ABSTRACT
Evidence for Babylon’s impact on Judah and the exilic and diasporic Judean communities in Babylonia is plentiful in historical and prophetic books of the Bible, as well as in more literary books of the Ketuvim (Writings). Native Babylonian documentation related to the same events and social outcomes, limited in number and scope, nonetheless reveals an imperial policy that preserved as intact deported communities from common geographic origins. Cuneiform sources from the settlement Yāhūdu, named for Judah, attest to the relocation of a portion of the Judean deportees into the southern Mesopotamian agricultural landscape, and their integration into the land-for-service sector of the economy. The distinctive Yahwistic element of Judean personal names provides onomastic evidence supporting identification of individuals of Judean background and enabling the tracing of their participation in Babylonian social and economic life. The records points to integration and acculturation of Judeans into various modes of economic activity: the holding of lands in the land-for-service sector; as royal merchants in the mercantile sector; and, as members of the larger circle of individuals associated with court service. Babylonian impact on the intellectual culture of Judah’s population is difficult to detect in the cuneiform sources. Indications of that impact may, however, be elicited from the biblical text, in the form of loan words, and the transmission of Babylonian literary and historical forms (e.g., Chronicles) to the realm of biblical scribal culture.
