The The Apostate Jew - Tiberius Julius Alexander who destroyed Jerusalem - Will it happen again?

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Tiberius Julius Alexander Junior

Tiberius Julius Alexander: Egyptian Jew, Roman governor of Judaea (46-48) and Egypt (68-69), one of the commanders during the Roman siege of Jerusalem (70).

Tiberius Julius Alexander was born as the son of a rich Jew from Alexandria, who was also called Tiberius Julius Alexander. Father Alexander served as chief customs officer and had offered financial help to the mother of the emperor Claudius, Antonia. His brother was the philosopher Philo (c.15-c.50), and his younger son was Marcus, the husband of princess Berenice, the daughter of the Jewish king Herod Agrippa. In other words, the younger Tiberius Julius Alexander belonged to one of the most influential families in the Roman East, a family that stood in three cultural traditions: Jewish, Greek, and Roman. They had the status of Roman knights.

During the reign of the emperor Caligula, a pogrom took place in Alexandria (more). The result was an increase of Anti-Semitism, and a change in Judaism, which started to look inside instead of outside. Where the elder Alexander had been able to combine Judaism and a Graeco-Roman attitude, his son may have had to make a choice. How he combined the two, we do not know; but there is no evidence that he was an apostate.

His first known office was that of commander of the Theban district in southern Egypt, and later, he was made prefect of Judaea (46-48).

Then came the successor of Fadus, Tiberius Alexander. He was the son of Alexander, the chief customs officer of Alexandria, one of the most influential men of his age, both for his family and wealth. He was also more eminent for his piety than his son Alexander, for the latter did not continue in the religion of his country. Under this prefect a great famine happened in Judaea, and queen Helena of Adiabene bought cereals in Egypt at a great expense, and distributed it to those that needed it. Besides this, the sons of Judas the Galilean were executed; I mean that they were the sons of that Judas who caused the people to revolt when the governor of Syria Quirinius came to take an account of the estates of the Jews. The names of those sons were James and Simon, whom Alexander commanded to be crucified.
Flavius Josephus, Jewish antiquities 20.100-103

This is what the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote at the end of the first century. The twe men he had executed were probably nationalist rebels of the type that was later known as Zealots. Some twenty years earlier, Josephus had written another book, The Jewish war, in which he had merely stated that Alexander respected the customs of the country and that the people lived in peace (2.220). The two statements support each other: because Alexander arrested the two men the peace remained in the land of Israel.
Bust of Corbulo. Louvre, Paris (France). Photo Marco Prins.
Corbulo (Louvre)

The next stage of Alexander's career are not completely understood, but it is certain that he was involved in the war between the Roman general Corbulo and the Parthian empire (63). He is mentioned as responsible for the commissariat and was present during negotiations with the Armenian king Tiridates.

In 68, Alexander was made prefect of Egypt, a very important function. This was probably one of the last appointments by the emperor Nero. He now commanded two legions, III Cyrenaica and XXII Deiotariana, which he was forced to use against the Jews of Alexandria - ethnic violence was not uncommon in ancient Egypt. According to Flavius Josephus, no less than 50,000 Jews were killed when Alexander sent the legions to the Jewish quarter. this meant the end of the once very large and powerful Jewish community of Alexandria. (The full story can be read here.)


The Jewish insurrection in Alexandria was not an isolated incident. War had broken out in Judaea. The Jews had revolted for fiscal reasons, but there was an increading messianic element in their motivation. (Go here for the story of the Jewish insurrection.) The emperor Nero had sent one of his best generals to suppress the Jewish rebellion: Titus Flavius Vespasianus, or (to use the English rendering of his name) Vespasian. He was very successful; early in 69, he had already broken the back of the revolt, although the siege of Jerusalem still remained.

Meanwhile, civil war had broken out among the Romans. Nero had committed suicide, and an old senator named Galba had succeeded him (June 68). However, in the first week of 69, the governor of Germania Inferior, Vitellius, had accepted the purple as well. When this news became known in Rome, Galba was lynched near the Lacus Curtius on the Roman Forum. His successor was Otho, who was defeated by Vitellius (April).

