Roman Palestine
After the destruction of Jerusalem, a legion (X Fretensis) was stationed on the site, and the rank of the provincial governor was raised from procurator to legatus Augusti, signifying a change from equestrian to senatorial rank. Caesarea Maritima, the governor’s residence, became a Roman colony, and, as a reward for the loyalty of the Greeks in the revolt, a new pagan city, Neapolis (modern Nābulus in the West Bank), was founded at Shechem, the religious centre of the Samaritans.
The Jews, deprived of the Temple, founded a new religious centre in the rabbinical school of Jamnia (Jabneh). When a revolt broke out in ad 115, the Roman emperor Trajan appointed the first consular legate of Judaea, Lucius Quietus, to suppress it. The rank of the legate confirms that two legions were stationed in Judaea, one at Jerusalem, the other at Caparcotna in Galilee, and thenceforth the province must have held consular status.
In 132 the emperor Hadrian decided to build a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, on the site of Jerusalem. The announcement of his plan, as well as his ban on circumcision (revoked later, but only for the Jews), provoked a much more serious uprising, the Second Jewish Revolt, led by Bar Kokhba. It was ruthlessly repressed by Julius Severus; according to certain accounts, almost 1,000 villages were destroyed and more than half a million people killed. In Judaea proper the Jews seem to have been virtually exterminated, but they survived in Galilee, which, like Samaria, appears to have held aloof from the revolt. Tiberias in Galilee became the seat of the Jewish patriarchs. The province of Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina (later simply called Palaestina), and, according to Eusebius of Caeseria (Ecclesiastical History, Book IV, chapter 6), no Jew was thenceforth allowed to set foot in Jerusalem or the surrounding district. This prohibition apparently was relaxed sometime later to permit Jews to enter Jerusalem one day a year, on a day of mourning called Tisha be-Ava. Although this ban was officially still in force as late as the 4th century ad, there is some evidence that from the Severan period onward (after 193) Jews visited the city more frequently, especially at certain festival times, and even that there may have been some Jews in residence. About the time the Bar Kokhba revolt was crushed (135), Hadrian proceeded to convert Jerusalem into a Greco-Roman city, with a circus, an amphitheatre, baths, and a theatre and with streets conforming to the Roman grid pattern. He also erected temples dedicated to Jupiter and himself (Aelia was his clan name) on the very site of the destroyed Temple of Jerusalem. To repopulate the city, Hadrian apparently brought in Greco-Syrians from the surrounding areas and even perhaps some legionary veterans. The urbanization and Hellenization of Palestine was continued during the reign of the emperor Septimius Severus (ad 193–211), except in Galilee, where the Jewish presence remained strong. New pagan cities were founded in Judaea at Eleutheropolis and Diospolis (formerly Lydda) and at Nicopolis (formerly Emmaus) under one of Severus’s successors, Elagabalus (218–222). In addition, Severus issued a specific ban against Jewish proselytism.
After Constantine I converted to Christianity early in the 4th century, a new era of prosperity began for Palestine. The emperor himself built a magnificent church on the site of the Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred of Christian holy places; his mother, Saint Helena, built two others—at the place of the Nativity at Bethlehem and of the Ascension in Jerusalem—and his mother-in-law, Eutropia, built a church at Mamre. Palestine began to attract floods of pilgrims from all parts of the empire. It also became a great centre of the eremitic life (idiorrhythmic monasticism); men flocked from all quarters to become hermits in the Judaean wilderness, which was soon dotted with monasteries. Constantine added the southern half of Arabia to the province, but in 357–358 (or perhaps as late as the 390s) the addition was made a separate province under the name of Palaestina or Salutaris (later Palaestina Tertia). At the end of the 4th century, an enlarged Palestine was divided into three provinces: Prima, with its capital at Caesarea; Secunda, with its capital at Scythopolis (Bet Sheʾan); and Salutaris, with its capital at Petra or possibly for a time at Elusa. It is clear that the province of Palaestina underwent several territorial changes in the 4th century ad, but the details and the chronology remain obscure. The governor of Prima bore the high rank of proconsul from 382 to 385 and again—as part of East Rome, which came to be known as the Byzantine Empire after 476—from 535 onward. A dux of Palestine commanded the garrison of all three provinces.
The bishop of the civil capital, Caesarea, was, according to the usual rule, metropolitan of the province, but the bishops of Jerusalem were claiming special prerogatives as early as the first Council of Nicaea (325). Eventually, Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem from 421 to 458, achieved his ambition and was recognized by the Council of Chalcedon (451) as patriarch of the three provinces of Palestine.
There was a revolt of the Jews in Galilee in 352, which was suppressed by Gallus Caesar. Under Marcian (450–457) and again under the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (527–565), the Samaritans revolted. Palestine, like Syria and Egypt, was also troubled by the Monophysite controversy, a debate among Christians who disagreed with the Council of Chalcedon’s assertion that the person of Jesus Christ comprised two natures, human and divine. When Juvenal returned from Chalcedon, having signed the Council’s canons, the monks of Palestine rose and elected another bishop of Jerusalem, and military force was required to subdue them. Gradually, however, the Chalcedonian doctrine gained ground, and Palestine became a stronghold of orthodoxy. Apart from these disturbances, the country enjoyed peace and prosperity until 611, when Khosrow II, king of Persia, launched an invasion of Byzantine territory. His troops captured Jerusalem (614), destroyed churches, and carried off the True Cross. In 628 the Byzantine emperor Heraclius recovered Palestine, and he subsequently restored the True Cross to Jerusalem, but 10 years later Arab armies invaded both the Persian and the Byzantine empires.