The Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylon . They had served forty eight years of captivity and slavery there. A great many of the original captives would have died and a new younger community of people would now be leaders of the nation.

The story of the return is recorded in two books of the Old Testament, (Ezra 10:3 to 44, and Nehemiah ch. 8). Many of the Jews who were not taken captive had married Canaanite people who were also of Semitic blood.

The fact that the Jews used Babylonian myths in their first two sacred texts, would indicate that they did not have a scripture until after about 580 B.C. If there was an earlier text it must have been superseded by Genesis. Probably the first five books of the Torah were also written in Babylon . The Jews had had a religion and places of worship, as did all pagans.

Ezra sent a message to all the Israelites, by order of the officials and elders, that they should gather together. If any did not come within three days, all their property would be forfeited and they themselves banned from the congregation of the exiles. (Ezra 10:8.) These were tough and arrogant measures to take. According to the story, the walls of Jerusalem city had been broken down and the Temple burned to the ground by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, when he took captives as slaves back to Babylon .

The people left behind had forgotten their religion. The Jews then, had no place to worship. Therefore they had little interest in records of Jewish religious laws, if they had any records.

Ezra and Nehemiah gathered the people together and read to them the Hebrew religious law for many days. All those who had married non-Jewish women, sent away their wives with their children. Ezra 10:3 & 11. If this is true, I would call it an extremely immoral act of ethnic cleansing.

There is nothing to suggest that the texts of the Torah were not written by the Jewish leaders while they were in Babylon or how much previous sacred texts had been modified or enlarged to fit the religion. This is the time when the whole fabricated story of Israel 's escape from Egypt could have been sold to the people for the first time. Some sacred texts, like the book of Daniel and at least part of Psalms (see chapter 137) and most of the following minor prophets were new additions to their sacred texts.

My Encyclopaedia Britannica states, "It is certain that before the second century A.D. the various manuscripts of the Old Testament differed very materially from one another and that the official Hebrew text was probably fixed in the second century A.D. Thereafter it was scrupulously preserved." This is a time when the Jewish religion was restarted or added to in earnest. The other ten tribes of Israel , often called the ten lost tribes of Israel , were scattered in small groups in many countries or were absorbed into local communities.