Heritage: Civilization and the Jews #101; No. 101; A People Is Born

<v Announcer>Major funding for this program has been provided by the Charles H. <v Announcer>Revson Foundation, Petrie Stores Corp., and the National <v Announcer>Endowment for the Humanities. <v Announcer>Additional funding has been provided by the following contributors. <v Announcer>A complete donor list is available at WNET. <v Music>[Intro music]. <v Narrator>The story of civilization is the story of our origins,

<v Narrator>of how we came to be the way we are. <v Narrator>It is a family tree of lost nations, <v Narrator>ruined empires, buried <v Narrator>couches, <v Narrator>and a surviving strain of ideas that inspired our ancestors. <v Narrator>Values that ruled our history and shaped the modern world. <v Narrator>In this 5000 year genealogy, there are many great traditions <v Narrator>intertwined.

<v Narrator>1 of them old enough to carry memories off the mystious beginnings runs <v Narrator>unbroken to the present day. <v Narrator>Follow that single thread, and you follow a course of ideas that <v Narrator>gave meaning to the experience of civilization. <v Narrator>It is the tradition, the story of the Jews. <v Narrator>I'm Abba Eban, a Jew, a citizen of Israel, educated <v Narrator>in England. By training a scholar of history and language. <v Narrator>In recent decades, a diplomat and member of my country's parliament. <v Narrator>In the 9 1-hour episodes of this series, we are going to show you history <v Narrator>through a microscope, focusing on the experience of a single small

<v Narrator>people, small in size and space and power. <v Narrator>We tell their story not just because of its constant drama, but because <v Narrator>their ideas have played a central and influential role in human affairs, <v Narrator>because their history is a link between our origins and our present. <v Narrator>You cannot recount the story of civilization without coming face to face <v Narrator>with what the Jews have thought and felt and written and performed. <v Narrator>Who are the Jews? <v Narrator>Not a race. <v Narrator>They are much too varied in physical type. <v Narrator>Not only a religion. <v Narrator>They include believers, nonbelievers, disbelievers. <v Narrator>No, the Jews are a people. <v Narrator>No more than 14 million, a fraction of 1 percent of the world's population. <v Narrator>About six million of them living in the United States.

<v Narrator>Over 3 million in Israel. <v Narrator>A few million more scattered throughout the world, but acknowledging <v Narrator>a common heritage, a common history that spans time and place. <v Narrator>Where does their unique story fit into the larger epic of mankind? <v Narrator>Into the history of empires and civilizations? <v Narrator>When and how did they conceive the idea that has been their greatest and most lasting <v Narrator>contribution as a people? <v Narrator>The idea of God that most of the world's great religions have come to share. <v Narrator>That idea is one of the great reaches of the human mind.

<v Narrator>It encompasses our view of our fellow human beings, of the universe of <v Narrator>life itself. But it did not arrive at the world full blown. <v Narrator>It evolved like the Jewish people themselves. <v Narrator>Over the course of many centuries, the development of that idea, <v Narrator>this people, the civilization in which they originated. <v Narrator>That is our subject in the first episode of Heritage, The Story of <v Narrator>Civilization and the Jews. <v Narrator>The search for the human past. <v Narrator>The fascination is probably as old as the human race itself. <v Narrator>The science is new.

<v Archaeologist>Divided, one room from here. ?inaudible? <v Narrator>It was only in the early 19th century that archeologists began systematically <v Narrator>sorting the ruins of ancient cultures and deciphering their lost languages. <v Narrator>Before archeology, our main source of information about the ancient world <v Narrator>was the Bible. <v Rabbi>[Speaking Hebrew] <v Narrator>But the Bible is a relatively modern document. <v Narrator>An anthology started only about 2500 years ago <v Narrator>by a group of Jewish scholars exiled from their home land in a foreign <v Narrator>capital called Babylon. <v Narrator>It was a collection of a people's memories. <v Narrator>Some written, some only told about events that were already receding <v Narrator>into the distant past.

<v Bible reader>Moses did not know that the skin of his face shown <v Bible reader>because he had been talking with God. <v Bible readers>[People reading the Bible in several different languages] <v Narrator>The first 5 books of the Bible, which Jews call the Torah, the teaching <v Narrator>traced to the genealogy of their people traced it back to a line of godly <v Narrator>men. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, and before <v Narrator>them to an ancient place, which was the starting place of all their memories. <v Narrator>The Torah calls it Eden.

