Jesus Christ

The Jewish people had been restored to their home of Jerusalem in Palestine by the Persian Empire in 539 B.C. after being captured by the Babylonians. In 332 B.C. they were mostly left alone by Alexander the Great as he conquered the Persian Empire because they were afraid of Alexander. After this the Jews were caught between the Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemaic Empire as Alexanders Empire came crashing down. They weren’t stuck in the struggle for long though, because the Ptolemaic Empire decided that it wasn’t worth it to battle against the Seleucid Empire, meaning the Jews were now under Seleucid control. Antiochus was the king of the Seleucid empire and thus controlled the Jews. Antiochus is remembered as a cruel ruler who relentlessly broke down the Jewish beliefs and utterly disrespected Jewish customs. He was eventually overthrown in 141 B.C. by a group of Jews called the Maccabees. This rebellion is celebrated by the holiday of Hanukkah. Shortly after this event Pompey added them to the Roman Republic in 63 B.C. though Rome let them rule themselves for the rest of the time it was a true republic. After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony appointed Herod as the ruler of Judea. Herod is known for his tendancy to murder anybody that he suspected of trying to gain his own power, and therefore killed most of his own family. It was during the rule of Herod that Jesus Christ was born. Octavian Augustus Caesar became the emperor of Rome beforehand, however and called for a census of his empire, because he wanted to know how many people he ruled over. Because of this Jesus’s parents, Mary and Joseph were forced to go to Bethlehem to be counted in this census. It was in Bethlehem that Mary gave birth to Jesus. Far to the east three wise Persian men called Magi saw a brilliant star shoot off towards Bethlehem and since they had a legend about a brilliant star leading them towards a newborn great king they followed the star all the way to Bethlehem. When they got there they went to see the king Herod and asked him if he’d had a son. Herod had not had a son, and was thus furious at the idea that a futere king had been born and immediatley began thinking about how he would deal with the problem. The Magi then continued on their journey and met Jesus as he was a baby. They then presented him gifts fit for a king and warned Mary and Joseph to get out of the city since they knew Herod was planning to kill all baby boys under the age of 2. Herod did this, but Jesus had already gotten out of the city and fled to either Egypt or India and lived there until he was 30 years old. Once he was of the age of 30, and Herod had died, he returned to Rome and began his ministry and his preaching. During this time Christians believe he preformed many miracles, and everyone believes he did lot’s of preaching on the way to live that would bring the most joy to their lives and afterlives, though not nearly everyone agrees that what he said was true. Eventually the Jewish people heard what he was saying and realized that he was saying he was God and that was very blasphemous, so they payed one of Jesus’s disciples, Judas Iscariot, $600 to detain Jesus for them so they could bring him to the courthouse. Pontius Pilate, the new Roman ruler after Herod died, realized he couldn’t do anything without eliciting the Jews rage so he gave Jesus to the people to do to as they wished. They put him on a cross rather famously and he died, but according to the christian religion he came back to life three days later and continued to preach for 70 more days before going up to heaven. Christianity is still a prevalent religion today and is practiced by many people.