[I]n 363, within the first few decades of Byzantine rule, Jews in Palestine experienced a most hopeful, uplifting, yet agonizingly brief chapter in their history. Emperor Julian, Gallus’s half-brother, had reluctantly become Emperor at the close of 361. Having rejected Christianity from the outset of his reign, he revoked the privileges and powers assigned to Christian bishops, and promulgated edicts and policies guaranteeing religious freedom. An intellectual, Julian was a prolific author and his early writings were hostile to the Jewish religion, albeit to a lesser extent than to Christianity. But there seems to have been either a political calculation or, more likely, a genuine evolution in his thinking. By the end of 362, he had come to regard the God of Israel as the authentic fashioner of the universe^[2] Johanan Lewy, “The Emperor Julian and the Rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem” [Hebrew], Zion (1941), 1–32. —for whom his pagan deities were but allegories—and who required sacrifice just as they did. After conversations with Antiochene Jews regarding why they did not sacrifice to their God, he sent an epistle to the Nasi Hillel II expressing his desire to rebuild and resettle the Jewish population in Jerusalem, just after his successful conclusion of his war with Persia.

Apparently, Julian decided that the project couldn’t wait, and the epistle was followed by a meeting between Julian and Jewish leaders at his headquarters in Antioch, in Shevat (January–February) of 363. We can piece together from Christian sources that, at this meeting, the Emperor presented arguments from prophetic works (and perhaps oracles to convince pagans) that the time was ripe to rebuild the Temple. Alypius, formerly a vice prefect of Britain, was assigned to oversee the task. Crews of architects, workmen, and artisans were assembled and materials were gathered from all across the Empire. Special silver tools were fashioned to avoid the prohibition of cutting altar stones with iron implements. Finally, the date for laying the foundations arrived. A letter attributed to Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem (but regarded by most as a fifth-century forgery)^[3] See the comprehensive discussion of sources in David B. Levenson, “The Ancient and Medieval Sources for the Emperor Julian’s Attempt to Rebuild the Jerusalem Temple,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 35:4 (2004), 409–460. See further regarding Cyril’s letter, David B. Levenson, “The Palestinian Earthquake of May 363 in Philostorgius, the Syriac Chronicon Miscellaneum, and the Letter Attributed to Cyril on the Rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple,” Journal of Late Antiquity 6:1 (2013), 60–83.  describes, with many fanciful flourishes, an abortive attempt to lay the foundations of the Temple on Iyyar 18 (May 18, 363). The effort was rendered impossible due to storms, followed by an earthquake that evening and mysterious fires from the Temple Mount, which caused heavy casualties on the following day. The dates and historical core are assumed to be accurate; the dating of a major earthquake in the region to Iyyar 18, 363 is verified by archaeological evidence from elsewhere.^[4] Oded Irshai notes Greek inscriptions from the Christian necropolis in Zoar that records deaths from an earthquake dated May 18, 363, which coincided with Iyyar 18 in that year. See his “‘The Earthquake in the Valley of Arbel’: A Galilean Apocalyptic Tradition and its Historical-Liturgical Context” [Hebrew], Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature: Merkamim 1 (2013), 107–132, and especially note 30.  Christian sources insist that these events were understood by all as a display of Divine displeasure, and ended the project; pagan sources understood the earthquake as a sign of mourning for the Emperor’s imminent death.^[5] See the discussion of sources in Levenson (2013).  Scholars assume that the project was aborted either with the earthquake, or with the death of Julian on the night of June 26, 363, after having been mortally wounded on the Persian front. His successor, Jovian, immediately reestablished Christianity as the religion of Rome and reinstated the ban on Jews from Jerusalem.

