Kingdom of David
Encyclopedia
Kingdom of David was a part of the Empire Series of history documentaries for the Public Broadcasting Service
(PBS) Public television stations produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting
(OPB) in joint venture with Red Hill Productions of Los Angeles, California.
The documentary chronicles the story of how the Jewish people were able to preserve their culture from being overwhelmed by other more powerful worldly kingdoms. It begins with the Babylonian Exile
where the Judean scribes, realizing that they faced the same fate as their ten northern brothers
of the lost Kingdom of Israel, fought to preserve their identity and culture though the written word
. From there it describes the struggles that the Jewish people faced against the materialism of the Seleucid Empire
to the armed might makes right
attitude of the Roman Empire
. The story culminates with the triumph of individual Jewish sages such as Hillel
, Yochanan ben Zakai
and Akiva in preserving Jewish tradition that has survived to this day.
First aired in 2003 as a series of four 55 minute programs, the series is now available in DVD
and VHS
video tapes.
The 220 minute video presentation is broken down into 4 parts which, in turn, are subdivided into scene selections that are accessible in the Main Menu portion of the DVD.
n king Nebuchadnezzar attacked and destroyed Jerusalem
, the main city of the Judean kingdom
. After its fall, the citizens were taken into exile in Babylonia. Only a few generations earlier their 10 northern cousins
in the Kingdom of Israel had suffered a similar fate and had vanished forever as they had been integrated into the neighboring societies found throughout the region.
In order to fight for their survival as a people, the Judeans decided to write a book instead of taking up armed struggle. They rewrote and edited together stories of their past and assembled them into what we today know as the Hebrew Bible
, or Old Testament. The documentary states that it should not be taken as literal history. It then states that it was written to teach the exiled the reasons why they were in Babylon as well as being a guide as to how they should live their lives.
was born in the city of Ur
in Mesopotamia
. The documentary briefly recounts the stories of Abraham believing in one god and the ultimate test that God gave him to sacrifice his son. Such stories, whether true or not, represent the turning away from idolatry. As a result, Abraham is considered the founding figure of Christianity
, Islam
and Judaism
.
For the scribes in Babylon, simply writing down stories of their ancestors was not enough. Their great challenge was to make sense of their own world. How did such a promised people of God end up near extinction in Babylon? In paganism
, if you are defeated it was because someone else's god was more powerful than yours. But, with monotheism
, if someone is suffering, then the individual must have done something wrong. This new book describes to the Judeans what they did to lose God’s favor.
's encounter with the flaming bush and his involvement with the freeing of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. the Exodus
is where the great epic of Israel starts. According to William G. Dever
, archeologist, the desert can only support a few thousand nomads, not the purported 3-million that legend tells us accompanied Moses. Furthermore, only 1 or 2 sites mentioned in Exodus have been identified. For the scribes to write an accurate historical account of what occurred 700 years earlier was improbable. What was probable was bringing to text the eternal lessons that the story of Moses taught.
that the people were to preserve for all time. God gave them to Moses in a face-to-face meeting. The revolution in the Ten Commandments
was that God cared about how human beings treated each other. One honors God by treating well the person standing in front of him. The commandments were viewed as a legal contract where God will bless an individual if the individual would follow His rules. After Sinai
, all the stories of the Israelites would be whether or not they had obeyed God’s commandments.
, but were really Canaanites themselves. They were the lower classes within Canaanite society that inhabited the countryside. As they told their stories over and over, those stories helped shape a culture. After they became a people, they continued telling the stories about the good and evil in every human heart.
’s story is that of a very flawed man. His problem was not just sex, but the fact that he tried to cover it up through murder. After committing such a sin, his life falls apart. Monotheism triumphs over the king’s laws when David acknowledges his sin. As punishment for his sin, God cursed David and his descendants. For the writers of the Bible, David’s sins and God’s curse on his house help explain the disaster the Israelites would suffer in the years after his death. The curse first manifested itself in 720 BC when the northern tribes were conquered and scattered.
, besides the One True God
. King Josiah
, feeling such practices by his subjects were dooming his country to foreign conquest, rallied the people around a book that had just been discovered while renovating the temple - Deuteronomy
. Most modern scholars feel the book had recently been written and then planted in the temple to be discovered in order to motivate a reformation. The main reform was that God could only be worshiped at one spot only - the Temple in Jerusalem
. As a result, many other religious altars were burned and destroyed along with their attendants. Scholars feel that the beginnings of monotheism by the people as a whole occurred at this time.
tried to warn the people of their grave mistake to no avail. Nebuchadnezzar’s ease at conquering and destroying Jerusalem in 597 BC was proof of God’s curse on David and his heirs.
Judean society would have ceased if not for the scribes putting in writing all the legends of the people. The writings told them the reason for their exile. The message told them that God is fair and if they were being punished there was a reason for it. The message also stipulated that for those who accept their guilt and change their ways, there’s hope.
freed all of the Babylonian’s captives. Not only were the Judeans allowed to return to their ancestral land, but they were given permission to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem.
Many Judeans, however, had found a successful life in their new surroundings and only the adventurous and deeply devout returned. When they did so, they faced a daunting challenge. It had been 70 years since their departure and the land was inhabited by many other groups of people who viewed the returnees as rivals for control of the land. Added to that was the fact that the city of Jerusalem itself was a wasteland that had not been rebuilt. After an initial jubilation, the returnees soon became apathetic and construction of the new temple came to a grinding halt. Law and order was breaking down and eighty years after they had arrived, the return home of the exiles seemed like a horrible mistake.
sent Ezra
to restore order. Ezra, a scribe and priest, brought with him a completed book of rules for the people in Jerusalem to live by - the Torah
(or first five book of the Old Testament). Most of the returnees knew little of this book or its laws as it was a work in progress when they had first left Babylon. After gathering all the returnees in a public square, Ezra read aloud the entire contents of this new book and required the listeners to sign a covenant indicating that they would abide by its rules.
This was considered a democratic revolution as there was no longer any secret knowledge confined to a priesthood class. Everyone could now know what the priests knew. The people and city of Jerusalem were revitalized. The temple was completed and became the central focus of Jewish life. A yearly pilgrimage to the temple to offer a sacrifice became of paramount importance. (Later, when a monetary system replaced the barter system, a farmer from the countryside would sell his best animal, then travel to Jerusalem to purchase another for sacrifice at the temple).
