Jewish history spans over 3,500 years, beginning with the Abrahamic traditions of the eastern Mediterranean. Descended from the Prophet Jacob (Israel), the people evolved from the Children of Israel, received the Torah through Moses, established a kingdom in Canaan, experienced exile (Babylonian/Roman), and progressed through the global diaspora, the Holocaust, and the founding of the modern state of Israel.
Here is a timeline and key points of Jewish history:
Patriarchal Era (c. 1900 BC):
Beginning with Abraham, who left Mesopotamia for Canaan. Followed by Isaac and Jacob (Israel), who had 12 sons, the ancestors of the Israelites. Egyptian Slavery & the Exodus: The Israelites settled in Egypt, were enslaved, and were freed by Moses, who led them to Sinai to receive the Torah.
The Kingdom of Israel & the Temple:
The establishment of a unified Kingdom of Israel (Saul, David, Solomon) with its center of worship in the First Temple in Jerusalem. The kingdom split into Israel (northern) and Judah (southern) after Solomon's death.
Exile: The destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians (586 BC) and the Second Temple by the Romans (70 AD) forced the Jews to disperse (diaspora) throughout the world. Hellenistic & Rabbinic Period: After the destruction of the Second Temple, the focus of religion shifted from sacrifice to Torah study, synagogues, and oral tradition (Rabbinic Judaism).
Diaspora & Persecution: Jews lived as a minority in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, often experiencing pogroms (persecution), especially in Medieval Europe.
The Holocaust (1930s–1940s): Nazi Germany murdered approximately six million Jews in Europe. Modern State of Israel (1948): The establishment of the state of Israel in the Promised Land sparked a long-running conflict in the Middle East, as well as mass Jewish migration to Israel, the United States, and other countries.
Jews today are a dispersed ethno-religious group with major population centers in Israel and the United States.
Who are Jews? What is their history? What motivates anti-Jewish prejudice and violence?
By looking at the origins of Jews, and their history as outsiders, starting in the ancient world, we can begin to understand antisemitism and anti-Judaism — two terms for anti-Jewish prejudice.
In particular, learning about two lesser-known cases of anti-Jewish violence in ancient times the genocide of Jews in Alexandria in 115-117 CE, and Christian violence towards Jews in the early Byzantine period (300-450 CE) will help to illustrate the underlying forces behind violence against Jews.
history and Judaism.
According to the Pew Research Center, about 30% of the world population identifies as Christian, 24% as Muslim and only a very tiny percentage as Jewish.
In 2015, there were 2300 million Christians worldwide, 1800 million Muslims, and 14 million Jews. In the United States, there are 5.7 million Jews or so, or about one or two in 100 Americans, while 71% of Americans identify as Christian and 23% identify as unaffiliated.
Identify themselves until after 500 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible and the Torah, the text that is most sacred to Jews, the term used most often is "the sons or daughters of Israel," b'nei Yisroel or b'not Yisroel. The term "Israelites" also appears, along with the term "Hebrews."
What are the origins of the Jewish people? Asking or answering this question is always tricky, and scholar Steven Weitzman does a great job of discussing this problem in his book "The Origins of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age."
But setting aside the political dimensions of the question, the origins of the Jewish people lie in the ancient Middle East, at the crossroads of ancient empires, particularly the ancient Egyptian Empire, the ancient Babylonian Empire, and the ancient Assyrian Empire.
Who were the ancient Israelites?
Ancient Israelites originated roughly in the territory of modern Israel, also known as the ancient Levant or ancient Canaan, sometime before 1000 BCE. These people were united by a sense of shared ancestry, myth, ritual and history.
Ancient Israelites believed that they were descendants of three people: Abraham, his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Jacob himself is renamed "Israel" in the Bible, which suggests that Israelites had a shared memory of a name change as part of their history.
The myth that bound ancient Israelites together was the Exodus narrative, from the second book of the Hebrew Bible, a story about liberation from enslavement in ancient Egypt.
The quick version of the story is that ancient Canaan was in a period of drought, and the Israelites went down into Egypt in search of food. They were a minority, and they were eventually enslaved by the Egyptians, until God intervened in history through miraculous plagues to liberate them, with the help of the prophet Moses.
After being freed from slavery, the Israelites were led by God and Moses on a journey through the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan. When they reached Mount Sinai, they were recipients of divine instruction. Eventually, they returned to the "Promised Land," the area of Canaan where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had resided centuries before.
Regardless of whether the story of the exodus "really happened" or not, Israelites in 1000 BCE connected with it. When they were told the story about liberation from enslavement, they felt personally invested, in the same way Americans might feel connected to the story of America's independence from England and the events of 1776, even though they may not be directly descended from people who took part in that conflict.
