Judea
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- For the Roman Empire province, see Iudaea Province.
Judea or Judæa (Hebrew: יהודה, Standard Yəhuda Tiberian Yəhûḏāh, "praised, celebrated"; Greek: Ιουδαία, Ioudaía; Latin: Iudæa) is the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel (Hebrew: ארץ ישראל Eretz Yisrael), an area now divided between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and, in a few geographical definitions of Judea, Jordan.
The name Judea is a Greek and Roman adaptation of the name "Judah" and originally implied the whole territories of the previous Jewish Kingdoms, but by the time of the New Testament it had been limited in scope to the south of the region. In Hebrew Yehudah refers to a large southern section of Israel and the West Bank, or in the combined term Judea and Samaria to refer specifically to the West Bank area south of Jerusalem.
The area was the site of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, the Hasmonean Kingdom, and the later Kingdom of Judea, a client kingdom of the Roman Empire. One of the first people known to inhabit Judea were Jews.
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[edit] Location and historical boundaries
The original boundaries were "Bethsûr" (near Hebron), on the south; Beth-horon (today Beit 'Ur al Fawka on the West Bank), on the north; Latrun or Emaüs, on the west (a few miles west of Jerusalem); the Jordan River on the east. The classical historian Josephus used a more expanded definition, encompassing the lower half of what is now the West Bank in the north down to Beer Sheba in the south, and bordered on the east and west by the Mediterranean and the Jordan river.
[edit] Geography
Judea is a mountainous and arid region, much of which is considered to be a desert. It varies greatly in height, rising to an altitude of 1,020 m (3,346 ft) in the south at Mount Hebron, 19 miles (30 km) southwest of Jerusalem, and descending to as much as 400 m (1,312ft) below sea level in the east of the region. Major urban areas in the region include Jerusalem, Beitar Illit, Bethlehem, Efrat, Gush Etzion, Jericho and Hebron.
Geographers divide Judea into several distinct regions: the Hebron hills, the Jerusalem saddle, the Bethel hills and the Judean desert east of Jerusalem, which descends in a series of steps to the Dead Sea. The hills are distinct for their anticline structure. In ancient times the hills were forested and the Bible records agriculture and sheep farming being practiced in the area. Animals are still grazed today, with shepherds moving them between the low ground to the hilltops (which have more rainfall) as summer approaches, while the slopes are still layered with centuries old stone terracing. The region dried out over the centuries and much of the ancient tree cover has since disappeared.
[edit] History
Human settlement in Judea stretches back to the Stone Age and the region is believed by paleoanthropologists to have been one of the routes through which Homo sapiens travelled out of Africa to colonise the rest of the world around 100,000 years ago. One of the first people known to inhabit the land were Jews. Archaeological evidence of human settlement dates back 11,000 years in the case of the city of Jericho, believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the world. In historic times, the region was inhabited by a number of peoples, most famously the Israelites. Judea is central to much of the narrative of the Torah, with the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob said to have been buried at Hebron in the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
In historic times, Judea was ruled by the Kingdom of Judah, a client kingdom of Persia, and later the Seleucid dynasty of Greece who were eventually expelled from the region by Judas Maccabeus. The Maccabean family established the Hasmonean dynasty of Kings who ruled in Judea for over a century.
Judea was the territory of the ancient Kingdom of Judah. Judea lost its independence to the Romans in the 1st century BCE, by becoming first a tributary kingdom, then a province, of the Roman Empire.
[edit] Roman Control 63 BCE
The first interference of Rome in the region dates from 63 BCE, following the end of the Third Mithridatic War.
After the defeat of Mithridates VI of Pontus, general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) stayed behind to make the area secure for Rome. Queen Alexandra Salome had recently died, and a civil war broke out between her sons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II.
In 63 BCE, Aristobulus II was surrounded in Jerusalem by his brother's armies, and the situation was bad. He sent a messenger to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, Pompey's representative in the area. Aristobulus offered a large bribe to be rescued, that Pompey quickly accepted, but later, he tried to accuse Scaurus of extortion. This caused his downfall, because Scaurus was Pompey's brother in law and was protected by him. The general did not like what Aristobulus II had done, and put the prince and high priest Hyrcanus in charge of the kingdom. Judea and Galilee became tributary kingdoms of Rome, which meant that they had to pay tribute to the Roman Republic to buy their protection.
