Middle East Empires Jews Have Contended With

 Nadene Goldfoot                                     

As Israel's second king, David built a small empire. He conquered Jerusalem, which he made Israel's political and religious centre. He defeated the Philistines so thoroughly that they never seriously threatened the Israelites' security again, and he annexed the coastal region. David ruled from 1010 BCE to 970 BCE. 

 Israel is not trying to create their old empire, only wanting to live in their ancient land that is today's Judea and Samaria that has been divided into areas A,B, and C with C under Israeli control and B for both Arab and Israeli control.                              

The Assyrian Empire of Semites was an aggressive kingdom in the 20th century BCE.  It expanded rapidly in the 13th and 10th centuries BCE.  Lots of fighting during its existence occurred.  In 853 BCE, Shalmaneser  III attacked Ben -Hadad of Damascus and King Ahab-(876-853 BCE) 7th king after Solomon's death,  of Israel helped Damascus in the battle at Karkar.  Israel lost its territory in Transjordan and Galilee in 735 BCE to Tiglath-Pileser.  By 726 BCE, King Hosea (730-721 BCE) of Israel fought against Shalmaneser  V's siege of Samaria (northern part of Israel where 10 of the 12 tribes lived) and its capture in 721 BCE, led by Sargon.  Sargon  annexed the country and deported 27,290 Israelites to Assyria and Media, and replaced these with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners.                                 

The Babylonian Empire was ruled by Nebuchadnezzar II from 604-656 BCE.  He had inherited the Assyrian Empire, then conquered Judah in 597 BCE and again 11 years later  in 586 BCE, exiling many Jews to Babylon.  Babylonian Jews could keep in contact with Judean Jews.  They supplied leaders such as Hillel.  Babylonian Jews were activists, in later during the Roman Occupation of Jerusalem and fought against the Roman emperor Trajan in a revolt, only ending in 116 by Commander Lucius Quietus.  Babylon remained an active Jewish center.  

                                               

The Persian Empire, made up of 127 provinces,  wants to live again in the hands of the Ayatollahs of Iran. The capital was Susa (Shushan). Cyrus of Persia had taken over the Babylonian Empire in 538 BCE. It existed from the 4th century BCE onward.   Jews, both in Mesopotamia and Judah,  found themselves under Persian rule for the next 200 years.  Cyrus encouraged the Jews to leave and return to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple  while Jerusalem was still a Persian province.  Being this huge land mass of Persia was unified politically, people could move from one area to the other easily.  

The area was then controlled by Parthia from 250 BCE onward, becoming a state by 225 CE.  under the Sassanid Dynasty, ruling over the ancient centers of intensive Jewish communities in Mesopotamia.                       

It appears that this ancient empire is being revitalized by the Ayatollas who have taken control of it today.  They are threatening the existence of Israel.   Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei (Persian: سید علی حسینی خامنه‌ای, born 19 April 1939) is a Twelver Shia marja' and the second and current supreme leader of Iran, in office since 1989.    He is the supreme ruler.   Khamenei officially succeeded Ruhollah Khomeini after Khomeini's death, being elected as the new Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts on 4 June 1989, for the past 33 years.                    

The Ottoman Empire, founded by Turks in 1299,  was also home to many Jews.  The Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire, was an empire that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I.  The Ottoman Empire was one of the mightiest and longest-lasting dynasties in world history. This Islamic-run superpower ruled large areas of the Middle East, Eastern Europe and North Africa for more than 600 years.  They made the mistake of siding with the Germans in our first World War, and they lost, which meant that they lost their land, keeping only Turkey itself.  The Ottomans ruled Palestine from 1517 to 1917.  They had also taken Egypt, Yemen and Iraq in that same year.  

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the 12th and current president of Turkey, who has held the office since 28 August 2014. Since 9 July 2018, Erdoğan has served as the first president under the new executive system of government. The president is directly elected by eligible Turkish voters for a five-year term, renewable once.  He seems to have the goal of reviving the Ottoman Empire, and has been a rather erratic president.  Right now he's being more friendly, possibly because of the Abrahamic Accords of friendliness towards Israel.  He's been a hot and cold member of NATO,, too.  He's been running into the Persian Empire desire to also renew their ancient position in the world, and is in the middle of Eastern and Western controls.                                   

 The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, ruled by emperors   Jews lived in Rome from 139 BCE. 

From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a principate with Italy as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital.  

Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until  476 CE when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians under Odoacer and the subsequent deposition of Romulus Augustulus. 

The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in 380 CE and the fall of the Western Roman Empire to Germanic kings conventionally marks the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. 

Because of these events, along with the gradual Hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire, historians distinguish the medieval Roman Empire that remained in the Eastern provinces as the Byzantine Empire.

Look for the deep red boot of Italy to get a grip on this map and see that the white area is the Mediterranean Sea.  

