Ancient Jewish History

1058 Pages·2004·9.94 MB·English

Ancient Jewish History Table of Contents
Ancient Jewish History
The Administration of Judaea
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After the Exile
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The Age of the Patriarchs
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Ancient Gaza
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Archaeology
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The Ark of the Covenant
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The Babylonians
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The Babylonian Jewish Community
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Bet Din
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The Bible On Jewish Links To The Holy Land
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Biblical Figures
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Biblical Times
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The Birth and Evolution of Judaism
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Civilizations and Rulers of the Ancient Middle East
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The Dead Sea Scrolls
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The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years after their Discovery
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Decapolis
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The Diaspora
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Egypt and the Wanderings
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Pharaoh
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Exile
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Gadara
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The Great Assembly
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Hebron
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Hillel and Shammai
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Ancient Jewish History Table of Contents
Idumea/Edom
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Jerusalem
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Jewish High Priests, from Herod to the Destruction of the Temple
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Jews of the Middle East
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Joseph’s Tomb
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Judges of Israel
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The Land of the Hebrews
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The Maccabees
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The Hasmonean Dynasty
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Machaerus
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Maps
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The Monarchy
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The Two Kingdoms
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The Kings of Israel
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The Kings of Judah
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The Name “Palestine”
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The Occupation of Canaan
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Perea/Gilead
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Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes
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The Essenes
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The Philistines
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The Return to Zion
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The Sanhedrin
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The Seven Species
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The Temple
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Timeline for the History of Judaism
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Timeline for the History of Jerusalem
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The Twelve Tribes of Israel
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Tyre
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Via Maris
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Virtual Jewish History Tour
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Weights, Measures, and Coins
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The Western Wall
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Who Were the Hebrews?
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The Administration of Judaea

The Administration of Judaea
Herod the Great, 37-4 BC
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Archelaus, 4 BC-AD 6
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Roman Prefects, AD 6-41
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Coponius, 6-9
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Marcus Ambibulus, 9-12
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Annius Rufus, 12-15
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Valerius Gratus, 15-26
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Pontius Pilate, 26-36
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Marcellus, 36/37
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Marullus, 37-41
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Agrippa I, 41-44
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Roman Procurators, 44-66
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Cuspius Fadus, 44-46?
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Tiberius Iulius Alexander, 46?-48
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Ventidius Cumanus, 48-52
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Antonius Felix, 52-60?
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Porcius Festus, 60-62?
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Albinus, 62-64
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Gessius Florus, 64-66
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Roman Legates, 66-135
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Sextus Vettulenus Cerialis, 70
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Sextus Lucilius Bassus
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Lucius Flavius Silva, 73/4-81
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Cnaeus Pompeius Longinus, 86
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Sextus Hermetidius Campanus, 93
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Atticus, c100
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Caius Iulius Quadratus Bassus, 102/3-104/5
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Quintus Roscius Coelius Pompeius Falco,
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The Administration of Judaea
105-7
?Tiberianus, 114
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Lusius Quietus, 117
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Quintus Tineius Rufus, 132
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Caius Quinctius Certus Publius Marcellus
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Sextus Iulius Severus, 135
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Source: Hugh Elton
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After the Exile

After the Exile
(538-332 BC)
Cyrus
When Cyrus the Persian conquered Mesopotamia and the whole of the
Middle East, he did so for religious reasons. Unlike any conqueror before
him, Cyrus set out to conquer the entire world. Before Cyrus and the
Persians, conquest was largely a strategic affair; you guaranteed your
territorial safety by conquering potential enemies. But Cyrus wanted the
whole world and he wanted it for religious reasons. Barely a century
before, the Persians were a rag-tag group of tribes living north of
Mesopotamia. They were Indo-European—they spoke a language from
the Indo-European family, which includes Greek, German, and English.
To the Mesopotamians, they were little better than animals and so went
largely ignored. But in the middle of the seventh century BC, a prophet,
Zarathustra, appeared among them and preached a new religion. This
religion would become Zoroastrianism (in Greek, Zarathustra is called
"Zoroaster"). The Zoroastrians believed that the universe was dualistic,
that it was made up of two distinct parts. One was good and light and the
other evil and dark. Cosmic history was simply the epic battle between
these two divine forces; at the end of time, a climactic battle would decide
once and for all which of the two would dominate the universe. Human
beings, in everything they do, participated in this struggle; all the gods and
all the religions were part of this epic, almost eternal battle.
