Bayt Jibrin Caves

The vast majority of Palestine’s population, including that in the highlands and the Shephelah apart from Jerusalem and outside the province of Jehud, continued in the land and began to prosper in the course of the Persian period. While the biblical books of Chronicles, Genesis, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel present us with allegorical and utopian pictures of an ideal, repentant remnant of the people, returning to the land and reconciling all of Israel, the extensive archaeological excavations of Jerusalem and the area immediately surrounding it does not provide us with evidence that any significant return occurred historically during the Persian Period. The population of Jerusalem remained unchanged: limited to a few hundred. The population of the province of Jehud as a whole continued to be insignificant throughout the Persian and early Hellenistic periods.