I century B.C.E. - I century C.E. was a time in Judea's history that determined the development of religious and spiritual life not only of the Jewish people, but of all Western civilization as well. By the beginning of the new era, there emerged a numerous and powerful people - the Judeans. This great people were not so much direct descendants of the sons of Abraham, as they were of all the indigenous inhabitants of ancient Canaan, who lived or arrived there from pre-historic times. Rome's expansion turned the Judean kingdom into a Roman province, but, being the only place where absolute monotheism ruled, the country became a unique part of the pagan empire. And while Roman legions had the upper hand over Judea militarily, Jewish monotheism triumphed spiritually over the Greco-Roman world. Later, the Jewish Messiah movement began to conquer the invincible Roman Empire, but on this victorious path lost its original character: the Judaism of Jesus changed into the Christianity of Paul and thus marked the transition to a new era.
About the Author: Professor Igor P. Lipovsky is a distinguished scholar of Near Eastern and Central Asian History. He is the author of seven books written in English and Russian, and has published more than a hundred articles in American, British, German, and Russian journals. He successfully taught at universities in Russia, Israel, and the United States. Lipovsky was born March 7, 1950, in Moscow, in an interfaith Russian-Jewish family. His paternal ancestors were prominent leaders and philanthropists of the Jewish community of Minsk, Belarus, while his mother (née Robinson) descended from the Russian-English family of well-known industrialists and merchants in pre-revolutionary Russia. Having graduated with distinction from Moscow State University, Lipovsky worked as a researcher and doctoral student at the Academy of Sciences, in Moscow. Later, because of his criticism of the totalitarian and anti-Semitic regime in the Soviet Union, he was forced to leave the country in 1987. In 1989, Lipovsky received his Ph.D. degree in Near Eastern History in Israel and continued to teach at Haifa University's Department of Middle Eastern History for three more years (1987-1992). After the USSR's collapse, he was invited as a visiting professor to St. Petersburg University (1993-1995) and then taught at Los Angeles (1995-97) and Boston (from 1998). Now, Lipovsky is a United States citizen and lives in suburban Boston.