The Jewish War of 66-70 was not the cataclysmic event that produced the burgeoning of christianity: Greco-Roman/Judean history you never learned in Sunday/Hebrew school

As noted previously, early Chrisitan history claims the Jewish war of 66-70 as the cataclysmic event that crushed the spirit of the Judean people.  The destruction of the Temple, it is presumed, was sufficient to teach the Judean people that they had been vanquished, and was the catalyst for proto-Christian communities to emerge.  This is not quite what happened.

After the Judean garrison at Elephantine assisted Augustus in his victory over Cleopatra, and after the Judean populace was disarmed by Augustus because of the impossibility of subsuming Judean cultic practice into Roman cultic practice, tensions between the Judean population and the Greco-Roman population increased, punctuated by periodic gradually violent events.  These events occurred, mainly in .Judea.   There were, however, incidents which occurred in other parts of the Roman Empire, notably in Alexandria where pogroms targeted the Judean community there.
These tensions erupted as  Jewish War, which began in 66 CE. There multiple causes for the War, among them religious tensions between Greco-Romans and Judeans, and tensions regarding taxation.  Judeans overwhelmed the Roman military garrison of Judaea.  Agrippa II fled Jerusalem for Galilee accompanied by Roman officials.  The Legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, brought the Syrian army to restore order.  The legion was ambushed and defeated by Judeans in the battle of Beth Horon, which shocked Roman leadership.
Vespasian and his son Titus were given command of the Roman army.  They assembled four legions and began a counter attack, starting in Galilee, in 67 CE. The revolt ended when legions under Titus’ command destroyed the center of Judean resistance, and the Temple, in Jerusalem in 70 CE.

Following the Jewish War (which was written about with a great deal of self-justification and self-promotion by Josephus), there were two other wars waged by Judeans against Rome.   The first of those was the Kitos War (115–117) known in Hebrew as “the Rebellion of the exile.”

The Kitos War was a series of major revolts by diaspora Jews in Cyrene, Cyprus, Mesopotamis and Aegyptus.  These revolte spiraled out of control, and resulted in a widespread slaughter of Romans and others (200,000 in Cyrene, 240,000 in Cyprus according to Dio) by the Judean rebels. The revolts were finally crushed by Roman legions, led principally by the Roman general Lusius Quietus.  The name by which the the conflicts are known is a corruption of his name.

In 115, the emperor Trajan commanded the eastern campaign against the Parthian Empire.  The Parthians had invaded Armenia and had placed a pro-Parthian king on its throne.  In Roman eyes, this constituted an encroachment into the Roman sphere of influence.  The Parthian Empire and the Roman Empire had shared control of Armenia.  Parthian imposition of a pro-Parthian king upset the balance of power.  Rome was compelled to answer power with power.

Trajan's army succeeded in conquering Mesopotamia.  In the army’s wake,  Judean rebels began attacking the small garrisons left behind.  A revolt in Cyrenaica spread to Egypt, then to Cyprus, which in turn precipitated a revolt in Judea.  An uprising in Lydda threatened to disrupt the supply of grain from Egypt to the front in Mesopotamia.  Judeans spread the revolt throughout the conquered provinces.  Nisibis, Edessa, Seleucia and Arbela, cities that had large Judean populations, joined the revolt and killed the Roman garrisons there.
Lukuas, who was also called “Andreas,” and who called himself “king” (according to Eusebius), led the Judeans of Cyrenaica.  They destroyed Roman temples dedicated to Hecate, Jupiter, Apollo, Artemis and Isis.  They also destroyed civil buildings which were symbols of Rome, including the Caesareum, the basilica and the public baths.
Paulus Orosius, a 4^th century CE Christian, recorded the revolt which so depopulated Cyrenaica that Hadrian had to establish new colonies there:
"The Jews ... waged war on the inhabitants throughout Libya in the most savage fashion, and to such an extent was the country wasted that, its cultivators having been slain, its land would have remained utterly depopulated, had not the Emperor Hadrian gathered settlers from other places and sent them thither, for the inhabitants had been wiped out." (Orosius, Seven Books of History against the Pagans)
Dio writes:
"'Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two, from the head downwards. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators. In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt, also, they performed many similar deeds, and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There, likewise, two hundred and forty thousand perished. For this reason no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon the island by force of the wind, he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan.”  (Dio, Rome, vol V)
After the destruction in Cyernaica, Lukuas led his Judeans towards Alexandria.  They entered the city, which had been abandoned by Roman troops during the governance of Marcus Rutilius Lupus. They set fire to the city. They destroyed Egyptian temples and the tomb of Pompey.  Trajan sent praefectus praetorio Quintus Marcius Turbo with new troops, but Egypt and Cyrenaica were reconquered only in autumn 117 CE.

