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have killed a lion with his bare hands, and his victory over the
Philistine giant Goliath caught the attention of King Saul.
At first Saul treated him almost like a son, and gave him one of his daughters as a wife. David also began a close friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan, which would continue even after Saul turned against him. But Saul eventually became jealous of David, and for many years David was a hunted man. During this time, he wrote a number of the psalms (SAULMS), or songs to God, contained in the book of that name, and assembled a fighting force of his own that would become known as “the Mighty Men of David.”
Saul met his end in a battle that claimed three of his sons, including Jonathan. Saul himself committed suicide by falling on his sword. An aging Samuel then anointed David king. The new king distinguished himself with numerous vic- tories over Philistines, Canaanites, and other hostile peoples. More important than these conquests, however, was his cap- ture of Jerusalem, an ancient city that became the new capital of the Israelites. He celebrated its capture by giving the Ark of the Covenant, a sacred box containing the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, a place of honor in the new capital city. The Israelites considered the Ark sacred; stories were told of terrible things that happened to men who touched it. Later, during the conquest by other nations that led to the Captivity, the Ark was lost and has never been seen again.”
God made a covenant with David, promising that his descendants would rule forever. Christians have taken this as a promise regarding Christ, who descended from David. David composed many songs of praise to God, for example Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible. He was called “a man after God’s own heart” despite occasional lapses into sin, as when he coveted another man’s wife [see sidebar, “The Ten Command- ments.”] That desire led him to break another commandment, against murder, when he sent the woman’s husband to certain death in battle. He married the woman, Bathsheba (bath-SHEE- buh). Out of this union came his successor, Solomon; however, David had to pay heavily for his sins.
Because of David’s checkered past, God denied him an honor that he gave instead to Solomon (reigned c. 960–922 B.C.): the building of a great temple in Jerusalem. The temple would house the Ark of the Covenant in a place called “The Holy of
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Holies.” The Bible records a great deal about the building of the temple and about Solomon’s legendary wisdom, in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes (ee-klee-zee-AS-teeze), biblical books attributed to him. Ecclesiastes is unusual among books of the Bible for its world-weary philosophical tone. Another unusual book is “Song of Solomon,” likewise traditionally attributed to the king. It is a love poem from a man to a woman and has no equal in ancient literature (certainly not in the Bible) for the intensity of the desire it expresses. Solomon, incidentally, is said to have had some 800 wives. According to legend he had a love affair with the Queen of Sheba from the African country of Ethiopia.
The divided kingdom (922–721 B.C.)
The reign of David and later Solomon marked Israel’s high point. Afterward came years of decline, followed by dis- aster. After Solomon’s death, in about 922 B.C., Israel divided into two kingdoms. To the south was Judah, which consisted of that tribe as well as Benjamin’s and part of the Levite priestly tribe. It was ruled by members of David’s dynasty. To the north was Israel, which consisted of the remaining ten tribes and was ruled by elected kings. Over the coming years, Judah had a number of wicked rulers, along with some good ones; by con- trast, all of Israel’s kings, according to the Bible, were evil.
Without a doubt the most notorious (no-TORE-ee-us; unfavorably well-known) rulers over Israel were the royal cou- ple Ahab (AY-hab) and Jezebel (JEZ-uh-bell.) For years, the Israelites’ god had been at war with other deities of the region, including the Canaanites’ Baal (BAIL); the Phoenicians’ Astarte (uh-STAR-tay), a variation on the Mesopotamian love goddess Ishtar; and others. Jezebel attempted to replace worship of Yahweh with that of Baal. Ahab tried to align (associate) Israel with its neighbors, something God had clearly forbidden. They committed various other evil deeds, such as killing a man to steal his vineyard (VIN-yurd.) God, through the prophet Eli- jah, another major figure of the Old Testament, dealt harshly with them.
