Question

How did the position of the land of Israel, in a region conquered by several ancient empires, affect Jewish history?

Answer 1

Answer:The history of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel is about the history and religion of the Jewish people who originated in the Land of Israel, and have maintained physical, cultural, and religious ties to it ever since. First emerging in the later part of the 2nd millennium BCE as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites,[1][2][3][4] the Hebrew Bible claims that a United Israelite monarchy existed starting in the 10th century BCE. The first appearance of the name "Israel" in the non-Biblical historic record is the Egyptian Merneptah Stele, circa 1200 BCE. During the biblical period, two kingdoms occupied the highland zone, the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (circa 722 BCE), and the Kingdom of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian Empire (586 BCE). Initially exiled to Babylon, upon the defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire by the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great (538 BCE), many of the Jewish elite returned to Jerusalem, building the Second Temple.

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