Big Ideas · 8 · Josiah and Huldah
Exaggerating the first exile
Kings says that in 597 BCE all Jerusalem's elites were deported, leaving only the poorest. Babylonian records say nothing of deportations.
Rival exile groups, rival histories.
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The exaggeration served an ideological battle between the first exiles and those deported a decade later.
Source: Why the Bible Began, pp. 126–127
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