WI: Kingdom of Canaan Never Joins the Roman Empire

What if the Kingdom of Canaan or Israel never becomes part of the Roman Empire?

It'll get conquered sooner or later. Its in a good position strategically, especially when considering the Persians are relativly close. If the Romans don't get it, Persia will either conquer or client it, for the same reasons Rome would want it.
 

jahenders

Banned
It depends, of course, on why they didn't.

If they (somehow) resisted Rome, then that would imply they're much stronger.

Alternately, they could have wound up conquered (again) by another neighbor, but even then Rome would probably eventually conquer them since they controlled the whole W. Med coast.

In any case, if Israel wasn't part of Rome at the time of Christ, it might have significantly changed the dynamics after he was crucified and would likely change the focus/direction of later missionary work.

What if the Kingdom of Canaan or Israel never becomes part of the Roman Empire?
 
What if the Kingdom of Canaan or Israel never becomes part of the Roman Empire?

It could only happen if it remained "free" as as Roman Client state, and it get its internal house in order so that it won't be divided or annexed.

Then some luck.

Basically, it would be Herod's kingdom surviving intact and never becoming formally annexed to the Roman Empire.
 
It could only happen if it remained "free" as as Roman Client state, and it get its internal house in order so that it won't be divided or annexed.

Then some luck.

Basically, it would be Herod's kingdom surviving intact and never becoming formally annexed to the Roman Empire.

Essentially, the best way to accomplish this is some form of the republic continuing, with its foreign policy being much more willing than the empire to maintain longterm client states witihn natural borders. Still, any shakeup in the east is inevitable and from there it's almost inevitable that some Roman proconsul in Syria decides to just annex Judea like Pompey did Syria.
 
It's best bet is to be a client state, though even then it's likely to get annexed down the line.

The Fact of the Matter is that Judea simply is too close to Both Rome and Parthia to remain independent for very long and even if it did, it would remain a non-entity on the Wider Political Stage.

Prior to annexation IOTL the Hasmoneans couldn't manage to go from one generation to the next without some sort of internal conflict, there's no plausible reason for that to change with Hasmonean Inheritance Laws at the time, which forced the dividing up of land between sons. Herod Antipas, the Roman Client, for example, was Tetrarch of Galilee and his three brothers controlled other parts of Judea for themselves.

In fact the whole reason that Judea got annexed was because Herod Antipas became a client of Rome in order to get control of the other three provinces from his brothers and the Romans decided to stay. It's a situation that just breeds opportunity for foreign intervention.
 
What if the Kingdom of Canaan or Israel never becomes part of the Roman Empire?

Why do you call it "the kingdom of canaan"? There was never such thing, the name canaan reefers only (mainly in the bible ) to the pre-israelite land of Israel... Which never joined the Roman empire, it was annexed by it under the herodian dynasty.
 
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