Cyrus believed that the final battle was approaching, and that Persia
would bring about the triumph of good. To this end, he sought to conquer
all peoples and create the stage for the final triumph of good. He was the
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greatest conqueror that had ever been seen; at his death, his empire was
exponentially larger than any other empire that had ever existed. His son,
Cambyses, conquered Egypt; the Persians, it seemed at the time, were on
their way to world domination.
Although Zoroastrianism involved two gods—one good and one evil—all
other gods were ranged on one side or the other of this equation. Cyrus
believed Yahweh was one of the good gods, and he claimed that Yahweh
visited him one night. In that vision, Yahweh commanded him to re-
establish Yahweh worship in Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple. Cyrus
ordered the temple rebuilt. But what good is a temple without
worshippers? To this end, he ordered that the Jews in Babylon return to
Jerusalem. In fact, Cyrus sent many people back to the native lands in
order to worship the local gods there, so the situation with the Jews was
not unique. Not all of the Jews went home; a large portion stayed in
Babylon and some had converted to Babylonian religions.
The Rebuilding of the Temple
The salient feature to keep in mind, however, is that Cyrus sent the Jews
home for religious purposes only. Judah was re-established only so
Yahweh could be worshipped, and the Jews were sent to Judah for the
express purpose of worshiping Yahweh. Before the Exile, Judah and Israel
were merely kingdoms; now Judah was a theological state . The shining
symbol of this new state dedicated to Yahweh was the temple of Solomon,
which had been burned to the ground by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC.
Under the direction of Zerubabbel and later Ezra, the temple is rebuilt and
the walls of the city rebuilt by Nehemiah. The rebuilding of the temple
was difficult; very few Jews actually returned home, so the effort was
monumental.
During the Exile, the Jews set about "purifying" their religion; they
attempted to return their laws and cultic practices to their Mosaic
originals. This new-found concern with cultic purity and the Mosaic laws,
combined with the re-establishment of Judah as a theological state,
produced a different society. Hebrew society was almost solely concerned
with religious matters in the Persian period; foreign religions were not
tolerated as they had been before. Non-Jews were persecuted, and foreign
religious expelled. During the Persian period and later, Judah was the state
where Yahweh and only Yahweh was worshipped. Both the Persians and
the Greeks respected this exclusivity, but the Romans would greatly
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offend the Jews when they introduced foreign gods.
The Jews had learned many things from the Persians and actively included
Persian elements in their religion. It's important to note that this occurred
side by side with the effort to purify the religion! Most of these elements
were popular elements rather than official beliefs; they would persist only
in Christianity which arose among the people rather than the educated and
priestly classes. Among these were
a.) adoption of a dualistic universe. In early Hebrew belief,
the universe was dominated only by Yahweh. All history
was the result of two forces: Yahweh and human will.
Perhaps in an effort to make sense of the Exile, the Hebrews
gradually adopted the Persian idea that the universe is
composed of two diametrically opposed forces, one good,
and the other evil. So, after the Babylonian exile, the
Hebrews, in their popular religion, talk about an evil force
opposed to Yahweh, which becomes the "devil" in
Christianity. (Satan in the Hebrew story, Job , is actually a
member of Yahweh's circle; he seems to be some kind of
itinerant prosecuting attorney.)
b.) belief in a dualistic afterlife. Before the Exile, the
Hebrews believed that the soul after death went to a house
of dust which they called "Sheol," to abide for a brief time
before fading completely from existence. This belief was
identical to all other Semitic versions of the afterlife.
Therefore, Hebraism was primarily a this-world religion
before the Exile. The Persians, though, believed that the
souls of the good would reunite with the principle of good
in eternal bliss; the souls of the evil would reunite with the
principle evil to suffer until the final defeat of evil. In
popular religion, the Hebrews adopted this view of the
afterlife. This view of the afterlife powerfully explains
suffering in this life, such as the Exile; cosmic justice is
apparent only at one's death rather than during one's life.
Again, it is only in the popular Jewish religions, such as the
Essenes and the Christians, where this view becomes
orthodox.
