• The Phoenicians lived in a region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea that was is now known as Palestine.
• It became the home of the Hebrews and they referred it to it as Canaan.
• Ancient Palestine’s location made it a cultural crossroads of the ancient world.
• To the east, there was Assyria and Babylonia
• To the west, there was Egypt.
• The Hebrews settled Canaan, it was between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea
• Let’s find out how the Hebrews migrated to
Most of what we know about the Hebrews, we know from the first five books in the Hebrew Bible
• The Torah
• The Old Testament
In the Torah, God chose Abraham to
be the father of the Hebrew people.
Origins of Hebrews in Canaan:
• God’s words to Abraham expressed a promise of land.
• Abraham was a shepherd living in the city of Ur.
• The book of Genesis tells its readers that God commanded Abraham to move his people to Canaan.
• Around 1800 B.C., Abraham, his family, and his herds made their way to Canaan.
• Abraham and his family moved from Mesopotamia to Canaan to Egypt and back to Canaan
• All the while, their God Yahweh watched over them.
• Unlike other religions at that time, the Hebrews worshipped one God.– Monotheism
• The Hebrews proclaimed the Yahweh was the one and only God.
• In their eyes, Yahweh had power over all people.
– To the Hebrews, God was not a physical being.
• According to the Bible, Yahweh looked after the Hebrews because they obeyed and listened to the orders he gave Abraham.
– No sacrifices
– No gifts
– No ritual ceremonies
*The covenant: Mutual promise between God and Abraham
• The Hebrews migrated to Egypt because a drought in Canaan threatened a massive famine.
• At first, the Hebrews were given places of honor in the Egyptian Kingdom.
• Later, however, they were forced into slavery.
• The Hebrews fled Egypt between 1300-1200 B.C.• The event is known as the Exodus• It’s celebrated every year during the festival of Passover
• The Torah says the man who led the escape was a man named Moses.
• Moses was the adopted son of an Egyptian princess, but he did not forget his Hebrew roots.
• When God commanded Moses to move the Hebrews out of Egypt, he followed his command.
– A new covenant was born.
• During their escape from Egypt, Moses and the Hebrews stopped on Sinai mountain.
• Moses climbed the mountain to talk to God.
• When he came down, he had two stone tablets
– The Ten Commandments
• The Ten Commandments became the basis for the civil and religious laws of Judaism
• The Hebrew people believed that these new laws created a new covenant between God and the Hebrew people.
– God promised to protect the Hebrew people
– The Hebrews promised to follow the ten Commandments.
The Torah reads that the Hebrews wandered the Sinai Desert for forty years
• After the death of Moses, the Hebrew people returned to Canaan where Abraham lived.
• The Hebrews evolved from a nomadic society to a settled civilization.
• The Hebrews in Canaan were twelve sparsely separated tribes.
• Occasionally the tribes would band together and fight against the Philistines
• Another civilization in Canaan
• Eventually there was one large tribe left Came to be known as The Jews– Their religion was transformed into Judaism
• 1020 to 922 B.C., the Hebrews united under three kings. – Saul
– David
– Solomon
*The new Kingdom was called Israel.
Solomon
Saul
David
• Saul was the first of the three Kings
• Became popular after he drove the Philistines from the central hills of Palestine
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• David was the son-in-law of Saul
• Extremely popular because he united the Jewish tribes
• Established Jerusalem as the capital city
• About 962 B.C., David was succeeded by Solomon.
• Solomon was the mightiest of the Hebrew Kings – Established a trading empire with the Phoenicians
– Built a great temple in Jerusalem which housed the Ten Commandment tablets
• The Temple was not large but inner walls were gold with bronze pillars were outside Displayed wealth
• Solomon’s building project called for high taxes and forced labor.
• The distress ultimately caused a split amongst the Jews.
• By 922 B.C., there were two Jewish empires.– The North: Israel
– The South: Judah
The next two hundred years, the two kingdoms of Israel were kind of confusing.
• Sometimes they fought each other.
• Sometimes they joined forces to fight others.
• In 738 B.C., both Kingdoms began paying tributes to more power Assyrians
– Tributes are peace payments.
• 725 B.C., the Assyrians began relentless sieges of the two Jewish Kingdoms.
• By 722 B.C., Israel had fallen.
• Judah resisted for another 150 years but eventually fell.
• The destruction of Judah came by the hands of the Babylonians
– Attack led by King Nebuchadnezzar
– Solomon’s temple was destroyed.
• After the success of the Babylonian attacks, many of the Jews were exiled to Babylon.
• During their exile, the bible describes that the prophet Ezekiel urged his people to keep their religion alive in the foreign land.
Ezekiel
• In 539 B.C., the Persian King Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon.
• Cyrus allowed 40,000 exiles to return to Jerusalem and they rebuilt the temple.
• In 445 B.C., the Walls of Jerusalem were built.
• Soon, however, other empires dominated the region.
• First the Persians, then the Greeks, and then the Romans
• These empires would all take control of Palestine.