Jewish history between the Old and New Testaments
George Horton
Bible Dictionary page 635
2000 BC - Abraham
1400 BC - Moses
1000 BC - United Israel (Saul, David, Solomon)
900 BC - Rehoboam & Jeroboam
721 BC - Assyria destroys Israel and takes captive
Samaritans
606 BC The fall of Nineveh, capital of Assyria. Babylon becomes the major power. Daniel and others are taken to Babylon from Israel. Nebuchadneszzar king in 604


598 BC - Judah’s king, Jehoiachin, and the prophet Ezekiel (with thousands of others) are carried captive into Babylon. Lehi leaves Jerusalem.

587 BC - The fall of Jerusalem; the leaders of Judah are taken captive into Babylon. Some, including Jeremiah (who is a hostage) escape to Egypt. Mulek leaves Jerusalem.

562 BC - The death of Nebuchadnezzar and the beginning of the decline of Babylon.

538 BC - Babylon modern-day Iraq) falls to Cyrus, king of Persia (modern-day Iran). Cyrus allows Jews to return, MOST choose not to. Those who return are greatly influenced. Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the common Jewish language. The Jews adopted the Babylonian alphabet & calendar.

535 BC - Zerubbabel and Jeshua lead approximately 50,000 Jews back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.


522 BC - The Samaritans have been opposed to the temple construction because they have not been allowed to help rebuild it. Jews have been indifferent to its reconstruction. As a result, work on it has stopped. Haggai and Zechariah encourage the Jews to finish the temple; King Darius of Persia commands the Samaritan opposition to cease.

516 BC - Zerubbabel’s temple is completed.

486 BC - Esther, wife of the King of Persia (460?).

458 BC - Ezra leads a second group of 1,496 back to Jerusalem.

445 BC - Nehemiah (Artaxerxes’ cupbearer) arrives in Jerusalem.

433 BC - Nehemiah returns to the service of Artaxerxes in Persia.

432 Prophecy of Malachi

431 BC - Nehemiah’s second mission to Jerusalem.

331 BC - Alexander the Great - Conquered the known world. After his death in 323 BC the
kingdom breaks up. One of his general’s Ptolemy (ancestor of Cleopatra) takes over Egypt, Israel & Southern Syria, another Seleucus, (Silookuhs) rules Babylonia. Jews in the middle between the two.

198 BC - Ptolemaic domination of Palestine ends with the defeat of the Ptolemies by the Seleucids at Caesarea Philippi.

175 BC - Jason appointed high priest by Antiochus Epiphanies. Jason is a “Hellenizer,” one who wishes to make Greek culture the culture of Israel. The ruling classes adopt Greek as their language and they adopt Greek education, including building a gymnasium. The introduction of gymnasia is a major controversy in Israel. In Greek gymnasia young men exercised and practiced military sports in the nude, which was a scandal to Jews. The possession or reading of the Torah was made punishable by death. Observance of Sabbath and feast days was forbidden. Circumcision & sacrifice forbidden. Jerusalem's walls destroyed. Thousands of Jews were killed. Thousands more sold as slaves. The temple was plundered and turned into an Olympian shrine with an image of Zeus placed on the altar and a pig was sacrificed in honor of the false God. Sacred Prostitution was practiced within the temple walls.

167 BC - Maccabean revolt - In the village of Modein, (north of Jerusalem), a local priest named Mattathias killed both the traitorous Jew who offered the sacrifice and the Greek officer sent there to institute pagan worship, and with his 5 sons went into the hills to wage a guerilla war against the Greeks. Mattathias challenged all of Judea, saying, "Let everyone who is zealous of the law and supports the covenant come out with me!" The family name was Hasmon, and they are therefore referred to as the Hasmonean family, but because of Judah's prowess and success against the Greeks, he was also called the Maccabee, a word that means something like the hammer or God's hammer. After Judah, the family is often referred to as the Maccabees as well as the Hasmoneans and the Jewish revolt of 167 is called the Maccabean revolt. Time and again, Judah and his followers were able to defeat the Greek generals and their armies even though they were greatly outnumbered. In the fall of 165 or 164 Judah retook Jerusalem and by December the Maccabees had torn down the altar of the temple, which had been desecrated and had it rebuilt. They also replaced the Jerusalem priesthood, which had been thoroughly cleansed and rededicated to the worship of Jehovah on the 25th of the Jewish month of Kislev (Dec) amid great rejoicing, an event that is still commemorated every year in the Jewish festival of Hannukah. (Olive oil for menorah in Holy Place with seal of High Priest burned 8 days on a 1 day supply.





Since no Zadokite priest is available to assume the office of High Priest, the Hasmonean family takes the office “until there should arise a faithful prophet” (1 Maccabees 14:41).

The decline of the Hasmonean dynasty was rapid. Within a generation or two, the descendants of the Maccabees had become as weak and corrupt as the rulers their fathers had replaced.

Between 67 and 63 BC, two brothers, Hyrcannus II and Aristobulus II, fought over the succession to the throne and high priesthood. Hyrcanus was the rightful heir but was weak and incompetent. His chief supporter and advisor was the Iddumean (Edom) leader Antipater. (Antipater knew Hyrcanus was weak, but he realized that his own fortunes would be better under a weak king than a strong one.

The two primary political groups in Jesus' time (but there were also others, such as those at Qumran):
Pharisees: fundamentalist; anti-Hellenist (i.e., anti-Greek); believed that the temple had become corrupt and without a high priest with authority; their worship focused on reading and interpreting the Torah (the Law) and on careful obedience to it—that is more important than temple worship and sacrifice
Sadducees: “Zadokites,” the rulers of the temple; worship was primarily understood to be temple worship; Hellenist (cooperated with the Seleucids and then the Romans, both Greek-speaking; were willing to become Greeks culturally); supposedly ruling until they could be replaced by a descendant of Zadok; though they came to power through a revolt against the Seleucids over the corruption of the temple and the corruption of the priesthood, by Jesus’ time, they too were often involved in corruption.