai may have found it judicious to deemphasize the rebellious nature of Jews, especially those under direct Roman rule in Judea and the Galilee, in order to protect the continuity of those communities and shield them from Roman reprisals. Accordingly, knowledge of the greater extent of the revolt would have been maintained in the oral tradition, with hidden references in the codified text.

This may explain why the Babylonian Talmud is entirely silent on the timing of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, with the only explicit dating (52 years after the destruction of the Temple) available in the Jerusalem Talmud, Midrash Rabbah, and Seder Olam. Various passages, however, allude to a Judean front in the struggle against Trajan and Quietus. 

The Babylonian Talmud in Taanit 18b quotes a reference to “Trajan’s Day” in Midrash Megillat Taanit and explains that Trajan executed the brothers Papos and Lulianus in Ludakia, and that he himself was killed immediately after.

In light of passages praising the “martyrs of Lod” (Bava Batra 10b), Rashi and other Talmudic commentators identify Ludakia with Lod (Lydda) in Judea, rather than Latakia in Syria.

An additional reference to “Lulianus Alexandri and his comrades” in Sifra 26:19 seems to indicate that Lulianus may have played a part in the Egyptian uprising as well before fleeing to Lod and instigating further unrest there before being captured and executed.

Papos and Lulianus are also mentioned in Midrash B’reshit Rabbah 64:10, which discusses an imperial decree allowing the reconstruction of the Temple, which was then rescinded.

The reference to Trajan may be intended for Trajan’s representative, Lucius Quietus (“Kitos” in Jewish sources), who was dismissed and then executed on orders by Hadrian upon his accession to the throne, according to the Historia Augusta (a later Roman historical work). But it may actually be a reference to Trajan himself, since the Epitome of Cassius Dio states that “he suddenly expired” in Anatolia while trying to make his way back to Rome.

In any case, the Jewish sources are clear that Trajan and Quietus’s active suppression of the uprising in Judea was their final act, placing this unrest in Judea around 3877, only a few years before the coronation of Bar Kokhba.

A series of Rabbinic teachings that present the destruction of the temple, the war against Trajan, and the fall of Betar at the end of the Bar Kokhba Revolt as three consecutive events in a series also lend credence to the existence of a Judean front in 3880. Whether the fall of Betar was in 3880 (following the early Judean sources and Rashi) or 3901 (following the Raavad and the Vilna Gaon), the second part of these series must be understood as a separate event from the ultimate suppression of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, either in 3866 (at the beginning of Trajan’s turn to the east) or more likely in 3877, as part of Trajan and Quietus’s attempt to suppress the Judean element of the broader revolt.

Most explicitly, the Mishna in Sotah 9:14 which discusses the cancellation of wedding traditions due to national disasters states, “In the war of Vespasian the sages decreed against the crowns of bridegrooms and upon the drums. In the war of Kitos they decreed upon the crowns of brides, and that a person should not teach his son Greek. In the last war they decreed that a bride may not go out in a palanquin inside the city.”

While some manuscripts and commentators place all three events during the Great Revolt – writing “Titus” instead of “Kitos (Quietus)” – the decree against learning Greek makes far more sense in the context of the uprising in 3875-80, in which the Jews fought the Greek-speaking Hellenistic populations of Alexandria, Cyprus, and Judea.

Considering that the Mishna was codified in the century after these uprisings in the Galilee, before the centers of rabbinic learning relocated to Mesopotamia, and that Roman historians and rabbinic sources agree that Quietus’s last post was the governorship of Judea, it’s clear that there were major confrontations, with heavy losses for the Jews in Judea, before the revolt was ultimately suppressed by Hadrian.

In another Talmudic passage (Gittin 55b) discussing the proximate causes of the destruction of Judea at the hands of the Romans, the rabbis teach, “Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Kamtza and bar Kamtza. Tur Malka (the king’s mountain) was destroyed on account of a rooster and a hen. Betar was destroyed on account of a shaft from a chariot.”

While the destructions of Jerusalem and Betar can easily be associated with Titus’s suppression of the Great Revolt and Hadrian’s final suppression of the Bar Kokhba Revolt (either in 3880 or 3901), Tur Malka’s identity is far more mysterious. But when compared to the above mentioned passage from Sotah, and to our proposed reading of Seder Olam, the recurrence of these triplets lends credence to the theory that Tur Malka was a major battle of the Judean front during the Kitos War.

