Judaism, Sikhism, and Smaller World Faiths

Judaism traces its origins to the biblical patriarchal narratives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to the Exodus tradition of liberation from bondage in Egypt under Moses, though its institutional history is documented with greater historical confidence from the Israelite monarchy of the tenth century BCE, under Saul, David, and Solomon, and the construction of the First Temple in Jerusalem. The unified kingdom later split into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah; Judah's conquest by the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BCE destroyed the First Temple and initiated the Babylonian Exile, which ended when the Persian king Cyrus the Great, after conquering Babylon, permitted the exiles' return and the rebuilding of the Temple beginning after 538 BCE.