Israel – Past, Present, and Future #4           October 19, 2006

 

Tonight we are going to have a little more review before we get started just to try to pull some things together for everybody so that you don’t have quite as many details dangling out there trying to figure it out saying, “I heard all of this the other night about all of these Hasmoneans and they all tended to have the same name and I heard all of this about the Herodians and they are just as bad.  Not only that but they keep marrying the same woman that has the same name.   How do I keep all of this straight?”

 

Some of it you don’t have to keep straight.  Just listen to the flow of what is going on because part of what we do in a study like this is to show the providential direction of God in history.  It gives us a great comfort to know that no matter what is going on with Israel - whether they’re apostate or whether they’re following the Lord - God is faithful to His promises and to His covenants.  As we go through this study, we are going to hit a number of people - especially some starting tonight but more so starting next Tuesday night.  We are going to hit a lot more names that are going to be somewhat familiar to you, but you probably haven’t been taught anything about what we are studying in relation to them and how God has used these people down through the centuries, specifically in relationship to Israel.  So it is going to open up a lot of things to you and you will probably get an idea of how God specifically raised up these people in special times just for what role they had to play with regard to Israel. So let’s take a little review. 

 

We started off in our first lesson saying that as we go through these, four questions will be answered. 

 

1.  Does the modern state of Israel have a legitimate claim on their historic homeland today?   This is important because there are evangelicals who do not believe that they do.  There are even dispensationalists who do not believe that the Abrahamic Covenant is a viable foundation for their being in the land today.  So as we go through the history it will help us to see the answer to that.  We have seen part of the answer already as we looked at what happened in the Old Testament period during the time of the exile from 586 when they are out of the land and when the Babylonians would repopulate the land with various other ethnic groups.  Even though Israel is apostate, under discipline, out of the land between 586 and 536 when they begin to back under  Cyrus the Persian what we seen during that time is that they still have a right to the land, even though they were out of the land just as they are today That period of time from 586 to 536, that 50 year period, that is not the whole exile.  The exile is 70 years, but that is from the fall of the temple to the dedication of the next temple.  But for 50 years it gives us a frame of reference.  It gives us an analogue for what is happening today. This time it has been 2,000 years.  But it gives us a frame of reference, an analogue that if they still had a title deed to the land, then what is happening is (This is one way to think about it.)  God is the landlord   He is the one who ultimately owns, has the title deed to the land.  He has got certain qualifications for the land. 

 

“If you really want to enjoy this piece of real estate, then you have to be obedient to Me.  If you are obedient to Me, I will bless you. If you are disobedient I will temporarily kick you out and evict you.   But it’s still yours.  If you are obedient, then I will let you come back in; but you never lose your right, you never lose your lease agreement.” 

 

It is a permanent unconditional lease agreement.  Even today even though Israel is apostate, the lease agreement the Abrahamic Covenant is still in effect. 

 

2. It the existence of the modern state of Israel prophetically significant?  This is a question we won’t get to just yet.  That will come up in the next three or four classes.

 

3. What should be the role of the believer be in relationship to modern Israel?  Again that becomes more apparent as we get into the next 3 or 4 lessons.

 

4. What is the history of the Jews since 70 AD in relationship to their historic homeland?    

 

We will begin that this evening because that is very important to understand.  There has always been a presence of Jews in the land.  No matter what else has happened, what we will discover, what we will begin to see tonight is that there has always been the presence of Jews in the land.  As we go through this we have seen that the history of Israel extends for approximately the last 4,000 years.  It is an outworking of the blessing and the curses that are contained within the Mosaic Law - Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28 and 29. During the times of divine judgment, both in the Old Testament during the exile and in the Church Age, God has protected Israel and watched over them.  As we go through the corridors of time and we think our way through all of the ancient civilizations, we have ancient Egyptians and we have the Sumerians and the Hittites and the Assyrians.  Later on we have the Romans and the Philistines and the ancient Greeks.  Where are they?  They are all on the dustbin of history.  But the Jews survived. 

 

In fact King Frederick of Prussia was once asked one of his generals if he could give one evidence of the validity of the Bible. 

 

He said, “Yes, sir.  In a word, the Jews.”

 

They have survived down through the corridors of time no matter what else has taken place.

