To the Death

by Peter R. Hall

  “How many are held?”

  “His father, mother and brother. At first it was believed they had managed to escape the city, but it was not to be”.

  Titus thought for a moment before saying, “I will grant you your life in return for your silence over the matter of Josephus’ family. If he learns of their imprisonment he may break down. If he does, I will have no-one to act as a go-between. This is as important to the civilians in Jerusalem as it is to me, for I am anxious that the killing stops”. So the two men parted. Titus had come to hate Judaea; the place seemed at best indifferent to human presence. At the end of yet another day’s brutal fighting, he sought out the company of Josephus whom he had taken to addressing as Doctor Josephus. This, he felt, acknowledged his prisoner as a scholar and played down his military persona.

  The Roman had come to admire Josephus’ wisdom and intelligence. To the Jewish scholar’s surprise, Titus was a far more sympathetic interlocutor than he had suspected. Consequently, during the three years they were thrown together in Judaea, the two men formed a lasting friendship, so when Titus joined him that evening to sit at the campfire, he was somewhat taken aback when the young Caesar asked him a most unexpected question. “What is it to be a Jew? Is it an accident of birth, or the teaching of your parents and your priests that persuades a child to believe what his father believes?”

  Josephus laughed dryly before replying. “Both – though the former is necessary to the latter. However, Jews are now having to consider a new teaching, one that challenges traditional thinking”.

  “In what way?” asked Titus.

  Josephus grimaced and shrugged. “A new prophet named Jesus claimed that God does not need blood sacrifices, nor does He need a Temple. Most interestingly of all, Jesus told men to pray to God – who is their father – directly. No priests are required”.

  A stunned Titus said “How do you feel about that?”

  Josephus smiled thinly. “The Essenes would agree with him. As for me, I can see his point. But I wonder if the common man doesn’t need the focal point of ritual to find his way to God. Maybe the furore caused by these so-called Christians and their Christ are like stirred mud clouding bright water. Leave them alone and eventually they will settle into the sediment of history. I believe the answer”, Josephus continued, “probably lies in two things. Firstly, in holy men who down the centuries claim God has revealed Himself to them. To prescribe how men should live and how men should behave to each other. To explain what the relationship between mankind and God should be. These holy men, the prophets, had unique powers given to them by God. These powers allowed them to perform wonders as proof that God was working through them”.

  “And the second?”

  “The second lies in logic. The gift of reasoning the Greeks have brought to humanity. You Romans are the military masters of the world, but the Greeks reign supreme intellectually.”

  Titus shook his head ruefully, acknowledging with a grin his companion’s reasoning. “I accept the point you make, but where in philosophy will I find the God of the Jews?”

  “By examining Greek thought on the origins of not just existence, but why there is anything at all. And” continued Josephus, “who was the creator? And most importantly, how was it created?” Titus would have interrupted but Josephus, holding up a hand, continued “There are brilliant speculations to all of these questions. In some cases, so-called proofs are offered, but for every question answered, not just two new ones are revealed but a dozen. That, of course, is the nature of philosophy”.

  A surprised Titus asked, “This is accepted by Judaism, by the Temple priests?”

  Josephus replied dryly “Virtually every word would be regarded as blasphemy. If I were to air such thoughts within the Temple precincts I would be put on trial”.

  “Rome has many gods”, said Titus, more to himself than to Josephus, who said, “Why don’t we set aside the question of gods and look at what philosophy has to offer us on the question of creation”.

  Titus brightened at this suggestion. “Zeus, that’s a good idea, but let me re-charge our cups, for I think better with a good wine to lubricate my mind”. With that he refilled both their glasses. “Where do we start?”

  It never occurred to the Roman that he had just served a man who was, in all but name, his slave. Josephus nodded and said “Let us start with nothing”. Titus lifted an eyebrow but remained silent. “Nothing”, continued Josephus “came before something; in fact, everything in creation, the sun, the moon and the stars. Before earth, mankind, animals, plants, Aristotle’s atoms – before any form of life. No matter who, or what, or how they were made, before they were made there was nothing! And”, he concluded, “it is, of course, absolutely impossible to get something from nothing”.

