Jews in Judah After Antigonus Mattathias

 Nadene Goldfoot     IRAN'S ANCESTOR, PARTHIA                         

 The Persians were an ancient southwestern Iranian ethnic group native to the region of Fars (Persia), famous for founding the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, while the Parthians were an eastern Iranian people who originated as a nomadic tribe (the Parni) from northeastern Iran and later ruled the Parthian Empire from 247 BCE to 224 CE

I left the period  from the time of Darius I in 486 BCE to Antigonus Mattathias ruling in Judah in 40 BCE, in which Judeans were living in Judah under the Parthians  for the past 526 years. 

Greeks entered and took control of Judah in 332 BCE when Alexander the Great led his Macedonian and Greek forces to conquer the Persian Empire, bringing Judea under Greek rule. 332 BCE: Alexander the Great sweeps through the eastern Mediterranean, defeating Persia/Parthia and taking control of Judah (Judea) without major resistance.

323 BCE: Alexander the Great dies, and his empire splits among his generals into rival Hellenistic kingdoms.
3rd Century BCE: Judah is ruled largely by the Ptolemaic Kingdom (Egypt), bringing Greek culture, language, and administration.The Ptolemaic Kingdom was connected to the Greeks through its Macedonian-Greek royal family, its Hellenistic culture, and its political and economic roots in the empire of Alexander the Great.  The dynasty was founded in 305 BCE by Ptolemy I Soter, a trusted Macedonian general and companion of Alexander the Great. Greek Ruling Elite: The government, military, and upper classes were dominated by Macedonian and Greek immigrants who held key administrative posts and used Greek as the official language
200 BCE: The Seleucid Empire (based in Syria) gains permanent control over Judah.



168–167 BCE: The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrates the Temple and bans Jewish practices, sparking the Maccabean Revolt and temporary Jewish independence. The Seleucid Empire ruled Judah for about 58 years (from 200 BCE to 142 BCE).   Conquest: King Antiochus III the Great won Judah from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt at the Battle of Panium in 200 BCE. Initial Governance: At first, the Seleucids allowed local Jewish self-rule, lowered taxes, and let people practice their religion freely. Forced Hellenization: Under King Antiochus IV Epiphanes (beginning around 175–167 BCE), policy changed. He banned the Torah, made Jerusalem a Greek city called Antioch in Judaea, and turned the Second Temple into a shrine for Zeus. 

                   Judas Maccabeus:  Judah was the third son of Mattathias, the Hasmonean, a Jewish priest from the village of Modi'in. In 167 BCE, Mattathias, together with his sons Judah, Eleazar, Simon, John, and Jonathan, started a revolt against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who since 169/8 BC had issued decrees that forbade Jewish religious practices. After Mattathias died in 166 BC, Judah assumed leadership of the revolt per the deathbed disposition of his father. The First Book of Maccabees praises Judah's valor and military talent, suggesting that those qualities made Judah a natural choice for the new commander.
The Maccabean Revolt: The extreme religious oppression led to a Jewish guerrilla rebellion (167–142 BCE) led by the Hasmonean (Maccabee) family.  End of Rule: Judas Maccabeus and his brothers fought off the Seleucid armies, recaptured the Jerusalem Temple (celebrated as Hanukkah), and won full autonomy and independence by 142 BCE                             

Antigonus II was High Priest of Israel, and also the last Hasmonean king of Judea. He was the son of King Aristobulus II.  Antigonus II Mattathias ruled Judea for 3 years (from 40 BCE to 37 BCE).  He was  proclaimed king and high priest in 40 BCE with the help of the Parthians.  He had to fight  approximately 3 years of continuous war against Roman forces and Herod the Great. Then he was  captured and executed in 37 BCE, which ended the Hasmonean dynasty.