One of the more controversial laws that Ezra had to impose on his subjects was the concept of marrying within the religion so as to keep it pure and uncorrupted. He had the unpleasant task of ordering many unorthodox marriages to be dissolved. Naturally, this led to discord among his subjects and the contents of the Torah pertaining to this topic were fiercely debated in public.
told of a righteous man beset by catastrophe and affliction. Job’s plight challenged the Hebrews’ notion of a God who consistently rewarded the righteous and punished the wicked – a central idea of biblical history. Job moans, “I helped the good, but got only wrong. I hoped for light, and got only darkness.” His suffering poses one of life’s great questions and a critical challenge to Jews: If God does not reward obedience and punish sin, why bother obeying God’s law at all?
with him with its emphasis on mind and body. This new culture proved to be the biggest threat to the Jewish way of life. A new economic system based on monetary exchange replaced the barter system allowing people the freedom to move about the empire. Soon there began a migration from the small villages to larger urban areas. New opportunities arose for the Jewish farmer who could now sell his products in distant markets. Jewish communities were established in other parts of the empire while Greek settlements became common in the Jewish region.
Some conservative Jewish leaders became alarmed that their traditions and ideologies were being buried under this pervasive materialistic culture.
was deeply influenced by Socrates
and Greek philosophy
and applied the Greek tradition of study and debate to the Bible. Ezra had given the people the Torah with its laws to live by. Ben Sira gave the people, who were eager to look for alternatives to Greek culture, the concept of studying the lives of the Bible’s heroes and to search it's pages for Divine wisdom that the stories revealed.
succeeded Alexander upon his death in the early 4th century BC. At first, the Seleucid emperors were content to have Greek culture slowly influence Jewish customs. But, in 185 BC Antiochus IV, derisively labeled the madman in Judea, had a different idea when he decreed that all of his subjects were to follow one common religion in order to unify the empire. That religion was not monotheism.
Antiochus was able to buy off Jason
, the high priest at the Jerusalem Temple. Soon, Jason and other priests began to revoke one of the most visible symbols of the Jewish covenant with God - circumcision. The Greeks loved athletic contests where the athletes participated in the nude. So as to not look out of place, these priests and other Jewish males had cosmetic surgery performed to obliterate this most pronounced symbol of the covenant.
Naturally, many other Jewish leaders took offense at this latest turn of events. It was bad enough that Greek culture worshiped more than one god, but the concept of worshiping the human body above all else was bringing Judea to the breaking point.
refused to pay homage to a statue of Zeus
and took out his anger by killing some of the emperor's emissaries. After fleeing to the countryside, he was able to gather many other supporters to start a major war. When confronted with the prospect of having to break the commandment banning warfare on the Sabbath day, Matathias and 1,000 of his allies chose to stay true to the word and paid the ultimate sacrifice.
After their martyrdom, Mataithias’s son, Judah
, and the other rebels realized that the faith could easily be annihilated if they continued to adhere to that principle. After debating the issue, they came to the conclusion that only offensive Sabbath day warfare was banned and that it was perfectly permissible to conduct defensive operations on that particular day. Judah’s brilliant military campaigns over a 3 year period of time soon earned him the nickname of Maccabee
(hammer) and by 164 BC the Seleucid forces were routed from the country.
took over.
By 152 BC the Seleucid Empire was undergoing internal strife between two rivals to the throne. Jonathan offered his 10,000 strong army to the weaker of the two contenders
in exchange for Judean autonomy. His gamble paid off, Judea regained is sovereignty and Jonathan became the head priest of the Jerusalem temple.
The victory convinced the Judeans of the Bible’s prophecy that God would come to the aid of those who were zealous for the law of God. That conviction would grow in the years ahead and set the stage for a true cataclysm when another great empire arrived in the Middle East - Rome.
ended Judea’s 100 years of independence when he marched through the county. He was amazed to find that the defenders of the city retreated not to a fortress, but to their holy sanctuary, the Temple. He was equally amazed when they refused to interrupt their religious observances to offer resistance when he entered their Temple.
To Rome, Judea was but a small piece on the road to a larger prize, easy access to bountiful Egypt
. To the Jews, Judea was the Promised Land
given to them by God to own.
Even worse for the Jews was that it pitted one Jew against the other - should they revolt or not. Soon their spiritual debates broke out into physical animosity between the various groups.
On one side were the Temple High Priests
and their allies, who formed the most wealthy class within Judaism. The Temple to them was the political and economic heart of Jerusalem. Each year pilgrims flooded its markets to find food and lodging. They spent freely to buy the very best sacrificial animals as animal sacrifices was their only permitted way of worshiping God. Since the High Priests were the only ones allowed to mediate between the average Jew and God, they had an enormous economic stake in maintaining social order through the status quo of Roman rule.
To help them rule Judea, the Romans chose an Arab prince named Herod
, who was known for his boundless ambition and extreme cruelty. To many Jews, crowning a king not descended from David
was blasphemous
. Herod and Rome felt it necessary to launch a series of unmerciful attacks against the various antagonistic Jewish groups to make an example of them so that law and order could be maintained.
To counteract his reputation for cruelty, Herod commissioned an extensive renovation of the Temple. Soon, even Gentile
s were making pilgrimages to Jerusalem to see this marvel of the ancient world and make sacrifices. But the rebels within the Jewish community were not impressed.
did not believe Jews should fight the Romans. Their belief was that God had allowed a Roman occupation because the Biblical prophecy of the End of Days
was at hand. Their solution was to withdraw from civilization and to live as perfect a life as possible by forsaking worldly possessions and sexual relations. They spent most of their time copying religious texts and hiding them in caves near Qumran
. Their legacy is the Dead Sea scrolls
.
When Herod died in 4 BC, chaos erupted as rebels attacked the traitorous upper class Jews. To the Romans, they were brigands, but to many Jews they were seen as Robin Hood
s. Their aim of ending Roman rule was misguided as all they accomplished was social anarchy.
and the Pharisees
believed whoever was the worldly master of Judea did not matter. What mattered was how one lived their life according to their covenant with God. Furthermore, they did not believe one had to be a member of the priesthood to communicate with God, just study His word in the Bible.
When challenged to sum the Torah up "while standing on one foot", Hillel replied “What is hateful to you, do not do to your friend. The rest is the explanation; go and learn.”
, who was influenced by Hillel according to the documentary, went a few steps further by preaching “turn the other cheek” and to make the world a better place. He also was influenced by the Biblical End of Days prophecies.
To Rome He was just one more rabble rousing messiah
. To His followers, His talk of a Heavenly Kingdom
was a reference to an afterlife
and was not a part of this world.
, the Sicarii
, began committing political assassinations. Anyone who collaborated with the Roman authorities was worthy of death.
The people of Jerusalem were deeply divided until the Roman governor attacked the Temple in 67 AD. It was a miscalculated move as all Judeans within Jerusalem united and forced the Roman garrison to flee the city.
A disciple of Hillel, Yochanan ben Zakai
, was one of the most passionate voices for peace. He preached that it did not matter who ruled Judea, what mattered was who ruled an individual's heart.