  Titus remained silent, frowning in concentration. Josephus waited patiently. The Roman, a trained lawyer, could find no fault in the statement. He was also surprised. The clarity of logic was undeniable; the profoundness of the thinking at the very heart of man’s search for the answer to the most important question of all ‘Who or what created not just man but everything?’

  Titus sipped his wine, turning this over in his mind, in no hurry to make what might prove to be an ill-judged opinion.

  Josephus, pleased that his pupil had accepted the concept of creation as being necessary to existence, said smoothly “Let us leave God out of the discussion. Instead, let us refer to him as the Creator”.

  “Agreed” beamed Titus “but I must go. One last question. Who made the Creator?”

  Josephus had to smile at his guest’s perception.

  “The Creator”, the Jew answered, “is unmade. He is without substance, existing as nothing within nothingness. All powerful. Unknowable. That we humans have the ability to vaguely comprehend his existence; that we know of Him – is His gift to humanity”.

  “This belief you accept on trust, as a matter of faith?”

  “Yes. But remember this belief is founded on revelation. The one God - ineffable, unknowable, all powerful, the first cause, creator of everything – revealed himself to man through his prophets. We Jews believe we are a people chosen to be the living proof of that revelation; to be as a light to the world”.

  Titus studied the wine in his glass, his mind in turmoil. With a smile he rose to leave. “Next time, you can tell me why”.

  With a smile, Josephus asked the question, “Why, what?”

  The Roman said softly, “Why should there be anything instead of nothing?”

  Josephus slapped his leg in delight, grinning hugely. “Make certain you have plenty of time and bring some decent wine with you. The question of why, like how, is beyond human reason and comprehension. Nevertheless, the giants of Greek philosophy have speculated on both. Before we next meet arm yourself with their wisdom, for in our debate we will venture into the realm of the supernatural and the divine; many would say unknowable.

  “Agreed”, said Titus. “I look forward to our debate, for which I will prepare by consulting Aristotle, the father of the inductive method, for he teaches us to observe and verify facts in order to discover the laws that control them”. With a smile and a lift of the hand in farewell, he was gone, leaving a surprised Josephus who had not expected the young Roman to evince such erudition.

  32

  Under a cloudless Judaean sky, a sweating Titus sipped from his water bottle and considered his objective. He knew that the key to the city was the Antonia, and that taking it would be difficult. To have any chance, he had to bring up the rams and put them to work. Knowing this would be fiercely resisted, he ordered that one hundred ballistas be brought forward, with a vast quantity of ammunition. His intention was to set up a constant fusillade of stone balls against the men manning the section of wall he intended to attack with the rams.

  In spite of this, when the attack started the rebels, shielding themselves as best they could, began dropping blocks of stone on the rams. Fortunately for the legionaries operating them, they
were partially protected by a mobile covered tunnel that deflected most of the chunks of stone dropped from the wall. As the engagement gathered momentum, both sides began launching fire arrows which on the Romans side caused Titus to order shields of wet ox hide to be deployed.

  When night fell both sides stood down and rested. Just before dawn, an area where John had dug his tunnel to try and get underneath the wall suddenly collapsed, the noise of which brought the Romans to full alert. Sentries, not knowing what it was, sounded the general alarm while the Romans cautiously advanced on what was apparently a breach in the wall they had been ineffectually battering. They were, however, disappointed. John had anticipated this might happen and built a second wall behind it.