This theory is further bolstered if we interpret the apparent similarities between Tur Malka and Betar in light of the Raavad’s narrative of three kings from the Bar Kokhba dynasty. The Talmud (Gittin 57a) elaborates on the fall of Tur Malka, writing:

“In that place was a man named Bar Deroma who could jump a mil, and he killed many of the Romans. The emperor took his crown and set it on the ground. He said: Master of the Universe, if it is pleasing to You, do not give over a man and his kingdom into the hands of only one man. Bar Deroma’s own mouth caused him to stumble, as he said: ‘Is it not You, God, who had abandoned us, You, God, who would not go out with our armies?’ (Tehillim 60:12)… He entered an outhouse, a snake came and eviscerated him, and he died. The emperor said: ‘Since a miracle was performed for me, I will let them be this time. He let them be and went on his way.’ They leapt about, ate, drank, and lit so many candles that the image on a seal was visible from a distance of a mil. The emperor then said: ‘The Jews are rejoicing over me. So he went back and came against them.’”

Bar Deroma is not mentioned in anywhere else in the rabbinic literature. But this account bears striking similarities to narratives around Bar Kokhba. The midrash in Eikha Rabbah recounts, “When Ben Koziva’s soldiers would go out to war they would say: ‘Do not help and do not hinder.’ That is what is written: ‘Is it not You, God, who had abandoned us, You, God, who would not go out with our armies?’ (Tehillim 60:12). What would Ben Koziva do? He would catch a catapult stone on one of his knees and propel it and kill several of their people.”

Both the “godless” attitude and the superhuman strength are strikingly reminiscent of Bar Daroma. The same midrash continues to imply that Bar Kokhba was killed by a snake to which Hadrian replies, “Had his God not killed him, who could have overcome him?” – another clear parallel to the story of Bar Daroma.

Is it possible that Bar Deroma and the first king of the Bar Kokhba dynasty are one and the same?

It’s possible that the Babylonian Talmud calls the founder of the Bar Kokhba dynasty Bar Daroma due to his origin or his headquarters being located south of Jerusalem. Various rabbinic texts refer to the territory south of Jerusalem, which remained a center of Jewish settlement after the destruction of Jerusalem, as “Daroma” (the “South”).

As a descendant of the Davidic line, which created its first capital in Hebron before later moving to Jerusalem, it would make sense for a fugitive guerrilla leader, like Bar Kokhba, to be identified as a resident of southern Judea.

The fact that the midrash in Eikha Rabbah is explicit about the timing of the events it describes is also informative. It relates that “Hadrian besieged Betar three and a half years,” and after detailing its fall writes, “Betar stood 52 years after the destruction of the Temple.”

This indicates that the siege of Betar by Hadrian described here took place from the emperor’s ascension in 5877 to 5880.

If we understand Bar Daroma to be synonymous with Shimon Bar Kokhba, and Tur Malka to be synonymous with Betar (meaning the “king’s mountain” is a reference to Bar Kokhba, and not to earlier Judean monarchs who used the fortress), the reference in Gittin to Hadrian’s retreat after the death of Bar Daroma may provide additional insight.

If 5880 were to mark a decisive defeat of the rebellion, the silence of Roman sources on the Judean front would be suspicious. But if Hadrian (or his general) leveraged Shimon Bar Kokhba’s untimely death after three and a half years of siege to secure a surrender from the city, in exchange for ending the campaign and leaving Bar Kokhba’s heir in power as a Roman client, both sides might see the event as a pyrrhic victory.

This would explain the Roman names (Rufus and Romulus) that the Raavad gives to Bar Kokhba’s heirs as a sign of their status in the empire and the rabbinic decrees against teaching Greek wisdom as a way to minimize the influence of the empire on the public.

It also explains a discrepancy between Cassius Dio and Eusebius regarding Hadrian’s plans to build a temple to the idol Jupiter on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Cassius Dio records this decision as the cause of the final Jewish revolt, near the end of Hadrian’s reign, while Eusebius records it as the aftermath of the revolt’s suppression.

It’s likely that Hadrian’s intentions were perceived by Romulus Bar Kokhba as a betrayal of their shaky peace, and taken as a casus belli to renew the struggle and liberate Jerusalem. After two and a half years, during which Hadrian reconquered Jerusalem and ultimately suppressed the revolt and killed the last Bar Kokhba king at Betar, the emperor initiated construction of his idolatrous temple, exiled the remaining Jews to the Galilee, and forbade the burial of the Judean fighters of Betar. This also clarifies the conflicting durations of the war provided in different rabbinic sources, and the Raavad and Vilna Gaon’s reference to the final collapse of the revolt in 3900/1.

This also sheds light on developments outside of Judea. Historia Augusta records that throughout his reign, Hadrian shied from the aggressive tactics of Trajan, preferring to restore Roman influence across the eastern Mediterranean through more diplomatic means. While this could be explained simply as prudent statesmanship, the contrast to his violent and vengeful destruction of Betar is noteworthy. It’s possible that Hadrian’s statesmanship in Egypt, Greece, North Africa, Anatolia, and Parthia were aimed at isolating Judea in order to successfully end its intransigence once and for all. 

