Part IV Egypt and It's History With the Jewish People

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

Egypt, called Mitzrayim in Hebrew, is a country in NE Africa that existed way back in the 20th Century BCE.  Our first Hebrew patriarchs visited Egypt and the beginnings of Hebrew history are connected with their bondage in Egypt and the Exodus with Moses, who was born in Egypt, and who bears an Egyptian name.
                                                                         

"Immigration by Canaanite populations preceded the Hyksos.  Canaanites first appeared in Egypt towards the end of the 12th Dynasty c. 1800 BC, and either around that time or c. 1720 BC, established an independent realm in the eastern Nile Delta".  The 1st Hebrew immigration into Egypt happened during the period of the domination  of the Semitic Hyksos dynasty(1720-1580 BCE  in Egypt of the 18th to 16th centuries BCE. It was during this period that the Israelites entered  the country and were favorably treated.  The Israelites were held in bondage after the expulsion of the Hyksos for a period of 400 years from entering to leaving.  .  Hyksos is an Egyptian word meaning "rulers of the foreign lands."
                                                                               

Tel el-Amarna Letters

 During that period, Egypt was closely involved in Canaanite affairs, shown in the Tel el-Amarna letters which  give us the background and allude to the 1st Israelite incursions there.  A.S. Yahuda, scholar, has shown the influence of Egyptian civilization on the Torah.
                                                                               

During the period of the Monarchy, there were constant Judea-Egyptian relations.  King Solomon (961-920 BCE)  married an Egyptian Princess and brought about a peace treaty this way. That's why he had 1,000 wives.  

                                                                             

 After King Solomon died, Pharaoh Shishak attacked Jerusalem in about 920 BCE in order to help the newly-established northern kingdom which had broken off from the southern newly formed Judah.
                                                                             

Judah's King Josiah (637-608, crowned king at age 8 after his father, Amon, was murdered) was killed in 608 BCE by the Egyptians when in the act of checking the march of Pharaoh Necho through Judean territory. (Necho imprisoned Jehoahaz, son of Josiah and killed Josiah in battle.)   Josiah's successor, King Jehoahaz, son of King Josiah  (608 for 3 months only because he belonged to the pro-Babylonian party and he was deported and died in  captivity in Egypt)  and his brother, King Jehoiakim/Eliakim(608-598) was installed in his place by the Egyptians, and for 3 years was a subject to Egypt, but when Necho was defeated at the battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, Jehoiakim became a Babylonian vassal.  He died when Jerusalem was under siege by the Babylonians in 598 BCE.
                                                                                   

There was a Jewish colony in Egypt before Solomon's Temple was built.  The prophet  Jeremiah was taken to it shortly afterwards.  Jewish military colonies existed in Egypt in pharaonic days.  In the town on Yeb, a great deal of papyri had been found showing local life and showing  the existence of a Jewish Temple under the Persians in the 5th century BCE.
                                                                                 

 Alexander the Great (333 BCE) took Egypt and so Jews were a large proportion of the new immigrants who came into the country, some on their own and some being deportees.
                                                                           

Alexandria, Egypt's Synagogue-Eliyahu Hanavi

Synagogues were found to be in existence in Egypt from the 3rd century BCE.  Their community was hellenized in speech and culture.
                                                                               

Bat Mitzva of 12 year old Egyptian Jewish girls in Alexandria, Egypt before 1948. 

Alexandria was the center of Jewish life then and of course it was the center of the great hellenistic Jewish civilization with The Alexandrian Jew,Philo (20 BCE-40+BCE) , the philosopher telling us about it.  It's figured that there were about 1,000,000 Egyptian Jews then
                                                                                 

Caligula

. He had participated in the deputation of Alexandrian Jews to Roman  Emperor Caligula b: August 31, 12; died January 24, 41) ( emperor from 37-41) during the anti-Jewish outbreaks in 40. (Caligula insisted on being worshipped as a god and because the Jews refused to do this, it caused the riots when Agrippa came to visit in 38.  Philo led the Jewish delegation sent to intercede with Caligula.  Luckily, Caligula was assassinated and this put an end to serious consequences then in the Jewish world.)   Philo's  family was one of the wealthiest in Egypt.  He had a hellenistic education, and was most familiar with Greek literature, philosophy.  He knew Plato.  His Jewish education was scant, probably didn't know Hebrew, and his knowledge of the Torah was from the Septuagint and from hellenistic commentaries of the day that were allegorical.  He was quite the writer.  Among much of his writings was an account about Flaccus, governor of Egypt and how he persecuted Jews during the anti-Jewish disturbances, and a great description of the deputation to Caligula. Christians were impressed by his philosophy.
                                                                         

