The Entire History of the Jews | Jewish History Documentary

Jews, Hebrews, Israelites. The chosen people. They are known by many names, and are one of the oldest people inhabiting the world today, and yet their true history is relatively unknown. They made a covenant with a God whose name they are forbidden to even pronounce. Since very early in their history they witnessed miracles and interacted with supernatural beings. Jewish sages and cabalists are possessors of an amazing arcane knowledge few people have access to. In this documentary, we will delve deep into the entire history of the Jews, from their origins to the present day. Welcome. In 1896,

legendary Egyptologist and archaeologist Sir William Flinders Petrie made an incredible discovery in the sands of Thebes, Egypt. He and his team uncovered a 10 feet high (3 meters) black granite slab, completely covered in hieroglyphic scripture and drawings. It was a celebratory inscription made by Pharaoh Merneptah, who ruled Egypt between 1213 and 1203 BCE. Most of the Merneptah Stele describes his victory against the Libyan invaders who threatened his reign and his predecessor’s, Ramesses the Great. Libya was known at the time as “The Land of the Nine Bows”, because they were unbeatable in ranged combat. Merneptah, however,

crushed them by attacking from all sides with loose, fast cavalry. Egyptians were known for disliking empty spaces, so at the end of the Stele, when the Libyan campaign description was finished, the royal scribe added a few lines detailing another, minor campaign by Pharaoh Merneptah, this time to Canaan. The Stele reads: The princes are prostrate, saying ‘Peace!’ Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows. Desolation is for Tjehenu; Hatti is pacified; Plundered is the Canaan with every evil; Carried off is Asqaluni; Seized upon is Gezer; Yanoam is made non-existent; Israel is laid waste—its seed is

no more; Kharru has become a widow because of Egypt. All lands together are pacified. Everyone who was restless has been bound. One name stands out among the others. This is in fact the first written attestation of the name ISRAEL. It is clear that they were well-established neighbors to Egypt, and even more, a palpable threat to their power. Otherwise, they would not even be named in such an important royal document. More interesting is the fact that the first known mention of the people of Israel describes precisely their defeat. The Stele claims “its seed is no more”,

implying that Egypt killed every last one of the Israeli men. And perhaps they thought they did, but somehow, the people of Israel managed to survive and build an impressive heritage. As we will see throughout this video, this theme of destruction, survival and resurrection will become common in Jewish history. Now, before we continue, we must address a common historical misconception. According to the biblical books of Genesis and Exodus, Israelites living in the Nile Delta were captured and enslaved by the Egyptian Pharaoh. The official story says that when Egyptian kings decided to build the pyramids, they used

Israeli slaves, which they called Hebrews. Actually, the only thing that is real in such a story is the name, as Hebrew is in fact how the Egyptians called nomadic Israelites, to distinguish them from other Canaanites. The truth is, the pyramids were already there by the time Jews appeared in history, and Egyptians would never allow foreigners so close to all their most important secrets that were buried within the pyramids. During the times of Ramesses the Second, also known as Ramesses the Great, short before Pharaoh Merneptah published his now famous Stele, a Hebrew magician by the name

of Moses arrived in Egypt. The Bible claims that he was prompted to free the Hebrew slaves by the One True God, Yahweh, who presented Himself in the form of a burning bush at the top of Mount Horeb. But the truth is much more interesting than that. As we have stated, there were no Hebrew slaves in Egypt. The only Hebrews that lived in Egypt had established themselves in the northern Delta area, a green, fertile zone where they cultivated their foods and traded with nomadic Canaanites and Libyans. Yahweh was a warrior god, a supernatural entity capable of

enormous destruction and revenge, and He despised the polytheistic Egyptians. However Israelites were not ready to fight against the mighty armies of Egypt at the height of their power, and those who lived in the Delta preferred to worship the Egyptian gods and live at their leisure instead of surviving in the desert. This angered Yahweh. He then sent a single man, Moses, to assert the power of the One God, Yahweh, and ask the Egyptians to deport Hebrews to the desert. Moses and his brother Aaron appeared before the pharaoh and asked him to “free the Israelites”. The pharaoh

then demanded that Moses perform a miracle, as proof of his prowess as a magician. Aaron then throws down the staff of Moses to the ground, where it turns into a giant snake. This did not impress the pharaoh, who instructed his court magicians to do exactly the same. Every Egyptian magician was easily able to summon a snake out of thin air, but then Moses’ snake devoured the others. The pharaoh considered this to be an insolence, and so he threw both Moses and Aaron out of his palace. Moses then goes back into the desert and relates what

happened in Egypt to Yahweh, who then takes matters into His hands. He made Moses return to Egypt to ask the pharaoh to “free the Israelites”. He did this seven times, and after every time Pharaoh refused, Yahweh would release a new plague. Pharaoh’s magicians, much more powerful than Moses, were easily able to counter the first plagues: turning the Nile to blood, and producing a plague of frogs. The third plague, an invasion of gnats or mosquitoes, was not so easy to offset, and Moses told the Pharaoh that the only way to remove the plagues was for Hebrews

to worship Yahweh. Pharaoh then instructed the Hebrews in the Nile Delta to worship Moses’ god in order to get rid of the other plagues: Flies, death of livestock, boils, thunderstorms of hail and fire, and locusts. After the latter, finally Ramesses the Great agreed to expel the Hebrews from Egypt, and they became followers of Moses, who led them to the desert east of the Nile. The Seven Plagues of Egypt were not directed against the Egyptians themselves, but against the Hebrews that lived in Egypt! They were considered heathens because they abandoned their original faith only to live

a prosperous, easy life in Egypt. This is proven by another story from the Bible, featuring the famous Golden Calf. When Moses went up to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments directly from god, Israelites were left at the base of the mountain for forty days and nights. They began losing faith and even thought Moses had left them and would not come back, so they defied the rules of Yahweh, according to which it was forbidden to worship any image of a god. In fact, according to their religion, god cannot be looked at, depicted, or touched, and

