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The Book of Isaiah is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BCE prophet Isaiah ben Amoz, but there is evidence that much of it was composed during the Babylonian captivity and later. Johann Christoph Döderlein suggested in 1775 that the book contained the works of two prophets separated by more than a century, and Bernhard Duhm originated the view, held as a consensus through most of the 20th century, that the book comprises three separate collections of oracles: Proto-Isaiah, containing the words of the 8th-century BC prophet Isaiah; Deutero-Isaiah, or "the Book of Consolation",, the work of an anonymous 6th-century BCE author writing during the Exile; and Trito-Isaiah, composed after the return from Exile. Isaiah 1–33 promises judgment and restoration for Judah, Jerusalem and the nations, and chapters 34–66 presume that judgment has been pronounced and restoration follows soon. While few scholars today attribute the entire book, or even most of it, to one person, the book's essential unity has become a focus in more recent research.
The history of ancient Israel and Judah spans from the early appearance of the Israelites in Canaan's hill country during the late second millenium BCE, to the establishment and subsequent downfall of the two Israelite kingdoms in the mid-first millenium BCE. This history unfolds within the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The earliest documented mention of "Israel" as a people appears on the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription dating back to around 1208 BCE. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient Israelite culture evolved from the pre-existing Canaanite civilization. During the Iron Age II period, two Israelite kingdoms emerged, covering much of Canaan: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.
The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple, refers to the two religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. According to the Hebrew Bible, the First Temple was built in the 10th century BCE, during the reign of Solomon over the United Kingdom of Israel. It stood until c. 587 BCE, when it was destroyed during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. Almost a century later, the First Temple was replaced by the Second Temple, which was built after the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire. While the Second Temple stood for a longer period of time than the First Temple, it was likewise destroyed during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
The 6th century BC started on the first day of 600 BC and ended on the last day of 501 BC.
This article concerns the period 539 BC – 530 BC.
The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were forcibly relocated to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The deportations occurred in multiple waves: After the siege of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, around 7,000 individuals were deported to Mesopotamia. Further deportations followed the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple in 587 BCE.
The Second Temple, later known as Herod's Temple, was the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem between c. 516 BCE and 70 CE. Defining the Second Temple period, it stood as a pivotal symbol of Jewish identity and was central to Second Temple Judaism; it was the chief place of worship, ritual sacrifice (korban), and communal gathering for Jews. As such, it attracted Jewish pilgrims from distant lands during the Three Pilgrimage Festivals: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.
The missing years in the Hebrew calendar refer to a chronological discrepancy between the rabbinic dating for the destruction of the First Temple in 422 BCE and the academic dating of it in 587 BCE. In a larger sense, it also refers to the discrepancy between conventional chronology versus that of Seder Olam in what concerns the Persian period during which time it exercised hegemony over Israel, a period which spanned 207 years according to conventional chronology, but only 34 years according to Seder Olam. Invariably, the resulting timeframe also affects the number of years the Second Temple stood, said by a late rabbinic tradition to have stood 420 years, but by conventional chronology 589 years.
The history of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel begins in the 2nd millennium BCE, when Israelites emerged as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites. During biblical times, a postulated United Kingdom of Israel existed but then split into two Israelite kingdoms occupying the highland zone: the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Initially exiled to Babylon, upon the defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire by the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, many of the Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem, building the Second Temple.
Seder Olam Rabbah is a 2nd-century CE Hebrew language chronology detailing the dates of biblical events from creation to Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia. It adds no stories beyond what is in the biblical text, and addresses such questions as the age of Isaac at his binding and the number of years that Joshua led the Israelites. Tradition considers it to have been written about 160 CE by Jose ben Halafta, but it was probably also supplemented and edited at a later period.
The siege of Jerusalem was the final event of the Judahite revolts against Babylon, in which Nebuchadnezzar II, king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, the capital city of the Kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem fell after a 30-month siege, following which the Babylonians systematically destroyed the city and Solomon's Temple. The Kingdom of Judah was dissolved and many of its inhabitants were exiled to Babylon.
