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  • From: Robert Vining <rvining AT log.on.ca>
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Babylonian Jewry
  • Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 14:08:10 -0500


BABYLONIAN JEWRY

When the Persians conquered Babylonia and allowed the exiles to return
home, not many did.(1)It was a minority of Jews who returned from the
Babylonian exile under the benevolent rule of the Persian monarch,
Cyrus.(2)

Babylonian Jewry was the largest single Jewish settlement in the world.
For a period of nearly 1,000 years it was powerful, independent and
influential-its scholars, producing over time the massive, revered
Babylonian Talmud. Josephus reports that they were an immense
multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers.(3)

Yet, inexplicably, we lose track of Babylonian Jewry, almost immediately
and completely, excepts for scraps of information. For almost 1,000
years the Jews of Babylon were isolated from the mainstream of Jewish
history, at least, history for which we have substantial documentation.
(4)

Was there no history written? Or, was there history written that may
have been suppressed?

If, instead of their talmudic efforts, the Babylonian scholars had
been inclined to write history, how might their version of events
compare to that rendering of history that became canonical?

*********

(1) "What is a Jew", Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, xvii

(2) "The World of the Talmud", Isaiah M. Gafni, in, "Christianity and
Rabbinic Judaism", 261

(3)"Antiquities", 11.133

(4)Gafni, 262



Robert Vining, Owen Sound, Ontario rvining AT log.on.ca





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