Inevitably, the long periods of occupation and the loss of countless lives in Israel’s struggle for freedom raised the question, why? Life seemed so different from the glory days of Moses, David or Solomon. In 63 BC, Roman general Pompey the Great marched his troops into Jerusalem, slaughtering thousands. This story is told in the books of Maccabees, which are in Catholic but not Protestant Bibles. By the 2nd century BC, the so-called Maccabean revolt against the foreign rulers led to a period of Jewish autonomy.

The Hebrews, meanwhile, remained under both foreign occupation and the influence of Hellenism. When he died prematurely of malaria, Alexander’s empire fell apart. He sought to unify his vast and diverse empire by spreading Hellenism – Greek culture and language – to its farthest corners. Some 200 years after the Jews returned from exile, Macedonian king Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) conquered much of the known world, including the Holy Land. The subsequent era in Israel’s history (late 6 th century BC till 70 AD) is known as Second Temple Judaism. The Protestant Old Testament timeline ends with the events described in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah: Jews returned from exile in Babylon (now Iraq), rebuilt Jerusalem, which had previously been sacked by the Babylonians, and restored the Temple. Catholic translations have the same Old Testament books as Protestant Bibles but add several that were written later.

In Protestant editions, which are based on the Hebrew Bible, there’s a 500-year gap between Old and New Testaments, possibly with the exception of the Book of Daniel, which may date from the 2nd century BC. The first thing to note is that the ‘end of the Old Testament’ depends on whether we’re talking about Hebrew, Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant Bibles.

What happened between the end of the Old Testament and the start of the New Testament? Answer:

Difference between the testaments