Herod Archelaus: Jewish leader, ruler of Samaria, Judaea, and Idumea between 4 BCE and 6 CE. His rule was disastrous and he was sent into exile by the Roman emperor Augustus.
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In October 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus took Babylon, the ancient capital of an oriental empire covering modern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. In a broader sense, Babylon was the ancient world's capital of scholarship and science. The subject…
The suffering servant
One of the most impressive themes developed by Second Isaiah is that of the suffering servant. There are three poems (Isaiah 42.1-4, 49.1-6, 50.4-11) in which the prophet, who lived in the age of the Babylonian Captivity, describes…
Kingdom of Israel: the northern of the two Jewish states after the kingdom of Solomon was divided. Israel was a regional superpower, but unable to retain its independence in the face of Assyrian imperialism. The name "Israel" survived as the…