Vision and Covenant | Timeline

Timeline
       
 
  8000 BCE   Grain farming   Farming culture establishes a permanent settlement at a site that will be called Jericho
 
  4000 BCE   Chalcolithic Period - First use of copper alloys for making tools    
  3800 BCE   Wheel, calendar
(Mesopotamia)		    
  3100 BCE   Cuneiform writing.Emergence of cities in Sumer.
Solar calendar		 The Sumerians, who settled in Mesopotamia, have by now built cities and irrigation canals.
They invent or develop a system of writing which will later be known as cuneiform
  
  2900 BCE     Signs of a local flood are evident in Mesopotamian city of Shuruppak, home of the Sumerian flood hero (Utnapishtim), parallel to the biblical Noah Genesis, 6-9
        Ziggurats (temple towers) built in Mesopotamia, may be viewed as parallel to the biblical Tower of Babel Genesis 12:1-9
  2500 BCE   First use of papyrus as writing material    
  1700 BCE     The Tales of Gilgamesh are compiled into a long Babylonian epic “Patriarchal period”
  1690 BCE     Hammurabi creates code of 282 laws. The laws of Hammurabi may belong to the same legislative tradition as biblical codes such as Exodus 21-22  
  1400 BCE   Alphabetic writing is being developed in northern Canaan    
  1250-1200 BCE       The Exodus from Egypt, the giving of the Torah, Israelites’ entry into Canaan
  1200-1000 BCE       Period of the Judges
  1100 BCE   Iron Age starts   YHWH is worshiped as Israel’s national God
  990 BCE       David conquers Jerusalem
  950 BCE       Solomon builds the first Temple
  928 BCE       Two kingdoms: the ten tribes form the northern kingdom- Israel, while the tribes of Judah and Simon form the southern kingdom
  922 BCE       The Book of Kings, written from a Judean perspective.
  750 BCE     Homer composes the Odyssey  
  745 BCE       Amos, a prophet from the Judean village of Tekoa, denounces the Israelite shrine
  734 BCE       The prophet Isaiah begins to prophesy
  722 BCE       Samaria falls to the Assyrian army. Exile of Israelites (ten lost tribes)
  701 BCE     Hesiod, the Greek theologian, asserts that the gods reward and punish people Sennacherib lays siege on Jerusalem.God protects his holy seat in Jerusalem. The doctrine of Zion’s inviolability becomes stronger then ever
  610 BCE       Jeremiah’s prophecies
  597 BCE       Judah surrenders to the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar's army. King Jehoiachin and other leading citizens are exiled to Babylon
  593 BCE       Ezekiel’s consoling prophecies to his fellow Judean exiles in Babylon (prophecy of the dry bones)
  587 BCE       By July the walls of Jerusalem fall. In August King Nebuchadnezzar sets fire to Jerusalem and its Temple. Thousands are exiled to Babylon
  538 BCE     Cyrus the Great,(590 – 529 BCE),
King of Persia, founds the Achaemenid Persian empire
 Cyrus permits the Judean exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild it
  536-333 BCE       The Return to Zion, Period of Ezra and Nehemiah, construction of the Second Temple
  520 BCE       The prophets Haggai and Zechariah interpret upheavals in the Persian Empire as a sign of God’s return to the historic arena
  515 BCE       The new temple is completed
  500 BCE     In India followers of Gautama develop Buddhism  
  499 BCE     Confucius stresses interpersonal ethics in his writings  
  475 BCE     Herodotus writes a history of Greece’s wars with Persia  
  450 BCE     “Golden age”Athens  
  445 BCE       Nehemiah, a Jewish official of the Persian Court, is sent to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of its fortifications
        Plato
(427-348 BCE)
Greek philosopher		  
  428 BCE       The priest- scribe Ezra arrives in Jerusalem
  425 BCE     Beginning of a series of plays by Aristophanes which will continue for decades to ridicule the Greeks and their gods  
  404 BCE     The Peloponnesian war ends, Thucydides explores and exposes the internal politics of Athens and the general background to the war  
  399 BCE     The Greek philosopher Socrates is condemned for undermining tradition and corrupting the youth. He commits suicide  
  380 BCE     Plato develops his “ideal world” theory  
  350 BCE     Aristotle, a student of Plato, endeavors to treat each branch of knowledge systematically The book of Tobit, part of the Apocrypha, is composed  
