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The Babylonian captivity (or Babylonian exile) was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon—conventionally 587–538 BCE.^{[citation needed]}

According to the Hebrew Bible, there were three deportations of Jews to Babylon: the exile of King Jeconiah, his court and many others in Nebuchadnezzar's eighth year; Jeconiah's successor Zedekiah and the rest of the people in Nebuchadnezzar's eighteenth year; and a later deportation in Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year. These are attributed to 597 BCE, 587 BCE, and 582 BCE, respectively. The forced exile ended in 538 BCE after the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus the Great, who gave the Jews permission to return to Yehud province and to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.^[1]

The captivity and subsequent return to the Land of Israel and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem are considered significant events in Jewish history and culture, which had a far-reaching impact on the development of Judaism.

Chronology[link]

Table based on Rainer Albertz, "Israel in exile: the history and literature of the sixth century BCE", p.xxi. Alternative dates are possible.

The Biblical history of the Exile[link]

Illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle of the destruction of Jerusalem under the Babylonian rule

In the late 7th century BCE, the kingdom of Judah was a client state of the powerful Assyrian empire. In the last decades of the century Assyria was overthrown by Babylon, an Assyrian province with a history of former glory in its own right. Egypt, fearing the sudden rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire, seized control of Assyrian territory up to the Euphrates river in Syria, but Babylon counter-attacked and in the process Josiah, the king of Judah, was killed, although the circumstances are obscure (609 BCE). Judah became a Babylonian client, but in the following years two parties formed at the court in Jerusalem: one pro-Egyptian and the other pro-Babylonian.

In 599 BCE, the pro-Egyptian party was in power and Judah revolted against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon laid siege to Jerusalem,^[3] and Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, died in 598 BCE with the siege still under way.^[4] He was succeeded by his son Jeconiah, aged either eight or eighteen.^[5] The city fell about three months later,^[6] on 2 Adar (March 16) 597 BCE, and Nebuchadnezzar pillaged Jerusalem and its Temple and took Jeconiah and his court and other prominent citizens (including the prophet Ezekiel) back to Babylon.^[7] Jehoiakim's brother Zedekiah was appointed king in his place, but the exiles in Babylon continued to consider Jeconiah as their Exilarch, or rightful ruler.

Despite the strong remonstrances of Jeremiah and others of the pro-Babylonian party, Zedekiah revolted against Babylon and entered into an alliance with Pharaoh Hophra of Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar returned, defeated the Egyptians, and again besieged Jerusalem. The city fell in 587. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city wall and the Temple, together with the houses of the most important citizens, and Zedekiah was blinded, and taken to Babylon, together with many others. Judah became a Babylonian province, called Yehud Medinata (Yehud being the Babylonian equivalent of the Hebrew Yehuda, or "Judah", and "medinata" the word for province), putting an end to the independent Kingdom of Judah.

The first governor appointed by Babylon was Gedaliah, a native Judahite; he encouraged the many Jews who had fled to surrounding countries such as Moab, Ammon, Edom, to return, and took steps to return the country to prosperity. Some time afterwards, however – it is not clear when, but possibly 582 BCE – a surviving member of the royal family assassinated Gedaliah and his Babylonian advisors, prompting a rush of refugees seeking safety in Egypt. Thus by the end of the second decade of the 6th century, in addition to those who remained in Yehud (Judah), there were significant Jewish communities in Babylon and in Egypt; this was the beginning of the later numerous Jewish communities living permanently outside Judah in the Jewish Diaspora.

According to the book of Ezra-Nehemiah, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the exile in 538 BCE, the year in which he captured Babylon.^[8] The Exile ends with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so-called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple in the period 520–515 BCE.

The Babylonian captivity had a number of consequences on Judaism and Jewish culture, including changes to the Hebrew alphabet and calendar and changes in the fundamental practices and customs of the Jewish religion. This period saw the last high-point of Biblical prophecy in the person of Ezekiel, followed by the emergence of the central role of the Torah in Jewish life.^[9] This process coincided with the emergence of scribes and sages as Jewish leaders (see Ezra and the Pharisees).

Exilic literature[link]

The Exilic period was a rich one for Hebrew literature. The Hebrew historians of the Exile include Jeremiah 39–43 (which saw the Exile as a lost opportunity); the final section of 2 Kings (which portrays it as the temporary end of history); 2 Chronicles (in which the Exile is the "Sabbath of the land"); and the opening chapters of Ezra, which records its end. Other works from or about the Exile include the stories in Daniel 1–6, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the "Story of the Three Youths" (1 Esdras 3:1–5:6), and the books of Tobit and Book of Judith.^[10]

Significance in Jewish history[link]

James Tissot, The Flight of the Prisoners.

