5. Policy Toward the Jews

Very different was Hadrian's policy with the Jews. The prohibition of circumcision and, still more, the establishment, from 130, of the colony of Ælia Capitolina, together with the erection of a temple to Jupiter upon ruins of Jerusalem, fanned the religious ardor of Judaism, and about 132 it burst into a powerful flame of insurrection under the leadership of Bar Kokba (q.v.). Only after the legate Julius Severus had been summoned thither from Britain, did Rome succeed, through wearisome and sanguinary conflicts, in gradually crushing the insurgents. The campaign ended in 135; hundreds of thousands of men had perished and the country had been laid desolate; and now a heathen colony grew up in the environs of the Holy City, and over the foundations of the destroyed sanctuary there arose a temple of Jupiter, the Jews being even forbidden entrance to the city under penalty of death.

Victor Schultze.

Bibliography: A. Hauerath, NCateata.enalichG ZeiiqBschichte, vol. iii., Heidelberg, 1874, Eng. transl., London, 1895; T. Keim, Rom und das Christtntum, Berlin 1881; H. Schiller, Geschichte der römischen KaiaerzA4 i., part 2, Gotha, 1883; F. Gregorovius, Der Kaiser Hadrian, Stuttgart, 1884, Eng. transl., London, 1898; E. G. Hardy, CiristianitiJ and the Roman Empire, London, 1894; Neander, Christian Church, i. 101-103 et passim; Schaff, Christian Church, ii. 49-50; Moeller, Christian Church, i. 95, 162.