<v Narrator>A garden watered by the rivers, Tigris and Euphrates. <v Narrator>Eden, the legendary site of mankind's origins. <v Narrator>The birthplace of our common ancestor, Adam. <v Narrator>The name Adam is simply the Hebrew word for human being <v Narrator>from the word for earth, adamah, the red clay from <v Narrator>which he was said to have been created. <v Narrator>The time, according to the Torah about 5,800 years <v Narrator>ago as Jewish traditionalists would count it, <v Narrator>3800 years BCE before the common or Christian era. <v Narrator>Archeologists tracing the human past have arrived back at the <v Narrator>same place at about the same time. <v Narrator>It is the place known to history as Mesopotamia, the land between

<v Narrator>the rivers, the part of the Middle East now called Iraq. <v Narrator>Scholars identify it as the starting point not of creation, but <v Narrator>of civilization. <v Narrator>Civilization developed out of agriculture, <v Narrator>out of irrigation, which earlier people had devised <v Narrator>as a way to temper the droughts and floods of the rivers to turn chance <v Narrator>vegetation into crops they could depend on. <v Narrator>Turn barren clay into Eden. <v Narrator>Irrigation was a social undertaking. <v Narrator>More people to share the hard work, the increased flow of water, <v Narrator>the increased products of the soil.

<v Narrator>Irrigation led to communities and communities became cities. <v Narrator>The great process called civilization was underway. <v Narrator>Civilization, literally the culture of cities. <v Narrator>Cities first arose in Mesopotamia between 4000 and 3000 <v Narrator>BCE. <v Narrator>This restored temple is a fragment of one of the earliest cities. <v Narrator>A place called Ur, which is mentioned in the Bible as Abraham's ancestral <v Narrator>home. It was built long before the Jews as a people entered the <v Narrator>story of civilization. <v Narrator>Built by a Mesopotamian people called the Sumerians. <v Narrator>In outward appearance, those earliest cities probably resembled this one <v Narrator>called ?inaudible? In North Africa. <v Narrator>They were mud brick complexes.

<v Narrator>Their walls enclosing a nucleus of public buildings, the temple and the palace, <v Narrator>and housing for a population of thousands. <v Narrator>Mud brick construction doomed these places to crumble into <v Narrator>ruins. Doomed the Sumerians to be forgotten. <v Narrator>Their very identity buried beneath the ruins of peoples who followed them. <v Narrator>But the Sumerians were, in one historian's phrase, the true inventors <v Narrator>of civilization. <v Narrator>In the marketplaces of their cities, skills developed into trades. <v Narrator>The potter's wheel was a crucial development <v Narrator>and early means of mass production. <v Narrator>Ancient man was no longer a mere hunter, no longer just a farmer. <v Narrator>He was also a merchant and a craftsman. <v Narrator>In the cities of Mesopotamia, there were weavers and wool merchants, brewers

<v Narrator>and bakers, metalworkers, dyers, tanners. <v Narrator>The wheel was a basic device of civilization, and the Sumerians <v Narrator>were the first to make use of it. <v Narrator>They moved their products in carts pulled by donkeys, vehicles of commerce <v Narrator>that soon evolved into a vehicle of war. <v Narrator>The military chariot. <v Narrator>The Sumerians were the first people known to field an organized army. <v Narrator>They also developed the arts of peace. <v Narrator>Lives eased by the civilized division of labor found the time to <v Narrator>develop music and poetry and painting. <v Narrator>On this inlaid panel found in the ruins of Ur, a Sumerian <v Narrator>artist portrayed the life of the third millennium BCE. <v Narrator>You are looking at one of civilization's milestones. <v Narrator>The picture like symbols on this tablet are one of the most remarkable of all human <v Narrator>inventions, writing.

<v Narrator>Devised by the Sumerians, about 3100 BCE before <v Narrator>Egyptian hieroglyphics, before Chinese ideograms. <v Narrator>After various transformations, it emerged as a system of weird <v Narrator>shaped symbols called cuneiform. <v Narrator>With writing, human knowledge could be preserved and transmitted. <v Narrator>Writing promoted political development. <v Narrator>The rights of citizens were established in legal codes. <v Narrator>This early code engraved in stone <v Narrator>was formulated by a Mesopotamian king named Hammurabi around <v Narrator>the year 1750. <v Narrator>The office of King was a significant development. <v Narrator>The earliest leaders had been chosen just for the course of some civic emergency. <v Narrator>Now, they ruled permanently and handed on their power to their heirs. <v Narrator>The Kings ruled as caretakers of the gods.

