At this time, Christianity was divided into two realms, the West (Europe) and the East (Anatolia, Palestine, Syria). The pope could be likened to an emperor over Western Europe, the Holy Roman Empire. First Crusade Pope Urban II’s Speech 1095 Pope Urban II issued a famous speech calling for all Christians to sell their land [...]

Roman governance style was not to appoint a governor, but to find a middleman well aware of Jewish sensibilities and in 40 BC the Romans find the able politician and successful military leader Herod to hold this position. His family is from Edom to the southeast of Jerusalem, and area outside the traditional border of [...]

Ezra and Nehemiah were the leaders of a second wave of returnees to Zion; the governor Nehemiah arrived in 445 BC and the priest Ezra arrived in 398 BC. Ezra and Nehemiah represented a group of returnees who claimed that they had a pure lineage traceable all the way back to before the exile, and [...]

Life in Jerusalem was strifed by bad harvests and a weak economy. Enthusiasm for rebuilding the Temple waned when there was not enough to even eat. But in August 520 the prophet Haggai scolded the Golah, the community of exiles: How could plenty, wealth and vivacity flourish without that essential aspect, the Temple, the link [...]

The technique of blowing glass into a mould is particularly associated with pilgrim flasks. The flasks were filled with sanctified oil or earth and taken away by pilgrims as mementoes.   Image Details Date Overview Glass pilgrim flask. Syria. British Museum, MME 1911,5-13,1. Image by L M Clancy 2009/09/13. AD 450-650 On one side is [...]

The Davidic Kingdom divided in 931 BC (1 Kings 12–14,19; 2 Kings 17:21). Samaria was destroyed and repopulated in 721 BC (2 Kings 17; Ezra 4:2) and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel made their way into Judah, while some stayed behind. When Jews began to return to their homeland during the Persian Period, there [...]

© Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery. Used with permission. Tel Dor, the best-preserved Persian Period settlement, was a very sophisticated port city (there were even special structures for boats to pull into). The Eastern mound was residential and had a Hippodamian plan that heralds from a late Persian style. The architecture itself is heavily Phoenician. [...]

Nehemiah went to Judah in 445 BC, the 20th year of Persian king Artaxerxes (Neh 1:1, 2:1). Nehemiah had been a cupbearer to the Persian king (Neh 1:1). Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem (part of a confrontation with the Samaritans), battled social injustice in Jerusalem (Neh 5) and built upon Ezra’s reforms. The books [...]

The period of Persian hegemony (538-332 BC) began when Persian king Cyrus seized Babylonia. Persian Control is split into Persian I (538-450 BC) and Persian II (450-332 BC), ending with Alexander’s conquest of the Levant (332 BC). Jewish diaspora communities appeared in Israel and Judah (amidst the First Return and Second Return), as well as [...]

After destroying Ashkelon and the Philistine coastal plain, the Babylonians besieged Judah and controlled it form 604-538 BC (Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BC). The Persian Empire (its first incarnation was under the Medes) began around this time. The Babylonian administration in Judah used an Assyrian approach of balkanization: Megiddu (capital at Megiddo); Samerina (Samaria); [...]