Israel
From the Hebrew name יִשְׂרָאֵל (Yisra'el) meaning "God contended".
The name 'Israel' was first given to the son of Isaac, Jacob, after he wrestled with an angel of the Lord by the river Jabbok (Genesis 32:22-32) at Peniel/Penuel. Jacob's descendants later become the people of Israel, or the Israelites, or the Tribes of Israel of which there were twelve.
Eventually these tribes settled in the Land of Caanan (modern Palestine and Israel) after defeating the Caananites. Prior to this conquest, the Israelites were know as Hebrews, still the descendants of Jacob, or 'Israel', but once they had this 'Promised Land' that they named Israel after their ancestor, they came to be called or call themselves Israelites, or the Nation of Israel -not just a land but also a people similar to the Navajo Nation.
The first temple was constructed under King Solomon (970-931 BCE).
After King Solomon there was a schism between the Tribe of Judah and the 10 tribes in the northern reaches of the Kingdom of Israel and there was a subsequent split. The result of this was two kingdoms, Israel in the north with Samaria as its capital and the Kingdom of Judah in the south with its capital in Jerusalem. (~9th Century BCE)
Around 740 BCE the Assyrian Empire invaded Israel for the next twenty years the rulers of Assyria (Modern Syria) laid conquest to Israel when Sargon II finally sacked Samaria in 722 BCE. The ten tribes of Israel were forcibly resettled and became known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Assyria attempted to do the same to Judah further south but were never able to take Jerusalem and so Judah endured.
In 605 BCE the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, this resulted in King Jehoiakim of Judah paying tribute to Nebuchadnezzar. After a few years he refuse to pay and another siege was laid this time resulting in the King of Judah's death. The King's successor and the other Judahites were subsequently exiled to Babylon, the deportations took place from 597 to 586. It was in the year 586 that the first temple constructed under Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians.
In 539 the Persian Empire conquered Babylon and within a year the Persian Cyrus decrees that the Judahites can return to Jerusalem. In 520-515 the second temple is founded, marking the beginning of the Second Temple Period. The re-settlement of the high-cast Judahites is also when Judah comes to be called Judea, and the Judahites become called Judeans for which the term 'Jew' is derived. It is important to note that Judea was still under the foreign rule of Persia. It is also important to note that some of the Samarian people survived in the northern kingdom. The Samaritans were the descendants of these Israelites, even had their own version of the Torah (Hebrew Scriptures/Bible). When some approached the Judeans to join in temple worship they were rebuked. The Judeans claimed an ethnic superiority because they did not inter-marry with other cultures as the Samaritans had, and conflict ensued, bad blood persisted through Jesus's time centuries later.
In 333 Alexander the Great conquers Persia and the rule of Judea fell to Alexander and Macedonia (Greece). Shortly after the Septuagint, the first translation of the Hebrew bible was written in Alexandria, Egypt. In Jesus's time this was the predominant translation read as many in Judea spoke and read Greek in addition to possibly speaking Aramaic. The Hebrew dialect was all but dead by then.
Alexander did not live long, dying at the age of 33. His kingdom was split between his two greatest generals forming two new kingdoms, the Seleucid in the north and Ptolemaic in the south. Judea was caught in the middle and changed hands a couple times before becoming part of the northern Seleucid Kingdom in 200 BCE. In the second century the Seleucid ruler tried to Hellenize (make more Greek) Jerusalem and this provoked the Maccabean revolt (174-135 BCE) which effectively ended Greek rule of Judea.
The resulting ruling family would come to be called the Hasmonean Dynasty, like any dynasty it was a succession of inheritance. The Hasmoneans were king-priests and they ruled Judea with the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Essenes as the principal Jewish social movements. The Pharisees eventually formed the first schools which eventually led to Rabbinic Judaism. The Sanhedrin administered justice and this was a Rabbinic assembly (Pharisees) which eventually had more legal control than the High Priest (a.k.a. the Hasmonean King)
The Hasmonean dynasty lasted until around 47 BCE, but became subjects of Rome in 64 BCE when the Roman General Pompey intervened in a Hasmonean civil war. In 47 BCE King Hyrcanus II of Judea sent troops to Alexandria to assist Julius Caesar led by Antipater. They saved the lives of Caesar and Cleopatra, Caesar rewarded Antipater by making his descendants kings of Judea which began the Herodian dynasty. This dynasty endured from 47BCE through the time of Jesus.
In our modern timeline Jesus was thought to have lived from year 4 BCE to around 30 CE (33 years).
In 66 CE (AD) Jews rose up against Rome declaring a nation of Israel, and in 70 CE Jerusalem was sacked by Rome which resulted in the destruction of the second temple, thus ending the second temple period. The revolt was put down but violence continued for decades.
In 131 Emperor Hadrian had a temple of Jupiter (Zeus) built over the ruins of the Jerusalem temple, Jews were banned from living in Jerusalem itself and the region was renamed Palestine after the Philistines of the past.
From 132-136 CE yet another Jewish revolt took place. Christians refused to take part in the revolt and from this point Jews considered Christianity a separate religion. The revolts was crushed (of course) and Jews were again exile from Judea (but the region of Galilee was not exiled).
The Jewish scholar Josephus (37-100 CE) records many of the events that happened at the end of the second temple period. In Rome he wrote accounts that were both pro-state (Rome) and apologetic (favoring Jews).
A lot happens from 135 CE to 1920 CE but I would like to go over the contemporary state of Israel.
The 20th Century
After the first world war many Jews began to migrate back to Palestine (which was under British rule). Palestine had changed much over the may centuries since the Jews were originally exiled. A particular surge of Jews returning to the lands of Palestine followed World War II, there were a lot of political issues and a fair amount of violence that emerged out of this including a civil war. A certain population of Jews had always remain in the region but they had been, by in large the minority.
In May of 1948 the State of Israel was established (Independence declared). In the contemporary vernacular we do not refer to citizens of Israel as Israelites, rather they are called Israelis. Jews are now referred to as a person that adheres to the practices of the Jewish Rabbinic religion and/or the ethnic descendant of such persons. Not all Israelis are Jews, there are some citizens that were born from Russian immigrants or from other regions. Not all Jewish Israelis are what one would call 'practicing'. And obviously not all Jews living in the world today are Israelis. The State of Israel also has a large Muslim population residing primarily in a region called The West Bank in the Eastern part of Israel on the West side of the River Jordan from the middle of the Dead Sea in the South to about 10 miles south of Nazareth in the North. The Gaza Strip is another region of Israel that is predominantly Muslim-held, it lies along the Mediterranean from Israel's southern boarder for about 20 miles and is anywhere from 4 to 8 miles in width. The land mass of Israel is about eight thousand square miles, in comparison, the State of Maryland is approximately 12,400 square miles in size. Israel is slightly smaller than Kern County, CA (Bakersfield).
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