by Karl Radl
I recently covered the jewish claim in Tractate Gittin of the Babylonian Talmud that the jews were responsible (directly or indirectly) for the death of the Roman Emperor Titus in 81 A.D. (1)
As an extension of that article, I wanted to situate the story of Titus’ death within the context of the Babylonian Talmud’s commentary on (and use of) Titus in general in its pages.
To begin with let’s remind ourselves of the Babylonian Talmud’s account of the death of Titus found in folio 56 of Tractate Gittin.
To wit:
‘It is further related about Titus that he was once traveling at sea and a wave rose up against him and threatened to drown him. Titus said: It seems to me that their God, the God of Israel, has power only in water. Pharaoh rose against them and He drowned him in water. Sisera rose against them and He drowned him in water. Here too, He has risen up against me to drown me in water. If He is really mighty, let Him go up on dry land and there wage war against me. A Divine Voice issued forth and said to him: Wicked one, son of a wicked one, grandson of Esau the wicked, for you are among his descendants and act just like him, I have a lowly creature in My world and it is called a gnat.
The Gemara resumes its story about Titus. The Divine Voice continued: Go up on dry land and make war with it. He went up on dry land, and a gnat came, entered his nostril, and picked at his brain for seven years. Titus suffered greatly from this until one day he passed by the gate of a blacksmith’s shop. The gnat heard the sound of a hammer and was silent and still. Titus said: I see that there is a remedy for my pain. Every day they would bring a blacksmith who hammered before him. He would give four dinars as payment to a gentile blacksmith, and to a Jew he would simply say: It is enough for you that you see your enemy in so much pain. He did this for thirty days and it was effective until then. From that point forward, since the gnat became accustomed to the hammering, it became accustomed to it, and once again it began to pick away at Titus’s brain.
It is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Pineḥas ben Arova said: I was at that time among the noblemen of Rome, and when Titus died they split open his head and found that the gnat had grown to the size of a sparrow weighing two sela. It was taught in another baraita: It was like a one-year-old pigeon weighing two litra.
Abaye said: We have a tradition that its mouth was made of copper and its claws were fashioned of iron. When Titus was dying, he said to his attendants: Burn that man, i.e., me, and scatter his ashes across the seven seas, so that the God of the Jews should not find me and stand me for judgment.’ (2)
Now we already know this story likely has a grain of truth in it given that Suetonius recounts how Titus died from a fever (3) and it is reasonable to suppose that the ‘gnat’ of the Babylonian Talmud is in fact a reference to a mosquito which possibly gave Titus the malaria (i.e., the fever) which in turn killed him in 81 A.D.
However, it is also clear that the way that the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud discuss this event that they view their people – the jews – as being directly or indirectly responsible for Titus’ death. So, either Yahweh killed Titus with the ‘gnat’ on behalf of the jews or there was a jewish tradition – which the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud are presumably simply repeating – that the jews themselves killed Titus. This would possibly be by poison as that is the alternative account of how Titus died which is related by Philostratus around a century after Suetonius wrote his near contemporary account of Titus’ death. (4)
Going over this ground again is important because of what the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud say around this description of the jews being directly or indirectly responsible for Titus’ death.
Namely earlier in Tractate Gittin we read the rabbis stating:
‘What did Titus do when he conquered the Temple? He took a prostitute with his hand, and entered the Holy of Holies with her. He then spread out a Torah scroll underneath him and committed a sin, i.e., engaged in sexual intercourse, on it. Afterward he took a sword and cut into the curtain separating between the Sanctuary and the Holy of Holies. And a miracle was performed and blood spurted forth. Seeing the blood, he mistakenly thought that he had killed himself. Here, the term himself is a euphemism for God. Titus saw blood issuing forth from the curtain in God’s meeting place, the Temple, and he took it as a sign that he had succeeded in killing God Himself. As it is stated: “Your enemies roar in the midst of Your meeting place; they have set up their own signs for signs” (Psalms 74:4).’ (5)
With the following additional rabbinic commentary attached to it:
‘Vespasian went back to Rome and sent Titus in his place. The Gemara cites a verse that was expounded as referring to Titus: “And he shall say: Where is their God, their rock in whom they trusted?” (Deuteronomy 32:37). This is the wicked Titus, who insulted and blasphemed God on High.’ (6)
Now what the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud are claiming here is that Titus took a prostitute – whether she was jewish or non-jewish is not stated and either could be true – into the Holy of Holies in the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Spread out a Torah scroll and then had sex with the prostitute on it to defile both the Written Torah and the jewish temple itself.
