Pompey enters the Jerusalem Temple. Painting by Jean Fouquet, circa 1470.
An Ancient Precedent for the Yom Kippur War?
Two Roman conquests of Jerusalem (Pompey in 63 B.C.E. and Sosius in 37 B.C.E.) purportedly happened on “the day of the fast,” during which the Jews barely defended themselves. Is this a reference to Yom Kippur and why didn’t the Jews defend themselves?
Published September 27, 2017
[1] Chaim Herzog, The War of Atonement: The Inside Story of the Yom Kippur War, 1973(London: Greenhill Books, 1998 [1975]), 33, 37.
[2] Editor’s note: For more on the reception of this queen in Jewish texts and tradition, see Mika Ahuvia, “Jewish Queens: From the Story of Esther to the History of Shelamzion,”TheTorah.com (2016).
[3] All translations of Josephus are taken from, or based on, the Loeb edition. “The third month” refers not to the calendar year but rather to the length of the siege, as attested elsewhere (War 1.149; 5.397).
[4] The statement that 27 years went by between the two conquests is apparently erroneous, since the true gap was 26 years. In this case, the “third month” datum seems to be a result of the similarity and synchronization between the two events; the siege actually lasted five or six months (see War 1.351; 5.398).
[5] For example, J. van Bruggen, “The Year of the Death of Herod the Great,” in T. Baarda, A. F. J. Klijn, and W. C. van Unnik (eds.), Miscellanea Neotestamentica II (NovTSup 48; Leiden: Brill, 1978), 9 n. 35; Abraham Schalit, King Herod: Portrait of a Ruler (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1960), 510 (Hebrew); and, recently, Bieke Mahieu, Between Rome and Jerusalem: Herod the Great and His Sons in Their Struggle for Recognition (OLA 208; Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 60–117
[6] For a more complete discussion of these considerations and of the dates of these conquests, see my, “The Conquests of Jerusalem by Pompey and Herod: On Sabbath or ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’?” Jewish Studies Quarterly 21 (2014) 193–220.
[7] For example, Stern, “Chronology,” in Shmuel Safrai et al. (eds.), The Jewish People in the First Century (2 vols.; Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974–1976), 1:66
[8] See also War 1.343; Ant. 14.461, 465.
[9] See Daniel R. Schwartz, Studies in the Jewish Background of Christianity (WUNT 60; Tübingen: Mohr, 1992), 178.
[10] For example, Stern, “Chronology,” 64–66; Eyal Regev, “How Did the Temple Mount Fall to Pompey?” JJS 48 (1997) 276–89.
[11] Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology: Principles of Time Reckoning in the Ancient World and Problems of Chronology in the Bible (rev. ed.; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1998), 122–23, in accordance with Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein’s, Babylonian Chronology: 626 B.C.–A.D. 75 (Providence, R.I.: Brown University, 1956), 44. The online astronomical Catalog of Phases of the Moon, compiled by the astrophysicist Fred Espenak, dates the new moon of 37 BCE to Sep. 24, which means Yom Kippur would have been on Oct. 3; see: http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/phasescat/phases-0099.html (accessed Oct. 22, 2015).
