Quote: I would rather suggest he was rewarded for betraying his army to save his own ass.
That idea always made more sense to me as well. Ever notice how the drawing of lots at Jotapata very closely resembles the drawing of lots at Masada? Of course, Josephus was not at Masada. He was already in Rome doing his bit for Flavian propaganda.
Quote:It does not say anyone was taken to Babylon.
No, but the Assyrians did deport conquered peoples to Assyria and replace them with others as a mechanism of control. (The US did the same thing by moving Indians off their land onto "reservations" where they had no ties to the land.) The Babylonians, being a successfully rebelling province of the Assyrian empire could easily have picked up the trick. Then again, we do have the Cyrus Cylinder which indicates that he did restore various peoples who had been overrun by the Babylonians. The Judahites are not mentioned, nor is yahweh but it was such an insignificant little shithole that it cannot have been foremost on his mind.
Archaeology does tell us that at the beginning of the Persian period a small number of people returned to "Jerusalem" and set up shop. Finkelstein puts the number at around 400 but this does mark a definitive break from the Babylonian administration which had been moved to Mispah when Jerusalem (or whatever it was called) was sacked and burned.
I've never found an online version of The View From Nebo. It is by Amy Dockser Marcus who is a reporter, not an archaeologist, but she went around interviewing archaeologists for the book. Luckily, she did not waste her time interviewing "theologians."