On the first of July, the governors in the Roman empire administered the oath of loyalty, but Tiberius Julius Alexander demanded that his men promised to be loyal to Vespasian. A few days later, the commander of the Roman forces in Judaea accepted the title. It may be suspected that he had in fact taken the initiative, and that Alexander was just a pawn in a larger game, offering Vespasian an opportunity to decline the title if the legions in the region did not side with him immediately.

Bust of Vespasian from Écija. Museo Arqueológico, Sevilla (Spain). Photo Jan van Vliet.
Vespasian, bust from Écija
(Museo Arqueológico, Sevilla)

But they duly hailed Vespasian as their emperor, and the governor of Syria, Gaius Licinius Mucianus, sided with the rebels as well. Within a few weeks, the rich provinces in modern Turkey, the eastern client kingdoms and the Roman navy of the Black sea followed suit. A battle plan was made: the war in Judaea was left to the new emperor's son Titus, Vespasian was to go to Alexander in Egypt (and cut off the grain supply of Rome), and Mucianus was to command an army and march to the west. It was expected that the legions of the Danube sided with the rebels. As it turned out, the Danube army arrived in Italy first and defeated Vitellius' legions in one of the longest battles in Roman history (October).

Vespasian arrived in Egypt in November. There were festivities, and it turned out that the emperor was able to cure people with the touch of his hands. It is possible that Alexander had arranged something, because a miraculous cure was something that the Egyptian populace appreciated.

Bust of Titus. Louvre, Paris (France). Photo Marco Prins.
Titus (Louvre, Paris)

In the first days of 70, Vespasian and Alexander learned that the army of the Danube had captured Rome and lynched Vitellius. While Vespasian proceeded to Italy, Alexander was added to the staff of the emperor's son Titus, who had to take Jerusalem. The prince's greatest asset was his loyalty, but he was not acquianted with the country or with generalship, so he needed advisers. Alexander was made chief staff and may have conducted the war; another adviser was Flavius Josephus, the historian of this campaign (go here for the story of the siege of Jerusalem).

When the city had been captured, Alexander proposed to keep the Temple intact, but Titus overruled him (go here for discussion).

One papyrus seems to mention Alexander in the seventies or eighties as praetorian prefect, but the text is confused. On the other hand, it was not uncommon that the prefect of Egypt became praetorian prefect. We simply do not know what became of Tiberius Julius Alexander.

http://www.livius.org/jo-jz/julius/alexander.html


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www. bible-history.com/archaeology/rome/arch-titus-menorah-1.html


Could this be the greatest testimony to the words of Jesus in all of Biblical archaeology?

This wall relief on the Arch of Titus reveals one of the most troubling scenes in all history, Roman soldiers carrying spoils from the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The Temple Menorah* and the Table** of the Shewbread shown at an angle, both of solid gold, and the silver trumpets which called the Jews to the festivals. The Romans are in triumphal procession wearing laurel crowns and the ones carrying the Menorah have pillows on their shoulders. The soldiers carry signs commemorating the victories which Titus had won. This group of soldiers is just a few of the hundreds in the actual triumphal procession down Rome's Sacred Way. The whole procession is about to enter the carved arch on the right which reveals the quadriga at the top, Titus on his 4-horsed chariot with soldiers. The Arch of Titus with its Menorah Relief are high on the list of importance in the study of Biblical Archaeology because it stands today as a testimony that the words of Jesus miraculously came true.

    * When the temple was plundered by Antiochus Epiphanes, the candlestick was taken away (1 Macc 1:21); after the cleansing, a new one was made by Judas Maccabeus (1 Macc 4:49,50).


    * * The 'table' originally provided for the second Temple had been taken away by Antiochus Epiphanes (about 170 BC); but another was supplied by the Maccabees.


Arch of Titus Soldiers Carrying Jewish Candlestick and Sign

Luke 19:41-44 "If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation."

Matthew 23:37-39 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!'"

Photo of the Arch of Titus in Rome
Heart Message

The Arch of Titus

Another witness of stone testifies before the jury of history. Proud and tall the Arch of Titus stoically watches over the highest point of the Via Sacra in Rome. It appears quiet, but as one focuses on its majestic beauty, the story begins to raise its voice. The procession carved in marble shows the Roman General Titus returning victorious, having crushed the Jewish state, carrying the spoils of war stolen from the very Temple of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

There's the menorah relief, showing a representation of the Golden Candelabra that Moses set in the Holy Place offering light and symbolism for the priests. The same shape that we see in the windows of Jewish homes during Hanukah commemorating a former time of victory for Israel. The Table of the ShewBread is is also carried off by the exulting Romans, the sacred furniture that was restocked with daily bread declaring the sustenance which can only come from God. The golden trumpets are there as well, which were once blown from the Temple and heard over the entire city as the Holy Days and celebration began during a happier time.