The Ptolemies of Egypt were  in control of Israel and Judah then which lasted for a long time as they were popular.  A dark period existed.  Onias, a high priest (Cohen) , lived during the 2nd Temple period in 230 BCE and refused to pay the 20 talents of silver that had to be given annually to Ptolemy III of Egypt.  By not paying, he put into danger the safety of Judea.  His nephew, Joseph, son of Tobias, succeeded in pacifying the king. The priest's grandson The son of Simon II was deposed by Antiochus Epiphanaes in 174 BCE.  Many Jews had fled to Egypt from the religious persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes.   Before the Maccabean revolt.  the refugee high priest, Onias, founded a Temple in either Leontopolis or Heliopolis, where he lived after being given permission by Ptolemy IV (Philopator-221-203 BCE, a Macedonian king of Egypt),  to do so.  This was when the completion of the 1st Greek translation of the bible took place in Alexandria which had enormous influence.  There had existed a lot of anti-Jewish feeling among the Greek population which burst out into anti-Jewish riots and caused the periodic intervention of the Roman authorities.
                                                                             

The Romans burned down Jerusalem along with the 2nd Temple in 70 CE, so in 71 CE after the destruction, zealot refugees stirred up a Jewish revolt. The Jewish Aluf (General) Bar Kokba fought the Romans from 132 to 135, but while he was killed in battle, had held Jerusalem for 3 years.   In Egypt, another uprising had occurred from  115 to 117 CE.

It's thought that Hellenism's (end of 4th century BCE which was the Greek civilization diffused over the Mediterranean and the Middle East) ,  affect of the Greek religion and culture to be  the cause of weakening the resistance of Egyptian Jewry to Christianity as there were many Alexandrian-Jewish elements in the early Christian literature and thought.  Egyptian Jewish life suffered with the Christianization of the Roman Empire, and riots broke out in Alexandria that were instigated by the bishop Cyril in 415 which drove masses of Jews to be baptized.
                                                                       

At the time of the Arab invasion of 640, the Egyptian Jewish community was unimportant, and under Moslem rule, the former traditions of  hellenistic Egypt were not continued.  The Jewish community now centered in the new city of Cairo which was wholly Arab in character and culture.  Jewish life is told about in the mass of documents of the Cairo Genizah (where sacred books were deposited.  It held many lost Hebrew works including extracts from Aquila's Greek translation of the bible, the Zadokite document, ancient liturgies, and synagogue poetry from Israel, Babylonia and Spain; documents and letters of important persons.  It gave information about the history of the gaonate, the Jews of Egypt and Israel/Judah and then when they were called Palestine between 640 to 1100;
                                                                                                     

Karaites and Samaritans during Passover An important Karaite community flourished and has survived to modern times.
Today they live in Israel.  

Karaites at prayer

and the Karaites, a Jewish sect that rejected the Oral Law that the Jews also followed.   It originated in the 8th century in and around Persia where the Jewish community was not long established.  They were people who didn't accept the discipline of the Babylonian gaonate.  Arabs had taken Persia in 640 and caused an affect on their interpreting their religion.  .

Mesopotamian Jewry were now organized  under an exilarch/nagid and this was imitated in Egypt.  Many academies of learning were created.  Saadyah Gaon (928 was appointed as head of a famous academy-died in 942) was a native of the Fayyum.  "The Fayum in the Ptolemaic and Roman Period" was explained as follows:

"During the periods preceding the arrival of Alexander the Great in 332 BC, the Fayum was most prominent in the Middle Kingdom (2025-1700 BC). In the Ptolemaic Period, the Fayum was one of the main regions where Greeks settled."

 Generally, the conditions were quite favorable under the Moslems, though "normally the traditional Moslem anti-Jewish code was enforced.  Under Caliph Hakim (996-1021)  there was a period of almost ferocious persecution of Jews.
                                                                       

     
Moses Maimonides/Maimonides/Rambam (1135-1204) arrived in Egypt in the 2nd half of the 12th century after leaving his home in Cordova, Spain at age 13 with his family to escape the Almohade persecutions.  and found a comfortable Jewish community.  His descendants served as nagids of the Egyptian Jews.  The Turks occupied Egypt in 1517 and conditions improved.  By the 19th century, western influences penetrated the country and made a fast Western affect on the upper classes in Egypt.  The Cattauri and Mosseri families played a part in public life.  The anti-European reaction of the mid 20th century involved the Jews of which many held European citizenship.  This was then linked with an anti-Zionist policy since Zionism had before been looked at favorably.  1948 came when Israel announced it was again created and war was announced 5 minutes later by the Egyptians and her neighbors.  The result of this was that many Egyptian Jews were placed in concentration camps and attacks were made on Jewish homes.   A great emigration of Egyptian Jews started to head for Israel and their number dropped from 90,000 in 1947 to about 30,000 by 1955.  
                                                                           

1967 IDF get to see the Wall in Jerusalem After the Six Days of War

In 1954, there were still 11 active Jewish day schools with 1,750 pupils.  The Sinai Operation took place and Nasser of Egypt dispossessed and expelled many Jews from Egypt.  Most of the others left in the following years.  By 1966, only 2,500 Jews lived in Egypt;  1,800 living in Cairo and the rest in Alexandria.  Most of the remaining males of Egyptian nationality were arrested at the time of the SIX DAY WAR in 1967 when  many Arab countries attacked Israel.  The remaining Jews emigrated to Israel.  By 1990, the Jewish population of Egypt had shrunk to 240. This would be elderly Jews most likely alone.  By 2012, only a few older ladies remained to care for the synagogue and graveyard.

