NR\Reader checked\16/06/2015
In 63 BCE the army of the Roman General Pompey the Great invaded ancient Palestine, destroyed part of the Jerusalem temple, and ended the nearly eighty-year-old Hasmonean state. The Romans thereafter ruled ancient Palestine either directly or through a series of client kings. The great Jewish War against the Romans of 66-70 BCE was largely an effort to restore independent Jewish rule. The nearly five-year conflict ended with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish temple. Atkinson explores this nearly two century period of messianic-inspired violence by focusing on its beginning, namely the 63 BCE Roman conquest of Jerusalem, to show how Jews, and then Christians, merged the Old Testament notion of a messiah with the Roman General Pompey to create a royal messianic figure that may be called the militant Davidic messiah.