  333 BCE   Crossbow invented in China Alexander the Great defeats the army of Darius of Persia  
  305 BCE     Euclid writes the Elements, a presentation of the mathematics of his day, in 13 books The book of Daniel is composed
  300 BCE   Stirrups invented in China, enabling horse-riders to use swords and spears effectively    
  275 BCE       Aramaic texts revolving around the biblical character Enoch, who was taken up to heaven by God, begin to be composed and collected
  250 BCE   Foot–driven potters’ wheel invented    
  218 BCE     The Carthaginian general Hannibal invades Italy  
  167 BCE      

The Hasmonean family of priests in the Judean town of Modiin leads a rebellion against the Hellenistic regime. The Book of Esther is composed
  75 BCE       The so-called Damascus Document is composed in Hebrew. The Qumran rule of the Community is compiled
  70 BCE       The idea of a Messiah from the House of David is first attested to in the pseudo- epigraphic Psalms of Solomon
  66 BCE     Plutarch (120-46 BCE), Greek biographer and miscellaneous writer, writes his biography of Lycurgus, the founder of Sparta  
  22 BCE     Luke (22 BCE – 75 CE), Greek Evangelist, the first non-Jewish apostle and the reputed author of the gospel bearing his name Herod builds fortresses and cities all over the land. His magnificent refurbishing of the Temple will be completed by 64 CE
  0 (4 BCE)     Birth of Jesus  
        Paul (10-67), Christian evangelist, writes a series of letters to his converts  
        Ovid (18 – 42), Roman poet, writes Metamorphoses ("Transfiguration")  
  26     Pontius Pilate is appointed governor of Judea  
  30     Pontius Pilate has Jesus of Nazareth crucified Philo of Alexandria writes an allegorical interpretation of the Torah
  37-42     Virgil (19-70), the greatest Roman poet, writes the ten eclogues ("Selections").  
  60     Paul of Tarsus writes a number of arguments for Christianity in letter form  
  65     The gospel of St. Mark is written, the earliest of the 4 gospels  
  66-72       Jewish revolt. Rome conquers Jerusalem. Second Temple destroyed. Yavneh academy founded by Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai
  73       Mass suicide at Masada – end of rebellion
  75       The Jewish general and later collaborator with Rome, Flavius Josephus, completes a detailed history – The Wars of the Jews
    Paper invented in China.    
  >131-134       Bar Kokhba revolt
  215       Rabbi Judah ha-Nassi completes the Mishnah
  380       Completion of the Jerusalem Talmud
  500       Completion of the Babylonian Talmud
  570     Birth of Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam  
  600   Windmills invented in Persia.    
  630     After nearly a decade of combat, Mohammad conquers Mecca  
        Zoroaster (550-630) Persian prophet, also called Zarathustra, founds the Zoroastrian religion.  
  691   Gunpowder invented in China Caliph Abd al-Malik builds the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, first Moslem structure in the world  
  920       Saadia Gaon, an emerging scholar, writes the first of his philological works
  1055       Solomon ibn Gabirol composes an extensive metaphysical work in Arabic – The Source of Life
  1070       Rashi composes commentaries on most of the bible
  1096     The first crusade  
  1139       Judah Halevi completes his classic and influential philosophy of Judaism
  1168       Maimonides completes his Arabic commentary on the Mishnah. 1185 - completes the Mishne Torah. 1195 - completes The guide for the perplexed
  1168-1172       Travels of Benjamin of Tudela
  1174   Europe begins to learn about Arabic numerals and the zero from the Liber Abaci Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, seizes power in Syria  
  1275     Marco Polo arrives in China  
  1280       Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (1240-1291), a Kabbalist who has come to Italy from Spain via Palestine and Greece, goes to the Vatican after being inspired by a prophetic vision
  1286       Rabbi Moshe of Leon completes a commentary on the Torah called the Zohar (the book of splendor)
  1302     Dante Alighieri, the great Italian poet, is exiled from Florence. 1307- Writes The Divine Comedy; a description of a journey through hell and purgatory and up to paradise  
