History Memes

Wait... Are you from the "Judean Peoples Front", or the "Peoples Front of Judea"?

Explanation: Most Roman provinces did not repeatedly revolt for nationalist or ethnic reasons; in most provinces, the locals and local elite were well-integrated enough that inside of a generation, any revolts were done for the same essential reasons as any other region of the Empire - protests against misrule, agitation for a new Emperor, etc, rather than a replacement of the entire Roman system of government.

Iudea was... different. Iudea was absorbed mostly peaceably, but not kept peaceably. It had three separate, and all very brutal, revolts, each one a bigger and bloodier failure than the last.

The First Jewish-Roman War had elements of a civil war, wherein Roman loyalists and Hellenized Jews fought moderate separatists, and Jewish religious fanatics fought everyone (including each other). It was eventually crushed, destroying Jerusalem in the process.

The Second Jewish-Roman War occurred as part of a broader flare-up of tensions between Hellenic and Jewish communities across the near-east, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Hellenic and Hellenized settlers being butchered by Jewish rebels. This resulted in the local militias and Roman forces in turn butchering almost every major Jewish community in Egypt and North Africa once the Romans returned from their latest campaign against Persia.

The Third Jewish-Roman War occurred due to the Emperor Hadrian deciding to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman city, and possibly due to his edict against genital mutilation being extended against circumcision (or else misinterpreted as such?). This resulted in the total expulsion of Jews from Iudea after a few extremely bloody years of attempted guerrilla war, and the end of messianic restoration attempts in broader Jewish theology for over a thousand years.