 

Today we see a Jewish nation in the land. That is a sign of how God has worked down through history.  We ought to look at that and see how that shows us God’s providential care.  That is what we will see in the next two classes as we go from AD 70 up through the 19th century.  The land of Israel has gone through a long period of time now since AD 70 where we have been subjugated by at least 20 different conquerors.  Nevertheless the land itself has never been a nation belonging to anybody else.  Despite all of the conquests, despite the fact that it was conquered by the Romans and then part of the Byzantine Empire, it was briefly conquered by the Persians. Then later it was conquered by the Moslems and you have various different Islamic empires that dominated.  It was never autonomous country belonging to any other ethnic group.  It was always just assimilated into another territory-usually Syria, sometimes Lebanon,  sometimes it was broken in half and part of it was in one administrative district and part of it was in another administrative district.  But, it as always just an administrative district.  It was never an autonomous nation owned by anybody else. 

 

So Jews have lived continuously in the land as we will see tonight for more than 2,000 years.  The Moslems never cared much about Jerusalem or the Jews being in the land until they became a significant force beginning in the late 19th century.  The covenant that God made with Abraham confirmed with the Jews in Deuteronomy 30 has the land covenant is still in effect. 

 

So let’s have a little review.  Our coat hanger that we are hanging all of our ideas on is a timeline that the history of Israel involves three periods of time.

 

  1. The Biblical Period which we have pretty much covered at this point extends from the call of Abraham in 2091 BC to AD 70 when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. 
  2. Then we enter into the Post-Biblical Period from AD 70 to 1839.  I chose that date because of its significance in the rise of modern Zionism even though that term isn’t coined until somewhat later.
  3. Then we have the modern period from 1839 to 2006.

 

So I went back to the Biblical Period and looked at that and said that there are nine historic periods in the Biblical Period. 

 

Patriarchal – God calling out Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

 

Sojourn – Joseph and the family of Jacob were taken to Egypt which ends with the period of slavery.

 

Exodus – The redemption of the people and the giving of the Mosaic Law which establishes the…

 

Theocracy – God is the king ruling over the nation.  The theocratic period ended with the anointing of Saul as the king of the United Kingdom. 

 

United – There are three kings – Saul, David, and Solomon.  David has a heart for God and he wants to build a temple for God.  But God says, “No.  You can’t do it because you are a man of war.  I want your son to do it who is a man of peace.”  So Solomon is the one who builds the temple – a permanent dwelling place for God on Mt. Zion on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  Then his son caused a tax revolt.  The nation split between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom.

 

Divided - The Northern Kingdom was called Israel.  The Southern Kingdom was called Judah.  The Northern Kingdom went out under divine discipline in 722 BC.  The Southern Kingdom went out under divine discipline in 586 BC.  The discipline on the nation was clearly outlined in the Mosaic Law in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28-30.

 

Exile – The period that they are out of the land is referred to as the exile.  Another word that is used to describe the Jews being out of the land is a Greek word Diaspora.  It is the Greek word Diaspora from which we get our word dispersion.  So they are dispersed throughout the nations of the ancient world.  They come back from the exile from Babylon only.  They don’t come back from all over the ancient world – just from Babylon and just a remnant returns from Babylon.  There is still a major community of Jews in Babylon that stays in Babylon until the rise of the Islamic empires.  They are a key element in both the history of the text of the Bible and they play an important role in the development of modern Judaism. 

 

Post Exile – Then we got into the period of the post-exile when they come back under Zerubbabel and are led by Zerubbabel and the biblical leaders who have books named after them – Ezra and Nehemiah.  Last time we looked at the fact that the Greek Empire is broken down after it splits up after Alexander the Great dies. The land of Israel is dominated first by the Ptolemy’s out of Egypt then the Seleucids who have the Syrian Empire.  Finally there is a revolt against them because they are so evil. That evil is personified in Antiochus IV called Epiphanies and this is led by Matthias and Judas the Hammer or the Maccabean.   This is the rise of the Hasmonean period. 

 

Hasmonean – Ends with the conquest by Rome by Ptolemy and you have the establishment of the Herodian dynasty. 

 

Rome - That takes us right up to AD 70.

 

So let’s review some basic points. 

