Every time I start writing about something I feel vaguely guilty that I’m not writing about something else. Pretty silly but there you go. I hope to get back to sciency stuff after this….
I’m going to try writing a timeline of events and data leading up to the current situation in Palestine/Israel, which will never be comprehensive but…
- c9000 years ago the region we may now call Palestine or Israel didn’t have a clear name. It was inhabited by agricultural communities practising various religions. There was at least one concentrated centre, Jericho, regarded as one of the world’s oldest towns, successively inhabited for the past 11000 years.
- c7000 years ago – evidence has recently been discovered that Jerusalem was inhabited at this time (the Chalcolithic era). The Israeli press made much of this, but there’s no evidence of course that Judaism dates back that far. I should add that, in considering the history of the people of the region, I make the reasonable assumption that ‘holy texts’ are propagandist and of extremely limited reliability.
- c6000 years ago – the region from this time is generally known as Canaan, at least by historians and archaeologists – though the first known use of the term comes much later (we’re at the very beginnings of rudimentary writing). The inhabitants spoke a variety of Semitic languages and dialects. We’re talking here about a large region encompassing much of modern Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
- c4500 – 4000 years ago – the region’s population grew – it benefitted from but was also threatened by surrounding civilisations, such as the Egyptians to the south, the Sumerians and Akkadians in Mesopotamia, and later the Assyrians, Babylonians and other peoples. These infiltrating groups also influenced religious beliefs.
- c3500 – 3000 years ago – small city states had developed, and the region, particularly in the south, came under increasing control of Egypt. one of the principal languages was Eblaite, in the north. The Hittites of Anatolia were another major influence. During this period, a number of towns and cities still known today came into being, or into prominence, including Sidon, Tyre, Haifa, Jaffa, Beirut and Hebron. The Canaanite religion, from which the Israelite religion essentially derived, was polytheistic but hierarchical, and among the many deities worshipped in a very diverse and volatile region were Dagon, Ba’al Hadad, Anat, Astarte, El Elyon and Moloch.
- c2800 years ago – by this time there were a number of distinct kingdoms in the region, including Israel/Samaria, whose principal god was Yahweh, Judah (also Yahweh), Moab (Chemosh), Edom or Idumea (Qaus), and Ammon (Moloch). Each of these gods headed a pantheon of lesser gods.
- c2700 years ago – around this time the Judaic religion began to take full form. Israel and Judah had become vassals of the Assyrian empire. Israel rebelled and its kingdom was destroyed. Refugees who fled to Judah, particularly the elite, promoted Yahweh as a supreme god, the only one to be worshipped. The sudden collapse of the Assyrian empire and the support of a new king of Judah (Josiah) helped the ‘reform’ to succeed. The old covenant, or treaty, between Judah and Assyria was replaced by a covenant with its new overlord, Yahweh. However, we cannot know how many people in the kingdom adhered to the new monotheism.
- 586 BCE – the Babylonians sacked Judah’s capital, Jerusalem, and the elite were taken captive. It’s impossible to know how many lives were lost. It’s claimed that the ‘first temple’, supposedly built under the reign of Solomon, was destroyed at this time, but there is no evidence of the existence of this fabulous structure.
- 539 BCE – the Persians under Cyrus the Great captured Babylon and many exiles returned to Judah. They regained control of the kingdom (now called Yehud) and brought with them a more ascetic, exclusivist form of the religion, very probably influenced by Zoroastrianism, a Persian form of monotheism. It was at this time that the Torah or Pentateuch was written. However, Yehud/Judah was now a part of the Persian Achaemenid empire, and remained so for over 200 years. The region was considerably smaller and less populated than suggested in Judaic holy texts – it was situated south of Samaria, bordering the Dead Sea to the east, but not quite stretching to the Mediterranean in the west.
- 332 BCE – Alexander the Great conquered the region, but died shortly thereafter. The Ptolemies, descendants of one of Alexander’s generals, gained control of the region.
- c 200BCE – another Greek dynasty, the Seleucids, based in Syria, gained control of the region. Clearly the people of the southern Levant region, among whom were people we might now call the Jews, had never really experienced autonomy, which might explain something of the modern situation. The Seleucids were keen to either suppress Judaism or to Hellenise it, leading to increased tensions with the ruling powers, and between traditional and ‘modernising’ Jews.
- 167-160 BCE – This was the Period of the ‘Maccabean Revolt’, involving a series of battles which eventually led to a semi-autonomous Jewish state, the Hasmonean dynasty.
- c110 BCE – with the weakening of the Seleucids, the Hasmonean dynasty became autonomous and expanded its territory into Samaria and Galilee in the north, Idumea to the south, and Perea and Iturea to the west. It should be noted however that this was a kingdom, not a religious state. The state was always reliant on more powerful states, such as the Roman Republic and the Parthian empire.
- 63 BCE – the region became a client state of Rome after invasion, and the Jewish territory was again reduced. The Hasmonean dynasty came to an end in 37 BCE when Herod, an Idumean, took over the throne. The Hasmonean period has been used for propaganda purposes by Zionist nationalists to claim modern rights to the land governed by the Hasmoneans before the Roman invasion.
- 6 CE – the first Roman governor/prefect of Judea – a Roman province – was appointed. The region was still a kingdom, but most power was in Roman hands.
- 66-73 CE – during these years a major rebellion broke out against Roman rule. The second temple was destroyed by the forces of the future Roman Emperor, Titus, and the first major diaspora of Jews occurred – though Jews were already starting to migrate to Egypt, Anatolia and Mesopotamia.
Okay, this first part of the timeline, taking us to the beginnings of the Christian era, has clearly more information about the Jews and Judaism than about the other peoples of the region. That’s largely because there’s more information out there about the Jews than the other cultures/religions. It’s virtually impossible to get reliable information about the population of the region in toto, let alone the proportions of different peoples, their range of occupations, the number and sizes of towns, the degree of co-operation and rancour between disparate groups etc etc. In any case, we’ve now covered the period which the most hardline Zionist nationalists say is the basis of their claim to a Zionist monocultural state. From this point on, the Jewish diaspora will be a feature, as well as the ever-changing situation in and around the southern Levant, or Palestine.