Dion Cassius relates that 580,000 Jews were massacred when the fortress fell. Rabbi Akiba, the friend and banner-bearer of Bar Choseba, was flayed alive, repeating with his last breath the noble words of the Shema, or morning prayer of the Temple: "Hear, O Israel! the Lord our God is one Lord.â (Deut. vi. 4.) The valley below Bether is said, in the Talmud, to have run blood to the sea, and the Romans lost a great number of troops in the siege. The power of the Jews was broken for ever by a destruction which must have decimated the nation, and the seat of the Sanhedrim was withdrawn finally to Galilee, having been situated at Jamnia up to this date since the time of the destruction of Jerusalem.
The only site which seems really suited for the important fortress of Bether is the village Bittîr, on the south side of the valley of the same name, thirty-five English miles from the sea, and about five from Jerusalem. On every side, except the south, it is surrounded by deep and rugged gorges, and it is supplied with fresh water from a spring above the village. On the north the position would have been impregnable, as steep cliffs rise from the bottom of the ravine, upon which the houses are perched. The name exactly represents the Hebrew, and the distances agree with those noticed by Eusebius and in the Talmud. Nor must the curious title be forgotten, which is applied to a shapeless mass of ruin on the hill, immediately west of Bittîr, for the name, Kh[)u]rbet el Yehûd--"ruin of the Jewsâ--may be well thought to hand down traditionally, among the natives of the neighbourhood, the memory of the great catastrophe of Bether.
The lofty but narrow ridge of the watershed which runs out south from Bittîr is the scene of another great tragedy in Jewish history. It is a bare and rocky hill, the summit of which, 3260 feet above the sea, is called Râs Sherifeh, and it extends to a lower saddle, upon which stand the ruins of Beit Skâria, the ancient Beth Zachariah. The ridge commands a fine view both east and west, being the very backbone of Judea. On the one side are the bare white hills round Bethlehem, and the fantastic peaks of the Judean Desert, with the great wall of the Moab mountains far beyond; on the other, the long spurs of the 'Arkûb, resembling waves, with gleams of white chalk, like the surf, on their sides.