 

  1. God gave the land to Israel permanently in the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 12:1-3.  It was a royal grant type of treaty. 
  2. The blessing of enjoying the land is related to the command to be a blessing.  In Genesis 12:2 in the last clause God says to Abraham, “You be a blessing.”  It is a command.   Then in verse 3 God says, “Those who bless you, I will bless. Those who curse you I will curse.”  There is a command for Abraham to be a blessing. The Jews were to be a blessing.  When they became apostate, they were no longer going to be a blessing. So God took them out of the land.  They were failing to fulfill their obligations under the treaty.  They couldn’t enjoy the blessing of being in the land.  The land is not taken away.  But God is not going to let them enjoy the blessing in an apostate, rebellious state. 
  3. The conditions for enjoying the blessing of the land are spelled out in the temporary Mosaic Covenant which also spelled out blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.  Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28-30.  If you are obedient there will be economic prosperity, military security.  God will pour out His blessings.  If you were disobedient then there were 5 stages of increasingly worse discipline.  The fourth stage was military domination by a foreign power.  The fifth is that they would be defeated and removed from the land.  This is what was fulfilled in 586 and again in AD 70. 
  4. The fifth stage of discipline ends the cycle.  The fourth stage is dominance by a foreign power as I just stated.  The fifth stage is they are scattered from the land throughout the world.  But God promised in the midst that that even though they would disobey God…
  5. He would remove them from the land, they would eventually turn to Him and He would return them to the land as a regenerate people.  There is always that promise in Deuteronomy and Leviticus that God will bring them back to the land from all the nations of the earth, not just from Babylon.   So that has yet to be fulfilled.  They have never come back to the land as a regenerate people.  When they come back to the land, there are many regenerate people after 536.  But when you look at their history, it is not the history of an obedient people.  They are still all manner of factions and religious schisms and divisions.  This is ultimately what causes such problems when they revolt against Rome in the first revolt from 66 to 70.
  6. The removal from the land came first in 722 with the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and then 586 for the Southern Kingdom (Judah).
  7. A partial return occurred during the post-exilic period, but this was not the foretold return from all the nations of the earth in regeneration.  That is going to be very important when we get to prophecy.   It is very important to understand this whole concept.  They are going to be scattered throughout the whole earth and they will be restored from all the earth.  That terminology becomes crucial. 
  8. Then we have the outline of future Gentile kingdoms given in Daniel 2, 7, and 8.  Daniel 2, 7, and 8 gives us the flow of those Gentile kingdoms.  You can think them through. 
  9. Then the outline of the timeframe for Daniel’s people is in Dan 9:24-27.  So Daniel is a crucial book for understanding history and understanding God’s plan, especially for Israel. 
  10. In the post-exilic period we see the outworking of that schedule of Gentile kingdoms.  Babylon was the first, but they were defeated before the return.  Persia dominates.  When they conquer Babylon, Cyrus the Persian is the one who gives Zerubbabel permission to take a group of Jews back to the land.  Persia is later defeated by Alexander the Great and Greece replaces Persia as the dominant empire.  Then after Alexander dies, his kingdom is divided into four sections.  What is important for our purposes is that the Ptolemy’s take over Egypt and much of the land of Israel for about the first 100 years.  Then they are defeated by the Seleucids and the Seleucids dominate up until about 166.  Then there is the Hasmonean Revolt.  The Romans come in 63 and they dominate the scene up through the end of the Biblical Period.  Actually they continue up to 360 something when the western kingdom is split from the eastern kingdom and then up till about the 600’s.  Daniel 2 gives us that flow from Babylon, Medo-Persia Greece, Rome, and the Revived Roman Empire.  This is exactly what happened.  It was prophesized.  It is foretold. It is precise.  The prophecy doesn’t give us the dates; it just gives us the order of the empires.   The Roman Empire begins as the legs of iron.  Then it splits into eastern and western Roman empires.   Then there is a promise of a future kingdom that will be made of up of iron and clay - iron, elements of the previous Roman Empire and then clay, elements that weren’t part the Roman Empire.  Of course clay and iron are not as strong as iron so the future Revived Roman Empire will not be viewed from God’s perspective as being as strong as the old Roman Empire.  That brings us in our review to point 11. 
  11. During the Roman period the Jews are ruled by Herod the Great and his descendents.  I confused everybody last week by putting up a chart of the whole family.  We can narrow it down to basically three of his sons - Archelaus who was extremely cruel.  He was appointed the ethnarch of Judea on Herod’s death in 4 BC.  He only lasts for about 9 years before the Romans remove him.  He is too cruel for even the Romans.  Antipas is placed in charge as the tetrarch, meaning the ruler of four, one-fourth over Galilee and Perea.  Galilee is the area in the northern part of the land and Perea is the area across the Jordan over in the territory generally where modern Jordan is today.  Antipas rules from 4 BC to AD 39 so he is the one who is mentioned during the life of Jesus.  He lives beyond the life of Jesus.  He is the Herod who beheads John the Baptist.  Then there is Philip who is the tetrarch of the territory that is north of the Sea of Galilee, northeast of the Sea of Galilee in the area that would be Syria today.  When Antipas dies in 39 he is replaced by his son Herod Agrippa I.   Herod Agrippa I then rules as tetrarch from 39 to 44, only about 5 years.  Then he dies in Caesarea by the Sea.  He dies because he is inflated with arrogance.  When the people hear him, according to Acts they say, “It is the voice of a god.” Suddenly the angels strike him dead and he is eaten with worms because of arrogance.  He is replaced - not immediately, he dies in 44.  He is replaced by his son but Herod Agrippa II isn’t old enough to succeed him in 44.   So he has to grow up a little bit.  Five years later he is given the territory of his uncle Philip.  Then because he is educated in Rome and he was best buddies with Caligula, Caligula eventually rewards him with the territory of Galilee.  Then after Caligula dies, Nero takes his place and Nero rewards him with the rest of the kingdom because he is excessively loyal to Rome.  This establishes him and he is the ruler of the territory as large as that of his great grandfather until the Jewish revolt in AD 70.  He lives until about 92.  Some say 100, but other sources say 92 so that is probably the best designation.

