From Exile to Rabbinic Judaism

In 597 and again in 586 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and eventually destroyed Jerusalem, razing the First Temple and deporting a substantial portion of the Judean elite, along with priests, artisans, and other members of society, to Babylon. This event, known as the Babylonian exile, is remembered in Psalm 137 ("By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept") and marks a decisive turning point in the religious history of ancient Israel. Deprived of the Temple, land, and monarchy that had anchored earlier religious life, exiled communities developed new institutions and practices centered on shared text, prayer, and communal gathering, developments that many historians see as the seedbed of what would later become the synagogue. The exile ended when the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 BCE and, according to a decree recorded in the books of Ezra and Chronicles, permitted exiled peoples, including the Judeans, to return to their homelands and rebuild their sanctuaries. Successive waves of returnees, followed by the reforms associated with Ezra the scribe and Nehemiah in the fifth century BCE, rebuilt the Temple, completed around 516 BCE, and reasserted the centrality of the Torah as the constitution of the restored community, a period known as the Second Temple era.