The Jews: Our Epic Story Starting in 1948 BCE and Again in 1948 CE

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

We are a different people.  We started in an epic way .  One must go to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and down south to our origins to the great city of Ur of the Chaldees,  south of Babylon, capital of urban living to find our origins.  It was a huge city back in the 2nd millennium BCE. Abraham, or Abram which was his original name, was born in 1948 BCE (before the common era) and was our patriarch. He was the father of the Jews and the Arabs.  Jews and Arabs came from different mothers;  Jews through Sarai and Arabs through Hagar, the Egyptian.                                               

   Terah was Abram's  father.  Terah,  Abram, Sarai his niece and later,, his wife, Lot, Abram's cousin were  traveling to Canaan, would visit Egypt and return to live in Hebron.  He'll deliver Lot from king of Elam, Chedorlaomer, king of Shinar, Amraphel, and their allies.  They're doing a lot of walking, not even counting steps.   

In Genesis, chapter 17:5, God gives Abram, who is now 99 years old,  the covenant of circumcision, to be an outward sign of this promise. But God does a strange thing here: he renames Abram to Abraham.  This name change is due to his new status as father of a multitude--whereas the name Avram represented his former status as only Av Aram---father of Aram, his native country.                                                   

     Abram and Sarah were with their first son, Isaac.  Sarah may have been 45 years of age, but was said to be 90 in the bible, very old for those days, but didn't look this bad, but this does make the point that she had waited a long time get pregnant and it took the angel's visit in disguise as 3 strangers, to make it happen. They had married before they left Haran.  When they were traveling to Egypt from Haran, her beauty attracted the local ruler. She was restored to her husband when it became known she was a married lady. Sarah died at age 127.  Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah for her burial.    

 Our great Patriarch, Abraham, father of the Israelites and the Arabs was born in Ur of the Chaldees at the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers area in about 1948 BCE. He died at age 175.    During his youth, the people of Ur were getting disgusting, sacrificing their sons to change the world in order to satisfy a family's needs; believing in many gods that they manifested into idols  which they worshipped and did bloody things for in order to gain their needs.                               

       Terah died in Haran which was on the way to Canaan. He was a devout idolator challenged in his beliefs by son Abram. I can't understand how this artist would believe in what he himself was creating.   

Abram, for that was his original name, had a father, Terah, who was an actual idol-maker.  Abram knew that they were just figures made out of clay and had no super-powers.  So Terah had been leaching his customers and abetting their beliefs in them as we see it.  Abram had enough of this masquerade and decided they had to get out of such an environment as Ur because one day the actual G-d force had called on Abram and conveyed to him how and what he must do in order to stop this continuation of idol-evil worship. He had that ah-hah moment.  Abram was told to go to Canaan and was told by G-d that he would have many descendants that would change the world.  Abram married Sarai, his niece, and they and Terah and Terah's nephew, Lot,  and others traveled on from Haran to Canaan.

                                                               

                         Sarai finally gave Abram her maid-servant, Hagar because she had not given him a child as yet, and maybe Hagar could.  

Here was Abram, anxious to start having children in his and Sarai's image, and Sarai still wasn't pregnant after years of waiting, so Abram took her servant, Hagar,  to impregnate.  The child would still be as if it was from Sarai as the mother belonged to her.  Hagar  became pregnant right away with Ishmael.  The interaction between the two women had now changed and Hagar acted as if she had become the queen of the tribe.  Sarai would have none of that and finally, after Ishmael had taunted her son, Isaac, who had finally come to her in her old age, probably around age 45, she gave evidence to Abram of the disruption of the family and insisted that Hagar and Ishmael and to leave their tents. I have a feeling that so much pressure was put on Sarai to get pregnant that she couldn't; and finally when Abram did have a son, Ishmael, the pressure was off of Sarai and that's when she finally conceived.

He sadly agreed.                                                                                           

                                                            Canaanites
 What they had found in Canaan were people unlike those they left in Ur and Babylon, but people living in little city-states, a family tribe grown into a band, who had also taken on the practices they had left behind.  They sacrificed their sons and daughters for whatever needs came up.  They had no reverence for life.  To Abraham, they were wild-a wild form of human life.  He wanted nothing to do with them. Such behaviors were why they had left Ur.                                                                         

 Isaac had married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel who delivered twins;  Esau and Jacob.  Esau was the oldest son by minutes.  It was as if she alone had made up for time by having twins.  These were not identical twins, however.  They were completely dissimilar, as different as could be, seen by their different likes and dislikes as they grew up.  They competed for their father's favor.  Jacob, with Rebecca's help, cheated Esau out of his birthright, a right given by their father, which also included a special blessing.  This led Jacob to leave their compound and separate.  This cheating caused Esau to become Jacob's enemy.  Jacob had fled to Haran and then returned 20 years later.  Esau greeted his returning  brother affectionately.  This story of the twins symbolizes the relationship between the 2 nations that they had become; that of the Jews and the Arabs, developing to the point of hostility.   So Isaac had married his 2nd or 3rd cousin, Rebekah.  

