The Land of Israel in the Age of Christianity

(AD 30-1800)

The previous lesson gave a biblical history of the land of Israel before Jesus, so make sure to read that if you missed it. This is the history of the land after the death of Jesus up to the age of Zionism. I intended this to be a three-part series over Israel but it is a lot of information and it is taking tons of research. So there will be two more lessons after this. The next one will cover the modern age, the beginning of the Jewish state. Then the last lesson will go into more depth on the beliefs of Jews, Christians, and Muslims and the future of Israel from a Christian perspective.

This is 1,800 years of history so you may want to scan the sections and read in detail the time periods that are of most interest to you. Also there is a timeline at the end so make sure you look at that.

Ruled by Rome (63BC-611AD) 674 years

After Jesus’s death, the Jews that didn’t believe He was the Messiah, continued to practice their faith according to Jewish law. But they were still governed by Rome and forced to pay them taxes. Since the Roman government appointed the high-priests, their position was as much political as it was religious, so worship was not as God intended. There was a constant struggle within about how to deal with Rome. Some just wanted power, so they aligned themselves more with the government. Others resisted Roman rule, but only wanted to practice their religion without interference. Still, some of them wanted to resist more militantly.

The Jews rebelled against Rome several times. The first was when the Roman emperor, Caligula, declared himself a deity and ordered his statue to be set up in every temple in the Roman Empire. The Jews refused, and only escaped his wrath because he died suddenly.

Then came the Great Revolt. When the Roman Procurator, Flores, stole silver from the Temple, the people rioted and wiped out the small Roman garrison in Judea. Then, the Roman ruler in Syria responded by sending troops. But the Jews defeated them too. This emboldened the Zealots (anti-Roman rebels), and the number of resistant militants grew. But the Romans attacked the northern part of Israel and killed or enslaved around 100,000 Jews in Galilee.

Instead of sending help, the Jews in Jerusalem stayed in the city hoping to defend themselves if the Romans came to them. But those who had escaped in the north, went south on a rampage. They were angry at the leadership for not coming to their aid and they killed many of them. Then, while Jerusalem was embodied in civil war, the Romans besieged the city. Soon they demolished the wall and took the city, killing as many as a million Jews. The Romans also burned the Temple, destroying it for good.

Fifty years later, when Hadrian became the Roman Emperor, he started letting the Jews return to Jerusalem and even gave them permission to rebuild the Temple. But then he suddenly changed his mind and requested that the Temple be moved to a different location and started deporting Jews to North Africa. Soon, he began forbidding circumcisions and eventually began building a temple to Jupiter in place of the Jewish Temple.

Under the leadership of Shimon Bar-Kokhba, the Jews began to rebel on a large scale. Soon the Syrian governor joined the governor of Judea, but the Jews defeated both of them. When the Jews invaded the coastal region of Philistia and the Romans began fighting them by sea. Once Britain, Germany, and Egypt also got involved, the Jews were ultimately defeated.

Israel had lost its independence. Many Jews were sold into slavery or deported to Egypt. The Romans plowed Jerusalem and turned it into a pagan city named Aelia Capitolina. Then, to mock the Jews, they renamed the entire region Syria Palestina - Syria because they ruled there before the Romans and Palestina which was the Greek word for the Philistines (coastal people), who the Jews had been fighting with for 1,500 years. So, there was never an independent state of Palestine. It was Roman territory that they renamed Palestine to taunt the people they had just defeated. They were basically saying, you are no longer the Jewish state of Israel. You have been trying to free yourselves from the Philistines, the Syrians, and the Romans for years, but you are not free. We rule you.

It was only after the death of Hadrian that the Jews were able to return to their land. In the mean time, Christianity had been spreading throughout the land. Soon after the Roman Emperor, Constantine, converted to Christianity, he decreed tolerance for the Christians. His mother Helena, visited Judea and went to all of the places where Jesus ministered, marking and naming each place on the way. She also had the beautiful Holy Sepulcher Church built where she believed Jesus was crucified and buried.

Then less than a decade after Constantine’s conversion, he made Christianity the official religion of Rome. But Constantine also gave Jerusalem back its name and officially allowed the Jews to reenter the city on the anniversary of its destruction, 254 years later. During this time, there was more struggle over the land between the Jews and Christians than anyone else.

But, less than four decades later, Julian became the new emperor of Rome and ordered the Temple to be rebuilt. Unfortunately, two years later, an earthquake destroyed the portion that had been rebuilt and it was never attempted again. Julian was assassinated in that same year and 17 years later the Roman Empire was split in two. Jerusalem became part of the Byzantine Empire, which was just Eastern Rome, with a separate ruler from the West.

Late in the fourth century, India’s king gave the Jews permission to live freely there, own property, and to build a synagogue. Early in the fifth century, the Byzantine Empress, Eudocia, removed the ban on Jews to pray on the site of the Temple and they were once again called back to their land. In the early sixth century, the king of Yemen converted to Judaism and upgraded the Jewish center there.

So, for the first 600 years after Jesus was born, the land of Israel was ruled by
Rome. The number of Jews in the land depended on the ruler at the time, so sometimes there were many living in the land and other times there were fewer. Also, as you can see, Jews spread into other countries that were friendly to them when Rome was not.

Persia (Iran) and Byzantine Empires Squabble over land with Jews and Christians (611-636) 25 years

But at the beginning of the seventh century, there was complete turmoil in the land. Persia (Iran) attacked the Byzantine Empire, and the Jews took it as their chance to finally break free from Rome. So they joined with the Persians against Eastern Rome and the Christians. Persia took Syria and Judea and the Jews helped them kill 60,000-90,000 Christians who were living in the land. They also destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

But the Jews soon realized that being ruled by the Persians was much worse than Roman rule. They worked out a deal with the Byzantines, they recovered all the territory they lost to the Persians 18 years later. But after Heraclius, the emperor, regained control of Judea, at the urging of the Christians, ordered that all the Jews be killed and their synagogues destroyed. All the Jews that did not die, fled to Egypt and other surrounding areas. He also ordered that the Jews convert to Christianity in all other Roman territories, although only Carthage enforced the order.

Muslim Rule (636-1099) 463 years

Then everything changed in the Middle East with the revelations of Muhammed in his forties. He gathered followers in his lifetime, but after his death, the Arab Muslims began invading and conquering lands. After establishing the Sanai Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman) they began moving north into Iraq, then west into Syria, and south all the way to Egypt. Within a few years they had conquered Syria, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan which all belonged to the Byzantine Empire. Soon after Egypt was theirs too.