<v Narrator>These votive figures evoke a world dominated by special deities, <v Narrator>gods of various cities, a god of Ur, a god of ?inaudible? <v Narrator>the rival gods of Babylon, Assur, Nineveh, Nippur. <v Narrator>Gods that could be seen and felt in the forces of nature. <v Narrator>Abstract powers like chaos and creation. <v Myth speaker>He created man. He created the beasts of the field. <v Myth speaker>He created the Tigris and Euphrates. <v Myth speaker>And he set them in their place. <v Narrator>This is the story of creation as told in a Mesopotamian myth. <v Myth speaker>Tear down this house. Build yourself a boat. <v Myth speaker>Aboard this boat, take the seed of all living things. <v Narrator>This is the story of a great flood in which all of mankind is destroyed <v Narrator>except for one deserving family. <v Narrator>A story handed down through the generations in Mesopotamia centuries <v Narrator>before the story of Noah and his ark would be written into the Bible.

<v Narrator>All of life, in the ancient view, was at the mercy of the gods. <v Narrator>Their all too human whims and rages. <v Narrator>Their perpetual conflicts with each other. <v Narrator>The god who appeared as wind fighting the god of vegetation. <v Narrator>Storm god fighting sea god. <v Narrator>Human beings could appeal to the gods through the priests with their ritual magic. <v Narrator>They could try to learn the mystery of their fate from omens. <v Narrator>The entrails of sacrificed animals, the patterns of birds in flight. <v Narrator>They might learn, their fate might even be deflect it. <v Narrator>But in the ways of the gods, they could see no moral pattern. <v Narrator>Nothing to count on or live up to. <v Narrator>That rather chaotic view of the human condition was one that dominated the life <v Narrator>and thought of early civilizations. <v Narrator>It would begin to change dramatically, permanently, only with the emergence <v Narrator>of a Jewish people onto the scene.

<v Narrator>According to the best evidence of archeology, that would not begin to happen until <v Narrator>sometime after 1500 BCE. <v Narrator>By 1500, the cities of Mesopotamia have developed into a thriving <v Narrator>city states, rich and potent nations ship their surplus grain <v Narrator>and wool and hides across overland trade routes that pass across <v Narrator>the countryside of Canaan towards cities along the Mediterranean coast. <v Narrator>Ugarit, Bybos, Sidon, Tyre and Gaza. <v Narrator>Those were the names of great city states off the Canaanite coast, ports <v Narrator>that maintained contact with other Mediterranean cities like Troy and with Mediterranean <v Narrator>islands like Cyprus and Crete. <v Narrator>Inland, beyond the coastal plain, there were walled citadels guarding <v Narrator>the trade routes that stretched east to Mesopotamia. <v Narrator>Along those routes, Canaan exported minerals, textiles and dyes

<v Narrator>and timber from the cedar forests of Lebanon. <v Narrator>The architecture of these cities was indigenous to Canaan. <v Narrator>Instead of mud bricks, there was plenty of durable stone. <v Narrator>But the culture of the Canaanite cities was in many respects an extension <v Narrator>of Mesopotamia in their art, their legal codes, their religious <v Narrator>outlook. <v Narrator>This huge stone platform may have been an altar used for animal <v Narrator>sacrifices in the worship of nature gods, deities identified <v Narrator>with the cycles of planting and harvest, death and renewal. <v Narrator>The chief of the Canaanite deities was Ba'al, revered as the source <v Narrator>of bounty of fertility. <v Narrator>He dominated a pantheon of lesser gods. <v Narrator>Ba'al's female counterpart, the fertility goddess called Ashtoreth or Astarte.

<v Speaker>This symbol of political power, a bronze scepter, was found along <v Speaker>with a crown in a cave near the Dead Sea. <v Speaker>In the Canaanite city states, power was concentrated at the top of a feudal structure. <v Speaker>The king, the royal family, the class of warrior knights, they owned most <v Speaker>of the farmland beyond the city walls. <v Speaker>The civilization of Canaan produced the alphabet, which became the basis <v Speaker>of all Western written languages. <v Speaker>It was an advance beyond the system of cuneiform symbols which the Canaanites <v Speaker>had learned from the Mesopotamians. <v Speaker>It was over caravan routes that Mesopotamian influence arrived in Canaan, <v Speaker>arrived with the goods carried by itinerant and traders, much like the Bedouin of today. <v Speaker>Like these Bedouin, like all peoples, they brought as part of their culture,

