Another thing worth noting here that may answer the OPs question the family of the Herodian Jewish king at the time of the revolt was allied with the family of Vespasian and Titus and the Herodian princess Berenice was known to have spent a lot of her personal money and time helping Vespasian to become Emperor. She eventually had a 10 year affair with Titus which only ended when Titus became emperor 10 years or so after the Churban around the year 80 CE. I would imagine R Yochanan Ben Zakai would have known about this. It’s also worth noting as an earlier commenter on this thread mentioned that Josephus claimed an almost identical story about himself that he wrote at least a couple hundred years before this story was written down.
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