from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_Israel_and_Judah
The biblical history
The Hebrew Bible contains "myths, legends and folktales, sagas, heroic epics, oral traditions, annals, biographies, narrative histories, novellae, belles lettres, proverbs and wisdom-sayings, poetry (including erotic poems ...), prophecy, apocalyptic, and much more ... the whole finally woven into a composite, highly complex literary fabric sometime in the Hellenistic era." [ 2 ] Although tradition ascribes them to times and authors contemporaneous with events, they were in fact written in many cases considerably after the times they describe and by authors with a clear religious and nationalist agenda, and it is therefore critical to treat them with circumspection. [ 3 ]
The bible's history begins with the Creation , but God, seeing how the world is corrupted with violence, destroys it with a Deluge and starts again with Noah. Noah has three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, but Ham offends him and decrees that Canaan, Ham's son, will become a slave to the sons of Shem and Japheth. Somewhat later God scatters the peoples of the world across the Earth, allocating each a land. God calls Abraham, the descendant of Shem, to take possession of the land of Canaan. After a period of enslavement in Egypt the descendants of Abraham's grandson Jacob/Israel enter Canaan under their leader Joshua and take it from the Canaanites.
At first the Israelites live as separate tribes, are repeatedly unfaithful to their God, and in consequence are oppressed by foreign peoples, and at their request God gives them a king. The first king, Saul, proves unworthy, and God replaces him with David. David, the ideal king, puts his faith in God and unites all Israel under his rule, and his son Solomon builds the Temple where God will dwell among his people. But Solomon proves unfaithful to God, permitting the worship of gods other than Yahweh (the name of Israel's god), and so God punishes him by dividing the kingdom, the kingdom of Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The kings of Israel are consistently unfaithful, worshiping gods other than Yahweh, and God brings the Assyrians to destroy them. In the south things are somewhat better, but king Mannasseh allows religious tolerance to flourish, and so, despite the goodness Mannasseh's grandson Josiah who removes all trace of incorrect worship, God also destroys Judah.
The third phase of the biblical history is the history of the exile of Judah in Babylon, which is God's punishment on Israel for having worshiped other gods. After 70 years of exile Yahweh relents and brings a messiah to set Israel free. This is Cyrus the Great of Persia, who conquers Babylon and sends the Jews back to Jerusalem to build a new Temple where God can be worshiped in the midst of a purified and holy people, separated from the impure peoples around them.
Could anyone please elaborate on what the article is refering to here?
-Sab