But many Jews were not ready to make peace with a foreign occupier. Giddy over their success at evicting the Roman garrison, the Zealots openly declared war on Rome. Convinced that they were mad, other groups decided to physically challenge them. House-to-house combat that lasted a week resulted in the city of Jerusalem being severely damaged by fire and looting. The conflict quickly spread throughout Judea. Romans, Greeks and Syrians attacked the Jews, the Jews made reprisals against them as well as each other. Anarchy had replaced social order.
was dispatched with three legions of 60,000 soldiers to the troubled area. The Jewish countryside fled to the walls of Jerusalem upon seeing the advancing Roman army. The historian Josephus
estimated that 100,000 were trapped inside the city walls where anarchy reigned. Six rebel groups vied with one another, destroying their entire food supply. The zealots threatened death to anyone who wished to leave the city. If one did manage to escape, they faced the Roman army and their mercenaries
who would either eviscerate
them, looking for swallowed gold or jewels, or crucify
them. The hills around Jerusalem were deforested due to the number of crosses being erected for crucifixion.
Only the bodies of the dead were allowed by the Zealots to leave the city. Feigning death, Jochanan ben Zakai, with help from his disciples, was able to escape the city laying on a cart amongst a pile of rotting meat.
According to Rabbi Perry Netter, “The Temple was the center of economic life of the Jewish people. It’s as if the Federal Reserve was housed in the Temple. It was the center of the judicial life, the Supreme Court was housed in the temple. It was the center of the religious life as if the high priest was the chief rabbi centered in that building.”
When the temple was destroyed, there was no other branch of government left for the Jews. Without the temple, their future looked bleak indeed.
, an impregnable fortress built by Herod, atop a butte overlooking the Dead Sea, became a place of refuge that the Sachari fled to after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. There’s but one narrow trail, called the Snake, leading to the top of the butte and a small garrison can defend the fortress from a much larger army.
The Romans laid siege to the fortress over a two year period of time. Instead of trying to navigate the treacherous trail, they put their engineering expertise to work and built a massive ramp. The day before they were to breach the walls, Elazar ben Ya'ir
, the Sachari leader, urged all his followers to commit suicide.
, their leader, set up his headquarters and a biblical school in the town of Yavne
. In this school Yochanan and his followers slowly rebuilt Judaism from the ashes of the destroyed temple.
His first act was to transformed the synagogue
, long a meeting place within the Jewish community to discuss daily living along with religious matters, into a more formal place which now focused exclusively on honoring God. He also revived, or reinforced, a seldom used practice favored by the writer of Psalms
- prayer
. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was his teaching the concept that one can come closer to God through acts of loving kindness and by studying the Hebrew Bible or Torah.
where the participants celebrated their liberation from the Egyptians with an elaborate ceremony. With the temple gone, a new kind of celebration had to be devised - the Seder
. Instead of being a mass celebration, it was now done in the home with family and friends.
to rebuild the temple had been refused. With tempers rising, Rome next tried to either establish a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina
, on the ashes of Jerusalem, or issue a decree forbidding circumcision. Whichever one it was, it turned out to be the catalyst that launched a new rebellion within Judea.
Simon Bar Kockba
began secretly plotting a guerilla style insurrection. Many Judeans either thought Bar Kockba to be the Messiah
or that the Messiah would come forth if they were victorious. Along with the Messiah, a third temple would descend from the sky and settle on top of the previous one. In 132 AD the rebels ranks swelled when the most prominent rabbi declared Bar Kockba to indeed be the Messiah.
The Bar Kockba rebels bided their time until Emperor Hadrian had left the area for a return trip to Rome. Once he was far enough away, the rebellion
was launched and they succeeded in having the Romans withdraw from the area.
to settle the Judean problem once and for all and sent 13 legions to the area, with units coming from as far as the Rhine and Britain. In all, about 600,000 Jews were slaughtered and the remnants were forced to leave the land. In the centuries that followed, whole villages were abandoned with their citizens settling elsewhere within the empire. Jerusalem was renamed Aelia
and Judea took on the name of Palestine
(in honor of the Philistines
- a final insult to the people of David).
had received a revelation to bind the empire back together under the sign of the cross. Unfortunately for Judaism, the Christian bishops who most influenced Constantine happened to be the ones most hostile to the Jews. These bishops wanted to stamp out any friendship that other bishops felt towards Judaism. John Chrysostom
, one of the great preachers of the 4th Century, was enraged when some in his congregation would slip out during church services to attend the more interesting Jewish High Holy Days
festivals. He preached eight sermons against the Judeaizers in which he first coined the term Christ killers. With laws being passed against them, the Jews started looking for new homes in North Africa, Spain and Russia.
taught himself how to read and began to study the Hebrew Bible. Within a few years he became a leading sage and learned there was a vast storehouse of oral traditions from Hillel to Yochanan ben Zakai in addition to the written word. He started to organize and write these oral traditions down. Being a strong supporter of rebellion, he was arrested by the Romans who then flayed him alive as an example to other rebels.
, which is a set of ethical commandments meant to compliment the ritual commandments set forth in the Hebrew Bible. It’s a how-to book for practicing the religion. With the Talmud, Jewish tradition could thrive in spite of the discrimination it faced.
Undoubtedly, according to the documentary, their most important gift to us is monotheism and the written Word of God as expressed in their Bible, which became the Christian Old Testament.
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
(PBS) Public television stations produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Oregon Public Broadcasting is the primary television and radio public broadcasting network for most of Oregon as well as southern Washington. With its headquarters and television studios in Portland, OPB consists of five full-power television stations, dozens of VHF or UHF translators, and over...
(OPB) in joint venture with Red Hill Productions of Los Angeles, California.
The documentary chronicles the story of how the Jewish people were able to preserve their culture from being overwhelmed by other more powerful worldly kingdoms. It begins with the Babylonian Exile
Babylonian captivity
The Babylonian captivity was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon—conventionally 587–538 BCE....
where the Judean scribes, realizing that they faced the same fate as their ten northern brothers
Ten Lost Tribes
The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to those tribes of ancient Israel that formed the Kingdom of Israel and which disappeared from Biblical and all other historical accounts after the kingdom was destroyed in about 720 BC by ancient Assyria...
of the lost Kingdom of Israel, fought to preserve their identity and culture though the written word
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
. From there it describes the struggles that the Jewish people faced against the materialism of the Seleucid Empire
Seleucid Empire
The Seleucid Empire was a Greek-Macedonian state that was created out of the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great. At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir and parts of Pakistan.The Seleucid Empire was a major centre...
to the armed might makes right
Might makes right
Might makes right is an aphorism with several potential meanings :* In English, the phrase is most often used in negative assessments of expressions of power....
attitude of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. The story culminates with the triumph of individual Jewish sages such as Hillel
Hillel the Elder
Hillel was a famous Jewish religious leader, one of the most important figures in Jewish history. He is associated with the development of the Mishnah and the Talmud...
