Babylonian captivity

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The Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon.

According to the history recorded in the Hebrew bible, there were three deportations of Jews to Babylon, the first in 597 BCE involving king Jeconiah and his court and many others, a second in 587 BCE of the next king, Zedekiah, and the rest of the people, and a final deportation at an unspecified time after this (possibly 582 BCE) following the assassination of Gedaliah, the Babylonian governor. The exile ended in 538 BCE with the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus the Great, who gave the Jews permission to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.

The captivity and subsequent return to Israel and rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple are pivotal events in the history of the Jews and Judaism, and had a far-reaching impact on the development of Jewish culture and practices.

Table: chronology

Table based on Rainer Albertz, "Israel in exile: the history and literature of the sixth century BCE", p.xxi. Alternative dates are possible.

The biblical history of the Exile

Illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle of the destruction of Jerusalem under the Babylonian rule.

In the late 7th century the kingdom of Judah was a client state of the powerful Assyrian empire. In the last decades of the century Assyria was overthrown by Babylon, an Assyrian province with a history of former glory in its own right. Egypt, fearing the sudden rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire, seized control of Assyrian territory up to the Euphrates river in Syria, but Babylon counter-attacked and in the process Josiah, the king of Judah, was killed, although the circumstances are obscure (609 BCE). Judah became a Babylonian client, but in the following years there were two parties at the court in Jerusalem, one pro-Egyptian, the other pro-Babylonian.

In 599 BCE the pro-Egyptian party was in power and Judah was in revolt against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon lay siege to Jerusalem,^[1] and Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, died in 598 BCE with the siege still under way.^[2] He was succeeded by his son Jeconiah, aged either eight or eighteen.^[3] The city fell about three months later,^[4] on 2 Adar (March 16) 597 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar pillaged Jerusalem and its Temple and took Jeconiah and his court and other prominent citizens (including the prophet Ezekiel) back to Babylon.^[5] Jehoiakim's brother Zedekiah was appointed king in his place, but the exiles in Babylon continued to consider Jeconiah as their Exilarch, or rightful ruler.

Despite the strong remonstrances of Jeremiah and others of the pro-Babylonian party, Zedekiah revolted against Babylon and entered into an alliance with Pharaoh Hophra of Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar returned, defeated the Egyptians, and again besieged Jerusalem. The city fell in 587. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city wall and the Temple, together with the houses of the most important citizens, and Zedekiah was blinded, and taken to Babylon, together with many others. Judah became a Babylonian province, called Yehud Medinata (Yehud being the Babylonian equivalent of the Hebrew Yehuda, or "Judah", and "medinata" the word for province), putting an end to the independent Kingdom of Judah.

The first governor appointed by Babylon was Gedaliah, a native Judahite; he encouraged the many Jews who had fled to surrounding countries such as Moab, Ammon, Edom, to return, and took steps to return the country to prosperity. Some time afterwards, however - it is not clear when, but possibly 582 BC - a surviving member of the royal family assassinated Gedaliah and his Babylonian advisors, prompting a rush of refugees seeking safety in Egypt. Thus by the end of the second decade of the 6th century, in addition to those who remained in Yehud (Judah), there were significant Jewish communities in Babylon and in Egypt; this was the beginning of the later numerous Jewish communities living permanently outside Judah in the Jewish Diaspora.

According to the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the exile in 538 BC, the year in which he captured Babylon.^[6] For reasons not explained in the biblical history nothing was done at the time, and the Exile ends with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so-called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple in the period 520-515 BC.

The Babylonian captivity had a number of consequences on Judaism and Jewish culture, including changes to the Hebrew alphabet and calendar and changes in the fundamental practices and customs of the Jewish religion. This period saw the last high-point of Biblical prophecy in the person of Ezekiel, followed by the emergence of the central role of the Torah in Jewish life.^[7] This process coincided with the emergence of scribes and sages as Jewish leaders (see Ezra and the Pharisees).