<v Speaker>their own lore, their memories handed down from generation to generation. <v Speaker>Songs, stories, myths rooted somewhere in experience, <v Speaker>in fantasy or belief. <v Music>[man singing a song] <v Announcer>By the year 1500, generations of travelers had arrived from Mesopotamia. <v Narrator>Whole families, tribes, clans, had settled in their way among the peoples <v Narrator>of Canaan in a land that was still inhabited by lions, its coastal <v Narrator>marshes by the hippopotamus. <v Narrator>Further centuries would pass before any of the peoples of Canaan could be identified

<v Narrator>as Hebrews or Israelites or Jews. <v Narrator>But that would only happen as the consequence of another significant traffic that <v Narrator>connected Canaan with a society to the south, a civilization <v Narrator>almost as old as Mesopotamia and equally powerful. <v Narrator>Egypt, a stable ?inaudible? <v Narrator>society, quick to flourish and slow to change <v Narrator>through dynasty after dynasty of absolute rulers. <v Narrator>The pharaohs. <v Narrator>The pharaohs reigned as incarnations of the gods, the many complex deities

<v Narrator>of Egypt, the pharaohs spent their lives preparing to join <v Narrator>the gods after death. <v Narrator>Building tombs like fortresses to preserve their bodies for the journey <v Narrator>into eternity. <v Narrator>The skill of Egypt's architects and engineers kept pace with the ambitions of <v Narrator>the pharaohs, what supported their immense projects was a flourishing <v Narrator>economy. <v Narrator>It was based on agriculture and a way of life still found along the Nile

<v Narrator>more than 3000 years later. <v Narrator>In ancient times, the dependable harvests of this delta were newer

<v Narrator>to immigration. <v Narrator>Tribes from Canaan came across the border when their own lands were parched by <v Narrator>drought. As Jacob's family did in the Bible story. <v Narrator>Many of the foreigners stayed to enjoy the rich life of this society. <v Narrator>Some rose to positions of authority, as in the story of Joseph. <v Narrator>Rich, creative Egypt. <v Narrator>Egypt's astronomers were the first to plot the stars. <v Narrator>Its mathematicians first to chart the earth. <v Narrator>Its artists wrote and painted with a zest for daily life. <v Narrator>The complexity of all ancient religious systems with their remote and of multiple

<v Narrator>gods was hard for the individual to comprehend. <v Narrator>There were efforts to simplify. <v Narrator>In the 1300s a pharaoh tried to combine many guards in a single <v Narrator>divine image, the Life-Giving disc of the sun called Aten. <v Narrator>But the reform was put down as heresy, Aten expunged <v Narrator>from the heavenly hierarchy, the old system of belief restored. <v Narrator>A few decades later, in the reign of a pharaoh called Ramesses the second, <v Narrator>the pace of Egyptian history seems to quicken. <v Narrator>With shipments of granite from the quarries of the Upper Nile, a vast new <v Narrator>building program is undertaken. <v Narrator>The pharaoh orders additions to the great temple of Karnak, the religious capital

<v Narrator>of the country. <v Narrator>A temple to prepare for his own death. <v Narrator>Ramesses' major project is a cluster of new cities in the Nile Delta, <v Narrator>a scheme requiring vast new sources of manpower. <v Narrator>Foreign workers are pressed into service as forced labor. <v Narrator>Egypt's records are vague, but scholars guess that among them were the foreigners <v Narrator>from Canaan. <v Narrator>Under Ramses and his successors, Egypt launches a series of military adventures <v Narrator>in Canaan. Egypt meets resistance not from its traditional rival <v Narrator>Mesopotamia, but from a newer empire. <v Narrator>The Hittites of Asia Minor. <v Narrator>It is in connection with this series of military campaigns that an arresting

<v Narrator>entry suddenly appears in the annals of Egypt. <v Narrator>A single, terse, remarkably, unprophetic line on a commemorative <v Narrator>column erected by a pharaoh named Merneptah. <v Narrator>Israel, it says, is laid waste. <v Narrator>His seed is destroyed. <v Narrator>The data's around 12 20 BCE. <v Narrator>This is the first known written record of a people we might identify <v Narrator>as Jews. <v Narrator>Who are the people who call themselves Israel? <v Narrator>The name is made up of 2 ancient words, one meaning God, the other to strive. <v Narrator>The Torah, written down centuries after the time of the events, describes <v Narrator>a group of Canaanite refugees fleeing slavery in Egypt. <v Narrator>The date probably about twelve fifty BCE, <v Narrator>one of the oldest passages of the Torah, celebrates their deliverance by their