[edit] The Jewish revolt 70 CE
Eventually as Roman policies became intolerant and oppressive a massive uprising took place which proved unsuccessful. Jerusalem was destroyed and much of the population was killed or enslaved. The Jews rebelled again 70 years later under the leadership of Simon Bar-Kochba and established the last Kingdom of Israel, which lasted three years, before the Romans managed to conquer the province for good at a terrible cost in terms of manpower and expense.
[edit] Bar Kochba revolt
After the defeat of Bar Kokhba (132-135 CE) the Roman Emperor Hadrian determined to wipe out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea, and began using the name "Palastina" to describe all the land of Israel, until that time the area was called "province of Judea" by the Romans. At the same time, he changed the name of the city of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina. The Romans killed many Jews and sold many more in slavery; many Jews departed into the Jewish diaspora, but there was never a complete abandonment of the Land. There was never a time when there were not Jews and Jewish communities, though the size and conditions of those communities fluctuated greatly.
[edit] 20th century
Judea later became part of the Mandate for Palestine, when the territory was split between British-ruled Palestine and the autonomous Emirate of Transjordan Palestine (a territorial unit within the Mandate, later to become Transjordan, then the independent Kingdom of Jordan). Jordan became independent in 1946, and the United Nations formed a plan to partition the remaining British mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1947. Jordan captured most of the Arab Palestinian partition following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was annexed by Jordan in 1950 (though this annexation was recognized only by the United Kingdom with the exception of East Jerusalem) and remained part of Jordan until the 1967 Six-Day War, when it was taken by Israeli forces. This part of Judea is now generally known outside Israel as the West Bank — a name given to it by Jordan after 1948 denoting that Judea and Samaria are located to the west of the Jordan river, as opposed to most of the territory of Jordan.
[edit] Chronology
- 18th century BCE? - 11th century BCE — province in Canaan
- 1004 BCE? — Jewish conquest
- 11th century BCE - 930 BCE — part of the United Monarchy
- 930 BCE–586 BCE — Kingdom of Judah
- 586 BCE -539 BCE — Babylonian Empire
- 539 BCE -332 BCE — Persian Empire
- 332 BCE - 305 BCE — Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great
- 305 BCE - 198 BCE — Ptolemaics
- 198 BCE - 141 BCE — Seleucids
- 141 BCE - 37 BCE — The Hasmonean state in Israel established by the Maccabees, after 63 BCE under Roman supremacy
- 37 BCE - 70 CE — Herodian Dynasty ruling Judea under Roman supremacy (37 BCE-6 CE, 41-44 CE), interchanging with direct Roman rule (6-41, 44-66). This ended in the first Jewish Revolt of 66 - 73, which saw the Temple destroyed in 70.
- 73 — Fall of Masada
- 115–117 — Kitos War
- 132–135 — Bar Kokhba's revolt
- 135 — Judea renamed Syria Palaestina by emperor Hadrian
- 400–638 — Byzantine Christian province
- 638 — Muslim rule established
- 1099 — The Crusaders conquer the region
- 1187 — Expulsion of the Crusaders from Judea and reassertion of Muslim rule
- 1516 — Beginning of Ottoman rule
- 1917 — Defeat of the Ottomans; beginning of British rule
- 1919 — Incorporation into the Mandate for Palestine
- 1947 — United Nations partition plan assigns most of Judea to an Arab state or corpus separatum
- 1948 — 1948 Arab-Israeli War leaves much of the area under the control of Jordan, though Israel controls the Shephelah and part of the Judean Desert near Ein Gedi
- 1967 — Israel captures Judea in the Six-Day War and annexes parts of it. The annexation is not recognized by any country.
- 1995 — As part of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority receives autonomy over much of the Arab population
[edit] External links
- The Jewish History Resource Center Project of the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Judea and civil war
- The subjugation of Judea
- Judaea 6-66 CE
- Judea photos
