The Jacob & Esau typology arose from national disaster: The Jewish prophets charged Edom – historically a small kingdom to the south of Judea – with abetting the destruction of First Temple Jerusalem. Apocalyptic prophecies turned Edom into an enemy whose demise would proclaim Jewish redemption. Biblical redactors edited the Jacob & Esau stories in Genesis to convey hostility to Edom, and made Esau the Edomites’ ancestor. By the end of the Second Temple period, the Idumaeans, forcibly converted to Judaism, assimilated. The rabbis now redirected biblical prophecies on Edom against the Roman Empire that destroyed the Second Temple and devastated the Land. In Midrash, the rabbis rewrote the biblical story. Esau became a pagan Roman, an apostate who rebelled against the Torah – a countermodel of the rabbinic Jew. Reading Rome, the universal empire, into the Bible, and turning Romans into wayward brothers, the rabbis made Jewish history universal. Pagan Rome disregarded them, but Christian Rome made the typology part of European history. The Church Fathers interpreted Jacob & Esau's brotherhood as that of Christians and Jews, claimed Jacob's legacy and decried the Jews as Esau. The Empire's Christianization encumbered Christianity with the Jewish–Roman past and Rome with the Christian claim to disinherit Israel, and forged a traumatic relationship that has never since been undone.