Naturally this didn’t in fact happen since know from Josephus for example that when this allegedly going on the sanctuary in the Temple – where the Holy of Holies was – it was subject to a raging out-of-control fire started by the Roman soldiers during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. (7) So therefore this story is almost certainly untrue and is likely to be apocryphal anti-Roman propaganda from a later period, which may have had a role in promoting jewish anti-gentile sentiment and anti-Roman terrorism that triggered the multiple other jewish revolts in Judea and across the Mediterranean in the Roman and Byzantine eras such as the Kitos War and the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
Then the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud go on to then claim that Titus decided – for reasons that aren’t made clear – to cut the ceremonial curtain separating the sanctuary and the Holy of Holies in the Second Temple – again this would likely have been completely burnt to a crisp in the raging fire at the sanctuary recounted by Josephus in his chronicle of the jewish revolt – with his sword – the Roman gladius was rather uniquely made for stabbing not cutting and as such its main edges were not usually very sharp, but the rabbis were apparently unaware of that little detail – and then a ‘miracle’ occurred whence ‘blood spurted forth from the curtain all over Titus’ and (we may assume) the prostitute that he had brought into the Holy of Holies in order to have sex.
How Titus then assumed that ‘he’d killed himself’ – Titus was a seasoned soldier so would have been very used to getting a lot of human and animal blood on his hands and body – is not explained, but the fact that is story is simply an apocryphal attempt to make Titus ‘learn his lesson’ courtesy of Yahweh – in a similar way to the story of Titus’ death via the ‘gnat’ entering his brain via his ear – is obvious.
Given of course that the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud immediately linked the ‘anti-Titus miracles’ they are relating back to ‘prophecy in the Written Torah and the Tanakh’, which again showcases the fact that these passages in the Babylonian Talmud are simply jewish anti-gentile (and specifically anti-Roman) propaganda. That also seek to make the events of the first jewish revolt fit into a linear narrative of jewish prophecy from the Written Torah and the Tanakh, which would then – in turn – allow later rabbis and jewish religious radicals to promote a second jewish revolt (as in fact happened in 132-135 A.D.) using this earlier rabbinic interpretation to ‘explain’ why the first jewish revolt failed as well as why ‘it had to fail in order for their new revolt to succeed’.
What the Babylonian Talmud is relating here is a good example of early jewish atrocity propaganda directed at a hated enemy (the Roman) and which is very similar to the atrocity propaganda directed by later jews at the Tsarist Russian government in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as against Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich from 1933 to present.
We can see this same modus operandi in what the rabbis write next in Tractate Gittin, which is as follows:
‘What else did Titus do? He took the curtain and formed it like a large basket, and brought all of the sacred vessels of the Temple and placed them in it. And he put them on a ship to go and be praised in his city that he had conquered Jerusalem, as it is stated: “And so I saw the wicked buried, and come to their rest; but those that had done right were gone from the holy place, and were forgotten in the city; this also is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 8:10). Do not read the word as “buried [kevurim].” Rather, read it as collected [kevutzim]. And do not read the word as “and were forgotten [veyishtakeḥu].” Rather, read it as: And they were praised [veyishtabeḥu]. According to this interpretation, the verse speaks of those who will gather and collect items “from the holy place,” the Temple, and be praised in their city about what they had done.
There are those who say that the verse is to be read as written, as it is referring to items that were actually buried. This is because even items that had been buried were revealed to them, i.e., Titus and his soldiers, as they found all of the sacred vessels.’ (8)
In the above passage we can see that there is no additional attempt to attack or smear Titus, but rather the passage is concerned with trying to show how Titus’ ransacking of the vast wealth of the Second Temple – famously illustrated on the Arch of Titus in Rome – that in turn largely paid for the construction of the Flavian Amphitheatre (aka the Coliseum) in Rome was in fact ‘the fulfillment of divine prophecy’ specifically from the book of Ecclesiastes (the traditional Hebrew name for the book is ‘Kohelet’) and as such was not a national humiliation for the jews, but instead a ‘necessary evil’ that would – in time – allow the jews to successfully revolt against (and then rule) the Roman Empire, which then in turn became one of the later rabbinical justifications for the jewish revolt led by Simon bar Kokhba in 132-135 B.C.
