The Land of Israel, known in Hebrew as Eretz Yisrael, has been sacred to the Jewish people since Biblical times. According to the Torah, the Land of Israel was promised to the three Patriarchs of the Jewish people, by God, as their homeland;[23][24] scholars have placed this period in the early 2nd millennium BCE.[25] According to the traditional view, around the 11th century BCE, the first of a series of Israelite kingdoms and states established rule over the region; these Israelite kingdoms and states ruled intermittently for the following one thousand years.[26] The sites holiest to Judaism are located within Israel.
Between the time of the Israelite kingdoms and the 7th-century Muslim conquests, the Land of Israel fell under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Sassanian, and Byzantine rule.[27] Jewish presence in the region dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE and the resultant large-scale expulsion of Jews. In 628/9, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius conducted a massacre and expulsion of the Jews, at which point the Jewish population probably reached its lowest point. Nevertheless, a continuous Jewish presence in the Land of Israel remained. Although the main Jewish population shifted from the Judea region to the Galilee,[28] the Mishnah and part of the Talmud, among Judaism's most important religious texts, were composed in Israel during this period.[29] The Land of Israel was captured from the Byzantine Empire around 636 CE during the initial Muslim conquests. Control of the region transferred between the Umayyads,[30] Abbasids,[31] and Crusaders over the next six centuries, before falling in the hands of the Mamluk Sultanate, in 1260. In 1516, the Land of Israel became a part of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region until the 20th century.[32]
With the advent of the internet and ability to travel throughout the world while sitting in a comfortable computer chair, I had no preconceived ideas as to what I might find when I began what was to become years of research of my ancestry. What was surprising though was how many people in the western world find themselves descendants of what we call the "Holy Land." If you find yourself tracing your family back a thousand years or so, that fact becomes very visible. My cousin Ray Miller and his wife Jean,
were fortunate to take a tour of the country a few years ago and the above pictures are a few memoirs.
Most of the caucasion race has come from european or middle eastern heritage and early ruins and history of these areas will be added from time to time.
