We all know some history from the Bible. We know it was once called the Land of Canaan and that is where Abraham journeyed when he left Ur in Mesopotamia. That was around 2100 BC. Before Abraham had any children, God promised him that one day his descendants wiould exceed the number of stars in the sky and that they would occupy Canaan which is referred to as “The Promised Land”. When he was about 90 years old, Abraham had a son by his wife Sara’s servant, Hagar, (at Sara’s request). That son was named Ismael and tradition has it that he is the father of the Arabs. A decade or so later, Sara, at age 100, gave birth to her only child, Isaac. Isaac had two sons and the youngest was Jacob who later in life was given the name Israel by God. Israel was the father of 12 sons whose names represent 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel including the tribe of Judah from whence the name “Jew” is derived. The other two tribes were named after the two sons of Israel’s 11th son, Joseph. Joseph was sold into slavery by his older brothers and ended up becoming Pharoah’s chief of staff. During a terrible famine, Joseph invited his family to move to Egypt where they were given land and became shepherds. Over the next four centuries, the descendants of Israel went from being honored guests to becoming slaves. They prayed to God for deliverance from their captivity and so God sent Moses in around 1,450 BC to lead His Chosen People out of Egypt back to Canaan, “The Promised Land”. They arrived around 1,400 BC. During the course of their journey, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible known as the Torah by the Jews and the Pentateuch by Christians. The Torah is basis for most Jewish law.
Israel reached its zenith in the middle of the 10th century BC when Solomon was king and built the first temple in Jerusalem. After Solomon, the kingdom was split in two: the one in the south consisted of two tribes, Judah and Benjamín, and one in the north was made up of the other ten tribes. From that point on, the Israelites were pretty much at the mercy of their more powerful neighbors. In 722 BC, Assyria conquered the northern kingdom and obliterated its culture by sending most of its inhabitants to other parts of the Assyrian empire and bringing in new inhabitants to what became known as Samaria. Those people conquered by the Assyrians are sometimes referred to as the Lost Tribes of Israel.
The southern kingdom, referred to as Judah (Benjamín was a much smaller tribe), rocked along for another century and a half until in 586 BC when they were conquered by the Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar. The Babylonians plundered and then destroyed the magnificent temple Solomon had built. (Included in the plunder was the Ark of the Covenant a la Indiana Jones fame.) The leading people of Judah were taken captive and forcibly resettled in Babylon (where Bagdad is today). Over a half century later, Babylon was conquered by the Persians, led by Cyrus the Great. Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Palestine in 538 BC, some 70 years after they had been exiled. One of the first things the returning Jews did was start building a new temple which was completed in 515 BC. About 75 years later, the then king of Persia, Artaxerxes I, allowed his cupbearer, Nehemiah, a Jew, to return to Jerusalem and assist with beautifying and dedicating this second temple. (Ezra was a contemporary.) At that time, Palestine was a province within the Persian Empire being governed by a satrap appointed by the Persian king. That is approximately where the Old Testament ends.
The New Testament picks up with the birth of Jesus, which scholars think was actually around 5 BC. There is no more Persia Empire. Palestine became a province in the Roman empire. There was a new temple in Jerusalem – much larger and grander than the first temple built by Solomon. It was built by King Herod, who was the king of the Jews when Jesus was born. The New Testament covers a period of about 100 years, though it is very sketchy on one of the most significant events in the history of Palestine from the standpoint of the Jews: the Jewish Roman War from 66-70 AD. We will cover that in the third segment. The most significant event in human history occurred during the New Testament era: Jesus’s incarnation, his ministry, his death and resurrection, and the establishment of Christianity as a religion.
In my next post, I will fill in the gap between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New.
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