The Byzantine Empire founded on May 11, 330 CE was the medieval Roman Empire of the Eastern provinces. It's rule commenced in the 4th century CE.   It's capital was Constantinople  that ruled over a varying geographical area that up to the year 637, including  Palestine.  

It really was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire remained the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. The terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" were coined after the end of the realm; its citizens continued to refer to their empire simply as the Roman Empire, and to themselves as Romans—a term which Greeks continued to use for themselves into Ottoman times.  Although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, modern historians distinguish Byzantium from its earlier incarnation because it was centered on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, and characterised by Eastern Orthodox Christianity. 

Resource:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/David

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei#:~:text=Sayyid%20Ali%20Hosseini%20Khamenei%20(Persian,Iran%2C%20in%20office%20since%201989.

https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/ottoman-empire#:~:text=The%20Ottoman%20Empire%20was%20one,for%20more%20than%20600%20years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Turkey#:~:text=Recep%20Tayyip%20Erdo%C4%9Fan%20is%20the,%2Dyear%20term%2C%20renewable%20once.

G0d and Mankind: 4,000 Years Ago Part I Middle East

Nadene Goldfoot                                                
Going back to the 2nd millennium BCE or 4,000 years ago, and we still find Mankind trying to adjust to his unpredictable surroundings.                                      

Abraham and Lot, his nephew, dividing the land

                                                                           

Their ancestors of 7,700 years before them were just coming out of the Pleistone Epoch or Last Ice Age that had begun some 1.8 million years ago.  Glaciers covered huge parts of our planet, meaning that it was a no man's land.  People congregated in what is today's Spain which was of a warmer climate,  eventually.
                                                                             

The Flood 

Geneticists explain that mankind came out of Africa in different stages.  They went into the Eastern parts, and we find they were in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey.  Remember the story of Noah?  He built an ark and took all the animals by pairs to procreate when they landed, and they landed evidently on Mt. Ararat in today's Turkey.  From there mankind worked their way throughout the planet, but not easily.  They were confronted with earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, storms, floods, hurricanes, you name it.  It's a wonder we all are here and that mankind was not wiped out by natural forces along with the mammoths of 10,000 years ago.  No wonder they all needed help in the form of a god or gods.  Things happen beyond man's control or understanding.
                                                                       

Moses and the burning bush that's not really burning

So we find a group of people migrating together coming from the East in the 2nd millennium BCE called the Israelites with a man named Abraham, son of Terah.  We know this because the people of his day had good memories and handed down this information orally to their descendants till it came to Abraham's  3rd great grandson, Moses, who was educated in Egypt in being a scribe and wrote down the story as he heard it; from G-d and most likely was filled in by his fellow relatives that he had rescued from the Egyptian Pharaoh.   Moses first had received his information orally from G-d, and this was called the Oral Law, which he shared orally.  It was necessary to be learned in this first in order to understand the more limited version Moses wrote as the written law.  After all, there was only so much he could find to write upon, as he must have used sheepskin.
                                                                   

           
What Moses had to offer his people was a way to behave in the form of 10 Commandments from G-d.  Those 10 can be summed up in the Golden Rule of not doing to others what you do not want to happen to yourself.  There were 613 laws in all that he shared with the Israelites; the same number of bones that we have in our bodies.


Egypt invented a form of writing which was in hieroglyphics, but writing was developed in the land of Canaan by the invention of an alphabet around the 18th century BCE.  An alphabet was the way to mass literacy for a people.  Egyptians needed to know this as it was involved in trading.
                                                                               

Egyptian scene of Israelites entering their land

Abraham's grandson, Jacob, had taken his extended family of 70 into Egypt because of drought condition in Canaan where they were living, and the group  stayed and grew till their numbers caused the Egyptians alarm and they were taken in mass as slaves for the Pharaoh, making their total years in Egypt to be 400.                                                      

Moses,born in c1391, was on the Exodus for 40 years and died at 120 just before entering Canaan by the year 1271 BCE.
                                                                               

Sarah suggesting Hagar could carry Abraham's child
as she had not conceived as yet

 Abraham had taught his children that there was only one unseen G-d whereas the people of Egypt believed in a multitude of animal beings they thought were gods that were in control of nature. He had a son, Ishmael, by Hagar, his wife's handmaid who didn't conceive until later.  Hagar was a princess of Egypt.  Then Sarah, his wife conceived and gave birth to Isaac, 2 important men in our biblical epic.  Abraham is considered as the founder of monotheism; Ishmael as father of the Arab people and Isaac father of the Jewish people.