 

Then we have Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem just before He dies.  He weeps over Jerusalem and says…

 

NKJ Matthew 23:37 " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!

 

NKJ Matthew 23:38 "See! Your house is left to you desolate;

 

NKJ Matthew 23:39 "for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!' "

 

The land of Israel will be left desolate.  It is a place of warfare, a place of violence.  It is a place that becomes a millstone around the neck of the world.  All the nations will fight because of Jerusalem.  It is a sore spot. 

 

That is exactly what we see in history until the Jews turn and accept Jesus as Messiah and say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”

 

The Scripture reference here is Matthew 23:37-24:2.  It is also found in Luke 19:19-44.  This is the Lord’s prediction of the judgment of Jerusalem.  In that section he shows that.  He also predicts that no stone will be left on top of another in the temple.  This is precisely fulfilled. 

 

Okay, that gives you a little more orientation.  Remember we are thinking through that period, the Biblical Period, the Post-Biblical period and the modern period.  We have gone through the Biblical Period and we have gone from the patriarchs to the destruction of the temple in AD 70.  We are in the Roman period.  The Roman period begins in 63 BC and extends into the Post Biblical period.  Now what ends the Jewish residence in the land is the first Jewish revolt that takes place in AD 66 to 70.  So let me give you a few more details.  We were in a hurry when we finished last time so I want to go back and give you a few more details.

 

The first Jewish revolt was a time that wiped out the Jewish residents in the land although there were many that survived during the first Jewish revolt which lasted for four years.  The Romans carried off between 100,000 and 300,000 Jews into slavery. They slaughtered between 600,000 and 1,500,000 Jews.   The land was completely devastated, ravaged for those four years, not just those four years because there are two more revolts that take place one in about 115 and another one in 132-135.  During this time the people were heavily taxed by Rome.  They were not permitted to own land.  They could farm in the area of Galilee and they were persecuted from this time forward. 

 

Herod Agrippa is king when this begins.  As I pointed out earlier Agrippa II was educated in Rome so he had a very tight loyalty with the Romans.  He had a sister named Bernice who was quite beautiful.  In AD 53 he was given the lands of his uncle Herod Phillip north east of Galilee.  Then in 54 Nero gave him Galilee and Perea as well as Judea.  He visited Caesarea by the Sea to visit Porcius Festus who was appointed the procurator over Judea.  He heard the gospel while he was there from the lips of the Apostle Paul.  That is recorded in Acts 26.  He was very close to his sister Bernice - so close that rumors flew.  But she was quite beautiful – reportedly one of the most beautiful women of the ancient world.  Later she had an extremely public affair with Titus after the fall of Jerusalem.  She moved to Rome.  When the first Jewish revolt broke out she was in Jerusalem in 66 and she almost lost her life.  She pleaded with the Roman procurator at the time (Flores) who was extremely vindictive and cruel toward the Jews.  He was extremely unjust which is what provoked the revolt.  She pleaded with him that he would not do what he was doing.  He completely ignored her.  She was finally able to escape in the violence.

