The Bar Kokhba Revolt was once thought to have erupted because of Hadrian’s ban on circumcision, but this explanation based on one passage is the unreliable Historia Augusta, has now been rightly dismissed. (Katell Berthelot, Jews and their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021], 153)
Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian 14.2. The idea that Hadrian forbade circumcision is based on a rescript of Hadrian—found in Justinian’s Digest 48.8.4.2, in a passage taken form book 7 of Ulpian’s On the Duties of the Proconsul, dated to 213-217 CE—but this text deals only with castration, and if circumcision had been meant, the verb used in this text deals only with castration, and if circumcision has been meant, the verb used in Latin would certainly have been circumdere, not excidere (pace Rabello 1995). See Boustan (Abusch) 2003, 74-80; Oppenheimer 2005c, 243-244. On the rabbinic texts discussing the issue of circumcision that have been used in support of the theory of Hadrian’s ban, see Schäfer’s illuminating interpretation in Schäfer 1981, 88-91 (which explains them as echoes of an inner Jewish conflict rather than a consequence of a Roman ban). (Ibid., 153 n. 314)