  "Formal Egyptian religious practice centered on the pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who was believed to possess a divine power by virtue of his position. He acted as the intermediary between his people and the gods and was obligated to sustain the gods through rituals and offerings so that they could maintain order in the universe. The state dedicated enormous resources to Egyptian rituals and to the construction of the temples."
                                                                                

Tel Armana letter: writing that recorded the events

 The cultures clashed, but being slaves,the Israelites could do nothing about it but hold onto their own beliefs.  At least the only people they could mingle with were other slaves from others places and beliefs other than the Egyptian ones.  This all took place during when the Semitic Hyksos dynasaty of the 18th to 16th centuries BCE took place.  We know this from the Tel el-Amarna letters found.  Moses, the secretly adopted son of the Egyptian princess, found out that he was an Israelite, and rescued 600,000 Israelites of Egypt and took them back to Canaan after hearing this request from the unseen G-d.  Moses died in about 1271 BCE, at age 120 outside of Canaan with Joshua taking over at his request as leader.
                                                                             

Egyptian gods  Osiris in white, Anubis in middle, and Horus

There was a close connection to Egypt with the new empire of Israel with King Solomon (961-920 BCE) or 3,000 years ago.  He had married an Egyptian princess to conclude a trade treaty.  The pharaoh Shishak attacked Jerusalem in 930 BCE. to help the to help the newly-established Northern kingdom of Israel.  Josiah was killed in 608 BCE when tryig to check the march of Pharaoh Neho through his territory.  His successor, King Jehoahaz, was deported, and Jehoiakim was installed in his place by the Egyptians.  Before the fall of the 1st Temple by the Assyrians, there was a Jewish colony in Egypt.  "At various times, certain  Egyptian gods became preeminent over the others, including the sun god Ra, the creator god Amun, and the mother goddess Isis. For a brief period, in the theology promulgated by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, a single god, the Aten, replaced the traditional pantheon. Ancient Egyptian religion and mythology left behind many writings and monuments, along with significant influences on ancient and modern cultures."
Their religion " could include gods adopted from foreign cultures, and sometimes humans: deceased Pharaohs were believed to be divine, and occasionally, distinguished commoners such as Imhotep also became deified.. "
                                                                

Baal
Canaanites made statues of their gods.  Abraham's father, Terah,
was an idol maker.  They also believed in human sacrifice.
Abraham himself was ready to sacrifice his son, Isaac but was stopped by
G-d, telling him that was to be the end of that practice.  

Canaan, today's Syria, existed in the 15th to 13th centuries BCE, and also included

 the coast of

Israel.  Before the land became Israel with King Saul, it was divided into small city-states.  The 
northern part was called Aram-today's Syria.  The population had been divided in 11 separate 
people who occupied the land between the Nile River of Egypt and the Euphrates in the East.
Canaanites were a mixture of Horites, Hittites and Hebrews going back to the 17th century BCE.
"Canaanite religion was polytheistic, and in some cases monolatristic, the  belief in the existence of many gods but with the consistent worship of only one deity.  The term "monolatry" was perhaps first used by Julius Wellhausen. 
                                                                            

DAGON was the god of the Philistines when they entered Canaan.  There were shrines to him 
set up in Gaza.  He was part of the Ugarite pantheon of gods and was the god of the soil and 
of plant growth.  This god was widely worshipped in the Mediterranean countries.  Ugarit was
 a Canaanite city on the North Syrian coast and called Ras Shamra today.  It was a 
commercial center in the 2nd millennium BCE when Abraham was born.  

                                                                                 

Hadad was the chief god of the ancient Semitic pantheon.He was thought of
as the god of justice and augury, the patron of rain and thunder.  Sometimes he was
identified with Baal, and that Baal was just a title showing lordship of the world.
Several kings of Edom carried his name.  

They had far more than the 28 gods that are listed in my source including such as
 El (leader of pantheon), , Asherah (Queen of El) and Baal (thunder) .  The Romans
seemed to copy them as they had a god for everything; marriage, birth, fertility, war. 
 Their religion  centered "with families typically focusing on veneration of the dead in the form of household gods and goddesses, the Elohim, while acknowledging the existence of other deities such as Baal and El, Asherah and Astarte."   I notice that Hebrew borrowed some names, such as "Yam (lit. sea-river) the god of the sea and the river.  Yam means "sea" in Hebrew.  "

• Shamayim, (lit. "Skies"), god of the heavens, paired with Eretz, the land or earth, meaning sky and earth in Hebrew.  

The Assyrian Empire attacked the Israelites in 721 BCE or about 2,738 years ago.They had spoken Akkadian, a Semitic language similar to Hebrew and Aramaic of the Israelites and Israel today.  The script was done in cuneiform and they were the first people to use it in writing.  Akkadian was spoken from the 4th millennium BCE and served as the language of diplomacy and commerce throughout the Middle East until the Greek Conquest.  
                                                                   

Marduk or Merodach was a Babylonian deity.  In mythology he was regarded as the main opponent of the monster Tiamat and as creator of the world and mankind.  King of the gods, he determined men's fate at the beginning of the year.  

