Over What Were Families Torn Apart in First Century Palestine
Ancient State of israel: A Brief History
When scholars refer to "ancient Israel," they often refer to the tribes, kingdoms and dynasties formed by the aboriginal Jewish people in the Levant (an area that encompasses mod-day State of israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Hashemite kingdom of jordan and Syria).
Scholars describe largely on three sources to reconstruct the history of ancient State of israel — archaeological excavations, the Hebrew Bible and texts that are not plant in the Hebrew Bible. The use of the Hebrew Bible poses difficulty for scholars as some of the accounts are widely idea to exist mythical.
Early history
The earliest mention of the give-and-take "Israel" comes from a stele (an inscription carved on stone) erected past the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah (reign ca. 1213-1203 B.C.) The inscription mentions a military campaign in the Levant during which Merneptah claims to have "laid waste product" to "State of israel" amongst other kingdoms and cities in the Levant.
The Hebrew Bible claims that the Jewish people fled Egypt as refugees arriving (with some divine assistance) in the Levant. Whether there is whatever truth to this biblical account is a point of contention among modern-24-hour interval scholars. Some scholars recall that in that location was no exodus from Egypt while others call up that some of the Jewish people could have fled Egypt at some signal during the iindmillennium B.C.
In his papers and lectures James Hoffmeier, an archaeologist and professor at Trinity International University, points out that people from the Levant did live in Arab republic of egypt at dissimilar points in Arab republic of egypt'south history. He also notes that the aboriginal city of Ramesses, mentioned in the exodus stories told in the Hebrew Bible, does be and archaeologists have adamant that it flourished for several centuries during the 2ndmillennium B.C., becoming abandoned about 3,100 years ago.
King David
Co-ordinate to the Hebrew Bible a man named David rose to be State of israel's king after slaying a behemothic named Goliath in a boxing that led to the rout of a Philistine army. Rex David led a series of armed forces campaigns that made State of israel a powerful kingdom centered at Jerusalem, according to the Hebrew Bible.
After King David'south death, his son Solomon took over the kingdom and constructed what is now called the Start Temple, a place where god was worshipped. The temple was located in Jerusalem and contained the Ark of the Covenant which, in turn, independent tablets inscribed with the 10 Commandments.
Well-nigh of what scholars know about Male monarch David comes from the Hebrew Bible although fragments of an inscription found at the archaeological site of Tel Dan in 1993 mention a "House of David." The fragmented inscription dates back over 2,800 years. Although the meaning of the words is debated by scholars many call back that it provides evidence that a ruler named David actually existed.
However, a number of archaeologists have noted that show for King David's supposedly vast kingdom is scarce. Jerusalem, which was supposed to be King David's majuscule, appears to have been sparsely populated around 3,000 years ago, says State of israel Finkelstein, a professor at Tel Aviv University.
"Over a century of archaeological explorations in Jerusalem — the uppercase of the glamorous biblical United Monarchy — failed to reveal evidence for any meaningful 10th-century edifice activeness," wrote Finkelstein in a paper published in 2010 in the volume "1 God? 1 Cult? I Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives" (De Gruyter, 2010). Finkelstein says that Male monarch David's kingdom was likely a more modest land.
Over the past few years a 3,000-year-old site now chosen Khirbet Qeiyafa has been excavated by a team of archaeologists. Located west of Jerusalem, the site's excavators have been determined that Khirbet Qeiyafa was controlled by King David. They've fifty-fifty gone and then far as to merits that they've found a palace that may take belonged to Rex David. The excavators are currently preparing their finds for publication.
Northern & southern kingdoms
After the death of King Solomon (sometime around 930 B.C.) the kingdom split into a northern kingdom, which retained the name Israel and a southern kingdom called Judah, so named after the tribe of Judah that dominated the kingdom. Accounts in the Hebrew Bible suggest that grievances over taxes and corvee labor (costless labor that had to be done for the state) played a office in the breakup.
The Hebrew Bible says that at the time of the breakup an Egyptian pharaoh named Shishak launched a military campaign, carrying out a successful raid against Jerusalem and taking war booty dorsum home.
Egyptian records say that around this fourth dimension a pharaoh named Sheshonq I ruled Egypt and launched a military machine campaign into the Levant, conquering a number of settlements. However, it's unclear from the surviving evidence whether Sheshonq I successfully attacked Jerusalem. Many scholars believe that Shishak and Sheshonq are the same pharaohs, although the account of the military expedition told in the Hebrew Bible may non exist fully authentic.
