Philo's works, On the Embassy to Gaius and Flaccus, give some details on Caligula's early reign, but mostly focus on events surrounding the Jewish population in Judea and Egypt with whom he sympathizes.

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus described Jericho as " the most fertile spot in Judea ".

" Antioch, a coastal city in northern Syria and the third largest in the Roman world, is often mentioned as this later home of the Matthean community, but it could have been any large city in the eastern Mediterranean with large Jewish and Christian populations, and recent research points towards a location near Galilee or Judea.

The Pharisees of Judea emerged as the new leaders of the Jewish community after the war, and the loss of the Temple and its priests and the ritual of sacrifice faced them with the problem of finding a new Jewish identity.

In 47 BCE the lives of Julius Caesar and his protege Cleopatra were saved by 3, 000 crack Jewish troops sent by King Hyrcanus II and commanded by Antipater, whose descendants Caesar made kings of Judea.

During the Jewish revolt, most Christians, at this time a sub-sect of Judaism, removed themselves from Judea.

Hadrian built a pagan idol on the Temple grounds and prohibited circumcision ; these acts of ethnocide provoked the Bar Kokhba revolt 132 – 136 CE after which the Romans banned the study of the Torah and the celebration of Jewish holidays, and forcibly removed virtually all Jews from Judea.

He was a key leader of the Jewish community during the Roman occupation of Judea.

Hebrew and later Aramaic were languages in use by the Jewish and Samaritan inhabitants of Judea prior to the Roman exile.

* The constellation of Jewish principalities in Roman Palestine was known as a tetrarchy ; see Tetrarchy ( Judea ).

* Cestius Gallus, legate of Syria, marches into Judea and leads a Roman army of 28, 000 soldiers to put down the Jewish rebellion.

* Province of Iudaea ( Judea ): Titus Flavius Vespasianus arrives in Ptolemais, along with Legio X Fretensis and Legio V Macedonica to put down the Jewish Revolt.

* The messianic, charismatic Jewish leader Simon bar Kokhba starts a war of liberation for Judea ( Bar Kokhba revolt ) against the Romans, which is eventually crushed ( in 135 ) by emperor Hadrian.

* Sextus Julius Severus, governor of Judea, begins in the summer a campaign against the Jewish rebel strongholds in the mountains.

** Nehemiah, prominent Jewish leader and governor of Judea ( then part of the Achaemenid empire )

Nebuchadnezzar soon dealt with these rebellions, capturing Jerusalem in 597 BCE and deposing King Jehoiakim, then in 587 BCE due to rebellion, destroying both the city and the temple, and deporting many of the prominent citizens along with a sizable portion of the Jewish population of Judea to Babylon.

** Mattathias, father of Judas Maccabaeus, Jewish priest from Modi ' in, near Jerusalem, who has started and briefly led a rebellion by the Jews in Judea against the Seleucid kingdom of Syria

The Israelites (, Standard: ; Tiberian: ; ISO 259-3: ) were a Semitic Hebrew-speaking people of the Ancient Near East, who inhabited part of the Land of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods ( 15th to 6th centuries BCE ), later evolving into Jews and Samaritans of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, inhabiting the territories of Judea and Galilee, and Samaria respectively, though a Jewish diaspora had already developed outside of Judea and Galilee.

These were a cadre of assassins among Jewish rebels intent on driving the Romans out of Judea.

Sicarii ( Latin plural of Sicarius ' dagger-men ' or later contract-killer, Hebrew סיקריקים ) is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, ( probably ) to an extremist splinter group of the Jewish Zealots, who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judea using concealed daggers ( sicae ).

" Judas " ( like the Hebrew " Judah ") refers to Judean identity, either membership in the state of Judea of the Graeco-Roman period or the Jewish people more generally.

* With the Seleucid victory in Judea over the Maccabees, Alcimus is re-established as the Jewish high priest and a strong force is left in Jerusalem to support him.

The city came to be ruled by the Hasmoneans, following the success of the Maccabean Revolt, and remained such until the Roman influence over the area brought Herod to claim the Hasmenean throne of Judea.

After the fall of Jerusalem to Vespasian's armies in the Great Revolt of Judea in 70 CE, Jericho declined rapidly, and by 100 CE it was but a small Roman garrison town.

Antiochus ' aggressive Hellenizing ( or de-Judaizing ) activities provoked a full scale armed rebellion in Judea — the Maccabean Revolt.

Following the Temple's destruction at the end of the First Jewish Revolt and the displacement to the Galilee of the bulk of the remaining Jewish population in Judea at the end of the Bar Kochva Revolt, Jewish tradition in the Talmud and poems from the period records that the descendants of each priestly watch established a separate residential seat in towns and villages of the Galilee, and maintained this residential pattern for at least several centuries in anticipation of the reconstruction of the Temple and reinstitution of the cycle of priestly courses.