Daniel is the main character of the Book of Daniel. According to the Hebrew Bible, Daniel was a noble Jewish youth of Jerusalem taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, serving the king and his successors with loyalty and ability until the time of the Persian conqueror Cyrus, all the while remaining true to the God of Israel. While some conservative scholars hold that Daniel existed and his book was written in the 6th century BCE, most scholars agree that Daniel is not a historical figure and that much of the book is a cryptic allusion to the reign of the 2nd century BCE Hellenistic king Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
The fall of Babylon was the decisive event that marked the total defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 539 BCE.
The return to Zion is an event recorded in Ezra–Nehemiah of the Hebrew Bible, in which the Jews of the Kingdom of Judah—subjugated by the Neo-Babylonian Empire—were freed from the Babylonian captivity following the Persian conquest of Babylon. In 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus the Great issued the Edict of Cyrus allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem and the Land of Judah, which was made a self-governing Jewish province under the new Persian Empire.
The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and ended with the First Jewish–Roman War and the Roman siege of Jerusalem.
Yehud Medinata, also called Yehud Medinta or simply Yehud, was an autonomous administrative division of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. It constituted a part of Eber-Nari and was bounded by Arabia to the south, lying along the frontier of the two satrapies. Spanning most of Judea—from the Shephelah in the west to the Dead Sea in the east—it was one of several Persian provinces in Palestine, together with Moab, Ammon, Gilead, Samaria, Ashdod, and Idumea, among others. It existed for just over two centuries before the Greek conquest of Persia resulted in it being incorporated into the Hellenistic empires.
Jerusalem during the Second Temple period describes the history of Jerusalem during the Second Temple period, from the return to Zion under Cyrus the Great to the siege and destruction the city by Titus during the First Jewish–Roman War. During this period, which saw the region and city change hands several times, Jerusalem was the center of religious life for all Jews; even those who lived in the diaspora prayed towards Jerusalem on a daily basis and made pilgrimages during religious festivals. Under Hasmonean and Herodian rule, Jerusalem served as a royal capital and the seat of all major national institutions. In Jerusalem, the Pharisees of Second Temple Judaism developed into the Tannaim and Judaism's post-Exilic religious identity as it continues today, and the Hebrew Bible was perhaps canonized, although exactly when this occurred remains disputed. It was also in Jerusalem during the later stages of this period that Christianity was born.
The history of the Jews in the Roman Empire traces the interaction of Jews and Romans during the period of the Roman Empire. A Jewish diaspora had migrated to Rome and to the territories of Roman Europe from the land of Israel, Anatolia, Babylon and Alexandria in response to economic hardship and incessant warfare over the land of Israel between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires from the 4th to the 1st centuries BC. In Rome, Jewish communities thrived economically. Jews became a significant part of the Roman Empire's population in the first century AD, with some estimates as high as 7 million people; however, this estimation has been questioned.
Second Temple Judaism is the Jewish religion as it developed during the Second Temple period, which began with the construction of the Second Temple around 516 BCE and ended with the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
Jewish tradition has long preserved a record of dates and time sequences of important historical events related to the Jewish nation, including but not limited to the dates fixed for the building and destruction of the Second Temple, and which same fixed points in time are well-documented and supported by ancient works, although when compared to the synchronistic chronological tables of modern-day chroniclers, belabored mostly by western scholars of history, they are, notwithstanding, often at variance with their modern dating system. Discrepancies between the two systems may be as much as 2 years, or well-over 100 years, depending on the event. Prior to the adoption of the BC / AD era of computation and its synchronization with the regnal years of kings and Caesars recorded in historical records, Jews made use of the earlier Seleucid era counting, or, in Hebrew, minyan li-šṭarōth, by which historical dates were marked, from the time of Alexander the Great.
References
- ↑ "Timeline of Judaism after the Babylonian Exile (538 BCE-70 CE)".
- ↑ Albertz, Rainer. Israel in exile: the history and literature of the sixth century BCE. p. xxi.
- ↑ 1–6 Ezra.
- ↑ Shalem, Yisrael (1997). "Second Temple Period (538 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.): Persian Rule". Jerusalem: Life Throughout the Ages in a Holy City. Ramat-Gan, Israel: Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies, Bar-Ilan University. Archived from the original on 2018-11-03. Retrieved 2020-01-08.
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