even His name cannot be said. Instead, Israelites refer to Him as Elohim (the plural for Gods), or Adonai (My Lord), but they can never utter the four letters that make Yahweh’s name, known as the Tetragrammaton. At the base of Mount Sinai, Israelites gathered all their golden rings and earrings, melted them, and made Aaron build an image… of a calf. The bull is a very common deity in Egypt, named Apis. Apis was a god of the underworld, but also of fertility, and since many Hebrews had lived in Egypt and were worried about finding food in the

desert, it was only natural that they turned to Apis for help, offering him sacrifices and burnt offerings. At the same time, Moses was up the mountain, speaking to god. He gave him two Tablets made of Stone, and in each of them engraved 5 Commandments, 10 in total. These were the main laws every Hebrew needed to obey if they wanted to please Yahweh. But when Moses came down and saw the Calf, he was furious, as the Hebrews had broken two of the Commandments: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”, and “Thou shalt not make unto

thee any graven image”. He burnt down the Golden Calf in a fire, ground it to powder, mixed it with water and forced the Israelites to drink that. In the Biblical text, it is said that not every Israelite adored the Calf. Now, at this point a couple of precisions about the origins of Israelites are needed. The traditional ancestor of all Israelites is the Patriarch Jacob, the twin brother of Esau. Rebekah, their mother, was told by Yahweh that her two children would grow up and found a great nation, but that Esau would end up serving Jacob. Esau

founded Edom, and Jacob changed his name to Israel after meeting a mysterious stranger, an ancient astronaut who seemed to know all the secrets of the land. This was not the only meeting with extraterrestrial beings Jacob had. When he fled from his home in fear of his brother and sought refuge in Mesopotamia, he had a dream in which he was able to see a strange device that connected Earth and space. Not knowing a better word for this transportation machine, he called it a ladder, and he could see extraterrestrials, which he deemed angels, traveling between Earth and

the skies. This is when he met Yahweh Himself. Yahweh descended to Earth to tell Jacob that he had made a covenant with his grandfather, Abraham. He promised Jacob that his people would rule the land of Canaan, provided he had many children to occupy it. So Jacob had 13 children and established himself in Egypt with some of them, but others dispersed around the north of Africa and Asia. His children each formed an independent “tribe”, or extended family. However, the Biblical story names only 12 tribes of Israel, and there has been speculation as to what happened to

the lost 13th tribe. We will return to this topic later. The Bible is full of stories about people whose lives were incredibly long, and suggestively, all of these people had encounters with extraterrestrial beings. Jacob died in Egypt at the age of 147. This happened 500 years before Moses came to “rescue” the Hebrews from Egypt. Now, going back to Mount Sinai and the Golden Calf, it is said that only one of the tribes, called the Levites because they descended from one of Jacob’s sons named Levi, refused to worship the Golden Calf. They were thus spared by

Moses, but he unleashed his wrath against the rest of the tribes, murdering between 3,000 and 23,000 Jews that same night. From that night on, and only because Israelites engaged in the religious rites they had known for centuries, their whole generation was banned from entering the Promised Land. Only after they were all dead, their children could finally establish themselves in Canaan, the Land of Honey and Milk. Also, from that point onwards, only members from the tribe of Levi could be considered Jewish priests. Now, who was this vengeful, incredibly cruel, and destructive god, Yahweh? Thanks to the

work of historians, theologians, and archaeologists, we have come to learn a lot about religions in the Ancient Near East. There is one exception, however. His name is shrouded in mystery, as it does not belong to any language spoken at the time. For this reason, it is speculated that His name is not of terrestrial origin, and for that same reason, His followers are prohibited from uttering this name. Not only this, Yahweh never disclosed His name to Jacob or Abraham. They had passed centuries worshipping and unknown god before revealing the four Hebrew letters of His name to

Moses. The origins of the cult of Yahweh are much more transparent. The most widely accepted theory suggests that Yahweh originated as a minor deity in southern Canaan. Canaanites worshipped a plethora of minor deities, including Yahweh, Asherah, the mother goddess, and Baal, who also appears in the Bible as a challenger to Yahweh’s supremacy in Israel. In early Canaanite mythology, Yahweh and Baal were merely two of the 70 children of their main god, El. Canaanites passed their worship of Yahweh, among others, to some nomadic tribes known as Shasu, who then dispersed this worship throughout the ancient world,

including Egypt. The first historical document mentioning the god Yahweh is an inscription dating to the rule of Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, a contemporary of Moses. At one point, the inscription talks about the “Shasu of Yehw”, and early scholars assumed that Yehw was the place of origin of the Shasu, but this is not likely due to the nomadic nature of the Shasu, who were constantly moving between northern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and Canaan. But Yahweh was not the typical Canaanite agricultural or weather god. He was a divine warrior. He was ambitious and did not stop until

he was revered as the Only God in the pantheon. The first step was to take the place of the foremost god in the Canaanite pantheon, El. El was known in Canaan as the creator of heavenly armies, much like the ones Jacob had seen in the sky. And as we have already seen, one of the authorized names of Yahweh, Elohim, begins with the name of the god El. In the Bible there are several mentions of conflict between Yahweh and other Canaanite gods, but not with El, suggesting that at some point in time they fused together or

Yahweh took his place. Thanks to Erich von Däniken’s books, we are all familiar with the Anunnaki, an alien race of beings with incredible strength and superhuman size, who were considered gods in the ancient Sumerian pantheon. They landed in Mesopotamia thousands of years before the times of Abraham and Jacob, but remember that Jacob had his encounters with Yahweh when he was living in Mesopotamia. This implies that there might be a connection between the Anunnaki and Yahweh just like there is a connection between them and the Egyptian gods like Thoth, the real builder of the Great Pyramids.

