The Jewish Commonwealth of Jerusalem and the Last War of Antiquity

Name: The Jewish Commonwealth of Jerusalem and the Last War of Antiquity
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ISBN: 9798233349102

Marcus Brugha

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Paperback

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English

Silverback Books
28 March 2026

History of other lands; Social & cultural history

The Jewish Commonwealth of Jerusalem and the Last War of Antiquity

In the summer of 614 CE, something happened that the Jewish world had been praying toward for five centuries: the gates of Jerusalem opened to a Jewish army, and for three extraordinary years a Jewish commonwealth governed the holiest city on earth, renewed sacrificial worship on the Temple Mount, and began preparations for the rebuilding of the Third Temple. It ended in execution, exile, and massacre, but while it lasted, it was the most ambitious act of Jewish political self-determination between the fall of the Second Temple and the modern era.

The Jewish Commonwealth of Jerusalem reconstructs this forgotten episode in full, tracing the revolt of 614 from its roots in two and a half centuries of Byzantine legal discrimination against the Jewish population of Palestine, through the Persian-Jewish military alliance that made the Commonwealth possible, to the messianic excitement that swept the diaspora when news of the conquest reached Babylonia and Egypt. Drawing on the chronicle sources, the apocalyptic literature of the Sefer Zerubbabel, and the latest archaeological and numismatic evidence, this book tells the story of Benjamin of Tiberias, the financier who made the revolt possible; Nehemiah ben Hushiel, the prince from Babylonia who governed Jerusalem as the tradition's predicted Messiah ben Joseph; and the Persian general Shahrbaraz, whose military genius carried the campaign from Antioch to the walls of the holy city.

At its heart, this is a story about what happens when a community that has been systematically excluded from political life for generations finally finds, in the crack between two collapsing empires, the opportunity to act. The Commonwealth lasted three years. The fire on the altar burned, the prayers were offered in Jerusalem rather than toward it, and the gap between the liturgical aspiration and the historical reality was briefly, impossibly, humanly small. Then it ended, in Persian betrayal, broken imperial oaths, and the massacre that Heraclius authorised against the communities his personal honour had sworn to protect.

This is the story of that light: what it took to light it, how briefly it burned, and why its recovery matters.

By: Marcus Brugha
Imprint: Silverback Books
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 40mm
Weight: 826g
ISBN: 9798233349102
Pages: 724
Publication Date: 28 March 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Dr. Marcus Brugha is an Irish historian and scholar specialising in the history of the ancient and late antique worlds, with particular expertise in the civilisations of the Near East, the Roman and Byzantine empires, and the religious and political transformations that reshaped the Mediterranean world between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of Islam. Born and educated in Ireland, he has spent decades immersed in the primary sources, archaeological literature, and historiographical debates that surround one of history's most consequential but least understood periods of transition. His research interests range across the full breadth of late antiquity, encompassing the military and diplomatic history of the Roman-Persian wars, the development of Jewish messianic thought in the post-Temple period, the archaeology of Byzantine Palestine, and the theological frameworks through which early medieval Christian and Jewish communities gave meaning to the catastrophic events of the seventh century. He brings to this work not only rigorous scholarly training but a storyteller's instinct for the human dimensions of historical events - the individual lives, the community decisions, and the moments of hope and catastrophe that formal history too often buries beneath the weight of structural analysis. Dr. Brugha is the author of numerous works spanning ancient history, medieval history, and historical biography, and he is committed to the belief that serious historical scholarship need not sacrifice narrative accessibility to achieve analytical depth. He lives and writes in Ireland.