                        The Siege of Jerusalem (37 BCE)              

• The Forces: After the Roman Senate declared Herod "King of the Jews" in 40 BCE, he returned to Judea with Roman legions led by Sosius, the governor of Syria. 
• The Assault: Herod and the Roman forces surrounded the city, amassing a massive army. The siege lasted 4 to 5 months of brutal, bitter fighting.  Starvation was happening as they had no food.  People were desperate.  
• The Breach: Roman forces breached the city walls, resulting in a massacre of the inhabitants. Herod famously had to step in and pay the Roman soldiers out of his own pocket to stop them from completely pillaging the city and desecrating the Holy of Holies. 
• The Execution: King Antigonus Mattathias surrendered to Sosius and was sent in chains to Mark Antony, who had him beheaded. This brought a definitive end to the century-long Hasmonean dynasty.  

 

Iran's Love-Hate Relationship with Israel

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Iran's name used to be Persia.  It first became a factor in Jewish history as a result of the conquest of the Babylonian Empire by Cyrus in 538 BCE.  Cyrus was thought to be by the Jews,  Queen Esther's son.  She was the Jewish queen of King Ahasueros of Persia.  For the next 2 centuries, both the mass of Jews in EXILE in Mesopotamia and in the homeland of Judea were under Persian rule.  It was under Cyrus who encouraged the Jews to return home and rebuild their Temple.  This took place as the great return from exile to Judea but continued to be a Persian province with some degree of local autonomy.  Some Jews did not return.

The political unity of the Middle East under Persian rule made inevitable considerable movements of population from one part of this area to another.  This is what took place earlier with the Assyrian invasion of the 10 northern tribes of Israel.  They were taken as slaves and replaced by the unwanted criminals of Mesopotamia. That may have taken place all over the world, moving people for various reasons. 

                                             

The Book of Esther in our Tanakh (old Testament) tells of Jews living throughout the 127 provinces of the Persian Empire and says they were numerous and influential in the capital of Susa (Shushan). At least from the 4th century BCE onward, Jews lived in considerable numbers in Persia proper, as they continued to do, although little is known about their history other than we know that Haman wanted all the Jews of the whole empire killed and he almost succeeded, except that Queen Esther heard of the plot and exposed him to her husband.  (our holiday of Purim) when we remember while eating hamentaschen cookies. 

                                        

Persia was then controlled by PARTHIA from 250 BCE onward.  Persia resumed its existence as a state in 225 CE, 475 years later, but under the Sassanid dynasty, Named after the House of Sasan, (Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians, and also called the Neo-Persian Empire by historians, was the last Persian imperial dynasty before the Muslim conquest in the mid seventh century CE).  It's authority extended over the ancient centers of intensive Jewish villages, towns and cities in Mesopotamia.  

The Babylon Talmud, reputed to be the best between it and the Palestinian Talmud,( a collection of the records of discussions about aspects of the bible by famous rabbis)  was redacted here under Persian rule, gives evidences of a vigorous Jewish life in Persia proper, and the Persian Queen SHUSHAN DUKHT was of Jewish birth. Shushandukht  was the wife of Yazdegerd I and mother of Bahram V. She was the daughter of a Jewish exilarch, Huna bar Nathan (Rav Huna bar Natan was a Babylonian rabbi and exilarch, of the fifth and sixth generations of amoraim.). She created the Jewish neighborhood in the city of Isfahan.  Bahram V was the son of the incumbent Sasanian shah Yazdegerd I (r. 399–420), Bahram was at an early age sent to the Lahkmid court in al-Hira, where he was raised under the tutelage of the Lakhmid kings. After the assassination of his father, Bahram hurried to the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon with a Lakhmid army, and won the favour of the nobles and priests, according to a long-existing popular legend, after withstanding a trial against two lions. No, they do not sound like Queen Esther's history under new names.  She's a new queen to me.  

Zoroaster, a Persian prophet, founded this religion in 7th century BCE, a belief in light and righteousness and actively ethical character reflected some Jewish qualities but contained dualism.  from Isaiah (45:7) "I form the light and create darkness;  I make peace and create evil:  I am the Lord, that doeth all these things."

