the babylonian exile would be fairly short-lived less than a century but
would be highly consequential for jewish history let's have a quick look at this brief period of
time that had a major impact on the development of jewish thought and jewish religiosity and of
course the story of the jewish people this 19th century painting is inspired by the famous psalm
137 that begins with the phrase by the rivers of babylon which describes the jews being taken off
into exile you can see here the uh the patriarch of the clan is is wearing a shackle on his wrist
and there we sat down the psalm goes on and we wept when we remembered zion meaning when they
remember their homeland in judah and they were forced by their babylonian captors to sing them
a song of zion so hence the the harp there that's being held by the patriarch and everyone
is very sad and indeed this passage is a very moving depiction of the sadness and frustration
and anger that the jews felt that being displaced from their homeland by nebuchadnezzar
the conqueror of course was never of babylon here you see a uh an arrowhead that was discovered
in the region there's extensive evidence of destruction throughout the land of judah
benjamin however was apparently not devastated to the same degree which indicates that it may have
surrendered to nebuchadnezzar without violence but there's extensive evidence of the incursion
of the babylonians into the region uh wreaking havoc beginning in 604 before the common era
there are some attempts at revolt against nebuchadnezzar and they're one of the ways
in which the babylonians respond is through progressively exiling the leadership of the region
although it's still a comparatively small number less than 5 000 if you look for example in the
book of jeremiah there is some indication that as we saw earlier with sanjero's uh exiles that
the leadership and also skilled craftsmen and potentially military
personnel were especially targeted for these uh expulsions to babylon there was no however
corresponding influx of population as we saw under the assyrians the the goal was to simply displace
those people who might influence the population to continue their revolt without necessarily
transplanting new populations in their place but we have massive destruction particularly in the
final campaign that begins in the year 587 and will culminate in the destruction of the temple
nebuchadnezzar's destruction of the temple is one of the most prominent dates in jewish history
it's usually associated with the year 586 before the common era but in the jewish psyche it is huge
it is associ there's a whole series of dates that are associated with the the siege beginning the
breaching of the walls and ultimately the burning of the temple um and those dates are actually
incorporated into the jewish liturgical calendar with a series of fasts beginning in the summer
and culminating in the late summer on the date of tisha b'av the ninth day of the month of ab
which usually falls uh in late july or early august of the gregorian calendar and the uh
the this whole period the three weeks between the breaching of the walls and the destruction of the
temple is observed as a form of semi-mourning by jews even to this day with the limitation on
certain types of celebrations some communities will refrain from haircuts and so on listening
to live music all kinds of restrictions meant to reflect upon the horrendous meaning of the
destruction of the temple in this year this is solomon's temple of course that we're discussing
and this entire period from solomon's creation of the temple which would have been in the 10th
century up until its destruction in the sixth century is collectively referred to as first
temple period the second temple would refer to the rebuilding of the temple under cyrus which we'll
discuss in a couple of videos at any rate a one more element that's especially important to note
is that nebuchadnezzar placed a person in charge a jewish leader in charge of the entire community
with the hopes that this individual gedalia benachikam would calm the local population and
keep them from any further revolts but he was actually killed in an assassination
by other jewish leaders by people who were more hot-headed and wanted to rebel against babylon
the assassination of a jewish leader by other jews is also marked in the jewish liturgical calendar
the uh date of his death is marked on the third day of tishrei which is the day after
rosh hashanah is also observed as a fast day in commemoration of this horrible act of uh
intra-communal violence fascinatingly uh in uh nearby mitzvah was found
some interesting seals including this one that bears the inscription in paleo-hebrew
gedalia who is over the house which seems to apply that gedalia is in charge of at least
this particular estate perhaps even larger than that many archaeologists have opined that this
could easily belong to gedalia beneficom the individual that we referred to earlier
so when taken all together besides the figures we mentioned earlier in jeremiah it's less than
13 000 jews were exiled to babylon as far as we can tell the babylon exile lasted from about 586
till 539 before the common era although as we shall discuss shortly many jews chose not
to return to israel after 5 39 the situation of the jews in babylon is recorded in the biblical
book of ezekiel he was a prophet who actually was active in the region and according to his account
many of the jewish exiles were located in the city of nepur and also in its surrounding area you'll
notice below nipper is the city of shushan or susa which is the setting for the book of esther
there's some significant scholarly concerns about the specific dating of the book of esther meaning
when does it actually happen based on the names of certain kings and things like that
but it is set between the two temple periods and all kinds of material inside the book of esther
is uh in consonance with what we know about the babylonian reign at that time as well
uh the jews living in babylon were heavily influenced by babylonian culture at this time
most significantly with the adoption of aramaic as a lingua franca as a vernacular a language that
they commonly used and ultimately aramaic would displace hebrew as the living language of the
jews and indeed of the entire near east at this point this is a language that would last over
a thousand years it it is spoken even today in some parts of syria and turkey it is of course
the language of the babylonian talmud and there are a few different versions of aramaic that maybe
we'll discuss in a later lecture hebrew was never abandoned but it increasingly became the language
of scholarship and liturgy as opposed to the daily language on the street uh the jews also
adopted the babylonian calendar specifically the names of the months tishrei and tamus and so on
these the hebrew names for the months are simply numbers the first month which would be nissan in
the spring the second month and so on and so the babylonian custom of of naming these lunar months
was applied to the jewish calendar it wasn't an exact fix because the jewish calendar has a leap
month on a somewhat irregular appearing schedule and so there are 12 months but there is one of
those months the month of adar which occurs in early spring which may be doubled so you will have
an ada rishon an adar one and then an adarshaini a second adar otherwise they adopted the babylonian
lunar calendar names for each of the months okay let us continue with our discussion of
the persian period which we'll follow in the next video thank you very much for watching
you