Ah, my earlier comment was made a bit too soon. It ended exactly like my own attempts to play as Judea.
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It was a nice story while it lasted, in the end I guess this had to happen. Hope to see more from you in the future, and remember Always look on the bright side of life 
Thanks for all the comments. I won't be able to do anything else until the end of June, as Rome is on my home PC and my uni laptop won't run it. Hopefully by then we'll have another patch.
i had a semi-successful judeah game once. i started as rome and used all my money to start a revolt in judeah and used my armies to maintain their independence in the resulting revo war. then i switched to judeah (luckily the egypt and seleucids were fighting still) and quickly colonized the surrounding area and took petra very quickly. then during a very small civil war, i took damascus and phoenecia from seleucids. and lucky me, armenia had taken iberia and pontus so they were a big enough threat (as my allies ) to keep seleucids out. so i started a revo in cyrene and thus deprived both my neighbouring empires of iron and easy expansion points. the jews win again
) to keep seleucids out. so i started a revo in cyrene and thus deprived both my neighbouring empires of iron and easy expansion points. the jews win again 
I would look forward to reading a longer Judea AAR... Too bad I dont have Rome judea would be one of my top nations to play