Their polytheistic religion is centered around Asshur, king of all the gods they believed in.  "Ashurism is polytheistic religion very similar to the religion of the Babylonians in that, their main gods were based around nature. they believed a spirit possessed every object in nature.  The other primary gods are based around nature such as, Anu- the god of heaven, Bel- the god of region inhabited by man, beast and birds, Ea- the god of water, Sin- the moon god, Shamash- the sun god, and Ramman- the god of storms. Many other gods follow these such as the five planet gods and hundreds of lesser gods they would make make offerings to in order to get what they want. "  

The Assyrians were the power of the Middle East first, and then Babylonia took over.  Nebuchadnezzar attacked Israel and Judah in 597 BCE and again in 586 and led the Jews into captivity with many ending up in Persia.  The tribe of Israelites could have come from the Assyrian area, breaking away and ending up in Ur of the Chaldees (today's Iraq).  Ur was where Abraham lived before he and his family left for Haran.   It had become an ancient Babylonian city.  Haran was a trading town of NW Mesopotamia (Iraq) and center of the Moon cult.  The name, Haran, was the name of Abraham's brother and the father of Lot.  

"By the 4th millennium BCE, Mesopotamia was in the Uruk period (4,000 - 3,100 BCE) , with emerging Sumerian hegemony and development of "proto-cuneiform" writing; base-60 mathematics, astronomy and astrology, civil law, complex hydrology, the sailboat, potter's wheel and wheel;" That's really going back, but no telling how far back some of their religion goes.  

"Sin /ˈsiːn/ (Akkadian: Su'en, Sîn) or Nanna (Sumerian: ^DŠEŠ.KI, ^DNANNA) was the god of the moon in the Mesopotamian mythology of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia. Nanna is a Sumerian deity, the son of Enlil and Ninlil, and became identified with Semitic Sin. The two chief seats of Nanna's/Sin's worship were Ur in the south of Mesopotamia and Harran in the north. A moon god by the same name was also worshipped in pre-Islamic South Arabia.
                                                                   

Statue of Mithras, ancient Persian god of light who was adopted into the Roman pantheon. Mithras is shown wearing the Phrygian cap, he holds the Labrys. (Labrys was a cult-word that was probably introduced from Anatolia, where such symbols have been found in Çatal Höyük from the neolithic age. In Labraunda of Caria the double-axe accompanies the storm-god Zeus Labraundos.)Louvre. This god was heavily borrowed by the Romans.  

The ancient Persian religion "was some old forms of Paganism:   they were worshiping the moon, sun, stars, trees and nature in general. and there is evidences that they worshiped statues too."  Mithraism  still has influence on Iran’s culture. and we yet don’t know for how many thousands years, but Mithra was their God, and later the religion went to Europe, and now we recall Mithraism as a religion of Roman Empire.

Mithraism was slightly like what we now call  Kundalini.  "Mithra, also spelled Mithras, Sanskrit Mitra, in ancient Indo-Iranian mythology, the god of light, whose cult spread from India in the east to as far west as Spain, Great Britain, and Germany. (See Mithraism.) The first written mention of the Vedic Mitra dates to 1400 BCE or 3,400 years ago."s  Mithra was the Persian god of war and preserver of law and order.  He is pictured often slaying a bull.  

                                                                              

Persia (today's Iran) in the 7th century BCE or 601 BCE  had a prophet by the name of Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism was founded through him.  "the religion contains both monotheistic and dualistic features. It influenced the other major Western religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  It's a little like Judaism's teachings in its belief in righteousness and had an ethical character in its attitude towards marriage.  It was never " as aggressively monotheistic as for instance, Judaism or Islam, it does represent an original attempt at unifying under the worship of one supreme god, a polytheistic religion comparable to those of other early peoples."  Like Judaism, " there are today about 200,000 Zoroastrians throughout the world.  100,000 are living in India and are called "Parsis." 

People as far back as those living 4,000 years ago had mobility from the need for trade, power and foods.  In gaining these things, they also borrowed from each other's religions; all except borrowing the monotheistic idea of a ONE invisible G0D of Abraham and the Israelites of Isaac and Jacob.  That was to come much later.  Abraham had been an enigma, unusual in those days of polytheism to be able to trust in an unseen power and put his faith in something that one did not make pictures or statues of.  

https://samtemple.wordpress.com/religion/
http://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,000_BC_(film)
Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Canaanite_religion
https://samtemple.wordpress.com/religion/ Assyrian ancient religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_(mythology)
https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-Persian-religion-before-Zoroastrianism
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mithra
http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Elam/Zoroastrian_rel.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_religion
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/164592561353377084/ on Mithras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_millennium_BC