Update: 9/19, 9/20/16
Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://queensouthhatshesput.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/pharaoh-thutmose-iii-attacks-jerusalem/
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/fayum/fptolemaic.html
http://www.biography.com/people/caligula-9235253
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula
Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZPMU9riKl4  Exodus:  Gods & Kings on Moses, Rameses
Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiLmKxiTT3g Ten Commandments, 1956 , with Charleston Heston
book: Messages from a Syrian Jew Trapped in Egypt

Part III: Edomites: Traditional Enemies of Israel South of Dead Sea on Mt. Seir

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

One of the other Semitic enemies of Israel and living in today's Jordan were the Edomites, hunters living on Mt. Seir in the SE part of Canaan.  Their land was easily fortified being mountainous and their land was fertile.  They were located South of the Dead Sea.  One border was on the Red Sea at Elath and the other border was Ezion Geber, an ancient port at the head of the Gulf of Akaba from which King Solomon's ships sailed to Ophir.  After the Edomites had taken this port, it was recovered by Jehoshaphat, King of Judah (875-854 BCE)  whose fleet was wrecked as it sailed to Ophir.  Uzziah/Azariah, King of Judah (780-740 BCE)  moved the port to a new site at Elath, though it still was used.

"Edom (/ˈiːdəm/ ^[1] or /ˈiː.dʌm/;^[2] Hebrew: ,דוֹםאֱ Modern Edom, Tiberian ʼĔḏôm; , lit.: "red"; Assyrian: Udumi; Syriac: ܐܕܘܡ) is the name of a country and a people located initially in Transjordan, between Ammon to the north, the Dead Sea and the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian desert to the south and east.
                                                                               

                                                                             

Esau and Jacob, twins of Isaac and Rebekah.
Isaac was 60 years old when they were born.  His father, Abraham,
almost sacrificed Isaac on Mt. Moriah, but was saved by Divine Intervention.  

They were not descendants of Lot like the Ammonites and Moabites were, but were descendants of Esau, a twin son of Isaac, brother of Jacob.  Esau was born first, and lost his 1st son standing in the family over a bowl of stew that meant more to him than his position in the family.  As it turns out, it was his twin brother, Jacob, who tricked him into giving up this status in order to get it for himself.  Both boys made poor choices as time tells.  Being Abraham, father of Isaac,  lived around 1948 BCE of the 2nd millennium BCE, this was about 4,000 years ago. We are told in Deuteronomy that we are not to marry any Ammonite or Moabite.
                                                                                   

 We are also told not to reject  an Edomite, because he is the brother of the Israelites.
                                                                                 

The Edomites lived by hunting.  They in turn had taken over land previously lived in by the Horites, who had originated South of the Caucasian mountains, who invaded Syria and Canaan in the 17th Century BCE. The Horites had lived near Mt. Seir in Abraham's time but their territory was conquered by the Edomites as told in Gen. 14:6; 36: 20-30;  and in Deut. 2:12, 22.   Egyptian documents  from the 16th century called Canaan "Haru." Before that it was called "Rutenu."  Some scholars believe that the Horites were pushed back by the Amorites and Canaanites to the Mt. Seir region where they were later driven out by the Edomites.  Edomites lived much like our native Americans did, being organized along tribal lines headed by a chieftain who was called an Allooph.  Later they consolidated into a monarchy.
                                                                             

These Edomites, being Israel's enemy, had fought against Israel's first king Saul of the 11th century BCE of the tribe of Benjamin, and were defeated finally by King David (1010-970 BCE)  who partly annexed their land.  The Edomites regained their independence during the reign of King Jehoram of Judah (851-844), but wars between the 2 states were many.
                                                                                 

II Chronicles 28:16, 17 said that "At that time King Ahaz sent to the kings of Assyria to come to his aid.  furthermore, the Edomites came and struck Judah and captured captives." Ahaz, king of Judah (735-720 BCE) , had led Judah to disgrce and betrayed G-d.  

