Ancient Israel survives to modern days ?

I’ve been wondering if it’s possible to create a timeline where the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea (better if they united somehow) survive to form a modern day Israel without all the drama like in OTL, I know this might not be realistic, but if somehow the Israelites (or the Canaanites) survive the Assyrians/Babylonians/Greeks/Romans to modern age while retaining the Israelite and Hebrew identity.

Bonus points if Islam never exists.
 
The area has been a major international trade route for millennia. It stands on the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. I think it's chances are that empires would have conquered and ruled it, unless the ancient Jews managed to fend them off. Perhaps that can be done by turning it into another version of Sparta and giving it a fierce military reputation, not to mention doing their level best to keep invaders away diplomatically, perhaps even submitting to being a protectorate/vassal state at times.

One intriguing possibility is to have the majority population remain Jewish, so that we could have a Jewish population that had been a majority in the land for centuries with a unified identity and very different culture form modern Israel.
 
I’ve been wondering if it’s possible to create a timeline where the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea (better if they united somehow) survive to form a modern day Israel without all the drama like in OTL, I know this might not be realistic, but if somehow the Israelites (or the Canaanites) survive the Assyrians/Babylonians/Greeks/Romans to modern age while retaining the Israelite and Hebrew identity.

Bonus points if Islam never exists.

Probably the easiest way would for them to become willing Vassal states to the big dogs that come through. Assyria comes through? Submit early, and probably they'll allow you full autonomy as long as you aren't problematic. Rinse and repeat.
 
They'd need Old Testament God to be on their side at all times for this to happen, but OT God seems like an unreliable ally who was often angry at Israel/Judea for whatever reason. Both of the kingdoms were up against insurmountable odds and controlled a region their more powerful neighbours (Egypt, Assyria, etc.) would rather control on their own.

One intriguing possibility is to have the majority population remain Jewish, so that we could have a Jewish population that had been a majority in the land for centuries with a unified identity and very different culture form modern Israel.

This would result in a very different Judaism. Do the Jews still scatter across the Eastern Mediterranean? What about the Samaritans and their interpretation of Judaism? And what happens to Christianity?

Probably the easiest way would for them to become willing Vassal states to the big dogs that come through. Assyria comes through? Submit early, and probably they'll allow you full autonomy as long as you aren't problematic. Rinse and repeat.

The Northern Kingdom of Israel appears to have been somewhat unstable, with occasional coups against their leadership like Jehu's coup against the Omrides. Local forces might not be too accomodating to foreign rulership.
 
euhemerist and taking biblical accounts as being based in fact, the earliest POD would probably be to avert the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, since those are what led to the main Jewish diaspora iirc (the former is where the concept of the Lost Tribes comes from)
 
This would result in a very different Judaism. Do the Jews still scatter across the Eastern Mediterranean? What about the Samaritans and their interpretation of Judaism? And what happens to Christianity?

Jews could scatter and Christianity could form, the only requirement is that Jews continue to form a demographic majority sharing a common culture and language (since the Jews in Palestine prior to the successful revival of Hebrew were scattered in different communities and did not have a common language).
 

Philip

Donor
Probably the easiest way would for them to become willing Vassal states to the big dogs that come through. Assyria comes through? Submit early, and probably they'll allow you full autonomy as long as you aren't problematic. Rinse and repeat.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? But look at the post-exile/pre-Roman history of Judea. Once Judea submits to one empire, a rival claimant to the throne or temple pledges to a neighboring empire. You're back at war, and both empires see you as troublesome.

The area has been a major international trade route for millennia. ..., perhaps even submitting to being a protectorate/vassal state at times.

One intriguing possibility is to have the majority population remain Jewish, so that we could have a Jewish population that had been a majority in the land for centuries with a unified identity and very different culture form modern Israel.

But history shows us this is very hard to achieve. Being at center of the trade routes means Judea will be flooded with foreign ideas and philosophies. There will be hellenized Jews, persianized (is there a better term?) Jews, traditionalist Jews, etc. Which is THE Jewish identity?
 
I’ve been wondering if it’s possible to create a timeline where the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea (better if they united somehow) survive to form a modern day Israel without all the drama like in OTL, I know this might not be realistic, but if somehow the Israelites (or the Canaanites) survive the Assyrians/Babylonians/Greeks/Romans to modern age while retaining the Israelite and Hebrew identity.

Bonus points if Islam never exists.
It would be somewhat of a China continuity.
 
Elohim stops telling his followers to hamstring captured horses. That or King David doesn't send a guy to his death because of coveting his wife, which butterflies the divinely mandated breakup of his kingdom.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Modern Israel is a product of modern developments unrelated to ancient Israel. For starters, any idea that preventing the Jewish diaspora would have prevented the development of modern Israel ignores the fact that native Jews existed in all periods of the Levant, whether under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Abbasid, Crusader, Ottoman and British colonial rule. The Jewish diaspora in practice is no more significant for modern Israel than the Greek expansion outside of Greece into the the Mediterranean and as far as Hindustan is for modern Greece, and this "diaspora" only provided a Romantic nationalist mythology that is no more factual than the Romantic national mythology of other nationalist movements of the same period. Jews have kept living in the land of Israel all the time, and at no point was every single Jew expelled from it unable to return until now.

Modern Israel is the product of a small class of 19th and 20th century European Jews who progressively bought land in and around biblical lands, aided initially by British colonialism and then forming a state around these lands when Britain decayed and said European Jews were able to carve a state out of their bought territories by taking advantage of this.