, Yochanan ben Zakai
Yochanan ben Zakai
Johanan ben Zakai , also known as Johanan B. Zakkai was one of the tannaim, an important Jewish sage in the era of the Second Temple, and a primary contributor to the core text of Rabbinical Judaism, the Mishnah. He is widely regarded as one of the most important Jewish figures of his time...
and Akiva in preserving Jewish tradition that has survived to this day.
First aired in 2003 as a series of four 55 minute programs, the series is now available in DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
video tapes.
The 220 minute video presentation is broken down into 4 parts which, in turn, are subdivided into scene selections that are accessible in the Main Menu portion of the DVD.
The Hebrew Bible
In 589 B.C. the BabyloniaBabylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
n king Nebuchadnezzar attacked and destroyed Jerusalem
History of Jerusalem
During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The oldest part of the city was settled in the 4th millennium BCE, making Jerusalem one of the oldest cities in the world....
, the main city of the Judean kingdom
Judea
Judea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...
. After its fall, the citizens were taken into exile in Babylonia. Only a few generations earlier their 10 northern cousins
Ten Lost Tribes
The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to those tribes of ancient Israel that formed the Kingdom of Israel and which disappeared from Biblical and all other historical accounts after the kingdom was destroyed in about 720 BC by ancient Assyria...
in the Kingdom of Israel had suffered a similar fate and had vanished forever as they had been integrated into the neighboring societies found throughout the region.
In order to fight for their survival as a people, the Judeans decided to write a book instead of taking up armed struggle. They rewrote and edited together stories of their past and assembled them into what we today know as the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, or Old Testament. The documentary states that it should not be taken as literal history. It then states that it was written to teach the exiled the reasons why they were in Babylon as well as being a guide as to how they should live their lives.
Abraham
AbrahamAbraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
was born in the city of Ur
Ur
Ur was an important city-state in ancient Sumer located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate...
in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
. The documentary briefly recounts the stories of Abraham believing in one god and the ultimate test that God gave him to sacrifice his son. Such stories, whether true or not, represent the turning away from idolatry. As a result, Abraham is considered the founding figure of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
and Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
.
For the scribes in Babylon, simply writing down stories of their ancestors was not enough. Their great challenge was to make sense of their own world. How did such a promised people of God end up near extinction in Babylon? In paganism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
, if you are defeated it was because someone else's god was more powerful than yours. But, with monotheism
Monotheism
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...
, if someone is suffering, then the individual must have done something wrong. This new book describes to the Judeans what they did to lose God’s favor.
Moses
The documentary recounts MosesMoses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
's encounter with the flaming bush and his involvement with the freeing of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. the Exodus
The Exodus
The Exodus is the story of the departure of the Israelites from ancient Egypt described in the Hebrew Bible.Narrowly defined, the term refers only to the departure from Egypt described in the Book of Exodus; more widely, it takes in the subsequent law-givings and wanderings in the wilderness...
is where the great epic of Israel starts. According to William G. Dever
William G. Dever
William G. Dever is an American archaeologist, specialising in the history of Israel and the Near East in Biblical times. He was Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1975 to 2002...
, archeologist, the desert can only support a few thousand nomads, not the purported 3-million that legend tells us accompanied Moses. Furthermore, only 1 or 2 sites mentioned in Exodus have been identified. For the scribes to write an accurate historical account of what occurred 700 years earlier was improbable. What was probable was bringing to text the eternal lessons that the story of Moses taught.
The Ten Commandments
To the scribes, the most important truths of all were how God gave Moses the lawsTen Commandments
The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
that the people were to preserve for all time. God gave them to Moses in a face-to-face meeting. The revolution in the Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
was that God cared about how human beings treated each other. One honors God by treating well the person standing in front of him. The commandments were viewed as a legal contract where God will bless an individual if the individual would follow His rules. After Sinai
Biblical Mount Sinai
The Biblical Mount Sinai is the mountain at which the Book of Exodus states that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God...
, all the stories of the Israelites would be whether or not they had obeyed God’s commandments.
Canaan
Archeologist feel, through the study of pottery fragments, that the Israelites did not invade CanaanCanaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
, but were really Canaanites themselves. They were the lower classes within Canaanite society that inhabited the countryside. As they told their stories over and over, those stories helped shape a culture. After they became a people, they continued telling the stories about the good and evil in every human heart.
The Story of King David
DavidDavid
David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...
’s story is that of a very flawed man. His problem was not just sex, but the fact that he tried to cover it up through murder. After committing such a sin, his life falls apart. Monotheism triumphs over the king’s laws when David acknowledges his sin. As punishment for his sin, God cursed David and his descendants. For the writers of the Bible, David’s sins and God’s curse on his house help explain the disaster the Israelites would suffer in the years after his death. The curse first manifested itself in 720 BC when the northern tribes were conquered and scattered.
Book of Deuteronomy
By 620 BC, according to the documentary, most Israelites living in Judea were rural folk that had little contact with Jerusalem and its religious rituals. Furthermore, it’s evident that they worshiped other gods, such as the goddess AsherahAsherah
Asherah , in Semitic mythology, is a Semitic mother goddess, who appears in a number of ancient sources including Akkadian writings by the name of Ashratum/Ashratu and in Hittite as Asherdu or Ashertu or Aserdu or Asertu...
, besides the One True God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
. King Josiah
Josiah
Josiah or Yoshiyahu or Joshua was a king of Judah who instituted major reforms. Josiah is credited by most historians with having established or compiled important Jewish scriptures during the Deuteronomic reform that occurred during his rule.Josiah became king of Judah at the age of eight, after...
, feeling such practices by his subjects were dooming his country to foreign conquest, rallied the people around a book that had just been discovered while renovating the temple - Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy
The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch...
. Most modern scholars feel the book had recently been written and then planted in the temple to be discovered in order to motivate a reformation. The main reform was that God could only be worshiped at one spot only - the Temple in Jerusalem
Temple in Jerusalem
The Temple in Jerusalem or Holy Temple , refers to one of a series of structures which were historically located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, the current site of the Dome of the Rock. Historically, these successive temples stood at this location and functioned as the centre of...
. As a result, many other religious altars were burned and destroyed along with their attendants. Scholars feel that the beginnings of monotheism by the people as a whole occurred at this time.
