According to the
Jerusalem Talmud, Betar remained a thriving town fifty-two years after the
destruction of the Second Temple, until it came to its demise. Modern chroniclers push back the destruction of Betar some years later, making the time-frame brought down in the Jerusalem Talmud hard to reconcile, even if, according to Jewish tradition, the destruction of the Second Temple occurred in 68 CE. Either the time-frame carried in the Talmud is a gross error, or else some of the dates used by modern-day chroniclers are purely
anachronistic.
Siege According to the Jerusalem Talmud, the city was besieged for three and a half years before it finally fell (
''Ta'anit'' 4:5 [13]). According to Jewish tradition, the fortress was breached and destroyed on the fast of Tisha B'Av, in the year 135, on the ninth day of the lunar month
Av, a day of mourning for the destruction of the First and the Second Jewish Temple. The
Mishnah, ''Ta'anit
4:6 states: "On the ninth of Av, it was decreed that our fathers should not enter the Land, the Temple was destroyed the first and second time, Beitar was captured and the city [of Jerusalem] was plowed under''." Earlier, when the Roman army had
circumvallated the city (from
Latin,
- + '''', round-about +
rampart), some sixty men of Israel went down and tried to make a breach in the Roman rampart, but to no avail. When they had not returned and were presumed to be dead, the
Chazal permitted their wives to remarry, even though their husbands' bodies had not been retrieved. According to
Lamentations Rabbah, when Bar Kokhba's body was shown to Hadrian, the emperor ordered that the rest of the body be brought forward. It was discovered with a snake coiled around his neck, leading Hadrian to state: "If his God had not slain him, who could have overcome him?"
Massacre The fall of Betar is described in rabbinic literature as a catastrophic event marked by large-scale loss of life. In ''
Ta'anit 4:5, the Jerusalem Talmud
states that the number of dead was so great that "the Roman "went about slaughtering them until a horse sunk in blood up to its nostrils, and the blood carried away boulders that weighted forty sela'' until it went four miles into the sea"—despite Betar being "forty miles distant from the sea." The account also reports that only one youth survived the massacre:
Simeon ben Gamaliel II. Another account appears in the
Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 57a–58a, where Rabbi Yohanan relates that "the brains of three hundred children were found upon one stone," along with "three hundred baskets of what remained of phylacteries (''
)"—each of which, it says, "had the capacity to hold three seahs''" (approximately 28 liters). The text adds: "If you should come to take [all of them] into account, you would find that they amounted to three hundred measures." In
Lamentations Rabbah, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel is quoted as saying: "Five hundred schools were in Betar, while the smallest of them wasn't less than three hundred children." The children would say: "If the enemy should ever come upon us, with these
styli [used in pointing at the letters of sacred writ] we'll go forth and stab them." The narrative concludes: "But since iniquities had caused [their fall], the enemy came in and wrapped up each and every child in his own book and burnt them together, and no one remained except me." According to the Babylonian Talmud,
Berakhot 48b, Hadrian had prohibited the burial of the dead, and so all the bodies remained above ground; however, they miraculously did not decompose. Years later, Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, allowed the dead a decent burial. During that time, the Sages of
Yavne made it a rule to acknowledge God's goodness by adding "He that is good and who does good" () in the grace said over meals. == Research history ==