<v Narrator>God, a God whose name modern scholars reconstruct as Yahweh <v Narrator>and many Christians pronounce Jehovah. <v Narrator>Very Orthodox Jews traditionally never pronounce the holy name at all. <v Narrator>They call him the Lord. <v Torah reader>Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, I shall <v Torah reader>seem to the Lord. He has triumphed gloriously, horse <v Torah reader>and rider, he has hurled into the sea. <v Torah reader>The Lord is my strength and my protection. <v Torah reader>He has become my salvation. <v Torah reader>The chariots of Pharaoh and his army, he cast into the sea. <v Torah reader>The abyss in Gulf. <v Narrator>The charismatic leader called Moses, the escape route, the chronology of the <v Narrator>exodus, these are matters for which the Bible is our only source, but the fact of the exodus and its impact are

<v Narrator>hard to dispute. <v Narrator>In the story of mankind, the emergence from Egypt into this wilderness sanctuary <v Narrator>would become a universal metaphor and everlasting symbol of the human <v Narrator>need and right to be free. <v Narrator>In Jewish tradition, it would be celebrated by generation after generation <v Narrator>in the springtime holiday of the Passover. <v Narrator>A festival of liberation as fervent as any nation's Independence Day. <v Narrator>It evokes the feelings of the liberated tribes, leaving the labor camps of the Nile <v Narrator>Delta behind them. To them, the exodus must have seemed nothing less than a miracle, <v Narrator>a deliverance so implausible, so incredibly dramatic that it could <v Narrator>only be a divine act. <v Narrator>It was evidence of the power of their own special god, not a universal God. <v Narrator>There was no single power ruling over human affairs, but the gods of this <v Narrator>one little group had triumphed over the mighty pharaohs and their gods.

<v Torah reader>Who is like you among the gods, oh Lord? <v Torah reader>Who is like you? <v Torah reader>Majestic in holiness, awesome in fame, worker of miracles. <v Narrator>Some events stand outside history. <v Narrator>Beyond the challenge of science. <v Narrator>What happened to the people of the exodus may never be established by scholars, <v Narrator>but what the Bible says about this awesome place has resonated through <v Narrator>the centuries of human experience. <v Torah reader>And Moses brought forth the people to meet with God, and they stood <v Torah reader>at the base of the mountain. <v Narrator>Tradition calls this towering peak the Mount Sinai of Exodus, <v Narrator>the landmark of the whole Western religious heritage and its base. <v Narrator>For the last 12 centuries, a Greek monastery has sat in humble attendance. <v Narrator>The meaning of this place is commemorated in the words of the Torah.

<v Narrator>For this is the place tradition identifies with the covenant, the <v Narrator>agreement by which the people calling themselves Israel accepted God's <v Narrator>law and God promised his blessings. <v Torah reader>I am the lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the <v Torah reader>house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. <v Torah reader>You shall not make for yourself a graven image. <v Narrator>There were laws governing the relationship between man and God. <v Torah reader>You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God in vain. <v Torah reader>Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. <v Narrator>Laws of behavior between men and women, between members of the family.

<v Torah reader>Honor your father and your mother. <v Narrator>Laws governing the relationships of individuals and society. <v Torah reader>You shall not kill. <v Torah reader>You shall not commit adultery. <v Torah reader>You shall not steal. <v Torah reader>You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. <v Narrator>By the act of the covenant the people of Israel had committed themselves <v Narrator>to the rule of law as a holy principle.The <v Narrator>God of Moses is not without connections to earlier religions. <v Narrator>He visits a kind of spell on Israel's enemies in the form of plagues. <v Narrator>His worship includes a prescribed ritual of animal sacrifices, but Yahweh, <v Narrator>however, the Hebrew God is without precedent in ancient belief, if not <v Narrator>the only God in the universe, then he is the only God of this particular people. <v Narrator>And there is no mystery to be defined by omens or averted by ritual magic. <v Narrator>Yahweh promises to deal with his people not on the basis of divine whim

<v Narrator>or passion, but of law, open and explicit. <v Narrator>Other peoples have elevated their king s to the status of duties, but in this <v Narrator>covenant, Israel has accepted God as their king. <v Narrator>Mankind's view of the human condition has begun to undergo a remarkable change. <v Narrator>The God driven people who entered the sanctuary of Canaan with a vivid <v Narrator>memory of the Sinai experience merged into the established Canaanite <v Narrator>population. <v Narrator>Most of them, after all, were originally Canaanite by language and culture. <v Narrator>It was around this nucleus that a new people would be formed and <v Narrator>out of that people a nation.