The next and last passage in the Babylonian Talmud that deals with the Emperor Titus is a very famous one namely:
‘The Gemara relates: Onkelos bar Kalonikos, the son of Titus’s sister, wanted to convert to Judaism. He went and raised Titus from the grave through necromancy, and said to him: Who is most important in that world where you are now? Titus said to him: The Jewish people. Onkelos asked him: Should I then attach myself to them here in this world? Titus said to him: Their commandments are numerous, and you will not be able to fulfill them. It is best that you do as follows: Go out and battle against them in that world, and you will become the chief, as it is written: “Her adversaries [tzareha] have become the chief” (Lamentations 1:5), which means: Anyone who distresses [meitzer] Israel will become the chief. Onkelos said to him: What is the punishment of that man, a euphemism for Titus himself, in the next world? Titus said to him:
That which he decreed against himself, as he undergoes the following: Every day his ashes are gathered, and they judge him, and they burn him, and they scatter him over the seven seas.’ (9)
Now you are probably wondering what I mean by ‘this passage is famous’, but it is easily explained by pointing out it is the first part of the famous passage in the Babylonian Talmud where we are told that Jesus is both ‘boiling in excrement’ and ‘boiling in semen’ in hell.
Namely:
‘[Onkelos the son of Kalonymos, nephew of the Roman general and emperor Titus, who desired to become a proselyte] called up Balaam [from the world of the dead] by necromancy. He said to him, ‘Who is honored in this world?’ He [Balaam] replied, ‘Israel.’ ‘What about [my] joining them?’ He replied, ‘You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days’ (Deut. 23:6) He said to him, ‘What is your punishment?’ He replied, ‘To be in boiling semen.’
He called up Jesus by necromancy. He said to him, ‘Who is honored in this world?’ He [Jesus] replied, ‘Israel.’ ‘What about joining them?’ He replied, ‘Seek their good, do not seek their harm. Injuring them is like injuring the apple of your own eye.’ He said, ‘What is your punishment?’ He replied, ‘To be in boiling excrement.’ As a teacher has said, ‘Everyone who mocks the words of the wise is punished by boiling excrement.’ (10)
For the sake of clarity ‘Balaam’ in this passage – who is ‘boiling in semen’ – is an earlier coded jewish reference to Jesus, (11) which a later rabbinical writer has not understood as such and has simply added in another insulting reference to Jesus – directly this time – who he has ‘boiling in excrement’ instead. (12)
This is outside the strict purview of this article (13) but I think will help the reader to locate the commentary in regard to Titus, because before the shade of Jesus is summoned from hell by Titus’ nephew Onkelos – a ‘God-Fearer’ – (14) the shade of Titus is summoned from hell by Onkelos to testify about just how much he was being ‘punished for wronging the jews’ and how the ‘jewish people were the most important [people] in the world.’
Titus is even made to start quoting passages from the Tanakh (specifically from the book of Lamentations) in support of this as well as preaching how ‘their [the jewish] commandments are [so] numerous [that] you will not be able to fulfil them.’
The latter is a coded reference to the concept of the ‘God-Fearer’ (aka the ancestor concept to the modern Noahide in Judaism) in that jews are required to fulfil the 613 mitzvot (‘613 commandments’; hence ‘their commandments are numerous’), but because Onkelos has been born a non-jew (being Titus’ nephew and thus a Roman) he is incapable of doing this because non-jews are biologically inferior to jews – this is also implicit in Titus’ statement that ‘jewish people are the most important in the world’ – so the Yahweh (and the jews) only require them to fulfil 7 mitzvot (‘7 commandments’; hence ‘you will not be able to fulfil them’ with the implied ‘but you can fulfil these 7 commandments because you aren’t jewish’) instead of 613 mitzvot.
The purpose of the ‘God-Fearer’ concept in antiquity was to recruit and then weaponize non-jews – who had been seduced by jewish proselytism into wanting to become jews but could not because they were not born jewish – into actively helping the jews subvert and then conquer Rome (among other civilizations and states) using a mix of religious subversion and attempted popular as well as palace coups, (15) which you see almost explicitly stated by Titus in the passage when he is made to declare by the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud that:
‘It is best that you do as follows: Go out and battle against them in that world, and you will become the chief, as it is written: “Her adversaries [tzareha] have become the chief” (Lamentations 1:5), which means: Anyone who distresses [meitzer] Israel will become the chief.’ (16)
This passage might seem paradoxical but remember that Onkelos is said to want to convert to Judaism and Titus has just told him that such a course of action is impossible for him because he was born a non-jew.
