| Alexander the Great | One of the most brilliant leaders and military conquerors of the classical world. Son of King Philip of Macedonia, Alexander was born at Pella in Macedonia in 356 b.c.e. and died in Babylon in 323 b.c.e. During his relatively brief career, he conquered most of the known world, created an empire that extended from Greece to India, propagated Greek culture throughout the Near East, and instituted a period of cosmopolitanism termed Hellenistic. His influence on Palestine is recounted in 1 Maccabees 1.
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| Antiochus | The name of several Syrian monarchs who inherited power from Seleucus I, a general and successor of Alexander the Great. The most famous were Antiochus III, who gained control of Palestine from Egypt in 198/197 b.c.e., and Antiochus IV (Epiphanes, or "God Manifest") (175-163 b.c.e.), whose persecution of the Jews led to the Maccabean revolt.
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| Baal | A Canaanite-Phoenician term meaning "lord" or "master," the name applied to Canaan's most popular fertility god. Worshiped as the power that caused germination and growth of farm crops, Baal was a serious rival to Yahweh after the Israelites settled in Palestine and became dependent on agriculture (Judg. 2:11-14). He is pictured as a god of storm and rainfall in a contest with the Yahwist Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:20-46).
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| Babylon | An ancient city on the middle Euphrates that was capital of both the Old and Neo-Babylonian empires. Under Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 b.c.e.), who joined forces with the Medes to defeat Egypt at the Battle of Carchemish (605 b.c.e.) and create the second Babylonian Empire, Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple (587 b.c.e.). Babylon fell to the Persians in 539 b.c.e. Alexander the Great's plans to rebuild the old sanctuaries ended with his death in 323 b.c.e., and the city never regained its former glory. As the archetypal enemy of God's people, Babylon became the symbol of Satan's worldly power (Rev. 14:8; 18:2).
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| Babylonian exile | The period between 587 and 538 b.c.e. during which Judah's upper classes were held captive in Babylon. An earlier deportation of Jewish leaders in 597 b.c.e. included the prophet Ezekiel. After Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon in 539, Jews who wished to do so were encouraged to return to their Palestinian homeland.
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| Code of Hammurabi | The compilation of Sumero-Babylonian laws inscribed on the basaltic Stele of Hammurabi (1728-1686 b.c.e.), founder of the first Babylonian Empire. A number of Hammurabi's statutes anticipate those of the biblical Torah.
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| Constantine | Roman emperor (306-337 c.e.) who was converted to Christianity and whose rule began a period of state support for the early church. Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 c.e., mandating general tolerance of Christianity. He also presided over the Council of Nicaea in 325 c.e., establishing a precedent for imperial leadership of the church.
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| cuneiform | A wedge-shaped writing that originated in ancient Sumer about 3000 b.c.e. and spread throughout Mesopotamia.
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| Diaspora | Literally, a "scattering," the term refers to the distribution of Jews outside their Palestinian homeland, such as the many Jewish communities established throughout the Greco-Roman world.
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| Euphrates River | The longest river of southwest Asia; one of the four streams of Eden (Gen. 2:14), the Euphrates was the extreme northeastern border of Israel's kingdom at its height (2 Sam. 8:3; 10:16; 1 Kings 4:24).
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| Gilgamesh | Legendary king of Uruk, hero of the Sumero-Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, fragments of which date from shortly after 3000 b.c.e., describ-ing his adventures battling Evil and searching for immortality. The Babylonian version incorporates a story of the Flood narrated by Gilgamesh's ancestor Utnapishtim.
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| Hasmoneans | The Jewish royal dynasty founded by the Maccabees and named for Hasmon, an ancestor of Mattathias. The Roman conquest of Palestine in 63 b.c.e. brought Hasmonean rulership and Jewish independence to an end.
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| Hellenism | The influence and adoption of Greek thought, language, values, and culture that began with Alexander the Great's conquest of the eastern Mediterranean world and intensified under his Hellenistic successors and various Roman emperors.
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| Herod I (the Great) | The Idumean Roman-appointed king of Judea (40-4 b.c.e.), was ruling when Jesus was born (Matt. 2:1). An able administrator who completely reconstructed the Jerusalem Temple, he was notorious for reputed cruelty and was almost universally hated by the Jews.
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| Jericho | One of the world's oldest cities, Jericho's ruins lie near an oasis on the west side of the south Jordan River Valley. Partly excavated by archaeologists, its earliest occupation dates to about 7800 b.c.e. Although according to Joshua 2 and 5:13-6:26 its fortified walls crumbled when the Israelites marched around the city, radiocarbon dating indicates that the site was already abandoned at the time of the conquest (thirteenth century b.c.e.). Jericho was partly rebuilt by Hiel of Bethel during Ahab's reign (869-850 b.c.e.) (1 Kings 16:34), but no evidence of this occupation remains. It was extensively rebuilt during Herod's day (40-4 b.c.e.) and is mentioned several times in the New Testament (Matt. 20:29; Mark 10:46; Luke 10:30; 18:35; 19:1; Heb. 11:30).
