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By 66 CE Jewish discontent with Rome had escalated. At first, the priests tried to suppress rebellion, even calling upon the Pharisees for help. After the Roman garrison failed to stop Hellenists from desecrating a synagogue in Caesarea, however, the high priest suspended payment of tribute, inaugurating the Great Jewish Revolt. The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE not only put an end to the revolt, it marked the end of an era. It was also a profoundly traumatic experience for the Jews, who were now confronted with difficult and far-reaching questions:
How people answered these questioned depended largely on their position prior to the revolt. Revolutionaries like the Zealots had been crushed by the Romans, and had little credibility (the last Zealots died at Masada in 73 CE). Similarly, the Sadducees, whose teachings were so closely connected to the Temple cult, disappeared.
The Essenes too disappeared, perhaps because their teachings so diverged from the concerns of the times. Briefly, the Essenes were the followers of a group of priests who had essentially rejected the Second Temple. They argued that the Essene community was itself the new Temple, and that obedience to the law represented a new form of sacrifice. Accordingly, the destruction of the Second Temple was of no consequence to them; precisely for this reason, they were of little consequence to the vast majority of Jews. Although their lack of concern for the Second Temple and its destruction alienated them from the great mass of Jews, their notion that the sacred could exist outside of the Temple was shared by Christians and Pharisees.
Christians too, however, were relatively unconcerned with the destruction of the Temple since they believed that Jesus had already replaced the Temple as the expression of a new covenant. When Christians failed to attract a large number of followers from among the Jews -- perhaps because, in the aftermath of the revolt, Jews were afraid that talk of a new king and a new kingdom would provoke Roman wrath, or because most Jews did not feel that the destruction of the Temple signified the abrogation of their covenant with God -- they turned to Gentile converts, distanced themselves from the rebellious Jews, and emerged as a new religion.
Of all the major Second Temple sects, only the Pharisees remained. Although they had accepted the importance of the Temple, their vision of Jewish law as a means by which ordinary people could engage with the sacred in their daily lives, provided them with a position from which to respond to all four challenges, in a way meaningful to the vast majority of Jews.
Following the destruction of the Temple, Rome governed Judea through a Procurator at Caesarea and a Jewish Patriarch. Yohanan ben Zakkai, a leading Pharisee, was appointed the first Patriarch (the Hebrew word, Nasi, also means prince, or president), and he reestablished the Sanhedrin at Javneh under Pharisee control. The rabbis rejected the sectarianism that had dominated Jewish life during the Second Temple Era; Pharisaism emerged as the dominant form of Judaism, which came to be known as "Rabbinic" Judaism. The Rabbinic Era itself is divided into two periods, that of the Tannaim (from the Aramaic word for "repeat," also used to mean "learn"), who wrote the Mishna, and that of the Amoraim (from the Aramaic word for "speaker"), who wrote the Talmud. Instead of giving tithes to the priests and sacrificing offerings at the Temple, Jews gave money to charities and studied in local Synagogues.
When the Emperor Hadrian threatened to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city dedicated to Jupiter, in 132 CE, some of the leading sages of the Sanhedrin supported a rebellion (and, for a short time, an independent state) led by Simon bar Kozeba (also called Bar Kochba, or "son of a star"); some, such as Rabbi Akiba, believed Bar Kochbah to be messiah, or king. This revolt ended in 135 CE when Bar Kochba and his army were defeated. According to a midrash, in addition to Bar Kochba the Romans executed ten leading members of the Sanhedrin: the high priest, R. Ishmael; the president of the Sanhedrin, R. Shimon ben Gamaliel; R. Akiba; R. Hanania ben Teradion; the interpreter of the Sanhedrin, R. Huspith; R.Eliezer ben Shamua; R. Hanina ben Hakinai; the secretary of the Sanhedrin, R. Yeshevav; R. Yehuda ben Dama; and R. Yehuda ben Baba. The Rabbinic account describes agonizing tortures: R. Akiba was flayed, and R. Hanania was burned at a stake, with wet wool held by a Torah scroll wrapped around his body to prolong his death. This account also claims that the rabbis were executed to atone for the guilt of the ten brothers who kidnapped Joseph. It is possible that this account represents a Pharisaic response to the Christian account of Jesus' crucifixion; in both accounts the Romans brutally punish rebels, who accept their torture as atonement for the crimes of others.
After the suppression of the revolt the vast majority of Jews were sent into exile; shortly thereafter, Judah haNasi edited together Tannaitic judgements and traditions into the Mishna, one of the key texts of Rabbinic Judaism.
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