Return to Zion (English Wikipedia)

Schipper, Bernd U. (2019). A Concise History of Ancient Israel: From the Beginnings Through the Hellenistic Era. Translated by Lesley, Michael. Eisenbrauns. p. 75. ISBN 978-1-57506-732-2. Given the situation depicted in the Babylonian texts, it is perhaps unsurprising that most likely only a small group of exiles returned to Judah. Even if the list of returnees in Ezra 2 does contain some historical truth, the number of returnees it gives, 42,360, is wholly unrealistic. In the early Persian period the province of Yehud probably had only 12,000 inhabitants (Finkelstein), or perhaps at the most 30,000 (Lipschits). At the same time, the archaeological record rules out the possibility of a mass return. Neither Jerusalem nor Yehud shows evidence of a spike in settlement growth in the early Persian period. A more realistic number of returnees would be around 4,000 people coming back to Yehud over several decades.
On the date, see Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press. 1 January 1988. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-664-22186-7.
Bedford, Peter Ross (2001). Temple Restoration in Early Achaemenid Judah. Leiden: Brill. p. 112 (Cyrus edict section pp. 111–131). ISBN 9789004115095.
Becking, Bob (2006). ""We All Returned as One!": Critical Notes on the Myth of the Mass Return". In Lipschitz, Oded; Oeming, Manfred (eds.). Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-57506-104-7.
Grabbe, Lester L. (2004). Yehud - A History of the Persian Province of Judah. The Library of Second Temple Studies. Vol. 1. T & T Clark. p. 355. ISBN 9780567089984. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
Young, Ian (2003-11-01). Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology. A&C Black. ISBN 978-0-8264-6841-3.

britannica.com

"Temple of Jerusalem". www.britannica.com. Encyclopedia Britannica. 2 June 2023.

chabad.org

"2 Kings 25 at chabad.org".
Ezra 1:7–8 at chabad.org
Ezra 1:7 at mechon-mamre.org (HE = Hebrew beside English)

halakhah.com

Babylonian Talmud: Order Moed, Tractate Megillah 16b
Megilah PDF in English Archived 2010-11-24 at the Wayback Machine on page 65 of 127, (last paragraph before footnotes), see last footnote on next page also.

hartsem.edu

hirr.hartsem.edu

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/jews.htm Archived 2018-06-24 at the Wayback Machine , the "population" section of this article estimates a pre-exilic population of 1.8 million in Israel and Judah combined. referenced on 6/26/2018.

mechon-mamre.org

Psalms 126
Ezra 1:7–8 at chabad.org
Ezra 1:7 at mechon-mamre.org (HE = Hebrew beside English)
Ezra 2
Ezra 7
Nehemiah 2
Nehemiah 5
Nehemiah 6:15

web.archive.org

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/jews.htm Archived 2018-06-24 at the Wayback Machine , the "population" section of this article estimates a pre-exilic population of 1.8 million in Israel and Judah combined. referenced on 6/26/2018.
Babylonian Talmud: Order Moed, Tractate Megillah 16b
Megilah PDF in English Archived 2010-11-24 at the Wayback Machine on page 65 of 127, (last paragraph before footnotes), see last footnote on next page also.

whyaliyah.com

Webmaster (2022-10-30). "#37 Fulfill the dreams of our ancestors". Why Aliyah?. Retrieved 2024-05-10.