What even is the first instance of the juice? Who encountered them first, for realsies? Egyptians? Did the Greeks know them? The pelopenisias? Which people's?
I know the Roman's killed Jesus and burned the temple down and all that.. A lot of history in this regard is quite murky to me
There's a whole bunch of information to unpack, most of which is vague (At best), from around that time but it's clear that the Jews were connected to Egypt, Mesopotamia and Sumerian way back in the day.
Lots of early Greek philosophers studied Jewish monotheism, mathematics and concepts of ethics which drifted into the Roman culture via various schools of thought which eventually became the bible via Hebrew, then Greek and finally Latin before eventually being translated to English and other European languages (Shout out to localisation problems!).
The concept of the Torah always being a complete unaltered work has been challenged by many scholars over the years and some think is the basis for why the Quran sticks to its original unaltered form as any additions or retractions are political in nature and diminish the word of the divine.
So, either ask and expect a reasonable answer here or spend a decade or two trying to make sense of it and see if you can come up with an answer :)
I'm more than willing to do the decade or two trying to make sense of it.
Im pretty well versed in all the literature regarding the 20th century. Beyond that it's murky. Prior to the middle ages I don't know anything other than the Bible really.
It's why I asked for reading material. I'll do the work and come to my own conclusions. I just need guidance. Books authors, collections,.. Anything with footnotes and references, anything beyond someone on the internet telling me what's what.
I hear you but remember before the Internet there was the printing press and publishers and those running them are always careful about what gets out and what doesn't.
So pretty much anything available in book form has to be scrutinised heavily because there will be bias in what is trying to be highlighted. So it gets grim and people on the Internet are just as trustworthy (Or the opposite) as anything you can actually touch with your own hands.
Archelogy, anthropology and economics seem to be good indicators across the different eras and don't contain opinion often because evidence and speculation upon it is all there is. Whatever the opinion of Jewish people is at any given moment in history you can state that they are resilient people and highly adaptive and yet insular wherever they go.
The archives of Alexandria being burned down are a good starting point if the Romans and their opinion of everything which came before them as a civilisation is your interest. Istanbul and the Silk Road also make for reasonable areas which contain more about what was established and fully operating before being snipped from history.
Pick a starting point and then extrapolate from there because it is a vast tapestry and there are no concrete answers. If biblical studies are your thing then Sumerian history and how that expanded into Europe and India might give you some background as to how important Judaism has been to what we consider to be culture.
But it's a lot and the Romans, while incredible important, only left us their history to take as THE history to go from.