So, what Titus is in fact stating here is that in order for Onkelos to best serve the jewish people – as a would-be convert to Judaism who can only become a ‘God-Fearer’ – is that he should pretend to be an enemy of the jews in order to get into power in Rome (i.e., become Emperor) and then the jews will rule from behind the scenes using Onkelos as their patsy and/or then the jews can take direct power from Onkelos and rule Rome and its empire from Jerusalem.
Indeed, this is almost exactly what the jews in Rome tried to do in the time of the Julian Emperors – notably Tiberius, Claudius and Nero – (17) and then proceeded to try and do again during the reign of Titus himself before they were crushed again by Titus’ brother and successor Domitian. (18)
So thus what we can actually see in this passage concerning Onkelos summoning the shade of Titus (and then Jesus) – which is in conscious imitation of the famous passage in the eleventh book of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ when Odysseus descends into the underworld and summons various shades (such as that of his friend Achilles) who he then converses with – is intended as anti-Roman propaganda, strategic advice on how jews should subvert the Roman Empire (which later morphed into the Byzantine Empire) from within via the use of ‘God-Fearers’ (think of them as the ‘Sayanim’ that the Mossad uses in modernity but in classical antiquity) and also explicitly preaches jewish racial superiority over non-jews.
In summary then we can see that the Babylonian Talmud’s commentary on the Emperor Titus is focused on doing several things at once:
A) Smearing Titus as an extremely evil man and proto-Hitler via spreading atrocity propaganda stories about him such as claiming that he did things (e.g., having sex with a prostitute on a Torah scroll in the Holy of Holies) that he almost certainly never did.
B) Making the events of jewish history (i.e., the first jewish revolt) fit within ‘jewish prophecy’ from the Written Torah and Tanakh. So as to explain away the jewish defeat by the Romans as a ‘necessary evil’ that ‘had to happen’ and ‘come before’ the jews were ultimately victorious and conquered Rome and her empire, which they would then proceed to rule from Jerusalem and/or via a ‘God-Fearer’ ruling in their name on the imperial throne in Rome itself.
C) Preaching the biological superiority of every jew over every non-jew.
D) Advising other jews on how they should go about conquering Rome and its empire by recruiting and using ‘God-Fearers’ to subvert it from within.
Does that sound familiar?
Because it should.
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References
(1) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-emperor-titus-and
(2) Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Gittin 56b (Sefaria Translation)
(3) Suet., Tit., 9-11
(4) Philostrat., Vit. Apol. Tyan., 6:32
(5) Op. Cit., Gittin 56b
(6) Idem.
(7) Josep., Bel. Jud., 6:4-5
(8) Op. Cit., Gittin 56b
(9) Ibid., 56b-57a
(10) Ibid., 57a; see Robert E. Van Voorst, 2000, ‘Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence’, 1st Edition, William B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, pp. 110-111
(11) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/validating-the-jesus-is-boiling-in-470
(12) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/validating-the-jesus-is-boiling-in
(13) For a detailed academic discussion of this passage and why it can only refer to the Christian Jesus not ‘some other person called Jesus’ see Peter Schaefer, 2007, ‘Jesus in the Talmud‘, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 85-90.
(14) What we’d now call a ‘Noahide’ following Moses Maimonides modification of the ‘God-Fearer’ of classical antiquity into the ‘Noahide’ of the medieval period and modernity.
(15) I have traced the history of the jewish plot to subvert and takeover Rome and its empire in the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-acta-hermaisci-on-the-jews as well as discussed how that applies to the period around the rule of the Emperors Vespasian and Titus in my more recent article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-emperor-titus-and. Alternatively see John Allegro, 1971, ‘The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish History from the time of the Exile until the Revolt of Bar Kocheba’, 1st Edition, Hodder and Stoughton: London which attempts to do much the same thing.
(16) Op. Cit., Gittin 56b
(17) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-acta-hermaisci-on-the-jews
(18) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-emperor-titus-and
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