As people read through the Bible, scriptures, or any type of religious material, they come across things that interest them and capture their attention. One thing that has always interested me is the Babylonian Exile. Everything about the Babylonian exile fascinates me, but what I am most interested in is how they continued their lives while in exile. As one could imagine, getting torn from one's homeland and forced to live in another country where there is no family is extremely tough. It's almost a sure thing that if a group of people get deported to another country, they are going to lose hope, faith, and eventually will disappear as a group. The Jewish people did almost the exact opposite when they were deported to Babylon. Although they did lose some faith and hope in the begging, the Jewish people kept their religion, practices, philosophies, and laws in tacked. The Babylonian exile lasting seventy years is one of the longest deportations in history. The fact that the Jewish community was able to overcome a hurdle of that size shows how strong and faithful they really are, and in that part of the Jewish history they showed all other religious groups how to survive.
             Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Chaldean's, captured Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in 597 B.C., the time when the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed. This was the first of three deportations to the city of Babylon. The deportations were rather large around 10,000 people, but not everyone in the entire nation was deported. As Gaubert mentions, "Nebuchadnezzar deported only the leading citizens like professionals, priests, craftsmen, and the wealthy Jewish people." (Gaubert, The Destruction of the Kingdom, pg 34) The "people of the land" stayed in their homeland. So from that point in time, Jewish history split into two poles during the exile. After 586, almost nothing is known about the Jewish people who stayed in Judah. When Nebuchadnezz...