Jeremiah and the Babylonian Exile
Feeling that God was on his side, King Josiah launched an attack on the Egyptian/Assyrian alliance in 609 BC. When Josiah was killed, his successors reinstituted polytheism. JeremiahJeremiah
Jeremiah Hebrew：יִרְמְיָה , Modern Hebrew:Yirməyāhū, IPA: jirməˈjaːhu, Tiberian:Yirmĭyahu, Greek:Ἰερεμίας), meaning "Yahweh exalts", or called the "Weeping prophet" was one of the main prophets of the Hebrew Bible...
tried to warn the people of their grave mistake to no avail. Nebuchadnezzar’s ease at conquering and destroying Jerusalem in 597 BC was proof of God’s curse on David and his heirs.
Judean society would have ceased if not for the scribes putting in writing all the legends of the people. The writings told them the reason for their exile. The message told them that God is fair and if they were being punished there was a reason for it. The message also stipulated that for those who accept their guilt and change their ways, there’s hope.
Temple of Yahweh
In 538 BC, the Persians conquered Babylon and King CyrusCyrus the Great
Cyrus II of Persia , commonly known as Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much...
freed all of the Babylonian’s captives. Not only were the Judeans allowed to return to their ancestral land, but they were given permission to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem.
Many Judeans, however, had found a successful life in their new surroundings and only the adventurous and deeply devout returned. When they did so, they faced a daunting challenge. It had been 70 years since their departure and the land was inhabited by many other groups of people who viewed the returnees as rivals for control of the land. Added to that was the fact that the city of Jerusalem itself was a wasteland that had not been rebuilt. After an initial jubilation, the returnees soon became apathetic and construction of the new temple came to a grinding halt. Law and order was breaking down and eighty years after they had arrived, the return home of the exiles seemed like a horrible mistake.
Ezra and the Torah
Seeing anarchy breaking out in Judea, Persian King ArtaxerxesArtaxerxes I of Persia
Artaxerxes I was the sixth king of kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 465 BCE to 424 BCE. He was the son of Xerxes I of Persia and Amestris, daughter of Otanes.*Artaxerxes I was the sixth king of kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 465 BCE to 424 BCE. He was the son of Xerxes I of Persia and...
sent Ezra
Ezra
Ezra , also called Ezra the Scribe and Ezra the Priest in the Book of Ezra. According to the Hebrew Bible he returned from the Babylonian exile and reintroduced the Torah in Jerusalem...
to restore order. Ezra, a scribe and priest, brought with him a completed book of rules for the people in Jerusalem to live by - the Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
(or first five book of the Old Testament). Most of the returnees knew little of this book or its laws as it was a work in progress when they had first left Babylon. After gathering all the returnees in a public square, Ezra read aloud the entire contents of this new book and required the listeners to sign a covenant indicating that they would abide by its rules.
This was considered a democratic revolution as there was no longer any secret knowledge confined to a priesthood class. Everyone could now know what the priests knew. The people and city of Jerusalem were revitalized. The temple was completed and became the central focus of Jewish life. A yearly pilgrimage to the temple to offer a sacrifice became of paramount importance. (Later, when a monetary system replaced the barter system, a farmer from the countryside would sell his best animal, then travel to Jerusalem to purchase another for sacrifice at the temple).
One of the more controversial laws that Ezra had to impose on his subjects was the concept of marrying within the religion so as to keep it pure and uncorrupted. He had the unpleasant task of ordering many unorthodox marriages to be dissolved. Naturally, this led to discord among his subjects and the contents of the Torah pertaining to this topic were fiercely debated in public.
The Book of Job
Soon after their return to Jerusalem, a new story appeared that questioned Jews’ traditional views. The Book of JobBook of Job
The Book of Job , commonly referred to simply as Job, is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. It relates the story of Job, his trials at the hands of Satan, his discussions with friends on the origins and nature of his suffering, his challenge to God, and finally a response from God. The book is a...
told of a righteous man beset by catastrophe and affliction. Job’s plight challenged the Hebrews’ notion of a God who consistently rewarded the righteous and punished the wicked – a central idea of biblical history. Job moans, “I helped the good, but got only wrong. I hoped for light, and got only darkness.” His suffering poses one of life’s great questions and a critical challenge to Jews: If God does not reward obedience and punish sin, why bother obeying God’s law at all?
The Greeks
In the early 4th century BC, Alexander the Great invaded the Mid East and brought Greek cultureCulture of Greece
The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, beginning in Mycenaean Greece, continuing most notably into Classical Greece, through the influence of the Roman Empire and its Greek Eastern successor the Byzantine Empire...
with him with its emphasis on mind and body. This new culture proved to be the biggest threat to the Jewish way of life. A new economic system based on monetary exchange replaced the barter system allowing people the freedom to move about the empire. Soon there began a migration from the small villages to larger urban areas. New opportunities arose for the Jewish farmer who could now sell his products in distant markets. Jewish communities were established in other parts of the empire while Greek settlements became common in the Jewish region.
Some conservative Jewish leaders became alarmed that their traditions and ideologies were being buried under this pervasive materialistic culture.
Ben Sira: Lover of Wisdom
Ben SiraBen Sira
Jesus ben Sirach , commonly known simply as ben Sirach or Sirach and also rendered "Jesus son of Sirach" or "Jesus Siracides", was the author of the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Sirach and possibly the rabbinical Alphabet of Sirach...
was deeply influenced by Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
and Greek philosophy
Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire...
and applied the Greek tradition of study and debate to the Bible. Ezra had given the people the Torah with its laws to live by. Ben Sira gave the people, who were eager to look for alternatives to Greek culture, the concept of studying the lives of the Bible’s heroes and to search it's pages for Divine wisdom that the stories revealed.
Open to Interpretation
The Bible contains many passages that are ambiguous and seemingly contradictory and, as a result, new beliefs arose. One of those beliefs was the concept of an afterlife where rewards and punishments were mete out. Another belief was that the Bible was inspired by God which gave rise to the concept that reading it could prophecy future events. The most pronounced prophecy was that a time of turmoil was coming where God would stand by those that kept their covenants with Him.Antiochus, the Madman
The Seleucid EmpireSeleucid Empire
The Seleucid Empire was a Greek-Macedonian state that was created out of the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great. At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir and parts of Pakistan.The Seleucid Empire was a major centre...
succeeded Alexander upon his death in the early 4th century BC. At first, the Seleucid emperors were content to have Greek culture slowly influence Jewish customs. But, in 185 BC Antiochus IV, derisively labeled the madman in Judea, had a different idea when he decreed that all of his subjects were to follow one common religion in order to unify the empire. That religion was not monotheism.
Antiochus was able to buy off Jason
Jason of Cyrene
Jason of Cyrene was a Hellenistic Jew who lived about 100 BC and wrote a history of the times of the Maccabees down to the victory over Nicanor . This work is said 2 Maccabees.-References:...