Our ancestors were forced by culture, religion and environment to be an endogamous people, probably something other peoples were also practicing.  The Egyptians had taken their spouses to be siblings; something the Israelites did not do.   Our endogamous existence would continue on unknown to us to the present for various reasons of being kept together as a people.  We have distant cousins marrying distant cousins if both are Jewish.  The mixing of Ashkenazi and Sephardim Jews in Israel is a good thing that has happened, genetically.  

Bethuel, in the Hebrew Bible, was an Aramean man (Syrian) , the youngest son of Nahor and Milcah, the nephew of Abraham, and the father of Laban and Rebecca. Bethuel was also a town in the territory of the tribe of Simeon, west of the Dead Sea.

All this is written in the Bible, by Moses, set down in his  5 Books of Moses...Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.                                                                        

      Tigris and Euphrates Rivers on the right, Nile running through Egypt to Mediterranian Sea .  King David, youngest son of Jesse was of the tribe of Judah who was the youngest son of Boaz, a man of property in Bethlehem and Ruth.  

Arameans were a group of Semitic tribes who invaded the Fertile Crescent in the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium BCE and roamed between the Persian Gulf and the Amamus Mountains.  Aram and Israel had a common ancestry and the Israelite patriarchs were of Aramaic origin and maintained ties of marriage with the Tribes of Aram.  The principal Aramean deity in Syria was Hadad, god of wind, rain, thunder, and lightning.                                                         

Here we see Jacob with Rachel and Joseph-11th son,  in the middle with her older sister, Leah in blue with Reuben-1st son, Simeon-2nd son, Levi-3rd son, Judah-4th son, Issachar,-5th son,  and Zebulun-6th son,  and daughter Dinah. Rachel's servant was Bilhah, with Dan-9thth son and Naphtali-10th son.  Leah's handmaid was Zilpah, mother of Gad-7th son and Asher, 8th son, whose territory was from Western Galilee to the south of Carmel. Benjamin was not yet born to Rachel, would be Jacob's 12th son. Rachel died at childbirth. 

Joseph would not receive land as he was living in Egypt, after being sold in slavery to the Ishmaelites by his brothers; but his sons, Manasseh and Ephraim by Asenath, inherited land with Joseph's brothers.  Jacob conferred on them an equal portion with his own sons in the division of Canaan.     

                                                                   

 Jacob had bought his brother Esau's birthright for a mess of pottage (stew)  and had wrangled the blessing out of Isaac who was blind.  At Haran, he married his uncle Laban's 2 daughters, Rachel and Leah.  By them and their handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah,   He had 12 sons who would be the fathers of the 12 tribes, and a  daughter, Dinah.  

Laban was the brother of Rebekah, and father of Leah and Rachel who lived in Haran in Aram Naharaim.                                   

Our kings were Saul, son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin;  David of the tribe of Judah and his son, Solomon.  David had to fight enemies of his people, but Solomon did not being his father had made peace in the wild land.  Solomon built a temple at a costly price, so high that his people rebelled, and this caused the division of the Northern tribes and the Southern.  It caused the Davidic line to be continued only with the Southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin.   

Weakened, the Assyrians took advantage and attacked the North in 721 BCE, carting off the best of the population.  Some 200 years later, their adversaries, the Babylonians, did the same thing in  597 and again in 586 BCE by taking the lot to Babylon.  Finally, their king Cyrus II in 538 BCE  sent Jews, for most were of the tribe of Judah, back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple that they had destroyed when Nebuchadnezzar had been in charge.  Cyrus II died in 529 BCE, was king of Persia.  It was he who overran the Babylonian Empire, including Palestine.  He was a man who pursued an enlightened policy towards his subject peoples.  The Jewish exiles regarded Cyrus as a Divine agent.  We think of him as the son of Queen Esther and King Ahasueros of Persia.  So the Jews returned, but not all of them as they had settled into Persian life with just enough freedom from Cyrus.                                    

 Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon (605-562 BCE) Conquered all the lands from the Euphrates River to the Egyptian frontier, including Judah.  In 597 BCE after Judah revolted, he sent contingents which captured Jerusalem, replaced the young king Jehoiachin with his own nominee, Zedekiah, and exiled 8,000 of the local aristocracy to Babylon.  8 years later Zedekiah rebelled.  The forces again invaded Judah, captured Jerusalem in 586 BCE and destroyed the Temple, laying waste the cities and exiling masses of the population.  The king was taken to Riblah, where he was slain.   

What strikes me is that our Jewish ancestors were taken back to Babylon, which was just north of Ur, where they had started from.  It was something like Eugene, Oregon was Ur and Portland, Oregon was Babylon.      

