ABSTRACT
Despite the devastating victory of the Romans, Jewish revolts continued into the second century ce. When the emperor Trajan invaded the east up to the Persian coast, uprisings among Babylonian Jews took place. In Judaea a messianic revolt was led in 132 ce by Simeon Bar Kochba which appears to have been aided by Rabbi Akiva and other scholars from Yavneh and touched off by Hadrian's programme of Hellenization. This Jewish revolt was inspired by the conviction that God would empower the Jews to regain control of their country and rebuild the Temple. By the 230s, the Roman Empire was encountering numerous difficulties including inflation, population decline and a lack of technological development to support the army. By the first half of the fourth century, Jewish scholars in Israel had collected together the teachings of generations of rabbis in the academies of Tiberias, Caesarea and Sepphoris. These extended discussions of the Mishnah became the Palestinian Talmud.