Exilic literature

The Exilic period was a rich one for Hebrew literature. The Hebrew historians of the Exile include Jeremiah 39-43) (who saw the Exile as a lost opportunity); the final section of 2 Kings (which portrays it as the temporary end of history); 2 Chronicles (in which the Exile is the "Sabbath of the land"); and the opening chapters of Ezra, which records its end. Other works from or about the Exile include the stories in Daniel 1-6, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the "Story of the Three Youths" (1 Esdras 3:1-5:6), and the books of Tobit and Book of Judith.^[8]

Significance in Jewish history

The Babylonian Captivity and the subsequent return to Israel were seen as one of the pivotal events in the biblical drama between Yahweh and his people of Israel. Just as they had been predestined for, and saved from, slavery in Egypt, in the logic of the Bible it had been prophesied that the Israelites would go into captivity to the Babylonians for their idolatry and disobedience to Yahweh, and then be delivered once more. The Babylonian Captivity had a number of serious effects on Judaism and the Jewish culture. For example, the current Hebrew script was adopted during this period, replacing the traditional Israelite script.

James Tissot, The Flight of the Prisoners.

This period saw the last high-point of Biblical prophecy in the person of Ezekiel, followed by the emergence of the central role of the Torah in Jewish life; according to many historical-critical scholars, it was edited and redacted during this time, and saw the beginning of the canonization of the Bible, which provided a central text for Jews.

This process coincided with the emergence of scribes and sages as Jewish leaders (see Ezra). Prior to exile, the people of Israel had been organized according to tribe; afterwards, they were organized by clans, only the tribe of Levi continuing in its 'special role'. After this time, there were always sizable numbers of Jews living outside Eretz Israel; thus, it also marks the beginning of the "Jewish diaspora", unless this is considered to have begun with the Assyrian Captivity of Israel.

In Rabbinic literature, Babylon was one of a number of metaphors for the Jewish diaspora. Most frequently the term "Babylon" meant the diaspora prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. The post-destruction term for the Jewish Diaspora was "Rome", or "Edom".

References

Further reading

Maps

• Yohanan Aharoni & Michael Avi-Yonah, "The MacMillan Bible Atlas", Revised Edition, pp. 96–106 (1968 & 1977 by Carta Ltd).
• Yehud Medinata map, CET – Center For Educational technology
• Yehud Medinata Border map, CET – Center For Educational technology

Google-Books

• Peter R. Ackroyd, "Exile and Restoration: A Study of Hebrew Thought of the Sixth Century B.C." (SCM Press, 1968)
• Rainer Albertz, Bob Becking, "Yahwism after the Exile" Van Gorcum, 2003)
• Blenkinsopp, Joseph, "Judaism, the first phase: the place of Ezra and Nehemiah in the origins of Judaism" (Eerdmans, 2009)
• Nodet, Étienne, "A search for the origins of Judaism: from Joshua to the Mishnah" (Sheffield Academic Press, 1999, original edition Editions du Cerf, 1997)
• Becking, Bob, and Korpel, Marjo Christina Annette (eds), "The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic & Post-Exilic Times" (Brill, 1999)
• Bedford, Peter Ross, "Temple restoration in early Achaemenid Judah" (Brill, 2001)
• Berquist, Jon L., "Approaching Yehud: new approaches to the study of the Persian period" (Society of Biblical Literature, 2007)
• Grabbe, Lester L., "A history of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period", vol.1 (T&T Clark International, 2004)
• Levine, Lee I., "Jerusalem: portrait of the city in the second Temple period (538 B.C.E.-70 C.E.)" (Jewish Publication Society, 2002)
• Lipschitz, Oded, "The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem" (Eisenbrauns, 2005)
• Lipschitz, Oded, and Oeming, Manfred (eds), "Judah and the Judeans in the Persian period" (Eisenbrauns, 2006)
• Lipschitz, Oded, and Oeming, Manfred (eds), "Judah and the Judeans in the fourth century B.C.E." (Eisenbrauns, 2006)
• Middlemas, Jill Anne, "The troubles of templeless Judah" (Oxford University Press, 2005)
• Stackert, Jeffrey, "Rewriting the Torah: literary revision in Deuteronomy and the holiness code" (Mohr Siebeck, 2007)
• Vanderkam, James, "An introduction to early Judaism" (Eerdmans, 2001)