During the 8th century  CE, the Edomites became vassals of Assyria.  It had been the Assyrians who had also attacked Israel in 722 and 721 BCE.  When the Israelite's Temple of Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians in 597 BCE and again in 586 BCE, the Edomites also plundered it and looted along with the Babylonians.  "Edomites first established a biblical kingdom ("Edom") in the southern area of modern Jordan.   Edomites later migrated into southern parts of the Kingdom of Judah ("Idumea", or modern southern Israel/Negev) when Judah was first weakened, then destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC.
                                                                               

 Then the Edomites were driven out of Seir by the Nabateans, who were people of Arab extraction who occupied Edom in the 6th Century BCE and established their capital at Petra (Rekem).   Nabateans were typical nomads and soon learned to develop agriculture under almost desert conditions by an elaborate system of water conservation.   So they occupied Southern Judah during or after the period of the Exile.
                                                                                 

b: 164 BCE-d: 104 BCE

John Hyrcanus conquered the Edomites.  He was the son and successor of Simon the Hasmonean and ruled from 135 to 104 BCE.  The Hasmoneans were a priestly family (Cohens carrying J1 haplogroup DNA) and dynasty found by Mattathias of Modiin.  In turn, Mattathias's ancestor was Hashmon, and Hashmon could have received his name as a place-name found in Joshua 15: 27.  In this case, the Hasmoneans were from Aaron, brother of Moses.   John  was the governor of Gezer, (a town in Canaan which held a Jewish population of late 1st Temple and 2nd Temple times) during his father's lifetime, but after the murder of his father and 2 brother by his brother in law, Ptolemy, escaped to Jerusalem, where he seized power before Ptolemy could get control.  Eventually John was made a high priest but by his  poor decisions, the Hasmonean state of Judah became a tributary to Syria.   It was after all this that John overran the territory of the Edomites, who by this time were also called the Idumeans, (Edomites now living in Southern Judah) and forced them to embrace Judaism.                                                       

King Herod of Judah  (73 -4 BCE) was one of the Edomite descendants.  He was the son of Antipater the Idumean by his Nabatean wife, Cypros.  Antipater ruled Judea from 63 to 43 BCE.  Antipater was a ruler who assisted the Romans and had joined Julius Caesar in war.  He had recruited Jewish and Nabatean troops for his army.  It was Caesar who had made Antipater the financial administrator of Judea in 47 BCE.  No wonder Herod was easily put into power.   I'm amazed by how easily these enemies married into the Israelite households.
                                                                               

In 70 CE,  Titus, a Roman General, had taken siege of Jerusalem for 5 months and then destroyed the city of peace and its Temple, and the Edomites of Idumea marched into Jerusalem to reinforce the extreme elements and killed all they suspected of peace tendencies.  After this, they were no longer mentioned in Jewish history.  The name of the Edomites or Idumeans turned out to be used as a synonym for an oppressive government, especially for Rome.  During the Middle Ages, it was used to describe to Christian Europe-being they were oppressors of the Jewish people who had been refugees there.
                                                                               

 Rome built the Arch of Titus in Rome, which was erected by their Senate in honor of Vespasian and Titus who had arrived in Rome marching the Jews taken captive as slaves and all the goods stolen out of the Temple.  The present Arch was built during the reign of Domitian (81-96 CE).

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Tanach, The Stone Edition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edom

Ammonites, Part II; Ancient People From Lot, Nephew of Abraham

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                           

The Ammonites also lived in what is today's Jordan, coming from Lot; nephew of Abraham.  Their capital was called Rabbath Ammon, which is where modern Amman sits.  Being related to Abraham, they were also a Semitic tribe related to the Israelites.  That's the tribe Abraham had come from.  They developed throughout the 13th to 8th centuries BCE, then declined and were finally absorbed into other Arab tribes.
                                                                             

Statue of Ammonite King 

When the Israelites reached their goal after 40 years of traveling from Egypt to Canaan, they occupied it, but were often attacked by the Ammonites.  It took the Israelite leaders of Jephthah, an Israelite judge living in Gilead where the Ammonites had threatened his people,  and King Saul to finally defeat them.  Jephthah also had to fight against the Ephraimites who were one of the 12 tribes and therefore cousins, but they didn't like his leadership.  Jephthah did a deplorable thing by today's standards.  Before he went out to fight the Ammonites, he made a vow, which was something very sacred in those days.  He vowed to sacrifice whatever came first from his home if he returned safely. "Whatever emerges---what will emerge from the doors of my house---toward me when I return in peace from the Children of Ammon, it shall belong to Hashem and I shall offer it up as an elevation-offering."   What a way to pray for safe-keeping!  He probably thought some animal would appear.  Instead, it was his only daughter, his only child!  Judg. 11:30-12-5 telling that she consented to the ordeal  for her father's vow to be accepted.  He saw her and tore his clothes in shock and said, "Alas, my daughter!  You have brought me to my knees, and you have joined those who trouble me.  I have opened my mouth to Hashem and I cannot recant!"  She replied, "Let this thing be done for me:  Let me be for 2 months, and I shall go and wail upon the mountains and weep over my virginity, I and my friends."  He released her for 2 months. and then she returned to him.  She never knew a man.  She was not killed in sacrifice as human sacrifice was not allowed, but lived in seclusion all her life and she devoted herself to prayer.  After this, from year to hear the daughters of Israel would go to lament with the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite, 4 days of the year.
                                                                   

