Preface: The land of Israel today is for all intents and purposes the same area as was encompassed by the ancient country known as Judaea. Throughout historical texts the names Israel and Judaea are used interchangeably.

 

In my last paper I recounted how Abraham came to the land of Canaan and the Jewish people settled there. When a famine occurred in the land Jacob took his sons to Egypt where they lived prosperously under the Hyksos for many years. When a new dynasty replaced the Hyksos they enslaved the Jews in Egypt. After the Exodus the Jews under Joshua’s leadership re-entered the land of Canaan where they settled. A series of leaders and later Kings led to peace and prosperity until King Solomon’s death. What I have briefly recounted is 1,000 years of Jews in the land of Judaea, today’s Israel. After the death of King Solomon the Jews were to experience trouble once more but were also to continue to inhabit the land. And so the second part of our story begins.

 

Note this! “In the beginning of my reign…I besieged Samaria… [Its] inhabitants I carried away. I carried away 27,290 of its inhabitants. The remainder of them I permitted to retain their goods [and stay]. People from [other] lands which I had taken I settled there. My men I set over them as governors. Tribute and taxes I set over them.”  So said Sargon King of Assyria.

 

This statement refers to the fall of Samaria, otherwise known as the Northern Kingdom of Israel, in 720 B. C. E. Deportations of indigenous peoples were standard Assyrian practice. Those deported were generally the royal family, the aristocracy, the army, the trades and skilled craftsmen and the clergy. Those left in the conquered land were the peasants. This was the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora and is recounted in the Bible, the book of Kings, and confirmed in two Assyrian cuneiform tablets discovered by archeologists. The Assyrian record shows the Jews were dispersed to three places: today’s northern Iraq, today’s northern Iran, and today’s Syrian Turkish border. These people, then, became the lost tribes of Israel.

 

The Assyrian record ends in 606 with the fall of their empire to the Babylonians. We know all too well today that Babylon is part of modern day in Iraq. The powerful Babylonians continued their westward march to confront their rival Egypt and in doing so Egypt’s ally Judaea, the Southern Kingdom of Israel. As the Babylonians entered Judea they deported many of the Jews by force including the prophet Ezekiel and installed a puppet Jewish King. After a good deal of strife and skirmishes came a final uprising against the Babylonians and King Nebuchadnezzar marched on Jerusalem utterly destroyed it along with the first Temple that had been built by King Solomon to house the Ten Commandments. By 586 B.C.E. the ruin was complete. The Babylonians practiced the same methods as the Assyrians. The most important of the Jews were taken captive to Babylon and the peasants were left behind under a vassal state administered by some of the Jewish royal family. However, one important difference occurred with this conquest, the land was not resettled with foreigners.

 

Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 and a series of intrigues placed many different Kings at the head of the Babylonians until 539 when the Persians conquered their kingdom in one night. The time of Babylonian supremacy was only a period of about seventy years, the lifespan of one man. They arose very quickly and descended even faster. Yet to this day they are well remembered and not always as the infamously cruel peoples they were.

 

The Persians were an enlightened people generally hailing from today’s Iran. Within a year the Persians controlled all of the Middle East except Egypt. Their King Cyrus allowed conquered people to continue observing their respective religious customs a policy not unique to the Kingdom of Judah. Over the ensuing years some 50,000 Jewish refugees returned to their land from the former Babylonian empire. In 538 in what is known as the Edict of Cyrus the King said quote “concerning the house of G_d at Jerusalem, let the house be [rebuilt]…let the foundations be strongly laid…the [height to be 90 feet]…and let the expenses be given out of the king’s house; and also let the gold and silver vessels…which Nebuchadnezzar took forth out of the temple…be restored and brought back.

 

Cyrus understood that if he allowed the people he ruled to continue their own customs they would become his allies, an important consideration for a far flung empire. Those of the Northern Kingdom of Samaria were resentful of the returnees as they posed a potential economic conflict on already tight resources. But the mass of people and their returned wealth proved too much for resistance and in 515 B.C.E. the second Temple was complete and rededicated. This entire account may be found in the archeological record as well as the Book of Ezra. In total Jerusalem encompassed about 30 acres with four or five thousand residents with the rest of the Jewish population spread throughout Judah. Jerusalem became the capital of the Persian province.  The importance ascribed to the city by the Persians served to further reinforce the Jewish feeling about its treasured capitol.

 

However, the Jews of this period were adrift without a spiritual leader. Jewish society degenerated into intermarriage; forsaking of Temple service; priests favoring the rich and partial interpretations of the Torah.

 

In 457 B.C.E. Ezra came to Jerusalem from Babylon and reinstituted Jewish law as it had been known before; Ezra being described as quote “a ready scribe in the Law of Moses, which the Lord, the G_d of Israel, had given. For Ezra had set his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statues and ordinances.”

 

A new Persian King Artaxerxes proclaimed: “I make a decree, that all they of the people of Israel, in my realm, that are minded of their own free will to go with [Ezra] to Jerusalem, go[!].”  Artaxerxes further proclaimed that the Jewish people be free of all taxes and tributes.  Ezra compelled the Jews in Judaea to divorce their wives who had been taken from among the non-Jewish tribes in the area. Three years later Nehemiah was appointed governor of Judaea and in 445 he rebuilt the city walls of Jerusalem.