Finally, while Cassius Dio and Eusebius attribute the final suppression of the revolt to Hadrian, who died around 3898, leading to the academic consensus around the revolt’s suppression in 3895-6 (135-6 CE)  Historia Augusta places only the final uprising in his reign, and attributes its ultimate defeat to Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius, lending credence to the rabbinic claim that the revolt was finally suppressed 73 years after the destruction of the Temple in 3901, three years after Antoninus’s accession.  

Ultimately, we can conclude our timeline as follows:

1. 3850: 22 years after the destruction of the temple, a fugitive descendant of King David – Shimon ben Koziba – eliminates a high-ranking Roman governor under Emperor Domitian in response to taxation and cultural repression.
2. 3866: As Emperor Trajan turns his attention to the east, Shimon ben Koziba steps up his guerrilla campaign in response to the consolidation of Roman power in Nabatea and an increased legionary presence in the vicinity of Judea.
3. 3875-80: As Trajan makes progress in his Parthian campaign, the Jews dispersed throughout the empire rise against their local garrisons, while the Jews of Parthia join their host nation in resisting the Roman advance. As the Romans regroup and take their revenge on the Jews in Egypt, Libya, and Cyprus, many retreat to Judea, where an additional front is developing. Shimon ben Koziba takes advantage of the influx of Jews and the weakened position of the Romans in Judea, establishes Jewish sovereignty in the area of Betar and is crowned king. After Shimon’s untimely death, his son Rufus concludes a truce with the Roman authorities, giving the Judeans local autonomy as a client state of Emperor Hadrian.
4. 3891-3901: After concluding his campaigns in the west, Hadrian focuses on diplomatically consolidating power in the eastern Mediterranean. With his alliances solidified, he reneges on his agreements with Rufus and prepares to build an idolatrous temple on the Temple Mount. Rufus’s son Romulus raises an army to resist him, and successfully liberates Jerusalem. Hadrian is ultimately able to recapture Jerusalem and carries through on building a temple there, dealing a severe blow to the revolt. Minor pockets of resistance hold out through Hadrian’s death, but are finally eliminated by Antoninus.

Rabbi Akiva & the Revolt

When considered in light of this new history of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, Rabbi Akiva’s role in the events becomes clearer.

The Jerusalem Talmud records that Rabbi Akiva declared Bar Kokhba to be the Messiah. In light of this, the Rambam calls Rabbi Akiva his “noseh keilim” (“arms bearer” or “squire”). While some rabbis have interpreted this metaphorically to mean that Rabbi Akiva gave spiritual support for the revolt through his Torah study, others have understood it more literally. A closer examination of the Talmudic and Midrashic accounts of Rabbi Akiva’s life gives considerable credence to the latter opinion.

Midrash Sifrei breaks Rabbi Akiva’s life into three periods – forty years as a simple shepherd, forty years of study, and forty years of leading his generation.

Considering that his time as a shepherd was in the service of Kalba Savua, one of the wealthiest men of Jerusalem (Ketubot 62b, Rashi there), we can assume that that entire period was before the destruction of the Temple, placing his birth somewhere before 3785.

It is unlikely that he was born more than a decade before this, since the Midrash Tanḥuma on Tazria records a debate he held with Turnus Rufus, the Roman governor of Jerusalem who Eusebius places during the final stage of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, around the 18th year of Hadrian’s reign, in 3895.

If we assume that Rabbi Akvia was executed during the final suppression of the revolt, around 3900, we can place his birth around 3780, the beginning of his studies in 3820 (shortly before the Great Revolt, which shaped his learning), and began leading the nation around 3860 (between the assassination of Domitian’s general in Judea and the unrest sparked by Trajan’s annexation of Nabatea). This means that for the entire period that the Raavad considers the revolt, and for all but the first ten years according to the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Akiva was one of the leading sages of the nation.

It is thus unsurprising that in the wake of the massive earthquake that shook Antioch while Trajan’s forces camped there (that in turn caused a tsunami which damaged the port of Caesarea according to modern maritime archaeologists), Rabbi Akiva took inspiration from the words of the prophet Ḥagai:

“Be strong, all you people of the land—says HaShem—and act! For I am with you—says the Lord of Hosts. So I promised you when you came out of Egypt, and My Spirit is still in your midst. Fear not! For thus said the Lord of Hosts: In just a little while longer I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land; I will shake all the nations. And the precious things of all the nations shall come here, and I will fill this House with glory, said the Lord of Hosts.”

The Babylonian Talmud in Sanhedrin 97b implies that Rabbi Akiva interpreted these words to mean that “a little while” after the destruction of the second Temple, the final messianic redemption would begin, marked by the nation of Israel acting out HaShem’s will, the destruction of Israel’s enemies, and the rebuilding of the Temple.

