66–73 AD

The Jewish War and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple

King Agrippa II tried and failed to persuade the people to submit to the procurator Florus. Then Eleazar, the captain of the Temple guard and son of the high priest Ananias, secured an end to the acceptance of sacrifices and gifts from non-Jews. This amounted to a refusal of the sacrifice for the emperor and for Rome. Josephus explicitly calls this step the actual beginning of the revolt (66 AD).

Already under Nero, Vespasian had been sent to suppress the rebellion, and he progressively subdued Galilee. Nero's death (68 AD) drew Vespasian away from the campaign against Jerusalem. After a series of upheavals in Rome, the soldiers proclaimed him emperor (69 AD), against his own resistance. He departed for Egypt and left the continuation of the war to his son Titus.

After a long siege, Roman soldiers set fire to the gates of the Temple court. Titus tried to stop the blaze, but the Temple burned on the 10th of the month of Loos (Av) in 70 AD – the same day and month on which the first Temple had burned under the Babylonians. While the Temple burned, soldiers killed Jews indiscriminately: those who surrendered met the same fate as those who resisted. About 6,000 women and children who had taken refuge in the gallery of the outer court perished there.

Three years later, on the 15th of Xanthicus, 73 AD, the last rebel stronghold fell: Masada. When it became clear the defense was doomed, the Sicarii leader Eleazar persuaded the defenders to kill their wives and children and then one another by lot. 960 people died; only an old woman and five children survived.

The destruction of the Temple dealt a mortal blow to the Sadducees. The Pharisees, who emphasized personal religion and the oral law, were scarcely affected and shaped Judaism's subsequent development. Soon after the fall of Jerusalem the rabbis adopted a limited canon of sacred books, excluding Sirach, the books of Maccabees, and the Greek additions to Daniel and Esther. They also removed the Greek translations from the synagogues.

By this time the Jewish Christians had already broken with official Judaism. Most of them had left Jerusalem and escaped the destruction. After 70 AD Jewish-Christian sects arose on the margins – Ebionites, Nazarenes and Elkesaites. They continued to observe the Law of Moses; the Ebionites used only the Gospel of Matthew and rejected Paul.

The destruction of Jerusalem was the early church's first turning point. Before 70 AD most Christians were Jews, and the mother church was in Jerusalem. After the Temple's fall the Gentile church became dominant, and a leading church emerged at Rome.