Yahweh even makes references to “fallen angels” in the Bible, which are the giants known as Nephilim. The Bible is a source of information not only about the nature of Yahweh, but about how the original Jews lived. As we have seen, not every story from the Bible is based on concrete facts, but they all have a grain of truth. Let’s take for example a passage from the Book of Ezekiel, one of the major prophetic books of the Christian Bible and the Hebrew Bible, known as the Tanakh. The Book records the six visions the Prophet Ezekiel had

during his exile in Babylon, in the 6th century BCE. Ezekiel 1:4 Ezekiel tells of his vision of a merkavah, or chariot. This became important in the Middle Ages, with the foundation of a whole school of kabbalistic thought called Merkavah mysticism. In reality, the vision of Ezekiel describes a close encounter with extraterrestrials. In his account, the heavenly chariot was driven by “a likeness of a man,” only bigger. The vehicle had four wheels and was pulled by four humanoid creatures, each one with two pairs of wings and faces that blended animal and human features. This was actually

a spaceship, a vehicle ancient astronauts used to travel from and to the Earth. The Bible is full of references to impossible vehicles, including Noah’s Ark, a ship so big that every species of animal on Earth fit inside it. The story of Noah also helps to show how the Bible is inspired by other texts from the time. The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, composed long before the Bible, has a similar myth about a Great Flood. In this story, the highest god, Enlil, decides to destroy the world with a flood because humans have become too noisy. The earth

god Ea, the creator of humankind out of clay, forewarns a hero by the name of Utnapishtim about the destruction that is about to happen and gives him instructions for building a giant boat to overcome the flood. As we know, this is exactly the same story of Noah and the Ark from the Bible. And the similarities do not end there. The Babylonian creation myth, called Enuma Elish, is very similar to the creation described in Genesis 1, including the creation of the world out of water, the separation of darkness and light, and the establishment of order by

a single mighty divinity. The Bible is full of accounts of sightings of heavenly beings. Some canonical Jewish texts such as Psalms 19:2 claim “The heavens declare the glory of God”, implying that the worship of Yahweh is not restricted to humans on Earth but also to heavenly beings living beyond the skies. The social structure of the early Jews is also described in the Bible. Originally, they were nomadic and organized themselves in tribes, led by a patriarch. The family or tribe was thus the most important social structure to them, and it continued to be so when they

finally settled in Canaan, the Promised Land. As we have already seen, every Israelite who was alive at the time of the Golden Calf incident was unable to enter the Promised Land. This included Moses, who was left behind when the tribes crossed the river Jordan, now under the leadership of his son Joshua. After 40 years in the desert, they finally were able to establish themselves in Canaan, building cities and a Temple in Jerusalem. In order to achieve this, they exterminated the Canaanites that inhabited the region, citing their God-given right to the Promised Land. There, they wrote

and codified the Pentateuch or Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, and developed their religious practices. These included sacrifices, and festivals like Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and Passover. The Torah also explains the dietary restrictions of Jews, who are forbidden to eat meat from camels, pigs, hares, and shellfish. Originally, each of the 12 tribes was self-governed and coexisted without the need to build a state, but once in Canaan, and with so many powerful neighbors, the elders of all Israeli tribes decided that they needed a king. A Jew named Saul was appointed king, but

did not last long, as he soon disobeyed Yahweh, and was punished by Him. Yahweh had him killed in battle against the Philistines. The next king of Israel and Judah was David. David also faced challenges, both from his neighbors and from the Israelites, who started a civil war that forced David to flee momentarily. He gathered support and returned to Israel, crushed the revolt and forged a powerful and unified Israelite monarchy. He was a successful military leader, who defeated the Philistines and avenged Saul, also securing the borders of Israel. It is at this time in history that

we can begin to talk about a true Israel empire, which exerted dominance over the neighboring Philistia, Moab, Edom, and Ammon, and even managed to subdue the Aramaean city-states of Aram-Zobah and Aram-Damascus into becoming vassal states. David is succeeded by his son Solomon. Solomon is remembered as a great king, famous for his wealth and his sense of justice. It is Salomon also who built the First Temple. It was located at a very important location, on top of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, exactly where Solomon’s father, King David, had had a meeting with an extraterrestrial angel. The Temple

of Solomon was the first embodiment of the arcane knowledge passed on for generations that the Israelites had been given directly by Yahweh. This is why many scientists and researchers have carefully studied what each part of the Temple meant. The Book of Kings describes in detail how the Temple of Solomon was built. The entrance to the Temple was supported by two sturdy columns or pillars, the right one was called Jachin (meaning “He establishes”) and the left one was named Boaz (“in His strength”). These embodied the duality of all the cosmos, and in medieval tarot cards, one

can see that the High Priestess is surrounded by two columns, one with the letter B and one with the letter J. Apart from the duality expressed in the columns, the Temple was divided into three, because three was considered the number of God, perfection, harmony, and wisdom. The first part was a great court with an altar for burnt offerings, where the people of Israel assembled to worship God. This part of the temple was public. Then, there was the holy place, which consisted of an enclosed room with a golden candlestick, a golden altar for incense, and a

table. This room was not public but was open to Israelites when the priests officiated ceremonies. Finally, there was the Holy of the Holies, forbidden to everyone but the high priest once a year. Inside this mysterious room there rested the kaporet or mercy seat, which was the gold lid placed over the Ark of the Covenant. It featured two gold cherubim at the ends, symbolizing the space in which Yahweh appeared and dwelled. This was connected with the rituals of Yom Kippur, which was the only day in the year when the Holy of the Holies could be accessed.