One only has to look at this relief and imagine it reversing like a film running backwards to see the dreadful death and destruction that was left behind by the invincible Roman Legion; the thousands that were slaughtered, the glorious city burning and in ruins, and those surviving banished to Europe in chains where their descendants will remain for almost 2,000 years until the miraculous events of 1948 brought Israel back into nationhood once again.

The mighty Arch of Titus tells its story to all who have a moment to listen.

"This happened!" it declares. "But you must seek out for yourself the reason why."


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For a large part of their history in the Roman era, Jews were active in proselytizing in the Pagan world. In fact in the Jews were rather Anti-Christian probably because of the new competition they had in winning converts and the fact that Christianity decimated their trade in usury products. 10% of the Roman World was Jewish by the time of Christ's birth.

utne. nvg.org/j/metzenberg.html
It is often remarked that the Jewish people are a nation or tribe as well as a religion. The modern Jewish population is actually a heavily self-selected group, the result of several defining population events. The first of these occurred in the later years of the Roman Empire, when the bulk of the Jewish population in the Roman Empire was probably converted to Christianity. Those who remained Jewish were principally the Pharisees, a movement of activists and scholars. Thus, the development of a distinct Jewish population with a higher average IQ dates not to the Middle Ages, but to the Talmudic period many centuries earlier.

In the ancient world of Greece and Rome, Judaism was a proselytizing religion and took in many converts. It has been estimated that in the 1st and 2nd centuries, about 10% of the population of the Roman Empire was Jewish, and as many as 25% in the Greek speaking cities of the Eastern Mediterranean. It was for this largely Greek speaking population that the Septuagint (a Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures) was produced. And it was amongst this Greek speaking Jewish population that Paul of Tarsus traveled, proselytizing Christianity.

Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending remark that no commentary survives that would suggest that ancient Jewish populations were set off from other peoples by ability or intelligence. Of course, no such documentation exists for any other group, for there were no social scientists and modern concepts of intelligence did not exist in ancient times.

Even so, it is likely that Jews already had a distinctive occupational structure in the Roman Empire. Historical sources suggest that male literacy was already universal among Jews in Roman times, although it is hard to say what level of literacy was attained. Diaspora communities had been established for more than 500 years, and the dispersion of the Jewish people around the Roman and Parthian (Persian) empires, as well as universal literacy among them, facilitated long distance trade.

The peak of Jewish population as a share of world population probably dates to the Roman era. So what happened to all those Jews?

Partly, the answer is that the population of Europe and the Mediterranean region declined precipitously at the end of the Roman era. The Romans had presided over an era of prosperity, in which Western Europe became progressively Romanized, speaking a common language, with a network of roads and other infrastructure to promote economic growth and trade. With the decline of the Roman Empire, which actually began long before the sacking of Rome in 410 CE, populations collapsed throughout Western Europe. Invasions of so-called "barbarians" were a symptom as much as a cause of this decline. In the Greek-speaking east, the decline was postponed for a century or more, but was ultimately almost as severe. In the reign of the Emperor Justinian during the 6th Century, the entire empire was decimated by plague.

Thus, the collapse of Roman authority was an economic catastrophe for the ancient world. In many regions, literacy came to an end and the written record of civilization vanishes for hundreds of years. Jewish populations, like urban populations in general, declined to a tiny remnant. How many of the Jews died in plagues or famines, and how many converted to Christianity and later Islam, is undocumented. Those that remained, a self-conscious and self-selected minority, created a unique intellectual culture, and it is that culture that survives today as modern Judaism.