 

The break out began the instigation of a revolt due to the policies and abuses of Flores.  Josephus says that he (Flores the procurator) paraded his outrages upon the nation and as though he had been sent as a hangman of condemned criminals.  He abstained from no form of robbery or violence.   In fact Flores wanted to rob the temple of all of its treasures and all of its money.  Once the riot broke out in Caesarea and it spread to Jerusalem in 66, rather than compromising and reaching a peace agreement and calming everything down, he fanned the flames hoping that there would be enough instability and chaos that he would be able to get into the temple and rob it.  So he was completely self-serving.  In the course of the violence in Jerusalem when the rioting spread there, he gave orders to the Roman troops to sack the city and the troops moved from house to house plundering the city and killing its residents.   Jewish insurgents however were able to rise up against them and to gradually force the Romans to withdraw.  Throughout the land from the north in Galilee down to the south in Judea, Jews then rose up and attacked the gentiles who were living in their vicinity.  The gentile cities (there were a number of gentile cities such as Sepphoris and Sephopolos which was also known as Beth-shan and the cities of the Decapolis.  Often the gentiles rose up against the Jews and slaughtered the Jews.  So it was a horrible time with incredible bloodshed during this time.  After about a year or so or toward the end of a year, Nero sent Vespasian and several Roman legions to the land of Israel to put down the revolt.  Initially Vespasian sent his son Titus with the 15th Roman legion to the land, but at least six or 7 other legions joined him.  After a couple of years, from 66 to 68 they gained control of the Galilee and portions of the south in Judea.   But at that time Nero died.  Because there wasn’t a Caesar to direct the continuation of the fighting, they just stopped.  During this time they have pretty much cut off Jerusalem. But within Jerusalem there were 3 major factions of Jews fighting each other.  They are fighting each other and they are fighting the Romans on the outside. 

 

It became clear about this time that the Zealots gained control and they were leading the nation to ruin.  It was at that time that the peaceful groups (those who wanted to have peace with Romans) left, including all the Christians.  Remember all the Christians knew of Jesus prophecy that the temple would be destroyed.  Jerusalem would be destroyed and no stone would be left on top of another.  Eusebius tells us that all the Christians left Jerusalem.  Up to this point all of the major figures in Christianity in Jerusalem were Jews.  So, all the Christians left. 

 

The next two years were a time of absolute horror.  There was a period of sort of a stalemate until Vespasian was finally appointed Caesar.  There was a lot of instability in Rome.  It took about a year before they appointed Vespasian as Caesar.  Then he delegated authority to his son Titus to complete the defeat of the rebels.  The final assault took place from the spring of AD 70 in April to the first of August in the summer of AD 70. 

 

The final assault took place in various stages.  There were three walls around Jerusalem.  It took about a month before the Romans were able to breach all three of the walls.  The fighting was so intense and so many Romans had died that despite orders to not destroy the temple, it didn’t take long before it burst into flames and the entire temple complex burned.  Allegedly the gold and silver melted and went down the rocks which caused the soldiers to pry the rocks apart to get to all the gold.  This is what caused the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy. 

 

However in 68 some of the Zealots had captured a fortification that was defended with a small contingent of Roman troops out in the Judean desert named Masada, from the Hebrew word for fortification.  A few Zealots under Eliezar Ben Judas held out at the desert fortress for the next 3 years.  By that time the new procurator was Flavius Silva who took the Roman 10th legion, camped around Masada and for several months he laid siege to the fortress.  This is a picture of Masada.  This is out in the area just to the west of the Dead Sea.  This is a three tiered layout for Herod’s palace.  He never went there, but he had it prepared just in case the Parthians attacked.  For awhile there, when he first became the king there was an attempt by Cleopatra of Egyptian fame and beauty thinking that she would overpower him. 

 

This is a picture looking down from the top of the fortress at the remains of the Roman encampment.  The rectangle represents the stone wall that they built around the encampment.  There are various encampments where the different Roman cohorts camped.  Then there is also a wall that was built that went all around the entire fortification so no Jew would escape.  The only way to get into the fortification was to come from the west side where they constructed a ramp.  This is a picture of the ramp.  It is 100 meters high to reach the western wall using thousands of tons of rock and earth.  They were able to do this by taking Jewish slaves and using them to build a ramp.  By using Jewish slaves to build the ramp, the Jews inside the fortification wouldn’t fire upon them and kill them.  So they built a ramp and moved their siege engine up the ramp and laid siege to the fortification.  They were ready to enter one night, but they postponed it for a day.  When they entered the next day approximately 930 Jews inside the fortification had killed themselves and burned all of the structures except for the food storehouses.  They did that to demonstrate that there was enough food and supplies there so that they could have held out for much longer.  They killed themselves because they felt it was better to be dead that to lose their liberty. It was the original “Give me liberty or give me death” group.   They went through a process the night before they killed themselves where all of the men drew lots.  First of all, all of the men went back and killed their families.  Then they came back and they drew lots.  Ten men were chosen who would kill the rest of the men.  Then they drew lots again and one man was chosen who would kill the other nine men and then he would kill himself.  This was the end of Jerusalem, the end of the temple. 