Solomon also went on to rebuild numerous significant cities that had been destroyed, including Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer. Unfortunately, when he died around 926 BCE, the tension between the tribes of Israel transformed into another civil war. Solomon's successor was his son Rehoboam, who could not prevent the unified monarchy from splitting into two kingdoms, the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital. Separated, and under no strong leadership, the Kingdom of Israel was conquered in 722 BCE by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Kingdom of Judah managed to resist for a century,

but in 586 BCE was finally defeated by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and all the Israelites were enslaved. After winning the battle of Charchemish against the Egyptians, Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar became the most important empire in the Ancient World. Easily defeating the fragile kingdom of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar chose to impose tribute on the Jews, which they did… for three years. After that, the Israelites revolted against Babylonia, in what came to be known as the Jewish-Babylonian War which lasted from 601 to 586 BCE. During this time, Jerusalem was sieged at least two times, and finally, the Babylonian army entered

the city, enslaved the population, and destroyed Solomon's Temple. Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem in his 18th year of reign or 587 BCE. Five years later, the King deported all the Jews to Babylonia’s capital city. There, the Jews remained until 539 BCE, when the Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to the Achaemenid Empire. The Persian Achaemenids allowed Jews to return to Judah, and two years later they began constructing the Second Temple. Most of the exiled Jews did not return to Jerusalem. Many settled in what is now northern Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. The period of captivity in Babylonia was important to

Jewish history because many of the canonical texts of the Jewish religion were written at this time, including most of the Prophet’s books like Ezekiel’s. Jeremiah also wrote about the exile, and so other important books like Daniel’s, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the "Story of the Three Youths" and the books of Tobit and Judith were written during the exile. Finally, the definitive redaction of the Pentateuch was done in the Persian period after the exile. The Book of Lamentations is dedicated entirely to the Babylonian captivity. Also importantly, it was during this period that the Hebrew alphabet was

adopted, and the Torah was redacted. As there was no central Temple in which to gather, private practices based on the Torah became common, and many of the sacred rites of modern Judaism started during the exile in Babylon. In fact, it can be claimed that this is precisely when the Jewish religion started. One of the main religious consequences of exile was that Jews no longer organized themselves according to tribes, but by smaller family groups that followed Jewish leaders, be it scribes, sages, or the Prophets themselves. For this reason, when Babylonia fell and was conquered by the

Persian Empire in 540 BCE, many Jews did not leave immediately back to Judah but chose to follow their Prophets. According to the Holy Scriptures, only those Jews adherent to the teachings of Ezra and Nehemiah followed them back to Judah and resumed their traditional practices. The rest chose to either stay in Babylonia or establish themselves elsewhere in the Persian Empire. Those Jews who returned to Judah, or Zion as they began to call the Promised Land, immediately began reconstructing the Temple. This is why, regardless of where Jews were established in the post-exilic times, this period is known

to historians as the Second Temple Period. It lasted approximately 600 years between 516 BCE and 70 AD, during which time when the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem before it was destroyed by the Romans. This was a highly conflictive period in which the Kingdom of Judah enjoyed certain freedom only to be later annexed to the Hellenistic Empire, the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the Seleucid Empire, and Rome. Soon after the conquest, Persian king Cyrus the Great issued a law known as the Edict of Cyrus, in which he encouraged exiles of different origins to return to their

homelands. The Edict also stipulated that the Jerusalem area would be made an autonomous province within the Achaemenid Empire but governed by the Jews. Those Jews who returned to their homeland were even offered help rebuilding the Temple, which they did not reject. The Persian era laid the foundations for the unified Judaic religion and the beginning of a scriptural canon. The final Torah, which had been redacted during the exile, was finished during the Persian period. It was the Prophet Ezra who had a pivotal role in its promulgation. At first, then, Jerusalem was reconstructed, and while the Temple

was finished, it did not have the same significance and importance as it did in the times of Solomon. In 332 BCE, the Persian Empire was conquered by the Macedonian armies of Alexander the Great. Alexander did not stay long in any of his possessions but continued conquering lands until he reached the Indus River. After turning back, he died in Babylon under mysterious circumstances at the age of 32. After his death, his generals divided the empire among themselves, and Judea became a frontier region between the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Egypt. Judea was considered a vassal state to

the Ptolemies, and the governance of the region was left to the hereditary office of the High Priest of Israel. This period of relative peace between 301 and 219 BCE saw the rise of Hellenistic Judaism, a syncretism that had started among the Jewish diaspora at Alexandria and later spread to Judea and Antioch. During this period, the Hebrew Bible was translated from Hebrew and Aramaic to Koiné Greek. This helped disseminate the traditions of Judaism among Jews from Alexandria and other parts of the Hellenistic kingdoms who had lost the ability to speak Hebrew or Aramaic. The importance of

Jewish religious leaders also grew during this period. Jewish leaders were perceived by other empires as valuable allies, and for this reason, when the Seleucid king Antiochus III captured the Judea region for the Seleucid Empire, he made efforts to protect Jewish culture and Jewish institutions. However, this was not the case with the Roman Empire, who considered Jews just an ignorant people who worshiped only one God. After Pompey's conquest of Judea in 63 BCE, he let the local leader Hyrcanus II keep his role. However, in practice, he did not have any power, and the whole region was

governed by a Roman official named Antipater. When Julius Caesar's civil war broke out back in Rome, he attempted to install one of his own men on the throne of Judea; however, Pompey, the conqueror of Judea, poisoned his candidate and beheaded his son, keeping the throne of Judea for himself and his sons Phasael and Herod. Herod was appointed King of the Jews by the Senate of Rome in the year 37 BCE. His rule was known for its cruelty and tyranny. Herod's rule was despotic, and he sought to suppress any manifestation of discontent by the population, especially

Jews. His secret police was infamous for monitoring and reporting the feelings of the inhabitants directly to him. Protests were viciously punished, and his opponents were frequently killed. According to Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, Herod had a bodyguard of 2,000 soldiers. One of the most infamous facts of his reign was the so-called Massacre of the Innocents, which is told in the Gospel of Matthew. According to Matthew, Herod ordered the execution of all male children who were two years old and under in or near Bethlehem. This story has not been confirmed by other sources, especially by Flavius

Josephus, prompting current scholars to doubt its truth. It was precisely in the Roman province of Judaea that the most well-known Jew of all time was born. Jesus of Nazareth, later known as Jesus Christ, was a young carpenter and magician native to Galilee who achieved the status of a god thanks to his deeds and miracles. Magi or Magus was a Persian term that can be translated as “wise man”. Since Persian times, a number of these Magi began traveling the world, teaching their wisdom to those who would listen, and practicing miracles that would get the people’s attention.