Much of the Old Testament is devoted to the troubled centuries between the death of Solomon and the Captivity. As
1st and 2nd Samuel recorded events involving Saul and David, the books of Kings and Chronicles preserve the period from
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Women in the Old Testament
Though it would be a mistake to say that women in Israel enjoyed anything like equality with men, their status was much higher than in most ancient societies,
even the supposedly more advanced cultures of Greece and Rome. Thus there were few prominent women in Rome, and fewer still in Greece, whereas the Bible is full of important females. There was Ruth, for instance, who lived around the time of the judges and whose story is told in a very short book that bears her name.
But not all female figures were as positive as Ruth, Deborah the judge, or Abraham’s wife Sarah. There was Eve; there was Delilah, who tricked Samson into giving up the secret of his strength; and there was Jezebel, who was so cruel that her name has become a negative word in the English language.
Also it should be noted that not many females had a reputation like that of Deborah, who is remembered purely in her own right rather than as the mother, wife, sister, or daughter of a more famous man—as is the case with many of the women named below. Nonetheless, few other ancient historical texts mention so many different females of importance; and as for the Jezebels and Delilahs, it should
be pointed out that there were plenty of wicked men in the Old Testament as well.
Other famous women of the Old Testament, in order of their appearance, include:
Hagar: Sarah’s maid and mother of Ishmael. Rebecca: Mother of Jacob.
Leah: Wife of Jacob and mother of Judah. Rachel: Wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph. Dinah: Daughter of Jacob.
Miriam: Moses’s sister, who assisted him in leading the people.
Zipporah: Moses’s wife.
Rahab (RAY-hab): A prostitute from Jericho who helped the Israelites conquer the city and whose life was spared in return.
Abigail: Wife of David.
Bathsheba: A woman with whom David fell in love, even though she was another man’s wife.
The Queen of Sheba: A great queen, per- haps from Ethiopia, with whom King Solomon fell in love.
Esther: The wife of a Persian emperor dur- ing the Captivity, who helped save her people.
Solomon through the Exile and Captivity. Likewise most of the Prophetic Books [see sidebar, “The Structure of the Bible”] are devoted to the works of men sent by God to criticize the
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wickedness of Israel and Judah. These prophets include Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah (MIKE-uh), Hosea (ho-ZAY-uh), and Amos.
The end of Israel and Judah (721–587 B.C.)
During this time, Judah at least had a few bright peri- ods, but Israel was threatened by conflict with the Syrians or Aramaeans, Egyptians, and Assyrians. Isaiah warned Ahas (AY- hass), the king of Israel, not to make an alliance with Assyria against the Aramaeans, but he did. Tiglath-Pileser III, the Assyrian king, drove out the Aramaeans, but in return for the favor he grabbed large portions of the Israelites’ territory.
Finally, in 721 B.C., Tiglath-Pileser’s successor, Sargon II, completed the conquest of Israel. As was the Assyrians’ pol- icy, he deported large numbers of the Israelites to another part of his empire. Most likely these people became assimilated into the Assyrian Empire; however, “The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel” became a legend. In later centuries, people would claim that they had ended up in Africa or even America.
Judah managed to hang on for another century and a half, led by kings such as Hezekiah (hez-uh-KIE-uh; r. 715–687
B.C.), a righteous leader according to the Bible. But after his time, the kingdom came under the influence of Assyria. King Josiah (joe-SIE-uh; r. 640–609 B.C.) worked against the Assyri- ans’ influence in the government and religion of Israel, but he died in an unsuccessful attempt to stop an Egyptian invasion of Mesopotamia.
By the time of Josiah’s death in 609 B.C., Assyria had fallen to Babylonia, and Judah fell under Babylonian influ- ence. Babylonia and Egypt now went to war, and Judah took Egypt’s side—which turned out to be a mistake. In 587 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia conquered Judah and carried many of its people into captivity in Babylon.
The Captivity and aftermath (587–63 B.C.)
In the history of Israel, the period from 587 to 538 B.C. is known as the Captivity or the Exile. (Because the divided kingdom had ended, the distinction between Judah and Israel no longer had any meaning. Therefore one can refer to “Israel”
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as a whole again.) This was the period of prophets such as Ezekiel (ee-ZEKE-ee-uhl) and Daniel, who wrote their works while living in Babylonia.
