Friday, December 13, 2019

An academic exchange regarding Hadrian and the Bar Kochba Revolt



 Image result for simon bar kokhba"

 
by
 
Damien F. Mackey
 
 
“But if the Temple is indeed depicted on the Bar Kochba coins (e.g., as a national symbol) then there is a way to check your hypothesis - "our" Bar Kochba could depict only magnificent Herod's Temple, while "your" Bar Kochba - only the previous one, a puny hut”.
Canadian Reader’s comment
 
 
Canadian reader:
 
…. Is your paper [not referenced by this reader] academic? Much of what you write is known. See e.g., this paper which can be also found on Academia:
Cheers ....
 
Damien Mackey:
But then you're quite wrong in writing that: "Much of what you write is known".
Who else today, but I, writes about Epiphanes as Hadrian (supposed to be some 300 years apart)?
Or who else argues that there was no Second Jewish Revolt after the First one?
….
 
Canadian reader:
 
Damien, I am missing something.
 
….
>The so-called Second Jewish Revolt is actually, rather, the revolt of the Maccabees (e.g. Simon) during the reign of Epiphanes.
 
Do you mean there was no Bar-Kochba revolt?
….
 
Maccabees 4 is of late origin. What's the point arguing from that? It could have been written after 135.
 
The usual nomenclature is the First revolt of 66-70 and Second of 132-135. Are you saying one of them was never happen?
….

Damien Mackey:
 
Absolutely … I am saying that the 'Second' Revolt did not - no, could not - have happened as there was nothing left to destroy after 70 AD, with the city and Temple burned to the ground and the people either killed or taken into captivity.

How could the Jews have launched a massive war of resistance not so very long after that!
Hadrian, who Jewish legend has in place of Antiochus Epiphanes (because Hadrian WAS Antiochus IV), was not a contemporary of a later revolt, but of an earlier one, the Maccabean revolt.

That is why the coins of Simon Bar Kochba (presumably Simon Maccabee) have the Temple of Yahweh represented on one side. What would have been the point of that if the Temple was no longer standing?
….
 
Canadian reader:
 
Well, do you read Hebrew, Damien? Just for a record.
 
Jewish history does not claim Bar- Kochba operated from Jerusalem but rather from the small fortified cities like Beitar conducting a partisan war.

But if the Temple is indeed depicted on the Bar Kochba coins (e.g., as a national symbol) then there is a way to check your hypothesis - "our" Bar Kochba could depict only magnificent Herod's Temple, while "your" Bar Kochba - only the previous one, a puny hut. ….
 
Damien Mackey:
 
Yes … I have studied Hebrew at University level and won a Jewish prize for it.

If Bar Kochba was Simon Maccabee, as I am maintaining, then Jewish history (Maccabees 1 and 2) has he and his brothers), perhaps based in Modein, operating all over the land.

I know of only two Temples of Yahweh: (i) that of Solomon, and (ii) that of the era of the Persians (Cyrus and Darius). See e.g. my article:
 
“‘… there shall not be left one stone upon another’. How to explain Jerusalem today?”
 
My best wishes,
Damien.
 
 


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