Ancient Babylonian tablets, now on display in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, have revealed a heretofore unavailable perspective on the Jewish exiles who arrived there around the time of the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. Lawrence Schiffman explains the tablets’ significance:
The most important thing about these tablets is most probably the names that occur in them. Here we have Jews undertaking business and personal transactions with other Jews as well as with Babylonians and exiles from other places, in areas with significant populations of Judean exiles. We see how quickly Jews acclimated to the economic and legal conditions of Babylonia, engaging in a variety of business and agricultural activities, while maintaining their identity. . . .
Readers of these tablets who are familiar with the occupations and economic circumstances that are in evidence in the Babylonian Talmud will feel that they are essentially in the same world, in which water depends on an elaborate canal system, barley and beer are the staple foods, plow animals are at a premium, and complex transactions are constantly being effected. What these texts really show us is how the Babylonian Jewish community established itself quickly and successfully in the immediate aftermath of the exile from the land of Israel, and how it was this community that eventually developed into the Jewish community from which the most important statement of [Jewish] tradition emerged—the Babylonian Talmud.
Read more on Jewish Journal: http://lawrenceschiffman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/jews-of-babylon.pdf