He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, For the Freedom of Zion: The Great Revolt of Jews against Romans, 66–74 CE, and reported the following:
I am not sure whether the quality of my book For the Freedom of Zion: The Great Revolt of Jews against Romans, 66-74 CE, will be revealed to a reader who opens it up to page 99, but the subject will be. For on page 99 I begin to tell the story of the breakdown of relations between the Jews of Judaea and the Roman government in 44 CE, leading to the revolt of Jews against Romans that broke out in 66. From the time the Romans began to send governors out to Judaea in 6 CE, and then during the brief reign of the client king Agrippa I – the last Jewish King of Judaea – relations between the Romans and the Jews were volatile, but manageable for the most part.Learn more about For the Freedom of Zion at the Yale University Press website.
After Agrippa’s death, when the Romans sent out new governors called procurators, a downward spiral began and ultimately led to the outbreak of fighting in 66. So on page 99 readers will begin to understand how and why the greatest revolt against Rome during the early Roman empire broke out. What they would not find on page 99 is much about the fighting during the war itself and its outcome, including the destruction of the Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem. To understand how and why the Jewish Temple was destroyed – spoiler alert here, I argue that the future Roman emperor Titus was indeed responsible for destroying the Temple, despite what the Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus claimed – and why the Romans won the war of weapons, but the Jews have won the longer peace of words, readers would have to read on, and I hope that they do so. I suppose therefore that my book passes the Page 99 Test, though with a couple of authorial asterisks.
--Marshal Zeringue
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