Some Magi had a more numerous following than others, and in this sense, Jesus did not achieve a particularly large following. We already know what the Catholic Church says about Jesus, that he was the son of God, sent by God Himself to save humanity. Romans feared a revolt against the empire, so they crucified him, but three days after dying he was reborn and ascended to the Heavens to reunite with his Father. After the discovery and later translation of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts, we know that this simplistic fairy tale is only partially true. In fact, in

a letter written by Clement of Alexandria, the Father of the Church explains that the wisdom of Jesus was much more than he taught his disciples. Clement believed that there were three levels to Jesus’ teaching: one for public consumption, which is the teaching found in the Gospel of Mark, for example; a more spiritual set for “initiates only”; and a third grade of wisdom so exalted that it was beyond the capabilities of human expression and could never be written down at all. This last level was strictly reserved for the highest graduates and passed on orally. For this

reason, we may never know what Jesus had to teach. This three-level structure is reminiscent of the three different spaces in Solomon’s Temple. In fact, there are some people who believe that wood from the columns in Solomon’s Temple was used in the fabrication of the Cross. This claim is impossible to prove, but what we do know is that Jesus Christ had to be in contact with the same higher beings Solomon met more than a thousand years before. The Gnostic Gospels found in Nag Hammadi actually point to Jesus having descended from above to reveal the truth to

humanity. Gnosis is a hidden knowledge that can only be transmitted through spoken word, and even then, any disciple who wants to receive this truth needs to prepare him or herself for a long time before being able to understand the teaching. Gnostics believed no one could even understand God. He is distant, unknowable. The Creator God that we worship on Earth is nothing but a lesser, flawed deity. Jesus then is not the representative of the true God, not His own flesh. He did not come as a savior, but as a revealer, who tried to show the world

how to escape the material prison and reconnect with the inner principle, the divine spark that Gnostics believe is inside every person. In this sense, according to Gnostic teachings, Jesus taught the knowledge of oneself, because only through knowing oneself one can gain knowledge of God. Discovering that inner, divine spark, is what leads to unity with God. This explains why the Gnostic gospels show Mary Magdalene in other light than the common Biblical tradition. In the Bible, Mary Magdalene is just a background figure, but according to the Gnostic Gospels, she was a close disciple of Jesus. The Gospel

of Mary Magdalene even presents her as the recipient of special teachings from Jesus, suggesting a deeper understanding. Gnostics did not make any distinction between men and women, they both had the inner spark and were equally prepared or unprepared to receive the true wisdom. In the Gospel of Philip, Jesus is even said to have loved Mary Magdalene "more than the other women" which is confirmed by a fragment found ten years ago that speaks of Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife. But Jesus was not the only Jew to be persecuted in Rome. The Romans were accustomed to assimilating

conquered peoples into their cultural sphere, so they clashed with the Jewish people who would not betray their strict monotheism. In turn, Roman polytheistic practices and emperor worship were seen as idolatry by Jews, and thus a mortal sin according to the Commandments. Following Herod’s tyrannical rule, other Romans also treated Jews cruelly, fuelling a nationalist sentiment and an increasing resistance against the Roman rule. A political movement known as the Zealots sought to incite the people of the province of Judaea to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy Land by force. The Zealots led

several uprisings throughout the 1st century AD, and by 66 AD they became an open major rebellion known to historians as the First Jewish-Roman War. The Roman response was brutal. Jerusalem was sacked, the Second Temple completely destroyed, and thousands of Jews were killed or sold as slaves in the Roman capital. This did not discourage Jews, who decades later initiated a large-scale armed rebellion known for the name of its leader, Simon Bar Kokhba. Following the revolts, the Jewish population in Judea dwindled, with many fleeing or being sold into slavery. This further dispersed the Jewish diaspora throughout the

empire. Restrictions on religious practices and discriminatory laws became more common. One of the consequences of these revolts was the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism, which became the unifying force for all the Jewish communities dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. Rabbis were responsible for preserving Jewish law and traditions, even when they needed to do so secretly. This gave Jews a sense of identity in the face of Roman dominion. A Legacy of Complexity: The relationship between Jews and Romans in the empire defied easy categorization. Periods of tolerance coexisted with brutal repression. The legacy is complex, marked by both cooperation

and conflict. The Gnostic Gospels, for instance, reflect some of these tensions, with some portraying a more harmonious coexistence, while others hint at Jewish resistance to Roman rule. Paradoxically, the reign of Nero was not negative for Jews. Like his uncle Caligula, Emperor Nero had a reputation for madness and cruelty, yet an interesting and overlooked aspect of his reign was the relationship between Nero and the Jews. In 62 AD, Nero married a young aristocratic woman named Poppea Sabina. The ancient sources claim that it was Poppea who killed Nero’s ex-wife, Octavia, and his tutor, the philosopher Seneca. Apparently,

she did not dislike Jews and intervened on two separate occasions to prevent her husband from taking action against the Jews. This meant that as long as Nero was emperor, Jews were relatively free and protected. The same Nero was responsible for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. The Middle Ages are frequently depicted as the “Dark Ages” where nothing culturally significant happened and the relationship between people and states was governed by violence. But this is far from the truth, as most modern philosophic currents started during the Middle Ages. Universities started appearing in Europe in the