Jewish intellectual achievement was already well established by 800 CE. Above average Jewish intelligence can be traced to the origins of rabbinical Judaism itself around the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

High measured Jewish intelligence results not from the unusual occupational structure of Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages, but from the origins of rabbinical Judaism hundreds of years earlier. At the beginning of the Christian Era, Judaism was deeply divided and in ferment between several competing religious factions, notably the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Both movements were elites. Although the Pharisees are best known outside of Judaism from Jesus' rebuke in the Gospel of Matthew, there are other historical sources, from Josephus' History of the Jews to the Mishna, a compilation of Jewish law that was initiated by the Pharisees after the fall of Jerusalem.

Since they are history's losers, we know about the Sadducees mostly from the negative viewpoint of the Pharisees, who survived the destruction of the Temple and went on to compile their oral tradition as the Talmud. The Sadducees had been the local ruling elite in Jerusalem and other urban centers prior to the destruction of the Temple. They favored the power and privileges of Judaism's aristocracy and hereditary priesthood, and they accommodated rather than resisted the pressures of Hellenization (assimilation into the dominant Greek and Roman culture).

By contrast, the Pharisees were a democratizing movement that sought to redefine Jewish observance, promoting talent over birthright, and extending the rituals and laws of purity from the priesthood of the Temple to the general population. The consummate Pharisee was Hillel, a kind of "hero-scholar" who traveled to Palestine from Babylon and lived a simple and humble life in order to dedicate himself to the study of Torah. It was the Pharisees that maintained the study of ancient text in Hebrew, no longer the vernacular of the Jewish people, and promoted the ideal of scholarship.

Thus, the Jewish population that survived the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the plunder of Mesopotamia under Trajan, and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolts (132–135 CE) was a self- selected remnant population of intellectuals. Of the religious movements that existed in the time of Jesus, it is the Pharisees that formed the basis of modern rabbinical Judaism.

Followers of the Sadducees, and also the great mass of people that were not such partisan believers, probably assimilated in large numbers into Christian and Greek cultures and disappeared from Jewish history. But the Pharisees, conscious of themselves as scholars in exile, redoubled their efforts, compiling the works that form the basis of modern Jewish law. The Pharisees certainly had intellectual and verbal skills far beyond the level of the general population, and they are the progenitors in disproportionate numbers of modern Jewish populations.

Self-selection and group selection for religious scholarship created a distinct Jewish population with a higher than average IQ.


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Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending assert, with absolutely no evidence, that less than one percent of the Jewish population was part of a professional class of rabbis and scholars. They seem to be imagining that Jewish rabbis have always functioned like Christian ministers, as professionals leading congregations, although the modern Jewish congregation was a product of the 19th and 20th centuries, and a reaction to the organization of Protestant Christianity.

Although no occupational or census information exists, religious scholarship was a vast enterprise within the Jewish community. The best evidence for this is that such a large body of scholarship survives, even from a period when there was no printing or reproduction technology.

This scholarship, and the class of scholars who produced it, preserved not only the written record itself, but also the two ancient languages in which most of it was written: Hebrew and Aramaic. Although real fluency and literacy in these languages was probably limited in Medieval Europe, ordinary Jews were required to learn them, not only for ritual in the synagogue, but also for ceremonies in the home.

Rabbinical scholarship did not just determine what direction to face while praying, or in what order to light the Chanukah candles. If a neighbor's donkey damaged your shop, Jewish law determined his obligations to pay you damages. And if a tradesman died owing money, rabbinical law determined the obligations of his widow.

Jewish scholarship involved far more than the one percent of adult males suggested by Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending. Indeed, every male in a traditional Jewish community is considered to have an obligation to study and learn Jewish law. Jewish scholarship was concerned not just with abstract, spiritual, and ceremonial manners, but also with civil law, administration, government, commerce, tax collection, social welfare, and the regulation of everyday life, including marriage and child rearing.

The rabbis whose discussions are preserved in the Babylonian Talmud, known as the Amoraim, were not professional rabbis. The academies of Pumedita and Sura where the Talmud was compiled, located near Babylon in modern Iraq, met during the off-season, and closed during the growing season so that their attendees could tend their crops.

Scholars and commentators of subsequent generations were also not professional rabbis. The two greatest scholars of the Middle Ages were Rashi and Maimonides. Rashi, whose 11th century commentary is traditionally printed near the spine on every page of Talmud, tended a vineyard in France. Maimonides, who might be considered the consummate Sephardic Jewish scholar, was a physician. ( and very evil...)

