Review: Bar Kokhba, the Jew who Defied Hadrian and Challenged Rome

Lindsay Powell, Bar Kokhba, the Jew who Defied Hadrian and Challenged Rome (Pen and Sword Military 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57168141-bar-kokhba?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_23

In researching my fourth novel, The Receptacles of St. Ananias, set in 132 CE when the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the third great Jewish revolt against Rome, was happening, I bought this (Kindle) book after searching for—without finding—a novel on the subject. Since then, I’ve found one—My Husband Bar Kokhba by Andrew Sanders—although there are many military novels from the Roman soldiers’ point of view. I selected this history as one hopefully less obviously Zionist in tone as Yigael Yadin’s or others’ take.
There are two problems facing those wanting to learn about Bar Kokhba in the 21st century. The first is that unlike the first Jewish Revolt of 66-73 CE, where we have contemporaneous accounts from Flavius Josephus and Tacitus , the precious and almost only records we have of the Bar Kokhba Revolt are the letters discovered in the 1950s in the Cave of Letters, some of them in the general’s own hand. Without knowing any of the context, these letters can read as cryptically as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Rabbinical sources refer to the man as just ‘the southerner’ (from Judaea). Cassius Dio’s account of the war doesn’t name him, and neither do Christian writings mention him by name. We don’t even know the location of Betar (maybe modern Bittar), the site of the famous last stand. What we know is pieced together from scant references in ancient histories and archeological finds.
What information we have is highly susceptible to mythologisation. For example, the destruction of the First Temple, the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Bar Kokhba are all said to have fallen on Tisha b’Av (the 9th of month Av). Twice may be a coincidence, but three times is, I would imagine, a myth. Bar Kokhba is supposed to have cut off the little fingers of his men to ensure none were ‘afraid or faint-hearted’, hardly something a general in his right mind would do. Unfortunately, Powell accepts these ‘facts’ as history.
The second problem is that Bar Kokhba has been claimed ideologically as a David-against-Goliath hero of Zionism. David ben Gurion, first prime minister in 1948, proclaimed, ‘The chain that was broken in the days of Shimon ben Kokhba…was reinforced in our days, and the Israeli army is again ready for the battle in its own land.’ A revision of this viewpoint is under way, e.g., Elon Gilad (2015) .
Powell recounts the history using a literary technique I found particularly interesting. He expounds the history from the origins of the Israelites to Bar Kokhba as he makes his way through the galleries of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He goes through the life of Emperor Hadrian as he’s on his way to interview Professor So-and-So. He paints the second century topography and road system by recounting the progress of Hadrian’s well-documented travels. He talks about events in Jewish history after recounting similar things that happened on his travels. It makes the read more like a chatty travelogue than a dry history book and makes it more accessible.
There is a lot of information in this book which is only laterally related to Bar Kokhba. Unfortunately, so little is known about the man and the war he waged that otherwise, it would have been a very thin book.