So when Rabbi Akiva witnessed the drowning of the Roman base of operations in a tsunami, and received word that the emperor’s armies had been devastated by an earthquake as they marched east, he was filled with inspiration, and sought to inspire his students as well, to “Be strong… and act!”

It is thus unsurprising that in the letter of Rav Shrira Gaon, in which he recounts the history of the transmission of the Torah, he notes that the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva mentioned in Yevamot 62b, who died between Pesaḥ and Shavuot died in a shmad – a general term for gentiles oppressing Jews. The Talmud emphasizes Rav Naḥman’s opinion that they died from askara, which is generally understood to be a respiratory disease, but some have noted that the Turkish word for soldier, asker, may indicate that askara is a military related death, just as mitah ra’ah – which Rav Idi brings as the reason for their death, is elsewhere understood to be a reference to execution.

The death of Rabbi Akiva’s students in the first major conflict of the revolt, somewhere between 3875-3880 during the suppressions by Trajan and Hadrian of the Diaspora Revolt and the Judean Bar Kokhba Revolt launched in its wake, makes far more sense in light of our proposed timeline. The same passage in Yevamot relates that after the deaths of these students, Rabbi Akiva raised up a new generation of students who would ultimately carry on the Torah after his death.

If we accept the historians’ consensus, and the simple meaning of the rabbinic sources which restrict the Bar Kokhba Revolt to two or three years, Rabbi Akiva would have had to transmit the entirety of the oral tradition in an exceptionally short timeframe before his execution near the end of the war or in its immediate aftermath. But if there were nearly two decades between the major conflicts on either end of the revolt, Rabbi Akiva would have had no difficulty utilizing the years of national autonomy (and the removal of cultural persecution) under the Bar Kokhba dynasty to fully transmit the Torah to his successors.

This generational breakdown is also instructive regarding other aggadot placing various stories about Rabbi Akiva with his teachers (Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua) and peers in the period before 3880, as well as those with his students (Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Meir, and Rabbi Elazar ben-Shamoa) in the period from 3880-3900. It also clarifies the distinction made in  the Talmud between the aforementioned martyrs of Lod, who were killed in the first major conflict, and Rabbi Akiva and his peers, who were killed in the second.

Rav Z’ev Yaaatz , in his history of Israel, even suggests that Rabbi Akiva’s travels to Babylon, Africa, and Arabia recorded in various aggadot all took place before 3880, and were an attempt to drum up nationalist sentiment in the Jewish Diaspora in the prelude to the Kitos War.

From all of these sources, it is increasingly clear that even if Rabbi Akiva himself wasn’t a soldier on the battlefield, his involvement in the revolt as a recruiter and spiritual figure were invaluable to Bar Kokhba’s efforts. But this only deepens the mystery around the rabbinic censorship of these events in the Talmud.

A Deeper Understanding of the Rabbinic Censorship

Earlier, we proposed that the rabbinic censorship was necessary in order to protect the surviving Jewish community from continued persecutions by Rome. But the context of the Talmudic passages that describe Rabbi Akiva’s messianic view of Bar Kokhba and the disappointment of his failure, provide a deeper explanation.

In the final chapter of Sanhedrin in the Babylonian Talmud just before page 97b, which mentions Rabbi Akiva’s interpretation of Ḥagai’s prophecy, page 97a records, “On the verse, ‘That Your enemies taunted, Lord, that they have taunted the footsteps of Your anointed’ Rabbi Yehuda says: During the generation that the son of David comes… the wisdom of scholars will diminish, and sin-fearing people will be despised. And the face of the generation will be like the face of a dog [shameless – Rashi].”

Rabbi Yehuda, one of Rabbi Akiva’s students, interprets the verse from Tehilim 89:52 to mean that the generation of Israel’s redemption will be one of general disrespect for the rabbis and their traditions.

It’s likely that in Shimon bar Kokhba, in the martyrs of Lod, and in the Jewish masses who raised arms against the Romans while defiantly calling out to HaShem not to interfere, Rabbi Yehuda saw a prototype for the type of Jew that would eventually be able to create an army and a state that would develop into a restored Israelite kingdom.

In the Talmud, the rabbis deemphasized the broad public and rabbinic support for the revolt, knowing that it would take a certain type of Jew to reclaim Bar Kokhba as a national hero. They knew that the generation in which “the wisdom of scholars will diminish, and sin-fearing people will be despised” would identify with Bar Kokhba’s attitude and not be bothered by the ancient rabbis who rejected him.

And now, when the State of Israel has long outlived the Bar Kokhba king (many times over according to the accepted mainstream timeline), and as the relationship between the rabbis and the army becomes ever more fraught, the time has come to recontextualize Bar Kokhba in the words of our sages.

Only by fully understanding how the rabbis of his time and the great Torah scholars of successive generations secretly kept the flame of the revolt alive can we finally reunite the spirits of Rabbi Akiva and Bar Kokhba, and bring about the final redemption.