This is the epic story of Jewish civilization from its beginnings to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 70. The book deals with Israel's relations with the great empires which shaped its development and with the changing internal structure of the Jewish state. Part of the tale is told by excavations, which reveal many aspects of the material culture and everyday life of those times. However, the major source is the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament, which is an unparalleled, massively varied compendium that includes a great deal of the world's earliest historical writing and has inspired the literature, art and ethics of half the world.