Hills in the Judean desert.
Judea or
Judæa (Hebrew:
יהודה, Standard
Yəhuda Tiberian , "praised,
celebrated"; Greek: Ιουδαία,
Ioudaía; ) is the name given to the mountainous southern
part of the historic Land of Israel (
Eretz Yisrael), an area now
divided between Israel
and the
West
Bank
(itself partly under Palestinian Authority
administration and Israeli military rule).
The name
Judea is a
Greek
and
Roman adaptation of the name
"
Judah", which originally encompassed
the territory of the
Israelite tribe of
that name and later of the ancient
Kingdom of Judah. The area was the site of
the
Hasmonean Kingdom and the
later Kingdom of Judah, a
client
kingdom of the
Roman Empire.
In modern
times, Jordan
renamed
Judea and Samaria the West
Bank. The name "Yehudah" may be used by Hebrew speakers to
refer to a large southern section of Israel and the disputed
territories.
The combined term Judea and Samaria, refers to land
alternatively called the West Bank.
Location and historical boundaries
The Judean hills.
The
original boundaries were "Bethsûr" (near
Hebron
), on the south; Beth-horon (today Beit 'Ur al Fawka
on the West
Bank), on the north; Latrun
or Emaüs, on
the west (22 kilometres west of Jerusalem
); the Jordan River
on the east. The classical historian Josephus used a more expanded definition,
encompassing the lower half of what is now the West Bank in the north down to Beer Sheba
in the south, and bordered on the east and west by
the Mediterranean and the Jordan river.
Geography
Abu Ehmad, an Arab farmer, ploughs his
fields in Judea, 1913.
Judea is a mountainous and arid region, much of which is considered
to be a
desert.
It varies greatly in
height, rising to an altitude of 1,020 m (3,346 ft) in
the south at Mount Hebron, 30 km
(19 miles) southwest of Jerusalem, and descending to as much as 400 m
(1,312 ft) below sea level in the east of the
region. Major urban areas in the region include
Jerusalem, Bethlehem
, Gush
Etzion
(including Beitar Illit
and Efrat
), Jericho
and Hebron.
Geographers divide Judea into several
distinct regions: the Hebron hills, the Jerusalem saddle, the
Bethel hills and the Judean
desert east of Jerusalem, which descends in a series of
steps to the Dead
Sea
. The hills are distinct for their
anticline structure. In ancient times the hills
were forested, and the
Bible records
agriculture and sheep farming being practiced in the area. Animals
are still grazed today, with shepherds moving them between the low
ground to the hilltops (which have more rainfall) as summer
approaches, while the slopes are still layered with centuries-old
stone
terracing. The region
dried out over the centuries and much of the ancient tree cover has
since disappeared.
History
Human settlement in Judea stretches back to the
Stone Age and the region is believed by
paleoanthropologists to have been one of
the routes through which
Homo
sapiens travelled
out
of Africa to
colonise the rest of
the world around 100,000 years ago.
Archaeological
evidence of human settlement dates back 11,000 years in the case of
the city of Jericho, believed to
be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the
world. In historic times, the region was inhabited by a
number of peoples, most famously the
Israelites.
Judea is central to much of the narrative of
the Torah, with the Patriarchs Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob said to
have been buried at Hebron in the
Tomb of the
Patriarchs
.
Judea was ruled by the
Kingdom of
Judah, a
client kingdom of
Persia, and later the
Seleucid dynasty of
Greece who were eventually
expelled from the region by
Judas
Maccabeus. The Maccabean family established the
Hasmonean dynasty of Kings who ruled in Judea for
over a century.
Roman conquest
Judea lost its independence to the Romans in the 1st century BCE,
by becoming first a tributary kingdom, then a province, of the
Roman Empire. The Romans had allied themselves to the
Maccabees and interfered again in 63 BCE,
following the end of the
Third
Mithridatic War, when general
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus stayed behind
to make the area secure for Rome. Queen
Alexandra Salome had recently died, and a
civil war broke out between her sons,
Hyrcanus II and
Aristobulus II. Pompeius restored Hyrcanus
but political rule passed to the
Herodian family, first as procuratores and
later as
client kings.
In
6 CE, Judea came under direct Roman rule as
the province of Iudaea
.
Eventually, the Jews rose against Roman rule in 66 CE in a
revolt that was unsuccessful. Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE
and much of the population was killed or enslaved.
Bar Kokhba revolt
The Jews
rebelled again 70 years
later under the leadership of
Simon bar
Kokhba and established the last Kingdom of Israel, which lasted
three years, before the Romans managed to conquer the province for
good, at a high cost in terms of manpower and expense.
After the defeat of Bar Kokhba (132-135 CE) the
Roman Emperor Hadrian
was determined to wipe out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea, and
renamed it Philistina (after the ancient enemy of the Israelites;
the Philistines). Until that time the area had been called
"province of Judea" by the Romans.
At the same time, he changed the name of
the city of Jerusalem to Aelia
Capitolina. The Romans killed many Jews and sold
many more into slavery; many Jews departed into the
Jewish diaspora, but there was never a
complete Jewish abandonment of the area.
20th century
As today's definition of Judea mostly covers the portion of the
West Bank south of Jerusalem, the following subdivisions of both
Israel and the PNA fall within the demographically-disputed
area:
PNA governorates
Israeli settlement councils
Chronology
[[Image:Levant 830.svg|thumb|272px|Map of the southern
Levant, c.830s BCE.
]]
Notes
External links
established
by the Maccabees, after 63 BCE under Roman
supremacy
(6-41, 44-66). This ended in the first
Jewish Revolt of 66 - 73, which saw
the Temple destroyed in 70.
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