King David (1010 BCE-970 BCE) fighting against the Moabites and Ammonites

 King David annexed their kingdom into Israel but they regained their independence and after King Solomon died in 920 BCE, they attacked the newer kingdom of Judah on many occasions.  Judah's first king was Rehoboam (933-917 BCE).a son of King Solomon.  Rehoboam had an Ammonite wife, Naamah!  Out of the 12 tribes, only Judah, Simeon and most of Benjamin were loyal to him.  Rehoboam had refused to lower Solomon's taxes on the people, so the nation of Israel split into Judah, named for the largest tribe following the king, and Israel then got Jeroboam (933-912) as their king, who was an Ephraimite.  He had been a superintendent of forced labor during King Solomon's days, and later led a revolt against Solomon's monarchy because of the taxation and forced labor.
                                                                           

Abram and Lot, his nephew, son of Abram's brother, Haran.  He had made the journey
with Abram from Aram-Naharaim to Canaan.  They parted company when their shepherds
quarreled with each other over pasture land for their sheep.  Lot settled in Sodom
but was captured by 5 kings who had attacked it.  It took Abram to rescue him with his men.
While he was drunk one night after losing his wife, his daughters took advantage of him to have sex,
thinking there were no other men in the world, and they had sons, Ammon and Moab.  This
explains why these 2 tribes were so cantankerous to the tribe of Israel.

After the destruction of the 1st Temple of Solomon in 586 BCE by the Babylonians, the king of Ammon, Baalis, instigated the murder of Gedaliah, the governor of Judah from a noble Jewish family to weaken Judah even more. Gedaliah had been appointed by the Babylonians.  Gedaliah was murdered by his own commander, Ishmael ben Nethaniah and his followers.  They had been planning a revolt against Babylon along with their neighboring peoples.  This caused Gedaliah's own supporters to flee for their lives to Egypt.  Actually, Gedaliah's murder, even though he was selected by the Babylonians, was bad for the Jews because it dashed any hope of holding the Jewish community together after the Babylonian conquest.   When the Israelites finally returned from Babylon, Ammonites joined Judah's enemies and Tobiah the Ammonite supported Sanballat in his opposition to Nehemiah, the next governor of Judah in 444 BCE.  His record was that he had been the cupbearer to the Persian king, Artaxerxes I.  It was Artaxerxes who appointed him governor of Judah .  On reaching Jerusalem, he organized the repair of its walls, completed in 52 days which was miraculous considering the builders were bothered by interference by neighboring peoples.  He was a great governor and even worked on social reforms.  He got people to start observing the Sabbath again from a lapse of negligence.  The law of cancelling debts owed by the poor was brought back.  After all, it had been 142 years that the Jews were taken out of Judah as slaves by the foreign and very different Babylonians who had been led by Nebuchadnezzer.

Found in Tel Siran (Tell Hesban) in Jordan is this metal bottle telling about King Amminadab II of Ammon. It is 5.6 miles  North of Madaba.  When the Israelites arrived in Canaan, they assigned this land which is east of the Jordan River to their tribe of Reuben.  

                                                                                 

During the Hasmonean rising, the Ammonites aided the Syrian forces, but Judah the Maccabee defeated them in 163 BCE.  Judah was the hero in the Jewish Chanukah story celebrated in December today.
                                                                                 

Ammon Citadel in Jordan's capital dating to Ammonite days 

Excavations have been done in Jordan show that the Ammonites had a developed kingdom with fortified frontiers, artistic tastes and advanced agriculture.  They worshipped fertility gods, the chief being Milkom.  Their religion was much the same as the Moabites who also had an adjoining kingdom that is now part of Jordan.  Being they were from Lot, DNA testing would probably not be able to tell if they were Moabites or Ammonites.
                                                                                       

Add caption

The Hashemite tribe from Saudi Arabia now live in Jordan as of 1921.  " The family belongs to the Dhawu Awn, one of the branches of the Hasanid Sharifs of Mecca – also referred to as Hashemites – who ruled Mecca continuously from the 10th century until its conquest by the House of Saud in 1924. Their eponymous ancestor is Hashim ibn Abd Manaf, great-grandfather of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad (570-632). . 
                                                                                     

On the left is Emir; then King Feisal, friend to Jewish leaders; and
on the right is King Abdullah Ist-brothers.  