  1348     The Black Death in Europe  
  1428       Rabbi Joseph Albo of Spain completes the Book of Principles
  1457   Johan Gutenberg prints the first surviving dated book in Mainz    
  1475   Rifle (muzzle-loaded) invented in Italy and Germany    
  1481     Beginning of the Spanish Inquisition.  
  1492     Columbus discovers various islands in the Caribbean Expulsion of Jews from Spain: migration to Palestine and particularly the cities of Safed and Tiberias
  1496     Buonarroti Michelangelo (1475-1564), the Florentine artist of the Renaissance, arrives in Rome for the first time  
  1498     Vasco da Gama discovers a route to India  
  1516     Thomas More writes Utopia Safed becomes an important spiritual, commercial and cultural center following the expulsion from Spain
  1517     Martin Luther publishes his 95 theses against indulgences  
  1522       Joseph Caro begins writing the Beit Yosef
  1524       David Reuveni claims to be a messenger of the king of the lost tribes of Israel Letter of the Tribes
  1555     Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel (1525-1569) combines past and present in his works  
  1564       Hayyim ben Joseph Vital (1514-1620), begins to study Kabbalah in Safed. He becomes the leading student of Isaac Luria
  1569       At about this time Isaac Luria, Kabbalist, settles in Safed
  1596     William Shakespeare writes The Merchant of Venice  
  1605     Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), begins Don Quixote  
  1627     Francis Bacon (1561-1626), philosopher, essayist and Lord Chancellor of England, writes The New Atlantis  
  1648     Rembrandt van Rijn produces his etching Jews in the Synagogue.
The ”Peace of Westphalia” ends the Thirty Years’ War. 		 
  1651     Thomas Hobbes, political philosopher, writes Leviathan  
  1665       Shabbetai Zevi proclaims himself the Jewish Messiah
  1667     John Milton , English poet, writes Paradise Lost  
  1670       Benedict Spinoza writes Tractatus Theologico-politicus
  1683   Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), Dutch student of natural history and maker of microscopes, discovers bacteria    
  1687   Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), English mathematician and natural philosopher (physicist), publishes the law of gravitation.    
  1689     Letter Concerning Toleration written by the English philosopher John Locke  
        Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), writes Robinson Crusoe  
  1736   John Hadley invents the reflecting quadrant, which will aid sailors by allowing them to determine latitude at any time, day or night   Israel Ben Eliezer (Baal Shem Tov) begins founding the Hassidic movement.
  1740   Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius invents a new temperature scale   Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Italian poet and Kabbalist, writes Mesillat Yesharim
  1762     Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher, publishes The Social Contract  
  1772       The Rabbinic leaders of Vilna, including Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (the Vilna Gaon) put the Hasidim under rabbinic ban
  1775     The American Revolution begins.  
  1777       Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, Hasidic leader, accompanied by Abraham of Kalisk and Israel of Polotsk, leads a group of 300 Jews to settle in Palestine
  1783   French brothers Jacques and Joseph Montgolfier invent the first working hot-air balloon   Moses Mendelssohn, spiritual leader of German Jewry, writes Jerusalem
  1789     The French Revolution begins  
        (L'abbé) Henri Gregoire (1750-1831), Catholic priest, writes Essai sur la Regeneration Physique, Morale et Politique des Juifs  
  1795     The Marquis de Condorcet, Marie Jean (1743-1794), French mathematician, philosopher and revolutionary writes Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (published after his death)  
  1796   Edward Jenner (1749–1823), English physician, discovers the vaccination    
  1798   Eli Whitney, the "father of mass production", builds firearms factory   Nahman of Bratslav, Hasidic tzaddik, visits Palestine.
          Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, the Hasidic leader, writes Sefer Meor Einayim
  1800-1801   Richard Trevithick (1771–1833), English engineer and inventor. Known as the father of locomotive power because of his invention of the high-pressure steam engine    
  1807       Augustin Barruel, French Jesuit anti-revolutionary advises the French government of an alleged world Jewish conspiracy, a "Jewish plot" (this will eventually lead to the writing of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion)
  1813     Robert Owen (1771-1858), British reformer and socialist, publishes A New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character  
  1819   Hans C. Oersted discovers electromagnetism    
  1823-1824     Claude Henri de Saint Simon (1760-1825), French socialist, historic founder of French socialism writes Catéchisme des industriels  
  1835       Abraham Geiger begins publishing The Scientific Journal for Jewish Theology
  1836   English physicist James Joule formulates the first law of thermodynamics: energy is conserved   Zevi Hirsch Kalischer, orthodox rabbi and early Zionist thinker, asks the Rothschilds for funds to purchase land in Palestine. 1862 - writes the Derishat Ziyyon
Yehudah Alkalai (1798-1878), an early Zionist, attempts to promote Jewish settlement in Israel
  1837   Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791–1872) invents the telegraph    
      The process of vulcanization is developed by Charles Goodyear. It enables the commercial use of rubber    
  1848     Karl Marx, German philosopher, writes the Communist Manifesto  
  1855       Samson Raphael Hirsch, leader of German Orthodoxy establishes coeducational school in Frankfurt
  1859     Charles Darwin writes his On the Origin of Species  
  1862     The Civil War rages throughout the U.S. Moses Hess (1812-1875), German Socialist, writes Rome and Jerusalem, asserting the need for Jewish nationalism
  1863       Judah Leib Gordon, Hebrew poet, writes Awake My People
  1867   Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833–1896), Swedish chemist, invents dynamite. Karl Marx writes Das Kapital  
  1879   Thomas A. Edison invents the first practical electric lamp    
  1882     Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher and poet, writes Also Sprach Zarathustra Leon Pinsker, a Russian physician, writes Auto-Emancipation
  1883     Friedrich Engles, (1820-1895), social philosopher, closet collaborator with Marx, publishes The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916-), Yiddish writer, publishes his first Yiddish story, Two Stones
  1885   Karl Benz (1844–1929), German engineer, credited with building the first automobile powered by an internal-combustion engine    
  1889       Ahad ha-Am (Asher Ginsberg), Hebrew essayist and a leader of Hibat Zion movement, publishes The Wrong Way
1891- publishes The Truth From Palestine
  1890     Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), English author and playwright Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook establishes the "Mercaz Harav” Yeshiva.
  1896   Guglielmo Marconi, Marchese (1874–1937), Italian physicist, celebrated for his development of wireless telegraphy   Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), writes The Jewish State: An Attempt at Modern Solution of the Jewish Question
  1897       The first Zionist Congress convenes in Basel, Switzerland, under the leadership of Theodor Herzl
  1898       Nachman Syrkin, founder of socialist Zionism, writes The Jewish Question and the Socialist Jewish State
          Rachel Blaustein (1890-1931), modernistic Hebrew poet
  1903   The Wright brothers achieve their first successful heavier-than- air flight.
The first moving picture is produced		   After the Kishinev pogrom, Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), Russian Hebrew poet, begins writing Poems of Wrath. This anthology establishes Bialik's reputation as the national poet of the Jewish people
  1904       Aharon David Gordon (1856-1922), Hebrew writer and Zionist thinker, leaves Russia to settle in Palestine
  1905   Albert Einstein publishes The Special Theory of Relativity   The first Russian edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian doctor, founder of psychoanalysis, writes Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
1900- writes The Interpretation of Dreams
  1914-1918     World War I Marc Chagall, Russian-born Jewish painter, has his first one-man exhibition in Berlin
  1917       The Balfour Declaration discusses a Jewish national homeland in Palestine
  1919       Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), German philosopher and theologian, completes The Star of Redemption
  1920       Joseph Hayyim Brenner (1881-1921), writes Breakdown and Bereavement, a novel describing the transition undergone by a pioneer
Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), becomes the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi in Israel
  1921     Albert Einstein (1879-1955) awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect Abraham Shlonski (1900-1973), Hebrew poet and literary editor, returns to Palestine from Russia and engages in road building in the Jezreel valley. Calls himself "the road-paving poet of Israel", composes a series of poems named Shirei Ha-Emek
  1923       Vladimir Jabotinsky, Zionist leader, resigns from the Zionist Executive and leaves the Zionist Organization
Rabbi Feldman Yehoshua Redler composes Al Hagvulin, an essay on life in the Levant, and a vision of Jewish-Arab coexistence
  1925   Robert H. Goddard launches the world's first rocket The Trial, a novel by Franz Kafka (1883-1924), is published. Brit Shalom [“Covenant of Peace”] movement is founded, led by Martin Buber
  1927       Joseph Isaac Schneerson (1880-1950), the Lubavitch Rebbe, goes to Riga, Latvia where he founds a center for the Habad movement
  1929     Karl Mannheim (1893-1947), sociologist, educator and philosopher, writes Ideology and Utopia  
  1933     Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany Ernest Bloch (1880-1959), Swiss composer who has emigrated to the U.S. composes Sacred Service