For another two hundred years, Persia dominated all of the Middle East
and Egypt, and came within a hair's breadth of conquering Greece. During
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all this time Palestine was a tribute state of Persia. However, in the late
fourth century BC, another man got the idea of conquering the world and
set about doing it with ruthless efficiency. He was a Greek: Alexander of
Macedon. When he conquered Persia in 332 BC, Palestine became a
Greek state, and the children of Yavan would mix once again with the
children of Shem.
Source: The Hebrews: A Learning Module from Washington State
University, ©Richard Hooker, reprinted by permission.
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The Age of the Patriarchs
The Age of the Patriarchs
(~1950-1500 BC)
For the most part, the people surrounding the Hebrews took little interest in
them for much of Hebrew history. The Hebrews themselves don't actually
appear in history until the reign of Marniptah, king of Egypt from about
1224-1211 BC. The son of Raamses I (1290-1224 BC), generally taken to
be the king of Egypt at the time of the Hebrew exodus, Marniptah
undertakes a military campaign in Asia in 1220 BC. In an account of the
campaign inscribed in granite, a list of all the conquered peoples includes
the Israelites who are mentioned as "now living in Canaan."
Before this point, the only history of the Hebrews we have are written by
the Hebrews themselves, in Genesis 12-50. In the Hebrew account of their
own history, they trace their origins back to a single individual, Abraham,
who comes originally from Mesopotamia. The histories of the pre-Egyptian
Hebrews is generally called the age of the patriarchs (patriarch means
"father-ruler"); while it is virtually impossible to date this age since a.) the
Hebrew history of the age is written down after more than a thousand years
had passed and b.) no-one else was interested in the history, scholars place
this age roughly between 1950 and 1500 BC.
Several aspects emerge from this history. First, the history of the patriarchs
indicates that the special election of the Hebrews, made manifest in the
delivery from Egypt, begins before the Egyptian sojourn and delivery. In
Hebrew history, Abraham and his descendants are selected by Yahweh to
be his chosen people over all other peoples. Abraham, who is a Semite
living in Haran, a city in northern Mesopotamia, and whose father, Terah,
comes from the city Ur in southern Mesopotamia, is visited suddenly by
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Yahweh and told to move his family. If Abraham's migration can be dated
to around 1950 BC, this means that his migration from Mesopotamia
would make sense, since the region was collapsing into chaos. Migrating to
the west, Abraham stops at Shechem and is again visited by Yahweh, who
then tells him that all this land will be given to him and his descendants. So
the election of the Hebrews involves a certain unexplained quality (why
pick Abraham) that is partially answered by Abraham's unswerving
obedience when Yahweh asks him to sacrifice his son. But more
importantly, the foundation of the Hebrew view of history is contained in
these patriarchal stories. God ("Elohim" in Hebrew) has a special
purpose in history and has chosen the Hebrews and the Hebrews alone
to fulfill this purpose. In order to fulfill this purpose, God has entered into
a covenantal relationship with the Hebrews and promises to protect them as
a lord protects his servants. As servants, then, the principle duty that
Abraham and his descendants owe to god is obedience.
The second aspect that emerges is that the early Hebrews are nomads,
wandering tribal groups who are organized along classic tribal logic.
Society is principally organized around kinship with a rigid kinship
hierarchy. The relationship with god is also a kinship relationship: anybody
outside the kinship structure (anybody who isn't a descendant of Abraham)
is not included in the special relationship with God. At the top of the
kinship hierarchy is a kind of tribal leader; we use the Greek word,
"patriarch," which means "father-ruler." Well into the monarchical period
and beyond, the Hebrews seem to dynamically remember their tribal
character, for Genesis associates civilization with Cain and his descendants
(meaning that civilization is not a good thing) and the history of the
monarchy is clearly written from an anti-monarchical stance, since it is
made clear that desiring a king is disobedience to God.
The third aspect that emerges is that these tribal groups of early Hebrews
wandered far and wide, that is, that they did not occupy the lands around
Palestine; this occupation would come considerably later. They seem to
freely move from Palestine, across the deserts, and as far as Egypt. At
several points in the narrative, Hebrew tribes move to Egypt in order to
find a better life. It would not be unfair to imagine that the Hebrews were
among the infinite variety of foreigners who overwhelmed Egypt at the end
of the Middle Kingdom.
Beyond this it is difficult to come to certain conclusions. As far as the
religion of the early Hebrews are concerned, it is generally believed that it
had nothing to do with the Yahweh cult which is introduced by Moses, for
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