The current dynasty was founded by Sharif Hussein ibn Ali. One of his sons was the first king of Transjordan, Abdullah I.  "His sons Abdullah and Faisal assumed the thrones of Jordan and Iraq in 1921. The land had been already promised to be the Jewish Homeland by the British, who went back on their word to the Jews in making this deal to take place after World War I. 

"In fact, under Hashemite control east Jerusalem was restored to rubble. Jewish shrines and cemeteries were sacked, torched, and defiled and access to Jews was forbidden and severely restricted for Christians."  Jordan attacked Israel with other neighboring states  in 1967 and lost.  They lost land on the Western side of the Jordan River this way to Israel, which is referred to as the "West Bank."  It is actually the side of the original Israel and Judah!!  Jews now live there as well as the many Arabs calling themselves Palestinians.  What they really are are people who entered around 1880 following Russian Jews making aliyah at that time who were escaping from more pogroms.  These "Palestinians"  came from near and far; all Muslims, with only a few being native Palestinians, meaning people who had migrated there after the Roman attacks and occupation of Jerusalem and war with the Jews in 135 CE when the Romans decided to call the land Palestine in order to wipe out the memory of Israel and Judah.  .  
                                                                            

Queen Rania of Jordan b: August 31, 1970 in Kuwait.
then resettled in 1991 in Amman, Jordan during Gulf War.  

"The Umayyads, who were fair to the Jews when they invaded them after 661 ,  were of the same tribe as the Hashemites, but a different clan.  They were defeated in 750, Since 1999,  Jordan is being ruled by Abdullah II, grandson of Abdullah I.  He  married in 1993  a woman said to be a Palestinian, Queen Rania.  She was born in Kuwait.  Her father was a doctor, and he and his wife were Palestinians from Judea/Samaria  who had moved to Kuwait.  

Reference:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Tanach; The Stone Edition (Bible)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashemites
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-hashemites-in-palestine-a-royal-scam-that-keeps-on-scamming
Textbook: Middle East, Past & Present by Yahya Armajani, Thomas M. Ricks; used by Portland State U.
http://www.biography.com/people/queen-rania-23468#synopsis 

Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Egyptians: Ancient Kingdoms: Part I What Happened to Them?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                         

Israel was not alone as a kingdom.  There were others who were most warlike.  There were the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites and of course the only one who survived to this day;  the Egyptians.  Above is a map showing the kingdoms after King Solomon died when Israel divided into Israel and Judah after 920 BCE.

We were told by Moses not to intermarry with these other kingdoms' men.  Interestingly, Ruth, a central figure in our history, was a Moabite.  It's almost as if Moses was told of the Y haplotypes of men, and didn't want his haplotype to intermix with theirs.  The problem was that these kingdoms did not continue to exist forever, and people were moved by the prevailing conquerors.  What would happen to these men was not known then.  Evidently there was more to it than haplotypes.
                                                                           

 The cultures of the others and their knowledge of good and evil acts differed.  They called their ancient god Chemosh, translated as "DESTROYER, or FISH GOD."  The Ammonites worshipped him, too.  "His cult was imported to Jerusalem by King Solomon (1 Kings 11:7).  The Hebrew scorn for his worship was evident in a curse from the scriptures:  "the abomination of Moab."  King Josiah of Judah (637-608 BCE) destroyed the Israelite branch of the cult (2 Kings 23).   
                                                                            

They believed in human sacrifice!  "Rites were commonplace in the various Canaanite religious cults, including those of the Baals and of Moloch.  Mythologists and other scholars suggest that such activity may be due to the fact the Chemosh and other Canaanite gods such as the Baals, Moloch, Thammuz, and Baalzebub were all personifications of the sun, or of the sun's rays.  They represented the fierce, inescapable, and often consuming heat of the summer sun (a necessary but deadly element in life; analogs may be found in Aztec sun worship)." "Goddesses were indeed secondary, and in many cases being dissolved or compounded with male deities."  One wonders what was so appealing to people when human sacrifice is involved in their beliefs.  Most all  the people of that period had a limited viewpoint of G-d and G-d was a national figure then who only helped that group.  Writer Judd H. Burton said, "Thus, it would seem that Semitic regard for respective national deities operated similarly from region to region." 
                                                                               

Moabites and Ammonites became Assyrians
King Abdulah I of Saudi Arabia moved to Jordan for his Arabian tribe which he brought with him.  

The Moabites, as you can see by the map, lived in where Jordan exists today.  The boundaries then were laid out to be in the North by the river Heshbon; The South by the river Zered; the Jordan River and the Dead Sea to the West,  and The Syrian Desert on the East.   They were blood relations to the Israelites because they were also descendants of Lot, Abraham's nephew. So were the Ammonites.   They shared genes with the Israelites.   Even their language was similar to Hebrew.

