The Second Temple Period

After the return from exile, Jerusalem and its rebuilt Temple formed the heart of a small autonomous province, Yehud, led by high priests. Coins of Judea bearing the inscription "Yehud" testify to this relative autonomy, while the Elephantine papyri document the relations of Egypt's Jewish diaspora with Jerusalem. Excavations around the Temple Mount have produced a few elements from the Persian and Hellenistic periods.

In 332 BCE Alexander the Great conquered the region. After his death, Judea passed under the rule of the Ptolemies of Egypt and then, from 200 BCE, of the Seleucids of Syria. Greek culture spread among the elites; it was also in Alexandria that the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, was undertaken.

The Maccabean revolt

In 167 BCE the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes banned the practice of Judaism and desecrated the Temple. The revolt led by the priest Mattathias and his sons, among them Judah the Maccabee, ended with the recapture of Jerusalem and the purification of the Temple in 164 BCE, commemorated by the festival of Hanukkah. Under Simon, around 140 BCE, Judea became independent in all but name: this was the beginning of the Hasmonean dynasty, which combined the high priesthood with, from Aristobulus I onwards, the royal title.

Under John Hyrcanus I and Alexander Jannaeus, the Hasmonean kingdom expanded into Idumea, Samaria, Galilee and part of Transjordan. The small bronze coins struck by these kings, inscribed in paleo-Hebrew script, are among the most common finds in excavations. The Hasmonean winter palaces at Jericho, with their swimming pools, bear witness to the dynasty's prosperity, and the desert fortresses — Alexandrium, Hyrcania, Machaerus and, according to Josephus, Masada — show how the kingdom organised its defence against outside pressure.

This is also when the main currents of Judaism described by Josephus took shape: Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. In 63 BCE, taking advantage of a civil war between two Hasmonean brothers, the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem: Judea entered Rome's orbit.

Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls

North-western shore of the Dead SeaQumran, the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: excavations and visitingBedouin shepherds, eleven caves and some 900 manuscripts: the site that yielded the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible, and the riddle of who hid them.View site →

Between 1947 and 1956, eleven caves near Qumran, on the north-western shore of the Dead Sea, yielded the remains of some 900 manuscripts copied between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE. About a quarter are biblical books — every book of the Hebrew Bible is represented except Esther — and they are the oldest copies known. The rest are para-biblical texts and writings specific to a community, such as the Community Rule and the War Scroll. The Great Isaiah Scroll, copied in the 2nd century BCE, is very close to the Masoretic text transmitted a thousand years later.

The nearby site of Khirbet Qumran, excavated by Roland de Vaux in the 1950s, is generally interpreted as the centre of a Jewish community, often identified with the Essenes; it was destroyed by the Romans around 68 CE. Other interpretations, such as a villa, a pottery workshop or a small fort, have been proposed.

Appointed king of Judea by the Roman Senate in 40 BCE, Herod the Great reigned in practice from 37 to 4 BCE. A great builder, he undertook around 20–19 BCE the complete rebuilding of the Temple and roughly doubled the area of the esplanade, supported by immense retaining walls. The Talmud preserves the memory of it (Bava Batra 4a).

Archaeology reveals the scale of this work. Along the Western Wall, the tunnels expose colossal blocks, one of them more than 13 metres long. To the south and south-west of the esplanade, the excavations begun by Benjamin Mazar in 1968 uncovered the Herodian street and its shops, the monumental stairways leading to the Huldah Gates, the ritual baths (mikvaot) used by pilgrims and the surviving springer of Robinson's Arch. They also found a stone inscribed in Hebrew "to the place of trumpeting", fallen from the top of the wall; elsewhere in the city, a Greek inscription forbade non-Jews, on pain of death, from entering the sacred precinct.

Herod also built the harbour of Caesarea Maritima, a feat of engineering, the palace-fortresses of Masada and Herodium — where archaeologist Ehud Netzer identified in 2007 what he believed to be the king's tomb — and the enclosure of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. His palaces reveal the luxury of the Herodian court and the influence of Roman art: frescoes, stucco, mosaics and bathhouses.

It is in this Jerusalem that the Gospels set the last part of the life of Jesus. Several discoveries echo this context: the Pontius Pilate inscription found at Caesarea in 1961, the ossuary bearing the name "Joseph son of Caiaphas" discovered in Jerusalem in 1990, and the Herodian-period Pool of Siloam, uncovered in 2004.

After Herod's death, Judea gradually came under the direct administration of Roman prefects and procurators. Tensions culminated in 66 CE in the Great Jewish Revolt. In 70 CE, after a long siege, the legions of Titus captured Jerusalem and set the Temple on fire in the month of Av — on the 9th according to Jewish tradition, the 10th according to Josephus.

The remains of this destruction are striking: the blocks from the esplanade hurled down onto the Herodian street, still lying where they fell at the foot of Robinson's Arch, or the "Burnt House" in the Jewish Quarter, where a stone weight bears the name of the priestly family of Kathros. In Rome, the Arch of Titus, erected around 81 CE, shows on one of its reliefs Roman soldiers carrying the menorah and the Temple vessels in triumph.

The last rebels held out at Masada, which fell in 73 or 74 CE; according to Josephus, its defenders chose death over captivity, an account whose details historians still debate. The Roman siege ramp and the besiegers' camps are still visible there.

• 332 BCE — Conquest by Alexander the Great.
• 167–164 BCE — The Maccabean revolt and the purification of the Temple (Hanukkah).
• 63 BCE — Pompey captures Jerusalem.
• 37–4 BCE — Reign of Herod the Great; rebuilding of the Temple from 20–19 BCE.
• 66–70 CE — The Great Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple.
• 73 or 74 CE — Fall of Masada.