During this time, the Israelites went through a great deal of soul-searching as they considered the reasons why Yah- weh had abandoned his covenant with their people. They came to recognize the importance of worshiping the one god and began to believe that he would send a leader to rescue their people. This figure, known as the Messiah (meh-SIY-uh), is described in later passages from the Book of Isaiah that were probably written during the period of the Captivity rather than by Isaiah himself. Some Israelites believed that the Mes- siah would reestablish Israel as a political nation, whereas fol- lowers of Christ would later come to believe that the Messiah came to establish a spiritual rather than a political leadership.
With the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539
B.C., the Israelites came under a new master. The period of cap- tivity under Persia, like the earlier Babylonian Captivity, would have an enormous influence on Israel. The books of Job and Esther were written during this time. According to Jewish tra- dition, Esther saved her people from slaughter by a cruel offi- cial of the Persian Empire, and this event is commemorated, or remembered, in the festival of Purim (POOR-im).
The religion of the Israelites also experienced the influence of Zoroastrianism [zo-ro-AS-tree-uhn-izm] from Per- sia. Before this time, the writings of the Old Testament con- tained few references to the idea of a devil. One of the most curious aspects of Judaism (JEW-day-izm), as the Israelite reli- gion came to be called, was its scriptures’ suggestion that evil things, as well as good, came from God. The Zoroastrian reli- gion, however, had an idea of an evil god continually at bat- tle with the good. From this came the concept of Satan or Lucifer, which developed over later centuries. Incidentally, the three famous Magi (MAY-jie) or wise men, who according to the New Testament traveled to see the baby Jesus, were probably Zoroastrian priests.
Another particularly significant aspect of Persian rule was the respect the emperor Cyrus had for other peoples’ reli- gions. He allowed the leaders Ezra and Nehemiah (nee-huh- MIYE-uh) to return to Jerusalem and begin rebuilding the city. This led also to a reconstruction of the Israelites’ way of life,
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and by the 300s B.C. the population of Jerusalem began to return to its pre-Captivity levels.
The Hellenistic Period and the Maccabees
(333–63 B.C.)
Alexander the Great marched through the area of
Israel, which by then had come to be called Palestine, in 333
B.C. After Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, Palestine became Greek, and this began a phase known as the Hellenis- tic (hell-in-IS-tick), or Greek, Period. First the Ptolemies, the Egyptian inheritors of Alexander’s empire, ruled Palestine, but from 198 B.C. the area came under the control of the Seleucids (suh-LOO-sidz), a Hellenistic group that had also emerged from Alexander’s conquests.
Several important things happened in these centuries. No longer known by their nation but by their religion, the peo- ple of Israel were called simply Jews, and they began to spread throughout the region. This spreading of the Jews, known as the Diaspora (dee-AS-pour-uh), would continue for many cen- turies, as they remained a people without a homeland of their own. Some of them went to Egypt, where they made the first translations of the Old Testament from the Hebrew language into Greek.
The Seleucids tried to force the Greek religion on the Jews, and this led to a revolt by a priest named Mattatias (matt- uh-TIE-us) and his son Judas Maccabeus (mack-uh-BEE-us) in
164 B.C. They reconquered Jerusalem, an event that Jews com- memorate in the festival of Hanukkah ([K]ON-oo-kuh). Under the Maccabees, whose history is recorded in the Apocryphal book by that name [see sidebar, “The Structure of the Bible”], the people of Israel enjoyed their last period of freedom for more than 2,000 years. But a later Maccabean ruler attempted to combine the functions of king and priest, an unpopular move with his Jewish subjects. This made it easy for the Romans to conquer the region in 63 B.C.
Roman rule (63 B.C.–A.D. 135)
In 34 B.C., a Roman vassal—that is, a king who is sub- ject to a more powerful king—began to rule the area, which under the Romans had come to be known as Judea (jew-DEE-
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Herod the Great. Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.
uh). This ruler’s name was Herod the Great, and though he is remembered for his cruelty, he also began the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, which was not completed until A.D. 64.
