Bar Kochba Wars

Wars and conflicts feature throughout the Hebrew Bible. Jewish violence was apparent in post biblical society up until the exclusion of Jews from Jerusalem in the second century CE by the Romans. Today Jews once again have political power in the state of Israel, and so the Jewish approach to conflict requires discussion to evaluate their relevance in modern warfare. To prove that Jewish approaches to war are still relevant in the world today, this essay will discuss the central teachings on war in Jewish scripture, the Maccabean revolt, the first Jewish War, the Bar Kochba revolt, and recent Israeli conflicts. Jewish principles of just warfare are derived from the examples given in scripture. Deuteronomy 20 provides a series of instructions …show more content…
The main cause of the revolt was "the fact that Hadrian planned to rebuild Jerusalem as a Graeco-Roman city with the name Aelia Capitolina". In addition, the Bar Kochba revolt was connected to messianic expectation. Bar Kochba, the leader of the rebellion, and the rebellion itself, was believed to be heralding the end-times. However, the death of Bar Kochba and the failure of the rebellion proved these beliefs to have been false. Bar Kochba was called Bar Koziba in rabbinic literature, changing the meaning of his name from 'son of the star' to 'son of the lie'. The failed messianic expectation connected with the Bar Kochba revolt led to a variety of rabbinic literature calling for Jews not to engage in war in order to bring about the end-times. "Attempting to bring messiah through human initiation rather than waiting patiently for God to do so is sometimes called "forcing God's hand," which would only bring God's wrath and further disasters of the Jewish people." This means that Jews would have to be careful about waging wars in the future so as not to force the arrival of the messianic age, a principle of war that still applies in the world

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