The Babylonian Captivity and the subsequent return to Israel were seen as one of the pivotal events in the biblical drama between Yahweh and his people of Israel. Just as they had been predestined for, and saved from, slavery in Egypt, in the logic of the Bible it had been prophesied that the Israelites would go into captivity to the Babylonians for their idolatry and disobedience to Yahweh, and then be delivered once more. The Babylonian Captivity had a number of serious effects on Judaism and the Jewish culture. For example, the current Hebrew script was adopted during this period, replacing the traditional Israelite script. This period saw the last high-point of Biblical prophecy in the person of Ezekiel, followed by the emergence of the central role of the Torah in Jewish life; according to many historical-critical scholars, it was edited and redacted during this time, and saw the beginning of the canonization of the Bible, which provided a central text for Jews.

This process coincided with the emergence of scribes and sages as Jewish leaders (see Ezra). Prior to exile, the people of Israel had been organized according to tribe; afterwards, they were organized by clans, only the tribe of Levi continuing in its 'special role'. After this time, there were always sizable numbers of Jews living outside Eretz Israel; thus, it also marks the beginning of the "Jewish diaspora", unless this is considered to have begun with the Assyrian Captivity of Israel.

In Rabbinic literature, Babylon was one of a number of metaphors for the Jewish diaspora. Most frequently the term "Babylon" meant the diaspora prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. The post-destruction term for the Jewish Diaspora was "Rome", or "Edom".

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Maps

• Yehud Medinata map, CET – Center For Educational technology
• Yehud Medinata Border map, CET – Center For Educational technology

Google-Books

• Peter R. Ackroyd, "Exile and Restoration: A Study of Hebrew Thought of the Sixth Century B.C." (SCM Press, 1968)
• Rainer Albertz, Bob Becking, "Yahwism after the Exile" Van Gorcum, 2003)
• Blenkinsopp, Joseph, "Judaism, the first phase: the place of Ezra and Nehemiah in the origins of Judaism" (Eerdmans, 2009)
• Nodet, Étienne, "A search for the origins of Judaism: from Joshua to the Mishnah" (Sheffield Academic Press, 1999, original edition Editions du Cerf, 1997)
• Becking, Bob, and Korpel, Marjo Christina Annette (eds), "The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic & Post-Exilic Times" (Brill, 1999)
• Bedford, Peter Ross, "Temple restoration in early Achaemenid Judah" (Brill, 2001)
• Berquist, Jon L., "Approaching Yehud: new approaches to the study of the Persian period" (Society of Biblical Literature, 2007)
• Grabbe, Lester L., "A history of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period", vol.1 (T&T Clark International, 2004)
• Levine, Lee I., "Jerusalem: portrait of the city in the second Temple period (538 B.C.E.-70 C.E.)" (Jewish Publication Society, 2002)
• Lipschitz, Oded, "The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem" (Eisenbrauns, 2005)
• Lipschitz, Oded, and Oeming, Manfred (eds), "Judah and the Judeans in the Persian period" (Eisenbrauns, 2006)
• Lipschitz, Oded, and Oeming, Manfred (eds), "Judah and the Judeans in the fourth century B.C.E." (Eisenbrauns, 2006)
• Middlemas, Jill Anne, "The troubles of templeless Judah" (Oxford University Press, 2005)
• Stackert, Jeffrey, "Rewriting the Torah: literary revision in Deuteronomy and the holiness code" (Mohr Siebeck, 2007)
• Vanderkam, James, "An introduction to early Judaism" (Eerdmans, 2001)

Wikisource.

• "Babylonian Captivity". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 
• "Babylonish Captivity". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. 

George Weigel (Baltimore, 1951 - ) is an American author, and political and social activist. He currently serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Weigel was the Founding President of the James Madison Foundation. He is the author of the best-selling biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope and Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace.

Career and personal life[link]

Weigel grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where he attended St. Mary's Seminary and University, and he later received his masters degree from St. Michael's College, University of Toronto. Weigel has received nine honorary doctorate degrees, as well as the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice and the Gloria Artis Gold Medal from the Polish Ministry of Culture.

Weigel lived in Seattle, serving as Assistant Professor of Theology and Assistant Dean of Studies at the St. Thomas the Apostle Seminary School of Theology in Kenmore, and Scholar-in-Residence at the World Without War Council of Greater Seattle, before returning to Washington, D.C. as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Weigel served as the founding president of the James Madison Foundation (not to be confused with the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation) from 1986 to 1989.^[1] In 1994, he was a signer of the document Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

He currently serves as Distinguished Senior Fellow and Chair of Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C..

Each summer, Weigel and several other Catholic intellectuals from the United States, Poland, and across Europe conduct the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society in Krakow, in which they and an assortment of students from the United States, Poland, and several other emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe discuss Christianity within the context of liberal democracy and capitalism, with the papal encyclical Centesimus Annus being the focal point.

