Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BC to the fall of Babylon to the Persian and Medes in 539 BC. Equally feasible, however, would be the early years of Iranian–Achaemenid rule when the return to Judah of Judaean deportees or their descendants first became possible. In favour of this somewhat later date would be the presentation in P of Abraham as the ideal immigrant, and the prediction, only in the P account of Israel’s ancestors (Gen. 17:6; 35:11), that kings would issue from Abraham’s line (Blenkinsopp
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