AD 135

Bar Kokhba revolt

Bar Kokhba revolt is crushed and Jews are excluded from Jerusalem

A late-antique source says Hadrian's order stopped Jews from even looking at Jerusalem from a distance.

Betar, and the end of the revolt

The revolt is conventionally dated 132–135, with some scholarship extending its end into 136. Roman forces finished it by reducing the remaining rebel positions.

Eusebius associates the decisive final siege with Betar, where the defenders were worn down by hunger and thirst and the rebel leader was killed. Cassius Dio identifies Julius Severus as the general who worked by isolation, starvation and piecemeal reduction rather than one open battle.

The exclusion order

According to Eusebius, drawing on the earlier Ariston of Pella, Hadrian then issued orders preventing Jews from entering the country around Jerusalem or even viewing it from a distance.

Jerusalem became the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina. Eusebius says its population and Christian leadership became Gentile, with a bishop named Marcus succeeding the earlier line of bishops of Jewish ancestry, and the province of Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina in the same period.

The diaspora did not begin here

Substantial Jewish communities had existed for centuries in Babylonia, Egypt, Cyrenaica, Syria, Asia Minor and Rome. The suppression devastated Jewish settlement in Judaea, but Jews went on living in the land of Israel in large numbers, especially outside Jerusalem.

The scale of the destruction is reported only in ancient claims: Dio gives 50 strongholds and 985 villages destroyed and 580,000 battle deaths excluding famine, disease and fire — figures historians have long debated.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited Date disputed

How this was checked

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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~135.

What the sources leave uncertain

The revolt is conventionally dated 132–135, but some scholars place its final end in 136.
Eusebius wrote roughly two centuries later, though he attributes the exclusion account to the earlier Ariston of Pella. Cassius Dio’s narrative also survives through a later epitome.
Cassius Dio places the founding of Aelia Capitolina before the revolt and treats it as a cause; Eusebius narrates the Roman city after the revolt. Coins and archaeology generally support a pre-revolt foundation, but details remain debated.
The geographic scope and enforcement of Hadrian’s exclusion order are not completely recoverable. Exclusion from Jerusalem is much better supported than expulsion from the entire province or empire.