Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:

Transjordan, Merneptah, Egyptians, nomadic, Canaan, Judah, military, catastrophe, urban, seed, mentioned, defeated, Cyrus, thirty, response, dating, kings, mountains, five, 1887, epistles, Babylonians, Assyrian, Jerusalem, Persians, figurines, Execration

•

the history of Israel is a history of defeat and the                 response to defeat

•

most concretely, the military and political                       catastrophe in which the states of Isreal and Judah were destroyed by Assyrians and                       Babylonians

•

Israel (9th century BC - 722 BC)

•

fell to Neo-                Assyrian Empire

•

Judah (8th century BC - 586 BC)

•

was client-state of Assyria, then Babylon

•

revolt again Neo-Babylonian Empire led to its destruction

•

after Babylon fell to King           Cyrus, some returned to Jerusalem

•

the writing that became the Bible emerged from         five successive empires:

•

1. Assyrians

•

2. Babylonians

•

3.                 Persians

•

4. Hellenistic Rulers

•

5. Roman Empire

•

Assyrian and Babylonian empires deported the           kings of Israel and Judah, the royal families, the elites of the palace

•

replaced them with their own governments, so now you didn't have a local government, but one that reported externally

•

territories of Israel and           Judah were transformed into provinces

•

this brought about profound changes in economics, demographics, family lives, language, religion

•

this situation left people asking:

•

who are we?

•

where do we go?

•

Israel's origins

•

first historical reference to Israel outside the Bible

•

19th century BC:                     Execration texts

•

texts which mention important towns in Canaan which would become Israel

•

during Egypt's 12th dynasty

•

on pottery shards

•

on                   figurines

•

names of enemy places were written on pottery and then it was destroyed

•

one supposedly mentioned a town that some say became                   Jerusalem

•

the context is important: curses calling for the defeat of these places and their inhabitants

•

The Amarna Letters

•

most important source of what was happening in Canaan in pre-Israel and pre-Judah times

•

discovered by local                   Egyptians in         1887

•

on clay tablets, mostly diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan

•

The correspondence spans a period of at most             thirty years

•

discovered by Sir Flinders Petrie

•

excavated these letters

•

pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and preservation of artifacts

•

developed the system of             dating layers based on pottery and ceramic findings

•

correspondence between rulers in Middle East with ruling Egypt

•

kings also wrote                 epistles back and forth to their town leaders in Canaan

•

these leaders wrote details about competitions with leaders in neighboring towns

•

                  Merneptah Stele [STEL-ah]

•

discovered by Sir Flinders Petrie

•

a large stone with writing

•

named after King Merneptah

•

an account of his                 military campaigns

•

last three lines are a military campaign in             Canaan

•

"...Israel is wasted, bare of         seed, all who roamed have been subdued, by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt..."

•

in heiroglyphs, Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam have a determinative marker, three sticks and three                   mountains, which is used before cities

•

Israel, however, has the three lines but not the three mountains

•

this determinative appears before foreign peoples who are typically               nomadic rather than urban

•

so Israel is being referred to as a people without an urban center

•

we are told that Israel is defeated

•

the word for defeated could refer to Israel's crops or its biological seed

•

either way, it meant that the Egyptian king had destroyed their means of survival

•

the location of Israel is revealed from the Merneptah Stele as likely to be in the southern Levant, but not more detailed

•

but they could have been in the                       Transjordan, now modern Jordan

•

the Mernepta Stele is significant because

•

1. the name of Isreal is                   mentioned for the first time (1200 BC) outside the Bible

•

2. referred to Israel as a non-          urban population, not yet a state

•

3. the first reference to Israel is that it has been                 defeated, it's "seed is no longer"