<v Narrator>Canaan in the 1200s was vulnerable to new forces.

<v Narrator>The currents of history were converging on this small land. <v Narrator>A sequence of landings by warriors from the Aegean, the area that would later be <v Narrator>known as Greece. The sea peoples, so they were called. <v Narrator>They arrived as mercenaries of the Egyptians and Hittites. <v Narrator>They stayed as free ?inaudible? <v Narrator>pursuing their own violent cause. <v Narrator>The siege of Troy described by Homer. <v Narrator>That was 1 of their acts. <v Narrator>Their pattern of pillage soon spread south. <v Narrator>1 group known as Philistines occupied the coastal cities <v Narrator>of Canaan. Later, the country would bear their name, Palestine. <v Narrator>The social structure of Canaan was in flux.

<v Narrator>The poor were fleeing the cities. <v Narrator>The tenant farmers who worked the nobles' land, the nomads who sometimes <v Narrator>settled among them, were driven by hardship, by repression, and <v Narrator>the turbulence of the times. <v Narrator>Many of these people became refugees, are hapiru in the <v Narrator>ancient term. <v Narrator>They fled to the back country where they joined with another group of refugees. <v Narrator>Those God enlightened people of the exodus from Egypt. <v Narrator>2 groups of hapiru which may be the source of the word <v Narrator>Hebrew. <v Narrator>At Beersheba in the northern Negev region of modern Israel, <v Narrator>lie the ruins of an ancient Canaanite town. <v Narrator>It became a Hebrew settlement sometime in the 1100s.

<v Narrator>The typical house was built around a courtyard in which most of the family <v Narrator>life took place. It was surrounded by 3 or 4 small <v Narrator>rooms. <v Narrator>Stone pillars supported some sort of roofing which sheltered the family members <v Narrator>and sometimes the animals. <v Narrator>Life in those places was simple and egalitarian, like <v Narrator>the character of Israel's belief in which the only authority was God's <v Narrator>and everyone had equal access to his law. <v Narrator>Today in the nearby countryside, you could find small Arab villages <v Narrator>in which the atmosphere of those early settlements still survives. <v Narrator>The inscription on this wall is in ancient Hebrew.

<v Narrator>It bears witness to the Israelite God. <v Narrator>In the course of 2 centuries, the belief in Yahweh and his law <v Narrator>spread through the hill country and wilderness of Canaan by conversion and by <v Narrator>conquest as it spread, its adherents formed a league, <v Narrator>a federation of little communities. <v Narrator>Their only authority was a temporary leader they called a shofet <v Narrator>or judge. Men like Gideon and Samuel, a woman <v Narrator>named Deborah. <v Narrator>The only thing that linked the communities was the Covenant of Sinai. <v Narrator>They carried tablets inscribed with God's laws into battle when they fought with <v Narrator>neighboring peoples for control of the countryside.

<v Narrator>Their greatest adversaries proved to be the Philistines. <v Narrator>Those descendants of the formidable sea people with a newly discovered source <v Narrator>of power, iron, it gave them a critical edge <v Narrator>in warfare. <v Narrator>Their burial cases may look benign, but their iron weapons <v Narrator>made the Philistines the scourge of Canaan. <v Narrator>About the year 1020, faced with a losing war against this enemy, <v Narrator>the Israelites adopted a course often taken by ancient peoples in <v Narrator>times of crisis. They chose a king. <v Narrator>His name was Saul. <v Narrator>This decision transformed the federation of believers into a unified <v Narrator>people. The League of Villages into a nation. <v Narrator>But it would have a drastic impact on their simple form of society.

<v Narrator>It was contrary to the spirit of a religion in which God was, in effect, <v Narrator>the only legitimate sovereign. <v Narrator>This is where their transformation took place. <v Narrator>I'm standing on the site that became the very center of Israelite nationhood. <v Narrator>Its capital, in fact, and in sentiment over the centuries. <v Narrator>This ancient place now being uncovered outside the southern walls of Jerusalem <v Narrator>is the city of David, the citadel built by Israel's second king. <v Narrator>Here, the modern nation of Israel seeks out its origins, assembles the <v Narrator>buried fragments of ancient Israel's brief golden age. <v Narrator>That era of fateful and dramatic change of rise and decline <v Narrator>ushered in by the reign of King David. <v Narrator>David, a popular hero who staved off the Philistine