Part of Herod’s bad reputation comes from the New Testament. The period of the Old Testament had ended with the restoration of Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah. The New Testament begins with the birth of Jesus in about 4 B.C. (Although B.C. means “Before Christ,” due to changes in the calendar, the original estimate of Jesus’s birth was off by about four years.) According to the Gospels [see sidebar, “The Struc- ture of the Bible”], Herod heard rumors that a new and rival king was about to be born. Therefore, like the pharaoh who had tried to stop Moses centuries before, he ordered the killing of firstborn sons.
But of course Jesus was born. Though his parents were the carpenter Joseph and his young wife Mary, Christian belief holds that Mary conceived Jesus through an act of God’s spirit
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without having sexual relations with Joseph. Stories of Jesus’s birth form a significant part of the Western tradition in the form of Christmas, a holiday celebrated by Christians and non-Christians alike.
The New Testament tells little about the first years of Jesus’s life, but at about the age of thirty, he went to his cousin John for baptism. To be baptized is to be lowered into water as a symbol of death and rebirth. John, better known as John the Baptist, had been preaching baptism. He had also preached the coming of the Messiah. He saw Jesus not only as that leader, but as God in human form—which Jesus himself claimed to be.
As Jesus embarked on his ministry, his main opposi- tion came from scholars of the Jewish scriptures known as Pharisees (FAIR-uh-seez). For his disciples, or close followers, he chose twelve men quite different from the Pharisees: sev- eral, including Peter and John, were fishermen; one was a hated tax collector; and another, Judas Iscariot, belonged to a group of anti-Roman political revolutionaries in the tradition of the Maccabees. (A revolutionary is someone who calls for an armed uprising against the rulers of a nation or area. An impor- tant group of revolutionaries at that time were the Zealots [ZELL-uhts], whose name is still a part of the English language as a term for someone who is extremely committed to a cause.) Nor did Jesus choose to keep the kind of company the Phar- isees would expect of someone who claimed to be a religious teacher. Instead, he spent his time with prostitutes and other sinners. Although he did not approve of their sin, he taught that God’s grace was for them as well.
It is important to note that Jesus was a Jew and that he was known as rabbi (RA-bye), a Jewish term for a teacher or priest. He did not attempt to remove the Old Testament, but to build on it. He angered the Pharisees by telling them that he was the promised Messiah. For three years, he con- ducted his ministry, teaching, preaching, and—according to the New Testament—healing and performing miracles. Noth- ing he did won the admiration of the Pharisees, who criti- cized him, for instance, for healing a man on the Sabbath, the day of rest according to the law of Moses [see sidebar, “The Ten Commandments”].
Ultimately the Pharisees captured Jesus, with the help of Judas Iscariot, who had turned against his teacher, perhaps
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because Jesus proved not to be the political leader he had hoped he would be. Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, who allowed the Jerusalem crowd to decide Jesus’s fate. The crowd called for him to be cru- cified, a Roman punishment in which the victim was nailed or tied to a cross until he died.
The meaning of the crucifixion, and what happened afterward, is the basis for Christianity. Christians believe that by dying on the cross, Jesus took on the sins of the world, just as in the Old Testament a lamb took on the sins of those who sacrificed it to God. As the son of God, Jesus became, in Chris- tian belief, the sacrificial lamb for all mankind’s sins; and after being dead for three days, he overcame sin and death and returned to life. Christians celebrate his resurrection at Easter.
The New Testament went on to record that Jesus, after being resurrected, gave his disciples power to perform miracles as great or greater than his own. The disciples became apostles (uh-POS-uhls, from a Greek word meaning “to send”). They went out into the world to preach about Jesus. Initially the apostles were persecuted by a Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus, but he had a dramatic conversion and, under the new name of Paul, became the most important of the apostles.