 

This is a model of what Herod’s palace looked like.  That is what it looks like in reality in remains today.  So it was a spectacular fortification.  After the destruction of the temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, what are the Jews going to do?  They don’t have a temple anymore to bring sacrifices. How are they going to survive if they can’t bring sacrifices to Jerusalem to obtain cleansing and forgiveness for sin?  This presented a major challenge to the rabbis.  So in AD 90 the Sanhedrin met (now it’s not a governmental body because there is no nation anymore) in a place called Jomnia.  Jomnia was located near the coast, near modern Tel Aviv.  Since the Sadducees had little to offer theologically, and because they had little to help, it was the Pharisees who dominated the council.  This is a very important council because it was there that they restructured Judaism along the lines of synagogues and provided the foundation for the future of Judaism.   That is AD 90.

 

The next event that happens of significance is the Trajan revolt.  The Trajan revolt occurs from 115 to 117 AD during Emperor Trajan’s reign.  During this time again thousands, several hundred thousand Jews are killed.  They again revolt against Rome. He had to send in the legions in order to quell the revolt.  The revolt extended over large portions of the Middle East from Cyrene including Egypt, Cyprus, as well as the land of Israel.  Hundreds of thousands were killed.

 

The next major revolt which is actually referred to as the second Jewish revolt is the Bar-Kochba revolt from 132 to135.  Simon Bar Koheba whose name sounded like Bar Kochba (the Hebrew for star) was identified by a very famous rabbi Akiba  as the Jewish Messiah.  Bar-Kochba is the Hebrew for son of the star and so based on a passage in Numbers that a star would come forth from Judah.  He was identified as the Messiah.  All of the Jews that were left in the land tended to orient or align themselves with Akiba.  Once again Hadrian had to send in the legions to put down the revolt.  Now what stimulated this revolt was that Emperor Hadrian visited the ruins of Jerusalem in AD 130.  He seemed to be sympathetic to the Jews but what he wanted to do and what his plan was and word got out the he was going to reestablish the city as a Roman city.  He was going to rename it Aelia Capitolina.  Aelia was a family name and Capitolina would indicate that it was the new capital.   He was going to build a temple to Zeus on the Temple Mount.  So this aggravated all the Jews.  That led to the revolt.  Bar Kochba was identified as the Messiah, but they are defeated.  During this defeat, 580,000 followers of Bar Koheba were massacred at Betar.  Then Hadrian implemented a massive campaign of destruction.  He renamed the land Palestine and he renamed Jerusalem.  He ended up carrying out his plan of establishing a new capital with a new name and building pagan temples on any holy sites related to either Judaism or Christianity.

 

That had a positive effect because one of the things that happened later on in history is people went back to the land to try to figure out where was Jesus born, where was he crucified, where was the tomb. There were places that were marked out by these pagan temples that Hadrian had built over these sites.  So there is evidence going back to the early second century that these sites were venerated by the early Christians.

 

The name Palestine, while there are many that think it is entomologically related to the term phillisitine, therefore refers to the term to the land of the Philistines.  That is not its source.  You have probably heard that.  A lot of people have heard that.  That has been the story.  However the Greek word paliao means a wrestler.  This was a term that the Greeks applied to this land and long before the Jewish revolt.  The Greeks loved puns. So they called it the land of the wrestler because it was the land of Israel and Israel got his name remember when he wrestled with the Angel of the Lord at a place called Peniel when the angel struck him on the hip.  In light of that there is a play on words because Palestine also sounded like Philistine.  So the Greeks got a good chuckle over of that thinking that they had come up with a great pun. So the Bar Kochba revolt pretty much ends the major Jewish revolts although there are minor revolts and insurrections against the Romans for the next 200 years.  There is always a presence in the land. 

