The history of the Jewish people spans the known history of mankind and begins in the caves of Hebron, about twenty miles south of Jerusalem. Genesis describes how Abraham purchased the cave and the lands around it. Its "stones are mute witnesses to constant strife and four millennia of religious and political disputes." "No race has maintained over so long a period so emotional an attachment to a particular corner of the earth's surface." And this land has been promised to them by God, who elected them the Chosen People. Moses has been deemed the founder of the first ethical monotheistic religion, from which both the Christian and Muslim religions derive. The Mosaic Code made no distinction between the secular and the religious, rendering all crimes sins and all sins crimes.
The Israelites unified their kingdom around 1000 BC. In the 10th century BC, "David became the most successful and popular king Israel ever had." He established "a national and religious capital" in Jerusalem and passed the kingdom on to his son, Solomon, who built the First Temple. Two centuries later, most of Israel was occupied and crushed by the Assyrians. Jerusalem survived but was captured by the Babylonians in 597 BC, and the Temple was destroyed. Many of Israel’s people were forced into captivity, and Judaism entered a phase when more Jews lived in the diaspora than in the Promised Land. The Babylonian Exile was brief, and the returnees built the Second Temple. Alexander’s Greeks occupied Judea but were ultimately expelled. A century of expansion followed, but the looming Roman Empire soon appeared, and in 63 BC, Israel became a Roman client state.
For the thirty years prior to the Christian era, the state was ruled by Herod the Great, a ruthless, aggressive Jew who expanded the state and greatly enhanced the Temple. It is believed that as many as two and a half million of the world’s eight million Jews lived in Palestine during his reign. "The death of Herod the Great ended the last phase of stable Jewish rule in Palestine until the mid-twentieth century." The ensuing Roman oppression led to uprisings in 66 AD and 135 AD. This era coincided with the spread of the new religion of Jesus Christ, which rejected the strictures of the Mosaic Code and focused on salvation through belief and grace. Rome’s unhappiness was fueled by the Jews’ rebelliousness and their unwillingness to treat with people of other religions or adhere to Roman ways.
"The Great Revolt of 66 AD and the siege of Jerusalem constitute one of the most important and horrifying events in Jewish history." The protracted war led to the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, when it fell to the Romans, who destroyed the Temple and most of the city. Seven decades later, the Jews again rebelled and were once again crushed. "The two catastrophes effectively ended Jewish state history in antiquity." It also ended the cooperative relationship between Judaism and Christianity, which had shared much but ultimately broke over Christ’s divinity. The Jewish population was decimated, but they survived because their leaders were able to make the Torah into "a system of moral theology and a community of extraordinary coherence." Judaism was no longer centrally focused but more localized in synagogues and led by rabbis. The religious themes remained the same as they spread throughout the Middle East and into central Europe. External peace and internal harmony "were essential for a vulnerable people without the protection of a state." The faith, as embodied in the Torah, was immutable and not subject to the countless schisms, heresies, and philosophical controversies that roiled Christianity. As for Palestine, it was Roman, then Christian, and in 636 AD conquered by the forces of Islam. Mohammed sought to destroy polytheistic paganism by "giving the Arabs Jewish ethical monotheism in a language they could understand." Jewish life in the Christian world was somewhat tenuous but safer in the Islamic theocracy.
This is a topic of great importance and interest, but a very challenging read—one whose complexities require me to attend to it piecemeal. One of the most difficult aspects is that I am looking for the history in the secular sense and have little interest in the religious aspects. More to follow in the future.
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