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| Josiah | Son of Amon (642-640 b.c.e.), Josiah (meaning "Yahweh heals") became king of Judah after his father's murder. The outstanding event of his reign (640-609 b.c.e.) was the discovery of a Book of the Law (probably an early edition of Deuteronomy) and the subsequent religious reform it inspired (following 621 b.c.e.). Josiah purged Judah and part of Israel's old territory of their rural shrines and "high places," centering all worship at the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kings 23:27). He was killed at Megiddo attempting to intercept Pharaoh Necho's army on its way to support the collapsing Assyrian Empire (609 b.c.e.) (2 Kings 22:1-23:30; 2 Chron. 34:1-35:27).
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| Maccabees | A name bestowed on the family that won religious and political independence for the Jews from their Greek-Syrian oppressors. Judas, called Maccabeus (meaning "the hammer"), son of the aged priest Mattathias, led his brothers and other faithful Jews against the armies of Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) (175-163 b.c.e.). The dynasty his brothers established was called Hasmonean (after an ancestor named Hashmon) and ruled Judea until 63 b.c.e., when the Romans occupied Palestine.
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| Marduk | Patron god of Babylon, hero of the Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, in which he defeats the monster Tiamat and creates the cosmos from her bifurcated corpse.
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| Mari | An ancient Near Eastern city located on the Middle Euphrates River near the boundary of modern Syria and Iraq. Destroyed by Hammurabi of Babylon (c. 1738-1686 b.c.e.), Mari's royal palace has yielded thousands of clay tablets that preserve a rich array of information about the Mari period (c. 1750-1697 b.c.e.).
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| Mesopotamia | The territory between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers at the head of the Persian Gulf (modern Iraq); cradle of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Neo-Babylonian civilizations (Gen. 24:10; Judg. 3:8-10; 1 Chron. 19:6; Acts 2:9; 7:2).
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| Nebuchadnezzar | (1) A Fourth Dynasty king of the Old Babylonian Empire (twelfth century b.c.e.). (2) Son of Nabopolassar and the most powerful ruler of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (605-562 b.c.e.), Nebuchadnezzar II defeated Pharaoh Necho at the Battle of Carchemish (605 b.c.e.) (2 Kings 24:1-7; Jer. 46:2) and brought much of the Near East under his control. He attacked Judah and deported many of its upper classes in 598-597 b.c.e., besieged and destroyed Jerusalem in 587 b.c.e., and took much of its population captive to Babylon (2 Kings 24:10-25; 25:11-21; 2 Chron. 26:6-21; Jer. 39:1-10; 52:1-30). The portrait of him in Daniel is probably not historical (Dan. 2:1-13; 3:1-7; 4:4-37).
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| Palestine | A strip of land bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea, lying south of Syria, north of the Sinai peninsula, and west of the Arabian desert. During the patriarchal period, it was known as Canaan (Gen. 12:6-7; 15:18-21). Named for the Philistines, it was first called Palestine by the Greek historian Herodotus about 450 b.c.e.
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| Persia | A large Asian territory southeast of Elam inhabited by Indo-European (Ayrian, hence "Iran") peoples, Persia became a world power under Cyrus the Great, who united Media and Persia (549 b.c.e.); conquered Lydia (546 b.c.e.) and Babylon (539 b.c.e.), including its former dominion, Palestine; then permitted the formerly captive Jews to return to their homeland (2 Chron. 36:20-22; Ezra 1). Under the emperor Darius I (522-486 b.c.e.), the Jerusalem Temple was rebuilt (Ezra 3-6). A son of Darius, Xerxes I (486-465 b.c.e.) was probably the Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther (Esther 1:2; 2:1; 3:1; 8:1). Artaxerxes I (465-423 b.c.e.) decreed the return of two other exile groups under Ezra and Nehemiah.
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| Pompey | A leading Roman general and rival of Julius Caesar, with whom he established a temporary political alliance known as the First Triumvirate, Pompey (106-49 b.c.e.) conquered much of the eastern Mediterranean region for Rome, including Syria and Judea (63 b.c.e.).
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| Ptolemy | (1) Ptolemy I (323-285 b.c.e.) was a Macedonian general who assumed rulership of Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great. The Ptolemaic dynasty controlled Egypt and its dominions until 31 b.c.e., when the Romans came to power. (2) Ptolemy II (285-246 b.c.e.) supposedly authorized the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (the Septuagint).
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| Rameses II | Ruler of Egypt (c. 1290-1224 b.c.e.) who many scholars think was the pharaoh of the Exodus.
