History of Israel

History of Israel

The modern nation of Israel has existed for little more than 50 years. Yet the land has a much older history that goes back thousands of years. For centuries, the early history of Israel was known through the books of the Bible. Yet recently the religious importance of the country has led Israel to become a major region for archeological excavation. Some of the discoveries found have presented similar histories to those in the Bible.

Over the era many empires have conquered and occupied the region. Among them have been the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Arabian Empires, the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and to end with the British Empire. Throughout this chaotic history, many different people have lived in the land now occupied by modern Israel. During the Roman occupation, the Jews were exiled or forced to flee from the region. They set up communities in many different countries around the world, but they always thought of Israel as their spiritual home. Jews began to resettle in the region in the 19th century, living beside the Arabs who had settled in the area over a thousand years ago. Both Jews and Arabs now claim a historic right to areas in Israel. To a degree the modern history of Israel has been the history of these claims.

Biblical History of Israel

Excavations In Jericho

In prehistoric times, Israel was home to one of the world's earliest civilizations. At Jericho, located in the Judaean Desert, archeologists have found the remains of a fortified city that is believed to date back to 8000 B.C.E. Stout stonewalls and a tall defensive tower are just some of the ruins that were found. Jericho is believed to have been one of the earliest places where people cast off a life of hunting animals and gathering plants, to settling down to farm. Cowry shells from the red Sea and turquoise from Sinai show that townspeople traded with distant regions. Archeologists base what they know on excavations of old sites and also on ancient writings. Writing was created in the Middle East, and for Israel's early history we have a vast amount of information in the Torah.

The Ancient Hebrews

Between 1800 and 1500 B.C.E. the Hebrews, the ancestors of the Jewish people, had a patriarch, or leader, named Abraham. The Torah tells how Abraham journeyed, and then pitched his tent and settled in Beersheba. He, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob worshiped one G-d whom they called Yahweh, in a land where other people had many G-ds. Jacob was also known as Israel. His descendants came to be known as the Israelites, or the Children of Israel.

Exodus from Egypt

Around 1700 B.C.E., the Israelites moved to Egypt because of a famine in Canaan. They were originally welcomed but the later the Egyptians grew less tolerant of the Israelites and forced them into slavery. Around 1250 B.C., the patriarch Moses led his people out of Egypt into the Sinai Desert. The book of Exodus in the Torah, tells how Moses received a code of law called the Ten Commandments from G-d, on the summit of Mount Sinai. The commandments were inscribed on two stone tablets. After spending forty years in the desert, the Hebrews returned to Canaan. There they set out to win the land they believed G-d had promised them. Led by the Hero Joshua, they led siege to the Canaanite cities. According to the Torah, at the battle of Jericho, the troops of Joshua blew their horns, and the walls came tumbling down. The Hebrews conquered the Judaean Hills and Jordan Valley. There they settled down and farmed. For the next 200 years, their main enemies were the Philistines, a highly developed people who lived on the Mediterranean coast near modern Gaza.

David and Solomon

Around 1050 B.C.E., the Hebrews were divided into 12 tribes. The leaders of the tribes, known as Judges, led their people into battle. Now the Hebrews decided that they wanted one king to rule them all. They elected Saul, a brave and clever general. Saul's successor was King David. According to the Torah, David began life as a shepherd and is famous for having killed in his youth a huge Philistine warrior named Goliath by firing a slingshot at him.

David defeated the Philistines and won a great kingdom that stretched from the Mediterranean coast north into Syria and south to the Red Sea. He conquered the city of Jerusalem and made it capital of the Israelite kingdom around 1000 B.C.E. The king placed a chest called the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the Ten Commandments, in a shrine in the city (Atlas of Jewish History). Then he made Jerusalem the spiritual home of the Jewish religion. Today all synagogues have a case representing the chest to contain scrolls of the Torah.

David's son Solomon was another great king, famed for his wisdom. Solomon built a beautiful temple in Jerusalem where his people could worship G-d. After Solomon died, his kingdom was dived into two parts. The ten northern tribes established the kingdom of Israel in he north. The two southern tribes set up the kingdom of Judah in the south, which included Jerusalem.

In the centuries that followed, the kingdoms came under the influence of peoples in the region, including the great Assyrian Empire and a highly civilized and skilled, seafaring people called the Phoenicians, who lived in the area to north of Palestine, where modern Lebanon is today.

Foreign Rule

In 722 B.C.E., the Assyrians from the northeast conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. The ten northern tribes were exiled to distant lands and disappeared from history. They are known as the lost tribes. A century later the Babylonians, another powerful empire from what is now Iraq, defeated the Assyrians.

In 586 B.C.E., the Babylonians conquered Judah. They ransacked the city of Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon's temple. The people were led in chains to Babylon and forced to slavery. The famous Psalm 137 in the Torah records their lament: "By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." Zion was an ancient name for Jerusalem. The exile in Babylon lasted less than 50 years. In 539 B.C.E., another great empire, the Persians, defeated the Babylonians. The Persians allowed the Jews to return to their homeland, and they rebuilt the Jew's temple in Jerusalem.

The Persians ruled much of the Middle East for the next 200 years. Then in 334 B.C.E., a determined young king, Alexander the Great, set out to conquer the world from Macedonia, to the north of Greece.