Paul and the others traveled around the known world, starting churches and, through their epistles (ee-PIS-uhls) or letters to those churches, directing the faithful. At that point, the Roman authorities still opposed Christianity, and Chris- tians were subjected to persecution both at home and abroad. Paul and Peter apparently died at the hands of the Romans, while John, a disciple of Jesus, had a less severe fate, being exiled to an island in the Aegean (uh-GEE-uhn) Sea near Greece. There he had a series of visions concerning the future, of which he told in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible.
Revelation was written in about A.D. 90, and by that point the history of Judea had become tied with that of Rome. The country had become a province of Rome in A.D. 44, but there was continual unrest among the people. In A.D. 70, the Roman emperor Titus (TIE-tus) destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, but a group of Zealots still held on to a fortress at Masada (muh-SOD-uh.) Forces under Titus destroyed Masada in A.D. 73, and 400 Zealots committed suicide rather than sur-
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render. In A.D. 135, the Roman emperor Hadrian (HAY-dree-uhn), responding to more Jewish unrest, declared that no Jew could live in the city of Jerusalem.
Israel to the present day
The focus of Christianity shifted from Palestine to Greece and Rome as those societies, formerly com- mitted to pagan religions, eventually accepted the new faith. Ironically, the Roman Empire that had crucified Jesus would one day adopt Christianity as its state religion. Christianity would long outlast the Roman Empire.
The Israelites would lose con- trol over Jerusalem and surrounding areas not just for centuries, but for mil- lennia. During the Middle Ages (A.D.
500–1500), the Jews spread throughout Europe, North Africa, and Asia. Mus- lims took over Palestine in the 600s A.D. Jerusalem was a holy place both to
Christians and Muslims, as well as to Jews. The Christian kings of Europe led a series of Crusades, or so-called holy wars, to retake Jerusalem during a period of nearly two centuries start- ing in 1095. The Crusades were anything but holy; they resulted in much bloodshed and cruelty on both sides. In the end, Jerusalem remained under Muslim control.
The Europeans did, however, gain valuable exposure to the advanced culture of the Arabs during the Crusades. This exposure helped bring Europe out of the ignorance and super- stition that characterized much of the early Middle Ages. But it did little to help the situation of the Jews, who were persecuted throughout Europe. Europeans prevented Jews from holding most jobs and forced them to live in specific areas called ghet- toes (GEH-toze). They forced Jews out of their countries, for instance from Spain in 1493, and killed many of their people.
The justification for this anti-Semitism was that the
Jews had crucified Christ. Some anti-Semites even claimed that
Emperor Hadrian, right profile.
The Library of Congress.
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The Bible in the Arts
Signs of the Bible’s influence on Western culture can be found in the biblical themes that appear in many of the arts, including painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, and film.
Most painters in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a period of renewed commitment to learning that began in about A.D. 1500, used Bible stories as their subjects. Perhaps the most striking examples are the paintings on the walls and ceiling of the Sistine (SIS-teen) Chapel, located in the Vatican, the center of the Catholic faith in Rome. Painted over a period of four years by Michelangelo (mick-ul-AN-jel-o; 1475–1564), it depicts events ranging from the Creation to the Great Flood.
Michelangelo also created many notable works of sculpture, including a statue of David and one of the Virgin Mary holding her son, Jesus, after his death on the cross. Many other painters and sculptors, including Leonardo (lee-o-NAR- do) da Vinci (1452–1519) and Raphael
(rah-fie-EL; 1483–1520) composed works depicting Jesus as an infant in the arms of his mother. This particular scene is so well known that it has a name, Nativity (nuh- TIV-i-tee), which means “birth.”
The influence of the Bible in architecture can be found in the numerous great churches and Jewish temples of the world. The style of these buildings draws on concepts contained in the Bible. For instance, the front of a Jewish synagogue (SIN-uh-gog) often bears a copy of the original Ten Commandments. Great cathedrals such as Notre-Dame (NO-truh DOM) in Paris, completed in 1345, are often called “sermons in stone” because they contain numerous statues depicting events from the Old and New Testaments.
