The Political Landscape in Palestine - 587 B.C.E. to 135 C.E.

Palestine was a fault line in the ancient world, a place where empires rubbed against one another. Like a fault line in the earth’s tectonic plates, when the different empires rubbed against one another the ground shook. All of these empires wanted to dominate this trade crossroads and access the somewhat fertile region. The Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, each in their turn, controlled Palestine as an occupied territory from 587 B.C.E. until 143 B.C.E. In the middle of the 2nd Century B.C.E., the Maccabeans revolted against their Hellenistic rulers. The Hasmonean dynasty ruled until 63 B.C.E. when the Roman general Pompey conquered Palestine.

Throughout the Roman rule of Palestine there was almost continual unrest. Syncretism is perhaps the best way to describe Rome’s approach to the religions of her territories. The Romans wanted their subjects to see all of their gods as the same; it presented no difficulty to add gods to the Roman pantheon. While the Romans were tolerant of religion as a general practice in the territories they occupied, the Jews became unsettled at the slightest threat to their faith. Emperor worship presented a major problem for Jews and Christians alike. From 66 – 70 C.E., the Jews waged a major revolt against their occupiers. The end of the revolt arrived when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and razed the temple. Bar Kochba led another revolt in 135 C.E. that ended much as the earlier one.