, the high priest at the Jerusalem Temple. Soon, Jason and other priests began to revoke one of the most visible symbols of the Jewish covenant with God - circumcision. The Greeks loved athletic contests where the athletes participated in the nude. So as to not look out of place, these priests and other Jewish males had cosmetic surgery performed to obliterate this most pronounced symbol of the covenant.
Naturally, many other Jewish leaders took offense at this latest turn of events. It was bad enough that Greek culture worshiped more than one god, but the concept of worshiping the human body above all else was bringing Judea to the breaking point.
The Maccabees
The final profanity occurred when Antiochus IV ordered that the temple in Jerusalem be transformed into a Greek temple. An uprising started in the rural town of Modi'in. A priest named MattathiasMattathias
Mattathias ben Johanan was a Jewish priest whose role in the Jewish revolt against the Syrian Greeks is related in the Books of the Maccabees...
refused to pay homage to a statue of Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
and took out his anger by killing some of the emperor's emissaries. After fleeing to the countryside, he was able to gather many other supporters to start a major war. When confronted with the prospect of having to break the commandment banning warfare on the Sabbath day, Matathias and 1,000 of his allies chose to stay true to the word and paid the ultimate sacrifice.
After their martyrdom, Mataithias’s son, Judah
Judas Maccabeus
Judah Maccabee was a Kohen and a son of the Jewish priest Mattathias...
, and the other rebels realized that the faith could easily be annihilated if they continued to adhere to that principle. After debating the issue, they came to the conclusion that only offensive Sabbath day warfare was banned and that it was perfectly permissible to conduct defensive operations on that particular day. Judah’s brilliant military campaigns over a 3 year period of time soon earned him the nickname of Maccabee
Maccabees
The Maccabees were a Jewish rebel army who took control of Judea, which had been a client state of the Seleucid Empire. They founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 164 BCE to 63 BCE, reasserting the Jewish religion, expanding the boundaries of the Land of Israel and reducing the influence...
(hammer) and by 164 BC the Seleucid forces were routed from the country.
Hanukkah
After the Maccabeean victory, attention was turned towards cleansing the temple and building a new altar. Unfortunately for Judah, the Seleucid forces regrouped and defeated him, mortally wounding him in the process. After Judah’s death, his brother JonathanJonathan Maccabaeus
Jonathan Apphus was leader of the Hasmonean Dynasty of Judea from 161 to 143 BCE. The name Apphus could mean = "the dissembler", "the Wary", or "the diplomat", in allusion to a trait prominent in him -Leader of the Jews:...
took over.
By 152 BC the Seleucid Empire was undergoing internal strife between two rivals to the throne. Jonathan offered his 10,000 strong army to the weaker of the two contenders
Demetrius II Nicator
For the similarly named Macedonian ruler, see Demetrius II of Macedon. For the Macedonian prince, see Demetrius the Fair.Demetrius II , called Nicator , was one of the sons of Demetrius I Soter, brother of Antiochus VII Sidetes and his mother could have been Laodice V...
in exchange for Judean autonomy. His gamble paid off, Judea regained is sovereignty and Jonathan became the head priest of the Jerusalem temple.
The victory convinced the Judeans of the Bible’s prophecy that God would come to the aid of those who were zealous for the law of God. That conviction would grow in the years ahead and set the stage for a true cataclysm when another great empire arrived in the Middle East - Rome.
Roman Rule
In 63 BC, Roman General PompeyPompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey or Pompey the Great , was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic...
ended Judea’s 100 years of independence when he marched through the county. He was amazed to find that the defenders of the city retreated not to a fortress, but to their holy sanctuary, the Temple. He was equally amazed when they refused to interrupt their religious observances to offer resistance when he entered their Temple.
To Rome, Judea was but a small piece on the road to a larger prize, easy access to bountiful Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. To the Jews, Judea was the Promised Land
Promised land
The Promised Land is a term used to describe the land promised or given by God, according to the Hebrew Bible, to the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob. The promise is firstly made to Abraham and then renewed to his son Isaac, and to Isaac's son Jacob , Abraham's grandson...
given to them by God to own.
Even worse for the Jews was that it pitted one Jew against the other - should they revolt or not. Soon their spiritual debates broke out into physical animosity between the various groups.
On one side were the Temple High Priests
Kohen Gadol
The High Priest was the chief religious official of Israelite religion and of classical Judaism from the rise of the Israelite nation until the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem...
and their allies, who formed the most wealthy class within Judaism. The Temple to them was the political and economic heart of Jerusalem. Each year pilgrims flooded its markets to find food and lodging. They spent freely to buy the very best sacrificial animals as animal sacrifices was their only permitted way of worshiping God. Since the High Priests were the only ones allowed to mediate between the average Jew and God, they had an enormous economic stake in maintaining social order through the status quo of Roman rule.
Civil War
Other groups within Judaism felt that the High Priests were traitors. They believed that if they wagged a just war against their occupiers, as related in Biblical stories, they would have God’s protection.To help them rule Judea, the Romans chose an Arab prince named Herod
Herod the Great
Herod , also known as Herod the Great , was a Roman client king of Judea. His epithet of "the Great" is widely disputed as he is described as "a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis." He is also known for his colossal building projects in Jerusalem and elsewhere, including his...
, who was known for his boundless ambition and extreme cruelty. To many Jews, crowning a king not descended from David
Davidic line
The Davidic line refers to the tracing of lineage to the King David referred to in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the New Testament...
was blasphemous
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
. Herod and Rome felt it necessary to launch a series of unmerciful attacks against the various antagonistic Jewish groups to make an example of them so that law and order could be maintained.
To counteract his reputation for cruelty, Herod commissioned an extensive renovation of the Temple. Soon, even Gentile
Gentile
The term Gentile refers to non-Israelite peoples or nations in English translations of the Bible....
s were making pilgrimages to Jerusalem to see this marvel of the ancient world and make sacrifices. But the rebels within the Jewish community were not impressed.
The Essenes
The EssenesEssenes
The Essenes were a Jewish sect that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests...
did not believe Jews should fight the Romans. Their belief was that God had allowed a Roman occupation because the Biblical prophecy of the End of Days
End times
The end time, end times, or end of days is a time period described in the eschatological writings in the three Abrahamic religions and in doomsday scenarios in various other non-Abrahamic religions...
was at hand. Their solution was to withdraw from civilization and to live as perfect a life as possible by forsaking worldly possessions and sexual relations. They spent most of their time copying religious texts and hiding them in caves near Qumran
Qumran
Qumran is an archaeological site in the West Bank. It is located on a dry plateau about a mile inland from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli settlement and kibbutz of Kalia...
. Their legacy is the Dead Sea scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...
.