<v Narrator>threat and unified the scattered communities of Israel.. <v Narrator>In the city of Jerusalem, he installed his government and provided a <v Narrator>permanent home for the tablets of the law. <v Narrator>The powerful symbol of his people's belief. <v Narrator>David himself was one of the voices of that faith, a poet <v Narrator>credited with some of the loveliest psalms in Hebrew literature. <v Psalm reader>Oh, Lord, our Lord, how great is your name in all <v Psalm reader>the Earth? <v Psalm reader>When I consider your heaven, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars. <v Psalm reader>What is man that you are mindful of him? <v Psalm reader>You have made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with honor <v Psalm reader>and glory. <v Psalm reader>You gave him dominion over all the works of your hands, all sheep and <v Psalm reader>oxen. Yes, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the earth,

<v Psalm reader>and whatever passes through the paths of the sea. <v Narrator>David's legacy was an empire. <v Narrator>With the great powers in Egypt and Mesopotamia both in temporary decline, <v Narrator>Israel expanded to fill the vacuum. <v Narrator>Israel's dominion extended north to the Euphrates, south <v Narrator>to the borders of Sinai. <v Narrator>The nation of refugees was now a ruler of subject peoples. <v Narrator>Canaanites, Edomites, Moabites. <v Narrator>David's son and heir, Solomon, consolidated Israel's new power <v Narrator>and exploited it in trade with the corners of the empire.

<v Narrator>Luxury goods of all sorts were imported. <v Narrator>They found a market among a new class of urban rich. <v Narrator>Like the pharaohs of Egypt. <v Narrator>Solomon launched an ambitious building program, it's keystone, <v Narrator>the splendid temple in Jerusalem. <v Narrator>The Bible account says he was 7 years building the House of <v Narrator>the Lord with its doors of olive wood, its planks of cedar <v Narrator>covering every inch of wall so that no mere stone could be seen. <v Narrator>Its carvings of palm trees and blossoms. <v Narrator>Winged beasts called Cherubim, their wings spreading from wall to wall. <v Narrator>The figures overlaid with gold. <v Narrator>But in the city of the Lord, Solomon permitted the worship of Ba'al <v Narrator>and foreign cults.

<v Narrator>And there were other building projects. <v Narrator>Solomon refortified Canaanite cities, Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer. <v Narrator>Gezer was the dowry of a foreign princess, 1 of Solomon's wives. <v Narrator>Israel was now tied to a system of foreign alliances, bound <v Narrator>to an imperial style that was undermining the old communal way of life. <v Narrator>This is all that is left of Fortress Gezer. <v Narrator>You can find it just off a busy highway a half hour's drive from modern Jerusalem <v Narrator>and archeologists dig a tourist site. <v Narrator>These stones behind me were the foundation of Solomon's massive gates. <v Narrator>To build these fortifications, the whole network of Citadel's guarding the <v Narrator>capital and the major trade routes, he resorted to a divisive, bitter memory. <v Narrator>Forced labor. To man these garrisons, he fell back on another <v Narrator>drastic measure. Military conscription. <v Narrator>The imperial style could be supported only by a heavy burden of new taxes.

<v Narrator>This fell crushingly on the ordinary people, the small farmers and tradesmen. <v Narrator>Around the year 920, after Solomon's death, rival claims to the <v Narrator>throne erupted, the empire fell apart and the kingdom split in two. <v Narrator>Israel in the north with a capital of its own. <v Narrator>Judah in the south, holding on to Jerusalem and the Holy Temple. <v Narrator>Two states going their separate ways. <v Narrator>The Israelites have come a long way from their simple beginnings, <v Narrator>the egalitarian life of the early settlements had been corrupted by <v Narrator>power and affluence. <v Narrator>In a society ruled by rank and privilege, who would speak for the ordinary people? <v Amos the shepherd>You trample upon the poor and take from them exactions of wheat, you have built houses <v Amos the shepherd>of human stone. But you shall not live in them. <v Narrator>These were the words of a shepherd named Amos. <v Narrator>Amos, spelling out the symptoms of Israel's plight.

<v Narrator>Farmers and tradesmen forced into debt. <v Narrator>A rising class of rich landowners collaborating with corrupt judges <v Narrator>exploiting their neighbor's distress. <v Unidentified text>Listen to this, you who would devour the needy, annihilating the poor of the land, <v Unidentified text>tilting a dishonest scale and selling grain refuse as grain. <v Unidentified text>The Lord swears by the pride of Jacob. <v Unidentified text>I will never forget any of that doings. <v Narrator>In the 8th century as inequities worsened and society disintegrated. <v Narrator>The cry for social justice was taken up by other inspired dissidents. <v Narrator>Hosea, Micah, Isaiah. <v Narrator>The men we have come to know as the prophets. <v Narrator>Some were imprisoned for their dissent. <v Narrator>They preached against foreign alliances, against the spread of foreign cults. <v Narrator>The prophets spoke as caretakers of the religion. <v Narrator>Recalling the Israelites to their origins. <v Narrator>Recalling them to God's law.

