Its subject is the Return to Zion following the close of the Babylonian captivity, and it is divided into two parts, the first telling the story of the first return of exiles in the first year of Cyrus the Great ( 538 BC ) and the completion and dedication of the new Temple in Jerusalem in the sixth year of Darius ( 515 BC ), the second telling of the subsequent mission of Ezra to Jerusalem and his struggle to purify the Jews from the sin of marriage with non-Jews.

The book is made up of six court tales and four apocalyptic visions set in the time of the Babylonian captivity.

Porteous and Roche agree that the Book of Daniel is composed of folktales that were used to fortify the Jewish faith during a time of great persecution and oppression by the Hellenized Seleucids some four centuries after Babylonian captivity.

The first, termed Proto-Isaiah ( chapters 1 – 39 ), contains the words of the 8th-century BCE prophet with 7th-century BCE expansions ; the second, Deutero-Isaiah ( chapters 40 – 55 ), is the work of a 6th-century BCE author writing near the end of the Babylonian captivity ; and the third, the poetic Trito-Isaiah ( chapters 56 – 66 ), was composed in Jerusalem shortly after the return from exile, probably by multiple authors.

* Chapters 40 to 55 ( Second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah ): by an anonymous author who lived in Babylon near the end of the Babylonian captivity.

* Babylonian captivity

The fulfilment of this prophecy is commonly understood to have taken place when Judah was captured by the nation of Babylon and many of its inhabitants were exiled in an event known as the Babylonian captivity.

The early history of the synagogue is obscure, but it seems to be an institution developed for public Jewish worship during the Babylonian captivity when the Jews ( and Jewish Proselytes ) did not have access to a Temple ( the First Temple having been destroyed c. 586 BC ) for ritual sacrifice.

* Babylonian captivity

For example, during the Babylonian captivity, Ezekiel counted the years from the first deportation, that of Jehoiachin, ( e. g. ).

By the end of the Babylonian captivity of Judah in the Tanakh, Judaism is strictly monotheistic.

* God redeems Israel ( i. e. the Jewish people ) from the captivity that began during the Babylonian Exile, in a new Exodus

According to the Book of Jeremiah, Moab and Biblical Elam which were exiled during the Babylonian Exile, will be brought back from their captivity in the end of days.

For the unnamed " king of Babylon " a wide range of identifications have been proposed. They include a Babylonian ruler of the prophet Isaiah's own time the later Nebuchadnezzar II, under whom the Babylonian captivity of the Jews began, or Nabonidus, and the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon II and Sennacherib, Herbert Wolf held that the " king of Babylon " was not a specific ruler but a generic representation of the whole line of rulers.

Eventually, in 1309, Pope Clement V even left Rome and relocated to the French city of Avignon, beginning the era known as the Avignon Papacy ( or, more disparagingly, the " Babylonian captivity ").

* 539 BC – Cyrus the Great enters the city of Babylon, detains Nabonidus and ends the Babylonian captivity.

* the son of Joab, one of the individuals who returned from the Babylonian captivity with the priestly scribe Ezra, and possibly the Levite mentioned in ( Nehemiah ) as a porter of Jerusalem's gates after the city's reconstruction under Nehemiah ( Ezra )

But the decision proved the precursor of the long Avignon Papacy, the " Babylonian captivity " ( 1309 – 77 ), in Petrarch's phrase, and marks a point from which the decay of the strictly Catholic conception of the pope as universal bishop may be dated.

And Sukkot was the first sacred occasion observed after the resumption of sacrifices in Jerusalem following the Babylonian captivity ( Ezra 3: 2-4 ).

The Tetragrammaton was written in contrasting Paleo-Hebrew characters in some of the oldest surviving square Aramaic Hebrew texts, and were not read as Adonai (" My Lord ") until after the Rabbinic teachings after Israel went into Babylonian captivity.

Regular public reading of the Torah was introduced by Ezra the Scribe after the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian captivity ( c. 537 BCE ), as described in the Book of Nehemiah.

This division includes the books which, as a whole, cover the chronological era from the entrance of the Israelites into the Land until the Babylonian captivity of Judah ( the " period of prophecy ").

This was also the time of the Babylonian captivity of the ancient Jews

The Babylonian captivity of the elite of Jerusalem on three occasions in the 6th century BCE was a population transfer.

# The remainder of 2 Chronicles ( chapters 10 – 36 ) is a chronicle of the kings of Judah to the time of the Babylonian exile, concluding with the call by Cyrus the Great for the exiles to return to their land.