 Later there were fierce religious persecutions under Zoroastrian influence.  This fighting culminated in the attempt to suppress Jewish observances under Shah Yezdegeerd II (438-457). There was even more sweeping persecution in 468 under FIRUZ in 459 to 486 after the alleged murder of 2 magi by the Jews in the capital ISFAHAN, a city reputedly of Jewish foundation.  When Kasvadh I (485-531) adopted and endeavored to impose the communistic practices of Zendicism (the practice of heretical magie (magic), especially with fire), the Persian Jews joined in the revolt led by MAR ZUTRA II in 513-520.

The Arab conquest of 641 and 642 introduced a new, generally tolerant spirit, with certain reservations.  The Jews of Persia flourished under the Eastern Caliphate of Baghdad.  They were controlled by the exilarchs and paid intellectual allegiance to the gaonim (Jewish leaders) whose influence was strong.  Persia was, at this period, a nursery of sectarian movements: that of Abu Issa al-Isfahani in 700.  

Consequently, Karaism (a Jewish sect rejecting the Oral Law in 8th century,  obtained a vigorous hold in Persia from the 8th century on, and some of its most influential teachers, such as Benjamin Nahavendi, came from there.   

Benjamin of Tudela at the end of the 12th century, found many flourishing Jewish communities that had recently been disturbed through the messianic movement of David Alroy (Menahem ben Solomon) 12th century. A movement began before 1121 among the Mountain Jews of NE Cancasia, caused by the invasion of the nomadic Kipchaks from the steppes of the Black Sea, sufferings and poverty of the Jews, and the greater possibility of conquering Palestine after the Crusades. Some of his followers in Azerbaijan remained loyal to him after his death and were called Menahemites.   

After an interlude of Mongol rule, during which a lot of Jews were checkered through 13th to 15th centuries, Persian independence was reasserted in 1499 under the Safavid dynasty.  (Jews should never forget that in 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Jews were kicked out of Spain by the Pope).  The Shiite form of Islam was then generally dominant,, and was highly intolerant in theory and practice.  The Jews were treated worse than in other parts of the Moslem world.  All manner of restrictions  were being enforced.  by the 17th century, there were widespread persecutions and forced conversions, particularly in Isfahan.                     

Conditions improved temporarily under the broadminded Nadir Shah (1736-1747) who aimed at creating a new religious synthesis.  He was responsible for settling a Jewish community at his new capital Meshed, from which they had  been excluded.  When he died, a reaction followed, and Shiite intolerance became supreme.  However, the Jews persisted with a fairly vigorous intellectual life, partly expressed in a literature in the Judeo-Persian dialect.  

Medieval conditions of intolerance continued  in Persia and in 1839, the entire Meshed community was forcibly converted to Islam, though retaining secret fidelity to Judaism as JEDID AL-ISLAM.  

By the 19th century, Persian Jewry was among the most depressed of the world's Jewish communities, notwithstanding the diplomatic interventions occasionally secured by Western Jewry, and intermittent promises of ameliorations by successive shahs were overlooked.  Sound familiar?  

From 1898, schools of the Alliance Israelite Universelle did something to introduce a more modern spirit, but progress was slight and the Jedid al-Islam did not dare to return openly to Judaism.

                                             

                             1973 portrait of the Shah
 In the mid 1930s, the ruler of the country, Reza Shah Pahlavi, moved towards formalising the name Iran instead of Persia for all purposes.  Although equality of political rights was nominally introduced into Persia under the SHAH Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980), the social and economic status of the Jews changed little. Jews began to emigrate in numbers after 1948. 

In the 1960s and 1970s, many Jews moved from the provinces to Teheran.                                         

                                    b: 1900 d; 1989

Although the Jews were not persecuted after the Khomeini revolution in 1978,the replacement of the Shah's government with an Islamic republic under the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a leader of one of the factions in the revolt. The revolution was supported by various leftist and Islamist organizations and student movements, many Jews felt uncomfortable under the strict Islamic regime and left for Israel and the west.  Their numbers fell from 80,000 in 1978 to 20,000 in 1989.  In the 2016 Iranian census, the remaining Jewish population of Iran was 9,826. In 2018, the Jewish Population in Iran was reported to be 8,500 In 2019, the Jewish Population of Iran was estimated to be 8,300.  As of 2021, only 8,500 Jews still live in Iran. After Israel, it is home to the second-largest Jewish population ... 

