ABSTRACT
Tradition is not just 'the way things are'; it is 'the way we make them be'. Although many customs may be the result of more or less arbitrary circumstances, literary traditions are conscious mental constructs, intended to give some structure and meaning to reality. However, the conviction that everyone who was of any social importance in pre-exilic Judah had been carried off to Babylon has worked powerfully towards regarding the exile as one of the big watersheds in the history of Israel. Just like invention and appropriation of tradition, the concept of intertextuality has been introduced into literary analysis fairly recently, but it has since prompted yet another wave of re-reading of texts with the expressed goal of establishing the relationship between different discourses. The general view on the exile can be summarized as follows, 'Babylonian captivity, in the history of Israel, the period from the fall of Jerusalem to the reconstruction in Palestine of a new Jewish state'.
