It's interesting that
scripture does not provide a record of God's chosen people during two long periods of time. The first gap was during the time following Joseph's death
when the families of the 12 patriarchs went gradually (or suddenly?) from being
guests of Pharaoh to being slaves. Meanwhile, there was tremendous cultural
flux in Canaan and surrounding lands that would later greatly influence the
course of events during the conquest of the promised land and the establishment
of the Kingdom of Israel in the midst of areas which had a great deal of ethnic
and religious diversity.
The second gap was during the fall of the Persian
Empire, followed by rise of the Greek Macedonian/Selucid Empires. As the
Selucid Empire crumbled, the successful Maccabean revolt (from which comes the
Jewish celebration of Hanukkah commemorating the re-dedication of the temple)
established the Hasmonean dynasty. Israel then existed as an independent
Hasmonean state for 100 years before the rise of the Roman empire and the birth
of Jesus. So there was a lot going on. The history of these two periods is well
worth studying in order to better understand the bracketing events in the
Bible, even though apocryphal books such as 1&2 Maccabees are not included
in the Protestant canon of scripture.