The people of Judah remained in captivity until the Persian king Cyrus captured Babylon in 539 and allowed them to return home around 520 B.C. to Jerusalem. They tried to rebuild the temple. First they were under the jurisdiction of Persia, then Greece, and then Syria (under the Seleucids). Then in 162 B.C. Judas Maccabeus and a group of Jews revolted and gained independence. The spread their boarders further than the Empire of King David. However, Rome was rising after the third Punic War.

“The Hasmonean dynasty founded by the Maccabees was finally brought to an end in 37 B.C. by Herod the Great [ need full name, the great does not mean anything!], a close ally of Rome ( this was the King Herod who met the wise men from the East and ordered the killing of infants in Bethlehem).”[1] His kingdom, though larger than that of David, was in reality a Roman protectorate. After his death in 4 B.C. it was split into four parts. Judea, Samaria, and Idumaea passed to his son Archelaus, who was given the title of “ethnarch” [ mjm: is ethnic monarch?](local/national ruler) by the emperor Augustus. When Archelaus was deposed in A.D. 7 this territory was merged with the Roman province of Syria and administered by a Roman protectorate, who resided in Caesarea Palaestinae. Meanwhile, from 4 B.C. to A.D. 39 the provinces of Gtalilee and Peraea, the region on the east bank of the Jordan river, were ruled over by Herod Antipas, Archelaus’ brother, who as a ruler of a fourth part of the kingdom bore the title of tetrarch. This was the King Herod who ordered the beheading of John the Baptist and later tried Jesus, presumably because, as a Galilean, the latter was one of his subjects. The fourth tetrarchy was that of Abilene, in southwestern Syria. According to the Gospels, this was ruled over by a tetrarch called Lysanias. His true identity is disputed by historians, but he does not appear to have been a relative of the three surviving sons of Herod.”[2]

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