<v Prophet reader>Take away from me the noise of your songs to the melody of your harps. <v Prophet reader>I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters and <v Prophet reader>righteousness like an ever flowing stream. <v Narrator>Justice and righteousness, the absence of justice was nothing less than a violation <v Narrator>of the covenant that was Israel's foundation, the heritage of Sinai. <v Narrator>A terrible retribution was promised. <v Prophet reader>You princes at the house of Israel who hate the good and love the <v Prophet reader>evil because of you, shall Zion be plowed as a field and Jerusalem <v Prophet reader>become rubble? <v Narrator>In fact, the danger was not far off Egypt and Mesopotamia <v Narrator>was stirring again the empire of the pharaohs being challenged <v Narrator>by a dynamic military force from Assyria. <v Narrator>In the course of this conflict, the northern kingdom of Israel was reduced <v Narrator>to a vassal state, surviving only by paying tribute to the Assyrians. <v Narrator>Then it was simply swept up into the empire.

<v Narrator>A century later, the armies of Babylon came marching west and in 605, <v Narrator>defeated the Egyptians. <v Narrator>Judah was occupied by the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar. <v Narrator>Jerusalem was pillaged, at least 10,000 <v Narrator>families were sent into exile. <v Narrator>The temple was destroyed by fire. <v Prophet reader>How the city to set solitarily that was full of people. <v Prophet reader>She, that was great among the nations. <v Prophet reader>How she has become a vassal. <v Prophet reader>Judah has gone into exile. <v Prophet reader>She dwells among the heathen, she finds no rest. <v Narrator>The year was 586 before the common era. <v Narrator>One of the bitterest years in Jewish memory. <v Narrator>The life of the independent nation was ended. <v Narrator>Its unifying symbol, the temple, was in ruins.

<v Narrator>The leadership in exile in Babylon. <v Narrator>In this majestic city of perhaps a million people more than 500 <v Narrator>miles from ruined Jerusalem, a group of Hebrew scribes set <v Narrator>about organizing and assimilating their people's history. <v Narrator>This is where they assembled the lore, written and spoken, the writings and <v Narrator>sayings of their leaders, poets and prophets, assembled it into the <v Narrator>first books of the Bible, into their great national work, <v Narrator>the Torah. <v Narrator>What emerged in this book, these books, what had been emerging over

<v Narrator>the centuries from the exodus to the exile was a new and <v Narrator>larger vision of life in the tragedy that had overtaken them. <v Narrator>The exiles saw the hand of a universal God, had not the prophets <v Narrator>warned them that violating the covenant would bring on a terrible punishment? <v Narrator>Was it not that God Yahweh, who had sent the mightiest empires of the world <v Narrator>to punish the Israelites? <v Narrator>So Israel and the enemies that had brought about its downfall were <v Narrator>all the instruments of a single God and his universal law, <v Narrator>a law in which goodness was required and in which wrongdoing was doomed to failure. <v Narrator>All the world's nations were linked in a common destiny, bound together <v Narrator>by a moral law with inescapable consequences. <v Narrator>At the center of this vision was no mere guard of nature, but the <v Narrator>God of all history, no mere national God but the God of all <v Narrator>mankind.

<v Narrator>The exiled people who wrote that vision into their history were called <v Narrator>Yehudim, people of Judah. <v Narrator>The word became Jews. <v Narrator>In the experience of exile, the vision of the early Israelites was transformed <v Narrator>and the Jewish people was born. <v Narrator>Born, they believed to a chosen mission, to carry the word of <v Narrator>the single God of justice and mercy from this place, Jerusalem, <v Narrator>to carry the word through history. <v Music>[outtro music] <v Announcer>Major funding for this program has been provided by the Charles H.

<v Announcer>Revson Foundation, Petrie Stores Corporation, and the National <v Announcer>Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding has been provided by the following <v Announcer>contributors. <v Announcer>A complete donor list is available at WNET. <v Announcer>Abba Eban has written a companion book to this series, which is published by Summit <v Announcer>Books and is available in bookstores and libraries.