At the outset of the reign of Antiochus V, there was an attempt by the Syrians to quell the Maccabean Revolt in Judea, but this ended in a weak compromise.

When Samaria, Judea proper and Idumea were first amalgamated into the Roman Judaea Province ( which some modern historians spell Iudaea ), from AD 6 to the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt in 66, officials of the Equestrian order ( the lower rank of governors ) governed.

He marched into Judea in 66 in an attempt to restore calm at the outset of the Great Jewish Revolt.

Nero's plan was never realized, and four cohorts saw service in Judea during the first revolt of AD 69 – 70, while the other six cohorts were involved in the Revolt of the Batavi in the same year.

Following the 1st century Great Revolt and the 2nd century Bar Kokhba revolt, the destruction of Judea exerted a decisive influence upon the dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the world, as the centre of worship shifted from the Temple to Rabbinic authority.

Archaeologist, Jonathan L. Reed summarises: " In terms of ethnicity, they shared the same socialised patterns of behaviour, and they were conscious of mutual descent in Judea, dating to the Maccabean Revolt, the occupation of the Diadochoi, the rebuilding of the Temple, Babylonian exile, and beyond.

Julianus ' revolt has been compared to the Bar Kokhba Revolt in neighboring Judea.

The escalation of tensions finally erupted as the Great Revolt of Judea, which began in the year 66 CE.

Seleucid control over the area of Judea began diminishing with the eruption of the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BC.

From there we see Jesus ' ministry move from Galilee ( chapters 4 – 9 ), through Samaria and Judea ( chs.

1 – 5 ), to Judea and Samaria ( chs.

1 – 5 ), and in all Judea and Samaria ( chs.

1 Maccabees, 1: 60 – 61 states that King Antiochus IV of Syria, the occupying power of Judea in 170 BCE, outlawed circumcision on penalty of death.

Egypt is identified in the Bible as the place of refuge that the Holy Family sought in its flight from Judea: " When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod the Great, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt I called My Son " ( Matthew 2: 12 – 23 ).

In 40 – 39, Herod the Great was appointed King of the Jews by the Roman Senate, and in 6 CE the last ethnarch of Judea was deposed by the emperor Augustus and his territories were combined with Idumea and Samaria and annexed as Iudaea Province under direct Roman administration.

Luke 1: 26 – " Nazareth " is called " a city of Judea ".

* March 24 – Marks the seventh successive year of the world wide boycott of all German exports initiated by front page declarations in Britain and the U. S. ' Judea declares war on Germany '

* Cuspius Fadus, governor of Judea ( 44 – 46 ), suppress the revolt of Theudas who is decapitated.

The Bar Kokhba revolt in Judea ( 132 – 135 ).

* 135 BC – Simon Maccabaeus, of Judea

* 164 BC – Antiochus IV Epiphanes (" God Manifest "), Seleucid king of the Syrian kingdom who has reigned since 175 BC, and has encouraged Greek culture and institutions but also attempted to suppress Judaism, which has led to the uprisings in Judea towards the end of his reign ( b. c. 215 BC )

* Aristobulus II, king and high priest of Judea ( 66 – 63 BC ; assassinated )

* Nehemiah, the Jewish cup-bearer to Artaxerxes I at Susa, is given permission by Artaxerxes to return to Jerusalem as governor of Judea, in order to rebuild parts of it ( Nehemiah 2: 5 – 8 ).

; 157 – 129 BCE: Hasmonean dynasty establishes its royal dominance in Judea during renewed war with Seleucid Empire.

In the 2nd century BCE, Judea lay between the Ptolemaic Kingdom based in Egypt and the Seleucid empire based in Syria, kingdoms formed after the death of Alexander the Great ( 336 – 323 BCE ).

In 57 – 55 BCE, Aulus Gabinius, proconsul of Syria, split the former Hasmonean Kingdom into Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, with five districts of legal and religious councils known as sanhedrin ( Greek: συνέδριον, " synedrion "): " And when he had ordained five councils ( συνέδρια ), he distributed the nation into the same number of parts.

He was a leading member of the Judea Workers ' Union in 1915 – 17.

; 1839: Lord Shaftesbury takes out a full-page advert in The Times addressed to the Protestant monarchs of Europe and entitled " The State and the rebirth of the Jews ", which included the suggestion for the Jews to return to Palestine to seize the lands of Galilee and Judea, as well as the phrase " Earth without people – people without land ".

During the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire 132 – 5 AD, the Jews of Judea struck Bar Kochba shekels.

** The state ruled by the Hasmoneans or " Maccabees " ( 140 – 37 BCE ), primarily known as Judea ( or cognates ) but also called Israel in the First Book of Maccabees

** The state ruled by Herod the Great and his heirs ( 37 – 4 BCE ), primarily known as Judea ( or cognates ) but also called Israel in the Gospels and Acts

Elsewhere in the empire, Cyrus was able to identify elite native groups to help him rule his new subjects – such as the priesthood of Judea.