The destruction of the second Temple in 70 C.E. necessarily influences perceptions of the entire course of Jewish history during the period of late antiquity. At a stroke, that event deprived Israel of the most vivid expression of its sacred association with God and of the most compelling of its symbols of national distinctiveness. So great was the calamity of the Destruction that the date of its occurrence has traditionally been regarded as an authentic historical watershed. Its immediate impact was to stimulate anguished reflection on the specific and/or generic failings which were considered to have been its cause; more hesitantly, but more fundamentally, it also generated profound re-assessments of every aspect of Jewry's national thought and practice. Thus it was that with the fall of Jerusalem the Jewish people and its religious culture began to embark upon a course which was eventually to prove revolutionary. However irregular and hesitant the initial steps in that transition, their cumulative effect was decisive. Post-Destruction Judaism, largely under the impact of the Destruction itself, differed in almost all essentials from the civilisation by which it was preceded and out of which it grew.

It is tempting to apply the same gauge when measuring the domestic political effects of the Destruction. At that level, the events of 70 C.E. could arguably be portrayed as marking – in addition to all else – a constitutional turning-point.