What was the interpretation of the events of 363 by those most affected, the Jews themselves? Scholars note that contemporaneous rabbinic writings display a deafening silence. There are several likely candidates in mainstream rabbinic literature for oblique references, but none can be linked to them in an unambiguous manner. It is difficult to fathom the exhilaration and disappointment that the Jews must have experienced in the space of a few short months in 363. When Benjamin Mazar’s team, excavating beside the Western Wall beneath Robinson’s Arch between 1968 and 1978, uncovered a jubilant Hebrew inscription from Isaiah 66:1, “And when you see this, your heart shall rejoice and bones like new grass,” it was assumed that it dated from Julian’s reign.^[6] Other interpretations have since been advanced. See discussion in Levenson (2004), 410.  What could possibly be the alternative? Conversely, there is a fast day ordained on Iyyar 18 that surfaces in numerous sources as late as the eighth century, which ostensibly references one or more events of that day, but also (or sometimes only) invokes the anniversary of the death of the Biblical personality Joshua, which seems to be a red herring.^[7] There is an apparently prior teaching linking Joshua’s burial with a Divine earthquake, owing to the people’s neglect in paying their respects (Shabbat 105b cites this in the name of second-century Amora’im), but the linkage does not appear to be associative; in the sources in which the earthquake is mentioned, either Joshua is not, or it is mentioned as a separate event.  A Judeo-Arabic document from the Cairo Geniza explains: “They fasted on the 18th due to the death of Joshua,​^[8] As Holzer later explains, this was likely a reference to Jesus on the 330th anniversary of his crucifixion rather than a reference to the protegé of Moses. –ANV  and there was an earthquake.”^[9] Shulamit Elizur, Wherefore Have We Fasted? (Graphit Press, 2007), 34.  One or both of these associations appear with the date in other sources from the Land of Israel; paytanim of the seventh and eighth century mention only Joshua, while the seventh-century apocalyptic work, Sefer Zerubavel, predicts an earthquake on Iyyar 18 among the events that will unfold in the eschaton. To date, the earliest source for the Iyyar 18 fast is an inscription on the wall of the synagogue in the town of Rehov, south of Beit She’an, which dates to the fifth century, though the date is simply part of a list of fast days, and explanations are not provided.

…Jews would continue to push back against Byzantine oppression, joining with Samaritans in revolts in the sixth century, and the denouement of Byzantine rule in Syria Palaestina under Heraclius was marked by a Jewish revolt in tandem with the Sassanid invasion.^[10] Find, the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 (Wikipedia). –ANV  The Byzantines’ spectacularly brutal trouncing of the latter is assumed to have inspired the historical core for the Jewish apocalyptic work Sefer Zerubavel, the basis for medieval Jewish eschatology. Forced baptism of Jews was decreed in 630, but in short order Heraclius was dispossessed of the Holy Land and all of Syria by the conquering Islamic armies of Umar ibn Khattab…. Upon his conquest of Jerusalem in 637–638, ibn Khattab had initially acceded to Christian demands that Jews continued to be barred from the city. However, Umar’s agreement was soon renegotiated, and Jews were admitted. His successors assiduously cleared the Mount of centuries of trash and restored its platform. The completion of the Dome of the Rock by Abd el-Malik around the turn of the eighth century signified, more than anything else, the supersession of Constantine’s Jerusalem. Built on the architectural model of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher itself—just as the latter was built on the model of the Temple!—but towering above it, the Dome’s upper walls are inscribed in gold leaf with Ḳoranic passages that polemicize against the virgin birth and Jesus’ divinity. Its very presence as a built structure on the Temple site gave lie to Jesus’ prophecy and reverted the New Jerusalem-Old Jerusalem paradigm, now in favor of Islam. The theological crisis that ensued was so acute that it served as the inspiration for Christian apocalypse literature.^[11] Sidney Harrison Griffi th, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam, (Princeton University Press, 2008), 32–33.  While Jews held out great hope for the new conquerors, Jewish apocalyptic imagination remained fi xated on Christendom, perhaps due to the large numbers of Christian populations who remained, or perhaps to a concern regarding the temporary nature of the reign of Islam.^[12] Philip Alexander, “The Toledot Yeshu in the Context of Jewish-Muslim Debate,” in Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited, 141.  Sefer Zerubavel predicts the messianic advent after the Byzantine reversal of the Sassanid invasion and fails to anticipate the Islamic conquest a few short years later; it should have been rendered obsolete within a decade of its publication, but it enjoyed a long afterlife and (along with Toledot Yeshu) remained popular in Islamic lands. Change of mindset came slowly. But with Umar, and then Abd el-Malik, “mōt Yehoshua” lost its reason to fast and mourn. On the contrary, its polemical promise was fulfilled, and perhaps this was not lost on those who had perpetuated its memory.

Given the relative obscurity of Sefer Zerubavel today, we thought that we could help remedy that on just the day it currently references in the rabbinic Jewish calendar: Lag ba-Omer — a day which otherwise lacks any liturgical reading. Below is the text of Sefer Zerubavel as found in Divrei Yeraḥmiel (according to the text transcribed and published as Sefer ha-Zikronot hu’ Divrey ha-Yamim le-Yerahme’el (ed. Eli Yassif; Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2001), pp. 427-435, set side-by-side with the English translation by the scholar John Reeves.