State of israel and Judah co-existed for about two centuries, oftentimes fighting against each other. The terminal war they engaged in destroyed State of israel but left Judah intact. Before its destruction, Israel also fought against a non-Jewish kingdom called Moab. A ninth century B.C. stele created by a Moabite king who discusses the conflict between Israel and Moab is at present in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Assyrian involvement
Betwixt the ninth and seventh centuries B.C., the Assyrian Empire grew in size, conquering an empire that stretched from mod-day Iraq to the borders of Arab republic of egypt. Every bit the Assyrian Empire grew, information technology came into contact with both Israel and Judah. The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser Three claims that an Israeli rex named Jehu was forced to pay tribute to Assyrian King Shalmaneser 3 (reign 859-824 B.C.), the obelisk is now in the British Museum.
The Hebrew Bible states that during the rule of Israel's Rex Pekah (who reigned around 735 B.C.) the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 B.C.) launched a military campaign that led to the loss of several cities that Israel controlled. As Israel's losses mounted, Pekah was assassinated and a new male monarch named Hoshea took control of what was left of State of israel.
Accounts recorded in the Hebrew Bible suggest that the Assyrian campaign confronting State of israel was part of a larger war in which Israel and Judah fought against each other — the Assyrians siding with Judah and a kingdom named Aram siding with Israel.
Hoshea was forced to pay tribute to the Assyrians, the Hebrew Bible says. He rebelled simply was crushed past Assyrian forces around 723 B.C. (the exact appointment is not clear). The kingdom of Israel and so came to an end, and its remaining territory was incorporated into the Assyrian Empire. Many Israelites were deported to Assyria. The Hebrew Bible says that Judah was the last Jewish kingdom standing although it was forced to pay tribute to Assyria.
In 705 B.C., Sennacherib came to the throne of Assyria and, non long afterward, launched a military campaign against Judah that culminated in the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C. Both the Hebrew Bible and cuneiform texts tell of the siege. The Hebrew Bible says that Taharqa, a ruler who controlled both Nubia & Egypt, marched against Sennacherib, something that may have helped end the siege. The Hebrew Bible besides says that at i point, "The angel of the Lord went out and put to expiry a hundred and lxxx-five k in the Assyrian camp. When the people got upwardly the next morning — in that location were all the dead bodies!" (2 Kings 19:35 and Isaiah 37:36)
The cuneiform texts the Assyrians wrote also say that Sennacherib failed to take Jerusalem. They don't specify why, only saying that Sennacherib trapped Hezekiah, the king of Judah, in Jerusalem "like a caged bird" and that the Assyrian king captured other cities that Hezekiah had controlled. The Assyrian texts claim that Hezekiah paid an enormous amount of tribute to Sennacherib before the Assyrian king went dwelling house.
Fall of Judah & Babylonian exile
Ultimately, information technology wasn't the Assyrian Empire that destroyed Judah. Well-nigh a century afterwards Sennacherib'due south unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem, a Babylonian king named Nebuchadnezzar II conquered much of Assyria's former empire and laid siege to Jerusalem, taking the city in 587 B.C., destroying the First Temple (forth with much of the residual of the Jerusalem) and deporting many of Judah's inhabitants to Babylonia. Both the Hebrew Bible and cuneiform tablets written in Nebuchadnezzar II's fourth dimension tell of the events that took place.
The fate of the Ark of the Covenant, which independent tablets recording the ten Commandments, is unknown. Some ancient writers say the ark was brought back to Babylon, while other suggest that it was hidden away. In the millennia afterwards the destruction of the First Temple a number of stories were spun telling tales of the location of the lost Ark.
In recent years, a number of cuneiform tablets take emerged from Iraq revealing details of the lives of Jewish deportees who lived at a village chosen Āl-Yahūdu which ways the "hamlet of Judea." Many of the tablets were purchased by private collectors on the antiquities marketplace, raising concerns that some of the tablets may accept been recently looted.
The tablets were "written past Babylonian scribes on behalf of the Judean families that lived in and around Āl-Yahūdu," wrote Kathleen Abraham, a professor at the University of Leuven in Kingdom of belgium, in a paper she wrote for an exhibition itemize, "Light and Shadows: The Story of Iran and the Jews" (Beit Hatfutsot, 2011).
The "tablets bear witness that the exiles and their descendants had, at least to some extent, adopted the local language, script and legal traditions of Babylonia a relatively brusque time later on their arrival there," wrote Abraham.