 

At this time the Jewish people now numbered some 70,000 living in and near Jerusalem. Ezra and Nehemiah gathered the people together in a mass audience to proclaim and teach the laws of the Sabbath and other holy rituals that the people accepted.

 

Nehemiah returned to Babylon. Then some twelve years later he journeyed back to Jerusalem and found the people once again in disarray and not following the laws he and Ezra had laid before them. At this time he removed the priests and installed those loyal to him. As Ezra continued to teach the people the meaning of the laws of the Torah, he embodied himself as what could be known as the first Rabbi. No longer were there prophesies, but a religion based upon the Law of Moses and interpreted so the people would have a path through life. This was the beginning of classical Judaism. Throughout this period of teaching, the Jews lived in peace. And by 397 B.C.E. when the people coalesced into unified religious practice, the Jews were prospering.

 

At the crossroads of the world’s great powers, Egyptians and Persians, Assyrians and Babylonians, the Jews had experienced continuing subjugation to foreign rule. Now came one of the most prolific conquerors of all time, Alexander the Great. In 332 he defeated the Persian King Darius and took all of Samaria in the north and Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel, including Jerusalem. Generally when he conquered a city, he demolished every structure standing and sold all the people into slavery, but Israel was spared, Jerusalem fortified; this began the Hellenic period in Israel, which was to last almost 200 years. Alexander’s own reign was to be short-lived for at age 32 he contracted Malaria and died. His infant son was murdered and the generals of his army began wars of Succession.

 

In 320 B.C.E. Ptolemy established his dominion over Egypt and began to capture the nearby land of Judah and also Gaza, Joppa, Samaria and in 302 Jerusalem, together comprising virtually all of Judaea or Israel. In Egypt he founded the dynasty of the Ptolemies and in Israel the Jews lived in peace and prospered. By this time Jerusalem and its nearby environs contained 120,000 Jews. The Ptolemies reigned over Egypt and Judah until a new power arose, the Seleucids (selloosids) in 198 B.C.E.

 

The twists and turn in political intrigue would eventually turn the Seleucids from friends to foe. However, when they were aided by the people of Jerusalem in overthrowing the Ptolemies, Seleucid King Antiochus (Anti a kus)  the third returned the favor by freeing any Jewish slaves that could be found, restoring their property, returning exiles to Jerusalem and exempting the people from taxes. He even fattened their treasury with goods and commodities necessary for Temple function and every-day life.

 

When the gracious and wise King Antiochus III died he was succeeded by Antiochus IV who possessed far less tolerance and wisdom. A new High Priest was appointed in Jerusalem who attempted to Hellenize the population and led the new King to believe the treasures of the Jewish Temple were his for the looting. Thwarted in his efforts in 175 B.C.E., considerable unrest followed. Antiochus IV was enmeshed in a series of military campaigns and after one unsuccessful attempt in Egypt he sacked Jerusalem on his way back and established a direct presence leading to the outlawing of Judaism in 167. Subsequently the Jewish priest Mattathias started the Maccabean war and Jerusalem was recaptured with the Temple rededicated by the Jews in 164. To this very day, over 2000 years later, Jews still celebrate the victory as the holiday of Chanukah.

 

This began the period of the Jewish Hasmonean Empire. The first leader was Judah the Maccabee. Today the quadrennial celebration of the Maccabean games around the world, known as the Jewish Olympics, celebrates this fearless leader and his warrior people. While nominally under Seleucid authority, lasting peace with Israel was sorely needed and in 162 a new Seleucid King issued a proclamation in support of Judaism thereby nullifying his predecessor’s woeful edict.

 

Judah Maccabee was followed by Jonathan who consolidated and expanded Jewish lands. The Jewish people had never left the land under all these foreign rulers. They had rebuilt their temple in Jerusalem and now found a new independence that had been missing since the beginning of Persian and Hellenistic rule.

 

Jonathan soon forged an alliance with his former enemies the Seleucids and in so doing joined an extensive and powerful imperial empire. He also made contact with the Romans and Spartans in an effort to expand the international scope of Judaea.  He was named head of the Kingdom as well as High Priest of the Temple. This act of combining state politics with religion, most scholars agree, was what prompted the formation of the sect known as the Essenes who under their own High Priest removed themselves to the desert to live a life of their own; but not, however, to author the Dead Sea Scrolls, a foolish and self-serving theory by a group of insular French archeologists that has since been thoroughly discredited. However, that is the subject of another paper.

 

The Kingdom had now become almost completely autonomous, yet still part of the Seleucid Empire. This was to change with the murder of Jonathan in 143 by Seleucid envoys, which began a new era of complete independence for the land of Israel.

 

To review: Jerusalem had been the capital of an independent nation for four hundred years from the time of David to the Babylonian conquest and then spent the next four hundred years under Assyrian, Persian, and Hellenistic control before it once again became an independent nation under the Jewish Hasmoneans.

