It's simply amazing what some folks want to believe....isn't it?
Josephus clears that up with his statement of the immense multitudes of Israelites still residing in Babylonia in the first century. Sheeeeesh!
Apparently, although I lack the citation, Josephus claimed that Jews were slaughtered in, and expelled from, Babylonia during the reign of Caligula (AD 37-41). Anyone know of the citation?
Alexander Campbell, a Protestant minister, mentions this in his book, The Living Oracles (1835). It is also mentioned in this old book: http://books.google.com/books?id=QzrslGl_bUQC&pg=RA5-PA598&lpg=RA5-PA598&dq=jews+expelled+babylon+caligula&source=web&ots=ysSB2WYItr&sig=NNRxGjVltwxqdniyks1sLLs-PTk#PRA5-PA598,M1
Strabo the Geographer, who lived in the reign of Augustus several decades before Caligula, said Babylon was deserted to the point that it could be called a "vast wasteland" (See Rosenmuller, BIBLICAL GEOGRAPHY).
Jacques Basnage, in HISTORY OF THE JEWS, in the 18th century, mentions that Pliny said Babylon was like one vast solitude in the reign of Vespasian (that's when Josephus was fighting rather than writing!).
So are you so sure there were Jews there? Just 15 or so years before the letter was written (according to one Protestant here) there were NO Jews in Babylon. Hmmmm...
Babylonian Jewry .....and
[Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI, Chapter V, Paragraph 2]"When Esdras had received this epistle, he was very joyful, and began to worship God, and confessed that he had been the cause of the king's great favor to him, and that for the same reason he gave all the thanks to God. So he read the epistle at Babylon to those Jews that were there; but he kept the epistle itself, and sent a copy of it to all those of his own nation that were in Media. And when these Jews had understood what piety the king had towards God, and what kindness he had for Esdras, they were all greatly pleased; nay, many of them took their effects with them, and came to Babylon, as very desirous of going down to Jerusalem; but then the entire body of the people of Israel remained in that country; wherefore there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers." to be found here.
Umm ... yeah, especially when it happens to be the truth. Look up any secular history of the region. Babylon was depopulated and in ruins by the time the NT was being written; in fact, for a couple of centuries before.
Josephus clears that up with his statement of the immense multitudes of Israelites still residing in Babylonia in the first century. Sheeeeesh!
Josephus says the ten tribes lived "beyond the Euphrates". In fact, they were absorbed by the Assyrians (through intermarriage, etc.), and nobody really knows where they are now. (Nobody knew exactly where they were in Josephus' time, either.)
The Assyrians, BTW, weren't Babylonians, but they did live on the Euphrates.