Giday, I'm Gary Stevens.

And welcome to the third season of the History in the Bible podcast.

In this final season, I explore how the Jews and the Christians constructed new religions when they were sent

spinning into the void after the destruction of the temple. All of the history, about all of the books

beyond the Bible.

Episode 3.5, The Great Revolt Part 1, Lighting the fuse.

In the last two episodes, I laid out the conditions of the Judeans and Christians on the verge of the Great Revolt. This erupted in 66, just a few years

after the deaths of Peter and Paul. Fifty years after that, Judeans living outside their

homeland launched devastating attacks on their Greek neighbours throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

This obscure conflict was known at the time as the tumult of the Jews.

We call it the Kittos War, named after the Roman general who quelled it, Lucius Quietus.

And finally, 70 years after the Great Revolt,

Shimon Bar Koseba led the province of Judea

in a final and futile attempt for independence.

Each of these revolts was a catastrophe for the Judeans.

Each left them in a worse position. Nothing describes the

Judean revolts better than a quote misattributed to the slippery but brilliant 19th century

French diplomat Talerand about the Bourbon kings. They learnt nothing and forgot nothing.

And each revolt launched the tiny sect of the Christians onto a new and unexpected path. In this episode, I will tackle the first of the

revolts. This erupted in the final years of Nero's reign.

It was finally suppressed by his successor, Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus,

after eight years of bloodshed and misery.

...