From the Sources by Eliezer Segal: Two-faced Titus

By Eliezer Segal

(AJNews) – Titus, the general (later, Emperor) who commanded the Roman forces in the Great Jewish Rebellion, was invariably designated in rabbinic tradition as “the wicked” taking his place alongside eminent villains like Balaam, Nebuchadnezzar and Haman. The sages of the Talmud and Midrash depict him as no mere military leader – but as a heathen scoundrel determined to triumph over the God of Israel.

As related in the Midrash and Talmud, Titus was resolved to profane the Temple’s sanctity by plundering its sacred vessels to display them in Rome, and by performing obscene acts on a Torah scroll in the sanctuary. He boldly taunted the Hebrew God for his inability to defy him, and for his powerlessness to defend the Jerusalem Temple, his personal domain.

This portrayal of Titus differs diametrically from the one presented by Josephus Flavius, whose accounts of “the Jewish Wars” preserve the most extensive record of the events. Josephus writes that Titus was uncertain how to proceed after his legions had effectively penetrated the city’s walls. A decision had to be made whether or not to destroy the Temple structure, an operation that would take a toll in Roman lives and reflect poorly on the victors’ respect for the shrines of subject nations. Seeking advice on this question, he convened a council of his foremost officers.

The council was divided. One faction favoured demolishing the structure “according to the rules of war” (presumably something along the lines of “to the victor belong the spoils.”) More specifically, they argued that there was a clear military advantage to eliminating the Jewish Temple owing to its function as a place of assembly for Jewish pilgrims from their homeland and the diaspora, gatherings that often inspired mobs to rise up against their conquerors. Rebellions would never cease as long as the Temple continued to stand.

Another faction reasoned that a deal might yet be negotiated if only the Jews would consent to a ceasefire and disarm themselves, knowing that any violation of those terms would result in the devastation of their beloved spiritual centre.

According to Josephus, Titus advocated an exceptionally conciliatory position: even if the Jews persisted in their insurrection, the Romans should refrain from destroying the Temple. After all, wars are fought against human enemies, not inanimate structures. And furthermore, after the suppression of the Jewish uprising the glorious Temple should survive as a tangible source of pride for the victorious empire.

General Titus’s position would have prevailed had not one of the soldiers, “propelled by a divine fury,” taken the initiative of tossing in a torch and igniting a conflagration that could not be restrained until the Temple lay in ruins, contrary to Titus’s wishes. Titus in fact hurried to have the fire extinguished, and even commanded to punish the soldiers who participated in the burning and looting, Ultimately, however, Josephus states that it was the Jews themselves, in their persistent opposition even against the soldiers trying to extinguish the fire, who were responsible for the Temple’s burning.

A very different version of Titus’s role in the event appears in a chronicle by a 3^rd-4^th century Christian scholar named Sulpicius Severus of Aquitania. In his account it was Titus who took the position – contrary to others who argued that the Temple should be left to stand as a monument to Rome’s magnanimity and not as a testimony to her ruthlessness – that it should be destroyed without delay, “in order that the religions of the Jews and Christians should be eradicated totally. For those religions, though opposed to one another, derive from the same founders; the Christians stemmed from the Jews and the extirpation of the root would easily cause the offspring to perish.”

Historians are still debating which of these contradictory portrayals is accurate. In the absence of direct evidence of the deliberations at the time, the question is often formulated as: who had reasons to falsify the historical record?

Thus, with regard to the Jewish sages, it should be noted that they were not historians in the academic sense of striving for objective accuracy. Their concerns were with deriving religious inspiration from those events, and that often involved depicting the villains and heroes of the Jewish past in stereotypical black and white terms. A malicious Titus could serve as an effective prototype in their contemporary struggles against idolatry and Roman subjugation.

Scholars have questioned the credibility of Sulpicus’ premise that Titus regarded Christianity as a threat at as early as the first century, and concede that the detail was likely inserted by Sulpicius; however, the rest of his account seems plausible, and may be based on an otherwise lost passage from the respected historian Tacitus, whom Sulpicius often cites.

As for Josephus’s portrayal of a kinder, gentler Titus, we must not forget that the historian himself owed his personal survival after defecting from the Jewish army to Titus and the Flavian emperors. This was a sufficient motivation for him to compromise the truth so as to present his sponsors in a favourable light.

Dio Cassius reported that some Roman forces were reluctant to advance inside the Temple because of their “superstitious” reverence for the shrine, and only under compulsion from Titus did they proceed inwards.

Josephus himself mentioned several instances of Titus’s insensitivity to Jewish sacred shrines and his general hostility to Judaism as a religion.  For example, he ordered the destruction of the Jewish sanctuary in Egypt in order to prevent it from becoming a rallying point for rebels.

Indeed, Josephus came to view the fall of Jerusalem as divinely ordained; and his historical chronicle is sprinkled with stories (analogous to those told by Roman historians like Suetonius) of supernatural portents that presaged the inevitable disaster. Seen from that perspective, the blame could hardly be assigned to any mortal leader.

Frankly, as a Jew if not as a historical scholar, I am quite comfortable recalling our ancient antagonists as unmitigated bad guys whom we are free to despise.