3.
Israel
The region between the Sinai Peninsula and
Lebanon, known by many names, as Israel, Canaan, the Holy Land,
Palestine, has no clear natural frontiers. The River Jordan, rising in
what is now called Lebanon and flowing directly South, runs through the middle,
parallel to the Mediterranean coast, southward through the lake called the Sea
of Galilee (or Lake of Gennesareth) and on down into the Dead Sea
where its waters evaporate, leaving the Dead Sea so charged with salts that
nothing can grow near it, whence its name. The Dead Sea is far below sea-level.
Almost all the events of the Bible stories
happen in towns lying to the West, between the Jordan and the sea. Jerusalem lies west of the point
where the Jordan enters the Dead Sea.
The Bible stories have two main centres, especially in New Testament
times, one the area around Jerusalem, called Judea or Judah, from which
comes the word "Jew", the other the area to the west of the Sea of
Galilee, called Galilee.
Between these lies the area called Samaria.
Most of the Holy Land is now rocky and not very
fertile, but in Bible times it seemed less arid ("a land flowing with milk
and honey"). The Jordan is a small river, of no importance for
transportation though useful for irrigation. Before the small groups of
families (tribes) calling themselves "the Children of Israel" took
control of the land, it was called Canaan and in recent times, before
the crea¡©tion of the modern state of Israel, the land was called Palestine.
To the South stretches the great desert of Sinai, between Israel and
Egypt, caught between the two branches of the Red Sea.
Early
History: The Patriarchs
In the first book of the Bible, Genesis (meaning
beginning, origin), we see nomadic figures moving across the empty spaces of
the Middle East between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean regions. Especially we see a particular family,
with proper names: Abraham, his son Isaac, his son Jacob
(who is also called Israel, whence the name of the people "the
children of Israel"). In the
Bronze Age period between 2000 and 1500, semi-nomadic Amorites were
coming down from the Syrian deserts into the fertile lands of Canaan, as well
as across into Assyria. Among them
archaeologists have found names such as Abram, Jacob, Levi, Benjamin. Their flocks of sheep were their main
wealth, but they also had some interest in farming; this is the life-style of
the "patriarchs" (fathers).
These first fathers of the future tribes of Israel were Arameans,
people speaking various Semitic languages.
Movements of population brought members of these
"foreign" tribes down into Egypt, where they took power as the
Hyksos (foreign rulers), and controlled Egypt from 1720-1580, when the
Egyptians threw them out and asserted their own power as far as the
Euphrates. This control by Egypt
was reaffirmed by Rameses II around 1300, and after a campaign in Canaan in about 1230, his successor could
write "Israel is laid waste", the first historical use of the
name in the sense of a place inhabited by a specific group of people known as
Israel.
Moses
and the Exodus
After these victories, the Egyptians used more
and more Semitic slaves and prisoners-of-war in their extensive new building
projects, a kind of sub-proletariate they called "apiru", a
word also found in Mesopotamia as "Habiru", meaning low-class
mercenaries or slaves from the poor nomads; it is probably the origin of the
word "Hebrew".
The well-known story of Moses (the name
is Egyptian) who leads a group of escaping Semitic slaves out of Egypt (Exodus)
and through the Sinai wilderness is rooted here. This group is shown as united, although the people are of
various family-origins, by the action of a tribal god with
the
four-consonant name YHWH (Yahweh-el), but the name was rarely
spoken, he was called Elohim, the Lord; the familiar form "Jehovah"
comes from a confusion, because the Hebrew Old Testament writes the vowels for Elohim
over the Tetragrammaton.
For the next two centuries this original group
of families, joined by others living in the hills of Canaan who accepted
the same faith in the Lord, fought to take control of the Canaanite villages in
the fertile areas near the Jordan. They were an amphictyony, a league
united by a conviction that the Lord had established a special covenant
with them. Here they found themselves confronted with the Philistine
problem. These were "People
of the Sea" whom Rameses III had driven out of Egypt and who had settled
on the coast of Canaan around 1150.
They may have come originally from Greece, their culture was partly
Mycenaean, and Homer mentions people with a similar name. They were stronger than Israel, partly
because they had learned to make iron weapons, and in 1050 they defeated Israel
and even captured the Ark of the Covenant (a wooden box or throne
symbolizing the Lord's presence with Israel). The present name
"Palestine" is derived from "Philistine".
