WITH HANUKKAH AROUND THE CORNER LETS REMEMBER HOW WE GOT HERE.
Canaan was a Semitic-speaking civilization and region in the Ancient Near East during the late 2000's BCE. In the region of Canaan, spheres of interest of the Egyptian, Hittite, Mitanni and Assyrian Empires converged or overlapped.
As it says in the bible, in 1400 BCE, Joshua and the Israelite Tribes crossed the Jordan River and conquered Jericho. In subsequent decades the B'Nai Israel (Sons of Israel) conquered the lands and various kingdoms in Canaan.
Jump to the Babylonian conquest of the region and the destruction of Solomon's Temple, the 1st Temple in ~567 B.C.E. The Babylonian's took the best of the best into captivity including the prophet Daniel.
Nehemiah, Ezra and the Jews returned from Babylon to the Land of Judah decades later in 538 BCE, due to Cyrus's decree.
The Greek's were next to conquer the region. Alexander the Great of Macedon created a vast empire. After his death the kingdom and its rule was divided. The Lands of Judah came under the rule of King Antiochus and the Seleucid Empire (the Greek Assyrians).
Judah and the Maccabees rebelled against them and regained control to the Kingdom of Judah around 156 BCE. The Maccabees purified and re-didicated (Hanukkahed) the Temple in Jerusalem. Hanukkah is Hebrew for dedicate, which is how we get the name of the holiday.
Trivia: After the Maccabees "hanukkahed" the temple altar, they celebrated the Festival of Tabernacles, a.k.a. Succoth which lasts 8 nights including Hoshana Rabba. A celebration like you've never seen!
The Maccabees began the Hasmonian period in Israel when "Israel" enjoyed independence and great prosperity.
For security reasons, the Maccabees made a treaty with the Roman Republic. This helped Judah fend off the Selucids, but it brought consequences.
The Roman–Jewish Treaty was an agreement made between Judas Maccabeus and the Roman Republic according to 1 Maccabees 8:17–20 and Josephus. It took place in 161 BCE and was the first recorded contract between the Jewish people and the Romans.
Rome wasn't yet an Empire, but they were expanding. The Roman Republic became the Roman Empire in 27 BCE when Julius Caesar's adopted son, best known as Augustus, became the Emperor.
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| King Herod of Judea |
In 63 BCE, that fateful treaty led to the Roman recapture of Jerusalem. The Romans ruled through a local "client king" and largely allowed free religious practice in Judaea. The first such king was Herod the Great, who was also called Herod the Mad. He controlled the Herodian Kingdom in Judea. Herod expanded the Temple in Jerusalem and did several other massive building projects.
During this period of Roman rule, in ~33 C.E. Yeshua (Jesus) was crucified, About 40 years later the Jews launched a massive revolt against their Roman masters. This was the first of three so called Jewish-Roman Wars.
In 70 A.D., Roman general Titus put down the revolt, captured Jerusalem and destroyed the 2nd Temple. He punished the rebellious Jewish zealots, slaughtered and enslaved thousands of Jews, and looted menorahs and other sacred objects. Thousands of Jewish slaves were brought to Rome from Judea. During a huge triumphal procession, commemorated by the Arch of Titus, Jewish prisoners were paraded through the streets and strangled at the Forum.
In 132–136 C.E. there was the last of three major Jewish–Roman wars. Simon bar Kokhba led the Jews in Judea against the Roman Empire. The Jewish historian Josephus claimed that all together over 1 million Jews died as a result of the Roman crackdown. This was the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora, the great exile of Jews in Europe and around the world. We wouldn't be regathered to our homeland for some 2000 years.
In order to add insult to injury and further humiliate the Jews, the Roman emperor renamed the region Syria-Palaestina. (That was eventually shortened to Palestine.) He also cut down the trees and salted agricultural land to make the land uninhabitable.
The area was later conquered by the Sasanian Persian Empire. That later became the Ottoman Empire which ruled Jerusalem and much of the Middle East from about 1516 to 1917.
In 1867, Mark Twain made a visit to the Land of Israel. He described it as "a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land."
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| Tourists in a cemetery outside of Jerusalem's walls, apparently outside of the Golden Gate. (Twain album 1867) |
After World War I, Great Britain took over the region which became known as simply as Palestine and included Jerusalem. Everyone living in the region, including Jews, where called Palestinians. The British controlled the city and surrounding region until after WWII when Israel became an independent state in 1948. A truly miraculous achievement which also brought back Hebrew as the official national language and the Magen (shield) of David as the national flag.
At this same time in history Lebanon (1943), Jordan (1946), Syria (1946), Iraq (1958) where all founded. Kingdom of Palestine? Never. King of Palestine? Never.
Israel is the Land of our biblical Patriarchs. The nation was born on the Passover in Egypt and destined to go to the land that God showed and promised to Abraham. No existing other nation has a longer history than Nation of Israel. No other nation has had to do battle more times for its land and freedom. No other nation has a biblical right to its Land with its deed and borders defined in the bible. No other nation is the birthplace of Monothiasm and a basis for a legal system which modern Western legal systems are rooted in.
2000+ years after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, the Jews have been gathered back to Eretz Israel. Today, Israel is stronger and more secure than ever. Hanukkah and Christmas are celebrated in it's borders. That is the Hanukkah miracle! It was also prophesied. Which leads to wonder, is Hanukkah part of God's plan?
There are few things pending, such as the 3rd Temple and the Messiah. Those chapters plays out a couple possible ways. But one thing is for sure . . .
We worship a Covenant keeping God!
P.S. Below is the true temple menorah, with 7 candles, presented to my father 32 years ago by the Jewish Federation of Dutchess County.
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BELOW: Segments of copy written by Mark Twain after his visit in 1867. As you read this, consider what the Jews accomplished with this place since they returned.
On Jerusalem:
It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound.
Close by is the Golden Gate, in the Temple wall--a gate that was an elegant piece of sculpture in the time of the Temple, and is even so yet. From it, in ancient times, the Jewish High Priest turned loose the scapegoat and let him flee to the wilderness and bear away his twelve-month load of the sins of the people. If they were to turn one loose now, he would not get as far as the Garden of Gethsemane, till these miserable vagabonds here would gobble him up,--sins and all.
A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is.
The population of Jerusalem is composed of Moslems, Jews, Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a handful of Protestants. .... It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls.
On the land of Palestine:
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead-- about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. .... The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.