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Conquest and Disaster at Jerusalem

After the conquest of Caesarea, the entire country of Israel willingly submitted to Khosrau. The remnants of the Hebrew people took in hand their native zeal [The translation is uncertain: perhaps "manifesting desire for their homeland"] wrought very damaging slaughters among the multitude of believers. Going to the Persians, the Jews united with them. At that time, the army of the king of Persia was stationed at Caesarea in Israel.[1] The Jews and the Persians were joined by Benjamin of Tiberias, a man of immense wealth, who enlisted and armed additional soldiers. The Tiberian Jews, with those of Nazareth and the mountain cities of Galilee, marched on Jerusalem with the Persian division commanded by Shahrbaraz (Rhazmiozan[2]). Later they were joined by the Jews of southern Israel; and supported by a band of Arabs, the united forces took Jerusalem by storm (July, 614 CE).[3]

Shahrbaraz spoke with the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that they submit voluntarily and be kept in peace and prosperity. Now at first the citizens of Jerusalem submitted, offering the general and the princes very great gifts, and requesting that a loyal ostikan, governor, be stationed with them to preserve the city.[4] Five years after his appointment to lead the conquest of Israel, and the "ingathering of the Jewish nation", the Exilarch Nehemiah was made ruler of Jerusalem.[5] The Exilarch was a strong young man, handsome and adorned in royal robes.[6] He began the work of making arrangements of the rebuilding of the Temple, and sorting out genealogies to established a new High Priesthood.[7] The Jews were exuberant, but an uneasy, explosive, tension was in the air.

Several months later a riot occurred in the city. A mob of the young Christians united and killed Nehemiah ben Hushial and his "council of the righteous".[8] They dragged their bodies through the street and dumped them over the city wall.[9] Then the Christians rebelled from Persian service. After this a battle took place among the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem, Jew and Christian. The multitude of the Christians grew stronger, struck at and killed many of the Jews. The remainder of the Jews jumped from the walls, and went to the Persian army in Caesarea.[10]

Then Xorheam assembled his troops and went and encamped around Jerusalem and invested it, warring against it for 19 days. Digging beneath the foundations of the city, they destroyed the wall. On the 19th day of the siege, the Judeo-Persian forces took Jerusalem. They put their swords to work for three days they slaughtering almost all the people in the city. Stationing themselves inside the city, they burned the place down.[11]

According to Christian sources, the troops were then ordered to count the corpses; the figure reached 57,000. Thirty-five thousand people were taken alive, among whom was a certain patriarch named Zak'aria who was also custodian of the Cross.[12] Later sources would claim that the Jews purchased Christian slaves in order to slaughter them.[13] The Jews sought for the Staff of Aaron, the "Rod of Hefzibah"[14], which they claimed was what the Christians called "the remnant of the Holy Cross"[15]. They began to torment the clerics, executing some. Finally the clerics pointed out the place where it was hidden. The Persians took it into captivity and also melted the city's silver and gold, which they took to the court of the king.[16]

In conjunction with the Persians, the Jews swept through Israel, destroyed the monasteries which abounded in the country, and expelled or killed the monks. Bands of Jews from Jerusalem, Tiberias, Galilee, Damascus, and even from Cyprus, united and undertook an incursion against Tyre, having been invited by the 4,000 Jewish inhabitants of that city to surprise and massacre the Christians on Easter night. The expedition, however, miscarried, as the Christians of Tyre learned of the impending danger, and seized the 4,000 Tyrian Jews as hostages. The Jewish invaders destroyed the churches around Tyre, an act which the Christians avenged by killing two thousand of their Jewish prisoners. The besiegers, to save the remaining prisoners, withdrew.[17]

The immediate results of these wars filled the Jews with joy. Many Christians became Jews through fear. A Sinaitic monk embraced Judaism of his own free will, and became a vehement assailant of his former belief.[18] The Judaic Nation was free from the Christian yoke for about fourteen years; and they seem to have deluded themselves with the hope that Khosrau would resign Jerusalem and a province to them, in order that they might establish a Jewish commonwealth.[19]