12th and 13th centuries, and translations of ancient texts were attempted not only in Europe but in the Muslim world too. The Middle Ages was the time when Kabbalistic knowledge was developed. This was a branch of Judaism characterized by its esoteric teachings and was later adapted into Western esotericism as the Christian Kabbalah and the Hermetic Kabbalah. Jewish Kabbalah was the product of profound thought and discussion among Rabbis. Like the Gnostic Jesus, they were preoccupied with trying to explain the relationship between an eternal God they call Ein Sof, meaning “The Infinite”, and a finite universe created by

said God. Mortal men are part of that finite universe, so can they even grasp the concept of unending Godhood? One of the most important pieces of scholarship created during this period is the Zohar, first published by Moses de León in the 13th century. Moses de León claimed it was a work recording the teachings of Simeon ben Yochai, a Jewish sage who lived in the 1st century AD, but modern scholars think it was de León who wrote the book himself. The Zohar contains discussions of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the

nature of souls, redemption, and metaphors relating man to darkness and the "true self" to "The Light of God". It should be noted that this Light of God is very similar to the Inner Spark that was mentioned in the Gnostic Gospels that discussed the teachings of Christ. And like the Gnostic Gospels, a careful reading of the Zohar offers insight into the relationships between Jewish sages and the higher extraterrestrial powers. A 20th-century kabbalist Rabbi and physicist named Aryeh Kaplan published a critical version of the Torah and a number of commentaries on Kabbalistic texts, including the Zohar. After

studying this text for several years, he concluded that they contained evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life. Kabbalistic texts clearly state that there are seven earths. Until Kaplan’s studies, it was thought that this number corresponded to the seven continents, but as Kaplan recalls the Zohar explains that each of these seven earths are separated by a firmament. It also states that each of them is inhabited by intelligent creatures. Not men, but other beings who understand the existence of God. Some of this secret wisdom is contained in the so-called Tree of Life. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life

is an arcane diagram containing 10 spheres called Sephiroths. Each of the Sephiroth has a specific name and certain characteristics, and they are connected by 22 different paths. In the traditional Kabbalistic diagrams, the Tree of Life is supported by a black column and a white column, symbolizing Jachin and Boaz from the Temple of Solomon. One interpretation speaks of the path between the Earth and the skies that the ancient astronauts traveled. Many Jews, and especially Kabbalah practitioners, had established themselves in Spain. But the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, were intent on achieving a culturally homogenous kingdom. In

March 1492 they published the Alhambra Decree, which forced Jews to either convert to Christianity or march into exile. It was not the first measure against Jews. During the 14th century, a series of pogroms occurred, the most savage of them in 1391. After that, the majority of Spain's 300,000 Jews converted to Catholicism. After 1492, out of the more than 100,000 Jews that remained in Spain, an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Jews left Spain, while the remainder converted. However, this does not mean that they automatically adopted Christianism. Most of them continued to exercise Judaism in secrecy, despite the

threats of the Spanish Inquisition. The exiled Spanish Jews fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire, North Africa and Portugal. A small number also settled in Holland and England. Officially, converted Jews were known in Spain as Cristianos Nuevos or New Christians. They enjoyed fewer rights than the “Old” Christians, giving them few reasons to actually embrace Christianity. Thus, they continued to secretly and discreetly practice Jewish rituals at their homes. This was known as Crypto-Judaism and was similar to the secret Jewish ceremonies of ancient Rome. One of the most clever forms of Crypto-Judaism was the invention of a fictional

Catholic saint, named Esterica. Saint Esterica was no other than Jewish queen Esther, and her festivities coincided with the feast of Purim. Crypto-Jews persisted in later periods in Russia and Eastern European countries influenced by the Soviet Union after the rise of Communism with the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Communist government, which included secular Communist Jews, did not force Jews to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church but considered the practice of any religion as undesirable. Some faiths were allowed to continue under strict supervision by the regime. Other Crypto-Jews from Portugal, known as the Belmonte Jews, maintained strong

secret traditions since the 12th century. Their Crypto-Judaism was so secretive that was able to survive for centuries by maintaining a tradition of endogamous marriage and hiding all external signs of their faith. They and their practices were only discovered in the 20th century. One of the most important figures of Judaism in this period was Maimonides, a powerful Rabbi and commentator of the Talmud. He was an influential leader of the Jewish community in the Iberian peninsula. Maimonides suggested the Jews of Spain not to seek martyrdom but to abandon Judaism publicly, while maintaining it secretly. But he also

prompted them not to convert to Christianity, and instead adopt Islam as their public religion. He argued that Crypto-Judaism was heroic and did not mean they were betraying their own religion and God. For this and other actions, he became known as a rationalist, but his views on Crypto-Judaism legitimized it among the accepted practices of Jews. This probably saved thousands of Jewish lives, as the Spanish Inquisition was an extended institution during these centuries. Jewish populations have existed in Europe, especially in the area of the former Roman Empire, from very early in history. During the Middle Ages and

the Early Modern Era, however, they suffered persecution in different countries, especially in Eastern Europe, but also in France. Early medieval society was tolerant, but that slowly changed with the centuries. As the Church and the feudal system became fully organized, there was a division of society into three different estates: clergy, knights, and serfs. But as non-Christians, Jews did not take part in that organization, leaving them with other occupations, primarily commerce, and artisanship. They were also protected by kings, princes, and bishops because they provided crucial services such as finance, administration, and medicine. However, states also applied excessive

taxes to all professions mainly run by Jews. Kings frequently kept Talmudic Rabbis in their courts, for consultations. Competition with Christian priests especially members of the Franciscan and Dominican orders rose in the 14th and 15th centuries. It was during this time that Christians started depicting Jews as having killed Christ. It was also during this period that persecution of Jews and deportations became generalized. After 1300, Jews suffered more discrimination and persecution in Christian Europe. Europe's Jews were mainly urban and literate, while Christians regarded them as deniers of the truth as they only read Jewish scriptures. The Church