In power, Khomeini distinguished between Zionism as a secular political party that employs Jewish symbols and ideals and Judaism as the religion of Moses.   Schools set up by Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians had to be run by Muslim principals.  Senior government posts were reserved for Muslims.  Conversion to Islam was encouraged by entitling converts to inherit the entire share of their parents (or even uncle's) estate if their siblings (or cousins) remain non-Muslim. 

Ahmadinejad showing his hatred for Israel-riding on the rocket aimed there.  

As for presidents of Iran, Ali Khamenei, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most anti-Semitic,  were each elected president for two terms. Hassan Rouhani is the current president, being elected in June 2013 presidential election. He won the reelection in the 2017 presidential election. 

In the first two to three years of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), about one-third of Iran's 80,000 Jews left for Israel, Europe, and the U.S. IRI broke its relations with Israel. The regime adapted a pro-Palestinian policy declaring that Israel and Zionism must be destroyed. IRI also encouraged the foundation of Hezbollah in Lebanon by supporting it with money, arms, and military advisers. Any tie with Israel was considered war against Islam. Though upon his return from Paris Khomeini met with the heads of the Jewish community, declaring that Jews were to be protected by Islamic law, some 200 Jews were arrested and jailed. During his rule, about 20 Jews were executed by the Revolutionary Courts, among them the former head of the Jewish Organization, the industrialist millionaire Habib Elghanaian (May 9, 1979). Many were deprived of their administrative, university, and high business positions. Jewish property on a large scale, amounting to more than one billion dollars, was confiscated by the regime. In recent years the IRI has tried to demonstrate some "friendly relations" with the remaining Jews of Iran who were led by the former Tudeh Party member, Parviz (Haroon) Yeshayai, the head of the Jewish Central Organization in Teheran. Nevertheless, events, such the arrest of 13 Jews in the last decade of the 20th century, allegedly spying for Israel, show the true face of these relations. As long as the hatred against Israel and Zionism and the support of terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah continue to fuel the foreign policy of Iran, the situation of Jews in IRI will remain precarious.               

Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei born 19 April 1939) is a Twelver Shia Marja' and the second and current supreme leader of Iran, in office since 1989. That means he is all-powerful, like a dictator.

Khamenei explains ‘final solution’ poster: I want Israel destroyed, not all Jews.                                           

  Netanyahu warning the UN that time was drawing near:  Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu draws a red line on a graphic of a bomb as he addresses the 67th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, September 27, 2012. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson.  It's been stalled, but now the Iranians are getting very shrewd in dodging this bullet of being open about their devices and intentions.  What we know is how much they hate the creation of Israel.  The world has had 9 years of warning.  

After being accused of endorsing genocide, Iranian supreme leader says annihilating the Jewish state ‘means abolishing the imposed regime’ and ousting ‘thugs’ like Netanyahu.  Yet he's hot on having his own nuclear power capabilities and most likely creating a missile to shoot into Israel with nuclear power.  He's not letting any investigators in to see his nuclear plant/plants.  Sure, and it was Netanyahu himself who was so worried about their capabilities and destructive aim toward Israel that he warned the UN about it long  ago, bringing his desires to the attention of the world powers.  

 He was previously the third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the longest serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.  Iran under the U.S.-allied Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had relations with Israel. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the first Quds Day be held on the last Friday of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan to criticize Israel. The late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat was among the first people invited to Iran after the revolution.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s supreme leader on Friday called Israel a “cancerous 

tumor” that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed” in an annual speech in

 support of the Palestinians, renewing threats against Iran’s archenemy in the Middle

 East.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s speech marked a subdued Quds Day for

 Iran, which typically sees government-encouraged mass demonstrations in Tehran

 and elsewhere in the Islamic Republic, as well as Iranian-allied nations. “Al-Quds”

 is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Iran largely asked demonstrators to stay home.  

