Jews were five hundred years under the overlordship of babylonian rulers. [1]
The end of Judah came suddenly. The city was destroyed, and the people were carried away into Babylon. The Yahweh-Baal struggle ended with the captivity. And the captivity shocked the remnant of Israel into monotheism. [2]
Sargon, king of Assyria, in subduing a revolt in central Palestine, carried away and into captivity over twenty-five thousand Jews of the northern kingdom of Israel and installed in their place an almost equal number of the descendants of the Cuthites, Sepharvites, and the Hamathites. [3] The national ego of the Jews was tremendously depressed by the Babylonian captivity. [4] Hebrews carried back Sabbath taboos from Babilonia. [5]
During the captivity the Jews were much influenced by Babylonian traditions and legends, although it should be noted that they unfailingly improved the moral tone and spiritual significance of the Chaldean stories which they adopted, notwithstanding that they invariably distorted these legends to reflect honor and glory upon the ancestry and history of Israel. [6]
The later captivity that enslaved the Jews in Babylon finally liberated the evolving concept of Yahweh to assume the monotheistic role of the God of all nations. [7] Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and carried people away into Babylon. [8] Persia freed Jews from Babylonian captivity. [9]
Old Testament records were masse edited in Babylon. [10] Priests invented many legends during their captivity in Babylon. [11]
After the priests of the Babylonian exile had prepared their new record of God’s supposedly miraculous dealings with the Hebrews, the sacred history of Israel as portrayed in the Old Testament, they carefully and completely destroyed the existing records of Hebrew affairs—such books as “The Doings of the Kings of Israel” and “The Doings of the Kings of Judah,” together with several other more or less accurate records of Hebrew history. [12]