Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Bailey <jonathan.bailey AT gmx.de>]

As far as I know, they migrated to Egypt, Spain, and the North African coast. 
They are 
what we know as Sephardim. I have not gotten deep into the history, but I do 
believe 
that it is there, and if you research the Sephardim, you will eventually get 
back to 
Babylon.

Jon

---------- Original Message ----------

>                                                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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