The Bible’s influence in music extends from classical to popular forms. Each year at Christmas, audiences around the world are treated to performances of the Messiah, a work for vocals, chorus, and symphony composed by George Frideric (FREE-drick) Handel (1685–1789) in 1742.
persecution of Jews was an act of Christian obedience. (The New Testament paints a very different picture, suggesting that all of humanity, and not just one group of people, is guilty of killing the son of God. It also teaches that all people are to be treated with kindness.) Anti-Semitism sank to its depths under Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and the Nazi Party, which controlled Germany from 1933 to 1945 and killed more than six million Jews in the Holocaust (HOE-loh-cost).
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Equally well known is the work of Johann
(YO-hahn) Sebastian Bach (BOCK;
1685–1750), who created numerous Christian works including Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring and the music for the Christian hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” (The
latter contains words written by Martin Luther, 1483–1546, the most significant leader of the Reformation. The Reformation was the revolt against Catholicism that created the Protestant churches.) Among popular works based on biblical themes are such well known songs as “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Rivers of Babylon.”
The Bible itself, of course— particularly the beautiful King James Version, a translation completed in 1611— is often studied in literature classes. So too
is Paradise Lost, a long poem by John Milton (1608–1704) portraying the revolt against God by the angel Lucifer, who became Satan. Many other literary works do not specifically depict biblical events but involve so many references to the Bible
that a reader who knew nothing about the
religion of the Israelites would be lost. A great example is Moby Dick (1851), a classic of American literature by Herman Melville (1819–1891). It is no mistake that the narrator is named Ishmael, the wanderer, or that the captain of his ship is the evil Ahab. The story itself is closely related to the biblical Book of Jonah.
Even film, the most recently developed of all the major arts, has drawn heavily on biblical themes. Among the best “Bible epics” is The Ten Commandments (1956), produced at a time when Hollywood was churning out movies on biblical subjects. A less notable example is The Bible (1966). Films about Christ include The Robe (1953), The King of Kings (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and Jesus of Nazareth (1977). Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), based on a musical of the same name, and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) both raised a great deal of discussion among Christians, many of whom disagreed with the ways in which these two films portrayed Jesus.
Ironically, the Holocaust resulted in the creation of Israel, the first official Jewish nation in 2,000 years. For centuries, there had been a great deal of disagreement as to whether the Jews could reclaim Palestine, since large numbers of Arabs had settled in their former homeland. At one time, the British gov- ernment even suggested a Jewish state in what is now the African nation of Uganda. But worldwide sympathy after the Holocaust paved the way for the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
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The Koran. Archive Photos. Reproduced by permission.
Independence was one step toward the restoration of Israel, but far from the last one: Israel had to fight wars with Egypt, Syria, and other Arab neighbors in 1948, 1967, and
1973. In spite of an agreement between Israeli and Egyptian leaders in 1977, tensions have remained high, particularly on the West Bank of the Jordan River. This area, taken from the nation of Jordan in the 1967 war, includes Jerusalem, and has a large population of Palestinian Arabs. During the 1990s, hopes for a peace settlement were continually frustrated by outbreaks of violence on all sides.
The legacy of ancient Israel
With the exception of Greece and Rome, no other ancient society has so directly affected the course of modern life as did the tiny nation of Israel. It is virtually impossible for
a person in the United States, Europe, or any other part of the
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Western world to go a day without experiencing the effects of Israel, Greece, and Rome. People seldom think about ancient Greece or Rome in their everyday lives, however, but events in ancient Israel are commemorated every weekend and on many holidays throughout the year. Names from the Old and New Testaments, too, are a part of day-to-day life: everyone knows a David or a Deborah, a Mark or a Mary.
People continue to disagree over the meaning of the Bible. At one time, some scholars had come to believe that Abraham, Moses, David, and even Jesus did not really live, but rather were legendary figures like the Greek heroes in the Iliad. Over the years, however, considerable archaeological evidence has surfaced regarding the Bible, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of ancient biblical texts found in Palestine in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Historians have come to treat Biblical figures as historical. Certainly there is plenty of outside evidence for events and people from the time of David onward.