When Herod died in 4 BC, chaos erupted as rebels attacked the traitorous upper class Jews. To the Romans, they were brigands, but to many Jews they were seen as Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
s. Their aim of ending Roman rule was misguided as all they accomplished was social anarchy.
Hillel
HillelHillel the Elder
Hillel was a famous Jewish religious leader, one of the most important figures in Jewish history. He is associated with the development of the Mishnah and the Talmud...
and the Pharisees
Pharisees
The Pharisees were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews during the Second Temple period beginning under the Hasmonean dynasty in the wake of...
believed whoever was the worldly master of Judea did not matter. What mattered was how one lived their life according to their covenant with God. Furthermore, they did not believe one had to be a member of the priesthood to communicate with God, just study His word in the Bible.
When challenged to sum the Torah up "while standing on one foot", Hillel replied “What is hateful to you, do not do to your friend. The rest is the explanation; go and learn.”
Jesus of Nazareth
JesusJesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, who was influenced by Hillel according to the documentary, went a few steps further by preaching “turn the other cheek” and to make the world a better place. He also was influenced by the Biblical End of Days prophecies.
To Rome He was just one more rabble rousing messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
. To His followers, His talk of a Heavenly Kingdom
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
was a reference to an afterlife
Afterlife
The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...
and was not a part of this world.
The Zealots
In 52 AD a new group of zealotsZealotry
Zealotry was originally a political movement in 1st century Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy land by force of arms, most notably during the Great Jewish Revolt...
, the Sicarii
Sicarii
Sicarii is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, to an extremist splinter group of the Jewish Zealots, who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judea using concealed daggers .-History:The Sicarii used...
, began committing political assassinations. Anyone who collaborated with the Roman authorities was worthy of death.
The people of Jerusalem were deeply divided until the Roman governor attacked the Temple in 67 AD. It was a miscalculated move as all Judeans within Jerusalem united and forced the Roman garrison to flee the city.
A disciple of Hillel, Yochanan ben Zakai
Yochanan ben Zakai
Johanan ben Zakai , also known as Johanan B. Zakkai was one of the tannaim, an important Jewish sage in the era of the Second Temple, and a primary contributor to the core text of Rabbinical Judaism, the Mishnah. He is widely regarded as one of the most important Jewish figures of his time...
, was one of the most passionate voices for peace. He preached that it did not matter who ruled Judea, what mattered was who ruled an individual's heart.
But many Jews were not ready to make peace with a foreign occupier. Giddy over their success at evicting the Roman garrison, the Zealots openly declared war on Rome. Convinced that they were mad, other groups decided to physically challenge them. House-to-house combat that lasted a week resulted in the city of Jerusalem being severely damaged by fire and looting. The conflict quickly spread throughout Judea. Romans, Greeks and Syrians attacked the Jews, the Jews made reprisals against them as well as each other. Anarchy had replaced social order.
The Siege of Jerusalem
Rome had to act and General VespasianVespasian
Vespasian , was Roman Emperor from 69 AD to 79 AD. Vespasian was the founder of the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire for a quarter century. Vespasian was descended from a family of equestrians, who rose into the senatorial rank under the Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty...
was dispatched with three legions of 60,000 soldiers to the troubled area. The Jewish countryside fled to the walls of Jerusalem upon seeing the advancing Roman army. The historian Josephus
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
estimated that 100,000 were trapped inside the city walls where anarchy reigned. Six rebel groups vied with one another, destroying their entire food supply. The zealots threatened death to anyone who wished to leave the city. If one did manage to escape, they faced the Roman army and their mercenaries
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
who would either eviscerate
Disembowelment
Disembowelment is the removal of some or all of the organs of the gastrointestinal tract , usually through a horizontal incision made across the abdominal area. Disembowelment may result from an accident, but has also been used as a method of torture and execution...
them, looking for swallowed gold or jewels, or crucify
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
them. The hills around Jerusalem were deforested due to the number of crosses being erected for crucifixion.
Only the bodies of the dead were allowed by the Zealots to leave the city. Feigning death, Jochanan ben Zakai, with help from his disciples, was able to escape the city laying on a cart amongst a pile of rotting meat.
Destruction of the Temple
In 70 AD, after a four month siege, the Romans broke through the city walls. After heavy house-to-house combat, the Roman army surrounded the Temple and destroyed it.According to Rabbi Perry Netter, “The Temple was the center of economic life of the Jewish people. It’s as if the Federal Reserve was housed in the Temple. It was the center of the judicial life, the Supreme Court was housed in the temple. It was the center of the religious life as if the high priest was the chief rabbi centered in that building.”
When the temple was destroyed, there was no other branch of government left for the Jews. Without the temple, their future looked bleak indeed.
Masada
MasadaMasada
Masada is the name for a site of ancient palaces and fortifications in the South District of Israel, on top of an isolated rock plateau, or horst, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada is best known for the violence that occurred there in the first century CE...
, an impregnable fortress built by Herod, atop a butte overlooking the Dead Sea, became a place of refuge that the Sachari fled to after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. There’s but one narrow trail, called the Snake, leading to the top of the butte and a small garrison can defend the fortress from a much larger army.
The Romans laid siege to the fortress over a two year period of time. Instead of trying to navigate the treacherous trail, they put their engineering expertise to work and built a massive ramp. The day before they were to breach the walls, Elazar ben Ya'ir
Eleazar ben Simon
Eleazar ben Simon was a Zealot leader during the First Jewish-Roman War who fought against the armies of Cestius Gallus, Vespasian, and Titus Flavius...
, the Sachari leader, urged all his followers to commit suicide.
The Rabbis and the Synagogue
Judea was fast becoming a wasteland. All the Sachari and Essenes were dead and, with no temple, the priesthood was now meaningless. Only one group remained in the Holy Land, the Pharisees. Yochanan ben ZakaiYochanan ben Zakai
Johanan ben Zakai , also known as Johanan B. Zakkai was one of the tannaim, an important Jewish sage in the era of the Second Temple, and a primary contributor to the core text of Rabbinical Judaism, the Mishnah. He is widely regarded as one of the most important Jewish figures of his time...
, their leader, set up his headquarters and a biblical school in the town of Yavne
Council of Jamnia
The Council of Jamnia or Council of Yavne is a hypothetical late 1st-century council at which it is postulated the canon of the Hebrew Bible was finalized....
. In this school Yochanan and his followers slowly rebuilt Judaism from the ashes of the destroyed temple.
His first act was to transformed the synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
, long a meeting place within the Jewish community to discuss daily living along with religious matters, into a more formal place which now focused exclusively on honoring God. He also revived, or reinforced, a seldom used practice favored by the writer of Psalms
Psalms
The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...
- prayer
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was his teaching the concept that one can come closer to God through acts of loving kindness and by studying the Hebrew Bible or Torah.
