Israel and Judah were related Iron Age kingdoms of the ancient
Levant. The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important local power
by the 10th century BCE before falling to the Neo-Assyrian Empire
in 722 BCE. Israel's southern neighbor the Kingdom of Judah emerged
in the 8th or 9th century BCE[1] and enjoyed a period of prosperity
as a client-state of first Assyria and then Babylon before a revolt
against the Neo-Babylonian Empire led to its destruction in 586
BCE. Following the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus the
Great in 539 BCE some Judean exiles returned to Jerusalem
inaugurating the formative period in the development of a
distinctive Judahite identity in the Persian province of Yehud.
Yehud was absorbed into the subsequent Hellenistic kingdoms that
followed the conquests of Alexander the Great but in the 2nd
century BCE the Judaeans revolted against the Hellenist Seleucid
Empire and created the Hasmonean kingdom. This the last nominally
independent Judean kingdom came to an end in 63 BCE with its
conquest by Pompey of Rome. With the installation of client
kingdoms under the Herodian Dynasty the Kingdom of Israel was
wracked by civil disturbances which culminated in the First
Jewish–Roman War the destruction of the Temple the emergence of
Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity.
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