Of course, Jewish scholarship and literacy contributed to Jewish survival during the Middle Ages. Hebrew script came to be used not only for sacred writing, but for everyday spoken language as well, including the Yiddish spoken by Ashkenazi Jews and the Judeo-Spanish or Ladino spoken by Sephardic Jews. This ability to write and record information facilitated the development of international trading and financial networks through which Jews supported themselves as they moved into Europe. At a time when most Europeans were peasant farmers and literacy was confined primarily to religious orders, the Jewish community was an alternate source of commercial talent, capable of conducting long-distance financial transactions.

In both Medieval Europe and in the Caliphates and Sultanates of the Middle East, small numbers of Jewish intellectuals were hired as "court Jews", offering their skills in finance, administration, and government as retainers for the Christian and Islamic royal elites. The success of this small and visible minority brought protection and prestige to the larger Jewish community, and reflects the survival of scholarship within that community.

Perhaps the ultimate testimony to the importance of religious scholarship among Jews is that Hebrew, an ancient language used only for religious purposes for nearly 2500 years, has been reborn as a modern language.

Above average intelligence is characteristic not only of Ashkenazi Jews, but also of large portions of the Sephardic and Mizrahi (oriental) Jewish populations. Furthermore, the Jews living in urban centers of North Africa and the Middle East were concentrated in intellectual occupations just as the European Jews were.


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"For Judaism, then, the question of its historical existence or disappearance depended upon its ability to accommodate itself to Western culture. But in the days of the Maccabees, as in the period of Moses Mendelssohn, the law interposed a wall between Jews and non-Jews. Nothing brings people closer together than a common table. But his dietary laws forbade the Jew to taste the food of his non-Jewish neighbor. There is no closer tie than the bond of matrimony. But the Jews told with approval the story of a father who abandoned his own daughter in order to free his brother from a passing attachment to a pagan dancing girl. To a man of the Hellenistic age this "separation from the nations" could be regarded as nothing else than the expression of a Jewish "hatred of mankind." Favorably disposed critics have endeavored to explain the withdrawal of the Jews from history as the consequence of the "bad experience of their expulsion from Egypt," and to exculpate it on such grounds; but no one outside Jewry itself has ever recognized positive merit in the separation....

"To "advanced" Jews, therefore, it seemed imperative to let these bars fall "In those days," we read in I Maccabees, "came there forth out of Israel lawless men, and persuaded many, saying, 'Let us go and make a covenant with the nations that are round about us .... "In those days" denotes the reign of the Syrian King Antiochus IV, surnamed Epiphanes (176-163 B.C.E.). The new King entrusted the position of High Priest at the Temple in Jerusalem- and hence the rule over Judea-to men of that same "advanced" party, first to a man who called himself by the Greek name of Jason (about 175-172 B.C.E.), then to Menelaus (172-162 B.C.E.). These Jewish "Hellenists" promptly received royal approval for establishing a Greek community in Jerusalem, and with it permission to erect a gymnasium. In 169, then, a regular Greek city, surrounded by walls and fortified by towers, was founded upon one of the hills of Jerusalem, opposite the Temple Mount. The name of this city is unknown; in our tradition it is referred to simply as Acra, that is to say, the Citadel. Henceforward the Sanctuary was dependent upon this Greek city. This was only natural. The Hellenistic culture, understandably enough, had first affected the upper classes, the Jerusalemites and the priesthood. When the signal went up for the exercises upon the athletic field to begin, it was the priests who hastened to the contests and surrendered their priestly linens for the nakedness of Greek sports. Greek marks of distinction were prized above old-fashioned, native honors. People strove to appear wholly Greek-externally, by removing the marks of circumcision through a painful operation; inwardly, by participating in the games in honor of the foreign gods, and even by contributing money for sacrifices to these gods.

"But the leaders of the party understood perfectly well that all this must remain merely a diversion of the upper classes as long as the Sanctuary remained inviolate and as long as the law enjoining "misanthropic" separation continued in force. Like the Emancipation of the nineteenth century, that of the second century B.C.E. must have necessarily led to religious "reform." But nineteenth-century Emancipation could in the end escape this necessity, for Occidental civilization as a whole had ... become secularized.

www. houseofdavid.ca/maccabee.htm