Dead Sea Scrolls, the manual of discipline, on display at the Special Museum, House of the Book in Jerusalem.
Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission
Israel 113
As for the truth of the Bible, however, that continues to be an area of disagreement. As noted earlier, Muslims hold much of the Bible sacred and respect biblical figures ranging from Abraham to Jesus. However, they have their own holy book, the Koran (core-AN). Likewise Jews have a number of sacred texts in addition to the Old Testament, including the Talmud, which provides additional information on the law and other subjects covered in the Old Testament. Catholics and Protestants, as well as other major branches of Christian- ity such as the Greek and Russian Orthodox (ORE-tho-dox) churches, all believe that Jesus was the son of God, but they disagree about other aspects of Christianity.
And of course, Christians disagree with other groups in Western society. The latter part of the twentieth century in the United States, for instance, saw the rise of religious and politi- cal groups sometimes described as “Christian fundamental- ists” (fun-duh-MEN-tul-ists), who called for a return to biblical traditions in American society at large. Fundamentalists have been sharply opposed by others who favor a nonreligious basis for government and public morality. But all sides can agree on at least one fact: the traditions of a small group of people, who existed only briefly as a nation more than 2,500 years ago, con- tinue to influence the world.
For More Information
Books
Connolly, Peter. The Jews in the Time of Jesus: A History. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1983.
De Paola, Tomie. The Miracle of Jesus: Retold from the Bible and Illustrated by
Tomie de Paola. New York: Holiday House, 1987.
Dijkstra, Henk. History of the Ancient & Medieval World, Volume 3: Ancient
Cultures. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1996, pp. 313-36.
Harker, Ronald. Digging Up the Bible Lands. Drawings by Martin Simmons.
New York: Henry Z. Walck, 1972.
Kent, David. Kings of Israel. Illustrated by Harry Bishop, John Keay, and
Rob McCaig. London: Kingfisher, 1981.
Kuskin, Karla. Jerusalem, Shining Still. Illustrations by David Frampton.
New York: Harper, 1987.
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Odijk, Pamela. The Israelites. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett, 1990.
Sasso, Sandy Eisenberg. But God Remembered: Stories of Women from Cre- ation to the Promised Land. Illustrated by Bethanne Andersen. Wood- stock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1995.
Smith, F. LaGard, ed. The Narrated Bible. Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1984. Tubb, Jonathan N. Bible Lands. New York: Knopf, 1991.
Web Sites
“Canaan and Ancient Israel @ University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.” University of Pennsylvania. http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Collections/ canaanframedoc1.html (February 26, 1999).
“Canaanite/Ugaritic Mythology FAQ.” University of New Hampshire.
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren/canaanite-faq.html (February 26,
1999).
“History of Jerusalem.” Virtual Jerusalem. http://www.virtual.co.il/
communities/jerusalem/history.htm (February 26, 1999).
The Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. http://www.itmi.com/jeruzoo/english/
index.htm (February 26, 1999).
Temple News. http://members.tripod.com/~faithibmfaith/index-37.html
(February 26, 1999).
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Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia 4
he term “Middle East” usually describes a vast stretch of lands from Morocco in North Africa to Afghanistan on the edge of the Indian subcontinent. But the very middle of the Middle East consists of countries that lie south of Turkey, west of Iran, and east of Egypt and the Red Sea. They extend all the way south to the bottom of Arabia, a huge, boot-shaped expanse of land that sticks out 1,400 miles (2,253 kilometers) into the waters that separate Africa from the Indian subcontinent. This region includes nine modern nations: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait. The first three countries lie to the north, between Israel, Iraq, and Turkey, in an area that ranges from the fertile Mediterranean coast in Lebanon to the rocky deserts of Jordan and Syria. As for the other six countries, except in a few areas,
they are almost purely desert and dry, rocky mountains.
The importance of Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia
With regard to Phoenicia, Syria, and Arabia—that is, the
entire Arabian Peninsula—it seems that the smaller the region,
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