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David, the youngest son of Jesse who was a member of the tribe of Judah, was chosen by the prophet Samuel to be anointed as the next king of Israel after Saul. When Saul and his son were killed in battle, David was crowned king in 1010 BCE, and after that he seized many lands and made many alliances to grow the Israelite empire into a prosperous and secure empire. He captured the city of Jerusalem and marked it as the capital of the empire and he brought the sacred Ark of the Covenant there.
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King Solomon established a great temple in Jerusalem which would be the permanent home for the Ark of the Covenant. This temple is where sacrifices would be made to God and Solomon was granted much wisdom from God along with wealth. However this wealth went to his head and he built alters and idols for his wives' gods and this angered God. Following Solomon's death God split up the kingdom into 10 tribes as a punishment to the people.
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King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 mistresses throughout his reign over Israel
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By the time King Hoshea had taken over Israel it had become so corrupt and idolatrous that God had permitted the Assyrian Empire to take over them. This empire conquered what was left of Israel and sent Israelites and Gentiles off into exile. God only allowed this because he was angry at the Israelites and did not want them to rise as a nation again. The Israelites became dispersed throughout Assyria and lost their identities, they then became known as "The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel."
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King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire conquered Assyria in 626 BCE and took control. It wasn't until 589 BCE that they captured the city of Jerusalem and completely ransacked it. The great walls were bashed down, buildings were burned, and the sacred temple was emptied of its treasures and destroyed. The Judaeans captured were taken to exile in Babylonia where they become known as "Jews" as they were from Judah originally. The prophets interpreted this as punishment for the (Next)
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idolatry behavior of the people of Judah. A prophet named Isaiah and an anonymous prophet prophesied that God would usher a new era of peace soon.
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The Persian Empire, lead by King Cyprus conquered the Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE. King Cyprus allowed for a group of 50,000 Jews from Babylonia to come to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple, which became a central symbol to the scattered Jewish nation. Temple rites began to develop lead by priest and scribe Ezra. Ezra and a group of other priests began to revise and redo the Pentateuch and the Torah became the spiritual foundation of the dispersed nation. Ezra set a precedent for (next)
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reading hours of Torah scrolls and soon these "five books of Moses," were accepted as the sacred covenant.
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Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in 330 BCE and introduced a Hellenistic belief to the Middle East. Hellenism is the culture that the Greeks believed in. This caused many affluent Jews and Jewish priests to develop a Hellenistic attitude instead of a unquestioning belief in God, as polytheism was a part of the Hellenistic culture.
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Antiochus IV, was a the Hellenistic ruler of Syria who also was in control of Israel. He tried to abolish the Jewish faith by forcing a single Hellenistic culture on the entire nation. He banned the Torah, ordered for all circumcised families to be killed and even built an alter for Zeus in the middle of the Jewish Temple. He then sacrificed a pig in the temple, which was strongly against Jewish belief as pigs were viewed as "unclean," in the Torah. This would not sit well with the Jews.
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A group that was lead by the Hasmon family of priests, called the Maccabees or "Hammer," revolted against the Greek Empire and gained independence for Judea. The area that was freed was renamed Israel once again and it was once again centered around Jerusalem. The Hasmonean Family ruled over the empire until its conquest in 63 BCE.
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Roman leader Pompey was sent to name one sect of the Hasmonean Empire as the leader of it, but ultimately just conquered the nation when he arrived. This lead to four centuries of Roman oppression over the Jews
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Under Roman rule a belief erupted from the Jews, that a savior, prophesied by Daniel, would come to relieve the Jews from the suffering. They believed that God would gather the chosen people, free them from oppression, and restore Israel into their power once again. They felt that this would show everyone that their God is the God and that the end of the world would be coming known as the "Messianic end of the age." Some believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but many Jews did not.
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A group of anti-Romans, known as Zealots, rose up against the Roman Empire in 66 AD. Once this rebellion was suppressed in 70 AD, all the Jewish defenders were slaughtered in Jerusalem and the Roman destroyed the Jewish Temple.
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Jews tried rebelling once again in 132 AD and this rebellion was much worse than the first. The Romans killed almost all of the Jews and destroyed Jerusalem, and the remaining Jews were forbidden from reading the Torah, honoring Sabbath Day and from circumcising their children. The Jews no longer had a geographical center and were ultimately sent into Diaspora.