The Maccabean Revolt

In order to understand the difference between what the prophets of the Hebrew Bible proclaimed, and what came to be the views of apocalyptic Jews, I need to sketch a set of historical events that the people of Israel had to live through. Without this kind of historical knowledge, you simply will not understand ancient Judaism at the time of Jesus. That is to say, you really have to know what happened among ancient Jews in order to make sense of what their theological beliefs were, since these beliefs were molded by and informed by nothing so much as the historical context out of which they emerged. And so here is a very brief sketch of the history of Judea over the four hundred years from approximately 540 BCE, when the Persians were in control, up to 63 BCE, when the Romans came in and took over. I’ve taken the sketch from my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. Read by Petra Ortiz