Babylonian captivity

Babylonian captivity is the name generally given to the deportation of the Jews to Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar. Three separate occasions are mentioned (Jeremiah 52:28-30). The first was in the time of Jehoiachin in 597 BCE, when the temple of Jerusalem was partially despoiled and a number of the leading citizens removed. After eleven years (in the reign of Zedekiah) a fresh rising of the Judaeans occurred; the city was razed to the ground, and a further deportation ensued. Finally, five years later, Jeremiah records a third captivity. After the overthrow of Babylonia by the Persians, Cyrus gave the Jews permission to return to their native land (537 BCE), and more than forty thousand are said to have availed themselves of the privilege. (See Jehoiakim; Ezra; Nehemiah and Jews.) The Previously, the northern tribes had been taken captive by Assyria and never returned; survivors of the Babylonian exile were all that remained of the Children of Israel. Persians had a different political philosophy of managing conquered territories than the Babylonians or Assyrians. Under the Persians, local personages were put into power to govern the local populace.

When the Israelites returned home, they found a mixture of peoples practicing a religion very similar to their own but not identical to it. Hostility grew up between the returning Jews and the Samaritans, which has continued to the present day.

The Babylonian Captivity and the resulting return from captivity back to Israel was seen as one of the great pivotal acts in the drama between God and his people Israel. Just as they had been predestine for, and saved from, slavery in Egypt, now they were pre-destined to be punished by God through the Babylonians, and then saved once. This experience had a number of serious effects on Judaism and Jewish culture. It provided an historical basis for political quietism, in which Jews saw oppression by other nations as a form of divine punishment to be endured patiently. This period saw the emergence of the Torah and the beginning of the canonization of the Bible, which provided a central text for Jews who did not have access to the Temple. This process coincided with the emergence of scribes and sages as Jewish leaders (see Pharisees). Prior to exile the people of Israel were organized according to tribe; after they were organized by clans.

The term Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy, or of the Church, is also used to refer to the Papacy's sojourn in Avignon between 1309 and 1378, when the Popes were seen by some as "captives" of the French Kings. See Avignon Papacy.

The term Babylonian Slavery or Egyptian Slavery was also used by the workforce working in the Stalin era and in Nazi concentration camps, but deported from central Europe following the German-Soviet pact of 1939.

Some groups were freed, like the Poles in 1942, thanks to Wladyslaw Sikorski's agreement with Stalin and led by Wladyslaw Anders to Persia. (Anders was later referred to as the Polish Moses. Most of the people had to wait until the 1945 repatriation agreement, or the 1956 Khrushchev amnesty.