  Two days later, a Syrian tribune in charge of the advanced camp guarding the platforms, decided to take action on his own initiative. He picked twenty of his toughest soldiers and ordered the standard bearer of the Fifth Legion to join them, plus a trumpeter. Fully armed, with all metal fitments bound with strips of cloth to avoid accidental noise, they crawled through the ruins surrounding the Antonia. Using a muffled scaling ladder, they climbed the wall and garrotted the first sentries they encountered. Then, with his soldiers ready to charge, he ordered the trumpeter to sound the advance. With the trumpet braying non-stop, the twenty legionaries, roaring their battle cry, charged along the wall swords at the ready. The other Jewish guards, many of whom had been dozing, were either pitched headlong over the parapet or stabbed. The screams of the dying guards and the roaring of the berserking Romans, coupled with the manic blaring of the trumpet, panicked the remaining sentries who fled convinced the enemy had climbed the walls in numbers

  When Titus heard the trumpet, he flung himself out of his tent and without a second’s hesitation, ordered the call to arms to be sounded. As the trumpet blasted, men poured out of their tents, grabbing the weapons stacked on a tripod immediately outside before running to a designated place. Within three minutes, six thousand fully armed men stood in their ranks awaiting their orders. In the adjacent camps, which had responded in the same way, another twenty four thousand legionaries were ready to march. Ordering a thousand elite troops and twenty officers to join him, Titus left the camp at the trot heading straight for the point where the wall had collapsed.

  Equally startled and confused, the rebels ran to the Temple. While the Romans poured into the tunnel John had dug to undermine the Roman platforms. John and Simon, realising that they were on the edge of disaster, rushed with their followers to meet this threat, knowing that if the Romans gained entry to the sanctuary it would be the beginning of the end. The two sides met at the entrance to the Outer Court, clashing in a struggle, where neither side could win the advantage. The Romans pushed forward relentlessly in an attempt to capture the Temple; the Jews desperately trying to drive them back to the Antonia.

  Archers and spearmen were of no use to either party. Locked together in hand to hand combat, the carnage on both sides was appalling. As men fell, dead or dying, they were trampled underfoot. The Romans, used to this kind of close quarter work, stamped in unison on the fallen. Their iron shod sandals and powerful leg muscles, developed by constant marching, crushed ribs and snapped arms and legs as they stamped down. In the increasing confusion of battle, with no room to manoeuvre, there was no question of retreat. On both sides, the men at the front were relentlessly pushed forward by the men at the back.

  With the seething mass of screaming men hacking at each other in mindless fury, something had to give and it was the Romans. Under the desperate suicidal pressure of the Jews, the Roman line began to buckle. Heavily outnumbered, Titus’ men had fought non-stop for nine hours and desperately needed reinforcements, which had not arrived. The legions had not followed Titus, having received no orders to do so. In spite of their own exhaustion, the Jews, who were at full strength having committed their reserves, pushed forward relentlessly. Inch by inch, the Jews forced the Romans back to the Antonia, where at last Titus’ men received reinforcements and the Jewish advance was halted. Vitally, Titus was able to start pulling exhausted troops out of the front line, and replace them with fresh men. With his position secured and reinforcements arriving, Titus ordered Josephus to address the Jews. He was to make John the same offer as before. If John was determined to fight it out, let him leave the city and meet the Romans in a place of his choice. It was in no-one’s interest that the city be destroyed. To continue polluting the Holy City, Titus argued, was an offence against the God of the Jews.

  Josephus mounted the wall at a point where he could not only be seen and heard by the combatants, but also by the civilians who were huddled in the ruins. He delivered Titus’ offer in Aramaic, using all his skill as a trained orator in an effort to persuade the rebels to lay down their arms. The people listened in silence but John screamed abuse at him. Josephus’ answer was damming. “You lay the fault of your sins on the Romans. Have they not always observed our religious laws? They now offer to assist you, in restoring the daily sacrifices you no longer make to God.

  “It is the Romans, whom you call enemy, that demand you atone for your crimes against God. Even now, John, it is not too late to repent. It is you, a Jew, born in the very centre of Judaism that the Romans ask to save the heart of our nation. Remember Jehoiachin, King of the Jews who, before the Babylonians captured the city, exchanged his own freedom to save the Temple. His sacrifice is remembered eternally, immortal to all generations. With this example before you, I beg you, for the sake of God’s chosen people, to choose peace. The Romans have given their word, sworn by their gods, to pardon you and your men.