 

The other thing that Hadrian did was he prohibited any Jew from living in Jerusalem.  That ended the Jewish nature of the Christian church.  Up to this point the church in Jerusalem was dominated by Jewish believers.  Because of the fact that no Jews could live inside Jerusalem that removed all Jewish believers from Jerusalem, this had the further effect of separating Jews from Christians and led to eventual hostility toward Jews and Christians.  At that stage in 135 you don’t have the hostility, the distinction between Jews and Christians that you have some 300-400 years later.  That brings us up to the next period.

 

What we see throughout all of this time is Jews still in the land.  For the last 2,000 years there has been a continuous presence of the Jews living in the land.  There was never a time when they were all removed.  There has always been a contingency of Jews living in the land. 

 

That brings us to our next period which is the Post-Biblical period of:

 

Rome

Byzantine Period

Persian Period

 

The next four are really the Moslem period.

 

Moslem Arab

Crusaders

Mamluks

Ottoman Turks

 

There is a little blip for awhile when the crusaders go in for awhile.  You have a European kingdom established there.  Think about it.  There is Rome.  Then Rome divides east and west. So the east is called the Byzantine Empire.  We go from the Roman Empire to the Byzantine Empire and then the Persians briefly come in for a period of about 25 years and conquer.  Then you have the Islamic hordes coming up from Arabia and the land comes under the dominance of various Moslem empires from the 8th century on.   So then you have Moslems, Arabs, crusaders, the Mamluks and the Ottoman Turks.  We will go through that in the next couple of classes.  So that is our breakdown.

 

We are going to build a chart. 

 

Conquerors of Jerusalem and Israel

 

Rome from 63BC – CA AD 364  In 364 the eastern and western empires split and the eastern empire, the Byzantine Empire is the dominant force in the east. 

 

Byzantine 365-614.  The Byzantine Empire only controls the land of Israel from 364 to 613 however the Byzantine Empire does not completely fall until the fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453.

 

Persian AD 614-636  The Persians come in and conquer the land of Israel and take it away from Byzantine Empire in 614.  They have it for a very short period of time, about 22 years.

 

Moslem Arab AD 636-1099  The Moslem Arabs conquer in 636 and they control until 1099 which is when we get into the crusader period.

 

Crusaders AD 1099-1291  The crusaders have it from 1099 to 1291, a period of almost 300 years.  They are followed by the Mamluks.

 

Mamluks  1291 -1516  the Mamluks were slaves from up in the Caucasus area.  They were Islamic.  They ruled from 1291 to 1516.  Then in 1516, 1517 the Ottoman Turks take over. 

 

What else happens then?  The Reformation begins October 31, 1517.  That is in another week or two.  We get to celebrate Reformation Day when Martin Luther nailed the 95 thesIS on the door of the church at Wittenberg.  Notice how these things happen. 

 

One of the things I am going to point out as we go through the Church Age is other things that are happening at the same time so we see how a lot of different things are happening that ultimately fit with one another.

 

 

Ottoman Turks  AD 1517-1918 

 

It is fascinating to see how God weaves the tapestry of history together. 

 

Okay, we come to the next period which is Israel out of the land.  We are in the post- Biblical period.  We have gone from the period of the revolts from AD 70 to 135.  Now we are in the period of Rome from 135 to 314.   This is a time of relative peace in the land.  There is still a number of Jews that live in the land.  There is peace from outside invasion.  There is a measure of relative prosperity.  It is a time in which the Jews are formalizing what becomes modern Judaism.  The rabbis are developing their theology.  They take the oral traditions related to the teachings of the rabbis and they write this out in the Mishnah which is a Hebrew word meaning repetition. The Mishnah becomes the standard expression and interpretation of the Mosaic Law.  The Mishnah becomes the foundation for what is later called the Talmud.  The Talmud is a rabbinical commentary on the meaning of the Mishnah.  This lays the foundation for Jewish law for rabbinical theology which is the next stage in the development of Judaism.   

 

During this time in the land of Israel the office of the president of the Jewish population is set up.  The president had to be a descendent from the house of Hilel, a very famous Pharisee and rabbi which was descended from the house of David.  Both in the land of Israel itself and the Jews that were in the Diaspora the Jews regarded the president of the Jewish population as the natural ruler and the last vestige of their former independent state.  His spiritual power was so great over the Jews that the Romans would seek his cooperation in ruling the land.  He was given the task of tax collection from the Jews and he was given the rights to ownership of large areas of land so that his rule resembled that of a king.  He even had the power to pass a death sentence.    This extended up until 314.  We are told by Eusebius in his “History of the Martyrs of Palestine” that in the Holy Land there is a large town with a considerable population consisting only of Jews called in Aramaic, Lod and in Greek Diocaesarea.  So we have at least one city that is inhabited by only Jews in this period of the latter part of the Roman domination.   In the third century still under the Roman rule in the land, the Jews had begun to reorganize themselves and to prepare for a lengthy period of time without the temple.