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| Samaria | Capital of the northern kingdom (Israel), Samaria was founded by Omri (c. 876-869 b.c.e.) (1 Kings 16:24-25) and included a temple and altar of Baal (1 Kings 16:32). The Assyrians destroyed it in 721 b.c.e. (2 Kings 17), a fate the prophets warned awaited Jerusalem (Isa. 8:4; 10:9-11; Mic. 1:1-7).
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| Samaritans | Inhabitants of the city or territory of Samaria, the central region of Palestine lying west of the Jordan River. According to a probably biased southern account in 2 Kings 17, the Samaritans were regarded by orthodox Jews as descendants of foreigners who had intermarried with survivors of the northern kingdom's fall to Assyria (721 b.c.e.). Separated from the rest of Judaism after about 400 b.c.e., they had a Bible consisting of their own edition of the Pentateuch (Torah) and a temple on Mount Gerizim, which was later destroyed by John Hyrcanus (128 b.c.e.) (Matt. 10:5; Luke 9:52; John 4:20-21). Jesus discussed correct worship with a woman at Jacob's well in Samaria (John 4:5-42) and made a "good Samaritan" the hero of a famous parable (Luke 10:29-37).
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| Sargon I | The Semitic founder of a Mesopotamian Empire incorporating ancient Sumer and Akkad and stretching from Elam to the Mediterranean (about 2360 b.c.e.).
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| Sargon II | Successor of Shalmaneser V and king of Assyria (722-705 b.c.e.) who completed his predecessor's three-year siege of Samaria and captured the city, bringing the northern kingdom (Israel) to an end in 721 b.c.e. (Isa. 20:1; 2 Kings 17).
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| Second Temple period | The span of Judean history from the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple in 515 b.c.e. to the Temple's destruction by the Romans in 70 c.e., a period in which Judea was consecutively occupied by Persians, Greeks, and Romans.
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| Seleucids | The Macedonian Greek dynasty founded by Alexander's general Seleucus (ruled 312-280 b.c.e.), centered in Syria with Antioch as its capital. After defeating the Ptolemies of Egypt, it controlled Palestine from 198 to 165 b.c.e., after which the Maccabean revolt defeated the forces of Antiochus IV and eventually drove the Syrians from Judea (142 b.c.e.) (1 and 2 Macc.).
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| Sennacherib | Son of Sargon II and king of Assyria (704-681 b.c.e.). In 701 b.c.e., Sennacherib devastated Tyre and besieged Jerusalem, after which he levied heavy tribute upon King Hezekiah of Judah (2 Kings 18). A clay prism recording Sennacherib's version of the Judean campaign tallies well with 2 Kings 18:14-16 but strikingly diverges from the story of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers slain by Yahweh's angel in a single night (2 Kings 19:10-35; Isa. 37:9-36).
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| Tigris River | According to Genesis 2:14 (where it is called the Hiddekel), the Tigris was the third of four rivers that watered Eden (see Dan. 10:4). Approximately 1146 miles long, it forms the eastern boundary of Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris and Euphrates). On its banks rose the ancient cities of Nineveh, Asshur, and Calah (Gen. 10:11), centers of the Assyrian Empire.
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| Titus | A Greek whom Paul converted and who became a companion on his missionary journeys (2 Cor. 8:23; Gal. 2:1-3; Titus 1:4), Titus effected a reconciliation between Paul and the Corinthians (2 Cor. 7:5-7; 8:16-24; 12:18). A post-Pauline writer makes him the type of the Christian pastor (Titus 1-3).
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| Transjordan | The rugged plateau area east of the Jordan River, a region Joshua assigned to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh (Josh. 13) but which they failed to wrest from other Semites living there.
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| Ugarit | Ancient Canaanite city (Arabic Ras Shamra) in modern Syria where cuneiform archives were found that preserve prebiblical religious texts and myths about El and Baal, some of which anticipate traditions later associated with Yahweh.
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| Ur | One of the world's oldest cities, in Sumer, Ur was the ancestral homeland (Gen. 11:28-31) from which Abraham and his family migrated to Haran, although some scholars have suggested a northern location for the Abrahamic Ur. Archaeologically, the Sumerian Ur is notable for its well-preserved ziggurat and "royal cemetery," whose tombs have yielded a number of beautifully crafted artwork, furniture, jewelry, and other sophisticated artifacts (mid-third millennium b.c.e.).
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| ziggurat | A characteristic architectural form of Sumerian and Babylonian temples, the ziggurat was a multileveled tower resembling a stepped or recessed pyramid consisting of succeedingly smaller platforms built one atop the other. At its apex was a chapel dedicated to a major civic god. Broad ceremonial staircases used for liturgical processions led to the ziggurat's summit, to which it was believed the gods invisibly descended. The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 is probably based on a misunderstanding of the ziggurat's function.
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education