Babylon and the Judean Exile

Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem, burned its temple, and deported much of Judah's population to Babylon. The exile might have erased them as it had erased other small peoples — instead, cut off from their temple and their land, the exiles compiled and edited the texts that became the Hebrew Bible, transforming a religion of place and sacrifice into one of book and covenant that could survive anywhere. A portable religion emerged from the loss of a homeland, and it outlasted every empire that displaced it.