 

We are also told some things about the Jews by Jerome.   Here is a statue of Jerome outside the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.  Jerome translated the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament into Latin.  This became the foundation for the Bible throughout the Middle Ages known as the Vulgate from the Latin word meaning common (just like the Koine).  It was translated into the common language.  Jerome performed that translation here in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.  Jerome wrote about the Jews and another revolt that occurred against the Romans in 351.  In 351 they revolted against Constantus Gallus who was the Roman emperor of the east, a Byzantine emperor.  The Jews slaughtered many of his soldiers under a general Ursasenus in night action.  Then the Jews declared open revolt.  Gallus then retaliated by destroying several towns including Caesarea, Tiberius, and Lydda.  He set fire to numerous others.  About this Jerome wrote…

 

Gallus persecuted the Jews who slaughtered his entire garrison during the night and afterwards declared open revolt.  

 

He killed thousands of people even infants who destroyed these towns which I have just mentioned. 

 

There is continued unrest among the Jews and the Romans.  This brings us to the next period.  That is the period of the Byzantine rule from 364 to 614.  We will be able to cover that before we get done this evening. 

 

In 364 the territories of Rome were divided east and west.  This is the beginning of the Byzantine era.  The capital city is Byzantium.  It is now known as Constantinople or Istanbul actually.  The name Byzantine is taken from the Greek word basileia which is the word for king or kingdom.  It referred to the Greek speaking part of the Roman Empire.  The Byzantine Empire as I said earlier extended up to until 1453.  Byzantium  was rebuilt as the capitol by Constantine I in approximately 315 when he became the emperor of the Roman empire.  Later on one of his descendents and successors Julian the Apologist (It is confusing.  There is a Julian the Apostate and Julian the Apologist.)  traveled through the land and he described it as devastated, consumed by fire and uncultivated.  It stays like that throughout much of the Middle Ages.  It is just a wreck.  In AD 362 Julian the Apostate attempted to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, but it didn’t succeed.  That is another thing that you see.  There are various groups through the Church Age who try to bring the Jews back to the land, who try to rebuild the temple and try to do these things and nothing happens.  It falls flat because God is not going to let it happen until the timing is right. 

 

In the 5th century following the succession of Theodosius I to the imperial throne, Christians became the majority of the population in the land of Israel. The Byzantine Christians began to build monasteries in the land of Israel.  They began to build churches over the various sites that were significant for both Old Testament Jews as well as in the life of Christ.  The 5th century marks the end of the Hellenistic world.  Few of the non-Christians communities remained apart from a scattering of Jews in the land.  But there is always a group of Jews living in the land. 

 

Under the reign of Theodosius II from 408 to 450 Jews were deprived of any autonomy that they had.  Their right to hold public positions was taken away.  Jewish courts were forbidden(to sit on mixed Jewish-Christian cases).  The construction of synagogues was prohibited.  Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem except on one day a year to mourn the destruction of the temple.  Under the Byzantine Empire Jews remained a suppressed minority but there were still various times when they tried to express their independence and revolt against their leadership.  Nevertheless there were 43 Jewish communities in Israel during the 5th century which remained into the 6th century.   There were 12 on the coast and in the Negev and east of the Jordan Then there were 31 villages in Galilee and in the Jordan Valley.  Most of the Jews had to live up in the north in Galilee where they were farmers.  Jews in Palestine numbered about 200,000 up through the 7th century.  So there is still a large presence of Jews in the land. 

 

That brings us to our next period which is the period of the Persians which is a very brief period.  Not much happens then because it is only about 22 years.  So we will come back next time with the beginning of the Arab period in 634.  What we have seen in this study so far is that even though the Jews are destroyed as a nation, Jerusalem is sacked.  Jerusalem is destroyed.  The Jews are prohibited from living in Jerusalem.  They can only come in perhaps at times once a year.  Nevertheless there is still a strong presence of Jews in the land and Jews who own the land.  God is not through with Israel.  They have not vacated the land.  They continue to have a presence in the land.  Next time what we will see is how that presence continues even under Islamic rule all the way to the 19th century.