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Appendix 5: A History of The Jewish People<br />
contact with civilization proper <strong>for</strong> the first time. Although<br />
in captivity, many of them were given positions of<br />
importance and allowed to flourish. They also learned to<br />
write. They picked up religious beliefs and traditions of<br />
their hosts, which eventually found their way into the<br />
Hebrew Bible and into the other Jewish holy book - the<br />
Talmud. Monotheism started at this point but was<br />
backdated <strong>for</strong> convenience. Despite the emotional tales<br />
ruing their captivity (lasting just 48 years from 586 to 538<br />
BC), not all of them returned to Palestine when the<br />
Persian emperor Cyrus defeated the Babylonians in 539<br />
BCE and freed the Jews. Even as late as 5 th century, many<br />
of them were still “returning” to their homeland – led by<br />
Ezrah and Nehemiah. By then, the early returnees had<br />
built/rebuilt the Temple of Solomon (in 515 BC). For the<br />
next five centuries, the Jewish state remained unharmed<br />
by big-power machinations.<br />
Jews were still working on the their holy books – the<br />
Torah and the Talmud. Of the two, the Talmud would<br />
prove most damaging to all humanity. While both Jews<br />
and Christians consider the books of the Hebrew Bible as<br />
scripture, the Talmud is used exclusively by the Jews. The<br />
reason is that Talmud divides humanity into two – Jews<br />
and non-Jews.<br />
The Talmud decreed that Jews were the rightful<br />
owners of everything on earth and that non-Jews<br />
<strong>World</strong> Government Slave Handbook 127