Seder
One of the major feasts at the temple was PassoverPassover
Passover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt...
where the participants celebrated their liberation from the Egyptians with an elaborate ceremony. With the temple gone, a new kind of celebration had to be devised - the Seder
Passover Seder
The Passover Seder is a Jewish ritual feast that marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. It is conducted on the evenings of the 14th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, and on the 15th by traditionally observant Jews living outside Israel. This corresponds to late March or April in...
. Instead of being a mass celebration, it was now done in the home with family and friends.
Bar Kockba Rebellion
During the 60 years since the temple’s destruction, an uneasy truce existed between the Jews and the Romans. In 130 AD, a petition to Emperor HadrianHadrian
Hadrian , was Roman Emperor from 117 to 138. He is best known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. In Rome, he re-built the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus and Roma. In addition to being emperor, Hadrian was a humanist and was philhellene in...
to rebuild the temple had been refused. With tempers rising, Rome next tried to either establish a pagan city, Aelia Capitolina
Aelia Capitolina
Aelia Capitolina was a city built by the emperor Hadrian, and occupied by a Roman colony, on the site of Jerusalem, which was in ruins since 70 AD, leading in part to the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136.-Politics:...
, on the ashes of Jerusalem, or issue a decree forbidding circumcision. Whichever one it was, it turned out to be the catalyst that launched a new rebellion within Judea.
Simon Bar Kockba
Simon bar Kokhba
Simon bar Kokhba was the Jewish leader of what is known as the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE, establishing an independent Jewish state of Israel which he ruled for three years as Nasi...
began secretly plotting a guerilla style insurrection. Many Judeans either thought Bar Kockba to be the Messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
or that the Messiah would come forth if they were victorious. Along with the Messiah, a third temple would descend from the sky and settle on top of the previous one. In 132 AD the rebels ranks swelled when the most prominent rabbi declared Bar Kockba to indeed be the Messiah.
The Bar Kockba rebels bided their time until Emperor Hadrian had left the area for a return trip to Rome. Once he was far enough away, the rebellion
Bar Kokhba's revolt
The Bar Kokhba revolt 132–136 CE; or mered bar kokhba) against the Roman Empire, was the third major rebellion by the Jews of Judaea Province being the last of the Jewish-Roman Wars. Simon bar Kokhba, the commander of the revolt, was acclaimed as a Messiah, a heroic figure who could restore Israel...
was launched and they succeeded in having the Romans withdraw from the area.
Julius Severus and Exile
Emperor Hadrian could ill afford to have Judea break away and set an example for other rebellious regions within the empire. He commissioned Julius SeverusSextus Julius Severus
Sextus Julius Severus was an accomplished Roman General of the 2nd century.Julius Severus served as Governor of Moesia; he was appointed Governor of Britain around 131.In 133 he was transferred to Judea, to help suppress the Bar Kochba rebellion there...
to settle the Judean problem once and for all and sent 13 legions to the area, with units coming from as far as the Rhine and Britain. In all, about 600,000 Jews were slaughtered and the remnants were forced to leave the land. In the centuries that followed, whole villages were abandoned with their citizens settling elsewhere within the empire. Jerusalem was renamed Aelia
Aelia Capitolina
Aelia Capitolina was a city built by the emperor Hadrian, and occupied by a Roman colony, on the site of Jerusalem, which was in ruins since 70 AD, leading in part to the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136.-Politics:...
and Judea took on the name of Palestine
Syria Palaestina
Syria Palæstina was a Roman province between 135CE and 390CE. It had been established by the merge of Roman Syria and Roman Judaea, following the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE. In 193 Syria-Coele was split to form a separate provincial locality...
(in honor of the Philistines
Philistines
Philistines , Pleshet or Peleset, were a people who occupied the southern coast of Canaan at the beginning of the Iron Age . According to the Bible, they ruled the five city-states of Gaza, Askelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath, from the Wadi Gaza in the south to the Yarqon River in the north, but with...
- a final insult to the people of David).
Christianity
In their new homes, the Jews faced a challenge just as daunting as the Romans. This time the threat came from within - a new form of Judaism called Christianity. These Christians did not mourn the loss of the temple and its sacrificial ordinances like the Jews did. They believed that God had decided to sacrifice His Only Son once and for all making animal sacrifices obsolete.Constantine
In 320 AD, civil war had broken out in the Roman Empire and the victorious ConstantineConstantine I
Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...
had received a revelation to bind the empire back together under the sign of the cross. Unfortunately for Judaism, the Christian bishops who most influenced Constantine happened to be the ones most hostile to the Jews. These bishops wanted to stamp out any friendship that other bishops felt towards Judaism. John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom , Archbishop of Constantinople, was an important Early Church Father. He is known for his eloquence in preaching and public speaking, his denunciation of abuse of authority by both ecclesiastical and political leaders, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and his ascetic...
, one of the great preachers of the 4th Century, was enraged when some in his congregation would slip out during church services to attend the more interesting Jewish High Holy Days
High Holy Days
The High Holidays or High Holy Days, in Judaism, more properly known as the Yamim Noraim , may mean:#strictly, the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur ;...
festivals. He preached eight sermons against the Judeaizers in which he first coined the term Christ killers. With laws being passed against them, the Jews started looking for new homes in North Africa, Spain and Russia.
The Shepherd Akiva
This spreading out of the Jewish nation threatened Judaism with disintegration. The laws, rituals and customs of the religion had never been written down. In the 2nd century AD, an illiterate 40 year old shepherd named AkivaRabbi Akiva
Akiva ben Joseph simply known as Rabbi Akiva , was a tanna of the latter part of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd century . He was a great authority in the matter of Jewish tradition, and one of the most central and essential contributors to the Mishnah and Midrash Halakha...
taught himself how to read and began to study the Hebrew Bible. Within a few years he became a leading sage and learned there was a vast storehouse of oral traditions from Hillel to Yochanan ben Zakai in addition to the written word. He started to organize and write these oral traditions down. Being a strong supporter of rebellion, he was arrested by the Romans who then flayed him alive as an example to other rebels.
The Talmud
Akiva’s heirs continued with his work and formed the TalmudTalmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
, which is a set of ethical commandments meant to compliment the ritual commandments set forth in the Hebrew Bible. It’s a how-to book for practicing the religion. With the Talmud, Jewish tradition could thrive in spite of the discrimination it faced.
Gifts
Invariably, the Christians and Muslims who lived among the Jews discovered they had unique gifts. One of the skills they introduced to country after country was glass blowing. Other gifts included advanced knowledge of medicine and their strong desire to give every child an education.Undoubtedly, according to the documentary, their most important gift to us is monotheism and the written Word of God as expressed in their Bible, which became the Christian Old Testament.