by Sarah Simon 100/19/2023
Here’s a timeline of what we now call the “Middle East” – a term that is only relevant from the perspective of the Europeans and the Western world.
Let’s start from the beginning, in BCE/BC times:
– Various groups of people in the land, an agglomeration of independent Canaanite city-states, lived in ancient Israel.
BRONZE AGE
Excavating the Canaanite Gate at Tel Gezer in Israel
The Jews split off to worship YHWH / became monotheistic
1500 BCE
Excavating the Canaanite Gate at Tel Gezer in Israel
1047 BCE
2 Jewish kingdoms: - Israel - 930 BCE - 720 BCE Judah - 930 BCE-587 BCE
Standing Stones at Tel Gezer in Israel
334-140 BCE
The Greeks renamed the land Judea
A view of the Sea of Galilee in Israel
Also called Babylonian Exile, the forced detention of Jews in Babylonia following the Babylonian conquest of the kingdom of Judah
598/7 BCE
When Esther saved the Jewish people from annihilation by Haman – the Jewish holiday of Purim
539 BCE
Hamentaschen, eaten at Purim
– 332 BCE: Alexander the Great – 301 BCE: Ptolemaic period
The Maccabean Revolt was as an uprising against the Empire’s repression (Chanukkah commemorates this). Jerusalem was taken back by the Jews.
200 BCE
Menorah Carving in a tomb in Bet Shearim, Israel
The Hasmonean dynasty ruled in the 2nd Temple period from 140 BCE to 37 BCE. From 140-116 BCE, the Seleucid Empire ruled with the Hasmonean dynasty, until Judea gained more independence and expanded.
142-63 BCE
In 132 AD the Emperor Hadrian resolved to stamp the Jewish people and their religion out of existence. He sold all Jewish prisoners into slavery after the Bar Kokhba revolt, forbade the teaching of the Torah, renamed the province Syria Palaestina, and changed Jerusalem’s name to Aelia Capitolina.
In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and looted the contents, bringing Jews to Rome to force them into slavery building the Colosseum. The Arch of Titus in Rome commemorates this.
63 CE