Israel and the Palestinians: 1. From earliest times to the Romans

In the first of 10 programmes examining the origins and tracing the history of the Middle East conflict, presenter Jonny Dymond is joined by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, professor in ancient history at Cardiff University, and historian and author Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem: The Biography. They discuss the value of the Bible as a guide to history, the concept of a “promised land”, the archaeological record of the various peoples who lived in the region in ancient times, the coming of the Romans, and the Jewish revolts against them in the first and second centuries AD.

(Photo: A map of Palestine, taken from The Public Schools Atlas of Modern Geography, published by Longmans, Green, and Co, 1905)