In Cyprus, a Judean named Artemion assumed leadership of Judean rebels there, taking control of the island, and killing thousands of Roman civilians.  Cypriot Judeans who participated in the great uprising against the Romans under Trajan (117 CE) are reported to have massacred 240,000 Greeks.  A small Roman army was dispatched to the island which soon reconquering the capital. After the revolt had been fully defeated, laws were enacted which  prohibited Judeans  from living on the island.

While Trajan reconquered Nisibius (in Turkey), Edessa, and Seleucia on the Tigris (in Iraq) each of which had large Judean communities, another rebellion sprang up in Mesopotamia
Trajan had brought Parthamaspatas, a pro-Roman son of the Parthian king Osroes, his entourage. Trajan had him crowned King of the Parthians in Ctesiphon. "Trajan, fearing that the Parthians, too, might begin a revolt, desired to give them a king of their own. Accordingly, when he came to Ctesiphon, he called together in a great plain all the Romans and likewise all the Parthians that were there at the time; then he mounted a lofty platform, and after describing in grandiloquent language what he had accomplished, he appointed Parthamaspates king over the Parthians and set the diadem upon his head." (Dio). Once this was done, Trajan moved north to take command of the siege of Hatra.
The siege lasted through the summer of 117 CE, Ttajan suffered the effects of years of constant campaigning in the baking eastern heat. He had a stroke from the heat.  He began the long journey back to Rome to recover. Leaving Seleucia, the his health deteriorated rapidly. He was taken ashore at Selinus in Cilicia, where he died.  His successor, Hadrian, acceded in 118 CE.
Meanwhile Lukuas fled to Judea.  He was pursued by Marcius Turbo, who sentenced to death the brothers Julian and Pappus, who had been key leaders in the rebellion.
Lusius Quietus, conqueror of the Judeans of Mesopotamia, was put in command of the Roman army in Judaea.   He laid siege to Lydda, where rebel Judeans had gathered under the leadership of Julian and Pappus.
When Hadrian acceded, Quietus, whom Trajan had regarded favorably and who had served Rome so well, was quietly stripped of his command. He was murdered in unknown circumstances in the summer of 118 CE, possibly by the orders of Hadrian.
Hadrian decided to end the war, abandoning much of Trajan's eastern conquests and stabilizing the eastern borders. Although he abandoned the province of Mesopotamia, he re-installed Parthamaspates, who had been ejected from Ctesiphon by the returning Osroes, as king of a restored Osroene. Osroene would retain a precarious independence as a buffer state, sandwiched between the two empires into the next century.
The situation in Judaea remained tense for the Romans.   Hadrian  decided to move the  Legio VI Ferrara into Caeserea Maritima in Judean.

In 130 CE, Hadrian visited the Eastern Mediterranean.  According to Dio, he decided to rebuild Jerusalem as the Roman city of Aelia Capitolina.  This decision, with other sanctions against Judeans, was among the reasons for the next war:  the Bar Cochba revolt of 132 CE.  The Bar Cochba revolt was a brutal rebellion, in which both Romans and Judeans suffered loss of life.  When the rebellion ended, much of the Judean population had perished, and Hadrian enacted a ban on Judean cultic practice.  The ban was only lifted in 137 CE when Hadrian himself died.