References

  1. ↑ "Sebeos' History", Chapter 24
  2. ↑ "Sebeos' History", Chapter 24
  3. ↑ The Jewish Encyclopedia - Chosroes (Khosru) II. Parwiz
  4. ↑ "Sebeos' History", Chapter 24
  5. ↑ Sefer Zerubavel
  6. ↑ Ibid.
  7. ↑ Ibid.
  8. ↑ "Sebeos' History", Chapter 24
  9. ↑ Sefer Zerubavel
  10. ↑ "Sebeos' History", Chapter 24
  11. ↑ Ibid.
  12. ↑ Ibid.
  13. ↑ Palestinian monk Antiochus Strategos of Mar Saba. in his Capture of Jerusalem, the Georgian text of which fills 66 large octavo pages of 33 lines each.38 Strategos devoted particular attention to the massacre perpetrated by the Jews in "the reservoir of Mamel [the Mamilla Pool]" after thousands of Christians were confined there by the conquering Persians: Thereupon the vile Jews . . . rejoiced exceedingly, because they detested the Christians, and they conceived an evil plan. . . . And in this season then the Jews approached the edge of the reservoir and called out to the children of God, while they were shut therein, and said to them: "If ye would escape from death, become Jews and deny Christ; and then ye shall . . . join us. We will ransom you with our money and ye shall be benefited by us." But their plot and desire were not fulfilled . . . because the children of Holy Church chose death for Christ's sake rather than to live in godlessness. . . . And when the unclean Jews saw the steadfastness of the Christians and their immovable faith, then they were agitated with lively ire . . . and thereupon imagined another plot. As of old they bought the Lord from the Jews with silver, so they purchased Christians out of the reservoir. . . .
    How many souls were slain in the reservoir of Mamel! How many perished of hunger and thirst! How many priests and monks were massacred by the sword! . . . How many maidens, refusing their abominable outrages, were given over to death by the enemy! How many parents perished on top of their own children! How many of the people were brought up by the Jews and butchered, and became confessors of Christ! . . . Who can count the multitude of the corpses of those who were massacred in Jerusalem!" Strategos, cited a total number of 66,509 Christian corpses, of which 24,518 were allegedly found at Mamilla, many more than were found anywhere else in the city.
    The Greek Theophanes (d. ca. 818), cited numbers of Christian dead as high as 90,000, which became a favorite among modern historians. See The Chronicle of Theophanes . . . (A.D. 602-813), trans. Harry Turtledove (Philadelphia, 1982), 11: "In this year [614] the Persians took . . . Palestine, and its holy city in battle. At the hands of the Jews they killed many people in it; some say, 90,000. The Jews, according to their means, bought the Christians and then killed them." The veracity of the claim by Strategos (and later Theophanes) that Jews purchased Christian captives and then butchered them has been challenged by many scholars, it has been taken quite seriously, even in recent years, by leading Byzantinists such as A. N. Stratos and Cyril Mango (the Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at the University of Oxford). N. Stratos, Byzantium in the Seventh Century, 4 vols. (Amsterdam, 1968-78), 1: 109 ("The Jews raised a fund to which each contributed according to his fortune, ransomed the prisoners, and slew them"); C. Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (London, 1980), 92 ("In 614, the Jews bought Christian captives and put them to death").
  14. ↑ Sefer Zerubavel
  15. ↑ The thirteenth-century Chrisitan Book of the Bee devotes a specially subtitled section to the "history" of the staff of Aharon:
    When Adam and Eve departed from Paradise, Adam – as if knowing he would never again return there – cut of a branch from the Tree of Good and Evill, which was the fig tree, took it with him and left. That (branch) served him as a staff all the days of his life. After the death of Adam, his son Seth took it because at that time weapons did not yet exist. That staff was transferred from hand to hand until it reached Noah. Shem received it from Noah, and from Shem it was handed down to Abraham as a gift from the Paradise of God. Abraham used it to shatter the images, carvings and idols which his father had made. It was on account of this that God said to him: "Leave the house of your father, etc." (Gen 12:1ff). The staff remained in his possession every place he dwelt, including Egypt and in Palestine after returning from Egypt. Afterwards Isaac received it, and Jacob received it from Isaac, and Jacob used it while shepherding the flocks of Laban the