Description
One of the most eventful eras of Jewish history was that of the Second Commonwealth, the period between the return of Jews from Babylonian exile during the last third of the sixth century B.C.E. to the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. Four great empires of antiquity Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome reached the zenith of their powers during this period and the Jews of Judea were among their subject peoples. Despite external pressures, these centuries witnessed an extraordinary flowering of Jewish achievement, resulting in the creation of the last books of the Bible, its canonization, the writing of apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works, the establishment of the Great Assembly and the Sanhedrin, and the evolution of the Oral Law.
