Jesus was a learned Jew who said that learning was not necessary, who took the spirit and not the letter as the essence of the Law and who thus embra… - Paul Johnson

The book made him famous — he was known as “Corsica Boswell” — and it was widely read in Europe. Among his readers was the young Bonaparte. It gave him ideas.

This culture-contempt on the Greek side, and the love-hate which some educated Jews had for Greek culture, were sources of constant tension.

Simon was killed in Betar. Akiva was captured, imprisoned, finally tortured to death, the flesh torn from his body ‘by iron combs’. Dio says that of the rebels ‘very few were saved’. The Roman vengeance was awe-inspiring. Fifty forts where the rebels had put up resistance were destroyed and 985 towns, villages and agricultural settlements. Dio says 580,000 Jews died in the fighting ‘and countless numbers of starvation, fire and the sword. Nearly the entire land of Judaea was laid waste.’.126 In the late fourth century, St Jerome reported from Bethlehem a tradition that, after the defeat, there were so many Jewish slaves for sale that the price dropped to less than a horse.