1. Background
A quick timeline:
- 586 BCE: Destruction of First Temple, Babylonian Exile begins
-538 BCE: Cyrus the Great calls for Second Temple to be built
-167 BCE: Maccabean Revolt against the Greeks + Start of Hasmonean Dynasty
-63 BCE: Roman General Pompey desecrates Temple
-20 BCE: Expansion by Herod the Great (Client of Rome)
-70 CE: Second Destruction of the Temple
- 132-135: Bar Kochva Revolt, Jews banned from Jerusalem
2. Crash Theory
שדריה עילוייהו לאספסיינוס קיסר אתא צר עלה תלת שני
הוו בהו הנהו בריוני אמרו להו רבנן ניפוק ונעביד שלמא בהדייהו לא שבקינהו אמרו להו ניפוק ונעביד קרבא בהדייהו אמרו להו רבנן לא מסתייעא מילתא קמו קלנהו להנהו אמברי דחיטי ושערי והוה כפנא
The Roman authorities then sent Vespasian Caesar against the Jews. He came and laid siege to Jerusalem for three years...
There were certain zealots among the people of Jerusalem. The Sages said to them: Let us go out and make peace with the Romans. But the zealots did not allow them to do this. The zealots said to the Sages: Let us go out and engage in battle against the Romans. But the Sages said to them: You will not be successful. It would be better for you to wait until the siege is broken. In order to force the residents of the city to engage in battle, the zealots arose and burned down these storehouses [ambarei] of wheat and barley, and there was a general famine.
3. Rabbi Yohanan's Plan
איברא מלכא את דאי לאו מלכא את לא מימסרא ירושלים בידך דכתיב (ישעיהו י, לד)
in truth, you are a king, if not now, then in the future. As if you are not a king, Jerusalem will not be handed over into your hand, as it is written: “And the Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one” (Isaiah 10:34).
אמר ליה לא תצטער שמועה טובה אתיא לך דכתיב (משלי טו, ל) שמועה טובה תדשן עצם אלא מאי תקנתיה ליתי איניש דלא מיתבא דעתך מיניה ולחליף קמך דכתיב (משלי יז, כב) ורוח נכאה תיבש גרם עבד הכי עייל
Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai said to him: Be not distressed or troubled, for good tidings have reached you, as it is written: “Good tidings make the bone fat” (Proverbs 15:30), and your feet have grown fatter out of joy and satisfaction. Vespasian said to him: But what is the remedy? What must I do in order to put on my shoe? Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai said to him: Have someone with whom you are displeased come and pass before you, as it is written: “A broken spirit dries the bones” (Proverbs 17:22). He did this, and his shoe went on his foot.
5. Building a Bridge
Law may be viewed as a system of tension or a bridge linking a concept of a reality to an imagined alternative—that is, as a connective between two states of affairs, both of which can be represented in their normative significance only through the devices of narrative.26 Thus, one constitutive element of a nomos is the phenomenon George Steiner has labeled ‘alternity’: ‘the ‘other than the case’, the counter-factual propositions, images, shapes of will and evasion with which we charge our mental being and by means of which we build the changing, largely fictive milieu for our somatic and our social existence.
Robert M. Cover, Nomos and Narrative (27)
