Another significant Persian-period achievement was the canonization of the Torah, traditionally credited to Ezra and playing an important role in shaping the Jewish identity.

In the early years of the 6th century BCE, despite the strong remonstrances of the prophet Jeremiah and others, the Judahite king Jehoiakim revolted against Nebuchadnezzar II.

Thus, by 586 BCE, much of Judah was devastated; the royal family, the priesthood, and the scribes, the country's elite, were in exile in Babylon, and the former kingdom suffered a steep decline in economy and population.

[17] The numbers of those who were deported to Babylon or made their way to Egypt and the remnants that remained in Yehud Province and surrounding countries are subject to academic debate.

The former kingdom of Judah then became the Babylonian province Yehud, with Gedaliah, a native Judahite, as governor (or possibly ruling as a puppet king).

According to Miller and Hayes, the province included the towns of Bethel in the north, Mizpah, Jericho in the east, Jerusalem, Beth-Zur in the west and En-Gedi in the south.

However, before long, Gedaliah was assassinated by a member of the former royal house, and the Babylonian garrison was killed, triggering a mass movement of refugees to Egypt.

[22] Much of the literature which became the Hebrew Bible was compiled in the early post-Exilic period, and Persian Yehud saw considerable conflict over the construction and function of the Temple and matters of cult (i.e., how God was to be worshiped).

However, by the middle of the next century, probably around 450 BCE, the kings and prophets had disappeared and only the high priest remained, joined by the scribe-sage (Ezra) and the appointed aristocrat-governor (Nehemiah).

[23] Canaan State of Israel (1948–present) Yehud was smaller than the former Iron-Age kingdom of Judah, stretching from around Bethel in the north to about Hebron in the south, which at the time belonged to Idumaea,[25] and from the Jordan River and the Dead Sea in the east to, but not including, the Shephelah, the slopes between the Judean highlands and the coastal plains in the west.

There is no sign in the archaeological record of massive inwards migration from Babylon,[29] in contradiction to the biblical account where Zerubbabel's band of returning Israelite exiles alone numbered 42,360.

[31] The second and third pillars of the early period of Persian rule in Yehud, copying the pattern of the old Davidic kingdom destroyed by the Babylonians, were the institutions of High Priest and Prophet.

Both are described and preserved in the Hebrew Bible in the histories of Ezra–Nehemiah–Chronicles and in the books of Zechariah, Haggai and Malachi, but by the mid-5th century BCE the prophets and Davidic kings had disappeared, leaving only the High Priest.

The experience of exile and restoration itself brought about a new worldview in which Jerusalem and the House of David continued to be central ingredients, and the destruction of the Temple came to be regarded as a demonstration of Yahweh's strength.

[44] Despite Yehud being consistently monotheistic, some pockets of polytheistic Yahwism still appeared to exist in the Persian period: the Elephantine papyri and ostraca (usually dated to the 5th century BCE) shows that a small community of Jews living on the Egyptian island of Elephantine, while being devout supporters of Yahweh, also venerated the Egyptian goddess Anat and even had their temple on the island.

[45] While it appears that the Elephantine community had some contact with the Second Temple (as evidenced by the fact that they had written a letter to the High Priest Johanan of Jerusalem[46]), the exact relationship between the two is currently unclear.

The literature from Ben Sira onwards is increasingly permeated with references to the Hebrew Bible in the present form, suggesting the slow development of the idea of a body of "scripture" in the sense of authoritative writings.

[48] One of the more important cultural shifts in the Persian period was the rise of Imperial Aramaic as the predominant language of Yehud and the Jewish diaspora.

Originally spoken by Aramaeans, the Persians adopted it and became the lingua franca of the empire, and already in the time of Ezra, it was necessary to have the Torah readings translated into Aramaic for them to be understood by Jews.

[51] According to Book of Ezra, Jeshua and Zerubbabel were frustrated in their efforts to rebuild the Temple by the enmity of the "people of the land" and the opposition of the governor of "Beyond-the-River" (the satrapy of which Yehud was a smaller unit).

Ezra led a large party of exiles back to Yehud, where he found that Jews had intermarried with the "peoples of the land" and immediately banned intermarriage.

The Book of Nehemiah says Ezra gathered the Jews together to read and enforce the law (his original commission from Darius but put into effect only now, 14 years after his arrival).

(Nehemiah 8–12) There is no complete agreement on the chronology of the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods: the following table is used in this article, but alternative dates for many events are plausible.

Jerusalem had shrunk to its pre-eighth century proportions and also had a much smaller population, which now concentrated in the Temple Mount and the City of David, especially near the Pool of Siloam.