Aramaean in Paddan-Aram. From Jacob it was received by Judah, the fourth of his sons, and this was the staff which Judah gave to his daughter-in-law Tamar along with his seal and his robe as payment for what he had done. From him it came to Peretz. Then wars broke out in every land, and an angle took the staff and put it in the Cave of Treasures in the hill country of Moab until Midian was built. Now there was a certain man in Midain who was just and righteous before God whose name was Jethro. While this one was shepherding his flocks in the hill country, he discovered the Cave and at divine instigation removed the staff. He used it to shepherd his flocks until he grew old, and after he gave his daughter to Moses, Jethro said to Moses: "Come, my son, take the staff and shepherd your flocks!" As Moses stepped on the threshold of the door, an angle caused the staff to fly out by itself toward Moses. Moses took that staff, and it was with him until the time when God spoke with him on Mount Sinai. When he told him to cast the staff on the ground and he accordingly threw it down, it became a large serpent; and the the Lord said for him to pick it up, he grasped it and it became a staff as before. This is the staff which God gave him as an assistant and as an agent of deliverance and to be a marvelous wonder: using it he rescued Israel from the oppression of the Egyptians. By the will of the Living God it became a large serpent in Egypt. God addressed Moses by means of ti, and it swallowed the staff of Pusdi, the Egyptian witch. He strucj the Sea of Reeds with it along its length and width, and "the depths were congealed in the midst of the sea" (Exodus 15:8b). This same staff was in the possession of Moses in the wilderness of Asimon, and he used it to strike the solid rock to make water flow copiously (from it). God then game serpents the power to destroy them due to His anger over the "waters of controversy" (Numvers 20:13). Moses prayed to the Lord, and God told him: "Make a bronze serpent and raise it on top of the staff, and have the children of Israel look at it so that they might be cured." Moses acted as the Lord had commanded him, and he set up a bronze serpent in the wilderness in the sight of all the children of Israel: they looked at it and they were cured. After the death of all the children of Israel – except for Joshua bar Nun and Caleb bar Yofana – they entered the Promised Land, taking the staff along with them due to wars with the Philistines and the Amalekites. Phineas hid the staff in the desert, beneath the dirt at the gate of Jerusalem, and it remained there until Our Lord the Messiah was born. By the will of the Deity He showed the staff to Joseph, the husband of Miriam, and that staff was in his possession when he fled to Egypt with Our Load and Miriam, (and) until he returned to Nazareth. After Joseph, his son James – the one called the brother of Our Lord – took it, and Judas Iscariot stole it from James, for he was a thief. When the Jews crucified Our Lord, they lacked sufficient wood for the arms of Our Lord, and Judas due to his wickedness gave them the staff. This became a judgement and a calamity for them, but a covenant for many (others). Ernest A. Allis Budge, ed., The Book of the Bee (Anecdota Oxoniensia Semitic Series 1.2; Oxford: Claredon Pres, 1886), 50.4-52.18 (tex). Note also Grunbaum, Neue Beitrage, 162-63; Speyer, Erzahlungen, 255; Louis Ginzberg, "Aaron's Rod," JE 1:5-6; Meilicke, "Moses' Staff," 359-60. This ledgend plays no role in the Syriac Cave of Treasures, but a cognate version of the story is contained in the Ethiopic book of Qalementos (i.e. Clement) a work in the Cave cycle that was apparently translated from an Arabic Vorlage. See Ri, Commentaire, 67 and 88.
    The descendent of Shallum ben Hushiel, Abu 'Isa al-Isfahani is depicted in one Muslim source wielding a "myrtle rod" whioch he uses to pretect his followers from the military attacks of their persecutors. Shahrastani, Kitab al-milal wa'l-nihal (ed. M.b.Fath Allah Badran; 2 vols; [Cairo]: Matba'at al-Azhar, [1951-55]), 1.506-7; Steven M. Wasserstom, Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 76
  16. ↑ "Sebeos' History", Chapter 24
  17. ↑ The Jewish Encyclopedia - Chosroes (Khosru) II. Parwiz
  18. ↑ A monk of Mt. Sinai went to Tiberias to become a Jew. He received the name of Abraham, and married a Jewess of that city (Antiochius, "Homilia Octoginta-Quarta," in Migne, "Patrologia Greca," xii. 265).
  19. ↑ The Jewish Encyclopedia - Chosroes (Khosru) II. Parwiz
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