 

Under foreign control the land of Judaea had been diminished to an area surrounding the outskirts of Jerusalem. However a series of Hasmonean leaders, who viewed themselves as the successors of Israel’s biblical leaders, instituted a program of regaining the promised lands through military conquests including Gaza, Ashkelon, Joppa and the area beyond the Jordan River, known today as the “West Bank,” which I remind you had historically always been Jewish land and obviously viewed that way by the Hasmoneans, some 2,000 years ago.

 

The people in these newly consolidated, formerly Jewish lands, were, however, no longer Jewish and were often exiled, killed in battle, or converted to Judaism upon conquest.  Just as so clearly dictated in earlier Torah text, the laws of Deuteronomy, the Hasmoneans wiped out idolatry and paganism in the retaken lands and resettled Jews there who had been absent for four hundred years. Jerusalem, always the capitol under Jewish as well as non-Semitic rulers, expanded from 5,000 inhabitants to over 25,000.

 

As the Romans next ascended to power, they needed outposts for military protection and taxes. In 63 B. C. E. General Pompeii captured Jerusalem without much struggle. However, the Hasmoneans who were the Jewish Royal family, proved skilled leaders and for all intents and purposes, the people were left by the Romans in peace. There were still inner dissentions among the people of Jerusalem, many who wished to see the Hasmoneans ushered out of power and bristled under new Roman control.

 

For several years there was great strife in Israel. Rome had split the Kingdom into five districts with distinct political authority to dilute Hasmonean power; a practice not uncommon in many Roman conquests. A new power came to fore with the ascension of Antipater (an tip a ter) a Jew from Idumea, which was in the southern portion of Judea. He had married into a prominent non-Jewish family of Nabataeans. Through a series of revolts, battles and intrigue, Antipater gained some control only to be later assassinated. He was to be most famous for siring a son. That son, Herod, was forced to flee to Rome. He returned some few years later with a Roman army that by 37 B.C.E. successfully conquered Judaea and Jerusalem. Through his alliances with Rome and successful negotiations with a series of emperors, Herod was able to regain the land formerly consolidated by the Hasmoneans; and while Syria remained separate he was given rights of control for this area too.

 

To recall the land; while under foreign influence, Israel was once again a Kingdom stretching as far and farther than the borders proscribed 1700 years earlier in the time of Abraham.

 

Herod was both a brutal and great leader. He viciously crushed any semblance of rebellion among the people, which put him in good stead with the Romans. He also continuously upgraded Jerusalem the eternal capitol. Adding extensively to its city walls, buildings, amenities, trade and most importantly he significantly rebuilt expanded the second temple of the Jews, which had been completed on the foundations of the first temple some five hundred years earlier. Recent excavations have found numerous Herodian structures built so well they are as solid today as they were 2000 years ago. During his reign, Judaea with its Jerusalem capitol was an independent kingdom in the Roman Empire.

 

A review of Herod’s building campaign is instructive:

 

“When Herod came to Jerusalem, it consisted only of the City of David, the Temple Mount and the Upper City, and was surrounded by the wall which [historian] Josephus Flavius called ‘the First Wall’. This wall was originally built by the Hasmoneans, who in several places used remains of the fortification from the First Temple period. Herod improved this wall mainly by building towers, one of which – the Tower of David – stands to this day, and built an additional wall for the city – the Second Wall.  The climax of Herod’s endeavor was the rebuilding of the Temple Mount, with the Temple at its center. Here Herod demonstrated outstanding fortification ability: he not only enlarged the area of the Temple Mount, but also refashioned its surroundings by building gates and passages through its southern and western walls. He rebuilt the Temple itself almost entirely. The need for many large gates to the Temple Mount resulted from the Temple’s role as a center of religious, social and political life in Judea. Three times a year, thousands of people came here to fulfill the pilgrimage commandment and to offer sacrifices.”[1]

 

Herod’s greatest error was jealousy of his own sons and a violent temper. Those sons who were intelligent, mighty and crafty were summarily put to death leaving only the weak minded and ill spirited sons to follow. Herod came to realize his grave mistake in eliminating the most capable rulers from his dynasty and at the end wrote a will that separated the Kingdom into five regions once again; each for a particular son. He died in 4 B.C.E. It was at about this time Jesus of Nazareth was born. With the death of Herod his son Archelaus was given central Judea, Idumea and Samaria, most of what comprises today’s Israel. Archelaus ruled for ten years until diminished in power he was recalled by the Romans and exiled to Gaul. Therefore, within only ten years of Herod’s death the great Kingdom was once again reduced and made an administrative territory subject to Rome’s rule in Syria. Autonomy the Jewish Kings had worked so hard to maintain vanished. What was to follow under Roman rule was a schism in the Jewish religion and a tragedy at the hands of the Romans that is mourned every day of the year in the land of Israel. In my next paper I will explore the events leading up to one of the most remarkable religious and political transformations the earth has ever known.



[1] Dr. D. Bahat, Israel: Past & Present, (Rome: Visioin S. r. l., 1998), ISBN 88-8162-083-9.