also forbade Christians from loaning money for interest, which Jews did all the time. This became another reason for despising the Jews in Christianity. As a result, the money trade of Western Europe became a specialty of the Jews. But, in almost every instance when Jews acquired large amounts through banking transactions, during their lives, or upon their deaths, the king would take it over. Massacres of Jews became common in many European countries. This situation escalated especially during the Crusades when the religious frenzy of the Christians was at its all-time high. During the so-called People's Crusade of 1096,

flourishing Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube were completely destroyed. In the Second Crusade of 1147, the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. This was also repeated during the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, and a century later, in 1396, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France. Most of the displaced Jews established themselves in Poland, where they were welcomed and prospered freely. In some city-states in the north of Italy, like Venice, Jews were permitted to live within the city walls, but they were not allowed to leave

their ghetto. This practice spread across the kingdom of Italy, where Jews were appreciated as moneylenders and tradespeople, but despised in terms of religion and culture. In some cities, Jews who left their ghettos had to wear a yellow Star of David to identify them. Unwanted in most of Europe, Jews began migrating to North America following the Protestant cults. Protestants were also persecuted, sometimes even more fiercely than Jews. In France, for example, in 1572 took place Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre, in which 30,000 French Protestants known as Huguenots were targeted and killed in a single day. America was an

attractive destination for both groups because of its social and entrepreneurial opportunities and later became a refuge from the peril of ongoing antisemitism in Europe. Most Jews never returned to Europe. The American Jewish community grew to about 15,000 by 1840, and about 250,000 by 1880. Most of the 19th century migrant Jews came from German-speaking countries, Austria and Germany, and commonly engaged in trade, manufacturing, and operated clothing stores in many cities. This number highly grew between 1880 and the start of World War I in 1914, as 2,000,000 Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews immigrated from diaspora communities in Eastern Europe,

where life was untenable due to the frequent pogroms. They came from Jewish diaspora communities in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and the Russian-controlled portions of Poland. The latter group clustered in New York City, where they are a powerful community even today. Zion is a name that appears in the Bible and refers either to the hill in Jerusalem where the First and the Second Temples stood or to Jerusalem itself. As we have seen, some of the Prophets had led a “return to Zion” after the Babylonian captivity. This idea was refloated during the 1870s and 1880s, mainly thanks to

the centuries-long pressure for Jews to leave Europe. However, there had not been a Jewish state in the Middle East for millennia, and the area was occupied by other peoples. At first, they began discussing mass emigration to Ottoman Syria with the aim of re-establishing a Jewish state in Palestine and fulfilling the biblical prophecies contained in the Talmud. After the Decree of Cyrus, the “return to Zion” became an important political claim for all Jews. They called the migration to Jerusalem Aliya. Influential Jewish figures started discussing the possibility of enacting Aliya. The Zionist movement was officially founded in

1884 at the Kattowitz convention, and later the World Zionist Congress of 1897 was dominated by the figure of Theodor Herzl, the main activist who sought to establish a state for the Jews. Herzl and other Jews made use of their contacts in different places of power in Europe, mainly in England. After the First World War, it seemed that the conditions that made it possible for the Jews to establish such a state had arrived: The United Kingdom had captured Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, and the Jews started to press the government to give them control of Palestine.

In this context, Arthur James Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, issued the declaration in the form of a letter to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a prominent leader of the British Jewish community and a Zionist. In this letter, dated 1917, Balfour expressed British government support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. In 1920, the British Mandate of Palestine was established and the pro-Jewish Herbert Samuel was appointed High Commissioner of Palestine. In the following years, several large Jewish immigration waves to Palestine occurred. The Arab co-inhabitants of Palestine were hostile to increasing Jewish immigration,

however, and as a result, they began to express their opposition to the establishment of Jewish settlements and they also began to express their opposition to the pro-Jewish policy of the British government in violent ways. After the 1920 Arab riots and the 1921 Jaffa riots, the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British had no desire to confront local Arab gangs and punish them for their attacks on Palestinian Jews. English officials simply decided they did not have any responsibilities in this conflict between two foreign groups. 600,000 Muslims lived in Palestine in 1922, as well as 94,000

Jews. Major riots occurred during 1929 and later in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. The United Kingdom, seeing this increase in violence, now began to lean towards a binational solution, supporting the establishment of both an Arab state and a Jewish state. However, by 1939, the Jews had other, more pressing preoccupations. In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, prompting a declaration of war from France and Great Britain. Hitler’s dreams included a racially homogenous Germany. This meant expelling all the Jews in Germany, but he did not want them to take their possessions. Instead, an increasingly discriminatory legislation was

passed, allowing the German state to dispossess the Jews. This garnered billions of German marks, allowing the rearmament of the country. The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and the pursuit of what they called "living space". Since Hitler was inaugurated in 1933, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and even orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938 known as the Night of Broken Glass. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. During the Second World War, Germany started to build concentration camps, where the Jewish population was sent

to do forced labor. But in 1941, due to the increasing costs of maintaining a large camp population and the pressures of the war economy, it was decided that Jews and other prisoners would be eliminated. Between 1941 and the end of the war in 1945, Germany systematically murdered around six million Jews, roughly two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. These mass murders were first carried out through mass shootings, but later poison gas chambers were implemented. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators. The property, homes,

and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war. Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. Many of them sought refuge in South and North America. Many German officers also fled to South America and Antarctica. After the war, the Zionist movement resumed its plans for a Jewish state in

