Roman Find Sheds Light on Ancient Jewish Revolt

Roman Find Sheds Light on 

Ancient Jewish Revolt

By Julie Stahl and John Waage

CBN News Middle East Bureau

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Archaeologists in Jerusalem have discovered a rare Latin inscription from the Roman period just 100 years after Jesus. It's the time when the Romans were trying to erase any trace of the Jews from the city.

The 2,000-year-old, one-ton stone was dedicated to the Roman Emperor Hadrian.

"We have preserved enough letters and words that we can figure out the name and the titles of the emperor and by whom the inscription was dedicated and probably the entire monument was constructed," Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) archaeologist Rina Avner told CBN News.

"The 10th legion dedicated this arch to Hadrian upon his 14th [year as tribune] -- that would be 130 CE [A.D.]," Shmulik Freireich, IAA conservator, said.

The Israel Antiquities Authority discovered the stone during a salvage excavation between a mosque and a church near a busy Jerusalem street. Found in a Byzantine-era site, the ancient stone had been recycled to build a water cistern.

"I think it's very significant because it's hard evidence of an official construction project that was carried [out] by the Roman army for the coming of the emperor to the city," Avner said. She says there's more that the stone does not reveal.

"We don't have the new name of Jerusalem that was given by Hadrian and we don't have indication of the change of the city status as a Roman colony," she explained.

Hadrian ruled the Roman Empire from 117 to 138 A.D. He renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, after his family name, and built a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the second Jewish Temple.

"It was a policy to Hellenize the land and erase the Jewish past," Avner said.

The unanswered question is whether Hadrian provoked the Jewish Bar Kochba revolt from 132 to 136 A.D. by building pagan temples or if he built the temples to punish the Jews.

The other half of the stone was found nearby more than 100 years ago and is on display in a museum in the Old City.

Avner said it's always exciting to find a direct physical connection to the past.

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