The Iron Age kingdom of Israel (blue) and kingdom of Judah (yellow), with their neighbors (tan) (8th century BCE) |
Israel and Judah were related Iron Age
kingdoms of the ancient Levant. The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important
local power by the 9th century BCE before falling to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in
722 BCE. Israel's southern neighbor, the Kingdom of Judah, emerged in the 8th
century and enjoyed a period of prosperity as a client-state of first
Assyria and then Babylon before a revolt against the Neo-Babylonian Empire led
to its destruction in 586 BCE. Following the fall of Babylon to the Persian
king Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE, some Judean exiles returned to Jerusalem,
inaugurating the formative period in the development of a distinctive Judahite
identity in the Persian province of Yehud. Yehud was absorbed into the
subsequent Hellenistic kingdoms that followed the conquests of Alexander the
Great, but in the 2nd century BCE the Judaeans revolted against the Hellenist
Seleucid Empire and created the Hasmonean kingdom. This, the last nominally
independent Judean kingdom, came to an end in 63 BCE with its conquest by
Pompey of Rome. With the installation of client kingdoms under the Herodian
Dynasty, the Kingdom of Israel was wracked by civil disturbances which
culminated in the First Jewish–Roman War, the destruction of the Temple, the
emergence of Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity.
Credits: Wikipedia
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