The failure of the Jewish revolt against Rome brought about a comprehensive transformation of life in Palestine: the old political system was replaced by direct Roman rule, the Roman army became a permanent presence, the size of the population and the ratio of Jews to pagans changed. This chapter explores how the norms of the Graeco-Roman city partly supplemented and partly replaced, as elsewhere in the High Roman Empire, native norms as the cultural ideal. For the Bar Kochba Revolt, the only accounts surviving are the highly folkloristic tales in rabbinic literature and brief notices in the works of Christian and pagan writers. The failure of the Jewish revolts, the consequent geographical dislocation of large numbers of Jews, the centralizing character of Roman rule, and the undeniable prosperity and success of the Empire, all conspired to transform Roman Palestine into a conventional eastern province, normal in its social, economic, political, and even religious life.

The fourth decade of the second century CE witnessed the outbreak and apex of the final Jewish uprising against Roman rule in Palestine. Named the Bar Kochba Revolt for its leader, its details remain shrouded in mystery. This chapter describes the revolt's direct causes, the geographical extent of Bar Kochba's regime and whether it included Jerusalem, and the magnitude of the Roman reaction. It also describes Bar Kochba's leadership style and administration, his state's borders, Jewish observance under wartime conditions, and the strong Roman reaction. Judaean desert documents provide a glimpse of Bar Kochba's administrative system. The list of Roman forces that participated in suppressing the Bar Kochba Revolt, compiled on the basis of epigraphic sources, assists in a tentative assessment of their magnitude. The Roman sense of having won a great victory emerges from Hadrian's second acclamation as imperator sometime after 135, following the revolt's suppression.

Both the apostle Paul and the risen Jesus envision a spreading of the Christian movement out from Jerusalem into the circumference of the Mediterranean world, as far as Rome, and 'to the ends of the earth'. This chapter traces the progress and effects of that dispersion of Christian communities in the first three centuries, to Asia Minor, Achaea, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Gaul, North Africa and Rome. Two major socio-political events without a doubt shaped Christian community destiny. The first crucial event was the seige and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 66-70 CE. Eusebius reports that the Jerusalem Christians, warned by an oracle via a revelation, fled from Jerusalem before its inhabitants were locked inside for the gruelling final siege. The second crucial event was Hadrian's suppression of the revolt of Bar Kochba in 132-5 CE, and rededication of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, with Jews forbidden, not only to live there, but even to gazeuponit from a distance.