                 

                                                     

                               Former Director of Mossad, Yossi Cohen :  Mossad, short for HaMossad leModiʿin uleTafkidim Meyuḥadim, is the national intelligence agency of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with Aman and Shin Bet. Mossad is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counter-terrorism. 

Al Jazeeera reports to their Muslim audience that The Mossad spy agency chief Yossi Cohen – a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – met Biden on Friday and, according to one media report, pressed the US president not to sign back on to the nuclear accord unless “improvements” were made.

An unnamed senior Israeli official is quoted as saying Biden responded that the United States “is not close” to returning to the Iran deal, Axios reported.                   

Resource: 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia    

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

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ruhollah-khomeini

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

https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-religion-iran-jerusalem-israel-a033042303545d9ef783a95222d51b83

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

https://www.ploughshares.org/issues-analysis/article/why-iran-deal-us-national-interest?gclid=CjwKCAjwzOqKBhAWEiwArQGwaLGmrxcrjp0DCXu9bcdOzOyhyFSazzFXEU3vLfMb1NOqx69uzjbKHBoCex8QAvD_BwE

 

BABYLONIA, Our Exodus From and Exile To: Iraq's Land

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

                                              Ur, a city in the Babylonia Empire

Long ago, the family of Abraham (b:1948 BCE) left their city of UR of the Chaldees, which was under Babylonia officially, actually being south of Babylonia on the Euphrates River.                                               

                          Ur, of the Chaldees.

 Babylonia was known by the name of the land of SHINAR or of the KASDIM (Chaldees).   It was an ancient state of Western Asia.  Babylonia was known as the CRADLE OF HUMANITY and as the scene of man's 1st revolt against G-d with the story of the Tower of Babel.  The FLOOD  was in Babylonian literature.                                                                          

 Abraham had left Ur with his father, Terah, and others for Canaan; where he later fought "Amraphel, king of Shinar. (Gen. 14).                                   

Some 136 years later, Babylon was to the prophets, a symbol of insolent pagan tyranny.  It was Nebuchadnezzar II (604-561 BCE) who inherited the Assyrian Empire and after his conquest of Judah in 597 and 586 BCE, exiled many Jews to Babylon, from whence their ancestors had come from so long ago.   Left in Judah were the Judeans and Benjaminites.  They would take on the name of Jews who were the largest population.

                                           

Brought to Babylon, the people wept.  a psalm was written about their feelings by David.  "By the rivers of Babylon" there we sat and also wept when we remembered Zion.  On the willows within it we hung our lyres.  For there outr captors requested words of song from us, with our lyres playing joyous music.  "Sing for us from Zion's song!" 

Considering the past history of the Assyrian who exiled 10 of the 12 tribes of Jacob in 721 BCE, they and Nebuchadnezzar's exiled Israelites they constituted a large Israelite population, many of whom remained in Babylon, even after King Cyrus of Persia permitted a return to Jerusalem later to return and rebuild the Temple, which many did.  

                                              

In the 6th-century BC, the armies of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah. They tore down the city walls, burned the temple, and ran down every person who tried to escape. The few survivors were dragged out of their homeland and forced to live in Babylon as vassals to the men who butchered their children.  And yet, when the Jews in exile won their freedom, most of them didn’t leave. They stayed in Babylon – and kept a thriving community that lasted for more than 2,000 years.

It’s one of the stranger moments in human history. These people were brutalized by an invading army. They were taught to hate so viciously that, for hundreds of years, the word “Babylon,” to the Jews, was synonymous with evil. But most chose to stay right there with their captors, living side-by-side with the men who had made their lives miserable.  Why didn’t they leave? It’s a question that’s plagued historians and theologians alike; but some recently uncovered documents shed a little light on how Babylon created a Jewish community that still lives on today.