The Babylonians were somewhen conquered by the Persian Empire, and the Western farsi king Cyrus the Great (died ca. 530 B.C.) gave the Jews permission to return to Jerusalem.
The Hasmonean Dynasty
The Farsi Empire was nigh destroyed after a serial of stunning defeats inflicted on them by Alexander the Great, who conquered an empire that stretched from Macedonia to Transitional islamic state of afghanistan.
Later on Alexander's death in 323 B.C., his empire rapidly fell autonomously. One of his generals, Seleucus Nicator, formed an empire that eventually controlled what was ancient Israel. Called the "Seleucid Empire" by modern-24-hour interval historians, the empire was passed downward through the Seleucid family unit line.
During the 2ndcentury B.C., the Seleucid Empire began to weaken and a line of Jewish rulers descended from a priest named Simon Maccabeus was able to gain semi-autonomy and eventually full independence from the Seleucids. This line of rulers is called the Hasmonean Dynasty by modern-twenty-four hour period scholars. Past 100 B.C., the Hasmoneans had managed to regain control of the territory that had once been controlled by Israel and Judah and even some territory that those kingdoms had never controlled.
However, the Hasmonean success proved brusque-lived. As Roman power grew in the Mediterranean, the Hasmoneans soon found themselves overmatched. The Roman general Pompey took advantage of a Hasmonean civil war to launch a military expedition into lands controlled by the Hasmoneans. Jerusalem fell to Pompey in 63 B.C. and from that point on the territories that the Hasmoneans controlled were finer under Roman rule.
Herod the Smashing
While the Romans held sway over the former Hasmonean-controlled territories, they preferred not to impose their rule directly. A number of rulers were allowed to control the territories as client kings of Rome.
The near famous of the client kings was Herod the Nifty (lived ca. 73 B.C. to four B.C.). Herod built what is today chosen the "second temple" in Jerusalem, a replacement of sorts for the commencement temple which was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. Herod also synthetic a serial of fantastic palaces at Masada.
Biblical literature ofttimes vilifies Herod, claiming that he tried to seek out and kill baby Jesus, perceiving the babe as a threat to his dominion. One biblical story claims that he killed all the infants living in Bethlehem in hopes of killing Jesus. Scholars are generally skeptical of these biblical claims and doubt that they really happened.
Some scholars think that a group called the Essenes established a retreat at Qumran during (or shortly after) Male monarch Herod'south time. It was at Qumran where the Expressionless Sea Scrolls were found in nearby caves in the 1940'southward and 1950's.
Rebellions confronting Rome
In A.D. 66, tensions betwixt the region's Jewish inhabitants and Roman rulers came to a head. A rebellion started and culminated in A.D. 70 in the siege of Jerusalem and the devastation of the 2nd temple. Resistance connected later on the urban center's fall — the final major stronghold of the rebels was at Masada; it didn't fall until A.D. 73 or A.D. 74, after a protracted Roman siege.
Masada'southward defenders were part of a group that modern-day scholars often refer to as the "Zealots." The ancient writer Josephus (A.D. 37-100) wrote that the Zealots chose to take their ain lives rather than surrender to the Romans. "For the husbands tenderly embraced their wives, and took their children into their arms, and gave the longest parting kisses to them, with tear in their eyes" before they committed suicide, wrote Josephus.
Farther rebellions occurred over the decades. The concluding rebellion was crushed in A.D. 136. The ancient writer Cassius Dio (lived ca. A.D. 155-235) wrote that this last rebellion led to the desolation of the Jewish population. He claimed that Roman forces killed about 580,000 Jewish men.
"Five hundred and 80 thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was by finding out … thus nigh the whole of Judaea was fabricated desolate," Dio wrote. (Translation by Earnest Cary, from volume VIII of the "Loeb Classical Library" published in 1925). Archaeologists are all the same finding treasure hoards buried by people who lived during the rebellion.
In the millennia afterward, the Jewish diaspora spread throughout the globe. It wasn't until the establishment of the modern land of Israel in 1948 that the Jewish people had a homeland once more.
Additional resources
- Museum of the Jewish People
- Biblical Archaeology Society
- Oxford Inquiry Encyclopedia: History of Ancient State of israel
Owen Jarus writes about archaeology and all things about humans' by for Live Scientific discipline. Owen has a bachelor of arts caste from the University of Toronto and a journalism degree from Ryerson University. He enjoys reading about new research and is always looking for a new historical tale.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/55774-ancient-israel.html
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