Sixty years after the temple burned, Judaea rose again. The leader was Simon bar Kosiba, who ruled a functioning administration for perhaps three years, issued coins dated to the redemption of Israel, and was acclaimed by Rabbi Akiva, the most eminent teacher of the age, as bar Kokhba, son of a star, a messianic title drawn from a verse in Numbers.
The war was fought largely from the caves and strongholds of the Judaean hills, and its end at Betar in 135 was total. Roman losses were heavy enough that the emperor is said to have omitted the customary formula about the health of the army in his report to the senate. Jewish losses were catastrophic: settlements destroyed, populations enslaved, and Jews barred from Jerusalem, which was refounded as the colony Aelia Capitolina. The province was renamed Syria Palaestina.
The revolt is unusually well attested for its period because of physical evidence. Letters written by Bar Kokhba himself and by his administration, on papyrus and wood, were recovered from caves above the Dead Sea in the twentieth century, along with the possessions of refugees who did not come out. They show an organised command, concerned with supplies, with the observance of the sabbath and festivals, and with discipline, in the leader's own dictated words.