Basically, it's simply not true that had the Assyrians and Babylonians not conquered Israel that therefore there would be no "diaspora" and thus no need to create a modern Jewish state. In fact, Jews were able to create the Hasmonean kingdom after the successful Maccabean revolt that became something of a regional hegemony as it absorbed local Nabatean territories and survived reconquest attempts by the Selucids and Ptolemies. In fact, the Hasmoneans kind of wilfully annexed themselves to the Romans, though it's true that the Romans threatened the Hasmoneans with war.

After that, we can also trace some independent states in the general area of Israel, even if not ruled by Jews. The Kingdom of Jerusalem, a number of Arab polities. Any of this could have developed into a nation-state called "Israel", though granted, one where Judaism is not the only identity marker but a combination of all cultures that have lived in and around Israel.
 
Having the Kingdom of Israel remain even semi-independent until present day is borderline ASB. However I can imagine a scenario in which the majority of the population of the region remains Jewish, and perhaps eventually developing its own national identity and becoming independent again in the 19th or 20th centuries. The POD for that would have to be in Roman times, and ever after the POD the Jews would require some luck in order to keep surviving (maybe if and when Islam rises, the Jews willingly subject themselves to the Caliph and in order the Caliph tolerates them and allows them to retain some form of autonomy without much pressure to assimilate and convert, kind of like what the Ottomans usually did with their Christian subjects). TTL's Jews and Israel will, needless to say, be very different from IOTL, and I also imagine there would still be significant non-Jewish minorities in the country, so it's not like the population would remain ethnically static since antiquity.
 
Ethnic Jews would have probably remained the demographic majority in Palestine up to modern times even in OTL, if the Romans had just sacked the Second Temple of Jerusalem without destroying the building. Without the destruction of the Temple there would have been no Diaspora, no mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis, since Europe would have always been Jew-free, and ATL Israel would have much better relations with all of its neighbors, since its people would be seen as the rightful inhabitants of the region rather than as stealing land from Arab settlers.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Ethnic Jews would have probably remained the demographic majority in Palestine up to modern times even in OTL, if the Romans had just sacked the Second Temple of Jerusalem without destroying the building. Without the destruction of the Temple there would have been no Diaspora, no mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis, since Europe would have always been Jew-free, and ATL Israel would have much better relations with all of its neighbors, since its people would be seen as the rightful inhabitants of the region rather than as stealing land from Arab settlers.
There were already Jewish communities in Europe by the first century BCE before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. Honestly, this kind of simplistic historical causation should just stop. People too readily believe 19th century Jewish Romantic nationalism, which is as accurate as the Scottish nationalism of Mel Gibson.
 
There were already Jewish communities in Europe by the first century BCE before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

But it was only after that moment that they started growing larger faster than just birthrate could account for, thus come the Middle Ages there were enough Jews in Europe to be a viable scapegoat.
 

Maoistic

Banned
But it was only after that moment that they started growing larger faster than just birthrate could account for, thus come the Middle Ages there were enough Jews in Europe to be a viable scapegoat.
You need demographic data to support the assertion that Jews suddenly begin to grow faster after either Titus' destruction of Jerusalem or after Hadrian's final destruction of the city.
 
For Ancient Israel to survive into modern times without the present day issues, you’ll need the following PODs:

King Solomon enacts a more equitable tax policy: In order to fund his construction projects and economic policies, Northern Israel was heavily taxed while Southern Israel got off lightly. A bit less centralization and a more federal structure is key to keep Israel united after Solomon’s death.

King Rehoboam listens to his more experienced advisors: King Rehoboam ignored his more experienced advisors who favored tax relief and instead listened to his friends and cronies who favored a more hardline approach. Listening to the wrong people cost Rehoboam northern Israel and is the root origin of the schism between the Jews and Samaritans. An unified Israel has a better chance of fending off the Assyrians than a Israel split between feuding kingdoms.

The High Priesthood stays a religious office: Much of Ancient Israel’s political issues after the Exile was rooted in the High Priest having both secular and clerical power which made it vulnerable to corruption from both domestic and foreign actors.

The Romans having a better provincial policy: The root cause of the Roman problems with the Jews was quite simply, provincial mismanagement. Either the Romans leave Israel as a client state or they make it into a proper province with its own imperial legate. Appointing second rate political hacks to govern a sensitive border province like Israel with their immediate supervisor as the Syrian imperial legate in Antioch could only end in revolt.
 
Have Israel remain united. That's a given.
Then have them conquer Phoenicia and have them take over Phonecia's seafaring ways.
Very easily you'll get a sphere of influence, which can potentially allow the civilization to survive better.
 

Kaze

Banned
You also have to have a much wiser King Solomon. He must know that he would not live forever. He should have foreseen that Rehoboam and Jeroboam would divide the nation in the face of two great enemies - namely the enemies in Egypt and Babylon.
Babylon backing the one kingdom, while Egypt backing the other = until Babylon tired of the game and decides to take the whole thing.

The only way to stop it would be
1. kill Jeroboam before he flees to Egypt
2. destroy Babylon
3. destroy Egypt.

This was not in the cards - the ability to remove two great superpowers. Even if it was in the cards, there was a different rising power in the West -- the Greeks would come to fill the void (eventually the Greeks would produce a Philip or an Alexander, then Israel would no longer exist) and then the Romans would come to fill the void of the Greeks.
The best option would be after the death of Alexander the Great - a rebellion successfully breaks away a small kingdom that becomes "allay of Rome (thus protected by it)", when Augustus decides to remove Egypt, Israel snatches up Egyptian territory helping Augustus.
 
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