Weigel and his wife Joan live in North Bethesda, Maryland.

He is a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.^[2]

Weigel writes and serves on the Institute board for the Institute for Religion and Public Life, which publishes First Things, an ecumenical that focuses on encouraging a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.

Views[link]

The main body of Weigel's writings engage the issues of religion and culture.

In his political writings, Weigel argues for a U.S. pitfalls of international relations. As such, Weigel advocates a U.S. foreign policy guided not by utopian notions about how nations should behave, but by moral reasoning.^[3]

"From the Iliad to Tolstoy and beyond, that familiar trope, “the fog of war,” has been used to evoke the millennia–old experience of the radical uncertainty of combat. Some analysts, however, take the trope of “the fog of war” a philosophical step further and suggest that warfare takes place beyond the reach of moral reason, in a realm of interest and necessity where moral argument is a pious diversion at best and, at worst, a lethal distraction from the deadly serious business at hand." ^[4]

In some cases, he adds, moral reasoning may require that the United States support authoritarian regimes to fend off the greater evils of moral decay and threats to the security of the United States. For Weigel, America's shortcomings do not excuse her from pursuing the greater moral good.

Weigel achieved much fame for writing Witness to Hope, a biography of the late Pope John Paul II, which was also made into a documentary film.^[5] In 2004 Weigel wrote an article in Commentary magazine, entitled "The Cathedral and the Cube", in which he used the contrast between the modernist Grande Arche, and the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral, both located in Paris, France, to illustrate what he called a loss of "civilizational morale" in Western Europe, which he tied to the secular tyrannies of the 20th century, along with, more recently, plummeting birthrates and Europe's refusal to recognize the Christian roots of its culture. Weigel questions whether Europe can give an account of itself while denying the very moral tradition through which its culture arose: "Christians who share this conviction (that it is the will of God that Christians be tolerant of those who have a different view of God's will) -- can give an account of their defense of the other's freedom even if the other, skeptical and relativist, finds it hard to give an account of the freedom of the Christian." This is a theme sounded clearly by Marcello Pera and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), in their book Without Roots: the West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, for which Weigel authored the foreword.^[6] In 2005, he expanded the article into a book, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God.

Following the controversial September 2006 lecture of Pope Benedict XVI at Regensburg, Weigel defended the Pope's call for interreligious dialogue based on reason.^[7][8]

In January 2009, Weigel expressed concern on the lifting of the excommunications of the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X, essentially because the group has been critical of some aspects of the Second Vatican Council, especially its teaching on religious liberty, which Weigel strongly defends.^[9]

Publications[link]

Books[link]

• The end and the beginning: Pope John Paul II–The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy, Doubleday, 2010, ISBN 978-0-385-52479-7
• Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, Crossroad, 2008, ISBN 0-8245-2448-9.
• Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action, Doubleday, 2007, ISBN 978-0-385-52378-3.
• God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, Harper Collins, 2005, ISBN 0-06-621331-2.
• The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God, Basic Books, 2005, ISBN 0-465-09266-7.
• Letters to a Young Catholic, Basic Books, 2004, ISBN 0-465-09262-4.
• The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church, Basic Books, 2002, ISBN 0-465-09260-8.
• The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored, Harper Collins, 2001, ISBN 0-06-621330-4.
• Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, Harper Collins, 1999, ISBN 0-06-018793-X.
• Soul of the World: Notes on the Future of Public Catholicism, Eerdmans, 1996, ISB 0802842070.
• The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism, Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-507160-3.
• Just War and the Gulf War, Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991, ISBN 0-89633-166-0.
• Freedom and Its Discontents: Catholicism Confronts Modernity, Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991, ISBN 0-89633-158-X.
• American Interests, American Purpose: Moral Reasoning and U.S. Foreign Policy, Praeger Publishers, 1989, ISBN 0-275-93335-0.
• Catholicism and the Renewal of American Democracy, Paulist Press, 1989, ISBN 0-8091-3043-2.
• Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace, Oxford University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-19-504193-3.

Reference notes[link]

External links[link]

• George Weigel at the Notable Names Database
• Unofficial Blog with links to archived articles
• Archdiocese of Denver: Denver Catholic Register: The Catholic Difference (home of Weigel's syndicated column The Catholic Difference)
• Ethics and Public Policy Center: George Weigel
• Political Research Associates: Right Web: George Weigel
• SourceWatch: George Weigel
• National Review Online: George Weigel archive
• Newsweek: George Weigel archive
• Audio interview with National Review Online
• The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: The Vatican and Islam: Pope Benedict XVI Prepares to Visit Turkey (interview with Weigel and John Esposito)
• In Depth interview with Weigel, June 1, 2008