During  our patriarchal era, they had settled in Moab which had been captured from the Rephaim as told about in Deut. 2:10-11.  The Rephaim lived, we think, south of the Sinai peninsula, or in the North.  It was between the Wilderness of Sin and the Sinai Desert and was a stopping place for the Israelites led by Moses.  They also were an ancient people living in today's Jordan in Abraham's day.  Some had settled near Jerusalem in the "Valley of Rephaim."  I'm going back over 4,000 years now to Abraham's day which would have been about 1948 BCE, otherwise known as the 2nd millennium BCE!!! It's wonderful to find such
bands were recorded for history.

The Moabites during Abraham's life were ruled by a king named Sihon.  He was defeated by the Israelites who occupied the land on their journey back to Canaan.  This of course was a cause of contention then with not only the Moabites but also with Ammonites.  The Moabites themselves were a divided people still in tribes, and this caused the tribes to unite into one kingdom.  Their 2nd ruler turns out to be Balak who called on Balaam to curse the Israelites.  As time went on, they had a king named Eglon, and they extended their territory to the Jericho region until Eglon was killed by Ehud, an Israelite Judge-leader before kings were needed for Israel.  He was from the tribe of Benjamin.  Ehud saved Israel from Eglon, king of Moab and his  oppression.
                                                                         

King David   ruled from 1010 BCE to 970 BCE over Israel.  His ggrandmother was a Moabite, however.  He conquered the Moabites who remained under the rule of  Israel down to the rebellion in the 9th century of  King Mesha of Moab.  At first King Mesha was nice to  Israel's King Omri (887-876 BCE) , but exploited Israel's weakness after the death of Israel's King Ahab (876-853 BCE)  and threw off Israel's ruling over them.  King Mesha set up the
                                                                                           

Mesha Stele, a stone with writing that commemorated his successful revolt against King Joram/Jehoram  (853-843 BCE) of Israel.  This stone was found in the Moabite capital, Dibon, in 1868, and is now in the Louvre.  It tells of Omri's subjection of Moab and Moab's liberation from Israel.  The language is similar to Hebrew.  It almost looks like the  tablet of today, doesn't it?
                                                                             

Assyrians taking Israelites as prisoners

Moab became an Assyrian province when Tiglath-Pileser III ruled.  The Assyrians had attacked Israel in 722 to 721 BCE.   During the Persian period, Arabs penetrated the country and assimilated with the Moabites.   Moab was conquered by the Jewish Hasmoneans and was later incorporated by the Romans into Arabia.
                                                   

Deut. 23:4 tells us that intermarriage between Jews and Moabites is forbidden, but the Talmud understood this referred only to males, so by the Mishnaic Period, the prohibition was abolished.  They knew Ruth was a Moabite and she was good.  Here's a case where one person made a difference in attitude.
                                                                           

Ruth is famous for being an ancestor of King David, his great grandmother.  Her story took place in the days of the Judges, before King  Saul, first king of Israel in the 11th century BCE.  Being from Moab,  she  had married an Israelite, Mahlon, and when he died after 10 years of marriage, Ruth stayed with his mother, Naomi and went with her back to Bethlehem.   Mahlon's brother, Chilion,   also died young. He had married a Moabite woman, too.    A few years later, Naomi introduced Ruth  to one of her relatives, Boaz, and he married Ruth.  Naomi was an interesting character.  She was also a widow, and had been married to the Israelite, Elimelech.    They had wandered into Moab when famine had hit their own city of Beth-lehem in the southern part of Canaan, later to be Judah.   When he died unexpectedly, she found herself left with only her 2 sons who later married Moabite women.  

Naomi urged her two daughters in law to go back to their own homes, but Ruth was insistent upon staying with her, and said her famous lines  that I repeated in my Confirmation:
   For where you go, I will go;  where you lodge, I will lodge;  your people are my people, and your G-d is my G-d;  where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.  Thus may Hashem do to me, and so may He do more, if anything but death separates me from you."

                                                                              Descendants of Boaz

1   Boaz b: in Bethlehem, cousin of Elimelach, Naomi's husband.
.. +Ruth of Royalty b: in Moab
. 2   Oved Obed Judah b: in 11th century BCE
..... 3   Jesse b: in Bethlehem
......... +Ithra's Daughter
......... 4   Zeruiah
......... 4   [1] King of Israel David b: in 1000 BCE Bethlehem
............. +Bathsheba b: in Giloh, Judah
......... *2nd Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Ahinoam of Jezreel
......... *3rd Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Michal the First, Daughter of Saul
......... *4th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Abigail b: in Carmelite
......... *5th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Maachah Fromgeshur
......... *6th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Merab
......... *7th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Haggith
......... *Partner of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Abital
......... *8th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Eglah
......... *9th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Maacah

Descendants of Judah-Tribe of Judah came from him-one of the 12 sons of Jacob.