The story of liberation from Egypt was powerful, and it bound people together as a group.
What is the Torah?
Part of the Israelites' shared story was the revelation of a sacred text known as the Torah, which literally means, in Hebrew, "instruction" or "teaching." In Greek, this term was translated as nomos or "law," and in the Christian Bible, references to "the law" often refer to the Hebrew Torah.
Today, the term "Torah" is understood to refer to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known in English as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
Many of the laws that are included in the Torah, like prohibitions against murder and stealing, are principles that are basic to a functioning society, and are similar to those found in other legal codes of the time.
What stood out to ancient peoples when they encountered Hebrew law were three particular elements: male infant circumcision, which happens on the eighth day after birth; the observance of the Sabbath as a day of rest; and dietary restrictions, known as kashrut or kosher laws, particularly not eating pork and not mixing meat and dairy.
The "Golden Age" of ancient Israel refers to the time when King David and King Solomon ruled, from 1010 – 931 BCE. King David is associated with foundation of the city of Jerusalem, in the center of ancient Israel, while King Solomon is associated with the construction of the first great Temple in 957 BCE.
Ancient Israelite society was supposedly divided between 12 tribes, 10 of them in the north of the region and two of them in the south.
In 722 BCE, the 10 tribes of northern Israel were conquered by the ancient Assyrian Empire, and only the tribes of the south, in the tiny kingdom of Judea, remained as their own self-ruling political units.
The time of King David and King Solomon was a very short-lived "Golden Age," lasting only around two generations. Most of the story of the ancient Israelites is a story about a tiny people among other superpowers, trying to maintain their identity and their relationship with God in a polytheistic world of many other competing gods and more successful peoples.
Babylonian conquest and exile of Israelites
In the sixth century BCE, the ancient Israelites endured another catastrophe when the Empire of Babylonia conquered the tiny kingdom of Judea. This conquest could have ended Jewish history, because when the Babylonians conquered ancient peoples, they not only destroyed buildings and plundered wealth, but they exiled the people were were most responsible for creating and maintaining the local culture.
So, in 586 and 587 BCE, some (mostly elite) Jews were exiled to Babylonia. Some Jews also fled to Egypt. This time could be considered the beginning of the Jewish diaspora, a term that comes from the word "dispersion," meaning the spreading out of Jews across the Middle East, and eventually, the world.
Why didn't this lead to the end of Jewish history? Part of the reason is that the Israelites believed that God worked through history, even through catastrophes and misfortunes.
The prophet Jeremiah, a very important biblical prophet, criticized his fellow Israelites for not trusting in God fully and for worshipping other gods. But he also promised them that, even though they were being punished through the Babylonian exile, God would call them back to Judea in 70 years (Jeremiah 29:10).
For Israelites of this time, the Babylonians' destruction of the Temple and exiling of the Israelite elite wasn't understood to mean that the Babylonian gods had won. Instead, it meant that the God of the Israelites was working through the Babylonians to teach them a lesson.
So, in 586 and 597 BCE, some (mostly elite) Jews were exiled to Babylonia. Some Jews also fled to Egypt. This time could be considered the beginning of the Jewish diaspora, a term that comes from the word "dispersion," meaning the spreading out of Jews across the Middle East, and eventually, the world.
The Persian Empire and the return to Judea
The Babylonian Empire didn't last long after its conquest of Judea. As Jeremiah had predicted, about 70 years later, in 539 BCE, the Babylonians were conquered by the Persian Empire.
The Persians pursued a very different policy in how they treated conquered peoples. Rather than exiling elites and attempting to suppress local cultures, the Persian Empire believed that the best way to ensure peace was to restore people to their homelands and help them to live according to their ancestral laws, even giving them money to rebuild their temples.
The Persian Emperor Cyrus, the only non-Jew referred to as "the Messiah" (or the "anointed one") in the Hebrew Bible, in Isaiah 45:1, allowed Israelites to return to the province of Judea. From then on, we find the Israelites called Judeans (eventually Jews) by others. They tend to still refer to themselves as Bnei Yisrael (the descendants of Israel).
These Israelites recognized Cyrus as the King of Kings, but they also continued to live according to their ancestral laws. This era, around 515 BCE, was also when the Torah was written down as a sacred text for the first time. Prior that, it had been transmitted orally, through memorization and recitation, as part of an oral tradition.
What united the Jews at this point, around 500 BCE? They had an allegiance to one God, and shared legendary ancestors and the foundational myth of the Exodus from Egypt. They also maintained the distinctive rituals of the Sabbath, and had a sense of God working through history, all recorded in the Torah.