"Zionism views itself as the political expression of the Jewish nation. Indeed, it fulfills itself as the fulfillment of Jewish history. In a matter analogous to most other nationalisms, Zionism has constructed a three-part narrative that traces the unbroken history of the Jewish nation from its birth and efflorescence in Palestine through a period of decay and degeneration in exile to a period of redemption at the hands of the modern Zionist movement and its return to its ancestral homeland in Palestine. For Zionists, the Jewish claim to Palestine can be found in the Bible and corroborative archaeological evidence. Most commonly, the Zionist narrative of Jewish history begins with Abraham and his descendants, who immigrated to Palestine in the second millennium BC, possibly from Iraq. The standard Zionist narrative considers the tenth-century BC reigns of King David and King Solomon the highpoint of the Jewish presence in Palestine. Theirs was a period of cultural and political glory, when the Jewish nation was politically united and religious authority radiated from the great temple in Jerusalem. But their was also a short-lived period, lasting less than seventy years, about half of the length of the "golden age" of Greece."