MARTIN GOODMAN'S LATEST BOOK is reviewed in the Jerusalem Post:

Age of empire
By RALPH AMELAN

Rome & Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations
By Martin Goodman
Allen Lane
639 pages; 25
History, with the apparent wisdom of hindsight, seems inevitable.

Certainly traditional Jewish explanations of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE speak of it as something that had to happen. Most teachings maintain that causeless hatred was the reason for the disaster, citing the murderous factional fighting among Jerusalem's defenders prior to the city's fall. Others brood on the wickedness of "Edom," the code word for Rome, as something that meant a violent collision with Jews sooner or later.

Not, so, claims Martin Goodman, professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University and a specialist in the period. Jerusalem's fall, and the consequent loss of status of Jews in the Roman Empire, was mostly sheer bad luck.

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