3,000 Years in 10 Questions: Israel’s History

I spend a good part of every week writing trivia questions, and I’ve found that the hardest subjects to fit into a quiz are the ones with the most history behind them. The clearest example I know is Israel. If you try to condense three thousand years into ten questions, you soon see how much you have to leave out: kings and prophets, empires rising and falling, exiles and homecomings, and the ordinary families who kept a language and a faith alive through it all.

But I think a short quiz can do what a fat history book sometimes can’t. It makes you pause and think about what you really know. Most of us have bits of the story of Israel. We picture the stones of the Western Wall, we remember Masada from a documentary, or we recall that something important happened in 1948. A good question takes one of these fragments and asks you to connect it to the rest of the story.

And that’s what I tried to do here. The ten questions below are in rough chronological order, from the time of King David to the founding of the modern state. None are designed to fool you. Some are simple, some are thought-provoking, and at least one is likely to catch people off guard.

If you enjoy keeping score, grab a pen. Answer from memory and try not to Google. The answers are at the end, with a little bit of context for each.

Ten Questions, Three Thousand Years

1. According to the Bible, which king made Jerusalem the capital of a united Israel?
   A) Saul B) David C) Solomon D) Hezekiah
2. Which empire destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE?
   A) Assyrian B) Persian C) Babylonian D) Roman
3. Which Persian ruler allowed the exiled Jews to return home and rebuild the Temple?
   A) Cyrus the Great B) Darius I C) Xerxes D) Artaxerxes
4. Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple after a revolt led by which family?
   A) The Herodians B) The Maccabees C) The Zealots D) The Essenes
5. Who rebuilt and greatly expanded the Second Temple, leaving behind the walls that include today’s Western Wall?
   A) Herod the Great B) Pontius Pilate C) Judah Maccabee D) Emperor Hadrian
6. In what year did Roman forces destroy the Second Temple?
   A) 4 BCE B) 33 CE C) 70 CE D) 135 CE
7. Masada fell to the Romans in about 73 or 74 CE. Which ancient historian is our main source for its story?
   A) Herodotus B) Josephus C) Tacitus D) Pliny the Elder
8. Which empire ruled the land for about four centuries, from 1517 until the First World War?
   A) Mamluk B) Byzantine C) Ottoman D) Abbasid
9. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is best remembered for what achievement?
   A) Leading the First Zionist Congress B) Reviving Hebrew as an everyday spoken language C) Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls D) Serving as Israel’s first president
10. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion read Israel’s Declaration of Independence aloud in which city?
    A) Jerusalem B) Haifa C) Tel Aviv D) Tiberias

If you enjoyed these and want a version with a timer, instant feedback and scoring, take today’s Bing Homepage Quiz on Israel and see how you compare. Then come back here, because the answers below carry some of my favorite details.

Ready? Here is how it all fits together.

1. B) David. The Bible tells how David captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites, around 1000 BCE, and made it his royal city. Archaeologists still debate how large his kingdom was, but the name “City of David” has stayed attached to the oldest part of Jerusalem ever since.
2. C) Babylonian. The armies of Nebuchadnezzar II burned Solomon’s Temple in 586 BCE (some scholars prefer 587) and carried many of Judah’s people into exile in Babylon. The pain of that loss still echoes in Psalm 137, “By the rivers of Babylon.”
3. A) Cyrus the Great. After conquering Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus allowed exiled peoples, including the Jews, to go home. The Book of Ezra records his decree, and the rebuilt Second Temple was completed around 516 BCE. Cyrus’s own clay record of his policy, the Cyrus Cylinder, is now kept in the British Museum.
4. B) The Maccabees. Judah Maccabee and his brothers led a revolt against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, who had outlawed Jewish practice. They rededicated the Temple in 164 BCE, and the dynasty their family founded is known as the Hasmoneans.
5. A) Herod the Great. Herod began his huge rebuilding project around 20 BCE. Here is the detail that surprises many people: the Western Wall was never a wall of the Temple itself. It is part of the retaining wall Herod built to support the enlarged platform of the Temple Mount.
6. C) 70 CE. The Roman general Titus, son of Emperor Vespasian, destroyed the Second Temple during the Jewish revolt. In Rome, the Arch of Titus still shows soldiers carrying away the Temple’s menorah. Jews mourn both Temples each year on Tisha B’Av.
7. B) Josephus. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish commander who later sided with Rome, described the defenders’ final night in his book The Jewish War. Historians still debate parts of his account, but Masada became a powerful symbol, and it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001.
8. C) Ottoman. The Ottomans took control in 1517 and ruled until British forces captured the region in 1917 and 1918. The walls that surround Jerusalem’s Old City today were built in the 1530s under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
9. B) Reviving Hebrew. Ben-Yehuda arrived in Jerusalem in 1881 and insisted on speaking only Hebrew at home, at a time when it was used mostly for prayer and study. He also began a vast Hebrew dictionary that was completed decades after his death. Today, millions of people speak Hebrew every day.
10. C) Tel Aviv. Ben-Gurion read the declaration in the hall of the former Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard, now known as Independence Hall. The ceremony took place on a Friday afternoon, just hours before the British Mandate ended.

So, how did you do? If you got eight or more right, you obviously know this story well. Five to seven is a good starting point, and anything less means there’s more to learn, which is the fun part.

What stays with me after writing these questions is not any single date. It is the continuity. The city David chose as his capital still stands at the heart of Jewish life. A language once kept mostly for prayer is now used to argue about football and order coffee. Three thousand years is a long time, yet in Israel the past never feels far away. If even one answer sent you looking for more, then these ten questions did their job.