  “That you revile me is of no concern, but remember who I am. I am a Jew of noble birth. I am trying to bring peace; I am trying to spare men who have earned God’s anger. Who amongst you does not remember the prophecy, the written word of our Holy oracles, passed down through the centuries, pronounced against this city that is now being fulfilled? Is it not prophesied that the day will come when Jew will kill Jew? When the living will envy the dead?

  “That Jews will pollute the House of God

  Are not the city and the Temple filled with corpses?

  Who killed them? Not the Romans.

  Who allowed the sacred ever-lasting fire to go out? Not the Romans.

  “Rather, they have been sent by an avenging God to purge this place with fire and sword.

  Like Sodom and Gomorrah, this seat of corruption will be no more”.

  Unable to continue, a distraught Josephus, who was weeping uncontrollably started to turn away. Pausing, he gathered himself for a final pronouncement. “Even now, you undeserving sinners, God will listen to you. His forgiveness, His love, is unconditional. It is forever. Ask for His forgiveness and it will be yours. Ask for His mercy and you will receive it. Return to the God of your fathers and save yourselves. Lay down your weapons and submit not to the Romans but to the will of God”. With these parting words, Josephus left the wall, tears streaming down his face. The rebels, jeering and screaming in anger, hurled stones after the disconsolate figure.

  The citizens who had witnessed this event were badly shaken. They were convinced that they were as good as dead and the City lost. With the rebels lining the wall, a large group of these desperate people burst out of the city through a carelessly guarded postern gate, and dashed towards the Roman lines.

  Skidding to a halt when faced with a wall of Roman shields, they turned to face the city. Weeping they begged John’s men to open the gates to the Romans, and accept the offered peace. This appeal brought a violent reaction from the rebels who, after cursing them for cowards, gave orders for spear throwers to attack the remaining civilians who packed the Temple courts. Catapults and stone throwers were swivelled from their outward facing positions, to add to the carnage. Within minutes the Temple courts were heaped with bodies. The rebels then poured into the sacred precincts, swords in hands, to finish off the wounded.

  A furious Titus shouted, “I call on the gods of my fathers to w
itness that I am not compelling you to desecrate the Temple. If you change the battleground, I will protect the Sanctuary, for we Romans have always respected your right to worship your God in the manner you choose, and in accordance with your Holy Laws”. As Josephus translated this promise, John spat over the wall and turned his back contemptuously on the Roman commander.

  A grim faced Titus, unable to bring up his entire army, ordered Mucianus to pick the best twenty five soldiers from every century. With a hand-picked centurion in charge of every newly formed century and a tribune in charge of every thousand, this task force was placed under the command of one of Titus’ best generals, Sextus Cerealis, a decorated soldier of proven ability.

  His orders were to attack the guard post at dawn. Titus declared he would lead the first wave, an announcement that caused consternation in his high command. It was the threat by Mucianus and Cerealis of instant resignation that persuaded him to step aside. Their argument was that he was needed in the Antonia, from which he could observe the coming battle and direct operations.

  In the darkest hour before dawn, Cerealis ordered scouts to creep out, hoping to find the enemy’s sentries asleep, but was disappointed. As the alarm was raised, the rest of the rebel guard swarmed out to repel the attackers. With the sentries battling to hold the Romans, the alerted rebels started to arrive in numbers to support their comrades. Spurred on by a mixture of anger and fear, the Jews hurled themselves at the Romans. With shields locked, the Romans charged forward in tightly knit squads. Knowing that in the darkness and confusion of fighting in a restricted area the risk of disorientation was very real, Cerealis had had the foresight to issue a password to his men. The Jews, unable to break the Roman line, pulled back as much as they could and launched a series of darting raids, hoping in this way to find a weakness. In fact, these haphazard tactics resulted in many Jews being injured in the dark by their own comrades, who were slashing wildly in their confused state at anything that moved. Came the dawn and the two sides drew apart, but continued to hurl missiles at each other. Eventually the battle stagnated, neither side able to advance or retreat.