The
Jerusalem Kingdom
About 1000 B.C., it became clear to the
religious leader (prophet) Samuel that the future of the amphictyony was
in danger and that a strong king was needed to unite and lead the
different families (tribes) living in Canaan that considered themselves to have
been called by the Lord YHWH (Yahweh-el) to take control of the land.
The modern state of Israel still
bases its existence on this notion of a Promised Land given them by God.
Until now there had been no social organization beyond that of individual
extended families, each with their elder patriarch. Some felt that the Lord was Israel's king and that no other
leader was needed.
After a first attempt with Saul that
failed, in about 1012 David became the new king, first in the South, and
crushed the Philistines. He was
accepted by the remaining Canaanite populations, and imposed his rule so
strongly that the sur¡©rounding peoples recognized his control over the whole
land. Finally, he made the
Canaanite city of Jerusalem his new capital, the centre of the Covenant, and so unifying the various groups
and
tribes. David's forty years of
kingship (1012 - 972) were partly inspired by the forms of divine kingship
found in Mesopotamia, adapted to Israel's unique vision of a God who saves in
history through his anointed servants.
David's son, Solomon, (ruled 972 - 931)
made Israel part of the Mediterranean world by joining forces with the Phoenicians
in commerce, by adopting much of their culture and by building a Temple
at Jerusalem in Canaanite style, using Phoenician building techniques. Solomon's court was extremely sophis¡©ticated
artistically and culturally. In
this time orders were given to record in writing all the stories of Israel's
origins that until then had only been transmitted orally, the writing of the
Bible had begun. Some of the
earliest texts in Genesis were written at this time, including the
familiar story of Paradise, the Temptation of Eve by the serpent, and the Fall,
by an individual writer often known as the Yahwist. All animal
sacrifices were forbidden outside the new Jerusalem Temple, as well, so
centralizing the religious life.
After Solomon died, however, the nation divided,
there was much conflict and the tribes of the North established the Kingdom
of Israel centered on the city of Samaria, while those of the South
continued in Jerusalem, the centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 722, the Assyrians destroyed
Samaria (and Damascus in Syria),
and deported the people; the Northern Kingdom ceased to exist.
Exile
and Return
For one thousand years, after Hammurabi had
consolidated the unity of the Assyrian Empire, the main concern had been
survival in a way of life close to that found in the Bible stories about
Abraham and the patriarchs. Then,
after the year 900, new energy brings the Assyrians into the Bible stories of
the history of Judah, with wars and treaties involving kings such as Sennacherib
(705-681).
Babylon was burned in 648, in response to a
regionalistic uprising against the Assyrian kings, so the local citizens called
in the Medes (who were Indo-Europeans) and in 612 Nineveh fell to
the new dynasty. Under
Nebuchadrezzar II (605-561) there was war with Egypt and inva¡©sion of
Palestine. In 598 the
people around Jerusalem (Judah) rebelled, the king
and
3000 citizens were taken back to Mesopotamia. When the survivors rebelled again
in 589, Nebuchadrezzar (also known as Nebuchadnezzar, reigned 605 - 561) destroyed Jerusalem
after a siege which lasted until 587.
This marks the beginning of the Exile, a
vital time in Israel's history, for the Jewish exiles were not dispersed among
the population of Mesopo¡©tamia; they continued to live close together. Their special religion served as a
uniting force, and while studying the written "scriptures" (writings)
they had brought with them, rewriting other records, and so composing the core
of the Jewish Bible (called the Old Testament by Christians) they waited for the Lord of their past
history to save them as he had saved their fore¡©fathers from Egypt. Since the
Lord had always acted in history through human agents, and not by some kind of
divine intervention, it was no great surprise when the long-awaited liberation
from Exile and return to Jerusalem came from the Persian king Cyrus in
536, after his conquest of Babylon.
There they rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple, which was
rededicated in 516. Only later,
around 445, did they rebuild the city walls. Almost two generations had lived and died away from the
"Holy Land", yet they had forgotten nothing of their faith. This miraculous return from Exile and
apparent disaster did not mean that Judah was able to become an independent
state. Like Egypt, it remained part of the Persian zone of influence
until the campaigns of Alexander the Great changed the face of the
region. After that, the Jews were ruled by either the Ptolemies of Egypt or the
Seleucids in Syrian Antioch.