History of the Jews: A Concise Guide to the Diaspora, Gathering, and Persecution of the Jews

The trajectory of Jewish history has been marked by a series of dispersals and captivities, with the first significant one being the Assyrian exile of the ten northern tribes in 722 BCE. This event set the stage for a larger dispersion that was solidified with the Babylonian captivity in 586 BCE, when the Jewish elite were taken into exile. Following the Babylonian conquest, Jews began to settle throughout the ancient Near East, which would later become a defining characteristic of Jewish existence. The Jewish people continued to spread across the Mediterranean world, particularly within the vast expanse of the Roman Empire, where they maintained distinct cultural and religious practices even as they interacted with surrounding civilizations. This trend persisted throughout Byzantine rule in the eastern Mediterranean, although the influence of Jewish communities diminished in these regions after the Byzantine Empire lost control of the Levant to the Arab Islamic Empire in 638 CE.