Certain towns in Babylonia, such as Nehardea, Nisibis, and Maboza, had an entirely Israelite or Jewish population.  Their position remained favorable during successive regimes.  In the 1st century BCE, a Jewish state was set up around Nehardea by 2 brothers, Anilai (Anilaos) and Asinai (Asinaios) and this lasted for some years.                                            

A wall fresco at a Jewish synagogue in Syria's national museum shows the hand of G-d reaching out to the people. The synagogue was excavated at the site of Dura Europos, a town built on the banks of the Euphrates river around 300 B.C E.  Quite unusual for a synagogue.   

Nehardea was situated at the junction of the Euphrates and the Nahr Malka (royal Canal).  Josephus describes Nehardea as a heavily fortified city, one of the 2 centers in which the Temple offerings were assembled for forwarding to Jerusalem.  The city contained the Shaf Veyativ Synagogue which was said to have been built by the exiled king Jehoiachin of Judah and described by Abbaye of the 4th century CE as the seat of the Divine Presence in Babylonia.                                                  

Papa was a Babylonian amora (lecturer, a title given to Jewish scholars in Babylonia in the 3rd-6th centuries).  A pupil of Rava and Abbaye, he removed to Neresh, near Sura, after the death of the former and established an academy there.  

The town of Nehardea was destroyed by the Palmyrenes of Palmyra  in 259 CE. Palmyra was the Roman name but the Biblical was Tadmor, which was an ancient Syrian city that was founded by King Solomon.  Palmyrenes served in the  Roman armies.  Many Palmyrene Jews are buried in the catacombs of Bet Shearim.   The academy reopened in Pumbedita under Rabbi Judah ben Ezekiel, and a group of scholars called "Nehardeans" continued to exist until savoraic times (500-700)and, for a while, provided heads of the academy alternately with the Pumbeditans.  Nehardea was the capital of the small rebel state set up by the 2 Jewish brothers in 20 CE.                       

Benjamin of Tudela found 2,000 Jews in Tadmor in the 12th century. 

                                                     

The Jews of Babylon remained in constant touch with the Jews of Judah and even supplied some of the leaders, such as HILLEL(1st century BCE).  He was the founder of the House of Hillel, born in Babylonia but settled in Palestine, earning his living by his manual labor while studying with the famous teachers, Shemaiah and Avtalyon.  He became President of the Sanhedrin.  He and his friend and opponent, Shammai, were the last pairs of Zugot of scholars, like debtors.  

                                            

       Trajan and his Roman Empire:  The Roman army at the time was one of the finest fighting machines the world has ever seen. Thirty legions, comprising 4,000 to 4,800 men in each, were spread across the empire, including five legions in Pannonia and Moesia, four in Germania, and three in Britain and Syria. Each legion was divided into smaller units called cohorts, numbering about 600 men, but the basic battlefield unit was called the century and was composed of a hundred men—hence the eventual usage of the word to denote a hundred years.

                                                                 

   Emperor Trajan  reigned from 98-117 CE.  His oriental policy led to a major clash.  In 105-106, he annexed the Nabatean kingdom including the Negev and Transjordan.  In 115-117, while he was engaged in his Parthian war, Jewish risings occurred in Cyrenaica, Egypt, and Cyprus.  In Alexandria the Greeks attacked the Jewish population.  So in 116, he ordered a preventative massacre of the Jews in Mesopotamia.  Judea itself was kept under firm control by his General Lucius Quietus.  The suppression of the many risings ended the prosperity of the Jewish settlements in Egypt, Cyrenaica,, and Cyprus.   

During the Roman occupation, the Babylonian Jews rose against the emperor TRAJAN, the revolt being bloodily suppressed by his commander, Lucius Quietus (116 CE).                                                  

 One undisputed fact remains: the brief idyll between the benevolent imperial couple (e.g.                                                       

                                   Trajan and  Pompeia Plotina, his wife

Alamy

 Trajan and  Plotina) and the Jews was soon to be shattered by the revolt of 115. The reaction of the Roman government fulfilled the desire of Hermaiskos to see the emperor support his “own people” instead of defending the “impious Jews.” And the image of Trajan as friend and protector of the Jews was to give way to that of a Trajan bent on persecution and destruction.  In the first engagement they happened to overcome the Greeks, who fled to Alexandria and captured and killed the Jews in the city, but though thus losing the help of the townsmen, the Jews of Cyrene continued to plunder the country of Egypt and to ravage the districts in it under their leader Loukouas.  

