In Palestine the Jewish population was fiercely loyal to the traditions of the fathers. The catastrophe of the Babylonian captivity uprooted the Jews from their native soil and compelled them to substitute the study of the Law for the ritual which had been destroyed. The families that returned in the Restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah were the loyal remnant who valued their homeland above their own ease and comfort, and who consequently were staunch defenders of the Law. The tensions of the Maccabean