In today's lecture, we learned about the splitting of the 12 tribes into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Israel went on to build new temples and places of worship since they no longer controlled Jerusalem and didn't want to always travel to Judah to worship. Although Judah condemned this, archaeological evidence suggests that they did the same and built other temples as well. We also talked about the Assyrians and how they were gaining tremendous amounts of power. In 722 BCE, they conquered the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and treated the inhabitants terribly. Because of this, many of them left Israel and went down to Judah to be closer to Jerusalem. Since Judah was prospering and wasn't conquered, they claimed to be protected by God. Because of this, Jerusalem grew exponentially and was expanded as a city. This created some problems such as religious diversity and conflict, but the city prospered overall. Although they weren't conquered by the Assyrians, records suggest that they were preparing for an attack. Hezekiah says that they built a large wall to protect them selves and also created Hezekiah's tunnel to bring in water. Some archaeologists also believe that they stored huge amounts of food in case the city was attacked so that they would not starve.
No comments:
Post a Comment