The first episode carried this story from its deep beginning down to the year one hundred and thirty-five. A people called the Jews had lived on this land for more than a thousand years and built kingdoms on it. They had made one city, Jerusalem, and one Temple inside it, the centre of their faith -- a faith in a single God, worshipped without images, in that one place above all. Rome conquered the land, and when the Jews rose against Rome, Rome destroyed the Temple. Two generations later it crushed a second Jewish revolt, barred the Jews from Jerusalem, and renamed the land itself: It had been Judaea, a word that pointed straight at the Jewish people; it became Palestine. Many Jews were killed, or sold into slavery, or scattered across the world.
But the scattering was not the whole of it, because not everyone left.
I’m Allen Schyf, and this is Polite Disputes.
Music: Truth Be Told by Maarten Schellekens