Palestine. In 1945 the Jewish resistance organizations in Palestine established the Jewish Resistance Movement. It was a paramilitary organization that attacked Muslim targets in Palestine, guerrilla style. The Jewish leadership, meanwhile, decided that they needed a larger number of Jews in Palestine if they wanted to have any chance of winning. They began organizing the migration to Palestine of a massive number of Jewish war refugees from Europe, without the approval of the British authorities. They knew that once they were established in Palestine, it would be difficult to get them out of there. The British authorities left the discussions

regarding the Palestine matter to the newly created United Nations. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, in which they recommended partitioning Palestine into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and a City of Jerusalem under shared control of Muslims and Jews. The Jewish leadership accepted the decision, but the Arab League and the leadership of Palestinian Arabs opposed it. In 1948, a full-blown war between Arabs and Israelis commenced. In the middle of the war, after the last British soldiers of the Palestine Mandate left the area, Jewish leader David Ben-Gurion proclaimed on May

14, 1948, the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, which was named the State of Israel. In 1949, when the war ended the state of Israel started to receive massive waves of Jewish immigrants from all over the world. It should be noted that Israel did not respect the division proposed by the United Nations and were it not for the Egyptian defense of the Gaza Strip and Transjordan defending the West Bank, Israel would have occupied the entirety of Palestine. Since its inception in 1948, the state of Israel engaged in an aggressive foreign policy, the encouragement of

Jews from all over the world to migrate to Israel, and the use of espionage and military power to achieve their goals in the region. Israel is today one of the nine countries with the most nuclear warheads, even though they are a relatively small country with a population of less than 10 million people. Since 1948, Israel has been involved in several major military conflicts. So many that the entire history of the State of Israel can be told through its wars. When the United Nations voted to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, British troops

were given orders to leave the country immediately. At the same time, violence between Arabs and Jews escalated. Among the most infamous events was the attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. This was a small village of 600 unarmed people, but Zionist fighters broke into the village and killed more than 100 people, including women and children. This action sparked retaliation by the Arabs who days later attacked a Jewish convoy headed for Hadassah Hospital, killing 78 men. Skirmishes and fights broke out every day, until in July 1949 an armistice was signed between

Israel and the Arab states, and a temporary frontier was fixed. Israelis remember this war as the “War of Independence”. In the Arab world, it is known as the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe”. Many families who were displaced during Nakba were never able to return to their homelands, even 80 years later. In 1956, the Egyptian president nationalized the Suez Canal, a waterway connecting Europe and Asia that was until that moment owned by French and British capitals. Both France and Britain sent money and weapons to Israel, who agreed to invade Egypt. Once the area was secured, they would step

in to recover control over the Suez Canal. The invasion of the Sinai Peninsula began in October 1956, and in just 5 days the Israeli army managed to capture Gaza, Rafah, and Al-Arish, taking thousands of prisoners. This attack took the Egyptians by surprise, who had no option other than to accept defeat. It was only in 1979, during the so-called Camp David Accords, that Egypt recovered the Sinai Peninsula, a largely uninhabited desertic plot of land. In June 1967, Israeli forces planned a brief campaign to gain control of the whole of Palestine. This was known as the Six-Day

War, and Israel managed to conquer the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights and maintain control over the Sinai Peninsula, which had been recaptured by Nasser after the Israeli Air Force shot down six Syrian jet fighters. However, shortly after the War, the United Nations passed a resolution that called for Israel to withdraw from the conquered lands. After the Six-Day War, sporadic fights emerged in different parts of the country. This turned into a full-blown war in 1973. On October 6, the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, Israel was caught off guard by Egyptian

forces crossing the Suez Canal and by Syrian forces crossing into the Golan Heights. The Arab armies showed greater aggressiveness and fighting ability than in the previous wars, and the Israeli forces suffered heavy casualties. The fighting, which lasted through the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, came to an end on October 26. Israel signed a formal cease-fire agreement with Egypt on November 11 and with Syria on May 31, 1974. According to the Camp David Accords of 1979, Israel would return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982. But only six weeks after Israel’s complete withdrawal from Sinai, increased

tensions between Israelis and Palestinians resulted in the Israeli bombing of Beirut and southern Lebanon, where the Palestine Liberation Organization had its headquarters. The following day, Israel invaded Lebanon, and by June 14 its land forces reached the outskirts of Beirut, which was surrounded, but the Israeli government agreed to retreat after signing a cease-fire with the Palestinians. Eventually, Israeli troops withdrew from west Beirut, and the Israeli army had withdrawn entirely from Lebanon by June 1985. Twenty years later, in 2006, the Palestinian nationalist organization known as Hezbollah launched an operation against Israel to pressure the country into releasing

Lebanese prisoners, killing a number of Israeli soldiers in the process and capturing two. Israel launched an offensive into southern Lebanon to recover the captured soldiers. The war lasted only a month but left more than one thousand Lebanese dead and about one million others displaced. Hezbollah’s ability to fight the Israel Defense Forces to a standstill won it praise throughout much of the Arab world. The last conflict in which the Jews are involved, and which is still ongoing today, is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and Rafah. On October 7, 2023, a Palestinian nationalist group known as Hamas

launched a surprise attack from the Gaza Strip into the land controlled by Israel, killing around a thousand people and taking several prisoners. Israel retaliated with full force, starting a humanitarian crisis that is getting worse every day. So far, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli attacks, including over 12,300 children and 8,400 women. Accusations of war crimes against Israel were made after Israelis cut access to water, power, and internet in the Gaza Strip, and because of the extremely large numbers of civilian casualties. Israel even is reported to deny entrance to Gaza to humanitarian

aid vehicles. With such a rich history spanning several millennia, it would be almost impossible to include every important detail and fact in just one video. Please write in the comments if you consider any topic in the history of the Jews should receive a more in-depth treatment in a separate video. For now, give this video a like, subscribe to the channel, and watch our related videos on the screen next. Keep your minds open and until we meet again.