The Chronicles are an epitome of the sacred history from the days of Adam down to the return from Babylonian exile, a period of about 3, 500 years.

The earliest parts of the book are possibly chapters 2 – 11, the story of the conquest ; more certain is that this section was then incorporated into an early form of Joshua that was part of then original Deuteronomistic history, written late in the reign of king Josiah ( reigned 640 – 609 BCE ); it seems clear that the book was not completed until after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586, and possibly not until after the return from the Babylonian exile late in the 6th century.

The fragments describe a Babylonian king ( spelled N-b-n-y ) who is afflicted by God with an " evil disease " for a period of seven years ; he is cured and his sins forgiven after the intervention of a Jewish exile who is described as a " diviner "; he issues a written proclamation in praise of the Most High God, and speaks in the first person.

It ends with a visit to Hezekiah by envoys from a rebel prince of Babylon, and Isaiah's words prophesying the Babylonian exile.

The first was the late 7th century Deuteronomistic reform of official Judean religion under king Josiah, who banned many elements of the old polytheistic cult from the Temple, and the sudden collapse of Assyria and the rise of Babylon to take its place ; the second was exile of the royal court, the priests and other members of the ruling elite following the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem c. 586 BCE.

The answers were recorded in the works of the prophets Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Second Isaiah, and in the Deuteronomistic history, the collection of historical works from Joshua to Kings: God had not abandoned Israel ; Israel had abandoned God, and the Babylonian exile was God's punishment for Israel's lack of faith.

The Babylonian exile lasted approximately 48 years, from 586 to 538 BCE, and ended with the conquest of Babylon in that year by the Persians.

The details of this history's composition are still widely debated, but most scholars place its origins, or at least its final form, in the 6th century BCE and the community of the Babylonian exile.

This same divine presence is on the move again ; this time accompanying the Babylonian exile.

These are during 853 – 841 BC when Jerusalem was invaded by Philistines and Arabs during the reign of Jehoram ( recorded in 2 Kings 8: 20-22 and 2 Chronicles 21: 8-20 in the Christian Old Testament ) and 605 – 586 BC when Jerusalem was attacked by King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon, which led to the Babylonian exile of Israel ( recorded in Psalm 137 ).

Micah addresses the future of Judah / Israel after the Babylonian exile.

While traditionally accepted as the genuine words of Moses delivered on the eve of the occupation of Canaan, a broad consensus of modern scholars now see its origins in traditions from Israel ( the northern kingdom ) brought south to the Kingdom of Judah in the wake of the Assyrian destruction of Samaria ( 8th century BCE ) and then adapted to a program of nationalist reform in the time of King Josiah ( late 7th century ), with the final form of the modern book emerging in the milieu of the return from the Babylonian exile during the late 6th century.

Traditionally ascribed to Moses himself, modern scholarship sees the book as initially a product of the Babylonian exile ( 6th century BCE ), with final revisions in the Persian post-exilic period ( 5th century ).

According to current thinking, a first draft ( the Yahwist ) was probably written in the 6th century BCE during the Babylonian exile ; this was supplemented and completed as a post-Exilic final edition ( the Priestly source ) at the very end of the 6th century or during the 5th century, and further adjustments and minor revisions continued down to the end of the 4th century.

According to the Hebrew Bible he returned from the Babylonian exile and reintroduced the Torah in Jerusalem ( Ezra 7-10 and Neh 8 ).

The Book of Daniel provides accounts of Jews in exile being assigned names relating to Babylonian gods and " Mordecai " is understood to mean servant of Marduk, a Babylonian god.

Scholars in the first half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that the Yahwist was produced in the monarchic period, specifically at the court of Solomon, and the Priestly work in the middle of the 5th century BC ( the author was even identified as Ezra ), but more recent thinking is that the Yahwist was written either just before or during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after.

Prior to the Babylonian exile, the names of only four months are referred to in the Tanakh:

During the Babylonian exile, which started in 586 BCE, Babylonian month names were adopted, which are still in use.

The Israel of the Persian period included descendants of the inhabitants of the old kingdom of Judah, returnees from the Babylonian exile community, Mesopotamians who had joined them or had been exiled themselves to Samaria at a far earlier period, Samaritans and others.

During this time, Jews have experienced slavery, anarchic and theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile ; in the Diasporas, they have been in contact with and have been influenced by ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment ( see Haskalah ) and the rise of nationalism, which would bear fruit in the form of a Jewish state in the Levant.