1   [2] Judah
.. +Daughter of Shua
. 2   Boaz b: in Bethlehem
..... +Ruth of Royalty b: in Moab
. 2   Hur
. 2   Er
..... +[1] Tamar
. 2   Onan
..... +[1] Tamar
. 2   Shelah
*2nd Wife of [2] Judah:
.. +Canaanite Woman
. 2   Er
..... +[3] Tamar
. 2   Onan
..... +[3] Tamar
. 2   Shelah b: in Chezib
*3rd Wife of [2] Judah:
.. +[3] Tamar
. 2   Perez
. 2   Zerah

Research:  Tanach;  The Stone Edition
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/cgodsandgoddesses/a/chemosh.htm

Spain's Alhambra Decree Concerning Jews of 1492

Rafael Nadal Parera, famous tennis player from Majorca, a large  island owned by Spain.  Jacobovici, historian on Israel and the Jews, thought Parera might have Jewish roots, but Rafael has done extensive searches and can not find any.  What he doesn't realize is that "Jews had been living in Majorca since Bible since Roman times.  In the 14th century, Majorca was the center of a school of Jewish map-makers headed by the Cresques family.  The Jews suffered during the massacres of 1391.  A ritual murder accusation was made in 1435 and the Jews were again attacked.  The surviving members were forced into accepting Christianity.  The Spanish Inquisition persecuted their descendants who were known in Majorca as Chuetas.  They again suffered terribly in 1678 and 1691.  In Palma,  the Chuetas are still recognizable.  Majorca had about 300 Jews living there by the 1970s.  Rafael Nadal Perera has a surname that was commonly used by the conversos.  

"Spanish Jews once constituted one of the largest and most prosperous Jewish communities in the world."

In biblical days, the land of Tarshish was in the Iberian Peninsula, later to be called Spain.  It was well known to the Jews.  

Nadene Goldfoot
Unmerciful riots and even pogroms started in 1391 in Spain against Jews, causing half of the Jewish population to be forcibly converted. More than 200,00 Jews went through a conversion process.  40,000 to 100,000 had already been expelled.   This was an outgrowth of Christianity's growth and definition, who must have felt they were in political competition with Judaism, and decided to put an end to their Jewish population.

On March 31, 1492, the Spanish monarchs announced their Alhambra Decree which said that Jews would be expulsed from Castile and Aragon.  They had to be out of Spain by July 31, 1492.  Some moved to Portugal, where they would be able to live for a little while until that monarch decided to join Spain and expelled Jews there as well.  This brought about the division of Jews into Ashkenazi and Sephari lines.
                                                                         

It was August 3, 1492 that the Italian, Christopher Columbus sailed with his 3 ships, the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria for India.  This was 3 days after the expulsion of all Jews. He arrived in the New World off North America instead on October 12, 1492.  It's thought that he was one of the Conversos, since he wrote letters to his son in Hebrew, a language not many were versed in unless they were Jewish.  Some of his crew members had to have been Jews, needing to get out of the country.  At the time, gambling on a sailing ship could have meant certain death.  It was a frightening experience.   Columbus had raised the money needed to make this journey by going to the Spanish monarchs for it.  They were willing to gamble that he would bring back riches enough to put their money in the profit zone.

Mohammad had been born in 570 CE and died in 632 CE.  It was also a proselytizing religion, so by the 8th Century CE, had spread out and overtook Spain's Iberian Peninsula.  Already living there since the Romans had come into Israel were Jews, and the native Spaniards respected them as "People of the Book."  The Muslim Moorish rulers were very tolerant of the Jews.  When the Umayyad Caliphate fell in 750 CE, things rapidly changed for Jews.  As conditions became horrid for the Jews, many converted and then were called Conversos, New Christians, or Marranos, an ugly term.  Today people from this group are called a Hebrew word, Anusim.  They have researched their ancestor's religion and many are now converting back to Judaism.

Ashkenazis were Jews who had left Israel in 70 CE when the Romans took Jerusalem and burned down the Temple and city, as the Sephardi had also, but Ashkenazis were the group that headed towards Rome, either by force or by choice, and then had gone into France and Germany.  From there after many years, they found that by necessity they needed to leave and meandered into Eastern Europe, where they wound up on Poland and Lithuania, etc.  in what was called the Pale of Settlement.

The distance in 70 CE from Jerusalem to Spain was much closer, and for reasons known to their leaders, that's the direction this Sephardic group had taken.  Reasons could have been that the area was known to certain leaders who had the experience of travel and of trading in these places.  The 2 groups stayed in communication with each other throughout the centuries.

What developed from 1492 was the Spanish Inquisition, which of course had already started before this date in the late 1300s.

Reference:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/columbus-sets-sail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Spain
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/rafael-nadal-a-jewish-story/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/nadal-smashes-away-talk-of-jewish-roots/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Caliphate