                                          King  Zedekiah 

Kings of Judah, following the Davidic line, ended with King Zedekiah (597-586) BCE.  He was the son of King Josiah, adopting this name from Mattaniah when appointed king by Nebuchadnezzar to succeed the exiled Jehoiachin.  He was king at age 21 and swore allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar; refusing to join an anti-Babylonian coalition of neighboring kingdoms and in 594 BCE, visited Babylon.  After 9 years, he conspired with Egypt:  in  consequence the Babylonians invaded his kingdom and captured Jerusalem.  He was overtaken while fleeing and brought for trial before Nebuchadnezzar.  His sons were killed before him;  his eyes were put out, and he was imprisoned in Babylon until his death.  

Jews returned and rebuilt the Temple only to see it destroyed and ravaged by the Romans in 70 CE.  They revived in 132 with General bar Kokhba in the 2nd Jewish Revolt of the Jews who held Jerusalem for 3 years before he was killed in battle.  Jews supposedly were not allowed entrance again. The Romans, the strongest army in the world, had been held off for an embarrassing 3 years.  

"Almost 1,000 villages were destroyed and more than half a million people killed. In Judaea proper the Jews seem to have been virtually exterminated, but they survived in Galilee, which, like Samaria, appears to have held aloof from the revolt. Tiberias in Galilee became the seat of the Jewish patriarchs. The province of Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina (later simply called Palaestina), and, according to Eusebius of Caeseria (Ecclesiastical History, Book IV, chapter 6), no Jew was thenceforth allowed to set foot in Jerusalem or the surrounding district. This prohibition apparently was relaxed sometime later to permit Jews to enter Jerusalem one day a year, on a day of mourning called Tisha be-Ava. Although this ban was officially still in force as late as the 4th century CE, there is some evidence that from the Severan period onward (after 193) Jews visited the city more frequently, especially at certain festival times, and even that there may have been some Jews in residence."                           

Emperor"Hadrian proceeded to convert Jerusalem into a Greco-Roman city, with a circus, an amphitheatre, baths, and a theatre and with streets conforming to the Roman grid pattern. He also erected temples dedicated to Jupiter and himself (Aelia was his clan name) on the very site of the destroyed Temple of Jerusalem. To repopulate the city, Hadrian apparently brought in Greco-Syrians from the surrounding areas and even perhaps some legionary veterans. The urbanization and Hellenization of Palestine was continued during the reign of the emperor Septimius Severus (193–211 CE), except in Galilee, where the Jewish presence remained strong. New pagan cities were founded in Judaea at Eleutheropolis and Diospolis (formerly Lydda) and at Nicopolis (formerly Emmaus) under one of Severus’s successors, Elagabalus (218–222). In addition, Severus issued a specific ban against Jewish proselytism".

The emperor Diocletian (r.284-305 CE) divided the Roman Empire in two, the Western Empire which controlled Europe and the Eastern Empire (later known as the Byzantine Empire) which administrated affairs in the Near East and, of course, held Syria-Palaestina.                                                      

"When the emperor Constantine the Great (r.306-337 CE) legitimized Christianity and made it the state religion, Syria-Palaestina became a Christian province and an important center for the new faith.  Jews still lived through this era in Judah.  "                                                                                  

                       Islamic army out of Arabia taking over lands

"7th century CE and the rise of Islam in the region. In 634 CE, the Muslim armies from Arabia took Syria-Palaestina and renamed it Jund Filastin (“Military District of Palestine”). The Muslims felt they had as much of a religious stake in the region as the Christians or as the Jews before them and churches were turned into mosques in the same way that earlier temples had given way to churches."  Still and all, Jews were living in the land; not governing it but living there as Jews.  The land was going to seed;  weed seed.  

                                                    

The Byzantine Empire fell in 1453 CE, greatly reducing Christian influence in the region, and Palestine was held by the Ottoman Turks for 400 years. The region continued to be contested throughout the next few centuries until the British involved themselves in 1915 CE during World War I at which time the western powers first devised plans to partition the Middle East for their own purposes and benefit.            

           Palestine from 1947-May 14, 1948 with the announcement of Israel  

Palestine continued to be a war-torn and much-contested region up through World War II when, afterwards, the United Nations declared the area the State of Israel and established it as a homeland for the Jewish people. This mandate by the United Nations, and the resulting country of Israel, remains controversial  to the Arabs and and the region continues to be as troubled in the present day as it was in ancient times.  Jews had gone through a great deal of talking and conferencing with the British and allies during WWI in order to gain the land.  They had been a people without a country since 70 CE.  Finally, after waiting 1,878 years, they regained their land back again, ISRAEL.  

Israel is a culmination of 3,896 + 73 more years since 1948  making 3,969 years of Jewish history that is an epic story.  

Resource: 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/Roman-Palestine

https://www.worldhistory.org/palestine/