Jewish history and culture in the hellenistic period

In the year 539 b.c.e., the Persian king, Cyrus, allowed the Jews, who had been exiled to Babylonia in 586 b.c.e. by King Nebuchadnezer, to return home to Jerusalem. A new era in the history of the Jews of Palestine thus began, one in which they were to live in their own land, but as subjects of a world empire. This situation was to persist until the Jews achieved formal independence under the Maccabees, in 140 b.c.e. Thus, for almost four hundred years, conditions of Jewish life in Palestine were dependent on the arrangements instituted by the empire controlling that part of the world, a role that was to pass from the Persians to the Macedonians at the time of Alexander the Great (333 b.c.e.), and after his death in 323 b.c.e. to his successors, at first Ptolemaic (until the Battle of the Bania in 198 b.c.e.) and later Seleucid.