On 9th August 117 AD (or it might have been the 7th or 8th), the Emperor Trajan died suddenly from a stroke at Selinus in Cilicia on his way from Syria to Rome. This event prompted the renaming of the city as Trajanopolis and the building of a cenotaph to Trajan.  Trajan lived 63 years and eleven months. He reigned for nineteen years and six months.                                           

                              Persian soldiers

    Parthian soldiers.  

They're all from different time periods, though three of them are closely related.

Ancient Persians came from the region of modern Fars, and made up the elite of the Achaemenid period. They spoke an early version of Persian, rather than any of the numerous other Iranian languages.

The Sassanids or Sassanians also came from Fars, and were ethnically Persian and viewed themselves as the heirs of the Achaemenid period. They helped spread the use of the Persian language throughout what is modern Iran and were a major empire and cultural focus before the rise of Islam.

The Parthians did not come from Fars, but rather from what is now northeast Iran and southern Turkmenistan. They spoke an Iranian language, but were a separate ethnic groups closer to the Saka/Scythians than the Achaemenid Persians.

Under both Persian( Iran)  and Parthian (Empire of Iranic people) ruled over Babylon and Media. The Jews of Babylon enjoyed an extensive measure of internal autonomy, being headed by an EXILARCH of Davidic descent who was the king's representative, while the community was governed by a council of elders.   The Parthians  restored Antigonus Mattathias to the throne of Judah in 40 BCE.  The Jews of the Roman Empire looked on Parthia as their future savior.  It was under the rule of Parthia that the famous rabbinic schools in Mesopotamia began to flourish.                              

The great literary creation of the Jews of Babylon, the Babylonian TALMUD, reflects a society preponderantly based on agriculture and crafts.  They were learned in Jewish studies and had produced works of literary merit, like Ezekiel, Daniel, and Tobit.  

At the beginning of the 3rd century CE, Babylonia became the main center of rabbinic studies, academies being founded by SAMUEL at Nehardea and by Rav at Sura, while in the later 3rd century, the academy of Pumbedita was founded to replace that at Nehardea which was destroyed in 261.  The importance of these schools was further enhanced with the abolition of the Palestinian patriarchate in 425.  

                                              

(Canaan, called Eretz Yisrael by the Jews, was named Palestine by the Romans who in anger, named it for the Jews' worst enemy, the Philistines when the Romans had to fight the Jewish General Bar Kokhba from 132-135. The Jewish general was killed, and the name of Palestine was born.

Babylon became the spiritual center for all Jewry after 425.

Persecutions in the 5th century led to the Jewish revolt under Mar Zutra II who held out of 7 years, but was finally captured and killed.                                                                 

The TALMUD was concluded about at this period.  The position of the Jews continued to be difficult until the Arab conquest in the 7th century with Mohammed.  

So history goes round and round.  Abraham left Ur in 722 BCE, and his descendants were brought back in 586 BCE to that same area 136 years later.  Many remained.  What would the DNA tests of the men show?  They might reflect in many a connection to the Jews of today. The town of Babylon was located along the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq, about 50 miles south of Baghdad.

                                                 

 Whit Athey's tool analysis showed that the Iraqi Arab population had seven major haplogroups; J1, E1b1b, J2a1b, J2, R1a, R1b and J2b. The most common haplogroup was J1 which represented 36.6% (93/254) of the population.  J1 is also found in Jews, and is the Cohen line.  Many Jewish men are also E1b1b and J2 and R1a.  Oh my!  

Resource:

Tanakh, Stone Edition

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/06/understanding-world-and-time-of-ur-of.html

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/02/could-iraqis-have-jewish-roots.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_137

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2015/10/06/emperor-trajan-the-roman-empire/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72283-1#:~:text=Whit%20Athey's%20tool%20analysis%20showed,%2F254)%20of%20the%20population.