“I do have a question: Can you recommend a history of Judaism that talks about the relationship between the Jews of Iraq and Palestine, and between both and the Jews of the Roman Empire.”
Sorry. I don’t know. Maybe someone else on this forum does.
“I was reading a snatch of history talking about the Jewish Rebellion under Trajan. It was, so I read, a really big deal and that the Romans put it down only with difficulty. Speculation: If the Jews of the Diaspora had supported the Rebellion of the 60s, the Zealots might have got the kingdom they wanted and it would have become a formidable power in the region.”
My personal opinion is that any efforts at rebellion against the Romans was doomed to failure. Their military machine back then was simply too effective and outclassed anything opposing them at the time.
The Jewish Revolt gave them a lot of trouble, but i nthe long run, it didn’t accomplish much for the Jewish People. Accomodation would have been much better as actually the Jews receveid pretty generous trteatment from the Romans.
Read Josephus “The Jewish War”.
The Revolt in the ‘ 60s did not extend beyond Syria. If the Jews in Egypt and in Asia had joined in, the Romans would have been under the gun. The Jews might have made common cause with the Persians. It has been estimated that a tenth of the people of the Empire were Jews, the bulk of them in the East. Roman power, btw, was based on the Greeks. One criticism of Mel Gibson’s
Passion” was that he had Pilate speaking Latin/Aramaic to Christ when Greek would probably have been their common language. Relatively few of the Roman troops were in the area Latins or Italians of any sort.